[DitV] Town of New Hope cleared

[Overdrive]

Hei all,

Because of the lack of recent Dogs posts, I decided to write about today's session. It was my/our first attempt at DitV, so there were some bumps, but overall it was Good.

I think I love the game. The resolution system lends itself to all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable things, we barely touched the surface! Too bad we were on a schedule and basically had to cut it short, so we skipped maybe two conflicts at the end. Just as we were getting the hang of it. Man I really need to build be another town and get to play play play!

I tried to build the town as light as possible, to have nothing really wrong, to be able to finish it in one session for sure. Taken, the character creation took too long even though there were only two players. One had read the introduction from the book and the other basically came with one hour notice, so there was a bit of explaining to do. Western's a genre not too popular here in Finland, but in the end things went pretty well.

New Hope had had a wagon accident where a father of three lost both his hands and his wife. (Maybe the handless farmer was too tragicomic, since we were constantly making jokes about his condition unintentionally. In Finnish, "kädetön" [without hands] has an insulting tone.. Perhaps the funniest thing was that someone had sent the family a pair of working gloves, and the Dogs were there to open the package. "Pannaanko hanskat naulaan?"...)

Now Brother Archibald's three daughters were taking care of the house, providing food, feeding the pigs et cetera. The eldest, Sister Cornelia, was around 17, and very beautiful, working hard, becoming independent and proud, having no time to court any local boys. The sin was faithlessness -- Brother Archibald and her daughter not fulfilling their duties -- but I feel this was maybe the weakest link, as it was not explicit, and I didn't make it clear what the Faith would say about this kind of situation. The sin allowed the demons to cause the young men to become slightly too attracted to Cornelia, which had led to mischief and some fighting. I also had developed the situation one bit further, as the demons had made some of the town's men indecisive, empowering the women. The demons wanted to turn the women away from the Faith.

1) The GM-howto worked like wonder. Say yes or roll dice. From the first moment, I was trying to give away all the information I had. I directed the players from the Steward's straight to Brother Archibald and said they have trouble. Stating explicitly what the NPCs want in the town sheet is perfect.

2) The players totally missed what was going on. Maybe I gave away too much info. Somehow the players thought the fighting between the town's young men was bad, and if the Dogs could stop that, all would be right. But the handless farmer and Cornelia were too sympathetic, the players just could not think anything wrong could arise from there.

3) It was pretty clear when to escalate. The Dogs had talked to all people in my town sheet, and solved one or two of the symptoms, though not a step closer to the cause. Then it got interesting. Too bad we ran out of time shortly after.

4) One of the finest moments was the conflict between one of the Dogs and Sister Cornelia, right after one Brother Newton had started a fire at Brother Archibald's shad. "No, I haven't seen Brother Newton today and don't know where he is," said she, but I said she was lying. The stakes were, "does Sister Cornelia reveal the true nature of the relationship between her and Brother Newton?" The Dog accused her of lying, in a pretty offending manner, which she calmly denied, and raised with "..but thank you soo much for helping putting out the fire." Man I had rolled fat :) The dog had to escalate to physical in order not to give. What other games could offer this?!

What else.. oh yeah 5) I had trouble coming up with NPC traits on the spot, as the GM should not do the NPCs beforehand. Vincent gives really good reasons in the book not to, but I got troubled. The PCs had traits and used them, and I couldn't very efficiently.

All right, that's it for now. Whoever hasn't looked at this game should do it right now. :)

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Overdrive,

What else.. oh yeah 5) I had trouble coming up with NPC traits on the spot, as the GM should not do the NPCs beforehand. Vincent gives really good reasons in the book not to, but I got troubled. The PCs had traits and used them, and I couldn't very efficiently.

This surprises me. The couple of times now that I've run dogs I had no trouble with NPC traits. The reason being that by the time the escalation to any dice came about I had a chance to play an NPC for a bit, and there was almost always a couple of clear traits that had been exhibited. They were stubborn, or good liars, or bad liars, or had money, or something that I could put on the sheet. The other interesting thing I've found is that the players reactions to them were able to directly define them in stats in a way that doesn't come about in other games. It's nice to have a mechanism which mechanically supports the importance of an NPC in the player's eyes during play. Was this sort of thing just not happening for you, or was it something else?

The players totally missed what was going on. Maybe I gave away too much info. Somehow the players thought the fighting between the town's young men was bad, and if the Dogs could stop that, all would be right. But the handless farmer and Cornelia were too sympathetic, the players just could not think anything wrong could arise from there.

This is great, just great. I love the fact that the town creation creates these neat little knots with problems that can be solved without at all addressing the root cause. I also love that the root cause can be addressed and it doesn't fix the current problems. It's such a neat little package. If you continued to play, do you know what the players were attempting to do in order to stop the fighting? Also, were they aware of the heirarchy that creates towns in distress?

-Tim

[Overdrive]

Hello,

It was maybe two things with the traits. It's a bit tough not to think of them as skills or attributes, although as play proceeded we noticed how "sunlight blinds me 2d4" could be very useful. But mostly it was just not getting to play the NPCs enough prior to the conflicts. The dogs talked to Cornelia maybe once before getting into a conflict with her.

