[DitV] First actual play - and several questions

[Michi]

I had my first GMing session of my new and shiny Dogs in the Vineyard on new year's eve; with Stefan and Susanne, both of whom are seasoned gamers leaning heavily toward freeform roleplaying.

We used the Olive Grove branch posted here in the forum.

I'll wait with the characters and the initiation conflicts until I can get a hold of the sheets again - right now they're in another country entirely than I am. Very tersely, the dogs - Br. Elijah and Br. Virgil were a skeptic and a recovering alcoholic, respectively.

The characters ride into town; which is surprisingly quiet and subdued. They catch a glimpse of the finishing school on their way in. Once there, they enter the Steward's home and find the blind Steward, who tells them about the several recent deaths and his own ailment. His wife appears and challenges the dogs to clean out the witchcraft so apparently rampant in the town.

They then go on a walk through town, discussing the tidings, and as they come by the school, Sr. Prudence invites them up on her porch for tea, and chats for a while with them. They get invited into the school, confronting Sr. Rachel about scripture, dissolving the class session and then picking out Sr. Rose on the porch for an interview. They interrogate her about the suicidal suitor, and when pressed, she draws on her sorcery powers to get the dogs out of her way. General mayhem ensues when Srs. Rachel and Rebecca come out to join their sister, and in the end the dogs save the lives of the dying Srs. Rose and Rebecca while Sr. Rachel is led home by the Steward and two more townsfolk.

Once the lives of the girls (one with fractured skull after Br. Virgil used his "I can headbutt you into next week" 2d8, the other hit by bad fallout after being anointed with sacred earth) have been saved, the dogs go to Sr. Rachels home, and there encounter the old coven, who refuse to let the dogs enter the house. Again, sorcery comes into play after words didn't help, with the result that both dogs draw their guns. We broke play due to time constraints with Br. Elijah and one of the coven lying dying on the ground.

Now for the questions this generated.

• My players were not at all pleased by the way escalation works. Escalating from talking to physical contact, brawl or gunfighting retains the dice rolled for talking - which both players felt led to extremely unbelievable combat situations; such as a 15 years old girl beating a welltrained 20-something dog in what amounts to a fistfight.
• Another aspect of the mechanics the players really hated was that the fallout came so late. You could get a bunch of d8 fallout dice during a conflict, keep on through the conflict until someone gave, but didn't discover the deadly wounds until someone lost the conflict already. Introducing "combat turns" as well as treating escalation as giving + followup conflict were both suggested as a way to deal with these problems.
• Br. Virgil carried a 2d6 Book of Life, and it wasn't clear exactly when those dice could be introduced. Would they be addable to a religious/theological conflict?
• During the large showdown between the new coven and the dogs (when they almost killed two of the girls), they wanted to introduce the help of the townsfolk on their own side. How would that be done - it was not clear at all to us during the session.
• With both the dogs acting basically in unison, they - at least in the beginning - simply pooled their relevant dice. This doesn't seem entirely in harmony with the rules, but it wasn't clear to us how to handle many-vs-many conflicts in a clean way.
• Does healing only pertain to physical healing, or is there/could there be a mental/spiritual component to it?
• When playing a healing conflict, the "illness" may well take the blow. What do we do with fallout taken by the illness? What size of fallout is given?
• Br. Virgil had to give from the conflict to get past the new coven in the end - with the stakes being "Will they let us into the house", whereas Br. Elijah stayed on. Then, the demonic influences showed and guns were drawn, whereupon Br. Virgil wanted back into the conflict. How should we handle that?

All in all, though, everyone were quite happy with the game. Susanne told me several time that she had never enjoyed rolling dice this much.

[Parsolamew]

• My players were not at all pleased by the way escalation works. Escalating from talking to physical contact, brawl or gunfighting retains the dice rolled for talking - which both players felt led to extremely unbelievable combat situations; such as a 15 years old girl beating a welltrained 20-something dog in what amounts to a fistfight.

Why did the 15 year old girl escalate?  If she's still got a pile of dice she can use, she doesn't -have- to escalate just because the dog does.  If he wants to beat her up, and she can see his blows without returning the violence, that's -perfectly- fine.  Escalation is usually what happens when A. dramatically appropriate, or B. when you're running out of dice, and are willing to up the ante to get your stakes. 

-Ben

[James Holloway]

Line-by-line responding is generally frowned on here at the Forge, but since these are quite different questions, I hope you'll indulge me.

Now for the questions this generated.

