[DitV] Shadetree Branch

[BrendanC]

So we started to play this town on Wednesday, but it quickly fell apart. After 20 minutes or so I had to stop and evaluate what went wrong. Partly, I think I was just a little too tired to be an effective GM, but that wasn't the whole story. Not wanting to railroad my players, I allowed them a chance to stop Lazarus from shooting Mark, and they succeeded. Unfortunately, that served to make the situation not as interesting as it should have been (or so I felt at the time - maybe it would have played out just fine).

I think this is a case of bad habits from D&D impairing my ability (or at least my confidence in my ability) to GM something more "hands-off". Basically, when I realized that my players stopped one of the central events of the town from occurring (because I gave them the ability to stop it when I probably shouldn't have) I sort of panicked. Part of me would really like to start over from the beginning tonight and have Mark get shot just before they arrive in town, but I'd feel like I was cheating my players if I did that.

I think what I need to do is just take this as a lesson in proper scene framing, hope that it's not going to make the town significantly less interesting, and just see what happens when we continue from here. I'll follow this up after we've played it out.

[TonyLB]

You should be fine, once you stop second-guessing your group.  My wholly unfounded opinion, for whatever it's worth, follows:

This isn't about your ability to GM.  This is about your ability to trust your players.  If you believe that you, as a GM, are the one who is determining the success or failure of the game then you are dead wrong.  You're treating yourself like a star player on a sports team... deciding that the team wins or loses games because of how you are performing that day, not how the team as a whole is performing.

So you had an off day.  So what?  Your players will carry the action if you give them a chance and keep doing your personal best (even if, for today, it's much less than your global best).

On particulars:  So Lazarus didn't shoot Mark.  Fine.  Where was he prevented?

Does Mark know that Lazarus wanted to kill him?  What does he think of that?  What does he want the Dogs to do about it?

Does Lazarus still think he should kill?  What does he think of his actions, and the Dogs' interference?  What does he want the Dogs to do about it?

Your job isn't to provide events that the Dogs need to respond to.  It's to provide requests that the Dogs need to respond to.  This town still has whatever problem brought Lazarus to the point of murder.  Everyone will have a different notion of what that problem is.  Everyone will want the Dogs to know what they think the problem is.  Everyone will want the Dogs to take concrete action to solve that problem.

Seriously... you're good to go.  Let go of the hand-brake of trying to do everything yourself, and get ready for a wild ride.

[BrendanC]

Over the course of two more sessions, we did play out the rest of the town. Things went well after the initial hangups, leading to what I felt were some of the most interesting scenes we've run so far. The conflicts the happened were lower-key than I had been imagining, with nothing escalating past physical - an impressive display of peacemaking in a town where murders were going on as the Dogs rode in.

Some of my favorite scenes were the Dogs going to Mary's grave and raising her spirit to give an account of how she died, and the two conflicts that wrapped up the town. The first of these was between the three Dogs, arguing over how to deal with Samuel. Gabriel wanted to shoot him, and although he won the conflict, he broke his hand doing it and so couldn't carry out the judgment. Imiah and Malachi took the opportunity to talk to Samuel and convince him that he needed help and guidance, and sent him back to Bridal Falls before Gabriel could protest.

We're seeing a lot of conflict between the PCs, particularly Imiah and Gabriel. They're practically designed to hate each other, which definitely makes it interesting when trying to present a united front to a town in need.

[lumpley]

Tell more about raising the spirit! I want to hear all the details.

-Vincent

[BrendanC]

Tell more about raising the spirit! I want to hear all the details.

This was one of my two favorite moments so far with DitV. Samuel was accusing the Steward's wife (a converted Mountain woman) of killing his daughter, but the Dogs weren't going for it. They didn't trust a word he said after they found out that he had made up reasons to lynch Isaiah Yellow-Hawk out of whole cloth. So rather than talk to the Steward or his wife, they decided to speak to the victim herself.

They walked over to the cemetery in a small field just outside of town and located Mary's plot, only a few days old. They created a protective circle with sacred earth, called the dead girl by name, and demanded that her spirit return to speak with them. Everything outside their circle faded into a dull grey, while inside it was still mid-afternoon sun. The force of their summoning brought every demon for miles to the circle's borders like moths to flame, and as the shadowy forms swirled around them, they saw the figure of a young girl walking towards them across the field. The demons began to surround her, but the Dogs warded them off by reading passages from their Books of Life about Faith being a shield against demons. The girl's spirit reached the circle unharmed, but the act of her crossing inside disturbed the sacred earth, breaking the protection. As the demons began to push inside, the Dogs stepped up the Ceremony and slammed them back out, then quickly repaired the breach.

Once Mary's spirit was inside the circle, they got her to explain how she died. She told them that she had been watching her family's cattle when a group of Mountain People tried to take the animals. She tried to stop them, and was killed for her trouble. She saw the face of her killer before she died, and was shocked to recognize the Steward's wife.

After divulging this information, the spirit of Mary asked to be allowed to return to the King of Life, for every moment she spent in the mortal world was an agony for her. The Dogs let her go, and the demons made one final attack, swirling around the outside of the circle until nothing could be seen outside but darkness. The Dogs felt the gaze of countless malevolent eyes, and for a moment it seemed they would be overwhelmed. Then they gathered themselves for one final burst of Ceremonial power, and the force of their Faith pushed the sunlight inside the circle gradually outward until the world was restored around them.

We agreed amongst the players that a spirit would be unable to lie to the Dogs, and indeed would have no reason to do so. However, as they would find out later, though the girl wasn't lying, she didn't know the whole truth. The Steward's wife had a twin sister who still lived with her family in the mountains, and it was she who had actually killed Mary.