SteveCon games - Dogs & MLwM

[GB Steve]

I was planning to run the Roach and UTB but popular pressure prevailed and I ended up running Dogs and MLwM instead. I'm sure there will be other occasions to run these fine games.

So, Dogs. I fell back on the tried and tested Fort Lemon. I had 5 players this time with a good mix of characters. Two of my players had played before so to save time I didn't run Accomplishments for them, we just decided what the outcome would be. Actually they asked me to decide, so I did. We also talked about the supernatural dial and the decision was to set it to low key. If there was to be any, it was going to be ambiguous.

The game threw up all the usual stuff, the old steward shot his foot off again and whilst two Dogs argued over whether they should finish him off, a third saved his life only for the Cavalry to drag him off to gaol.

The decision about who should be steward was rather strange. Not liking any of the prospective candidates the Dogs chose the one of themselves who was not present as the interim Steward. The new steward was a bit surprised by this but took it in good grace.

Then there were the cannibals. The Dogs chose to make public examples of them and as the crowd became heated, the pregnant cannibal gave birth to a very hairy child. Cue a big conflict about persuading the Faithful that the child was not demonic. Although the Dogs prevailed, there was a riot and TA intervention (on the Dogs' side) which left many dead or injured.

Finally, the new steward took it upon himself to confront Sister Sharon over the fact that she was acting in loco steward. The Dogs had decided that as punishment, she should marry the old steward and rehabilitate them. I took the opportunity to remind the only female Dog that her accomplishment had been about stopping a bullying Dog from forcing marriage on a woman. The Steward prevailed and took Sister Sharon aside to persuade her to marry the old steward. Given that he was alone with her and that she was the focus for the demons, I decided to go supernatural on the Dog's ass. He just about got her to agree when she escalated to fighting and lifted him off the ground with on hand. So he shot her in the head, twice. Her final weak raise was to rip his trousers down.

So when everyone came running they found a dead woman with two holes in her head and a man with a smoking gun and trousers round his ankles. The steward could hardly breath and in fact the Dogs were unable to save him. His larynx crushed, all he could do was whisper "demon, she was a demon" before expiring.

This was cue for the biggest conflict so far. At stake, was our brother a demon slaying hero or a philandering sinner? Demon slayer prevailed, but only just and the TA just took him for a dead rapist.

This last conflict did bring up some discussion as to what losing means. The final Dog left on the philandering side wanted to just walk away, unconvinced but letting the others hold sway. But given that the truth of the matter was the stake, it was unclear whether her defeat meant that she could walk away unconvinced. It seems that in Dogs, there is not much middle ground.

And then, My Life with Master. I had six players and it took 4 hours to run. I skipped master creation and used the vanilla setting of Gothic Austro-Hungary with the master intent on creating supersoldiers for the army. I set Fear and Reason to 3. Everyone had good PCs, created as a group with a good mix of More and Less Thans.

I suppose the most horrific scene was when the Butcher attempted to make a connection with his mother, the whore. He failed his roll so she mistook the money being offered as a contract and dragged him to the bed for sweaty, sticky sex. All the more so given that he had the not so fresh brain of the school teacher in his apron.

In his next scene, the werewolf, who had also come into some money, visited the whore and could not resist her twin charms of availability and being smeared with brains.

There was quite a lot of comedy in the game (such as chanting "disembowl" when the dog creature was facing the school teacher) but also some quite creepy moments too.

I loved the dynamic between the apprentice Boy and Blinky, the little boy with hypnotic eyes. Blinky was charged to bring an Innocent schoolchild Ivan to the master but to save Ivan, his connection, corrupted his innocence by persuading him to throw stones at a kitten. The master no longer having a use for Ivan flung him at a wall but Blinky revived him with supersoldier serum.

Boy had been sent to fetch the other Innocent, his twin sister and novice nun Avana. He tried to subsitute a different nun but the master saw through his ruse. Boy then fetched his sister but Blinky kindly took her place and gave her to Ivan to look after. There were some quite creepy moments in this struggle and rrr who played Blinky and Mark who played Boy both gave great interpretations of their characters.

So two good games but next time I'll be stronger and run some of the newer crop of games.

[Jason Morningstar]

I think you get the prize for running Fort Lemon the most times!  This sounds like a particularly hairy (pardon the pun) version.  Having run that town a number of times, do you see commonalities in approach from the players?  Are there key moments or NPCs that evoke similar responses?  Does running the same town repeatedly give you a better view of the game's underlying structure, do you think?

--Jason

[GB Steve]

I don't need notes to run Fort Lemon so I can wheel it out on demand now however implementations might vary depending on the supernatural dial or the traits chosen by the players. I've not really been keeping a Lemon Diary but it seems to me that the underlying problem is actually quite subtle. Of course, the order in which I expose things does a lot to dictate the direction of play.

The players have deal with the old steward, who I make into a much more obvious drunken flake than you did. I usually escalate to guns, not because he thinks he's done a good job but because he doesn't think it's his fault that he failed. Invariably he ends up shot, usually self-inflicted.

The ugly problem of who is to be the new steward then pops up. The players all recognise that it's not Sharon's place to be the new steward although I've always played her as polite and accomodating towards the Dogs. She's not stupid and knows that they can take it all away from her. On the other hand, I do have her comment on Dogs' request. For example, she complied with the "all go to your tents requests" but soon came out to ask if it was OK to collect firewood and feed the children. And she just doesn't stop. Only one player has recognised this as a subtle form of insubbordination, and she killed his PC (see above).

So there have been various attempts to deal with Sharon, several of which have ended in a bloodbath. Of course, I throw in the cannibals to up the tension and divert the attention away from Sharon. The wife beating usually ends in a conflict between the Dogs as to how to deal with the unfortunate couple, and usually those who don't mind it prevail. At which point the pregnancy is thrown into the pot, and then the cannibalism.

Balbinus had a great response to the Lutzs'. When they said "How could we choose between sin and death?" he said "You had the choice between glory everlasting and hell, and you chose hell!"

The Lutzs usually end up dead although on one occasion they were hauled away by the TA. The Dogs wanted them protected from the mob and saw the TA as a buffer. I'm not sure this is a good outcome for the Dogs though. Prairy justice seems to be much more satisfactory, but who am I to judge?

In the end, the Faithfull get a new Steward, and it's always Sharon's puppet Peter, although Sharon isn't usually alive at this point.

To a certain extent, this scenario isn't really suitable for convention play because there are so many things going on and only a short time to run the game. On the other hand, this let me pick and choose which to highlight and make into issues for the players depending on the choices they have made for their characters. I've only played one game of Fort Lemon with all the badness turned on and we only managed one session and only just got stuck in to the meat of it.

Fort Lemon presses a lot of White Liberal buttons which is why I think it works so well. As an introductory game it's tough and I really do emphasise the nastiness and press consequences. I'm pretty sure it doesn't have to be run that way but it's worked so far.