[DitV] Question about Escalation

[James Holloway]

And that's just fine.

Is he not an interesting character?

-Vincent

He'd be more interesting if he had to make sacrifices for being a pacifist, like not getting his Will dice. I guess he loses his gun dice already, as well as the good shot dice most dogs have.

But yeah, in practice I agree with other posters: with a character like that, I'd push the whole "you only get away with being a pacifist because you're surrounded by a posse of armed Dogs" thing, and maybe throw him up against an NPC with high scores in things like "deaf" or "crazy" as defenses against having to listen to reason.

Ooh! Ooh! Or maybe a town where the false doctrine is bound up with pacifism!

Because the ultimate questions of pacifism are "is it better to be hurt than to hurt someone else? How about to die?" and "is it better to let someone else be hurt than to hurt someone else? How about to let them die?" Playing a pacifist in a gun-happy setting is just begging to crash head-on into those questions.

[sirogit]

He'd be more interesting if he had to make sacrifices for being a pacifist, like not getting his Will dice. I guess he loses his gun dice already, as well as the good shot dice most dogs have.

But yeah, in practice I agree with other posters: with a character like that, I'd push the whole "you only get away with being a pacifist because you're surrounded by a posse of armed Dogs" thing, and maybe throw him up against an NPC with high scores in things like "deaf" or "crazy" as defenses against having to listen to reason.

Ooh! Ooh! Or maybe a town where the false doctrine is bound up with pacifism!

Because the ultimate questions of pacifism are "is it better to be hurt than to hurt someone else? How about to die?" and "is it better to let someone else be hurt than to hurt someone else? How about to let them die?" Playing a pacifist in a gun-happy setting is just begging to crash head-on into those questions.

I think this approach would work if you made sure you challenged all of the player's approaches to violence equally.

If you just challenged one character's pacifism, the issue wouldn't become examing "is pacifism effective or not?" but instead acknowledgment of "I find your view questionable, so I'm going to make it hard to do."

But if you challenged everyone, it'd work out fine because no one is recieving special difficulty for the "questionableness" of their views.

[James Holloway]

I think this approach would work if you made sure you challenged all of the player's approaches to violence equally.

If you just challenged one character's pacifism, the issue wouldn't become examing "is pacifism effective or not?" but instead acknowledgment of "I find your view questionable, so I'm going to make it hard to do."

I think Dogs as-is does a pretty good job of challenging the idea that violence is a good way to solve problems. The Dogs are already expected to resolve the town's problems by killing people, and to have to deal at least a little bit with the ruined lives they leave behind.

But yeah, if the game as written weren't there to address the role of violence, you'd have to step carefully.