Dogs actual play

[dunlaing]

So, we're playing Dogs and my character, Br. Samson, is being fawned over by a hot young Mountain Person woman. I initiated a conflict with the Stakes that I would resist her temptations (I have "I can resist any woman's temptations 1d4").

I roll well, with three sixes as well as a bunch of other dice. My GM pushes forward a snake-eyes raise. . . and I say "I give."

That is all.

[Vaxalon]

Uhm, given that "say yes or roll dice" applies to players as much as the GM... why?

[Ben Lehman]

What was the fictional narration on the raise?  Was that why you gave?

Or was it just to demonstrate that you could win, but you chose not to?

yrs--
--Ben

[dunlaing]

I initiated the conflict, so there was nothing for me to "say yes" to until I initiated the conflict. The whole thing was basically me asking the GM to have the hot young Mountain Person woman try to tempt my Dog into sin, and then my Dog failing to resist. It definitely wasn't about trying to demonstrate that I could win, just demonstrating that my Dog wasn't going to do it just to do it, but would fail to resist doing it. If that makes sense. (or really, even if it doesn't)

[Vaxalon]

Hm... initiating a conflict, where you're on the defensive.

Interesting tactic.

Would it have played out any different, if the Mountain woman had been a PC?

[Supplanter]

This was a screamingly funny moment at the table, if not in the recap. (Coincidentally, we were running Ben's town, New Bethesda, or at least my hasty misreading of it. The agent of Brother Samson's temptation was Sister Semma.) The sequence of events was:

Me: [Narrates Sister Semma making eyes at Brother Samson.]

Bill: I want a conflict to resist Sister Semma's temptations

We: [Roll dice.]

Me: Sister Semma says something like, "I think you could be a great influence around the camp." (Unspoken: "*Big Boy*.")

Me: [Pushes forward snake-eyes.]

Bill: I give.

We: [Wipe tears from eyes. Right chairs.]

Nate: There are very few people in the world who would get why this is funny, but man -

Sometimes you toss the players a wicked curve, and sometimes you toss them a fat one over the plate just to see what they do with it. In this case, I gave Bill a gift-wrapped opportunity to reverse the blow. Comedy value aside, the fact that he declined was veddy veddy interesting.

Best,


Jim

[Brian Newman]

If you were going to have your Dog fail, and her goal was for you to fail, that doesn't sound like a conflict.  Just narrate the cigarettes.

[Supplanter]

We had a lot more fun doing it this way. I'm sure it's a bit meta for some tastes, though.

Best,


Jim

[Brand_Robins]

I've actually seen something like this in the Dogs game I ran with my brothers. It wasn't quite so precipitous in their case, but it was similar enough.

The reasoning behind it (in my brothers case) seemed to be that he wasn't comfortable a) simply saying what an NPC did and b) assuming the results of the NPCs action a priori. Asking for the contest is a way to work the GM into doing a for you (preserving the control of NPCs as GM domain) and then folding quickly into the contest is a way to avoid b.

So where saying "She tries to seduce me and does" may be difficult, may not give the sense of flow or struggle that you want, or may step on group-dynamic toes, saying "I'd like for her to try to seduce me, oops I fail" gets a similar result. For some groups this won't matter at all, for others it might.

(Plus, it was funny.)

The one thing my brother did differently was to wait for me to make a big enough raise for him to take fallout, and then give on the next one. That way he got seduced in two moves, and got a new trait from the deal.

[dunlaing]

In our next session, Brother Solomon was presented with a young, beautiful Mountain Person woman (Semma) who desperately wanted to marry him. His fellow Dog, Brother Roderick, put some peer pressure on him, but also went and discussed the issue with a missionary instead of discussing it with Semma.

Eventually, Brother Solomon was put into a position where he could either leave her behind or continue as a Dog and "come back for her later."

I decided to push it to a conflict (I actually had to have a conflict to bolster her self-esteem enough for her to even join the conflict first) and was then in a situation with three possible outcomes:
1) I could lose the conflict and retire Brother Solomon;
2) I could win the conflict without escalating or using any traits that would take advantage of the poor girl; or
3) I could win the conflict and have Brother Solomon turn out to be a cad.

As it turned out, I decided not to go route #3. I ended up being 1 short of succeeding at #2 (I pushed forward a raise which the GM matched with one die left over, showing a 1). When the GM pushed forward his raise of 1, I was at a loss to come up with another trait, belonging, or escalation that wouldn't turn Brother Solomon into a cad. (I had already used all of the d6s and d10s in free relationship dice, so I couldn't increase my relationship with either Semma or the Dogs).

So I retired Brother Solomon. He stayed behind to marry Semma and to work as a missionary among the Mountain People.

It was awesome.

[lumpley]

I think that this is probably more important than the first reported Dog fatality.

The last several Dogs reports I've read, including this one, have really shone for me. Thank you!

-Vincent

[Judd]

The only dog who ever retired in a Dogs game I ran, went before the Council of Elders, burned her coat in protest, spit on the floor and told the other Dogs in her posse that if she ever saw them she'd shoot them.

Nice to see a dog just retire and marry happily.  I always stress during the Accomplishment scene that there is no shame in folding up the coat, putting down the gun and retiring.

