[DitV] Couple Questions, If I May

[PaulChapman]

Question 1: Why use attributes? I'm not saying I disagree with the idea – most of my favorite games use them – but for such a rules light system, it seems that Traits are so much more useful and "character defining" than Attributes, so why not go all the way?

Question 2: How are negative Traits brought into a conflict? Can an opponent use them in a Raise? If my trait is "Blind as a bat without my glasses 4d4," could Billy Badass use "Brawler 3d6" to force me to roll that Trait?

Question 3: Can relationships overlap? Take, for instance, a captain who places a high priority on taking care of his crew. One crewmember in particular, however, is his hidden love. Additionally, he has a bond with his ship. With this in mind, is this legal:
My ship 2d6
My crew 2d6
My first mate/hidden love 2d8

In a hijacking situation, would he roll both his ship (for location) and his crew (for those involved) dice? If the hidden love was involved more as a crewmemeber than a love, then just the 2d6, but if the hijackers took the first mate in particular hostage, the 2d8 would kick in, right?

Or would the "hidden love" aspect make a better Trait? I admit that sometimes the line between Relationship and Trait blurs for me.

Thanks for the help!

Paul Chapman

[TonyLB]

Well, here's my answers, then Vincent can come in and clear up the confusion.

#1:  Attributes provide a baseline against which the effectiveness of traits is measured.  Them being d6 makes d6 the average, d4 troublesome, d10 cool.

#2:  There's no such thing as a negative trait.  Just a trait that causes you trouble (in the form of the much more fallout you'll take using 4d4 than you will using 2d8).

#3:  If you can make your ship, your crew and the first mate all be individually and distinctly relevant to the Stakes then you get them all:  Like "Will Captain Scarlet burn my ship, imprison my crew and seduce my first mate?"  You see how not saying (for instance) that last one would have left you some leeway to Give in a way that would preserve the Relation you didn't include in the Stakes?  Relationships (my wholly individual and refutable viewpoint) are about how much you're willing to risk in the stakes, as counted in things dear to you.

[Darren Hill]

These are just my opinions of course...
Attributes: the way the system works in play, you need a reasonable-sized dice pool to start you off - attributes as very general traits that apply to just about everything are ideal for this purpose.

Negative traits: As I understand it, negative traits are used exactly like positive ones. An opponent can never force you to use a trait, but if Billy The Brawler 3d6 went to punch you, and you wanted to Take The Blow (as opposed to Block), you could easily justify rolling Blind As A Bat to get some extra dice into your pool, as you explain who your limited sight caused you to only partially block the punch and stagger back into  atable or something.

Realtionships Overlap: yes, they can overlap - as long as you pay attention to the rules on when to use Relationships (it's listed in the conflict chapter). If your ship, crew, and first mate were all about to be killed by a sea monster, you could easily justify rolling them all.
In your hijacking example, I'd have no hesitation in allowing all three to be rolled the instant the hijacking conflict got underway - all of them are in jeopardy.

"hidden love" Trait or Relationship: if you make it a trait, you can more easily use it when the subject of the relationship isn't around for some reason. If the first mate is ashore gathering supplies, and you get involved in a conflict with a crewmember who is trying to discover your secret love, you could use the "hidden love" trait to help you out, while the relationship isn't in a position to directly assist you so it couldn't be used.
Note also, you could have both. One of my PCs has a pet Dog which is a Trait, Relationship, and Belonging.
(Hmm, if a horse or dog can be a belonging, can you take a sidekick as a belonging?...)

[PaulChapman]

Well, here's my answers, then Vincent can come in and clear up the confusion.

#1:  Attributes provide a baseline against which the effectiveness of traits is measured.  Them being d6 makes d6 the average, d4 troublesome, d10 cool.

I don't follow this line of thought, frankly. d6 is the baseline because that's what most of your dice are, not because they happen to represent Attributes.

Anyhow, establishing a baseline could be accomplished by simply saying "d6 is average." At some point, the decision to include Attributes was made -- but Traits obviously overshadow them. Why not drop them?

#2:  There's no such thing as a negative trait.  Just a trait that causes you trouble (in the form of the much more fallout you'll take using 4d4 than you will using 2d8).

