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

[Moreno R.]

- 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.

Yes.

If someone shoots at you and you have to take the blow, you get d10s fallout.

Yes, but if you read the example above, the raise was "I shoot that shadow", not "I shoot you"

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".

And if you read the example above, you will see that nobody told something like this in a "see".

It was a raise. A raise that the other player could not "see". A raise that said simply WHO was the shadow that was shot

In any case, please don't be stuck on the examples. If you think an example is wrong, you can come up easily with another example that make more sense to you. I think that EVERYBODY can think of some example in which the possibility to "change the past" with a flashback could change the size of the die of fallout (o change in some manner the previous results). So, please think about the question USING AN EXAMPLE THAT MAKES SENSE TO YOU. Let's not be bogged down about the minutiae of the examples.

Without using examples, the question is this: in DitV, the size of the dices of fallout is given by the situation. But a following raise can change that situation in a time set before that fallout. Wouldn't this change the fallout?

[Mikael]

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.

Hmm. But wasn´t one of the big points in Dogs that character can only die if the player takes that risk? The player always has the option of Giving before taking that Xd10 fallout. "Post-edited" fallout dice would take that decision from the player.

Thus, if you accept the above, some tricks just are not allowed in a conflict, like your "it wasn´t me" example. Which to me is a good thing; it streamlines the game as it prevents the players from spending a lot of time inventing tortuous - and in the long run, boring - justifications based on time tricks.

[Darren Hill]

Without using examples, the question is this: in DitV, the size of the dices of fallout is given by the situation. But a following raise can change that situation in a time set before that fallout. Wouldn't this change the fallout?

The simple answer is: no.
You take fallout when you have to Take The Blow. Here's the tricky bit (and it is genuinely tricky): once you have put those fallout dice aside, there is no longer any link between the stated narration that caused the fallout, and that fallout.
Here's a simple example to illustrate this, with no time tricks.
Let's say, I've made a raise: "I shoot you."
Here are several possible outcomes, all assuming you Take The Blow.
Option 1: "I grunt in pain as the impact of the shot knocks me to the ground, but I keep going."
Option 2: "My rifle is shot out of my hand."
Notice in the second one, you didn't actually get hit. But you still set aside 3 (or more) d10's for later.
Then, when the conflict is over, you roll those fallout dice. Let's say you are down and dying.
Following on from Option 1, you'd naturally assume that bullet wound is the cause.
But with Option 2, you can't do that, and you have to come up with some explanation for that injury - probably something happened during the fight you can use to justify it, but if not, you can narrate something happening after the fight is over which causes it.
The important thing is: there need be no link between the fallout suffered on any specific See, and the actual effects at the end of the conflict.

Now, going back to your time tricks.

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?

Here's how it would work.
You take the blow, and take 6d10 fallout. Once taken, you can't change that. But...
On your next Raise, you could indeed say, that your opponent has shot his friend. The players at the table would have to decide if this was an acceptable raise. probably they'd say not, but if they accepted it, your opponent would then either Block or Take The Blow, to determine whether this actually happens. But that means he suffers fallout (or his friend dies), it doesn't change what happened to you.
You didn't get shot, but you still have 6d10 fallout. When the conflict is over, you'll roll that fallout, and if you suffer an injury or worse, you and your group will have to explain how it happened. Maybe you banged your head in the cave, maybe you got hit by a ricochet and hadn't realised it, maybe you collapse from exhaustion, or whatever.

So, yes, you can use timetricks to add a new interpretation to events in the games fiction, if the group permits it, but you can't use this trick to avoid (or increase) fallout.

[Darren Hill]

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.

The thing here is that the Dogs in the vineyard rules ask us to play the game in a different way than we might be used to. We aren't supposed to be holding back, and hiding things from the players. We should reveal all that important stuff as quickly as we reasonably can - this is sometimes hard for me, too. But it's important. The players should start making those hard choices straight away, not just at the end.

