[DitV] Welcome to Bounty

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

  I'd wrapped up my Amber/Nobilis game and offered to do a Dogs one-shot for people.  I was interested in trying it out again, they seemed game to try something different.  I had three players all of whom had a great deal of experience with different RPGs although they rarely played indie systems (unless you count Amber and or Nobilis as indie systems, which you well might).  They tended towards Sci-fi and horror games (Fading Suns, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars, etc.) and god-like games (Amber, Nobilis) with the World of Darkness stuff in hot pursuit.

  One of the players (who played Brother Lucias) had done a solo Dogs game with me and seemed to like it pretty well so it was handy to have him around because we could run through the Accomplishment part of character creation.

  One of the of the players (who played Brother Ezekiel) was a bit of a challenge since in the Amber/Nobilis game he'd gotten the chance to pass judgements on NPC and really liked to split the baby.  I was pretty sure he'd be the "kill 'em all type" and in fact, he put down "Good with Dynamite" as a Trait and took a couple of sticks of dynamite for equipment.  He also came up with the quote of the game "I'll take 'em down and if I kill 'em, I'll just Lay Hands on them and heal them back".  Perhaps he reminds me too much of myself as a player....

  The final player (who played sister Rachel) had no particular pluses or minuses coming into the game.

  Right.  So the game. 

  First, during character creation, Sister Rachel's player had the odd experience of rolling a huge wad of d4s for Fallout from non-Physical Accomplishment conflict and getting over 20.  I'm not sure if I did something wrong or if there was some regulated method for handling it, but I'm playing Dogs, not Traveller, so I just let it slide.

  I should also note that everyone managed to get what they wanted out of the Accomplishment.  Lucias learned to track men, Ezekiel curbed his thieving ways, and Rachel learned to read people (especially possessed people) a lot better.

  The PCs show up in the town of Bounty.  We learn that Brother Ezekiel's Uncle Cyrus used to be a Dog and saved the entire town of Bounty by single-handedly converting the Mountain Folk who were attacking and who are now good, Faithful citizens.  Cyrus has married Sister Rachel's niece Patience and they'd just had a baby.

  An angel baby.  With wings and everything.

  Cyrus also mentions that he's been thinking about taking a second wife -- Sister Obedience who happens to be Brother Lucias's cousin.  Here, I was hoping to snarl everyone together so that Ezekiel couldn't just set fire to the whole thing.

  The PCs investigate the baby.  Yup.  It's evil.  They drive out the demon and it's just a normal baby again.  They have a bit of a scuffle with Sister Patience and Ezekiel nearly dies from it (the PCs were rolling crap all over the place).

  Anyway, once that's settled, they run into the local TA rep, Sister Monette.  The TA gave her the job as part of some political grandstanding back East.  Out here, most people just ignore her (being a TA rep and a woman and there's the angel baby excitement).  So Monette pleads with the PCs to help her out.  The Prime Minister for this section of the Territory is coming out on a press junket with a bunch of journalists to showcase what a good job he's doing "promoting justice and equality and such".  If they show up to see Angel babies and three-way weddings, it won't go down well.  The PCs assure her that the angel baby problem is taken care of and the polygamous wedding may not go off (they asked Cyrus to "think about it" in light of these events).  They probe her a bit on why she got this job and she confesses that efore her convertion, she'd had quite a bit of learning for a woman and she'd been really interested in archeology.  When she came out here and learned about the ruins, she snuck off, looked them over and written up a paper that was well-received and got her name on the list of "politically advantageous people" who might be appointed as a TA rep. 

  The PCs chat up the Steward to see if they can figure out what's going on.  The Steward can't figure it out, but he does mention that there are some Mountain Folk ruins about a day's round trip to the southeast.  The PCs are being put up at Cyrus's place so they go back and run into Brother Humble, the former leader of the Mountain Folk, now a steady convert.  They question him a little bit and then it's off to bed.

  Under his pillow, Brother Lucias finds a golden amulet.  It's this weird animalistic design that looks a bit like the head of a cat, a big cat like the mountain lions in this area.  He does a bit of magical warding on the thing (which is just weird and not evil) and then goes to bed.  In the morning, there's a general questioning about what the amulet might be.  They go to Brother Humble who mentions that it's similar to a symbol used by sacred warriors of the Mountain Folk.  But they were never made of gold or anything so fancy.

  The PCs head out to the ruins, where it's obvious that someone has been poking around.  Inside the ruins they find a series of hidden passage ways that lead to a room filled with bizarre gold artifacts.  Some of which are clearly missing.

