What if they go back to a town?

[Vaxalon]

James and I want to know what you think of a conversation we had in #indierpgs tonight.

<James_Nostack> what if they go back to the same town later on?
<Vaxalon> James: Going back to the same town later would be a BAD idea, I think.
<James_Nostack> how so?
<TQuid> I'd think it'd depend; it sounds perfectly possible to wrap up a town pretty peacefully, or beat it to shit, or even leave some things unfinished.
<Vaxalon> Vincent goes to a lot of trouble, to take away the GM's ability to make moral judgements about the PC's actions.
<Vaxalon> Being able to go back to a town would give it back.
<jwalton> Totally.
<TQuid> Wow--you should say that in his blog.  I wanna see what he says.
<jwalton> But I just want to make practical judgements, not moral judgements.
<jwalton> I wanna show how their judgement didn't really solve the real problems, not that what they did was morally wrong.
<James_Nostack> that in itself is a kind of moral criticism though.
<Vaxalon> I don't think there's any difference.
<Vaxalon> Yeah
<jwalton> I want the PCs to have to face up to the hard decisions they made.
<Vaxalon> Why?
<James_Nostack> But I can see what jwalton is saying, because without consequences, who cares?
<jwalton> Because they get to ride off into the sunset and the people have to deal with it.  That's not fair.
<jwalton> No karma.
<James_Nostack> I mean, it's like the Prisoner's Dilemma with someone you never meet again
<James_Nostack> could you not revisit the same town, but have the town come after them?
<James_Nostack> like, somebody they screwed over saddles up and tries to get revenge?
<Vaxalon> Well
<Vaxalon> If the town is left unresolved, yes.
<Vaxalon> But if everything has been expunged, all the way down to the pride, I'd say no.
<James_Nostack> Yeah, then I guess that's another way of approaching what I was talking about earlier: the characters are kind of floating.  there's no persistent moral connection to their setting.
<James_Nostack> in the sense of consequences, etc.
<Vaxalon> They don't HAVE moral consequences, they ARE moral consequences.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Isn't this a matter of the individual play group's situation? The rule against moral judgement is there as a kind of safety rail, helping the players break into confident, moral play. If the players have these kinds of problems, certainly coming back to town might prove difficult. But if the players are secure enough to stand behind their judgement (or to confess being wrong), revisiting would prove pretty bountiful, I should think. I'm not seeing how this is a design level problem at all. People get uncomfortable over different things.

Actually, the stated reasons are ample to make revisits de rigueur: it helps tie the characters into the setting, allows longer plot arcs and deepens the philosophical issues. Good all around for a deep, strong game. For a light and entertaining one, though, it's not necessary, as the main focus is in the now of judgement.

[lumpley]

The rules answer: If they're on their way back to revisit a town, create the town, using the town creation rules. The only point to possibly clarify - and it should be obvious - is that when you choose the town's Pride, it has to be a person who lives in the town who's proud, not one of the Dogs.

Fred, James, Jonathan, if you'd like to raise some of the other issues you touched on in your conversation - Dogs' persistent moral connection to their setting, the GM's role in confronting the Dogs with their decisions - please do so directly. Also please be prepared for me to not take your concerns very seriously until after you've played the game and discovered them to be, in fact, well-founded.

'Cause they ain't.

-Vincent

[Judd]

Humans don't stop fucking up and the enemies of the King of Life are Legion.

Going back to a town would be cool.

[Vaxalon]

Also please be prepared for me to not take your concerns very seriously until after you've played the game...

Working on it...

[lumpley]

Oh man, now I feel bad.

It's not that I don't take non-players of my game seriously, of course. It's that those specific types of concerns come very clearly from second guessing the game without having played it.

-Vincent

[Vaxalon]

I understand completely.   Really, all the discussion on my end is preparatory to understanding the game well enough to run it.

[Vaxalon]

Humans don't stop fucking up and the enemies of the King of Life are Legion.

Going back to a town would be cool.

Thinking about this further, if I were running Dogs, and the players WERE to come back to a town, I would have very, very little of the new conflict derive from the old one; a whole new pride would appear.

[Ginger Stampley]

The interesting thing to me about this question is that I've written one town, which I expect to play in two weeks, and I can see the roots of a second visit in the NPCs I've written. There's a blatant hierarchy of sin in the town to be played out and dealt with, but unless the Dogs are subtler than I expect them to be--and they may be--there are the roots of a second sin in there, and it totally wasn't what I expected when I started working on the town. It just kind of grew up while I was writing the NPCs.

I'll report back when I have actual play to discuss.