[Dogs In The Vineyard] Silver City - a FLGS demo

[JamesDJIII]

This is my third time running "Dogs in the Vineyard."

After running a couple of games for my buddies, it was time to run it as a demo.

I drew up the town of Silver City, which is a big mining town somewhere south and east of most of the Faithful branches. It's really a Territorial outpost with about half the town folk are non-Faithful. The top officials are all Faithful, but silver mining and the upcoming telegraph installation is bringing in more and more outsiders. That's a rough outline, really. I don't want to dwell on town creation too much.

Things I found interesting:

1. I'm not comfortable with how I handle accomplishments during character creation. I have a mental stumlbing block when I read the part of the rules where it says the player takes the part of the character, for instance, before the accomplishment, and me the other. Always messes me up. (Can a player just give right away? Nothing says they can't. What does that say about them and their accomplishment?)

2. We had 2 people who had never played before, Ben and Jenn. Ben played in a Burning Wheel demo I ran 6 months before. Jenn is the wife of a coworker and long time roleplayer who was really intrigued by the concepts in Dogs. We also had Bowen, who played Dogs before in an ongoing campaign. He was great to have there, because he knew just about every rule or nuance I forgot.

3. Jenn was a Mormon. Learned this as we started to play. And it turns out this was particularly helpful. For instance, she was very tuned into the relationships between the women in the the family at the heart of the Branch's problems. Jenn's character, Dara, kept angling in on the women, in ways I knew that the guys probably wouldn't go for, even if they played women characters. For example, if a women left the room, Dara followed her out to "help".

4. Ben and Bowen played Dogs that were mostly built for fighting and sneaking. I felt bad because in writing up the town, I never thought about violent developments, like "yeah, this guy would kill over X and Y". So Iw as worried that there would be more talky bits than not, and that they would be bored. Now, Bowen did decide to escalate one conflict to gunplay, but his opponent gave as soon as that happened. I'm wondering - do most people try and keep an eye for the potential for violence when thinking about town creation? Or is it perfectly ok to not worry about it and let the players decide on where the violence comes in? Anyone have to shift gears in the middle of the game with respect to how much physical violence is being used?

5. I was proud that I was able to fight the feeling that Vincent described as "Oh no! They are going to figure out everything!" I worked hard to immediately and constantly give away every dirty secret and desire I could. The guy who shut down his mine because of his pride - he openly defended and pushed his beleifs on everyone. That guy's first wife - she was hiding the shunned silver money from him. His second wife was cheating on him, and she couldn't help but lie unconvincingly to the Dogs. The guy's younger bother never stopped asking the Dogs to reopen the mine. And so on.

[David Artman]

Interesting, if brief, AP post. I only saw one thing with which I could help or about which I could comment:

I'm wondering - do most people try and keep an eye for the potential for violence when thinking about town creation? Or is it perfectly ok to not worry about it and let the players decide on where the violence comes in?

It is my understanding that one significant part of town creation *is* the injection of Hate & Murder, in the flow of events if not the current state of affairs at the time the Dogs arrive. Yes, one could eliminate that Baddest of the Bad entirely in a town design; but I feel that one would lose the sense of building tension and ever-higher-ratcheting consequences of the Dogs not solving the root problem(s). If the worst that ever happens is a bit of Injustice and a beating or two, then there might not be much sense of accomplishment, at the conclusion, as there would be if lives were "saved" (not to mention souls!).

As a follow-up, if I may: how might one challenge the "sneaky" character build, given that the "violent" character build is sort of automatically engaged, eventually, by Hate & Murder? Isn't a Sneaker trying to engage mystery, even as it is generally understood that you want to Dogs to latch onto the issue ASAP, to begin the escallation of tension and consequences? Wouldn't the Sneaker in fact be *hurting his own enjoyment of the game*, in essence, by "forcing" you, the GM, to hold back revelations until he has "won" the right to them via his sneakiness? And wouldn't that be putting every other player on the back burner, while the elements are obfuscated so that the Sneaker may sneak around and discover them?

Don't let me thread-jack... but I think the Sneaker character would be far harder to engage than a Violent character who's just waiting--hands resting lightly on his shootin' irons--for the Murder and Demons to crop up!
David

[ffilz]

A few thoughts:

On the character with lots of violent traits: push the player hard in conflicts, make him eager to use those violent traits to get the dice, but set up the potential targets of the violence so something is learned (is this PC willing to gun down a little girl? is this PC willing to gun someone down over the role of women in the society?).

