[DITV] Failure

[JC]

Hi there

GMed my second game of Dogs yesterday (my first very short AP post can be found here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=325133). This time around, it went all kinds of wrong.

For this second outing, I used my own town (description here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=23886.0). Going in, I felt it was OK. Probably not the best town around, maybe even had some weak spots, but playable. Well, it didn't work out.

First of all, the circumstances. There were five of us, all experienced role-players. I'm no GNS guru, but I guess we're pretty Sim oriented, with some Nar and Gam thrown in from time to time. The plan for the day was to play another player's first try at running a game without rules (freeform?). It went OK, but ended quite quickly (four hours or something). So it was 7 PM, and I had brought my Dogs scenario over for just such an occasion. Everyone was on-board with trying it, so off we went. One GM and four players.

Let me state right away that four players was probably too much for me at that point. Maybe if I had a better grasp of the rules, it would have been OK. But tonight, two or three would have been better.

Anyway: I read through the setting and the rules. I had prepared some adequate music, which contributed nicely too setting the mood. After the first part of character creation, they were eager to start, but I insisted we play through accomplishments. It took some time, because there were four of them to run, and because I hesitated quite a bit about what kind of stakes were appropriate. Nothing phenomenal happened, but I think everyone agreed in the end it was useful to get a better grasp of the game mechanics.

Finally, we "go to town". Now, if you look at how the story unfolded, you might think things went OK. A Dog tries to teach the kids some respect, but refuses to escalate and gives. The Dogs snoop around, everyone's complaining to them, accusing everyone else, and asking them to make it better.

The Dogs make Brother August admit to drinking and publicly humiliate him. They save Sister Marilla's life when she gives birth. Another awesome conflict: Sister Temperance begs a Dog to take her to the Steward's home, planning to ask him to marry her to him. By that point, the Dog had had enough of talking, so he hits her and shoves her aside, so as not to give, knowing she might be badly hurt. The Steward and his wife save the woman's life, and bring her back to their home. Finally, the Dogs try to exorcise a wounded Sister Temperance, and end up killing her. So far so good.

Except the players (save maybe for one of them) didn't enjoy the game at all. They said the system kept them from role-playing. They said the dice tactics felt like "Magic" etc. They said too much depended on how well you rolled. They said they were too tempted to min-max their characters.

Another point was that they found the NPCs too powerful, especially the fact that I could pick the right traits during the conflicts, whereas the players had to chose their traits at the beginning. This probably had to do with how I managed conflicts with multiple opponents. When there were several Dogs, I let Dogs aid each other by giving two dice. I figured this was simpler than running everyone's raises and sees. But I reckon it made the Dogs much weaker than they could or should have been. Even when it was one on one though, the Dogs sometimes had a hard time.

My fumbling around with the rules sure didn't help. Setting cool stakes seemed far from simple. There are also lots of ambiguous cases, or at least that's what they seemed like at the time, under pressure.

OK, besides from bitching, I also have a few concrete questions.

Question n°1: Once I've escalated to fighting, say by hitting my opponent, can my subsequent raises be talking? If so, what would the fallout be like from those last "just talking" raises?

Question n°2: What's the fallout level if I'm just talking but my opponent's all the way up to shooting? I guess I'd take d10s and he'd take d4s, but I'm not sure.

Question n°3: Say the stakes are "does the PC expel the demon from the NPC?". One of my raises is "the NPC gets up and strangles the PC". The PC's out of dice, and gives, but there's not much fallout to speak of. The PC loses the conflict, and the NPC is still possessed. So far so good. But is the PC now dead, because he couldn't see my strangling raise?

Question n°4: Are stakes like "the NPC persuades you to do this or that" legit? Say Sister Temperance wants the Dog to marry her to the Steward. Can that be what's at stake? I feel I should set some kind of smaller stake, but I just can't figure out what.

Question n°5: Can I force a dilemma on the players? As in the classic "she's giving birth, it's going very wrong, and you can only save the mother or the child". When I sprang that one, the player said "I want to save both, let's have a conflict".

A couple of other things turned up, but I can't remember them right now.

