[DitV] Judging a town

[Ward]

Hey,

We finally got to play a third session of DitV and I got to run a second town. Overall we had alot of fun, but we ran into some trouble (again) with the actual judging or whatever you want to call it when the dogs decide how to solve the town's problems. However, first some background.

The first town I ran was Orchard Plains Branch, we had alot of fun and the players really enjoyed play being driven towards conflict. I got one dog to almost shoot a young girl until he realized what he was about to do, upon which he conceded the (not unimportant) conflict! After the players had confronted every one of the sinners and prideful and knew exactly what was up with the town they got to discussing a solution. This is where things stopped flowing smoothly. I really feel that it's important that the players discuss what they think is a good solution, the morality of what the dogs do being an important part of the game, but they took over an hour to argue about what they were going to do. In the end I tried to help them come to an agreement by proposing a few options they hadn't considered (banishment, pilgrimage, etc). They immediately chose to go with these solutions, which made me feel as if we were playing just any old game where I created the options and they only got to choose. Anyway, they were happy with the solution and great fun had been had, but the end of the session could have been better.

The second town, the one I ran two nights ago, was Coachwhip Cut-off Branch. Again we had quite a bit of fun and I the game flowed great without me having to do anything special, although I might have pushed for some more conflicts instead of giving the information freely. Alot of the possible conflicts just didn't seem like they would add much to the roleplaying that was already going on. Finally when they had got the gist of what was going on, they had to decide again what to do with the town, which took them over an hour again.

Now I'm really not complaining, the players clearly buy into the whole judging thing alot, but I was thinking there should be a better way of doing this. I am also considering bringing in the ninjas (SotC style) next time they start this kind of discussion, just to interrupt them and force them to do some more visceral instead of intellectual judging. Any other suggestions?

Things to do next time:
- Create a town where they will have to judge someone harshly, or at least have one or two conflicts where the NPCS won't concede before bullets are flying;
- Give out information a little less easily (I was feeding them basically all the info on the town, many NPCS being open about what they wanted from the dogs);
- Call for intraparty conflicts sooner, to short endless discussions;
- Or bring the conflict to them when they get stuck in intraparty discussions.

[Moreno R.]

Hi Jonas!

The solution is built into the rules of DitV: the CHARACTERS should argue, not the PLAYERS. (And possibly go to gunfighting about it: most DitV players wild say that the most awesome games they played were the ones where a Dog shoot another Dog over a difference of opinion about punishing someone...

If the players decide between themselves, beforehand, a common opinion for every Dog, they have killed the game, that is built to create conflict between _characters_ while keeping collaboration between the _players_.

[Ward]

Well, they are arguing in character. We solved one of the arguments with a conflict, but I felt like neither the winning players nor the losing players were really satisfied with the outcome. The losing player tried to wiggle out of the literal meaning of the stakes we agreed on and the two winning players didn't feel comfortable with calling him on it. I mediated and it solved the immediate crisis but it still didn't feel like we had accomplished alot.

[Moreno R.]

The stakes were about "convincing" the other dog, or were about making him do (or allow) something?

What kind of raises and sees they used?

I see that what you described usually doesn't happen in my games, i think for a couple of reasons
1) the stakes are always about "here and now", "I will do this now", not "I will convince you forever and ever that I was right in doing this"
2) with the rules of the conflicts in DitV, you are almost never forced out of a conflict that you feel as too important. If you have still something to say but you don't have dice, you can escalate, or get dice from objects, other traits, help, etc.  The conflict really end only when the player is convinced, too, that he/she did everything that he/she could

So I would like to know if you used different raises and stakes, or the cause of this difference is elsewhere.