[Supplanter]

It was awesome.

Yeah. Bill was amazing on this. Because at one point in the middle of the second conflict he had a perfect opportunity to reverse the blow, but didn't because, well, in the fiction it would have meant meanness or cheapness or some other less than admirable quality. Some more detail, from the GM side . . .

Bill had sent an e-mail saying that it might be neat if Sister Semma showed up pregnant two towns from now. I had Brother Hiram and Semma trying to get Brother Samson (Bill's character) to Make Good, and Brother Roderick (Nate's Dog) put some "peer" pressure on him too (scare quotes because Rod was pretty condescending about it), but as GM I was also prepared to let Bill have Br. Samson skedaddle. As the evening progressed, Bill kept passing up chances to skedaddle. So after services, Brother Samson asks Sister Semma to go for a walk and on the walk asks if she'll "wait" until he's ready to lay down his canine burdens.

Me: Sister Semma says, gently, "Of course I'll wait. Among the Faithful I'm a fallen woman now and among the Mountain People I'm marked for having lain with a white man. No one else will have me."

Bill: That's the kind of thing you have to roll dice for.

Me: Why?

Bill: Because she's trying to guilt me into staying.

Me: No she's not. She's explaining why she'll do as you ask. She doesn't feel secure enough of her position to try to get you to stay.

Bill: Oh. Cause I'd kind of like a conflict where she tries to get me to stay.

Me: Ah. I see. But in your e-mail you were talking about postponing a final reckoning with Sister Semma for a couple of towns yet.

Bill: Yeah, but that was a whole other me.

Me: All right. (Thinks.)

Me: How about first a conflict where Brother Samson tries to instill in her enough gumption to fight to keep him? It would mean he's got this weird conflicted sense of what he's done and should do.

Bill: That works.

Needless to say, I stayed in the first conflict only long enough to roll a big fat 8 to cut my losses with. Then on to the retirement conflict.

Once the actual "Stay with Me" conflict began I showed no mercy. Bill had improved a picnic setting for them. When I needed Semma's body dice I had her undo her blouse and ask Brother Samson to at least lie with her one more time. At this point Bill took out his eight Body dice and set them in front of him, but didn't roll them in. I needed Will dice so I had Semma slap Brother Samson hard across the face.

There sat the eight body dice that would have won the conflict easily for Brother Samson. He could kiss her, slap her back, stand up and walk off or any number of things that would have meant, to Bill, that Brother Samson wasn't such a swell guy.

Somewhere in here Bill had dice on the order of 10-8-7-5-3-2 and the only raise I could make was an 8. Instead of Reversing, because Reversing would have been cruel, Bill saw with the 8.

I was down to three Ones and Bill was out of dice.The sequence is fading a bit, but more or less next, what happened was:

Bill's last "clean" trait was "My Momma taught me a few things." He rolled that and got to push forward like, a 2.

Bill: My Momma had this look, a kind of sad-sack put-upon expression that I hated, whenever you weren't doing what she wanted. I make my face look just like that.

Me: (Seeing the two with snake-eyes.) "Oh don't make that face at me," Semma says.

Me: (Pushing forward my lame last One to Raise.) "My mother always made that face."

And then Bill thought. And looked at his Body dice sitting there, and the unused stuff on his character sheet, and said:

"I think I'm gonna give."

Nate and I sounded him out about it. Nate suggested that Brother Samson could make a present of his jar of consecrated earth or a piece of his coat as a token of his betrothal (getting those dice and winning), which totally would have worked for me. But Bill grew surer by the minute that this was the course for him. We faded on Semma's last line (end of the meatspace night) and everyone knowing what the scene meant. We'll have an appropriate epilogue next week, once we figure out what "appropriate" means.

I'm full of notions in the aftermath. (Any Quakers will recognize that "notions" are problematic, but there you go.) Such as, how important it is that the mechanics of raising and seeing are tightly tied to event at the level of the fiction - IOW, that they're not mere apportionment of authority at the table. And that the supposed slam-dunk insight, "The character doesn't exist" is, on some levels, wildly, wildly wrong. If the characters didn't exist, I couldn't see any reason to do this stuff.

Best,


Jim

[Supplanter]

I had Brother Hiram and Semma trying to get Brother Samson (Bill's character) to Make Good, and Brother Roderick (Nate's Dog) put some "peer" pressure on him . . .

That's bad sentence construction. It reads like Nate did the peer pressure at my behest, which was not the case.

"I had Brother Hiram and Semma trying to get Brother Samson (Bill's character) to Make Good. Brother Roderick (Nate's Dog) put some "peer" pressure on him . . . "

Better.


Jim

[Judd]

Because at one point in the middle of the second conflict he had a perfect opportunity to reverse the blow, but didn't because, well, in the fiction it would have meant meanness or cheapness or some other less than admirable quality.

I don't understand. what that means.

And that the supposed slam-dunk insight, "The character doesn't exist" is, on some levels, wildly, wildly wrong. If the characters didn't exist, I couldn't see any reason to do this stuff.

Huh?

The character not existing has nothing to do with the way the fiction and the fiction's creation makes you feel.  Those feelings are real, hells yes, but Brother X and Sister Y and Town Alpha...nope, not real.