On the character with the sneaky traits: One question - how did the discussion go during chargen? Did you point out that while each town has a "problem" that needs resolution, this game is not like many detective type games that the PCs have to tease out information. But you can also let these traits come in through play. Go ahead and initiate conflicts where the PC WILL have to sneak (with the same conundrums, is he willing to sneak up on a little girl? have the townsfolk react to this dog who keeps sneaking around at night).

If during chargen you're not sure how a trait would come into play, talk to the player. Perhaps the player has an idea, or perhaps the player has a disconnect with the way the game plays.

Frank

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey James, was this at Lost Goblin?  Just curious.  I'd like to run some local demos. 

I think it's important with new players to explain how there is no "mystery", and to maybe demonstrate this by having someone lie to them.  "She says she doesn't care - but she's totally lying" is the sort of thing that gets light bulbs of understanding going off in people's heads. 

Personally I love it when players approach Dogs in an essentially defensive posture, building a violent and unbeatable thug.  That's good stuff, because they are asking you to put that character in situations where that violence will matter, for good or ill.  Give them what they want - any town going all the way to hate and murder will provide.

And initiations, particularly more esoteric conflicts, can be hard, because you don't really know the character (and maybe not the player) yet.  The real trick for me is to find out what they really want to accomplish and push that hard.  You don't have a lot of mojo as GM, so make sure that both outcomes are satisfying and life-changing for the character. 

[JamesDJIII]

David, Frank, and Jason,

Thanks for your responses.

David, my understanding was that you could stop in the progression of the town's creation as soon as you wanted, that is, you didn't need to go to Hate & Murder.

As for the "sneaky" Dog - I didn't feel as if this was a problem. I just saw it as the player thinking that being able to sneak around was going to be interesting to him during play. I was just worried that the state of the town at start might not have been engaging after they created their Dogs.

I should reiterate that the town was made well in advance, and the Dog creation was on the spot.

As I saw it, there was lots of saying "Yes" when it came to their Traits outside of conflicts - do you make it up the stairs without hassle? Yeah, no problem. Do you tail so and so without them noticing... yeah, sure! It wasn't until the players deciced to push for conflict that I even worried about how the Traits were being brought into play.

Perhaps this is really more of a problem with a demo situation - I don't know the players very well, and it's hard to guage what they'd most dig at first glance.

In any case, to the rest of the questions...

Jason, yup this was at the Goblin, which is a nice place to play with friendly ownership. My only - ONLY - gripe is that they shut down at 9pm. Which means if you are working a 9-5 job, and you want to run a demo on a weeknight, you better not waste time. Three hours flies rather fast.

Also, Jason, I tried hard to let them know that the game wasn't really about a clue-hunt. I tried to make each NPC extremely transparent about what and why they were doing their ...er... doings. In the games I've run, everytime I've try to hide stuff, it never works out right, but where I lay it all out, it never fails. It's really, really weird.

I would like to thank you, however, for making that clear. At MACE, you essentially laid out the town's relationship map on the table. And you know, in some games, the person running the game might slap his hands to his face and go "OH MY GOD! I RUINED THE SURPRISE!" But in Dogs, you know, it just made us all that more interested in why that box connected to that box, and the opportunities in play multiplied in good ways. We didn't spend 1 minute in "Gosh, I dunno, what should we do/go talk to now?" land.

So, I wanted to be sure to do the same and come right out with this town, the screw ups, and what was going down.

Lastly, for the accomplishment conflicts, I think I mean, I really have trouble coming up with arenas and time scales. I hope I get better with practice!

[Web_Weaver]

Hi James,

I think question 1 goes right to the heart of how things can be different in Dogs. A similar question came up Here (question 2) and I detailed my experience of this there also.

But the question "Can a player just give right away?" is, I feel, a more general one. As I see it, the decision to run a conflict in Dogs is partly informed by wanting to know what will happen. The mechanics serve to structure the narration of the conflict, and they usually result in unforeseen actions, with a resulting narrative that is often surprising or unexpected.

A healing contest is similar to this, you could just give as the victim, but you wouldn't get to find out exactly how the healing went, or what complications arose.

It is important to fully get behind the idea that the player does not know what happened during the initial conflict during char gen, and the conflict itself is the way of finding out.

