Scorched Earth in Crystalline

[Levi Kornelsen]

Yikes!

Played this town last night - and my players ate it alive.  I kept Caedmon alive and and Heloise be sacrificed, as the tweaks I used.

On the road in, seeing the crops, they circled the town nice and slow, and noticed a few fields looking healthier than the rest.  They looked around a bit, and I could feel that we were about to stall - somewhat at a loss, I had them meet Brother Caedmon.

Well.  Within the hour, the players had concluded that this was going to be a straight-up cleanse and burn job - they sanctified, absolved, and executed Caedmon, rode straight on out to Artemus' farm, and grabbed the dice.

They found the pagoda, the scarecrow, and set to burn them - and they gave cues that they were spoiling for a fight; and, frankly, so was I.  Now, this was our second town of the night.  The first had been subtle, involved, with lots of talking and not much dicing.

So, again, went with it.  While they prepared to burn the pagoda and scarecrow, the cult attacks, in force, out in the field.  They drive back the cult to town, and finish the burning.  And they limp away to patch up, expecting an ambush by the cult upon arriving in town.

So, fine.  I'll escalate, even here.

Artemus and his cult take as much of the town as they can hostage, drives them at gunpoint into the town hall, and sends a message - the Dogs are to come and surrender, or the cult will sacrifice the whole town.  The players are hot to fight this (though, naturally, they bicker about how to do it).  They ride in, and blast the cult into flinders.

Not what I expected at all - not how most of our town unfold in the slightest.

But still, a lot of fun.

[Levi Kornelsen]

Ack.  Forgot to put up my reason for posting this.

Is this something I should expect to see now and then - and, anyone have experience with this kind of group reaction, wandering way off normal the group process for the group, in a continuing game?  Should I expect any odd long-term repercussions from incidents like this?

[coffeestain]

Levi,

It's hard saying.  It could just be that your group is flexing a bit to see how the system/setting handles it and responds.  They're new players, right?

Did you touch any of their buttons in this game that you're aware of?  Did you play about anything they truly hate?  Did you push the characters into physical corners and really get their blood boiling?

My guess is, the only repercussion you'll see from this is the players settling into what they enjoy the most and you having to use those preferences to challenge them by escalating from town to town.

Regards,
Daniel

[lumpley]

Well, y'know, the book doesn't say "you get to see sides of your friends you've never seen before" for nothin'.

-Vincent

[Levi Kornelsen]

Daniel -
New to Dogs, yes.  I don't think I got them really mad...  but I do think the players were a bit worn, and when their first NPC is an ugly, deluded old pervert that tells them how much worse everyone else is.  Well.  I think, now that you point out that perspective, they got the impression that we were changing up from talking to fighting as an exploration - that I was leading them into it - and, ultimately, that's what we did.  So, all right.

Vincent -
No kidding.  The first half of the night (I'll write the town up presently) actually gave us a whole lot of watching the players really internalizing just how much authority their characters have, and really thinking about what they could - and should - do with it.  Which was a pretty great set of scenes between them.