You asked a few questions that haven't yet been answered.
The Drop: Vincent mentioned you could get a d6 belonging bonus on the raise following the one where you got the drop. You asked if this could be a 2d8 or whatever the item is: the answer is yes. The dice gained are those appropriate to the belonging used. Remember also, you gain the bonus (for a specific item) only once in a conflict.

The Healing questions: If someone has 12+ fallout, he has to make his body test. If he succeeds, then he does not deteriorate. He does not need further treatment for that 'wound' ever - it is gone. You can describe how the dog is bandaged, or walks with a limp for a while, but all that is interesting descriptive colour - there are no further game mechanics effects.
When multiple people attempt to heal someone: I'm a little uncertain here, too. My group have done it this way: one healer gets all of his dice and makes most of the groups sees and raises. Each helper gets to contribute one of his traits, and counts as a d6 improvised belonging. To get these bonuses, the healer must let them narrate one of the sees or raises during the healing conflict. (This rule is very similar to the Group rules in the NPC chapter.)

The big area left is that example when the player learns the truth, and tries to convince the players of this.
Now, when he goes to convince the other players, they can object (in which case its a conflict) or immediately believe him. If I understand correctly, it's this last bit you object to. But the players can do this even though they were convinced otherwise earlier in the session. That's what Vincent meant when he said later conflicts trump early ones. So when one player comes up and says, "this is what I've learned, do believe me!", that is a conflict - the players have to decide if their characters accept that or challenge it. If they accept it, it's just a conflict in which they chose to Give before the dice were rolled.
Remember: Players can always Give in a conflict, and they can Give immediately - before any dice are rolled. It's the "Say Yes or Roll the dice" rule in reverse.

[Vaxalon]

Of course, if you let the dice get rolled, and give immediately, you can retain a die for a follow-up; this is a particuarly useful tactic to pursue when someone insists on rolling the dice when you want to just say yes.

[agony]

So when one player comes up and says, "this is what I've learned, do believe me!", that is a conflict - the players have to decide if their characters accept that or challenge it. If they accept it, it's just a conflict in which they chose to Give before the dice were rolled.
Remember: Players can always Give in a conflict, and they can Give immediately - before any dice are rolled. It's the "Say Yes or Roll the dice" rule in reverse.

Is that neccessarily the case though?  If you choose to believe the character, I imagine no dice would need be rolled as there is no conflict (not that they gave after the conflict was initiated but before dice were rolled).  It seems like unneccessary baggage to believe a conflict was initiated and you gave.

[Darren Hill]

Charles, you're right, this may seem like nitpicky semantics. but remember the context of this discussion: one player has learned something, and goes to tell the other players. The other players (or at least their characters) at this point believe something different.
Moreno/Blood was suggesting that this player must launch a conflict and persuade the others to his point of view, before they can act on this new information.
I was pointing this out to show that if the players do launch that conflict, they can give immediately, so requiring a conflict has exactly the same result as not requiring a conflict at all, if the players don't want one. Maybe my method was a bit convoluted :)
The important point: as GM, you can't - and shouldn't - try to use the game system to police your players' behaviour in DITV.

[Moreno R.]

This is about my question #4 in my previous post (all the others are being undestood by now, and answered)

Charles, you're right, this may seem like nitpicky semantics. but remember the context of this discussion: one player has learned something, and goes to tell the other players. The other players (or at least their characters) at this point believe something different.
Moreno/Blood was suggesting that this player must launch a conflict and persuade the others to his point of view, before they can act on this new information.
I was pointing this out to show that if the players do launch that conflict, they can give immediately, so requiring a conflict has exactly the same result as not requiring a conflict at all, if the players don't want one. Maybe my method was a bit convoluted :)
The important point: as GM, you can't - and shouldn't - try to use the game system to police your players' behaviour in DITV.

