Schrodinger's Fallout (on the Dogs, not on the cat )

[Moreno R.]

Hello!

This is my first post on the Forge. English is not my native language (I live in Italy) so please forgive my grammar errors.

I would like to get a little (OK, a lot...)  of feedback on a couple of decision I made on my last session of play of DitV

A little of background first: this was the fourth Town I played, but it was the first one as the GM. I usually are the "alpha-GM" in my play group, but I am not the only one (we rotate on the role) so the first three town were GM-ed by two other players.  In the first town, with a very simulationist-minded GM,  we played a very "simulationist" (for DitV) kind of play (no flashbacks, no strange use of conflict and consequences, the play was all about winning against increasingly larger mobs and discovering secrets, etc. I have nothing to say against the game, it was fun, but it wasn't really DitV). With the next GM' two towns we began to "esperiment" more with the system. When it got to be my turn, I decided to let REALLY loose with everything I could think the system could do. And this got the situation that caused the discussion with the first GM (now a player) that I am about to describe.

An aside: my calling this player "simulationist" is (for me, at least) true, but it's a friendly poke at him, too, seeing that He (and the other GM, who suggested to pose here the question) are reading this forum, and doesn't agree with the definition...

The situation was this: a desperate man (a drunken fool who has left the faith, has lost everything, has learned that his son has lost his marriage, declared null and void by the dog, and is full of rage about it) is racing the dog to town. He want to go to the church, force his way in, to reclaim his "right to pray the lord of life". He is quite mad from rage, has a lot of hate for the people of the town, and has a gun with him.

The gun is rusty and empty of bullets, but the dogs doesn't know it

The 3 dogs that are on his heels want to stop him before he reach the town.

The man has the help of the demonic influence (the whys and what this man has done before are better left unsaid, for now: the town is still in play and a couple of my players are reading this) and the player know this.

I want, as the GM, to escalate to violence, and, as "devil's player", to cause trouble. 

The dogs reach the man, and begin a conflict. The stakes: they win, the man doesn't go in town. I win, the man reach the church.

The call to him, call his name (3 in authority), and tell him that he can't go to the church. They ARE the church, they are the word of god, and they forbit him to entering the church and the town around it.

I decide that this final rejection, for a man so desperate, drunk and angry, it's enough to seek his death. So he wave the gun at the dogs (this is the time of the 1st contestation, later recalled: the player said that having won the "we have the authority" raise, he shouldn't have fought against them anymore. He recalled the contestation, after the gunfight, when he discovered that the man couldn't harm them, but I still think that accepting someone's authority as "right" is not a guarantee that he will not shoot that authority...  What do you think?).

Now I have a problem. The man has a gun out, but it's still talking. Because he CAN'T fire that gun. The Dogs are not afraid of words. They are not afraid of the gun.

To make them fear that gun, I make the following raise:

1) "the man is pointing the gun at you. He is choosing the better target, and he take aim to that target. Every one of you will have to see this raise, or risk being a really easy target when he will shoot"

Player: "Hell, no, it's impossibile, he can't aim for all of three at the same time"

GM (me): "let me finish. it's obvious that he will aim for only one of you. He will choose the first one of you that will take the blow!"

This was the 2nd contestation: The player thought that the man should have to choose only ONE dog, and aim to him, and only him should have to see the raise.

And this is the moment in which our little "social contract" broke down for the night: he said "the rules says that even if one player doesn't agree with your decision, you have to recall it". And I answered "the rules are for a better play, not to stop play. You are only trying to shoot down any decision that cause any problem to your character, so for you this rule is not valid. Find another player that want to stop this action and change the raise, and I will. But from now on, that rule for you doesn't apply"

[Don't worry, we didn't get really angry about this, and we are still friends. Re-reading this piece I think I am rending everything a little over-dramatic. But I learned English from Marvel books so this it's to be expected. It's only that often he is not able di differentiate between his characters and himself (and he is the fist to admit this) and act AS A PLAYER only in the interest of his character (and not in the interest of the game, of the fun of the other player) and this annoys me]

The other players were at the time really impatient to resolve the situation without other interruptions, so they told "OK, go on, it's all right"

But the player still (after the game) contested that the people who have to "see" a raise have to be declared at the beginning, not as a condition like "every one of you until somone has to take a blow". I answered that already the game system has a condition "Every one of you until someone see the raise" (think for example about a bunch of Dogs that are trying to avoid something happening. The first one to do it, had done it for everybody), so this is the same thing reversed.

What do you think?

The 3dr contestation was about une thing I said at the end of that raise...

2)"...  if, at my next raise, I will get to shoot the person who can't see this raise, I will add the Fallout FROM THIS RAISE, in d10s,  to the fallout of the gunshot."

The players didn't understand what I meant, so I explained the thing so:

"If, for example, You have got fallout from this raise, ok?, Well, my raise was to aim better for you. If you can't see the raise, I got the drop on you.  If in my next raise I will shoot you, the fallout from this raise will be the first part of the fallout for a shoot that you take. "Aim" and "shoot" are the 2 parts of the action "I am shooting you". I divided them to add drama to the action, and to let the action of taking aim be a really MENACING thing, with consequences.  It's really normal that you should get a bigger fallout in d10s if I take the time to aim carefully for your head, and in this game I can't take a "+30% for aiming", right? So, i accumulate d10s fallout to give you when I shoot you".

Players (not the one who made the contestations, but the one who had seen that he couldn't see that raise): "but you have still not shoot me, how can these be d10?

Me: "this is the beauty of the thing: if I will not shoot you, or if I can't shoot you, or if I miss you, this become only fallout from waving a gun menacingly onto your face. So, they become D4s."

This was when the contestating player REALLY became outraged.  "this is fallout. This is damage. How it's possible that I don't know how much damage i got, until the result of another raise? It doesn't have sense!!"

I answered (as always). "You should really leave behind all that simulationist garbage. This is a narrative game. In a story, it's perfectly possible for a character to get damage, and define that damage only when the reader turn the next 50 pages and discover what happened"

At this time, the other players (now really fed up with both of us and our argumenrs) forced the game to go on, negotiating a kind of "truce" thar said something like "OK, continue the game, we want to PLAY this evening, not argue, and instead of arguing during the game, you two, take the issue with the author of the game".

That is what I am doing, now!