• My players were not at all pleased by the way escalation works. Escalating from talking to physical contact, brawl or gunfighting retains the dice rolled for talking - which both players felt led to extremely unbelievable combat situations; such as a 15 years old girl beating a welltrained 20-something dog in what amounts to a fistfight.

A single NPC with more dice than a Dog is a pretty unlikely creature -- you were using the NPC creation rules, right? But note that all conflicts don't have to start with conversation, either. If the Dog knows he or she is going to be vulnerable to the sinner's honeyed words, then opening the conflict with a poke in the kisser is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. After that, you can only escalate to talking if you have some way in which it makes sense -- which does happen, of course, but not always.

[li]Another aspect of the mechanics the players really hated was that the fallout came so late. You could get a bunch of d8 fallout dice during a conflict, keep on through the conflict until someone gave, but didn't discover the deadly wounds until someone lost the conflict already. Introducing "combat turns" as well as treating escalation as giving + followup conflict were both suggested as a way to deal with these problems.[/li]

Nothing to be done about this one. Dogs conflicts don't have consequences until they're over; that's the way the game is.

[li]Br. Virgil carried a 2d6 Book of Life, and it wasn't clear exactly when those dice could be introduced. Would they be addable to a religious/theological conflict?[/li]

This one gets a lot of new players (definitely including me the first time I ran Dogs). Brother Virgil can roll his 2d6 whenever he uses his Book of Life in narrating a Raise or See. He can therefore use the dice in any conflict where it makes sense, but he has to actually work the book into the narration before he gets them.

[li]During the large showdown between the new coven and the dogs (when they almost killed two of the girls), they wanted to introduce the help of the townsfolk on their own side. How would that be done - it was not clear at all to us during the session.[/li]

NPCs actively taking the PC's side in a conflict add 2d6 to relevant Stats, plus a trait representing their role. If they join a conflict in the middle, they act as an improvised tool. Check out p. 129 of the second edition rulebook for how to do this.

[li]With both the dogs acting basically in unison, they - at least in the beginning - simply pooled their relevant dice. This doesn't seem entirely in harmony with the rules, but it wasn't clear to us how to handle many-vs-many conflicts in a clean way.[/li]

Conflicts with multiple PCs (the NPCs will presumably just act as a Group; see p. 128) can get a little confusing at first. Basically, a player will Raise, then everyone targeted by the Raise will See, then the next player will Raise, and everyone targeted by the Raise will See, and so on. It means that in a large enough conflict, a character might See several times before getting to Raise, which seems odd, but you'll get the hang of it. Check out the example under "Multiple Opponents" on p. 70 for a more detailed discussion of how this works.

[li]Does healing only pertain to physical healing, or is there/could there be a mental/spiritual component to it?[/li]

Someone else want to field this one?

[li]When playing a healing conflict, the "illness" may well take the blow. What do we do with fallout taken by the illness? What size of fallout is given?[/li]

The main use for the Fallout given to the illness would be in a followup conflict with that same illness, if one happened, where the fallout dice would be added to the player's pool. As for the size, it would depend -- normally, healing is physical, so I would assume the fallout dice are d6.

[li]Br. Virgil had to give from the conflict to get past the new coven in the end - with the stakes being "Will they let us into the house", whereas Br. Elijah stayed on. Then, the demonic influences showed and guns were drawn, whereupon Br. Virgil wanted back into the conflict. How should we handle that?[/li]

Too bad for him. You Give, you're out. Elijah could Give and you could start a new conflict, but that would mean having to lose the stakes of the first conflict.
[/list]

I hope that's helpful -- it sounds like Escalation and Fallout may simply not work they way you'd like them to, but hopefully I've been able to answer your questions about the other stuff.

[Darren Hill]

My players were not at all pleased by the way escalation works. Escalating from talking to physical contact, brawl or gunfighting retains the dice rolled for talking - which both players felt led to extremely unbelievable combat situations; such as a 15 years old girl beating a welltrained 20-something dog in what amounts to a fistfight.
Another aspect of the mechanics the players really hated was that the fallout came so late. You could get a bunch of d8 fallout dice during a conflict, keep on through the conflict until someone gave, but didn't discover the deadly wounds until someone lost the conflict already. Introducing "combat turns" as well as treating escalation as giving + followup conflict were both suggested as a way to deal with these problems.

These are both very important elements of the rules - the way escalation and fallout work is a very deliberate design decision.
The fact that you can take Fallout at the end of the conflict means that you can choose to stake your character's life on something - you can win the conflict and die. That's something that very few other games allow without a great deal of fudging.
I've had an adolescent girl almost beat up a dog (she got angry and grabbed a shovel), and the player gave because the thing he was trying to persuade her of was less important than running the risk of one of them dying. Escalation makes this sort of thing possible - it gives players real choices, and forces them to live with the consequences of those choices. Change it to a more traditional conflict system (with combat turns, etc.), and you lose many of the unique features that DITV offers.