It was fun, though, when I brought the NPC batch sheet and began assigning stats and traits. The players were looking, like "she has how many dice??" and I was like "well, we're going to wrap this up in fifteen minutes and I have all this available so I as well might use it, now she's Beautiful 2d10"..

But the game's really unique in the traits. Just as a Raise has its weight in the dice, the traits are not just words listed in the paper like in most RPGs. When brought into play in a conflict, the traits are not hollow. Conflicts are won or lost because of the traits. After a bit of play, they begin defining the characters.

So we found the traits useful. But how about conflicts with no clear opposition i.e. the GM rolling 4d6 + demonic influence? He can't use traits or escalate? Unless the demonic influence is exceedingly high, smart players will always win the conflicts, right?

If you continued to play, do you know what the players were attempting to do in order to stop the fighting? Also, were they aware of the heirarchy that creates towns in distress?

Now I'm pretty sure the players in question thought that I had created a problem, and a solution for it. Old-skool & Turku inheritance and all. The pieces kinda went together quite nicely, so it might have looked like it.

So there were these young men fighting with each other, and on the other hand this one dumb guy whose dad had died a couple of months ago and whose wife was running things in his house, because he couldn't. It was in the theme. The Dogs went and persuaded the youths to stop fighting and get working for the dumb guy, it was all quite elegant.

No, the players were not really aware of what causes things in Dogs. I thought I had made it clear, the "what's wrong" chain. I also maybe didn't really go through the Faith hierarchy, so our opinions on what should be right and wrong may have differed.

Next time I'm definitely going to have something heavier. Any suggestions? I'm thinking of exploiting the Dogs' young age, relative inexperience. Like "don't come to tell your father how to ..." Blood relationships would really shine I think.

[lumpley]

I get the Trait thing.

When I GM Dogs, I feel guilty if I give NPCs Traits they're about to use in the conflict. I'm like, "is this guy really a good shot or am I just trying to stack the deck wah wah wah." I have to remind myself all the time that the rules are there to make the conflicts hard and I'm a big softie, so I should follow the rules.

-Vincent

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Again,

When I GM Dogs, I feel guilty if I give NPCs Traits they're about to use in the conflict. I'm like, "is this guy really a good shot or am I just trying to stack the deck wah wah wah." I have to remind myself all the time that the rules are there to make the conflicts hard and I'm a big softie, so I should follow the rules.

I love this about Dogs, it does a spectacular job of letting you take the kid gloves off.

So we found the traits useful. But how about conflicts with no clear opposition i.e. the GM rolling 4d6 + demonic influence? He can't use traits or escalate? Unless the demonic influence is exceedingly high, smart players will always win the conflicts, right?

Depending on the situation I could see some escalation possibilities, but by and large I think you're spot on. Even with that said though, the increasing value of demonic influence as the players find new levels of the town's decay can make a hefty change in the weight of things. I mean, 4d6+1d10 is a pretty decent roll, and 4d6+4d10 is a damn big one. Those d10s giving the higher possibility of turning the blow is a big advantage. That said, the players should be able to overcome that stuff... if they want to escalate, which is what the game drives anyway. So, you have this neat situation where at the beginning of a scenario, when the town is still vomiting up it's secrets, the dogs have a pretty easy time of things. As more and more is revealed, even those simple conflicts suddenly take on a lot more weight.

Next time I'm definitely going to have something heavier. Any suggestions? I'm thinking of exploiting the Dogs' young age, relative inexperience. Like "don't come to tell your father how to ..." Blood relationships would really shine I think.

One of my players made this really interesting comment about the Dogs, and how young they were. He was saying that they get picked so early, so they're all full of piss and vinegar and can totally lay judgement because they're these kids who are at that age where you swear you know everything. It's the older dogs that are a little unsure of themselves, a little more likely to doubt, or to show some compassion. I thought that response was cool, I want to do something neat with that sometime.

As for more weight, I think the game is really going to shine with repeat play, almost no matter what you do. I think as the players build relationships in a few towns and you can go back and revisit these characters that already exist it's just going to get that much more interesting. Just run yourself a little further down the demonic line this time, throw on some Sorcery. It might be interesting to look over here. I asked Vincent about building a one shot, and he recommended shoving the thing way down the progression.

-Tim

[Lance D. Allen]

I get the Trait thing.

When I GM Dogs, I feel guilty if I give NPCs Traits they're about to use in the conflict. I'm like, "is this guy really a good shot or am I just trying to stack the deck wah wah wah." I have to remind myself all the time that the rules are there to make the conflicts hard and I'm a big softie, so I should follow the rules.

-Vincent

Hm. This makes me think that the problem that I mentioned in this post is more me than Lx, then. It seemed to me that the conflicts were way difficult, but it's very possible that my tendencies to believe that the PCs should almost always win unless something goes wrong is interfering with the way the game is supposed to work.