In the heat of the game I didn't think the best answer to him: that Fallout is ALWAYS rolled at the end, and so it's ALWAYS changeable. Fluid. In an indeterminate state. You have a mount of dice to roll, but you don't kmow, until the end, if you have on the table a "your character is dead" o "your character is a little pissed off". The fallout is ALWAYS a "Schrodinger's Cat" until is rolled.

And what about flashbacks? I could force your character to drink from a glass with a raise, and in the NEXT raise remember a flashback in which I put poison in the glass!

So... what do you think?

P.S.: what happened in game? Well, I got the drop on a Dog (a girl), the contesting player made a raise of "I want to shoot that damn gun out of his hand", I grinning went to "see" with all the 1s and 2s that I had carefully let on the table for this, and the drunk got 9d10s fallout from that shot.  (the player REALLY has not yet understood that he doesn't have to shoot everything. The same exact dice from him would have forced the drunk to let go of the gun if he would have thrown him a book, a pebble, o said something to him to make him ashamed. But I really was counting on his being so trigger-happy, and I love a good plan that work well...)

The empty gun flew in the face of the drunk making him fall from the horse. The Dogs were able to save him (yust my luck with dices, only 15 with 9d10s...) but doesn't matter, they now have take a side, and will have to face the consequences...  (evil laugher fading in background)

P. P. S.: the contesting player gave this different idea about what would have to happen with my raise, to give "I am aiming" a meaning. He said that the fallout from aiming it's ALWAYS d4s, but if you can't see the raise, I can shoot you with my next raise and I always get the target, even if you see my raise.
This for me SCREAM "broken simulationism". First: he would give the "simulation" ("it's impossible for him to miss") the power to broke the narrative rules ("I raise shooting you. You see the raise, but you take the bullet anyway because the GM says so for the good of the simulation"), getting result of the kind of "OK, I shoot you in the head, but there's no fallout because you saw the raise".
For me, this is really absurd, but he wanted his version to be heard in this forum, too...   

[Moreno R.]

Ehi, I forgot the FOURTH contestation!  (the first one of the evening, to be exact...)

Before the drunk's run, the Dogs questioned his son.  You see, two of the dogs (two girls - in my game group there are fours women and two man, including me. The girls say that it's still too much testosterone in the game, and I can't fault them, seeing that the other male is the contesting player...) has lost two different conflicts (one-on-one) with two little girls (of 14-15 years of age) (one-on-one) that had as prize "this dog will believe that I am really a sincere little girl who doesn't even know the meaning of the dirty words that the drunken' son said about me and my sister".

The players made what they always do in DitV when they begin to lose conflicts: for the rest of the evening the characters stayed always together, always in group, not talking to anyone alone. (this annoys me, too, but about this I can't do anything so I try to use their firepower together as an advantage. Using them to kill poor drunken fathers, for example). But the girls, even if they too stick their character together like bricks in a wall, at least try to play theys character like they don't know everything their player know.

The (male) contesting player is another kind of player...

He got into a conflict (all the dogs against the drunken father's son) to FORCE the truth from him.

I said "OK, you don't need the dices. I fold. He tell you all the truth, that you (the players) already know" (they already had a conflict with him when they first met, a couple of game nights ago). "it's the same story he always said. He always said the truth"

And I added, when I saw that He had begin to talk (in character) as this proved that the little girls were the ones that lied: "but it's you, the PLAYER, that know that he said the truth. You, THE PLAYER, see the dices, know how this game work, and know that this time you won and got the truth, and your two friends lost instead and got a lot of lies. But for the CHARACTERS these are really only three people that tell a different story. Your two friends HAVE TO believe in the girl's tale, because they lost the two conflicts, but you can CHOOSE if your character BELIEVE what the boy said. It's a CHOICE that YOU, as his player, can make: you can decide that "my character believe the boy" or you can decide that "I don't believe the boy, I begin to rough him up to get him to tell me the real truth!". But your character CAN'T BE SURE about this because "he won the conflict". That is a game structure, non game world "reality". The "reality" of the game world it's made up of the thing your characters says and do, and the rules can force YOU to make your characters see and do (or don't see and don't do) something, but the rules apply to you, your character don't see them, he see the game world created by them."

"Your character can be sure about this being the truth if you decide that he is sure, for your own reason. But when your friends will ask you "why you are so sure he is telling the truth", you will have to give an answer, and that answer CAN'T BE "didn't you see? I won the game of dices with the master"!

This was the first contestation (he contested that the victory in the conflict had proven to all the dogs that the boy said the truth and the girls lied), so we were more calm, we talked (all the players) and at the end all the other players agreed with me. Al the others but not him, but we decided to use my decision in play anyway.

Ten minutes after this he started with the second contestation, and after that with the third, and I started to became to be a little pissed off about all the interrumptions...

What do you think about this contestation?

[Darren Hill]

I decide that this final rejection, for a man so desperate, drunk and angry, it's enough to seek his death. So he wave the gun at the dogs (this is the time of the 1st contestation, later recalled: the player said that having won the "we have the authority" raise, he shouldn't have fought against them anymore. He recalled the contestation, after the gunfight, when he discovered that the man couldn't harm them, but I still think that accepting someone's authority as "right" is not a guarantee that he will not shoot that authority...  What do you think?).

Hello and wlecome.
I think you're right.
It's been pointed out on this forum that you cannot make a raise that in itself would achieve the conflict stakes.
So, if the conflict is "do we stop him reaching the church," you can't raise with "I stop him reaching the church."
It sounds to me that the player who thought "he shouldn't have fought against them anymore" did not understand this. (I also struggled with this.)

Now I have a problem. The man has a gun out, but it's still talking. Because he CAN'T fire that gun. The Dogs are not afraid of words. They are not afraid of the gun.

To make them fear that gun, I make the following raise:

1) "the man is pointing the gun at you. He is choosing the better target, and he take aim to that target. Every one of you will have to see this raise, or risk being a really easy target when he will shoot"

Player: "Hell, no, it's impossibile, he can't aim for all of three at the same time"

GM (me): "let me finish. it's obvious that he will aim for only one of you. He will choose the first one of you that will take the blow!"

This was the 2nd contestation: The player thought that the man should have to choose only ONE dog, and aim to him, and only him should have to see the raise.

