[DitV] Jericho Flats (Swamp Crew)

[Judd]

"My character is thinking...thinking about how in some dark places there doesn't seem to be a god at all and in those places HE must be god.  That is what he took from his failed accomplishment's outcome."  

- Kurt

Pete and Lilly live in the swamp with their German Shepherd and tonight that's where we gamed.

A few weeks ago we had a successful session of Cat but my girlfriend, one of the players in the game, was not able to attend, so I decided to try to run Dogs with Jericho Flats, now the third time running that town.

The players:

Pete - he posts here every so often and reads here quite a bit (thought I can't remember his sign-in name for the life of me).  He's a veteran gamer and when I first met him ten years ago he was constantly in a state of designing games.  

Many kung-fu card games that I see on the market now remind me strongly of his own, Kung-fu Heroes design that he showed me in a little game store called the Dragon's Hearth a decade ago.

Lilly - Pete's wife who has been gaming with him quite a bit, video games, board games, etc.  She has a great attitude and mind for this shit and catches on quite quickly.

Kurt - another veteran, mostly of CoC and D&D with the kind of mind you want in a gamer, the kind that always surprises you.

Pete did exactly what I did when I first tried DitV with Vincent during my demo at Gen Con and that is he role-played his conflicts before the dice were rolled.  He sometimes wanted to do things so that he would get more dice that weren't in his traits or relationships but he needed to roll the dice, gain the currency to call on that creativity that is bottled up in him.

The accomplishments did a good job of showing the players the ropes.  Pete wanted to help a town re-forge its church bell and so it was kind of like an entire adventure in one conflict, played as a montage.  Very nice.

Lily wanted her PC, Eli, to scrap with a classmate at the Dog's temple who was making fun of him because he couldn't read and Eli whupped his aggressor but good.

Kurt wanted to try his hand at exorcism and failed.

In the end it was a shoot-out with Kurt and Lily between the town's opporessive landlord and his son, while Pete's smithie boy chewed the fat with six Territory Authority soldiers.

And then Lily took 17 in fallout and Pete took 16 and then failed his Body roll.

Kurt's PC, an educated fella from Back East, changed bandages all night when he noticed the Angel of Death perched on the window sill.

The conflict for healing was rolled and the  Angel took Lily's PC away.

"I'm going to a better place, a place where I can eat biscuits and pork roast whenever I want 'em.  Don't you worry about me, I'll be with the Lord, eating His roast."

I asked Lily how she felt about dying and she said it was like a Hong Kong action flic, about his big a compliment as you can get from her.

They left the town in a total glorious mess, with the landlord's wife bereft from the DEATH of her son and husband at the hands of the Dogs.  Not much was resolved.  I need to seriously get to work on my timing for con scenarios.

This might very well be a town we have to re-visit at some point.  We'll see.

Pete commented that these rules would rock for CoC, with fallout as insanity, investigators going from town to town.  Interesting...

It was an interesting game, a good night's gaming.

[Latigo]

We blew it but not really by choice...the dice in the end decided.  I have to say that the players did try to resolve things but that ain't how she was wrote by fate!  Cruel slings and arrows of the bell-curve to death deliver such an innocent one...

Overall it was wonderful fun, especially since none of us had any clue how deadly the rules were.  I think Lily took dying as a "plus" is because she loves films where the heroes die.  That is very common in HK cinema, so in her mind it isn't "Oh no, Silverleaf is dead!" like Jack Chick it's more "Wow, that was a spectacular heroic death" like Shaw Bothers.  Also, we play a lot of miniatures, so the fact that "you" die is not a big deal.  That's how it goes.  That's what the game is about and why it's a game and not an exercise.

Anyhow, Friday Indy Games with Judd rule and we will have to play CoC with DitV!  I'll dust off the cyclopean tomes and dog-dishes!

Best,

Pete

[Judd]

We blew it but not really by choice...the dice in the end decided.  I have to say that the players did try to resolve things but that ain't how she was wrote by fate!  Cruel slings and arrows of the bell-curve to death deliver such an innocent one...

Y'all didn't blow anything.  Twas a beautiful and tragic story.

[Judd]

I think my big mistake in running this game is that I didn't link anything from the accomplishments into the game itself.  I think that is the difference, for me, in a game that is really firing hot and one that is just luke-warm.

It was a good night and a fine night of gaming but it lacked something and I think that was it.