[DitV] Spiritual opposition only game

[Filip Luszczyk]

(Sorry for flooding the forum with two new topics one after another, but I preferred to keep the ideas separate, for the eventual feedback not to be mixed.)

During the last months I've been more and more drawn to games that either give the GM his own character sheet to represent "the world", "the adventure" or however you sum up his sphere of influence, or budget him, or generally treat him mechanically as he was on the same level as the players (and I've been designing in those directions). Thinking about DitV, it occurred to me that the game could work pretty well with the GM running general "spiritual opposition" in every conflict instead of dividing attention between various NPCs of interest. Basically, the GM would roll a spiritual opposition regardless of the number of NPCs that face the group. With tweaking number of dice for spiritual opposition it would become possible to make the opposition in conflicts more balanced - e.g. no overwhelming crowds, and no overkill 3 to 1 conflicts. Also, it would reduce the preparation time a little by removing the need to roll proto-NPCs (eh, how lazy I can get? ^^).

The problem is, unless Demonic Influence raised high, spiritual opposition is rather pathetic in comparison with loads of dice that Dogs can muster. Also, there's no escalating with spiritual opposition. I'd leave the initiatory conflicts as they are, but after the character generation, I'd treat spiritual opposition as having it's own stats, of 4d6 each. That way the GM would roll 8d6 + Demonic Influence dice right away, and he could escalate for 4d6 additional dice (the whole opposition would be mechanically treated as escalating the moment any individual NPC escalated). Still, it can get a bit stale, and these are not impressive enough amounts of dice to seriously threaten a group of Dogs working together. Also, there should be some way to represent the sorcery in conflicts.

My idea is to tie Fallout to the number of dice rolled by the GM. After thinking about it a bit, I got an idea of "reversing" who gets the Fallout dice in conflicts - e.g. if the character Takes the Blow it's the GM who takes the Fallout dice, and if the GM Takes the Blow, the raising player takes the Fallout (in PvP conflicts, Fallout from a Raise would be taken by the Raising player). Now, the Fallout taken by the GM from the character would be added to the spiritual opposition pool in the next conflict against that character. Escalating has more mechanical consequences, as it helps the player or the GM now, but gives an edge to the other side later (and, in case of players, reduces chances of gaining experience Fallout, as the better the die, the lower the chances for rolling 1). This changes the nature of the Fallout a bit, but I think it's fits the game - the more violent you get, the more dire the consequences you face, and getting yourself "damaged" results in having a tougher time later. There is an issue of dying from your own shot, though - and I'm not sure how to tackle it (on the other hand, it might be non-problem, as 1).dying Fallout allows for setting a dying scene at a later time, and 2).live by gun, die by gun).

As for the sorcery, I think it could be solved by giving the GM an option of saving some amount of Fallout dice (e.g. one per conflict) and moving it aside to a "sorcery pool" for later use, instead of rolling it in the next conflict. Then, in any subsequent conflict, the GM could spend a number of dice of the same type from his "sorcery pool" to represent NPC sorcerers using their relationships with demons - and then use effects of demonic powers as appropriate for the number of relationship dice added.

Thoughts?

(One thing, just in case, as I don't know people writing on lumpley games forum. Yes, I know, lots of changes in this variant - but if you don't have any constructive criticism, can't think of a way to do something similar better, and you don't like the whole idea of this variant, please don't post here only to protest against me messing up with the rules as written and to tell me my idea is badwrongstupid. That kind of feedback is obviously not what I need. I hope I'm not overpretensious now. ^^)