[DITV] The Bloated Blood River Valley

[Glendower]

I have never made my own town in Dogs.  I usually took a town from the site to use instead, which has worked well for me the last little while.  But I really wanted to find a town that pushes the buttons of my players, to get them worked up over what's happening and really care about the outcomes. 

So I created my first Town, Blood River Valley.  I made the critical mistake of having too much happening at once in the town.  It got confusing for the players, hell, it got confusing for myself!  Had I cut out David, and have Malvina break off the engagement, it would have been a lot easier to process.  But let's talk about what happened in play.

This game involved Erica and Aaron, from my game session written up here.  They asked if their friend Dave could come to try the game out, and I was happy to have one more (three is a great player number).  I didn't know much about Dave, Erica mentioned that his RPG experience was a little D&D way back in the past. 

Dave scanned the big list of names, and settled on Brother David, "so I won't forget his name", to the chuckles of the group.  His accomplishment was "I hope I get over my jealousy of the other Dogs".  I asked for a few ideas from Erica and Aaron, and then spun off into a graduation and awards ceremony amongst the new Dogs.  Every single Dog there got some kind of award, in the form of a pin that they placed on their coats.  The awards ranged from academic to physical, down to silly stuff like "Best made Bed" and "Never asked for Second Helpings".  David, of course, didn't get a single award.

In the celebration afterwards, I had a teacher approach him and ask him "having a good time?"  Conflict begins!  It looked a little scary for poor Brother David, as I rolled pretty huge, but somehow, and this has never happened before, he managed to win by matching my raises point by point.  One raise I did was an awesome awesome "I don't think we missed anything important." At the very end, we both had no dice, and I was next to raise, forcing me to give.  Dave seemed to really dig the back and forth of the mechanic, and we launched into the town.

Aaron really wanted a Dog for his Dog, an Irish Wolfhound named "King".  I saw no reason not to let him have it, and we quickly agreed that they had traveled through a few relatively "horrible sin free" towns where they got showered with gifts.  It was also agreed that Lilith and Gabriel had been traveling for almost six months after their Orchard Plains cleanup.  I don't know their reasons why, that's what they wanted, so I said yes and moved on.

Now, initially, I wanted to give the Dogs a small chance to interact before inflicting the town, so I put them at a crossroads, Aaron and Erica's Dogs waiting for Brother David.  Aaron, who played Brother Gabriel, began a good rapport with Brother David, who Dave played almost as a younger "I'm just starting out" Dog looking up to Gabriel's advice.  One of his advice was a whispered "Be careful of Sister Lilith, she's scary", that Erica laughed at.  Erica had her character, Sister Lilith, glare at Gabriel and say "Don't let Gabriel fill your head with nonsense".  Gabriel waited for Lilith to move ahead "See?  Scary."  which got an angry "I heard that!"

When this sort of banter begins to happen organically, I relax and know that even if I borked the town, this game was going to be fun for everyone involved.

I handed out a sheet of people that they'd all know who lived in Blood River Valley, I figured that this would be a useful tool to see the different prominent families and their relations.  It was useful but not useful enough to unsnarl the knot of problems in the town, I should have provided spots to show the relationships between the different families. 

I also asked them to pick who they were related to.  Lilith was adopted, but still blood, and was a niece to Brother Thomas.  Gabriel was a nephew of the Steward, Brother Abel, and David took on Brother Micah as a cousin.  I really like doing this, as family makes stuff complicated.

I played up their arrival as an excuse to have a big party, and had the different groups come up to them in ones and twos to ask the Dogs for what they wanted.  I really pushed the carnival atmosphere, where the Dogs got a chorus of children singing hymns to them, all the ginger and root beer they could drink, sitting at the head table at the central pavilion, even now being constructed for the big wedding.

I had Brother Steven Morning Brook approach Gabriel and David in private, telling them of the horrible truths in Blood River, and asking them to do something about it.  Specifically, leading them to the panicked sounds of the entombed horses, and telling the story of Elanor's enslavement by Thomas. 

One thing that happened very quickly was for Gabriel to quickly take David away from Lilith, speaking to him in confidence.  "Once Lilith gets involved, things get really ugly." he says, and told him about her burning down the orchard six months ago.  This was an interesting division in the ranks, causing a lot of tension when Lilith showed up as they were leaving to visit Thomas Widmore's house. 

Lilith insisted on going to her family's house to get to the bottom of things, and not wanting to disappear from their own celebration they left David there to fend for himself.  I had David set upon by a number of other players, who filled him in on other problems in the town.  I pushed hard to make sure that him staying at the celebration was a useful thing, he ended up gleaning several pieces of information very quickly. 

Our first conflict came about when Lilith spoke to a crying Malvina.  Gabriel went in to talk to Elanor, leading to the second, much shorter conflict.  The conflict was "Does Lilith find out why Malvina REALLY doesn't want to marry Abel?"  This was a nicely phrased conflict, as I had Malvina unwilling to come out with the full truth, and using a lot of lies and half truths to cover up her distress, "Abel's so ... OLD!", being one of them. It took Lilith escalating to physical by holding her as she sobbed and stroking her hair was really touching, and I had Malvina give and spill. 

The relationship between Malvina and Thelsa was a sticky one, and I made very clear that the decision of what to do was directly in their hands.  Lilith gave Malvina two options, either go through with the marriage as she announced (!!!) or leave the town with Thelsa and give their service to God.  Erica wanted to know if there was the equivalent of nunneries in the Faith, to which I said "sure".  Marry or live in a convent.  It was hardcore, and I wished the other two were there to toss in their opinions.  But Gabriel was in the kitchen, horribly failing to get anything from Elanor.