Ordinarily, you can target a group with a single raise. If that gun was loaded, for example, you could raise with, "he fires at all three of you, blam blam blam!"
In this case of the unloaded gun, he can't actually escalate to gunfire. The Dogs don't know this, but the players should know this. So a suitable raise would be something like, "he waves the gun at all three of you, pulling the trigger, and before you realise he's not firing, you leap off your horses in a panic." Or something like that. The fallout here would be Physical, I think.
You should be stating what you want to happen as part of your raise - if you have someone intimidating someone with a pistol, tell the target how he should react. Then, when he sees, he can say how he actually reacts.

But the player still (after the game) contested that the people who have to "see" a raise have to be declared at the beginning, not as a condition like "every one of you until somone has to take a blow". I answered that already the game system has a condition "Every one of you until someone see the raise" (think for example about a bunch of Dogs that are trying to avoid something happening. The first one to do it, had done it for everybody), so this is the same thing reversed.

Actually, the rule is as follows.
If you make a raise that can be stopped by a single person, then everyone must See that raise in order of Best Dice, and the first one to block it, stops it.
If you make a raise that affects a group and cannot be stopped by a single person, everyone in that group must See that Raise.

So, for instance, if you have a madman brandishing a gun at a group and causing them to panic, they must all See.
If you have someone who makes a raise, "I shoot Mrs Bystander," then - in order of Best Dice (or by sonme other sequence you've determined), they must each See it. If they Take The Blow, the next person must See. The first one to Block or Reverse it stops it, and anyone left does not have to See.

The 3dr contestation was about une thing I said at the end of that raise...

2)"...  if, at my next raise, I will get to shoot the person who can't see this raise, I will add the Fallout FROM THIS RAISE, in d10s,  to the fallout of the gunshot."

The players didn't understand what I meant, so I explained the thing so:

"If, for example, You have got fallout from this raise, ok?, Well, my raise was to aim better for you. If you can't see the raise, I got the drop on you.  If in my next raise I will shoot you, the fallout from this raise will be the first part of the fallout for a shoot that you take. "Aim" and "shoot" are the 2 parts of the action "I am shooting you". I divided them to add drama to the action, and to let the action of taking aim be a really MENACING thing, with consequences.  It's really normal that you should get a bigger fallout in d10s if I take the time to aim carefully for your head, and in this game I can't take a "+30% for aiming", right? So, i accumulate d10s fallout to give you when I shoot you".

Players (not the one who made the contestations, but the one who had seen that he couldn't see that raise): "but you have still not shoot me, how can these be d10?

This sounds highly questionable to me. I think the players are right.
If you raise, "He aims, and has the drop on you," and the player takes the blow, it would have to be rolled and inflicted there and then. (whether it's non-physical or gunfighting fallout can be left for another day!).

Me: "this is the beauty of the thing: if I will not shoot you, or if I can't shoot you, or if I miss you, this become only fallout from waving a gun menacingly onto your face. So, they become D4s."

You can't make fallout from one roll conditional on an a later roll.

This was when the contestating player REALLY became outraged.  "this is fallout. This is damage. How it's possible that I don't know how much damage i got, until the result of another raise? It doesn't have sense!!"

Of course, this is wrong also. You never know the effect of fallout until the conflict is over. If you Take The Blow when you get shot, you can say you're injured, but you don't have to. Once the contest is over, you might then discover you've dropped dead - and have to describe how that happened. Maybe an earlier wound was more serious, maybe a meteorite drops on your head later - it can be completely unconnected to any specific event from the conflict.

So you are correct when you say

I answered (as always). "You should really leave behind all that simulationist garbage. This is a narrative game. In a story, it's perfectly possible for a character to get damage, and define that damage only when the reader turn the next 50 pages and discover what happened"
<snip>
In the heat of the game I didn't think the best answer to him: that Fallout is ALWAYS rolled at the end, and so it's ALWAYS changeable. Fluid. In an indeterminate state. You have a mount of dice to roll, but you don't kmow, until the end, if you have on the table a "your character is dead" o "your character is a little pissed off". The fallout is ALWAYS a "Schrodinger's Cat" until is rolled.

And what about flashbacks? I could force your character to drink from a glass with a raise, and in the NEXT raise remember a flashback in which I put poison in the glass!

Yes, this is true.

P. P. S.: the contesting player gave this different idea about what would have to happen with my raise, to give "I am aiming" a meaning. He said that the fallout from aiming it's ALWAYS d4s, but if you can't see the raise, I can shoot you with my next raise and I always get the target, even if you see my raise.

There is in fact an example in the Advanced Conflict section of the rules which works like this. The conflict is "who gets to draw first." The loser of the conflict gets shot and is down and dying, regardless of any fallout, and raises and sees are in the way they stare each other down, describe the sun shining in one of their eyes, and so on.
So, it is quite possible to have, "This raise is 'I get the drop on him'" and have that fallout be gunfighting d10's even though it's an aim-  the idea being, if he Takes The Blow, the shot is fired (just not immediately - but it doesn't require another Raise, it's already decided), and if he blocks, you don't get the drop on him and so don't get to shoot.

[Darren Hill]

The players made what they always do in DitV when they begin to lose conflicts: for the rest of the evening the characters stayed always together, always in group, not talking to anyone alone. (this annoys me, too, but about this I can't do anything so I try to use their firepower together as an advantage. Using them to kill poor drunken fathers, for example).

I'm picking up some small hints of tension in your group...

<snip>And I added, when I saw that He had begin to talk (in character) as this proved that the little girls were the ones that lied: "but it's you, the PLAYER, that know that he said the truth. You, THE PLAYER, see the dices, know how this game work, and know that this time you won and got the truth, and your two friends lost instead and got a lot of lies. But for the CHARACTERS these are really only three people that tell a different story. Your two friends HAVE TO believe in the girl's tale,

Note: the proper way to handle this, I feel, in DITV is as follows.
Yes, this player learns the truth, he believes it, he knows it.
He then goes to the other players and tells them what he has learned, and they respond in one of the following ways:
a) They believe him.
b) They don't believe him.

Now, the earlier conflicts you mentioned suggest they should respond as in (b) - they don't believe him. But, at this point, the player who knows the truth can call for a conflict to convince them, and the instant he makes his first raise, they can say, "We Give." (Player v Player conflict is legal and to be encouraged in this game, by the way.)
That is perfectly legal, and NOT wrong. If you saw them do this, and felt frustrated that they were manipulating the rules to their own advantage, you'd be the one in the wrong.
So, by choosing (a) to believe him, they are simply skipping the conflict step. That's fine.
You're talking a bit dismissively about the 'simulationist' player, but I have to say, you're showing some habits of your own that can get you into trouble in this game.