  The PCs head back to town and call a general meeting where they tell everyone about the impending TA visit and how everyone needs to be on their best behavior.  They also ask some pointed questions about anyone sneaking out which pretty much gets a collective shrug.  After the meeting they run into Sister Obedience having a small argument with Brother Erlan (who is Sister Monette's brother).  It turns out that before Cyrus asked Obedience to marry him, it was Brother Erlan who had been seriously courting her and he was obviously still a little put out.  They ask Erlan about the amulet and he say "nope, never seen it", and he's clearly lying so they take him out back and work him over a bit.

  Eventually, he caves in and says he was filching gold from the ruins and he'd been planting a few items on the Mountain Folk so that if his stash was found he could pin the blame on them.  The PCs declare that Erlan must turn over the gold and make a pilgrimage to Bridal Falls and do penance there.  They send him off to take care of that and then go talk to Brother Artax, the Mountain Folk that Erlan planted the amulet on.

  The talk with Artax is short and winds up with him going all possessed and the Dogs putting him down.  In the fight, Brother Ezekiel loses his gun, so they go back to Cyrus's place to get a new one before Confronting Brother Humble and the other Mountain Folk.  Cyrus, concerned that his converted friend are just going to get gunned down, offers to go along with them to possibly help in negotiations.  The PCs agree and then head down to the Mountain Folk slums.  Along the way, they stop by Brother Erlan's to see how he's doing.  He's fled into the night that's what he's doing.  The PCs split up.  Brother Lucias will track him down while Ezekiel and Rachel will go deal with the Mountain Folk.

  While Lucias rides off, Rachel, Ezekiel and Cyrus go down to the "Mountain Folk ghetto" and poke around.  It's deserted.  On their way out the door of Brother Humble's place, an arrow thunks down into the wood near them.  There are figures on the rooftops and across from them is Brother Humble and a couple of warriors.  Brother Humble is raving on about how the sacred artifacts are being returned to him by the King of Life so that he may restore the TRUE worship to the whole world.  Brother Ezekiel up and shoots at him.

  There is a short, fierce fight.  Sister Rachel wisely takes cover, Brother Ezekiel's Coat sends arrows flying back to impale their shooters and puts a bullet in Brother Humble's head.  It's a costly fight, Brother Ezekiel's coat wasn't able to stop all the arrows and one found it's mark.  He dies saving the town from a cult.

  Brother Lucias's road is long and hard, he tracks Brother Erlan for months, eventually finding him in a drunken stupor in a saloon back East.  He hauls him back to Bridal Falls where he hangs him for greed and contributing to the rise of a false doctrine.



  Uh, yeah, so that was that.  The players seemed to have a pretty good time.  I feel like I didn't quite have the handle of GMing this thing yet -- I wanted to organize the mystery rather than just say "here's the mess, deal with it".  I made sure the PCs pretty much always knew when people were lying which helped a lot.  I was bummed that they went right for the baby exorcism, but really, what did I expect?  (well, I *expected* that the false cult would go after the baby and stuff, but frankly, it's probably just as well that it didn't go that way)

  Between this and the Amber/Nobilis stuff, I've also learned that one of the reason I like a lot of indie-games is because it parcels out the storytelling so you can be on the "player" side of the fence.  There's a lot of neat stories I'd like to tell, but frankly, I'd rather be playing through a lot of these stories.  Being a GM is a tough row to hoe.

  As I said, the players themselves seemed to like the game and thought the system was neat, but I think the core story wasn't compelling enough to get them to go back to it "as-is".  Ezekiel's player said he'd really like to adapt the system to something else entirely.  Rachel's player was less enthralled for reasons best summed up in her (public) LJ post:

The system is certainly innovative, flexible, and high-concept, but it requires the player to constantly make metagame decisions, which is a huge turnoff for me. The game is designed to be played in only one style--not necessarily a bad thing, but that style happens to be the dry, put-the-pieces-together investigative one of Call of Cthulhu, which I find boring. Also, the Mormon setting bothers me as a woman. I don't enjoy being in the position of enforcing a social order I would find reprehensibly sexist, even in play. That's one of the reasons I prefer games set in the future, I think.

  By "meta-game" I believe she's basically referring to the whole "all the dice are out in the open" aspect.  At any rate, she gave it a shot, appreciated it for what it was, decided it wasn't her cup of tea.  Nothing really to complain about there.  I'm a bit surprised/worried that she found it too CoC.  Either I misjudged her roleplaying preferences, or I was really poor in presenting the moral dilemmas.

  At any rate, I'm probably not going to be running anything again until the new year (unless it's some design beatdown on my seekrit projekt) so it's stuff to mull over for awhile.  I'd really like to do PtA next time around, but it will probably have to be with a different group.  Luckily, I live in a good area to find different sets of people.

later
Tom

[TonyLB]

First, during character creation, Sister Rachel's player had the odd experience of rolling a huge wad of d4s for Fallout from non-Physical Accomplishment conflict and getting over 20.  I'm not sure if I did something wrong or if there was some regulated method for handling it, but I'm playing Dogs, not Traveller, so I just let it slide.