Sigh, now I feel REALLY frustrated...  I tried to explain the situation and the question I pose at least three times in this thread, and NOBODY in this thread seems to understand it. This synopsis written by Darren, for example, is completly wrong. Maybe I confused the issue when I talked in my third post about the respect I want for the continuity of the story ("if you want to play your character as if he know everything that happened in the game to the other players, please find an explanation, for example, have the other characters tell him") that is ANOTHER issue that I didn't touch in my fist post, and I talked about it only when my example was misunderstood and someone told me that telling them is not an essential step, and...

No. Wait. This is wrong. It's useless to continue to try to correct this mess. If, after explaining the same example three times, nobody still gets it, it can only means that there is something in that example that doesn't work. Maybe it's because there is something in it that I explaing wrongly in English. Maybe I use a word that means something other than what I think should mean. Or, maybe, it's the example that is too complex, with multiple players and multiple communications and people who believe different things and previous conflicts...  no, let's scrap all of this. Let's keep it simple. It was a mistake to continue to try to use a moment of real play, instead of an "ad hoc" example. Let's make a different, clearer example.

---THE NEW EXAMPLE -----

The player's name is YAGO. the Dog that Yago play in my game is called OTHELLO. Othello loves a maiden, DESDEMONA, but is getting increasingly angry thinking that she is having a sexual relationship with an older man.

There are no other player, no other character, no previous conflict, no town, no demons, nothing at all in this example. I want to keep this simple. 1 player (Yago), who play 1 dog (Othello), and an NPC (Desdemona) played by me.

Othello go to Desdemona. And says to her "tell me the truth, woman, or I will kill you"
I "say yes" (but if I had rolled dice and lost would be the same) and Desdemona says the truth: she is still a maiden, she love only Othello, and has never had any other love.

YAGO says: "no, I don't like where this story is going. I always wanted to play Othello like a man haunted by remorse and guilt for a crime he committed, so I was playing my character toward an ending full of rage and blood, and this is becoming a valentine card. So I DECIDE that I (Othello) DON'T BELIEVE HER! Full of rage, I say to her "this is the last time you lie to me, woman" and shoot her with my gun until she doesn't move anymore"

The question I posed in the previous posts is (in this case): can I answer like this:

1) GM: "It's OK, it's your character, you can decide what he believe or not believe"

Or I MUST, BY THE RULES OF THE GAME answer like this?:

2) GM: "NO, now you are FORCED to believe her. YOU CAN'T CHOOSE. Othello MUST believe her, because you (Yago) won the conflict, so YOU (Yago) LOST THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE what your character believe"

------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the game I described in my first post (and in the following two clarifications) one of the players said that I had to stictly enforce (2).  don't think so. I believe that (1) it's the right answer. What do you think?

I hope that this explain more clearly what I was saying in my previous post in this thread (I would like to ask you to re-read them now, please)

[Mikael]

Thank you for the short and clear example.

Yes, sir, I choose option 1. You might suggest to the players that they take a "I do not recognize the truth when I see it" trait at the next opportunity.

[Darren Hill]

I'm sorry for causing you frustration.
In the example above, I'd agree with Mikael, and go with 1.

But it's never as simple as that. I hope I'm not muddy the waters here, but lets assume that confrontation between Othello and Desdemona had gone to a conflict.
Desdemona is played by the GM, and sets as stakes for the conflict, "whether Othello publicly admits that he is wrong, and Desdemona is innocent."
In this case, if Yago playing Othello loses the conflict, he must have his character perform the above actions, regardless of what Othello's player wants for the relationship.
Yago the player can still choose to privately disbelieve Desdemona, and can still have Othello do things to lead towards that direction for the story that he wants, so long as he still carries out the outcome of conflict.

Then another player thinks it would be fun to mess things up a bit (or his character has a genuine misunderstanding), and comes to Othello and tells him he has seen Desdemona with another man. At this point, Yago decides (without a conflict) that Othello believes him, and heads off to bring about that ending full of rage and blood.

