[DitV] town of Hard River Crossing

[Call Me Curly]

Here's the town of Hard River Crossing:

http://callmecurly.blogspot.com/2005/12/hard-river-crossing.html

Enjoy! Critique!

[Jason Morningstar]

That looks like a fun town.  I particularly like the ferry set-up and the pride and injustice associated with it.  I'd set the rate at an amount that is both completely out of line for travelers and entirely reasonable based on Jimi's actual expenses and efforts. 

Here are my suggestions:

Re-order your write-up based on the order of town construction in the rules.  Write down all the pride, then all the injustice, etc. This will definitely make it easier to follow.

Make sure there are no plot dependencies and that you don't have any particular outcome in mind.  When I saw "This is probably the order the Dogs will encounter..." I worried about this, because you have zero control over any of this in play.

--Jason

[Jason Morningstar]

Oh, also ... welcome to the Forge!

[Call Me Curly]

Make sure there are no plot dependencies and that you don't have any particular outcome in mind. 

Good advice.  But so far I've had no trouble following the players' lead.  I've had no choice but to follow their lead-- since one player is an unabashed Illusionism/Railroading/Force AD&D1e DM; who feels threatened by 'these wacky new games'.  He actually considers DitV to be nearly "GMless" (to quote his quaint jargon); because of the relative lack of GM preperation, compared to his own elaborate world building. And because of the players' narration power.     

He's determined to jump left every time he thinks I want him to jump right.  So-as to expose me as ill-prepared.  I enjoy the challenge.  And have embraced the only strategy that he can't break: I have no particular outcome in mind.   I was thrilled when his "check for traps" mentality led him to discover the seemingly-impossible-to-find ferry; without crossing the river the hard way first.  Didn't hurt the game a bit.  Also, another player lost a battle with booze in her initiation, so the grape juice/wine stuff is more central than I'd intended.

The other players' only rpg experience is in the DM-guy's game.  So they-too are looking for clues as-to what I want them to do. (Which way they are 'supposed' to judge the town.) And they're finding it frustrating that I'm responding with, "Handle it however you want."  They don't trust that I'm really offering them a free hand.  They're wary that it's a trap-- and that I have some diabolical master plan.  And, frankly, their paranoia makes the game exhausting for them.  They wish I'd just let the other shoe drop already.  Get it over with.  But there is no other shoe. 

Similarly, as women, they are wary of the game's patriarchical setting.  They keep trying to rebel against the church... and they're confused when the church offers no resistance.  They haven't grasped that their characters are the final arbiters.  There's no 'godslap' penalty for whatever reforms they enact, by whatever means they choose.

When I saw "This is probably the order the Dogs will encounter..." I worried about this, because you have zero control over any of this in play.

Actually, I intended that sentence as a YMMV acknowlegement. But I know it reads like the opposite. 

Re-order your write-up based on the order of town construction in the rules.  Write down all the pride, then all the injustice, etc. This will definitely make it easier to follow.

Did you personally find the write-up hard to follow?  Or are you suggesting this as general good-practice?
I composed the town according to the rulebook's procedure. And then fleshed it out as fun details came to mind.
And then re-ordered it, to make it more readable.  But now it feels wordy to me.  And too prescriptive.
Still, I don't know how I'd shoehorn it back into the by-the-numbers format that others have used for their towns.
I'll only bother to try to do-so/ if somebody says they-themselves can't understand the current version.
So speak up!

[Jason Morningstar]

Did you personally find the write-up hard to follow?  Or are you suggesting this as general good-practice?

That's how I do it, and it's a pretty common way to organize it.  There's nothing wrong with your way in terms of readibility, but I suspect it would be confusing for someone who grabbed your town and wanted to run it without much prep.  I also sometimes find interesting interrelationships between disparate sins, injustices, etc when I look at them side by side on the page.  It sounds like you know what you are doing, though. 

I bet Dogs is really fun to play with folks who are trying to poke the corners and look for weak spots.  I'd suggest having a discussion about the role their characters have in the setting, because if they are confused by the Faith's reaction to their behavior, they may be operating under assumptions that are prescriptive and unsatisfying.   Or maybe they are just kicking it old skool.

--Jason

[Call Me Curly]

I bet Dogs is really fun to play with folks who are trying to poke the corners and look for weak spots.

All 3 players built a lot of distrust of the game & how I might run it-- into their (very autobiographical) PCs.

