[DitV] A Fistful of Dice

[Jason Morningstar]

Last night our regular game group was a player short, so I seized the opportunity and ran Dogs for two of my friends.  I had a copy of Tony's town Kettle Lake with me, and a couple of character sheets, but had left the rules at home by mistake.  As they made up characters, I tried my best to remember the general spread of dice for stats, traits, and relationships and just winged it.  It turns out I low-balled the number of dice they should have had to play with, which had some interesting results. 

For starters, I told them to divide 13 dice among their stats - it turns out this is the minimum, and had we been following the rules they could have had as many as 17.  The same with traits and relationships - they were a few dice short of the normal Dog. 

I had a better memory for what NPCs looked like, so their opposition, on average, was pretty much spot on for what they should have been. 

There were two related results of this bootleg play-by-memory situation - first, almost every conflict was a genuine, down-to-the-wire challenge, and second, they outright lost a few or were forced to give, even when working together.  It was a different dynamic and it was a lot of fun - Kettle Lake is a pretty mellow town, but being outgunned made every conflict quite compelling.  I think it is noteworthy that the game weathered my inept guessing and kept on rolling.

[lumpley]

I've been thinking that if I had Dogs to do over I'd give the players fewer dice. Good to know!

Any highlights? Lowlights?

-Vincent

[Jason Morningstar]

Well, since you asked...

The absolute highlight for me was seeing my oldest gamer buddy, who I had completely alienated by being a zealous prick, really enjoy himself playing Dogs.  I really like Dogs and it sort of became the code word for everything my friends hated about my new enthusiasm, so it was fantastic that he was down for a game, and even more fantastic that he had a good time. 

My favorite moment in play came when the Dogs rode out on the range with Sister Judith, a very angry tomboy, to start a conflict with the stakes "Does Judith come around and help us help her family?".  There was some back and forth about how the King of Life is really into, well, life, and wants people to be happy and in love and married and pregnant, and Judith was just not buying what they were selling.  She was, in fact, kicking their collective ass, and then Steve's all "OK, I'm escalating to physical.  There's a cow on the ground giving birth, and me and Judith have to get in there up to our elbows and help out.  I'm rolling up my sleeves."

"Roll up my sleeves" was one of his traits, and he used the moment to drive home his points about how beautiful and important life is, and he won the conflict, and awesomeness ensued.

[Eric Provost]

"Roll up my sleeves" was one of his traits, and he used the moment to drive home his points about how beautiful and important life is, and he won the conflict, and awesomeness ensued.

Freakin' awesome, dude. 

Out of curiosity, do you think they've turned indie-addict from that single play experience?  That is, do you think that future offers to run indie games will result in a response of "Well, yeah it was fun, but..." or "Hells yeah, bring it on!"...?

-Eric

[Jason Morningstar]

I really soured them to it by, as mentioned earlier, being a zealous prick.  So there's some damage to undo, but I don't think it is a huge deal.  As a group we've played a bunch of indie game one-shots with varying degrees of success, and everybody has a different level of enthusiasm (the other guy playing last night is 100% down for literally anything). I was just really pleased to get to show off Dogs.  By hurting my friendship with stupid evangelism I learned that I need to relax and appreciate all kinds of things, not just whatever is making my own head catch on fire at the moment. 

[Steve Segedy]

Yeah, unfortunately, Eric, it's that sense of "indie-addiction" that causes problems for our group, as if it's an all-or-nothing deal.  This isn't the first time Jason's brought indie games to our group, or even the first time we've had fun with them.  Besides DitV, we've played the Mountain Witch, several PTA one-shots, My Life with Master, Burning Wheel, the imminent Shab-al-Hiri Roach, and a host of other indie-influenced games.  I've had fun with pretty much all of them, but I've also had fun with more conventional game systems, like GURPS, D&D, etc.  It's the suggestion that one is inherently "better" than the other, and that we have to spend so much time thinking and talking about the systems rather than playing the games that gets tiresome.

For me, game systems are just tools, used to leverage fun out of an evening in different ways.  I generally feel that any game can be a lot of fun for a short session if everybody is into it (yes, any game, even if the rules suck).   It's experimental, and short-term, and the investment (in time, energy, and gaming materials) is consequently low.  The problems come in when our group wants to shift gears and play a longer run game, like a traditional campaign, because the investment is greater and we don't seem to be able to agree on the best way to have fun anymore.

Anyway, since I totally busted in on this Actual Play thread with my ranting, let me try to veer back on topic and say I did have a great time with DitV last night, and I was glad Jason had it ready to run (even if off the top of his head).  Otherwise our evening would have been dull indeed.  With Jason's explanation, the system was easy enough to grasp, and supported our roleplaying efforts pretty well.  It was suprising when I lost a conflict that I thought I had all sewn up (trying to convince Hurtfew that he actually still loved Mariah, despite his objections), but it worked just fine in the story. 

[Steve Segedy]

Hurtfew?  Maybe it was Makepiece.  Anyway, it was one of the Smith family...

*shuffles off, looking for his notes*

[Jason Morningstar]

Steve, I'm super interested in what you found problematic or not-fun, if you want to discuss it.  I'm such a fanboy I can't really see the rough edges.  Besides your overheated attic. 

And it was Makepeace, dude! 

[Steve Segedy]

That wasn't an attic, dude, it was a bonus room.  Or maybe an "away room", I'm not really sure...

Anyway, I really didn't have any problems with the session, or the DitV system.  The mechanics are well crafted to support the kind of story the game is going for. It was nice to be able to make a character who's strong suit was talking to and inspiring others (or charming them with a smile, as necessary) and have that supported almost invisibly by the mechanics.  Putting that in a slightly different way, its good to have a mechanic that is universally applied in the system and simple enough to grasp that it disappears behind the actual meat of the game, which is the dialogue and scene-setting.  Having just come away from Burning Wheel, that's a nice change of pace... ;)

[Eric Provost]

Rant away Steve.  I can take it.  One day maybe, if we ever get the chance, I'd love to sit down & shoot the breeze with ya about gaming in general.  I totally dug playing the Roach with you and Joel a few months back, and I think we might end up agreeing more about gaming than disagreeing about it.

I totally knew that you guys had played all those other games.  Hell, I remember Jason talking about issues he'd had with BW.  But, my brain being the sieve that it is, reading his post all I could remember was his remourse at banging the indie-bible at you guys.  If they hadn't moved out of state a month or two before I found DitV for myself, I probably would have had the same effect on my own core gamers.

Maybe.

-Eric