Group Helping Strategies

[John Kim]

OK, so as I'm preparing to GM my second Dogs game, I'm pondering group strategies. 

In my first run, the players would tend to approach group conflicts by all rolling, then usually in the first round the others would lend their highest die to someone who had rolled well.  With only one die left for their own See, they would then tend to drop out and let the person they helped win the thing.  So this amounted to the group picking a champion and the others helping him a bit. 

I was turned around by reading MCroft's explanation of how exchanging help can be used to Reverse the Blow.  That seems to me to be both a more effective strategy and more narratively interesting (because it keeps more players involved).  So how do your players tend to approach group conflicts?

[Mayuran]

I can honestly say that my players have never helped each other out that way in a conflict (by lending dice).  Maybe it's because we haven't gotten that violent, where it necessitated helping out.  We also haven't had many conflicts involving more than two dogs together (the max was three).  At the same time, I think each of the Dogs in my games has very different moral codes, and sometimes in the conflicts the players are trying to win the stakes through very different methods.

In your situation it might seem like the group is really just trying to win the conflict as quickly as possible... which leaves out a lot of ripe narrative opportunities.  At the same time, they can only contribute their dice to a friend's "Raise" or "See."  They can't just say "take my dice for your dice pool."

Maybe you can give some examples of how they narrate their characters "helping" - particularly when it's "just talking."  They'd have to contribute in some significant way to the "Raise" or "See."

The "helping" rule is null if anyone objects, according to the rules.

[cdr]

With only one die left for their own See

My understanding was that the helping die always came out of their next Raise, whether they were helping someone See or Raise.

In the pickup game I ran at Gencon, the 3 players helped each other vs. the Raise 14 with d10 fallout (a shotgun) so that they could all block/dodge (with 2 dice plus a helper die each), and then two of them raised 1 with the possessed sheriff reversing both blows with his highest die, a 6, and the third Dog raised with her only big die, a 7, so the sheriff used up the 6 on his block/dodge by adding a die to it.

On a later round, two Dogs helped the third exorcise the demon from the sheriff with Three in Authority and other elements of ceremony, with a total Raise of 21, so the demon had to Take the Blow or give.  It took the blow for 9d8 fallout vs. the sheriff.

In my regular campaign Helping is rare, I'm not sure why.  I've seen it used defensively a time or two.  Only one Dog's died in three towns, when 3d10 fallout came up with two 10's.

--Carl