Br. Virgil carried a 2d6 Book of Life, and it wasn't clear exactly when those dice could be introduced. Would they be addable to a religious/theological conflict?

This is simpler than it appears. Anytime you use the item in a raise or see, you get its dice. Maybe you're trying to convince the Steward of something, and say, "I consult my Book of Life, and draw out the relevant scripture that says... bla bla" Or maybe someone shoots you, and you say, "I stagger back, unhurt as my Book of Life took the bullet".

During the large showdown between the new coven and the dogs (when they almost killed two of the girls), they wanted to introduce the help of the townsfolk on their own side. How would that be done - it was not clear at all to us during the session.

There are two easy ways:
1) Take a realtionship with the townsfolk (an individual or the entire town), and then get to roll those relationship dice.
2) Use them as an improvised weapon: the standard rule when someone comes in on your side to help is you get is either 1d6 or 2d6, I forget. (when my players take a rleationship, I give them this bonus as well).
Either way, it shouldn't really matter whether you get 1 person or a crowd - for the purposes of the raise or see, it's pretty much the same. You get the dice on the first see or raise you use them, and from then on, no more - but you do have the freedom to narrate their actions as part of future sees and raises.

With both the dogs acting basically in unison, they - at least in the beginning - simply pooled their relevant dice. This doesn't seem entirely in harmony with the rules, but it wasn't clear to us how to handle many-vs-many conflicts in a clean way.

I fell afoul of this in my first session. In actual fact, during a conflict the GM should only be using 1 NPC. That NPC might be "Brother Jacob and his two brothers," or "The Angry Crowd". You stat it up as a single NPC and get some extra stat dice for the greater numbers - check the designing NPCs section, this is described in there.

Does healing only pertain to physical healing, or is there/could there be a mental/spiritual component to it?
When playing a healing conflict, the "illness" may well take the blow. What do we do with fallout taken by the illness? What size of fallout is given?

Yes, this gave me pause too. Remember, Taking the Blow is not just about taking Fallout. When taking the blow, you have to concede something to your opponent during the conflict, in a way that you don't with a Block or Reversal. This is the main thing that happens during healing attempts in my experience - the fallout isn't an issue. (Though the extra dice you can get for follow-up conflicts if there are any might still be useful.)

One other thing that might not be obvious (I mention it just because it's come up on the forum before): it'not all conflicts have the potential for escalation. If you are attempting to heal someone, you can't easily escalate to gunfighting!

And yes, healing can have a spiritual conflict too.

Br. Virgil had to give from the conflict to get past the new coven in the end - with the stakes being "Will they let us into the house", whereas Br. Elijah stayed on. Then, the demonic influences showed and guns were drawn, whereupon Br. Virgil wanted back into the conflict. How should we handle that?

This does cause new players (my group included) a lot of consternation - it takes some getting used to.
The simple rule is: Brother Virgil has Given, so he can not under any circumstances re-enter the conflict. Have the in-game description reflexct this: Maybe when he Gave, Virgil wandered off in disgust and is now too far away to rejoin the conflict before it is over, or maybe say, since Virgil wants back in the conflict, all raises and sees must be described in such a way that they take place before he can do so. (This places some constraint on what can be done, of course.)
In your case, if Elijah really wanted to shoot his way into the house, he can attempt to do so, but lives or dies on his own. However, he can Give. Would that be so bad? There are rulkes in the book (2nd edition) about giving and reattempting certain conflicts at a later time - certain things have to change (the exact people, the time, and something else, or something like that, I forget).
Abandoning some conflicts is not a bad thing anyway. DITV is built on the assumption that players won't win every conflict they get into.

[SusanneV]

Hi!
I played Elijah in the aforementioned game - I quite liked the character and the system, and am thinking about introducing it to another gaming group, as soon as I've modified (or really understood) some of the rules.

Regarding giving in: After having read your posts, I have a clearer view of how Give affects play. In our case, we let Virgil back in - originally he had thrown his hands up in the air, shouted "women" and gone away a bit, leaving Elijah to continue the argument. It would have worked to say that he was too far away to get involved when the coven started physical fighting, but we didn't think of that - mainly because we're all new to the DitV mindset. Instead, we claimed that since weapons had been drawn, this could actually be seen as a new conflict. The stake in the earlier one was: Get Into The House, now it was: Kill the Witches... Comments?