[Mikael]

You have some very imaginative approaches to the conflict rulings, but I will not go into those, since what I am seeing seems to me more of a problem in the way you, as a GM, are playing. Of course, I am just going from what you have told us.

Now I have a problem. The man has a gun out, but it's still talking. Because he CAN'T fire that gun. The Dogs are not afraid of words. They are not afraid of the gun.

To make them fear that gun, I make the following raise:

Shouldn´t the situation here be one where the characters get to judge the morality of shooting this crazy drunken father or not? So why´s the gun without bullets? Just so that you can say: "Ha ha, suckers, you just shot a man and his gun didn´t even have any bullets! Your judgment was bad."

If you want to play Dogs to the hilt, remember that Dogs is about making hard judgments with the players having full knowledge of all the pertinent facts, not fooling the players into doing something they would not have otherwise. Suckering them to do something stupid will just make the feel - well - stupid, which is very unlike the feeling you get when you have just made a difficult call and discovered something new about yourself.

[Moreno R.]

Hello!

I was searching more for feedback on my rules judgement rather than on my GMing style, but every feedback is useful and I thank all of you for your answers (but, Mikael, I am really interested in what you think about my approaches to the conflict rulings, too).

I will try to clarify my thinking (and my approach to gaming) point for point:

1) about my "tricking" the Dogs:

Shouldn´t the situation here be one where the characters get to judge the morality of shooting this crazy drunken father or not? So why´s the gun without bullets? Just so that you can say: "Ha ha, suckers, you just shot a man and his gun didn´t even have any bullets! Your judgment was bad."

If you want to play Dogs to the hilt, remember that Dogs is about making hard judgments with the players having full knowledge of all the pertinent facts, not fooling the players into doing something they would not have otherwise. Suckering them to do something stupid will just make the feel - well - stupid, which is very unlike the feeling you get when you have just made a difficult call and discovered something new about yourself.

Yes, in that scene I tried to (and got to) "trick" the Dogs into doing a grave mistake. But I don't think that that wasn't justified. Really, I think that that was my job. As a gamemaster, it's my job to make things harder (and, at the end, more satisfiying when they "win") and, as the "player" of the demonic influence, it's my job to try to led them to making error, to do stupid things, to sin. NOT to laught at the and call them "stupid" (OK, I sometimes let go an evil laught, but is scenographic. And I don't call them stupid if I am not playing an Evil Overlord/Sorcerer that has taken them prisoner and doesn't know that is about to have his ass kicked into orbit... and this anyway in games that thrive in that sort of things, where in DitV I like to have "evil" having the face of human weakness instead), but to let them redeem themselves afterwards.

It is, I believe, only a kind of escalation. When the machinations of demons have cause the death of an innocent by your hands... well, that's for me is an hell of an escalation!  ("you understand that this means WAR!")

(and, anyway, they saved the life of the man they shoot, so in this occasion they foiled the plans of the demons)

You could say that, to get this result, I didn't use the weakness of the characters, but I used instead my knownledge of the weakness of the players (well, of ONE player...). And this is true. The Dogs could have stopped the man any way they liked. They could have talked to him, they could have used any kind of object (or ceremony) to disarm him. They had used a ceremony to stop his run mere seconds before.  But, before a gun aimed at them, the player first impulse was to shoot. 

But this weakness of the player that I exploited is a weakness of the Dog He play, too. Because he has already played him in that manner before. Between the players and the characters there are ALWAYS only the differences that the players want to. The difference that they WORK at showing in the game. For all the rest, all the little things that show in the game, the characters are the players that play them.  A trigger-happy player play always (1) trigger-happy character or (2) characters that he actively want to show as NOT trigger-happy, and work at it.
And if he wanted to show, in this case, that his character wasn't trigger-happy, my "trick" would not have worked. It worked because the weakness I exploited was of the dog as well of the player.

You say that this was not a moral judgement from the dog? Because he didn't know that the gun was empty? I don't think so. The fact is that he could have stopped him anyway he liked, even if the gun was loaded. But he was angry, and he shoot. I "triked" him in provoking his anger pointing the gun (and, I suspect, refusing to listen to his many protests. But this was not part of the plan, and was a part of the game that I really didn't enjoy in any way), and I "triked" him in choosing to use only 1s and 2s to "see" the raise, causing his shoot (at the weapon) to have much more consequences that he wanted. But the use of the dice in this manner is part and parcel of the game (and is easily explained by demonic influence) and an angry dog is not a dog that has lost the capacity to make moral judgments.

If I had chosen to explain the situation in ALL the details, ending the first conflict ("ok, you stopped him...") and beginning another conflict ("...but he is raising a gun to your head. The gun is empty, but your dogs can't know this. He want to force you to kill him, to end his misery. If he wins this follow-up conflict, you will shoot and kill him", winning this follow-up conflict and forcing the player to kill him, would you have had the same objections?

2) About the fact that "I didn't tell everythig to the players before the conflict"

Yes, I know that the example before is, for some, the "orthodox" way of play that situation in DitV.  Why didn't I use it? For two reason, most,  the first I that I didn't have enough faith in the players. If I thought that the players would have enjoyed this situation as a way to "put on the line" the moral judgment of their characters, maybe I could have used it. If I thought that the trigger-happy player, for example, would have made a play of the kind of "I am not interested in the well-being of a man who is pointing a gun to me. I will shoot him, not to kill, but I will shoot him", if I thought that he would have played THE SAME WAY with another presentation, I wouldn't have thought necessary to "limit" the difference between what he know and what his character know. in this manner.

But this a player that has HIMSELF said to me that he has difficulties to play a character that doesn't know something that he (as a player) know. It's a player that PREFERE to have his knowledge of the action limited to what his character know. To avoid "spoiling" his fun. (and, to be honest, to see him play his character using knowledge out-of-character would have spoiled MY fun, too. So I thought, for the good of BOTH our fun, to avoid telling him too many details...)