Does this sequence look okay to you?

[agony]

Charles, you're right, this may seem like nitpicky semantics. but remember the context of this discussion: one player has learned something, and goes to tell the other players. The other players (or at least their characters) at this point believe something different.
Moreno/Blood was suggesting that this player must launch a conflict and persuade the others to his point of view, before they can act on this new information.
I was pointing this out to show that if the players do launch that conflict, they can give immediately, so requiring a conflict has exactly the same result as not requiring a conflict at all, if the players don't want one. Maybe my method was a bit convoluted :)
The important point: as GM, you can't - and shouldn't - try to use the game system to police your players' behaviour in DITV.

Ah, my apologies in attempting to point out you're wrongdoing when none had been committed. 


As for the new example, that makes much more sense in what you were trying to convey.  I think rules should never stand in the way of a good story and if the player put that idea before the GM and they both talked about it, just let things go where they may and go with option 1 (which has already been stated).  The point for rules is not to constrain narration, but to supplement it.

What I think needs to be done, however, to avoid this problem completely, is for the player to talk to the GM before the conflict would begin.  To me, the point of a conflict is openly recognizing a potential fork in the road for the plot in which either fork should be interesting to the parties involved.  If a conflict is initiated in which one of the parties is completely adamant that one of the options cannot happen then it is a rather poor conflict.  Unfortunately, this is assuming you have a player/GM who is willing to not completely control the narrative but narrativist gaming in general relies heavily on that premise.   

[Moreno R.]

Hello!  I would like to thank again all the people who answered my post. Yesterday we played the last phase of Garden Town (I will post a description of the game in the next days), I discussed with the players some of the things that were said in this thread, and I admit that I was (pleasantly) surprised by some of their answers. I think I will trust them more in the next games (but it's difficult to let go of twenty years of "esperience" in traditional role-playing games: I noticed that when I am tired, at the end of a session, sometimes I forget to let the players narrate their own results. And sometimes they forgot that they should narrate and look to me asking for a description of the results and I sometimes without thinking give it to them before remembering that I shouldn't. It's an automatic reflex after so much time, but I am learning to catch myself in time...)

I am asking for advice on another rule, too, about an event that happened in the last session.  The situation:

1 dog (Emanual) is freeing his sister, who became a sorceress "in good faith" (she believed that she was talking with angels), was caught and repented. He want to banish her from the city, giving her a chance to start a new life. But blood was spilled, an old woman (the aunt of another dog) was killed by the followers of Emanuel's sister (against her will), and another dog (Angela) want to kill her. They first talk, then fight without weapons, but Emanuel lose every conflict and can't stop the other dog until they reach his sister (who get shot in the leg by the other dog, and can't run anymore).  The current conflict is "I want to kill her" against "I want to delay Angela until my sister is safe".

Angela raises with "i shoot her".
Emanual at this time want to see with a lot of dices, narrating that he put himself in front of Angela's Gun when she shoot, getting fallout enough to risk his life (forcing Angela to let his sister go to save his life). But angela's player contest this. She said that, if Emanuel want to stop his shot with his body, he must see with 2 dices (and not get fallout) parrying the blow. If he can't parry, she should get what he wanted from her raise: she should hit his sister.

I decided that Angela's player was right, and Emaluel parryed (using 2 dices) with his body without getting fallout. I ruled that "a wound without fallout" is a wound that has no lasting effect whatsoever, after the time it will need to heal (decided by the player), and anyway the player was free to assign to this wound any fallout he got until this point (mostly d4s) and after.

But I am not really satisfied by this decision. I really liked his play and I wanted to let him get to do it without hurting the "winning" of the raise of the other player, but I could not think a way to do it. What do you think about the situation and the ruling?

(at the end of the conflict, Emanuel's sister was dead and Emanual had a fallout of 10...)