You only sum the two highest dice, so she probably got a result of 8 (for one long-term Fallout).

The other stuff (particularly DitV as a investigative game ... wierd) is a bit beyond my ken.  You certainly did have a lot of NPCs ... to the extent that if they conflicted against each one individually with the stakes "Tell us everything you know that we'll find useful" then you'd have been at it all night.  Can you show us your town write-up?  I'm interested how all those people linked into the hierarchy of sin.

[oliof]

Hey,

I'd like to see the Bounty writeup as well. In fact, having the dogs look for problems is not the ideal way to present a town. Go through with this quickly. If the dogs don't go around asking people what's up, have the people come to them. There is a reason why one writes down what the people want from the dogs during town creation. Most of them want assurance that their ways are in line with the faith.

And here is another thing that helped me keep things in motion: If you write up a town, don't begin where you began writing when revealing the town to the dogs. Do it 'later' into the ladder, when the things you want to happen already happened. Want the baby child apprehended by the cult? Then the dogs come into town and are presented with a grieving mother who cries for her angel baby. Want it to be about a murder of an unbeliever? Have them pass the grave of an unbeliever outside the town before they enter. Let the Dogs see the bruises of people who were roughed up. There always seems to be a smart guy who can't keep teasing people until he gets hit. That one should be the first person the Dogs talk to besides the Steward.

The whole people coming to the Dogs and telling them flat out 'You smell the stench of falsehood between his words' or 'a shadow falls upon her face like it's hiding something' makes for great conflicts such as 'Will he tell us the truth now?' or 'Does she spill her beans?'! And let's not forget: Although the escalation arenas are all there, only the most desperate people will go so far as to have a shoot-out or even a little knife-play with the Dogs. But that also depends on the way the Dogs handle the people.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Also, the Mormon setting bothers me as a woman. I don't enjoy being in the position of enforcing a social order I would find reprehensibly sexist, even in play.

Was it clear to her, absolutely and crystal clear, that the doctrine of the Faith is what the dogs say it is?

[oliof]

Victor,
even if it is the Dogs who have a say what the doctrine of the Faith is, the gender role is very much ingrained into the default setting (in as much a way as homophobia is). I think one does need to tell the players about this and give them alternatives during game prep.

I am totally of the opinion that neither aspect of the default setting is crucial to the game, but they make for easily constructed conflicts. I'd rather know the topics my players would not like to have handled and concentrate on others.

In other words: your question is valid, but I think the selection of topics is a metagame aspect as well. Even if I am able to change the world I play in, I probably don't want to fight the fight during a game that I do to entertain myself. That is an equally valid point, IMHO.

Regards,
    Harald

[Neal]

Hi Tom,

I'm kind of glad you had some of the problems you had with DitV because it reassures me I'm not the only one.  By this, I mean the way you tried to run a mystery and it just wouldn't take.  See, I tried to run the game strictly by the book, but I found myself unwittingly tossing in "mystery" stuff that really has no place in Dogs.  So we're in the same boat, I guess, and we both have a bit of a learning curve ahead of us.

I think Rachel's player's objection to connect-the-dots mystery plots is a good one.  Not only should this kind of dot-connecting and clue-collecting not take place in DitV (where the point is judgment, not detection), but it's kind of dangerous in just about any game, CoC included.  I just had to remind myself for DitV, "This is not Agatha Christie; it's Murder, She Wrote; the crime is spelled out in vivid detail in the first five minutes of the show."

I'd also like to address Rachel's player's other objection...

I've heard several people complain about DitV's core setting and the problem of enforcing a moral code they don't personally endorse.  That's a tough one to solve, and I think it says more about the player's reasons for gaming than it does about anything else.

Also, the Mormon setting bothers me as a woman. I don't enjoy being in the position of enforcing a social order I would find reprehensibly sexist, even in play. That's one of the reasons I prefer games set in the future, I think.

I don't want to second-guess your friend's reasons for disliking a game with unequal gender roles in its core setting; she knows her reasons for gaming a lot better than I do.  Instead, I'll point out that the literature of the time (fictional and documentary) is filled with fascinating females, far more fascinating than I've seen in fantasy games where gender roles are (often inexplicably) a non-issue.  I'll take Elizabeth Cady Stanton over Storm Silverhand any day of the week. 