The conflict between Gabriel and Elanor was hilariously uncomfortable.  Gabriel's raise of "So I hear that Thomas beat up your husband, huh?" was hilariously inept, mixed in with his "What about those horses that Thomas left in the ground, know anything about that?" and "This is good water.  So are you here by choice?" had everyone just laughing and cringing. 

I had Elanor raise with "How do you view your horse, Gabriel?  Do you love your horse as a friend, or is she just a useful tool, to consume and discard?"  He tossed in his infamous "I didn't ask to be a dog" trait and even though he had a mechanical advantage, gave and had Gabriel half run out of the kitchen with a "thanks for the water" thrown over his shoulder. 

Gabriel shot a "If there's a gunfight, I'll be there, but I'm not good at this talking stuff" at Lilith, and left the house. 

Lilith then moved in to talk to Elanor.  There was a shorter conflict, but Lilith focused on getting her help to stop Thomas. I had Elanor give and tell the horrible story of Thomas and his dealings with the Morning Brook family.  I decided to inter cut this with a conversation David was having with Brother Thomas.  As Thomas was discussing how he  forgave Adam's attack and comforted Elanor, and how their love grew, Elanor spoke of her humiliation and degraded treatment by Thomas, and how her hate of him and herself grows.  As Thomas asked David to consider given the peace of Death to a comatose Adam, Elanor begs Lilith to give him life once more.   

Elanor then told Lilith something interesting about the gun that Adam's brother allegedly had when he was shot by Thomas.  That the gun originally belonged to Brother Abel, the Steward. 

Lilith had Gabriel and David speak to the Steward, while she went off to find Thomas and confront him.  And then we started to run very short on time!  Curse my horribly complicated town!

Gabriel and David's conflict with the Steward was decided to be the last conflict of the game session, and it turned out to be a really tense one.  There was a very fascinating give that happened here, where David had run out of dice, escalated to physical by putting his hand on the Steward's shoulder, ran out of dice again, and when given the choice to escalate to physical, to strike his own blood, he chose to give instead, and offered his last remaining die to Gabriel to help him come to a peaceful conclusion. 

Gabriel's response was to pull his gun and fire it into the air, stopping the Steward cold (it was ruled as using the gun as an improvised device).  Having no dice, I gave rather than escalating, and he confessed to giving his gun to Thomas the night the Morning Brook brother was shot, but insisted he didn't know why Thomas wanted the gun, but neither did he ask. 

The session ended there, with plans to continue the town to it's likely bloody conclusion next week. 

Now, my thoughts.  Giving rocks.  It's a powerful moment to know that you can push it further, that you can step over the line, but deliberately don't. The choice to voluntarily lose a conflict is always awesome when it happens, especially if the player decides to do it. 

We used Afraid group rules when we did have groups, but I did like that they occasionally decided to split up and deal with different peoples, which gave nice screen time to each character.  Al in all, I'm looking forward to playing the second part of this town, and building slimmer, more focused towns in the future.

[Web_Weaver]

Hi Jon,

Everything seems to be going smoothly, but I am intrigued as to why you decided to make such a complex situation, with so many NPCs. To me it seems to stretch the town creation rules somewhat, more in fitting with an investigative campaign than a Dogs town.

What was your thinking here?
Was the complexity in reaction to the PCs decisive nature in the previous town?
Do you have a plan to simplify things?
I have had far simpler towns take 3 sessions of play, how long do you envisage this town taking?

It may be an idea to work towards a point in the story where you can hand over the town write-up to the players.

[Glendower]

1. What was your thinking here?
2. Was the complexity in reaction to the PCs decisive nature in the previous town?
3. Do you have a plan to simplify things?
4. I have had far simpler towns take 3 sessions of play, how long do you envisage this town taking?

1) When I built the town, I kept in mind the major intolerances my players had.  I wanted to push buttons, and so I built in something for everyone.  and I built, and built, and built.  If you look at the town, you can see I followed town creation rules to the hilt.  I was worried that I didn't have enough meaty conflict, so I added more things wrong in the town. And more stuff going on.  This is three, maybe four towns layered on top of each other. 

It was a combination of anxiety that they'll be done the town in 15 minutes, and coupled with an urge to hit as many of the player's interest points as possible, that led to this hugely complicated town.

2) Orchard Plains definitely had a part in the decision to make things more complicated.  I wanted there to be a lot more interlocking sin and interconnections between the families in terms of wrongness, and that would lead to a bigger knot that they'd need to judge and untangle to "make things right".  This was a mistake, of course, more complicated doesn't suddenly translate to more fun.  It translates to more confusing. 

3) One thing I'm pretty happy about is that the players are sharp and on the ball, especially Erica.  The situation is complicated, but they'll make a judgment on the situation.  I'm also lucky in that the players are enjoying themselves, in spite of some confusing relationships between the various townsfolk.

I don't think I can change anything now, not with all the information on the town handed out.  This will mean that in the future, my towns are way less confusing.  Sticking with one major issue, and dividing the town on it, seems the best way to go.  Orchard Plains had a single premise, but led to some compelling game play. As I said earlier, this town was a useful failure. 

I think what I'll do next session is provide a relationship map to help them keep all the criss crossing affairs and courting straight.  That should be enough to get them through the town and move to the next.

4) I imagine that had we one, maybe two more hours of game play, this town would have been judged.  I have found thus far in play that towns tend to get completed within a session. I give the players all the information on what's happening in town as quickly as possible, through conversations with the various townsfolk.  In this case, there were too many townsfolk, and too many conversations. 

KISS was the rule of the day here, and something I'll keep in mind for the future.