[Glendower]

Angela raises with "i shoot her".
Emanual at this time want to see with a lot of dices, narrating that he put himself in front of Angela's Gun when she shoot, getting fallout enough to risk his life (forcing Angela to let his sister go to save his life). But angela's player contest this. She said that, if Emanuel want to stop his shot with his body, he must see with 2 dices (and not get fallout) parrying the blow. If he can't parry, she should get what he wanted from her raise: she should hit his sister.

I decided that Angela's player was right, and Emaluel parryed (using 2 dices) with his body without getting fallout. I ruled that "a wound without fallout" is a wound that has no lasting effect whatsoever, after the time it will need to heal (decided by the player), and anyway the player was free to assign to this wound any fallout he got until this point (mostly d4s) and after.

But I am not really satisfied by this decision. I really liked his play and I wanted to let him get to do it without hurting the "winning" of the raise of the other player, but I could not think a way to do it. What do you think about the situation and the ruling?

Angela's player was wrong.  Taking the blow is NOT losing the see, it's more like assigning a risk to the Dog to keep in the conflict.  By going along with the player's protest, you had to kludge the rules to somehow "make it work".  I think the more compelling scene would have been one dog shooting another, rather than what ended up happening.  I think the tactic that Emaluel's character was going with would have ramped up the tragedy of the scene, he was totally going for something in that sort of "dying for peace" vein.  Not to mention it was a legal thing to do in the conflict system.

By saying yes to Angela's player you said no to Emaluel.  And that's probably why the scene came off unsatisfactory. 

[Moreno R.]

I forgot one detail: the conflict was between Angela (in one corner) and Emanuel and his sister (in the other corner) both played by Emanuel's player.  It's for this reason that the fallout wasn't automatically directed to Emanual: his sister was partecipanting in the conflict, too (even if her role was based on her most powerful trait: look pure and innocent...).

In a case like this, can one player in conflict force with a raise the fallout on one specific character, or Emanuel's player could assign the fallout dice like he wanted? But in this case, if he got fallout on a raise that said very clearly "I shoot her, not him", how can that fallout be d10s?

I, too, think that the other sequence of events was "better", more powerful and dramatic, but can I, as a GM, impose my idea of "good sequence of events" on a player who won a raise, forcing a different interpretation of his action against his wishes? Isn't this contrary to the spirit of this game?

P.S.: seeing that their "side" was being soundly beaten by Angela (Emanuel had already a broken finger and his better dice was a 5, against at least 4 higher dices on Angela's side, and she had a lot more dices too really, Emanuel's only strategy was to get so beaten up to force Angela to stop the conflict to save his life...), and Emanuel's sister ha previouwsly "renounced her wicked ways",  at this time I put on the table 5d10 (the Demonic influence) and said (to Emanuel) "you know, all your sister has to do to get these, is to ask...". He decided that even at gun's point she would not choose to ask for the help of something that she now did know to be against the lord of life. And so, dying, she proved that Emanuel was right in believing in her.

What a GREAT game!!!

[Glendower]

[quote author=Brother Blood link=topic=19566.msg207387#msg207387 date=1147287739
In a case like this, can one player in conflict force with a raise the fallout on one specific character, or Emanuel's player could assign the fallout dice like he wanted? But in this case, if he got fallout on a raise that said very clearly "I shoot her, not him", how can that fallout be d10s?

I, too, think that the other sequence of events was "better", more powerful and dramatic, but can I, as a GM, impose my idea of "good sequence of events" on a player who won a raise, forcing a different interpretation of his action against his wishes? Isn't this contrary to the spirit of this game?

Taking the blow is NOT losing.  Giving up and dropping out of the conflict is losing.  Taking the Blow is a block that hurts and puts a person at risk.  The fallout you earn from that is your price for using more dice to take the blow.  There is no "imposition" of a "good sequence of events" suggested.  What I'm trying to say was that it was a legal move by Emanuel's player.