Here's something I've noticed, and it's not just about gender roles or (to take another common objection to historical games) sexual mores.  It's Presentism: the unwillingness to take the past on its own terms.  The problem of Presentism creeps into just about any gaming group when the past is delivered without apology.  We tend to look at the past as a place with "a lot to learn" rather than "a lot to teach," as if we held all the answers ourselves.  Worse, many people seem to demand disclaimers be slapped onto any treatment of historical injustices, as if failing to condemn the past constantly and loudly somehow makes us apologists for its sins.

I've run a lot of historical games, and my solution (which does not always work) has been to demonstrate (as in, "Show, don't Tell") that the gender roles (or other social norms) of the setting are just one aspect of a complex world, filled with complex people who are not reducable to that one aspect of their world.  In short, focus on the human element and explore what People are like in a setting taken on its own terms.  You won't convince everyone, but hey, you only need three or four, right?

Personallly, I don't think you can run a historical setting without a tacit agreement to let the past speak in its own voice.  Every time I've seen it tried another way, it's been an embarrassing botch.

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

  First off:  Fallout.  Two Highest Dice.  Right.  Totally glazed over on that.  KAAHHHHHNNNNN!!!!

  That may have made people too nervous to escalate in some cases.  Also it made a small scuffle a lot more deadly.  Well, live and learn.

  Um, the town set-up:

  Start with Pride:  Sister Monette hears about the Mountain Folk ruins and chafes under the restrictions around it.  She's a highly educated woman, she can certainly investigate the ruins and there's probably a great research paper in the making.

  Sin:  Sister Monette investigates the ruins.  She finds the hidden room with the gold.  She writes up her paper but doens't tell anyone other than her brother Erlan about the gold.  Both of them start getting the gold lust.  Erlan hopes to use it to help woo Sister Obedience, Sister Monette is thinking that maybe it's time to get out of the Faith and go back East where her academic reputation is rising fast.

  Brother Erlan starts sneaking off to get the artifacts and bring them back here.  If their stash gets uncovered, he wants a ready scapegoat, so he plants a number of artifacts in among the converted Mountain Folk.

  False Doctrine:  The Mountain Folk discover these precious artifacts mysteriously showing up in their stuff.  Clearly this is the work of some Divine agent (after all, didn't the founder of the Faithful receive the Holy Book on a set of mysteroius Emerald Tablets?).  This must be a sign that it is time for the True and Correct forms of Faithful Worship to be revealed.

  False Worship:  Bother Humble, nominal leader of the Mountain Folk gets them organized into the "True Religion".  He restarts the "Lions in the Desert" (i.e. demon possessed warriors).  He's getting ready to break out the new religion to everyone.

  Meanwhile, the demons have taken possession of the child of Patience and Cyrus.  This partly serves to further galvanize the Mountain Folk and it's hoped that this will be the lever to help push the false doctrine out from the Moutain Folk to the rest of the Faifthful.

  Additionally, SIster Monette has been made TA rep and she's learned about the press junket.  If word gets out about the Faithful having angel babies and open polygamy and whatnot, then there will be a hue and cry Back East to rid the territory of these Faithful "demon worshippers".



  So it's a rock and a hard place.

  Regarding sexism and setting -- On the one hand, it's true, we can tweak the setting to address whatever issue we want.  It's also true that Rachel, as a Dog, could demand a matriarchy and get it.  But I also agree with Neal in that side-stepping the issue doesn't make it go away and may leave the game poorer for it.  There's also the consideration that for an afternoon one-shot, I wasn't going to tweak out the background a whole bunch.  I mean frankly, while the gender codes might be the most obnoxious social more the Dogs enforce, there are plenty of other laws the Dogs enforce that are just as repellent to a modern-day sensibility.  In the person of the Dogs themselves you have judge, jury, and executioner -- a draconic law-enforcement that would raise howls of protest today.  So...I'm not sweating it.

  Regarding the Mystery -- I tried my best.  I could've done better.  But I sort of think that there should be some level of mystery.  If I just handed out the town write-up to players before they started play and said "here's what you know", I think that a.) it'd be a very short game and b.) I'd be forcing a particular judgement.  Perhaps I'm too enamoured of complexity, but I think that by having  the PCs peel back the layers of the problem, I give them a chance to re-think the judgment.  You start out and discover that there's a Mountain Folk cult and get to thinking about a solution and then realize that it's just the side effect of Erlan's greed and now what do you do?  Do you still burn out the Mountain Folk like you planned?  Do you reason with them?  Are they guilty or just innocent dupes?  If you find out about Erlan's gold thieving first and give him a light punishment, what happens when you discover his unintended consequences?  Can you go back and re-punish him?  Is he sinfully guilty or just uninentionally guilty?  Does that make a difference?

  I feel like unless you have to peel the mystery onion you don't get to cry the tears of conflicted choices.  And I think that's the heart of the game.

So anyway, that's my 2 cents...
Tom