Regarding escalation to fighting: Would not a sensible solution be that going from "you're ugly" to trying to kill someone is actually two conflicts. In the "you're ugly" heart-acuity-phase, the goal is to insult, get the other one angry. When weapons start to be used, the goal is different - you want to hurt someone...

[Darren Hill]

Regarding giving in: After having read your posts, I have a clearer view of how Give affects play. In our case, we let Virgil back in - originally he had thrown his hands up in the air, shouted "women" and gone away a bit, leaving Elijah to continue the argument. It would have worked to say that he was too far away to get involved when the coven started physical fighting, but we didn't think of that - mainly because we're all new to the DitV mindset. Instead, we claimed that since weapons had been drawn, this could actually be seen as a new conflict. The stake in the earlier one was: Get Into The House, now it was: Kill the Witches... Comments?

One thing here: the violence that occurs during a conflict is not part of the stakes, it is incidental.
Having one conflict that is "Get Into The House" that happens to result in the death of the witches is perfectly okay.
Also fine is having one conflict "Get Into The House" followed by another conflict "Kill The Witches" - so long as the second conflict is not a sneaky way to achieve the first. So, that second conflict should only take place if the witches aren't actually in the house at the time.
If the goal was to "Get Into The House Before The Witches Sacrifice The Child", you could give on that one, and have the second conflict be "Kill The Wicthes In The House" - but in doing so, the child has already been sacrificed when you enter.
It's important to have a good idea what the stakes of the conflict represent before the conflict states-  this makes it much easier to handle follow up conflicts.

Regarding escalation to fighting: Would not a sensible solution be that going from "you're ugly" to trying to kill someone is actually two conflicts. In the "you're ugly" heart-acuity-phase, the goal is to insult, get the other one angry. When weapons start to be used, the goal is different - you want to hurt someone...

If you have good stakes, escalation usually isn't a problem. If uou're using a Raise to say, "you're ugly," that's only part of the picture. We can't tell whether that's a good raise without knowing whatt he stakes of the confliuct are.
If you're stakes are, "get the ugly guy to go away and let us do our work," then telling him "you're ugly," as part of a raise might be fine. It is easy to see, also, how this may lead to him escalating - in the verbal, increasingly heatede, arguments, people could easily reach for weapons - brandish them while posturing, and then someone pulls a trigger...
In the end, if you kill him, the stakes are satisfied - he dies 'go away'. Likewise, if he puts you down, or drives you away, he can continue to pester you.
Work on getting stakes hammered out before the conflict starts (and this does take some practice - it caused me and my group some problems), and many of the stumbling blocks you have with the system should go away.

[Michi]

One thing here: the violence that occurs during a conflict is not part of the stakes, it is incidental.
Having one conflict that is "Get Into The House" that happens to result in the death of the witches is perfectly okay.
Also fine is having one conflict "Get Into The House" followed by another conflict "Kill The Witches" - so long as the second conflict is not a sneaky way to achieve the first. So, that second conflict should only take place if the witches aren't actually in the house at the time.
If the goal was to "Get Into The House Before The Witches Sacrifice The Child", you could give on that one, and have the second conflict be "Kill The Wicthes In The House" - but in doing so, the child has already been sacrificed when you enter.
It's important to have a good idea what the stakes of the conflict represent before the conflict states-  this makes it much easier to handle follow up conflicts.

Actually, in the case mentioned, it wasn't "Get into the house before the witches sacrifice the child" but rather "Get past the women in front of the house so we can exorcise the witch inside the house"  and once the women in front of the house turned out to be witches as well, they wanted to start in that end. By that time, as already said, Virgil had already given, not wanting to grow violent on women. That the women turned out to be witches was, to Virgil, a fundamental change in the premises, which is why he wanted back in.

Regarding escalation to fighting: Would not a sensible solution be that going from "you're ugly" to trying to kill someone is actually two conflicts. In the "you're ugly" heart-acuity-phase, the goal is to insult, get the other one angry. When weapons start to be used, the goal is different - you want to hurt someone...

Actually, this indicates, probably, a misunderstanding of conflicts. The idea (I think) is that you don't insult the other one in order to get him angry - you have something else that you want to achieve, whereby getting him angry could very well be a good road there. Thus, this particular argument seems to reside on the confusion between means and ends. Getting him angry, insulting him, or hurting him are all means. But the end is something else - and THIS is your stake.

