[DitV] The pacifist was shot

[Eric Provost]

Well, we revisited Silent River last night and had a blast.  A few different issues with the game came up that I'd like to share with everyone.

First, the good stuff.

We're getting so much better at tasty and satisfying narration to match with our dice.  It's almost certainly the idea of Mononinitionus Conflicts that drives us to do so.  Our standards for each others' narrations keep rising, so we're driven to become more and more entertaining to each other.  Best example from last night;

Nik is playing Brother Uriah, the pacifist.  He and the other two Dogs are in a conflict with Sister Ruth, who's trying to rile the crowd up to attack the Dogs.  She raises with "Beat them!  Beat them into the dust before they can raise their weapons against us!'  To which Nik narrates Brother Uriah (who is forced to take the blow for 4d4) standing up in front of the crowd, raising his hands up to show that he's unarmed, and announcing "If anyone here believes that I have a weapon upon me, I invite them to beat it from me!"  With all of us knowing that this would probably result in a beating, we just loved it.  Tickled our funny bits.

We learned that lots of pushing and shoving combined with lots of nasty words and capped with a single gunshot can be just as lethal as a barrage of gunfire.  At the end of that very same conflict with Sister Ruth and the crowd, she got off a single gunshot at Brother Uriah.  Nik was just about out of dice.  We quickly discussed wether or not Uriah should remain in the conflict, or if he should just bow out and avoid the 3d10 fallout he was looking at.  I reminded Nik that, no matter how unlikely, those 3d10 could kill Uriah in a single roll.  Nik decided that Uriah would stay in the conflict.  We were all very satisfied with the idea that the pacifist would stick around, taking a gunshot, in order to be 100% sure that they did NOT kill Sister Ruth (which was the stakes).  Nik rolled 18 for fallout.  The follow up conflict to heal him (taken on by Sister Temperance, Lisa's character) didn't go very well.  Lisa just didn't have much luck with the dice last night, and managed to get seven 1s in her initial roll to heal Uriah.  In the end, Lisa didn't have nearly the dice to save Uriah.  A grazing gunshot from a desperate and self-destructive sorceress killed the pacifist.  Very satisfying all around I think.

We used the conflict resolution system to formalize an argument between the players.  See, this is what happened;  In the town, the Singers were all wearing red scarves.  In a scene between Sister Temperance and Sister Carmen (a singer) Sister Temperance convinced Carmen to give up her red scarf.  Lisa said that this meant that Carmen had given up her sins.  Nik disagreed, saying that the scarf meant nothing.  After maybe five minutes of bickering that wasn't getting anywhere I announced that I thought it was a good time to bring it 'in-character' and roll for it.  Once we nailed down the stakes, the dice were out and the narration came in.  By the end of it, Nik had run out of dice, and we all knew for certain that Brother Uriah was wrong;  The scarves were important, and anyone who gave them up was giving up their wicked ways.

A few bad things.

We found that the Pacifist never had to escalate past physical, and that became a minor problem for me.  See, Nik dumped 11 dice into Heart in character creation, which is kewl, but it meant that he had as many dice for talking as most characters do for talking+violence combined.  Vincent once asked me if I thought that his character was any less interesting because of it.  Well, no, I don't think the character was any less interesting.  But...  The conflicts he entered were considerably less interesting because of it, IMO.  See, we know entering a conflict that the Dogs are almost certainly gonna win, right?  So the suspense, the interesting bits, the reason why we're dropping dice in the first place, is to see what the Dogs are willing to do to get to win the conflict.  And, as I see it, there are two things that we generally ask the Dogs as the conflict progresses;  Are you willing to get hurt to win?  and;  Are you willing to hurt someone else to win?  After last night's game, I feel quite confident in saying that, if you take away one of those questions you loose lots of flavor in the conflicts.

The other thing we encountered last night...  I'm not sure how to explain the why, but...  The encounters occationally began to feel like they were dragging out.  Like they were going on just a little too long.  I think perhaps that we just need to raise up our standards even a bit higher on the narration that brings in traits.  I think we've all gotten in the habit of 'The conflict isn't over 'till we've used up every die on our sheets'.  But I think we'd be happier with 'The conflict is over when we can't satisfactorily narrate any of the traits remaining on our sheets.'

I'm gonna bring that bit up next time we gather.

-Eric

[TonyLB]

The 11 Heart dice and "dies to a grazing gunshot"... those are linked phenomena, right?  Because he therefore had only two dice in Body, which can't have helped Sister Temperance's attempts to heal him.

How very karmic.

[Eric Provost]

*L*  Yeah, definately linked phenomena.  During character creation I told Nik that less than three dice in Body would bode badly if he got into a fight.  He really wanted to start with only one die, but conceded to two after my words of warning.

But then, the low body was really just a contributing factor.  It wasn't the whole deal.  Lisa's dice just weren't on her side last night.

-Eric

[Sydney Freedberg]

Very cool.

....the idea of Mononinitionus Conflicts ...

Definition?

[Eric Provost]

Monotonous Conflicts

-Eric

[lumpley]

But I think we'd be happier with 'The conflict is over when we can't satisfactorily narrate any of the traits remaining on our sheets.'

I think you probably would!

So, check this out. Forcing someone to take a blow does two things. First, it gives them fallout, groovy, that's the obvious one. Second, it allows you to choose the direction of the conflict, ideally opening up future trait use for you yourself while cutting off future trait use for them.

If your group's letting everybody use every trait every time, without demanding solid rationales and fun narration, you're doing two things. First, you're dragging the conflicts out, yep, just by making all those dice always available. But second, you're robbing the raises of half their potential impact. I don't need to direct the conflict if I'm going to get every trait anyway, you see, and there's no point me directing the conflict against you if you're just going to get every trait anyway too.

You might find it easier to wean your group off of "every trait every time" if you also make your conflicts' stakes smaller and more tolerable to lose. If somebody proposes "do I convince him?" you can say "first things first, does even stay in the room to hear you out? 'Do you convince him?' can be followup."

-Vincent

[Eric Provost]

Thanks for the reply Vincent.  It's given my group some good stuff to chew on.  We've definately been too lax in narrations.  I think that it's the sudden change of pace.  Moving from one style of play where everything seems very strict to a style of play were certain things are more lax... and we go overboard with being lax.  If that makes any sense.

So, having managed to discuss this with two of my three other players, and pointing the third to the thread for later reading, we've come up with some new house rules I thought we might share.

First is my personal rule of thumb for bringing traits and belongings in via narration:
If the narration of the trait or item points in the direction of winning the conflict AND is suitably entertaining and new, then I find it acceptable.

Then a little cleanup:
Don't hold up the conflict all day trying to think of narration. If it won't come, it won't come. It's time to fold.

Then there's the bit I'd still like to discuss;  Taking a closer look at the scope of our stakes.  This might take a little work on our part as a group.  The 'stake scale/drawn out resloution' -thing is possibly a little circular problem that we'll have to try to crush all at once.  That is, I know I was avoiding small and seemingly minor conflicts... because they were taking too long to resolve.

We're not finished with Silent River yet (10 hours of play and counting... is that a record for a Dogs town yet?), so I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes.

-Eric

[lumpley]

Don't hold up the conflict all day trying to think of narration. If it won't come, it won't come. It's time to fold.

Yes indeedy. That oughta go into the book.

-Vincent