[DitV] Question about Relationships

[Brand_Robins]

I will note, for the record that it is possible to mess up a relationship without the other person in a relationship ever knowing that anything happened. If you care about something enough, put enough weight into it, and blow it then it can mess up your ability to relate to someone even though they remain ignorant.

Putting that kind of weight into it is making it part of the stakes. "I'm doing this because my Pa would never love me if I didn't" becomes useable when you put your relationship with your Pa on the line, even when your Pa isn't there and will never know.

Why? Because you'll know. You'll know all your life that your Pa told you to live one way and when the crap hit the fan you didn't have the strength to see it through. Every time you think about him, about him raising you and protecting you, every time you think about going home, about your brothers and sisters and how they always listened to your dad more than you did, you will remember it.

So when you have to stop the man who is beating his wife because your father wouldn't cross the street to spit on a man who was on fire if he were the sort of man that wouldn't help a woman in trouble, and you make that part of your stakes then fail to make him stop -- well, you'll know it for your whole life. And it will screw your relationship with your father for a very long time. The fact that he won't know why is only likely to make it worse.

Edit: removed the swearing. I find it ironic that the Mormon is the one that keeps breaking the forum rules about making the place a nice place for Mormons to post.

[TonyLB]

Given the setting... how would the people whose opinions you value not know every piddling detail of what you've been doing as Dogs?

I don't think the difference between "My poppa wouldn't love me if I didn't save her soul" and "My poppa won't love me if I don't save her soul" is simply a semantic one.  The second one is saying "When he hears, and he will hear, he won't love you no more.  Period."

[Brand_Robins]

Good point Tony.

I'll also note that I just got done watching an episdoe of Law and Order Special Victims Unit in which Olivia used her relationship with her mother for almost every "contest" in the story.

The thing that made it interesting is that not only was her mother not there, she’s been dead for about a year now. And despite the fact that she’s been brought up in about every 4th episode for 5 seasons (or is it 6 now?) she’s never once been on screen.

But that “Abusive mother who hates me because I was a rape child 4d4” relationship keeps a comin’ up, time after time. Because relationships are about more than just our current dialogue with a person, they’re about the whole complexity of having a human relationship. And even when someone is dead your relationship with them, as it matters to you, to the audience, and to the story, can still be both at stake and a profoundly motivational force on human behavior.

Put that together with the inbred nature of Dog's communities, and well, I think you're getting to a place where you can cook those relationships with gas.

[Yokiboy]

Yoki: I always bring a prepped town to the first session. No need to wait to see the characters.

Alright, I'll give. Although this is in conflict with the Structure of the Game list, which list character creation in step 1, and town creation in step 2. I have also heard so many times that everything in Dogs is the way it is for a reason, so I took you quite literary with that structure list.

Mike, I'm not familiar enough with HQ, it is still on my reading list, so I don't know how HQ relationships work or why they would all be pre-defined. It seems that in hindsight both you and Joshua realize that you could've easily gotten to use some relationships by either leaving some dice unassigned as players, or the GM having snuck some of your relations into his pre-planned town by substituting them for pre-designed NPCs.

I like where Tony and Brand_Robins is taking this discussion. I really like Tony's "he will hear" example, but also see Brand's dead mom example as a viable contradiction. Let me think on this for a while...

TTFN,

Yoki

[Simon Kamber]

But that “Abusive mother who hates me because I was a rape child 4d4” relationship keeps a comin’ up, time after time.

How is that a relationship? I can't quite see how you'd define stakes out of this for so many conflicts. Then I again, I didn't see it. Could you give me some examples of stakes involving the dead mother?

[Mike Holmes]

Unsurprisingly, I agree with Brand. That is, the quality of a person who is motivated by, "what would my dead relative think if they were alive?" seems to me to be a relationship as well. If you want to call it a trait of some sort, that's fine, too - but I think it's more powerful when portrayed as a relationship. I mean, given that the person in question probably represents an array of specific values for the character, simply having a trait like "Honest" probably doesn't cover everything. And, it doesn't convey the same thing as being honest because you're uncle would expect you to be honest. I mean, you can have the honest trait as well and use them both, when they're both applicable.

That seems to me to be the difference. Most traits you don't have to find these stakes to include. Do I have to be risking my honesty to use the honesty trait? Why then do I have to be directly risking my relationship for it to come into play?

I mean, all contests have stakes. It's not like by using a relationship that I get out of that. I'm just wondering what behavior the relationship limits are trying to avoid? Or what they promote by putting them in.

Mike

[lumpley]

Hey Mike. You've missed the bigger piece of the dynamic.