Delightful Bounty is an alcoholic urbanite who shoplifted her Watchdog coat from a fancy boutique Back East. 

Chianti Rain is a suffragette midwife from a family of doctors & progressive teachers.  Her initiation involved protesting sexism in the Faith.  I took a fall & gave her an upper-most Bridal Falls prophet, as a 1d6 Relationship/ whose endorsement protects her from reprimand.

Enoch is an austere multilingual scholar of mystic lore & Mountain People skills-- who is a walking arsenal & wears a plain black coat. His initiation was "I hope I don't get found out".  Which I let him win & didn't even ask what the secret is. He's probably a Masonic spy or a vampire or something.  He has a 1d8 relationship with the uber-demon from his AD&D campaign.

Do those sound like churchy rural teens to you?  Me neither.

But here's the cool part-- after just a few hours of play; the players have come to realize the game would be perfectly-enjoyable without their contrarian worldliness. "I think it would be more fun to play sincere, naive bumpkins, next time," they all agreed. 'I win,' I thought to myself, 'they've stopped fighting the System'.

Except, they're starting to find their current characters to be a drag.  They were created in-opposition to things the players expected to dislike about the game. Rather than as in-support of things the players do like.   We're having trouble scheduling the next session, because they kinda dread continuing.  I wanna offer to let 'em finish the town with different Dogs.

[Warren]

Except, they're starting to find their current characters to be a drag.  They were created in-opposition to things the players expected to dislike about the game. Rather than as in-support of things the players do like.   We're having trouble scheduling the next session, because they kinda dread continuing.  I wanna offer to let 'em finish the town with different Dogs.

Out of interest, what kind of Traits have the players been picking with Fallout and Experience? Are they ones which promote these 'tester' character concepts or ones which soften them somewhat? (i.e. having Chianti Rain pick "A woman's place is in the home, sometimes, 1d4" would be ... interesting, to say the least)

As has been pointed out many times, characters in Dogs are not static and are continually changing, and having the Dogs change as they change the Town would be interesting.

Oh, and on topic, I prefer towns to be written up in the 'book' style. It helps me file serial numbers off and tweak things so that it fits my group better.

[Jason Morningstar]

Those characters sound awesome.  I can totally see things going slapstick, fast.  Not that that's a bad thing... but it is interesting that they are maybe regretting their approach to play - maybe the thing to do is to let them create some new Dogs and start over in a different town, now that they see how things will roll.  "Dread" isn't really a big selling point for productive, happy play, so you might also consider backing off Dogs entirely and returning to it after exposing them to some other games, like The Mountain Witch or something. 

[Call Me Curly]

I can totally see things going slapstick, fast...you might also consider backing off Dogs entirely and returning to it after exposing them to some other games, like The Mountain Witch or something. 

Slapstick is the right word, because they're failing against their own assumptions like Jerry Lewis; and mistaking me, a straightman who is basically on their side, for a villain.  But it hasn't degenerated into humor. Just a learning-curve. 

TMW is the wrong game for them.  I've considered converting their characters to PTA & finishing the town there.  One player doesn't like DitV's poker dice Back & Forth rhythm. Nor does she care about what different types of dice imply. She would prefer a single show of cards per scene.

what kind of Traits have the players been picking with Fallout and Experience?

Not much fallout yet. I've been Giving like crazy in conflicts. ( "Giving" 'em enough rope.)  Reinforcing the idea that the world jumps when they tell it to.

They want to 'investigate' & gather info.  So I hesitate to Force action on them, until at-least grasp the dilemmas involved.  Otherwise, they're likely to treat the action as meaningless randomly-rolled monster encounters.

Speaking of avoiding fallout (and more on-topic)...

As noted above, my players evaded having to drive the settler's wagon thru the raging river.  So I never had to figure-out how to handle that with dice. That's something worth contemplating, before you try to run this town.

Does the river get 5d10 Demonic Influence dice for Murder, if the Dogs know it has killed people?! Does it get 4d10 for Sorcery, if the Dogs know about the Seances conducted on the river banks?
Another wild solution would be to treat Old Man River like an NPC, with blood Relationships to friends & family of  everyone it has killed.    Heck, what's the 'vanilla' way of handling the river?

[coffeestain]

Curly,

If I'm not mistaken, all of those sorts of things are handled with a 4d6 + Demonic Influence roll.

Regards,

Daniel

[Call Me Curly]

Daniel,

You are not.

(mistaken)

--Curly