With this in mind, the initial conflict during character generation is framed as "I wonder if.." or "Did I..", sure one could give straight away, but surely if the question is important, then finding how or why should be equally important? All that is required is for the player to indulge in a bit of role play, to imagine the character with the negative trait.  If the player's first instinct is to give when asked to play against achieving this goal, then maybe this initial question is not suited to that player, maybe it was better suited as a positive trait. After-all, if the player gets into this and plays it to the hilt, you as the GM may give, leaving the player with the flawed character. If this is unacceptable to the player, then again, maybe the question is not suited to them.

[Adam Cerling]

Another thing that can help avoid players giving right away is to frame the details of the conflict so giving is unthinkable.

Player: "For my accomplishment... I want to learn to control my temper."

GM: "Okay, so you play as angry-you, and we'll see if you learn. Here's the sitch: your sister Mary and her new husband Paul are visiting Bridal Falls City, staying at his cousin's. You're dropping by for a visit when you overhear them through the door.

GM continues: "Paul is shouting, 'And why aren't these socks darned? Useless bitch! I told you this mornin'!' And Mary's like, 'I'm sorry, I'll fix them, I didn't mean--" and then you hear this heavy SMACK, and a thump like someone thrown against the wall, and Mary's crying and Paul's saying 'Don't you talk back to me, woman!'

GM: "What do you do?"

I dare a player to give without conflict in that situation.

[JamesDJIII]

Adam,

Maybe this is where my confusion can be examined. I love that example, but I'm not sure I understand how this affects wanting to give right away or not. I see that example as asking "Do I lose my temper (right here, in this moment)?" not "Do I get involved?" which is what I *think* you're example is trying to decide.

The player could say "I give!" and whatever else happens, either he bursts into the room, gun in hand and delivers his own ass-whoopin', or runs, head full of steam, to Mary's family, ranting about how bad Paul is to her. He gives and the question about "temper", to me, answered. I could also see the player winning the conflict, and getting involved, but this time, while he whoops up on Paul or goes for help, he's level headed and doesn't lose his temper.

I want to say "Ok, you are angry you.." and my raises are Paul's smacking Mary, the abusive language, etc. Oh! But wait - I'm supposed to be CALM Dog behavior, not the angry Dog behavior. This is my confusion. Does that make sense?

Now, just looking at the first line in your response - "giving is unthinkable" - I kinda see how doing that makes the conflict SOOO much more interesting. I'm just wrasslin' with the details of framing the conflict so that it works with the rules as written, and so on.

Again, many thanks for the input everyone.

[JamesDJIII]

Ok, I just reread the section on Dog creation and accomplishmemt conflicts. I think I see where my confusion originated.

The rules say "you take the part of your character as she is [bad tempered] and I take the part of whatever forces or pressures are on your character to change [a situation in which your temper might be useful or needed, perhaps?]."

They don't say squat about me [as GM] being the character as the way they want to be. Ok!
That makes more sense.

I think I'd still do the example Adam outlined with my raises being Paul smacking Mary, the sound of her sobbing, Paul's abusive tongue. If the player REALLY wants to control his temper, he'll keep seeing and raising with how he's controlling his temper, calming his anger, maybe quoting from the Book of Life to himself. If he gives, the player is saying "Screw this! I blow up."

I would not be concerned with wether or not he barges in - I'd be fine with that as post-conflict color, etc. If the player wants to interfere or not, that's not a conflict I care to dice over. Whatever they want is fine. It's about wether they loose their temper. That makes sense to me.

Whew! This is good... again, thanks!

[David Artman]

David, my understanding was that you could stop in the progression of the town's creation as soon as you wanted, that is, you didn't need to go to Hate & Murder.

Well, I suppose it's not imperative that you set it all out at creation. But my understanding is that it will eventually escalate to that, unless the Dogs somehow defuse the situation at an earlier stage. Thus, the violent character could be engaged by simply letting the situation "go there" sooner than you might have planned, the better to start pinging his or her Traits.

But, yeah, I guess you could have an All and Only Sin/Injustice game. I don't think it would be very exciting, because the moral decisions that must be made are far more clear-cut, at that stage, for the Dogs. It seems.

And, yeah, creating the town well in advance of the characters does mean you won't be able to easily "tune" it to heavily engage the Flags they are giving you, by their choice of Traits.