Dogs' relationships aren't Hero Quest's. In a way, they're more like Hero points. You spend (assign) them for a bonus; they're more lasting than Hero points only in that you may be in conflict with or over that person again someday.

Next time, assign only one or two relationships up front (you can even consider these wasted dice for all I care) and save the rest to assign during play, like the rules say. See what you think.

-Vincent

[Lance D. Allen]

See now, given the setting once again, why would the question be "What would my dead relation think if they were still alive?" rather than "What will my dead relation think when they see me do/not do this?" We're talking pseudo-Mormon, which is a Christian sub-sect, so I imagine it keeps the same general ideals that your dead relatives are watching you from the Kingdom of Life.

Though, as I found out, that's not technically gospel; According to my Chaplain, whom I approached when the idea that Jesus called Lazarus back from Heaven occurred to me, the bible tells us that people don't actually go straight to Heaven or Hell upon death; they sort of go to sleep, waiting for Judgement Day.

If that's true, Heaven and Hell are just about empty, folks... Wonder what that idea would do in Dogs?

Anyhow, slightly off topic there. I still see it, whether it's true or not, that people believe their dead relations can see everything they do.

[lumpley]

Maybe this will help, Mike: your starting relationship dice aren't there to describe your character's pre-initiation community. They're there to reflect what your character learned from it.

If you grew up in a complicated family, you're going to know how to create complicated new relationships. If you grew up in a strong family, you're going to know how to create strong new relationships.

You really aren't meant to spend your relationship dice on people you used to know.

Lance: real-world LDS doctrine has it that the dead have work to do, including looking out for their living families. So that's totally viable.

-Vincent

[Brand_Robins]

How is that a relationship?

Because its a relation between two people that forms a lasting and engaging bond?

I can't quite see how you'd define stakes out of this for so many conflicts. Then I again, I didn't see it.

Are you familiar with SVU? It's a show that deals heavily with rape and abuse cases, so having a relationship with a family member that is based around the trauma of rape is going to be something that's relevant more than it would be in a show about, say, emergency room doctors.

Sort of like taking a relationship that's something like "My dad: who hates me for becoming a Dog."

Could you give me some examples of stakes involving the dead mother?

From this one episode the ones I can recall off hand are:

"Can I deal fairly with this woman, even though she's abusing her daughter the way my mother abused me?"

"Can I see through this girl's lies, even though she's telling me all the things I want to hear because of how my mother raised me?"

"Can I forgive this girl for doing to her mother what I wanted to do to my mother?"

"Can I convince the DA to lower the charges against this girl by exposing my own history of abuse and telling her about how I almost killed my mother too?"

However, now Vincent has gone and added this:

Maybe this will help, Mike: your starting relationship dice aren't there to describe your character's pre-initiation community. They're there to reflect what your character learned from it.

If you grew up in a complicated family, you're going to know how to create complicated new relationships. If you grew up in a strong family, you're going to know how to create strong new relationships.

SO... having built this case up, I can now say that the other totally valid way to do it (possibly more valid way) would be to have the character take a relationship with the girl and the abusive mother, based on Olivia's broken family past -- which would give her the base relationship dice type and so on.

Could go either way. In SVU they often draw on existing relationships to complicate new ones, but that could just be rational... and as I'm sure everyone is wanting to tell me at this point, TV is not Game, and SVU is not Dogs.

[Simon Kamber]

Are you familiar with SVU? It's a show that deals heavily with rape and abuse cases, so having a relationship with a family member that is based around the trauma of rape is going to be something that's relevant more than it would be in a show about, say, emergency room doctors.

I'm not familiar with the show at all. My point is that while it's a relationship in the classic sense, Dogs defines relationships a bit differently. You don't get the dice from including them in the stakes, you get dice when they ARE the stakes.

So, basically, you really have to go through some seriously abstract stuff to get dice for a relationship with a dead person. In fact, I don't think it's possible unless you're playing with a supernatural level high enough that the dead are still hangin' out.

All the things you say would be much better expressed with a trait that goes "my mother abused me 4d4".


Or how about a relationship with a sin? I could see that applying the way you're saying.

[Mike Holmes]

You really aren't meant to spend your relationship dice on people you used to know.

Vincent, I get this. I really, really, really, really do. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

Now can we get on with the rest of the conversation? What if I want to take pre-existing relationships? Am I a bad player for wanting to do so, or playing badly? Rather I don't understand how this is something that's discouraged.

Also, let's say that I do take a character like a preacher in a town I come to. I still maintain that its fun to be able to bring that relationship in without direct stakes, even if it would be easy to do it. That is, I could say, "I want to do this because if I don't the preacher will think I'm a dork" or I could say, "I want to do this because if I don't the preacher would think I'm a dork."