Another question to the forum at large. The players here are generally characterized by a great love of acting out their roles; and introducing stakes and starting conflicts often was seen (still is) as an unwelcome break in the flow of roleplaying. All of a sudden, the acting-out had to give way for mechanics and the negotiation of proper stakes. Does anyone have any good ideas on whether to and if so then how to streamline the mechanical part? Or for that matter finding a good trigger point to initiate it? I found myself often having to break the stream of roleplaying to ask the players what they -really- were after, because I could sense in the way they were playing, that they were trying to fish for information by playing for it, whereas my NPC was dead set on not giving out that information - thus keeping me from "Saying yes" and just running along with it. By the time the conflict was started, sometimes almost half of the conflict had been played out before the mechanics came along and the treatment got a .. stilted feel to it.

[Warren]

Another question to the forum at large. The players here are generally characterized by a great love of acting out their roles; and introducing stakes and starting conflicts often was seen (still is) as an unwelcome break in the flow of roleplaying. All of a sudden, the acting-out had to give way for mechanics and the negotiation of proper stakes. Does anyone have any good ideas on whether to and if so then how to streamline the mechanical part? Or for that matter finding a good trigger point to initiate it? I found myself often having to break the stream of roleplaying to ask the players what they -really- were after, because I could sense in the way they were playing, that they were trying to fish for information by playing for it, whereas my NPC was dead set on not giving out that information - thus keeping me from "Saying yes" and just running along with it. By the time the conflict was started, sometimes almost half of the conflict had been played out before the mechanics came along and the treatment got a .. stilted feel to it.

The way we do in it my group is to talk 'out-of-character' about what the objectives of each player is. Normally, I don't find that to take too long, and you can get a good set of Stakes from it (if needed for a imminent Conflict). In any case, once that is decided upon, I frame a Scene that is a good starting place for that Conflict (or just roleplaying situation if you have decided to just "Say Yes")* and go into free roleplay or the conflict resolution mechanics as needed, with all the Actor-stance stuff as needed. Once that Scene has resolved, we drop back out-of-character to deal with Fallout and then start discussing what the next set of objectives are.

*Note that I cut straight to the heart of the scene, skipping things pretty harshly. For more stuff on how I learnt how to frame scenes this way, I looked at this threads (they may have various other games in the title, but the meat of thing thing is fine for Dogs.) 

Scene Framing
Scene Framing and octaNe
[D&D 3.5] Scene framing goodness

[James Holloway]

Actually, in the case mentioned, it wasn't "Get into the house before the witches sacrifice the child" but rather "Get past the women in front of the house so we can exorcise the witch inside the house"  and once the women in front of the house turned out to be witches as well, they wanted to start in that end. By that time, as already said, Virgil had already given, not wanting to grow violent on women. That the women turned out to be witches was, to Virgil, a fundamental change in the premises, which is why he wanted back in.

In this case, "exorcise the witches" should really be the stakes, with people blocking the way into the house being some of the Raises one side could make. It's a little simpler that way.

[Brendan]

Another question to the forum at large. The players here are generally characterized by a great love of acting out their roles; and introducing stakes and starting conflicts often was seen (still is) as an unwelcome break in the flow of roleplaying. All of a sudden, the acting-out had to give way for mechanics and the negotiation of proper stakes. Does anyone have any good ideas on whether to and if so then how to streamline the mechanical part? Or for that matter finding a good trigger point to initiate it?

Coaching the players on noticing conflicts and setting stakes is an important part of the GM's role in Dogs; if your players want full immersion--and it sounds like they do--that makes the job harder.

I suggest borrowing from Polaris and creating a Key Phrase.  For example, every time someone says "Here's what's going to happen," in character voice, it should be understood that he or she is calling for a conflict; whatever he or she says next ("you're going to step aside and let us into this accursed house") is half the stakes.  To accept the stakes, the player or GM on the other side says "No, HERE'S what's going to happen..." and then the first side says "All right then" to accept.  Roll dice.  (To reject someone's stakes, say "You're out of your dadblamed mind!")

[Jason Morningstar]

Regarding giving in: ... Instead, we claimed that since weapons had been drawn, this could actually be seen as a new conflict. The stake in the earlier one was: Get Into The House, now it was: Kill the Witches... Comments?

Hi Susanne, and welcome to the Forge!

There's definitely a value in using follow-on conflicts (page 41 in my rules), but you have to respect the stakes in any conflict.  So If what was at stake was "do I get in the house?", and you lost, then you didn't.  Work with that and propose a follow-on conflict with new stakes, maybe "Do I kill the witches?"  You can't switch mid-conflict.  It's actually really compelling once you get the hang of it, because you can begin to craft follow-ons in your head while you are still getting beat down...and if nobody cares about the NPCs, you get some extra dice in the bargain.

--Jason