Notice that this player criticized almost EVERY decision I made that evening, but NOT my decision to don't tell him before that the gun was empty. He was all right with this. It's the kind of play he like.  (I am a little of both worlds: I like the kind of play that happen when the players know something more that help them to choose the most "fun for the play" path for their character, but I hate the kind of play that happen when they use that knowledge to make always the right choiches and avoid making their characters do any errors. So when in doubt I prefere to avoid risking telling too much)

The second reason, is that I really don't believe that "telling everything about the situation as soon as possibile" is the orthodox way of playing DitV. The manual say "Actively reveal the town in play". "in play". not "in words of explaination before playing a scene". For me, this mean "use the NPCs and the events to show to the characters what they neeed to know to get to the heart of the matter", not "tell the players everything"
So, in this case, I didn't ask for a difficult conflict before telling the players that the gun was empty, after the end of the shooting.  It was an information that I wanted them to have, so I told them "you see, near the man, his broken gun. It's empty of bullets, and the fire chamber is so dirty and rustry that it would not shoot even with a bullets inside". I told the WHEN THEIR CHARACTER COULD SEE IT. I "revealed this in play", not BEFORE PLAY.

I am full aware that in my DitV games I am keeping more "secrets" from the players that I should, by the letter of the rules.  As I said, it's a question of faith in the players. For some playes, I don't have any problem explaining the situation including what his characters can't know (in BOTH the conflict with the little girls, I told the players that the girls were really lying, before the conflict. Because I did know - or hoped - that their reacton would be, when they lost "OK, now we believe these girls. Let's rough up that little liar of the drunk's son until he tell us why he lied". And it was so. But what was the reaction of the other player?

He was at the church. His character couldn't have know anything about what was happening at the little girls' school. His characters has already said that he had other plans for the day. But when his friends lost the first conflict, he started out of the church, almost running to them (I make him meet his long-lost sister, a sister that lived in the city but couldn't recognize him because he died - it's a rather odd story, that of this dog - a sister that he had not try to meet in two evening of play, because it didn't serve the purpose of "winning" the game at the moment...   and even after I almost PUSHED his sister against him, he STILL didn't care and didn't stop, because all he was thinking was to get to his friend that were losing conflicts!!)

[to the defence of the player, I have to say that usually he doesn't arrive a these excess, and after the game he admitted that it wasn't the best play that he ever did. Probably it was just the wrong evening to play. But even if he doesn't always play like this, he always has difficulty to separate what he know and what his character know, and knowing this he doesn't WANT to know anything that his character don't.)

When he met the other dogs, they formed a "posse" of FIVE dogs (I know, too many dogs, but can't be avoided, we always play in six, GM included. I usually try to break them at least in two groups that act separately, but it's difficult when the players don't want to) that went to the drunk's son, and forced him to "say the truth". And when they got the truth, the player acted like all was resolved, and they now did know that the little girls lied because they won this conflict. (more on this later)

In this situation, what can I do? I could play a different "kind" of DitV, without "all that narrativism", without flashbacks, without telling the players nothing that their character would know (and this is the way we played in the first town, with the other player as the GM). Or I could play DitV to the hilt, using an "swim or drown" approach to the player that have still difficulties with this approach. Or I could stay in the middle, like I do, playing in one manner with some players and in another manner with the other players, showing them two kinds of play and letting them choose which kind they prefere (with their actions)

It's a judgement call, and I am not really sure that my choice it's the right choice. I see that even the best players, when there is a "group push" to "be together to win", begin to play in that manner. It's like the "group of dogs" is always worse in play that any dog (even the one from the worse player). It really bring out the worst kind of play (it's one of the reason for my dislike of these group of dogs that move like one, think like one, and would be really funny if seen really from the eye of a bystander: five people that move like one, not a half yard one from the other, even when they go to the bathroom...). So I am not sure if my approach is bettering the game play (showing sometimes a little scene with a different kind of play) or it's worsening it, showing them that when they try that different kind of play they can "lose" but when they march like one they can ovverrun every opposition and "solve the game" without any risk.

(I can't say anymore because a couple of my players are reading this, but Garden Town was CREATED to show them that this isn't true. There are some situation that their "posse" can only get worse, because their force can be used against them. There are situation that a dog can solve only LOSING conflicts, because winning mean doing the devil's work for him. I hope they "get" the message, and not end up thinking that I "triked them" into doing errors. Nobody is tricking them into doing error if not themselves. I am only recreating the same situations that made them make the same errors before, in other games, to get them thinking about the kind of play they want)

[I am breaking this message in two because the forum software is telling me that it's too long...]

[Moreno R.]

[this it's the second part of my reply. Was only one message, but I had to break it in two]

3) About the truth and the way to get it in game:

<snip>And I added, when I saw that He had begin to talk (in character) as this proved that the little girls were the ones that lied: "but it's you, the PLAYER, that know that he said the truth. You, THE PLAYER, see the dices, know how this game work, and know that this time you won and got the truth, and your two friends lost instead and got a lot of lies. But for the CHARACTERS these are really only three people that tell a different story. Your two friends HAVE TO believe in the girl's tale,

Note: the proper way to handle this, I feel, in DITV is as follows.
Yes, this player learns the truth, he believes it, he knows it.
He then goes to the other players and tells them what he has learned, and they respond in one of the following ways:
a) They believe him.
b) They don't believe him.

Now, the earlier conflicts you mentioned suggest they should respond as in (b) - they don't believe him. But, at this point, the player who knows the truth can call for a conflict to convince them, and the instant he makes his first raise, they can say, "We Give." (Player v Player conflict is legal and to be encouraged in this game, by the way.)
That is perfectly legal, and NOT wrong. If you saw them do this, and felt frustrated that they were manipulating the rules to their own advantage, you'd be the one in the wrong.
So, by choosing (a) to believe him, they are simply skipping the conflict step. That's fine.

No, it's NOT fine. I they want to go to that route, they HAVE to do that step. Because it's the step that "translate" their out-of-character knowledge into "in-character" belief. It's not a trivial step.  It's the equivalent of wanting to have a character know what happened in another place to another character, without the other character saying "I tell him". It's a difference that can make or break the premise for the player (I hope that "premise" it's the right word. I read all the Forge articles, but not many older thread, and I am not sure my understanding of Forge Theory is "right")

But let's see what you said, point for point:

Note: the proper way to handle this, I feel, in DITV is as follows.
Yes, this player learns the truth, he believes it, he knows it.

You state, matter-of-fact, that the player believes this to be the truth, KNOWS this to be the truth.

Why?