I'm not talking at all about who you take or when. I'm talking about when relationships already taken can be brought into play. Heck, I would like it if you could say, "Hey, I'll take a relationship to that preacher I met ten minutes ago, and say that I'm going to try harder because I like him."

Mike

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Also, let's say that I do take a character like a preacher in a town I come to. I still maintain that its fun to be able to bring that relationship in without direct stakes, even if it would be easy to do it. That is, I could say, "I want to do this because if I don't the preacher will think I'm a dork" or I could say, "I want to do this because if I don't the preacher would think I'm a dork."

What's at stake there is your dorkiness in the eyes of the Preacher. I assume that's cool.

I'm not talking at all about who you take or when. I'm talking about when relationships already taken can be brought into play. Heck, I would like it if you could say, "Hey, I'll take a relationship to that preacher I met ten minutes ago, and say that I'm going to try harder because I like him."

Again, you have your relationship to the preacher at stake. This seems kosher to me. The preacher will find out what you did; it's great.

[lumpley]

Hey Mike.

Are you asking me why the rule is the way it is?

The reason is: if you bring relationship dice into play at the moment-to-moment of conflicts, as well as at stakes and opposition, you deflate the tension in the system.

Here's why: your traits are going to be a good mix of emotional, ideological, physical and violent, right? In the existing rules, if a "just talking" conflict is turning against you, you have two choices: bring in an emotional or ideological trait, or escalate. Notice that escalating gets you two things: new stat dice, plus access to your physical or violent traits.

Your relationships on the other hand, applied to sees and raises, are going to be practically all emotional and ideological. Even if the relationship's been established to be physical or violent, like "my dad (who used to kick shit out of me)," you'll be able to easily interpret it into a "just talking" see or raise. So when a "just talking" conflict turns against you, that'd be a whole new body of dice available to you before you have to consider escalating.

The pressure the rules put on you to escalate is what drives the game. Allowing relationship dice to be brought into conflicts on the fly would be taking your foot off the gas.

-Vincent

[WiredNavi]

Perhaps it would be useful to illustrate what happened with relationships the one time I got to play this game.

My character, Matthew, had an issue with his father being murdered.  He had Relationship:  My dead father 1d8, and Relationship: The Sin of Murder 2d6, because he had spent a lot of time thinking about killing and what would make someone do it, trying to come to grips with what happened to his dad.

Now, that Sin of Murder thing came up all the time, because Matthew was not exactly the forgiving kind.  A man tried to kill him and failed, but Matthew executed him afterwards for various and sundry sins - among them attempted murder.  Was that execution a justifiable killing, or was it murder?  Actually, Matthew wasn't sure, but he did it anyway.  Not only did his relationship with Murder come into play, but the fallout he took from those two conflicts significantly changed his relationship with Murder.  Where he used to understand murder and how bad it was (2d6), having both killed a man in cold blood and having had a man try to kill him, now he's unsure and the whole idea of murder just complicates his thinking and his actions (3d4).

My friend's character was all about the unspent relationship dice.  A good but not particularly righteous man was involved with the new second wife of the (very bad and about to be exiled-by-the-Dogs) Steward.  He had some powerful justifications for what he and his lover had done, and was trying, in the ultimate confrontation of the session, to convince us Dogs that he was right.  We were getting down to bare-bones dice, and my friend said, "You know what?  I'm dropping 2d8 into a relationship with this guy.  I really like him, I sympathize with his struggle, and I want him to come out of this without us having to do something more than just talk him back into the fold."  Another of us said, "Yeah, and I really feel for his lover; she's a girl like me who had a hard time getting out from under everyone's thumb.  I'll take my last 1d10 relationship die with her."

So they used these unspent dice to systematically represent their understanding of these people whom they had heard so much about and from, and in part because of that, we didn't have to do anything more drastic than wave guns around without shooting and shout a lot at them.  It could've been a lot worse.  And if a similar situation ever comes up - or if we ever run into these fine folks' relatives - we can bring those relationships back into play.

That's what Relationship dice are for, in both ways.  They're for when something or someone is so important to your character that you can't bear not to have it already systematically described, and they're for when you want to show that your character has really been 'gotten' by one of the NPCs.  Both are useful - but if you throw all your dice into previous relationships, you're going to have to accept the fact that they're not always going to come up.

(In fact, I'd say that the big idea of, say, 'Strong Community' isn't that you have lots of relationship dice in your community members, but that you grew up in a place where you learned that your bonds with other people gave you strength, so you form lots of those bonds very fast, as represented by a big pool of availiable dice.)