[DiTV] Dogs One-Shot

[Judd]

A few friends are coming to visit from outta town and so we will be making up characters primarily through e-mail.

Town creation will come later.  For now, here are the first e-mailed character concepts:

Rob is a gaming buddy of mine from junior high and he loves when we get to game together and he can take a rare step away from d20.

I sent the three players the back cover copy link:  http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/dogcerpts.html#copy


Rob's response:

I was stuck for inspiration on this at first, then I read this:

"a town welcomes you with celebration and honor, but what you.re there to do is stir up its dirt and lay bare its sins."  

and this:

"Under pressure, their pride becomes sin, their anger becomes violence, their resentments become hate. Winter and the demons howl..."  and I had it.

The idea I have is for an old Dog, who has been at this for many years.
He started out idealistic and pure, but after seeing so much sin, it's
starting to be the only thing he can see. He's bitter, sarcastic, and
dangerous as hell. Think Roland of Gilead, only moralistic and
sanctimonious.

Paula loves westerns and loves playing paladins.  I think she is going to take to this game like a duck to water.  She sent the following:

Inspired by Clint Eastwood's character from High Plains Drifter:

My first preliminary idea is a Dog who was originally a non-secterian sheriff, maybe in the Dakota territory.  Young and idealistic, he tried to bring the law to a wild west town and was driven out with whips and scorn.  Embittered, scarred for life, he wandered alone until he made his way to the Deseret Territory.  There, caked in blood and exhausted physically and spiritually, he had a vision of YHWH, commanding him not to give up on justice and the law, but to go forward and take up his true calling.  He soon found his way into the nearby town and a Dog saw to his healing and conversion.  With the help of his mentor, he's back in the justice business, only this time he can smite the evildoers with the help of God Himself.  

Heaven help any sinner that crosses his path.

The third player is Tom and from his e-mailed reactions he sounds luke warm on the setting, as if it hasn't grabbed him and inspired him yet but we've got a week from this Friday for it all to marinate in his head.

I have concerns and thoughts about running this game as a one-shot but more on that later as town creation comes up.

[Judd]

Today Tom e-mailed me the following:

I'm thinking of a young guy from a strict background; a fundamentalist
family. He takes the bible quite literally. He believes he was born of
sin and is nothing but a hopeless sinner. He thinks sometimes purity is
only achieved by washing away sin in blood.

Haven't gotten much further than that. Oh, he also is into divining
using the bible. What is that called again? You know, you open the bible to a
random page, close your eyes and put your finger down and the passage
you land on will tell you what you need to know.

To which I replied:

Do you want to have a Bible on hand or do we want to make a bunch of passages from the entirely fictional Book of Life and throw them in a hat for your to draw from when you use this method of prophecy?  We can do it that way AND have it command some kind of in-game power and currency.

Thoughts?

We're trading e-mails back and forth as a group to hammer out the details.

Next up:

We'll make the characters largely on-line through a series of e-mails and then it'll be time to either make up a town, choose one from the book or choose from the menu of sinful towns on the DotV site.

[lumpley]

Judd, you saw Jason's awesome play aids, I'm sure. His "Wisdom of the Book of Life" might be just what your player wants. (Is "bibliomancy" the word?)

-Vincent

[Judd]

Judd, you saw Jason's awesome play aids, I'm sure.

I'm not getting a good link from the above URL.

Sounds neat, though.

[lumpley]

I wasn't either this morning but it looks like they're back.

-Vincent

[Judd]

Here's an IM conversation about this Friday's game:

Me: okay, there is a kind of prelude built into the game
Player: When he's home, he's bored and miserable
Me: in which starting PC's play out something they want their hcaracters to have accomplished during their training
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: and he also knows he can't put up with people. he sees too much hypocracy in them. at least moving changes the faces and shows him new sins
Me: but I want to ammend that
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: anyway, go on
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: okay
Me: I want it to be somethign that has happened to you during your career
Me: example
Me: "I want Caleb to have exorcised a Demon" then we play out his attempt
Player: gotcha
Me: and you might fail
Me: so it shouldn't be a life or death thing
Player: ok
Player: hm
Me: but somethign that will define a part of him
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: Okay
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: This may be too big
Me: hit me
Player: I want him to have exposed the corruption of a beloved Steward.
Me: awesome
Player: Someone who people loved.
Me: not too big at all
Player: tell me when I go too far
Me: we will role-play the attempt
Me: the moment when you confronted him before his entire Temple's congregation.
Me: he'll be at the pulput,
Me: you'll be in the aisle with guns on your hips
Me: the Steward's hired muscle killed your ka-tet
Me: and you are there to confront him
Player: I see it as the kind of thing where he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  If he fails, he takes a big prestige hit and if he successfully outs the guy it can potentially cause more damage to the peaceful and happy town than the sin itself.
Me: right
Me: right on
Me: the mechanics are PERFECT for this kind of confrontation.
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: awesome
Me: Does what I'm saying sound good?
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: I don't know about it having killed his ka-tet
Me: ok
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: Something more painful to the community than the pc
Me: were you riding alone, then?
Me: cool
Me: he is promoting False Doctrine of some kind?
Player: Like he's been taking the tithes and buying booze
Me: Nice.
Me: Done.
Player: or
Player: for false doctrine
Player: it was working
Player: but it was false.
Player: either way works.
Me: gotcha
Me: that work
Me: s
Me: sounds good
Me: cool
Player: I worry thaat this character's heroism may be too obscured
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: but I get the feeling you at least know where he's coming from
Me: he won't be an anti-hero
Me: he is RIGHT
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: Right.
Me: he is the Right Arm of the Lord.
Me: others might not like him
Me: but it doesn't fucking matter
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: Right
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: I'm grinning
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: you really get it :-)
Me: and the adventure begins as you are called back to the Watchdgs of the Lords Temple in Bridal Falls to talk to the Elders about your actions.

and one last bit
Me: it isn't about a whodunnit
Me: it is about the players rendering judgement and then putting forth God's Will through their very actions.
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: the nonwhodunitism reminds me of Dust Devils, where it's supposed to be about the journey and not the destination
Me: and then the players deciding if it was just or not
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: is it going to be a problem then that I consider this character to be wrong even when he's right?
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: not that I'm going to be unfair to him, but. . .
Me: no, don't think so
[color=dark blue]Player[/color]: ok

[Judd]

Upon reading the above IM session that I e-mailed the players, Tom e-mailed me the following:

This is cool and made me think about my character (still nameless) differently.

I think that I want to role-play a confrontation with his dad. His dad raised him to be righteous, to hate sin, to strive to be a good person even if the stain of original sin is indelible. He viewed his father as the paragon of the righteous man preaching to all those who would listen.

That changed when he caught his father with that whore. In the church. This made him realize that sin was everywhere, even in the most unlikely places.

I won't write up more, as Judd wants to role-play this.

Whore?

Church?

Sin everywhere?

This game is going to rock.

[Judd]

We game tomorrow night and I haven't given a whole lot of thought to the town where the players will dispense justice.  I might go with Job Gully (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=151517).  The character concepts are so mythic and larger than life that I almost hate to stick them into any of the smaller towns that I have made up, though I need to re-read the examples in the book and the towns on the site and see if anything pops out at me.

[Judd]

We game tonight.  Here is what will probably be the final character generation related e-mails before we get together face to face:

I want my prelude to be after my character's mentor saved him from dying of his wounds (and brainwashed him simultaneously) and wanted him to join the church.  He wasn't sure of his own power and calling, so his mentor took him to exorcise a demon.  Lem has serious misgivings about this, but he does it anyway.

Is that too boring?

To which I replied:

I do'nt think exorcising a demon is boring.

What kind of demon do you visualize?  a pea soup vomitting child?  a spirit in an iron box used to test Dog recruits?  Want me to just handle it?

To which she replied:

I want it to be something really creepy.  REALLY scary and disturbing, like when Rob's character Ardash and his sister did that ritual to summon Lost Beauty.  I'll leave it up to you but if some great idea comes to me, I'll shoot you an e-mail.  Otherwise, try to surprise me (but don't let it be anything about cats or cute animals getting hurt).

I'll jot down some notes after work before the game and be ready to roll this evening.  I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.  Should be fun.

[Robert Bohl]

I'm Rob, the first player mentioned in this thread, and the player of Caleb Phelps.

This was a hell of a lot of fun.  Even the acrimony was fun.  I have never had a philosophical discussion about the meaning and value of what the characters chose to do the day after the game.  This time I did.  We drove around the beautiful countryside of Ithaca and debated the good and evil of what our characters do; the difference between player and character; what is winning and what is losing; and many other things.

I can't wait to see Judd's writeup.