Now, I am not asking you the rationale behind your interpretation. These are games construct. There could be any number of different interpretation of the rule, any one of them would be "right" for a number of reason (and a number of people), and would give us a different kind of play. We can't examine a "real" Dog in the Vineyard to study "how he can know what he know", so you can say that the dog has a sense that let him "know" when he "win a conflict forcing someone to say the truth", I can say that he has not such a sense and he can't know if someone has said the truth because he lost or said a lie because he win (but If this was not the case, I ask... would not the dog "know" when he lost a conflict that forced him to believe a lie, knowing so that that was really a lie? Because he would "know" that he didn't get the "feeling" of winning a conflict... and if a foe could, winning a conflict, force a dog to "feel" like he won... how could a dog TRUST this instinct after a conflict? Following your interpretation I feel that we would get a world where it would be impossible to force a dog to believe anything winning a conflict...)

No, what I mean is "why do you think it would be a good thin for the game to have such a rule"?

If "what the dog believe" after winning a conflict it's a CHOICE of the dog's player, we can have (1) a dog who has heard the truth, but doesn't believe it, (2) a dog that continue to push an innocent man because he believes that he is lying, (3) a dog who, after hearing the truth, continue to believe some other thing, od DEDUCE some other thing.

We can (willingly) play dogs that believe in lies. And this is a GREAT opportunity of play!

An opportunity of play that would be stolen from us by your interpretation, that a dog "learns the truth, he believes it, he knows it". Without giving us anything in return.

I don't believe that reducing the opportunities of play makes a better game...

[all this matter, in this specific case, because ALL FIVE of the dogs entered the conflicts with the boy, forcing him to say the truth. The contesting player's dog has already decidend that the boy told the truth, even before winning the conflict, because his player did know the truth (my error, maybe. maybe I should have made him left the room when the other two players lost their conflicts with the girls). The other two players's dog WANTED TO CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THE GIRLS, because they wanted to "play" their losing the conflicts (don't you hate when someone make what you did in play meaningless?), and were (I think) a little relieved when I confirmed that they were not "forced" to disbelieve what the girls ha said, and was their choice if their dogs would believe the boy's story - they decided at the end to believe BOTH, and try to solve this with a meeting between them, the boy and the girls, all together]

The rest of your post makes the assumption that the other dogs weren't in the conflict, so it's not relevant in this specific case, but I will try to answer it in reference to a case in which they weren't:

He then goes to the other players and tells them what he has learned, and they respond in one of the following ways:
a) They believe him.
b) They don't believe him.

Now, the earlier conflicts you mentioned suggest they should respond as in (b) - they don't believe him.

Yes, I think this would be enforced. Winning a contest give you choice to believe or not, losing a contest make you LOSE that choice. You believe them, and so you don't believe what the other player tell you, period.

But, at this point, the player who knows the truth can call for a conflict to convince them, and the instant he makes his first raise, they can say, "We Give." (Player v Player conflict is legal and to be encouraged in this game, by the way.)
That is perfectly legal,

Yes, I agree. It's perfectly legal. And it's not much fun, IMHO.

and NOT wrong. If you saw them do this, and felt frustrated that they were manipulating the rules to their own advantage, you'd be the one in the wrong.

No, I would not be frustrated because they "manipolate the rules to their advantage". I manipolate the rules all the time, that by itself it's no sin. Making it to the advantage of the Dog's Victory, and not the Player's Fun, for me is "wrong" not in the sense that "it's forbidden" but in the sense that "you don't know how your gaming would be more fun if you stopped doing this. You could play fallen dogs, dogs who lost their faith and regain it at the end of the struggle, dogs who die to protect the weak and dogs who die for their faith. You could play true heroes. And instead you play all the time a dog who always win without even sweating. Boooring!!! And Lame."

I would be disappointed, not frustrated. (and I am sorry to say that I was disappointed many, many times in this way in the past, but it's getting better all the time. And I really should not talk badly of my present game group, it's the game group that has dissappointed me less in my twenty-year history of play. Pure gold against my old D&D group in 1986...)

So, by choosing (a) to believe him, they are simply skipping the conflict step. That's fine.

No, as I said, I don't believe this.

If the players follow your example of play, and EXPLAIN IN THE GAME (SHOW IN THE GAME) how they "are forced" to believe the boy, I could be disappointed (as I explained before) because they choose the easy road, but at the same time I could be impressed by the way they "solved" that conundrum without "breaking" the experience of play, the "illusion of reality", the "continuity of the story" (there are not the same thing, but they all break at the same time if you are not careful)

If they "skip that step", they are really saying to me "we really don't give a damn about the illusion of reality that you are trying to preserve, we don't have any kind of interest into the story, and the only experience of play we treasure it's the experience of beating you at dice"

And the only answer I have to that is "OK, let's skip all this game and play dice"...

(the rest in the next days, that my fingers are beginning to hurt and I am sleepy...)

[Darren Hill]

Brother Blood, you asked:

Note: the proper way to handle this, I feel, in DITV is as follows.
Yes, this player learns the truth, he believes it, he knows it.

You state, matter-of-fact, that the player believes this to be the truth, KNOWS this to be the truth.

Why?

Because you told me so. If I misunderstood something about your earliest posts, correct me, but I believe you said something like:
One player went to interrogate someome, won the conflict, and learned the truth.
There - that's the incident I was talking about.
Then that player went to tell the other players, and you told them they could not act on that knowledge because they didn't believe it (as a result of two earlier conflicts).

I was pointing out that in the context of DITV, by doing this you overstepped your authority. The GM does not have the authority to tell players what their characters believe. This is in fact vital for good DITV play.

=====================
A bit about conflict stakes:
It's bad practice in DITV to have as the stakes "what a character believes" - whether it's an NPC or PC.
It's good practice in DITV to set as the states "what a character does next" or "how a character acts".

So, it's perfectly okay to have stakes like "does this NPC tell the Dog everything she knows?"
But be wary of stakes like, "does the Dog believe what the NPC tells him?" Instead you should have, "Does the Dog act [in this specified manner] on what the NPC tells him?"
You can swap "NPC" and "Dog" around in those statements.
This approach avoids many of the wishy-washy stakes which are all to easy for novice DITV GMs and players to come up with, and also leaves the motivation behind a character's actions up to the player of that character.

Then, its always a player's choice over whether he Gives or not in a conflict. This is a PLAYER action, not a CHARACTER action. A player might Give when his character doesn't want to. In fact, that's usually the case.
The player is free to use whatever knowledge he chooses, in-character or out-of-character, when deciding whether to Give.
The GM does not have the right, in DITV, to stand in judgement over this decision and tell the player that he is playing "wrong," nor impose sanctions to 'encourage' proper behaviour.

