[DitV] Too-effective Dogs?

[Ginger Stampley]

In this thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=15320) Vincent said:

There's this thing that happens sometimes when people see Dogs. They go "holy FUCK, the characters are effective! I gotta put a stop to that! How can this possibly go well if the characters run around accomplishing all their goals all the time?"

It's nonsense. The meaning of the game, now look I'm talking about the MEANING of the game, depends on the characters being effective and accomplishing their goals. Your job as a GM isn't to keep them from accomplishing exactly what they want to accomplish, it's to design good towns and then play the townspeople fully and with passion. I promise, the Dogs can win every single conflict easily and the game still works, it's still challenging morally and it'll still engage you and your players. Losing a conflict once in a while is a spice, not a staple.

Here's my question about this. In a large group of Dogs (4 or 5), people can put a LOT of dice on the table just talking. If the point of the game is to see what people will do, don't I as GM need to put a lot of dice (pressure) on the table to see whether they'll escalate?

I'm not worried about them winning; I'm worried that they win too easily and that I'm not making enough of a challenge for the number of Dogs I have. If they don't have to make some choices about what tools to use and how to apply them, I feel like I'm not doing my job.

It may be that Dogs doesn't scale well and that at 4 or 5 it starts to break down a little. It's the players' job to min-max, and they win more easily when they stay in a group because they don't have to escalate, they take smaller dice of fallout (=more experience for less risk), etc.

I can see some ways around this: forcing escalation by having the NPCs escalate hard and fast, and making so darn much trouble that the PCs have to break into groups to get at all of it. I'm interested in what else I should be doing to provide a challenge (besides playing the townspeople fully and with passion, which I try to do anyway).

[Bankuei]

Hi,

I think everyone who's got a real problem with this should do one thing:

Grab your copy of DITV.  Open up to page 1, with the word "Introduction" near the bottom.  Read the little situation described at the top of the page.

Ok, assuming that you have enough dice to succeed, what exactly would you do?  Notice that, let us say an "idealized" goal would be to get your brother not to shoot anyone, your nephew to stop stealing and whoring, AND then what?  Do you exile the shopkeeper and his "wife"?  Do you blame one or the other, do you get both of them to amend their sinnin' ways?

Even if you succeed at every single thing- how you do it is the major part of the game.  The dice don't tell you how to really solve the problems, and sure as hell don't stop things from happening as a consequence to your actions.  

I mean, let's say you stop the violence, but then the rest of the townsfolk decide to take matters into their own hands... and you talk them down.  Now what?  These two sinners aren't going to be safe in town, but its winter- where are you going to send them?

You know the phrase, "Watch what you wish for, you might just get it?"

That's Dogs.

Chris

[xenopulse]

Chris,

I understand that there are still difficult choices to make outside of the conflicts.

But why have an escalation mechanic when the game works just as well if no player ever escalates? I mean, the book tells you explicitly to escalate, escalate, escalate. If the players don't have to follow suit, that seems like it doesn't do a thing.

[lumpley]

(I've answered Christian about escalation here in the escalation thread.)

-Vincent

[Harlequin]

Me, I hear where you're coming from, lass.  Vincent and co, think about what Dogs would be like if you simply gave very PC twice as many dice and changed nothing else.  Yes, still playable; yes, the point is still there; no, it's not as easy to get across, because the range of situations which can be solved by "I persuade him not to do bad things" conflicts increases.

I see the same thing about group conflicts that lass does.  Frankly, many games see this; Dogs' many-on-one rules (IMO the least strong part of the system) don't seem immune.  My suggestion is simply the same kinds of techniques you'd use in any other game, to break up the 'party hydra' phenomenon... diverge their goals; split 'em with coincidence and scene framing; play to the rifts between them.  All of which are good in and of themselves, including (maybe even especially) in Dogs.

In my long-running Pendragon game the PCs eventually got so good as a team that I used these techniques in pretty extreme form.  One long, memorable story arc started with a shipwreck at sea, and left them pursuing completely independent lives (one as a saxon thrall, one washed back to the lands he knew, one onboard the ship they'd been pursuing, one wakening inexplicably a hundred miles from the ocean), for at least a half-dozen sessions.  To this day some parts of that arc are amongst the most-retold anecdotes from that game.  The Dogs equivalent is pretty obvious... engineer a situation (apply a hint of Participationism and let the players in on this) wherein the Dogs are dispersed to deal with different towns with thematically linked issues, for a session or three, before reuniting them.  You don't have to do this constantly; it's just one of a large bag of tricks.

- Eric

[lumpley]

Ginger: It's very true, 4 or 5 Dogs united get to impose their will on the world. There's not much you can do to challenge them. I've never run the game for 5 players - I wouldn't want to try, really!

I've run it for 4 a bunch of times, but they've always settled pretty much instinctively into pairs or solos. I don't have there be all kinds of things always happening at once, but I try to have there usually be two things happening right now, so there's usually a "you go there, I'll go here" going on between the Dogs.

-Vincent

[Ginger Stampley]

Vincent, thanks for the answer. I knew 5 was a BIG group, but Michael gave us a very complicated town to work with. We voluntarily split up. I'll just work a little harder at breaking my four Dogs into pairs.

My group hasn't shown a huge interest in the supernatural end of Dogs, which I think could be another way to start throwing dice down and pushing to escalate. You'd end up with Crouching Dog, Hidden Sorcerer pretty fast, but I want to get to that anyway with one group or another.

[ptikachu]

For me, Dogs played with large groups of PCs breaks down logistically before  it breaks down as a game. Mainly, because folks don't have enough dice!

It isn't really a problem for me to provide sufficient opposition, since I can even out the number of individual NPCs to oppose the Dogs. But I'd need to have dice for all of them, and my resources are finite.

I think Dogs is better played more intimately, with a limited group of players, not more than five. Keeps the focus tight. Also, I prefer an odd number of Dogs - helps prevent tied decisions when passing judgement on towns...

[Darren Hill]

I think Dogs is better played more intimately, with a limited group of players, not more than five. Keeps the focus tight. Also, I prefer an odd number of Dogs - helps prevent tied decisions when passing judgement on towns...

That reminds me of a D&D game I ran, where the most memorable (and dogs-like) decision the players had to make was: "do we allow the Gods back into the world, or do we assert that man has a right to self-determination."
After a good half-session hammering out their points, two players voted on each side, leaving the fifth player as the tie breaker.
Faced with the gravity of ther situation, he had the perfect solution - he decided to throw a coin!
As a result, the Gods won, and he got throttled by his real life wife.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

After a good half-session hammering out their points, two players voted on each side, leaving the fifth player as the tie breaker.
Faced with the gravity of ther situation, he had the perfect solution - he decided to throw a coin!
As a result, the Gods won, and he got throttled by his real life wife.

There's a game that needs conflict resolution mechanics! Shit, you coulda hashed that out in one 10-minute conflict!