Ok, so the question becomes: "How are Traits which cause you trouble brought into a conflict?" To expand: is there a mechanic in DitV which promotes the use of troublesome Traits in conflicts, especially those whose stakes are important to the players? Sure, Moe may be willing to roll "bum knee" during a poker game, but when she's in a shoot-out, she's likely to leave those dice behind. What I'm looking for is something to encourage players to use troublesome Traits, even when the additional dice makes their success less likely.

#3:  If you can make your ship, your crew and the first mate all be individually and distinctly relevant to the Stakes then you get them all:  Like "Will Captain Scarlet burn my ship, imprison my crew and seduce my first mate?"  You see how not saying (for instance) that last one would have left you some leeway to Give in a way that would preserve the Relation you didn't include in the Stakes?  Relationships (my wholly individual and refutable viewpoint) are about how much you're willing to risk in the stakes, as counted in things dear to you.

Interesting.

Thanks!

Paul Chapman

[TonyLB]

Ok, so the question becomes: "How are Traits which cause you trouble brought into a conflict?" To expand: is there a mechanic in DitV which promotes the use of troublesome Traits in conflicts, especially those whose stakes are important to the players? Sure, Moe may be willing to roll "bum knee" during a poker game, but when she's in a shoot-out, she's likely to leave those dice behind. What I'm looking for is something to encourage players to use troublesome Traits, even when the additional dice makes their success less likely.

Using Traits never makes your success less likely.  So the encouragement to use troublesome Traits is "You are more likely to succeed."  Is that enough?

[PaulChapman]

These are just my opinions of course...
Attributes: the way the system works in play, you need a reasonable-sized dice pool to start you off - attributes as very general traits that apply to just about everything are ideal for this purpose.

Ok, that's an angle I hadn't considered. By keeping Attributes around as the foundation of any conflict, you guarentee that players will always have *some* chance of success.

Of course, if you're giving the players a wide degree of latitude on which conflicts they're willing to enter, they're likely to be steering towards those which their Traits will help them. So dumping those Attribute dice into the Trait pools wouldn't unbalance anything....

Negative traits: As I understand it, negative traits are used exactly like positive ones. An opponent can never force you to use a trait, but if Billy The Brawler 3d6 went to punch you, and you wanted to Take The Blow (as opposed to Block), you could easily justify rolling Blind As A Bat to get some extra dice into your pool, as you explain who your limited sight caused you to only partially block the punch and stagger back into  atable or something.

But you don't roll a Trait when you Take a Blow, right? You bring a Trait in during your Raise.

Realtionships Overlap: yes, they can overlap - as long as you pay attention to the rules on when to use Relationships (it's listed in the conflict chapter). If your ship, crew, and first mate were all about to be killed by a sea monster, you could easily justify rolling them all.
In your hijacking example, I'd have no hesitation in allowing all three to be rolled the instant the hijacking conflict got underway - all of them are in jeopardy.

"hidden love" Trait or Relationship: if you make it a trait, you can more easily use it when the subject of the relationship isn't around for some reason. If the first mate is ashore gathering supplies, and you get involved in a conflict with a crewmember who is trying to discover your secret love, you could use the "hidden love" trait to help you out, while the relationship isn't in a position to directly assist you so it couldn't be used.
Note also, you could have both. One of my PCs has a pet Dog which is a Trait, Relationship, and Belonging.
(Hmm, if a horse or dog can be a belonging, can you take a sidekick as a belonging?...)

One item with three dice pools attached? Wow!

Thanks!

Paul Chapman

[PaulChapman]

Using Traits never makes your success less likely.  So the encouragement to use troublesome Traits is "You are more likely to succeed."  Is that enough?

I don't know; I haven't seen the system in action often enought to say for certain one way or the other. However, I did sense a certain amount of "I'm not bringing my troublesome Traits into this conflict; the slight increase in likelyhood of success does not compensate me for the huge increase in likelyhood of fallout" from my players.

Paul Chapman

[Eero Tuovinen]

I don't know; I haven't seen the system in action often enought to say for certain one way or the other. However, I did sense a certain amount of "I'm not bringing my troublesome Traits into this conflict; the slight increase in likelyhood of success does not compensate me for the huge increase in likelyhood of fallout" from my players.

How is the fallout any more likely, as compared to not rolling the dice?

