Multiple Participant Conflicts

[MUKid]

Remember also reversing the blow. If I'm the GM and I've got a 6 and a 4 see showing, you aren't going to want to raise me less than a 6. If you do, I get to keep the 6 for my next raise.

Okay, so what you're saying is this - we're assuming I use one set of dice to "See" all raises in a given round (which I know isn't the real rule).  So Player A raises 8, I see 8 with two 4's.  So if Player B raises 4, I could See with that same 4, and then keep it for my next raise?  But if Player B raises 5 or better, I can't do that, right?

When I See with my dice after Player A raises, am I committed to using those dice?  Could I swap them out after Player B raises?  So if I see with two 4's and Player B raises with 6, could I swap out my total of 8 with two 4's to a 6 and a 2, thereby reversing the blow on Player B?  (Am I making sense?)

As for uncertain outcomes, I think that's just a difference in play style.  I enjoy it when the characters don't know right off if they're going to win or lose, and keep pushing, hoping for the win.  More importantly, my players enjoy that style, too.  Not all the time, not in every game, but a lot of the time they do.  I think I'm a pretty good GM, and I don't use my extra knowledge to screw them.  I use it to tell a good story.  They seem to appreciate that.  I think it helps play more realistically, since the actual character can't "look at the dice" and know when to give up or when not to (if it were true in real life, I could just glance over at your 4d10 you just rolled and we could stop this discussion right now, heh...)  More realistic play isn't always the goal, of course, but if that's what the players are going for, hiding dice helps, IMO.

[Moreno R.]

As for uncertain outcomes, I think that's just a difference in play style.  I enjoy it when the characters don't know right off if they're going to win or lose, and keep pushing, hoping for the win.  More importantly, my players enjoy that style, too.  Not all the time, not in every game, but a lot of the time they do.  I think I'm a pretty good GM, and I don't use my extra knowledge to screw them.  I use it to tell a good story.  They seem to appreciate that.  I think it helps play more realistically, since the actual character can't "look at the dice" and know when to give up or when not to (if it were true in real life, I could just glance over at your 4d10 you just rolled and we could stop this discussion right now, heh...)  More realistic play isn't always the goal, of course, but if that's what the players are going for, hiding dice helps, IMO.

I certainly can't tell you how to run your game (and only your players can tell you if they enjoy one way of playing more than another), but you should understand what does this mean: a complete 180 degree turn around of the game, from it's deepest foundation. It would be like playing D&D to heal monster and give them stuff.

It's been said that DitV is a game of hard choices, and I agree. At the core of the experience of playing this game, it's a single moment, in play. The moment in which you have to choose. Knowingly. Raise or give up. Take the blow or escalate. Knowing well the consequences of your choice. These choices MAKE your character, they make him a coldblooded killer or a man who would die for what he believe, a coward or a man who would risk anything to save another.  These choices characterize the Dogs like I have never seen done in another rpg, ever.

And these are all MORAL choices. They show what you character is made of, inside.

If you keep the secret about what they are choosing, they don't choose anymore. They guess.

The choices? They will not be moral anymore. They will be tactical.

You will never discover what your character would do at the end, before the final choice. Your player will be denied that defining moment, and all they will discover is how much they are lucky with dices, or how much they are able to calculate probabilities.  Killing a man to save another will not be a moral statement anymore, it will became a bad roll of dices.

And I don't know how much you are familiar with DitV conflict, but they can be very, very long.  If the player don't know what they are against, they will try until the end to "win". To guess how many dices you have. Four stats (with escalations) + some relationship mean at least 20 dices, plus traits and possession, that mean over 40 dices, for three players mean 120 dices. And they can get dices from the environment, from things that they can narrate in the fiction. "I hide behind the big barrel, +2d6", "I take a handful of sand, +1d6".
What does this means? It means that, when your player will understand well the rules, they will beat you every single time. You don't really have a chance. They will never be without new dices to roll, They will beat you, at the cost of dragging the game over an hour of raising and blocking.

Why this doesn't happen in the game-as-written? Because the player see at once, seeing your rolls, what this would cost them. They see this NOW, at the beginning, before committing to the conflict. (and in this cost I count the tired look of the other players when the conflict drag on). But if you make the conflict all this big secret, they will want to discover what you have. As a game inside the game.

There is more: It doesn't matter that you don't use the screen to screw them. They can believe you, but they will never be sure. And even if you don't screw them changing the rolls, you are still trying to trick them into making the wrong tactical choice, hiding the dices. It's the game of "lets guess what the GM has". It breed distrust. In the DitV book Vincent talked a lot about the way to play to avoid all this, If the conflict resolution is the heart of DitV, this is its soul. Playing with hidden dices mean throwing out this, and turn the game in a "traditional" guess-the-gm game.

And it doesn't improve the "realism" a bit. Yes, you can say that IF the players really were the characters, and they were in the west and not at you table, they would have to decide without seeing your dices. But this is because there wouldn't be any dices. In the same vein, you could ask the player to decide who would win in a brawl, boxing for real between them. Or you could shoot one of them to see if you miss or not (with very realistic sound effect). But this would improve even a little bit the "realism" of the character's story?

In my experience, no. Not even a little bit. Well, there would be a really a big chance of losing realism. Because these "realistic" way to resolve conflicts tends to give results much less realistic that the ones where the players see all the factors. Why? Because we, as people, are much more good at giving realistic results when we have all the information that when we are denied them.

It's the difference between using a system that start with a "realistic doubt from the wrong person" (because it's the character that should be in doubt. Not the player) thinking that from this "realistic" input could only be born realistic results, as an act of faith, and a system that is by design "as realistic as the players want it to be" because they narrate the results and can disallow what they don't want in the game.

In summary: if you want to play with hidden dices, to "tell a good story" to the players, I thinks that DitV is the wrong system to do that. It can't do what you want. If you want, give it a chance, playing as it is written (even the little rules that you think don't make sense. You should try to follow them the most, to the letter) , and see the results.

They could astound you. As it happened to me.

[Valamir]

What he said.

[MUKid]

Oh sheesh, I agree with you guys completely about Dogs.  I think that it's exactly what you said it is, and when I played we played with almost all the dice out in the open.  We experimented a little with hidden dice, just to see what it was like and monkeying around with the rules.  When I play Dogs again, I'll play with open dice, more than likely.  You guys are right - if you want to play something with hidden dice, then maybe try a different game.

But I think this all applies when playing DOGS, not when using the rules with some other setting.  What I really think Dogs excels at, better than any other game I've played, is dealing with verbal conflict.  I'd like to try it with some of the alternate setting ideas in this thread.  I think that playing Star Wars with the Dogs rules would ROCK.  In *that* setting, it might be cool to try it with hidden dice, don't you think?  I mean, Vincent has written a very neat set of rules, and I think Dogs is only one possibility for how to use them.

As a bit of an aside, although I haven't played it, I own With Great Power.  It uses a very similar system, but the "dice" (actually, cards) are hidden.  And it's also a narrative game, with a character-driven story, and it works really well.  That's what I'm trying to say here - you don't have to play with open dice for the rules to work.  And in some settings, hiding the dice might be better.

Just sayin' is all.  ;-)