Now, when one player has learned something and wants to convince his fellow Dogs, it should now be clear that he can approach them and use the conflict system to try to convince them. Now, the conflict system should only be used when there's a concrete outcome - say, the player who knows the truth wants to convince them that so-and-so is a villain and they need to go and expose that villain.
So, that said, the player comes to his fellow dogs and ties to persude them to join him in this endeavour.
They can choose to Give the instant he declares this intention.
This is a good thing.
===============

Being a good DITV GM requires the two following features (among other things - but these are the ones relevant to this discussion):
A willingness to trust your players to play their character with integrity (or at least act as if you do).
An ability to create situations where different people can have a different idea about what should be done.

You openly admit your distrust of your players, and you describe GMing antics that - it looks to me - encourage them to act in ways that disappoint you.
The most important of those two is the second - get that right and the first will follow.

For example, that guy with the gun but no bullets. As Mikael brilliantly and insightfully points out, that's a clear case where the GM has set up a situation in which he gets to pass judgement on his players, and show them how wrong they were - you were setting them up for failure. Upon realising the NPC had no bullets, every right-minded player would realise they had made a mistake.
You need to create situations where - even when the players know everything you do - they might still disagree (and have good reasons to disagree) on what should be done. That will also solve the problem of multiple dogs banding together against the GM - they'll be fighting each other, and loving it.
Have a look at the sample towns in the rulebook, and many of the towns posted on this forum.

Also, you are concerned about the players banding together-  this tells me that you are worried that they are finding conflicts too easy. If you get that second point correct it doesn't matter if they win every conflict they get into. To illustrate this, read that example at the start of the conflict rules chapter, about the dog's brother who is heading into town to kill the whore who took his son's innocence. Realise that if the dog tried to stop the brother, that could lead to violence, and the player would then have to choose - does my dog escalate to shooting, "am I willing to kill my brother to stop him?"

With situations like that, you don't need to worry about whether players are winning or losing conflicts - it's the statement being made by their decision to Give or Escalate that DITV play is all about. Create situations like that, and let the players respond however they choose  - even when you disagree with their actions - and many of your problems will disappear.

[Mikael]

(Cross-posted with Darren´s reply, so please forgive any overlap.)

Brother Blood - what was your real name again?

This is your thread, you had some specific questions and I am not answering them, so I should shut up.

Just a few lines to explain why I am not addressing your questions:

In our game, I take the initial or "actively revealing the Town" phase to be just a more entertaining way of me reading the "What´s wrong" sheet to the players. Another function of this phase is to play the NPCs up so that they and their problems feel human to the players. After this phase, when the facts as I know them have been laid out, judgment begins.

Against this background, your and your players´ concerns about truth, lying and player vs. character knowledge seem bizarre or perhaps even irrelevant. Same applies to "posse play" - it might be boring if the players win conflicts too easily, but in the end it does not make a difference.

Overall, it looks to me that the solution to all your problems could be actually doing what the game tells you to do: "escalate, escalate, escalate".

Trigger-happy player?f Where does he draw the line? How young does the target need to be before he hesitates?

Player ignoring the character´s sister? "Don´t go, brother! I am pregnant! To the Steward! Tell me it was not sin since he´s the Steward!"

Players moving as a posse? Introduce moral questions that they will not agree on. (Of course, in a pinch, mobs are an easy way to provide wothwhile adversity.)

Well, I will not bother you further if all this seems like I am missing the points you have already made. Good luck with the game - I hope you can find a balance where you can all concentrate on the play instead of conflict rulings.

[lumpley]

Hey.

I haven't had any time with this thread, and I want some.

Everybody take it easy for a couple of days, let me catch up, okay?

-Vincent

[lumpley]

Okay, Brother Blood! I'll answer your 4 questions.

1) You were right. The way to keep the guy from going to church is to win the conflict, not to win one raise.

2) You were right. You can declare that everyone has to see until one person takes the blow.

3) Nobody was right. If you raise "he points his gun at you" and I take the blow, I take d4 fallout, whether his gun is loaded or empty or what. That's how the fallout rules work.

Now, here's a tricky move you can do. You can declare that "the drop" as in, "he has the drop on you," is an improvised belonging. Then if you raise "he shoots the hell out of you," you can say "and I'm going to roll this extra d6 because he has the drop on you, per the improvised belonging rules." Just be sure that everyone sees which rule you're applying and why, so that they can take advantage of it themselves in the future.

4) You were wrong. When the outcome of one conflict contradicts the outcome of an earlier conflict, the later conflict wins. "You believed the girl, but now it's obvious that the boy's telling the truth and the girl was lying."

-Vincent

[Moreno R.]

Brother Blood - what was your real name again?

My real Name is Moreno, "Brother Blood" is a old DC Comics Villain that had a sort of "congregation" behind him, and it was the first name in my mind when I logged here. In retrospect, I should have chosen more carefully my nickname, but I did not remember at the time that in the Forge you can't change your nickname at will...

This is your thread, you had some specific questions and I am not answering them, so I should shut up.

Just a few lines to explain why I am not addressing your questions:

In our game, I take the initial or "actively revealing the Town" phase to be just a more entertaining way of me reading the "What´s wrong" sheet to the players. Another function of this phase is to play the NPCs up so that they and their problems feel human to the players. After this phase, when the facts as I know them have been laid out, judgment begins.

It's a matter of preference: I prefere to keep some secret until the later parts of play. I don't think there is a "right" way of play, anyway. What's important is that at the end, when they have to "make the hard choices", the characters have all the information they need. I simply like to make them struggle more to get to that point.

About the rest of your post (and the Darren Hill posts) I have some difficulty answering them with "actual play" example without revealing too much on a Town still in play, and I saw with my previous answer that answering talking in general cause too many misunderstandings (caused, I suspect, by my use of a foreign language). So I ask you to please wait until the next week (when I should finish playing Garden Town), when I will post the details of the town and I will be able to talk more freely about the whys of the choices I made in play.

[Moreno R.]

First, I would like to thank Vincent for answering my questions. But I would like to talk some more (with him and anybody other who would like to add his point of view) about two of these answers.

3) Nobody was right. If you raise "he points his gun at you" and I take the blow, I take d4 fallout, whether his gun is loaded or empty or what. That's how the fallout rules work.