[Darren Hill]

These are just my opinions of course...
Attributes: the way the system works in play, you need a reasonable-sized dice pool to start you off - attributes as very general traits that apply to just about everything are ideal for this purpose.

Ok, that's an angle I hadn't considered. By keeping Attributes around as the foundation of any conflict, you guarentee that players will always have *some* chance of success.

Of course, if you're giving the players a wide degree of latitude on which conflicts they're willing to enter, they're likely to be steering towards those which their Traits will help them. So dumping those Attribute dice into the Trait pools wouldn't unbalance anything....

I don't know - it's easy to get 6-10d6 from attributes without needing to justify anything. To get Traits, you need to justify them, and having to do it for every raise or see means that conflict becomes a bit more mentally tiring.
Also there are a couple of gameplay elements you may be overlooking.
1. having that large lump of dice in front of you when you start does make a difference. As I mentioned earlier, it gives you a foundation on which you then put your character on the line by adding Traits to the mix.
2. More importantly, you diminish the escalation aspect of play. A vital part of Dogs is choosing whether to escalate or not, and if you do, you get those extra stat dice - as does your foe. This is unpredictable, but fun.
You need some mechanic to mark that division between talking and jumping to weapon use, or you lose much of what makes Dogs special. You'd be in the situation that on any action a player can choose to talk, jostle, stab, or shoot, with no special in-system attention given to those things other than the change in fallout.
Having the stat dice is really, really important for the way escalation works.

<snip>But you don't roll a Trait when you Take a Blow, right? You bring a Trait in during your Raise.

No you can bring in a Trait when you Raise and when you See - Take The Blow is one of the three types of See.

[PaulChapman]

I don't know; I haven't seen the system in action often enought to say for certain one way or the other. However, I did sense a certain amount of "I'm not bringing my troublesome Traits into this conflict; the slight increase in likelyhood of success does not compensate me for the huge increase in likelyhood of fallout" from my players.

How is the fallout any more likely, as compared to not rolling the dice?

Smaller dice tend to generate more fallout. From page 13: "Because most of your character's opponent's dice are going to be d6s and better, rolling d4s makes it more likely that your character'll suffer consequences in conflicts." Am I reading it incorrectly?

[PaulChapman]

No you can bring in a Trait when you Raise and when you See - Take The Blow is one of the three types of See.

Right, forgot that.

Paul Chapman

[ScottM]

Smaller dice tend to generate more fallout. From page 13: "Because most of your character's opponent's dice are going to be d6s and better, rolling d4s makes it more likely that your character'll suffer consequences in conflicts." Am I reading it incorrectly?

No, you've read that correctly.  That's a simplification though... rolling the extra dice does not cause more fallout.  Using the extra dice is what increases the fallout-- if you choose to roll the dice, but not to use them, there's no more fallout than if you didn't roll them at all.

Of course, once they're on the table, you'll be tempted to use them...

--Scott

[lumpley]

Hey Paul. I like what everybody's saying. Do you feel answered or is there more I can tell you?

-Vincent

[Lance D. Allen]

The reason why d4 traits make it more likely to receive fallout is this.. The total on any one die has a greater likelihood of being a low number.

Consider.. Say I raise with 2d6 totaling up to eleven. You've got a bunch of dice in front of you, so meeting an eleven is easy as pie.. However, they're all d4s, so the maximum number possible on 2 dice is 8.. meaning you'll take fallout to see an eleven.

Now, this won't always be the case. You may have, say, an 8 in front of you, and all of your d6+ dice are showing 5s. So you decide to roll your Bum Leg trait, at d4, hoping for a 3 or maybe a four. Whatever your roll, you don't have to use that die.. So if you roll a 1, or a 2, you can still choose to add up your other dice to meet the eleven, say the 8 and a 5. Rolling your Bum Leg trait means that you have to bring Bum Leg into the narration, which isn't really all that hard to do, especially in a gunfight. "As you fire, my leg twists, and I go down, narrowly missed by your shot."

So if you can bring in any trait, go for it. If it lends itself to a cool narration, even better.

As for other points raised, I think everyone has answered as well as I could.

[PaulChapman]

Hey Paul. I like what everybody's saying. Do you feel answered or is there more I can tell you?

Very answered. Thank you, sirs!

(BTW, if anyone ever asks you, "would you like to plan the office move?" -- say NO!)

Paul