As for the "sneaky" Dog - I didn't feel as if this was a problem. I just saw it as the player thinking that being able to sneak around was going to be interesting to him during play. I was just worried that the state of the town at start might not have been engaging after they created their Dogs.

This and the other examples above make it more clear to me. Sneaker doesn't need a mystery so much as he needs a reason to sneak that will lead to tough moral decisions (another ex: his sneaking leads to an invasion of the privacy of a nice girl in her bath... and her father catches him. Yow! That one's going at least to Physical, right off the bat!).

...MACE...

I played in that game, right? "Knows the Book of Life Backwards and Forwards: 2d10" ring any bells?
David

[Jason Morningstar]

Yeah, you and James were both in my game at MACE.  I'm looking forward to playing with both of you more at some point.

David, the progression can stop wherever it needs to.  I think the point is that without intervention, it will always deteriorate as the demons push toward hate and murder.  Some of my favorite towns have not gone farther than sin.  Not much farther, anyway. 

[Adam Cerling]

James,

I kind of rattled off that example without thinking too hard about it, but I pictured the outcomes like so:

If you, the bad-tempered dog, win the conflict, then congratulations: your fiery temper clearly helps you solve your problems, so naturally you don't learn to curb it.

If you, the bad-tempered dog, lose (give) the conflict, then you see that your temper didn't help you fix anything: so you learn from it.

Mostly I wanted to set up the idea of a personal-change accomplishment conflict where giving is unthinkable.

(PS. It is not universally good advice to create such high stakes. In towns, often you want to wrangle for small, givable stakes, which work better for provoking the question of how far will you go to win.)

[Ice Cream Emperor]

I think I'd still do the example Adam outlined with my raises being Paul smacking Mary, the sound of her sobbing, Paul's abusive tongue. If the player REALLY wants to control his temper, he'll keep seeing and raising with how he's controlling his temper, calming his anger, maybe quoting from the Book of Life to himself. If he gives, the player is saying "Screw this! I blow up."

I think one way of looking at it is that the two sides of the mechanical conflict, and the stakes of the conflict, don't have to be 'I get lose my temper/I don't lose my temper.' This could be a conflict about how he deals with Mary & Paul's situation, and through the raises and sees you find out if he does so without losing his temper. It's still important as GM that you are pushing really hard on one of those two sides, but the conflict itself doesn't have to be about exactly the temper.

This is easier to see in a classic initiation request:' I hope I can solve a problem without resorting to violence'. The best way to approach that initiation isn't necessarily to have a conflict with generic stakes of 'does the Dog resort to violence' -- you're probably better off coming up with a really specific situation where the most obvious solution is violence. So while the conflict may be 'can Brother Jebediah stop the other initiates from bullying Brother Zeke', what everyone at the table is watching for is whether Br. Jebediah will just give up on talking and pound the bully's face. What makes it interesting is when you create a situation where everyone really wants Jebediah to succeed at the conflict itself. And maybe in the end Jeb's player decides he'd rather break someone's face than let Brother Zeke get bullied out of Dogs training.

--

Anyways, this is good stuff for me. I've never run Dogs before myself but I am hoping to do so at an upcoming con, so all the advice here is invaluable. I'm going to try and fit in some low-pressure practice sessions between now and then, but I do have a question for the more experienced Dogs-Demoers around, that relates to the concern about having a strong mismatch between the prepared town and the PCs that end up being generated.

Do people going into demo/con situations ever prepare multiple towns, then wait to see what kind of group is shaping up, PC-and-tone wise before they choose which one to run? Or is it better to just get one town down like the back of your hand and not worry about fiddling over whether the crazy gun-toting PC will have a chance to crazily tote his guns?

[Adam Cerling]

Do people going into demo/con situations ever prepare multiple towns, then wait to see what kind of group is shaping up, PC-and-tone wise before they choose which one to run? Or is it better to just get one town down like the back of your hand and not worry about fiddling over whether the crazy gun-toting PC will have a chance to crazily tote his guns?

Dan,

I first played Dogs at GenCon two years back, run by Carl Rigley, who just plucked Tower Creek branch right out of the book. Carl made it immediate and pertinent to me by mentioning simply, "Oh, and you've got an aunt in this town: her name's Wilhelmina."

Wilhelmina, of course, being one of the townsfolk in most need of some judgin'.

No matter what the Dogs are like, blood can easily tangle them up in a town. Especially when those blood relatives have been profoundly wronged... or are the ones doin' the wrongin'.