Now, here's a tricky move you can do. You can declare that "the drop" as in, "he has the drop on you," is an improvised belonging. Then if you raise "he shoots the hell out of you," you can say "and I'm going to roll this extra d6 because he has the drop on you, per the improvised belonging rules." Just be sure that everyone sees which rule you're applying and why, so that they can take advantage of it themselves in the future.

Interesting...  could be that he has got a "really excellent big drop" and get 2d8? Or the dice is fixed? And if the dice(s) can vary, they are decided by the person who make the raise, of by the consensus of the players? (I would prefere the latter, but it could slow the play cosiderably...)

I really like this rule, because it "solve" for me a little problem I had with the conflict rules. the thing about somebody who help you after the conflict began, and count only as a "belonging". I did not "seems" right. But thinking about it now, it could be because that person CANNOT join the conflict, but can instead give "his support" o "his help" as if it was a belonging. And that's (for me, at least) make sense.

How "universally" you think it should be used? I mean, I could "get the moral high ground" with a raise in an argument, and get more dices for it? or get "the respect" of a Mountain People Warrior talking with him, and use it then I escalate to gunfighting? Or anything I could think to "get" with a raise? Or you see some limit with this rule that should be enforced?

Anyway, about my ruling in the game (the changing of the type of dices for the fallout), I see that nobody liked it (not the players in the game, not the people who answered me here) so I don't think I will use it again (but really, I am the only one to think that it was a cool rule? What a pity...). But I would like to know what you thing about it in general.

Do you see some situation that would cause the changing of the type of dices of a fallout already given? Because the game system encourage the use of "triks" with time, flashbacks, background, etc, that for me call for some ruling about this.

Some examples:
- I raise, and I make you "drink from the glass I put poison before". You get 5d8 fallout. Next, you make this raise: "I noticed you putting poison in that glass before, and I emptyed, washed and refilled it with clean water before you returned in the room.". It's a legal raise? The fallout of drinking a glass of clear water it's still 5d8?

- You raise "I see you in the hole in the cliff" , I see with two dices and reply "no, you only see a shadow, can't recognize me", you raise with "I shoot that shadow anyway", I get 6d10 fallout, I raise with "I kidnapped the boy that you sent to search for me before, and that shadow was him, immobilized with some rope and put at the mouth of the hole in the cliff to trick you. I am really behind you, making for the month of the valley". Should I get 6d10 fallout when you shoot your friend?

4) You were wrong. When the outcome of one conflict contradicts the outcome of an earlier conflict, the later conflict wins. "You believed the girl, but now it's obvious that the boy's telling the truth and the girl was lying."

I think you misunderstood the situation, and the question. The question was not about the "durability" of an old conflict results, but about what happen when you win a conflict that has as stakes like "I force this npc to tell me the truth" or "I convince this npc to confide in me and tell me the truth"

You force (or convince) the npc to tell you the truth, and I (the GM) tell you the truth.

Now, your PC is FORCED by the game system to BELIEVE that this is the truth, or the player can CHOOSE what the PC think?

Can the Dog think "no, this can't be the truth, this sinner is continuing to lie to me" if his player WANT TO?

Or the Dogs KNOW "this is the truth", and there is no question about it?

In "real play", this question was asked when a player used a conflict with an npc to CONVINCE all the other PCs that the boy was telling the truth. In my opinion, this is not authomatic. If the Player wanted to force the other PCs to believe him, he should have begin a conflict AGAINST THEM. The players should not be FORCED to do anything by a conflict they WIN.

5) I have another question. (Maybe I should begin another thread about it, but it was a question asked in the same session of play, so for now I am keeping it here).

In the rules, you talk always about "the healer" who treat someone who has 16+ fallout. But what happen when more than one PC want to help someone wounded?

I searched in this forum, but I found only some discussion about one PC helping one NPC healer (and using that healer as a belonging). I am talking about a different case here: the conflict that decide if someone dies or not following potentially lethal fallout (16+) can be joined by all the remaining PC?

When this happened, in my game, I ruled that only one can physically "cure" a wound, but all the others PC could "help" with cerimonies (asking the King of Life to save the life of the man, anointing, reading the Book of Life, etc.). But I am not satisfied with this ruling. It pull the "supernatural" dial to fast-forward (the dogs can really raise anybody who is not already dead at fallout 20+), diminuish the "fear of the guns", and makes the cure too "easy" (if curing people was more difficult, the players would be forced to think more, to use objects, searching for something to cauterize the wound, to calm the fever, to get all the dices they would need. But if all the dogs can join the conflict, all they have to do is pray and everything is nice and sweet in five minutes...)

Next time, I would probably rule that the other PC can only "give theur help" as a belonging. But I not satisfied with this answer, too. This cause the curing with ceremonies, when they are warranted, not much useful.

So, I have not an answer that seem "right" to me to this question. How would you play that situation?

6) Another question about curing: what happen when someone cures as soon as possible someome that has got only 12+ fallout? The wounded is allright or he has to throw his body dices anyway to see if he get to 16+ and need  someone to cure him to avoid dying?

[Darren Hill]

My real Name is Moreno, "Brother Blood" is a old DC Comics Villain that had a sort of "congregation" behind him, and it was the first name in my mind when I logged here. In retrospect, I should have chosen more carefully my nickname, but I did not remember at the time that in the Forge you can't change your nickname at will...

I've sent you a Private Message explaining how to change your displayed name.
(I'll give Vincent a chance to respond before leaping headlong into answering your latest post :))
Darren

[Pyromancer]

- You raise "I see you in the hole in the cliff" , I see with two dices and reply "no, you only see a shadow, can't recognize me", you raise with "I shoot that shadow anyway", I get 6d10 fallout, I raise with "I kidnapped the boy that you sent to search for me before, and that shadow was him, immobilized with some rope and put at the mouth of the hole in the cliff to trick you. I am really behind you, making for the month of the valley". Should I get 6d10 fallout when you shoot your friend?

I think the rules state that you have to take fallout if you can't see a raise according to the type of raise. If someone shoots at you and you have to take the blow, you get d10s fallout. And you must narrate accordingly. In my group, anyone who tried to take a blow with "haha, you missed me and killed your friend instead" would get multiple vetoes. In your example above you don't narrate how you take the blow at all. I think that is the important step to make this whole thing "feel right".