All in all, I feel like I've failed both the game and my gaming buddies. It's nothing dramatic, of course. But I really wanted this game to rock, and I really wanted my friends to like it. No such luck...

It's especially disappointing because some of these guys tried out The Mountain Witch with me two years ago, which also ended in me not running the game very well and them not liking it (AP thread here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16985.0).

OK... Uh, let's end with something constructive... thing's I'd do differently, if I could do it all over again:
- less PCs (say, two or three);
- insist on simple accomplishments;
- use the "multiple opponent" rules, instead of just the "helping" ones;
- clarify that the rules are good at creating an interesting story, not simulating things accurately.

Please feel free to chime in, be it with advice, questions, or just to sympathize with my misery .

Cheers!

[JC]

EDIT

Just remembered: the players also complained about the "experience fallout" rules. They felt that adding a die to a stat was just too powerful, and not justified considering how little happened during some conflicts. I tried to point out the fact that anyone could veto something if they felt it wasn't kosher, but that didn't seem to satisfy them.

[Moreno R.]

Hi JC!

I will try to get a shot at what went wrong. Just remember that I wasn't there, so I could make assumptions about the way you played the game that aren't true. And please remember that English is not my native language.

For this second outing, I used my own town (description here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=23886.0). Going in, I felt it was OK. Probably not the best town around, maybe even had some weak spots, but playable. Well, it didn't work out.

I don't know if this contribuited to the problems or not, but usually is good advice for novice players to play a town where everything got so bad to go to "Hate & Murder". More simple, basic emotions and reactions are much easier to play than more nuanced social problems (you can shoot a murdered, and it feels good. When you have to convince a wife to return to his husband and you are not used to the social weight of a dog's judment, it can be hairy)

A thing that could cause problem is the pre-setting of the results in the case of Sister Marilla's pregnancy. When you say that the dogs can save only the mother or the child, but not both, you are pre-setting a result that should be played instead. "You can save only the mother or the child, but not both" should be a strong raise you make during the conflict, not a pre-set ending condition.

Other than this, I have some doubt about some other aspects of the town (some parts of the sin ladder seems to me upside-down) but I am not sure about this and in any case from your account the problems you had were more about the technical aspects of the game.

First of all, the circumstances. There were five of us, all experienced role-players. I'm no GNS guru, but I guess we're pretty Sim oriented, with some Nar and Gam thrown in from time to time.

Did you talk with them about the objective of the game, about the kind of game it is? They are familiar with a kind of game where the objective isn't to win or "be something", but to create a satisfying story all together?

I am asking because I often see threads in internet forum where people tie themselves in knots trying to play the historical mindset of the times or trying to "realistically play mormons" and it seems to be that this "trying to play it like it was sim" is the most common cause of social-based problems some people have with the game (the most common cause of the technical problems is instead the thinking that some rules like the town and npc creation are "optional" or the misreading of the conflict rules)

Let me state right away that four players was probably too much for me at that point. Maybe if I had a better grasp of the rules, it would have been OK. But tonight, two or three would have been better.

Four players is always a little too much for DitV. The game is for 2-3 players plus the GM. It can be played with more, but it becomes difficult to create enough adversity (both in the mechanical - i.e serious threats - than in the narrative sense) for everyone. So when I play with many players I try to split up the party, and tell the players why I am doing this so they collaborate. They are still in the same city but they don't move all together all of the time. (It's easier when the players understand that the GM can't really hurt their character without their collaboration)

By that point, the Dog had had enough of talking, so he hits her and shoves her aside, so as not to give, knowing she might be badly hurt. The Steward and his wife save the woman's life, and bring her back to their home. Finally, the Dogs try to exorcise a wounded Sister Temperance, and end up killing her. So far so good.

From this description, it seems that the players got frustrated at some point from "all the talking". It's one of the reasons you really should go to "hate and murder" for beginning players, and in any case push for stakes that make something happen. "I convince her that she is wrong" it's not a good stake, because at the end nothing is visibly "happening". It should be "you force her to repent her sin in front of the entire congregation" or something like this (with raises even more dramatic, with screaming, with tearing of hairs, and if you played with the supernatural setting on "high", even special effects like red eyes and sulphur). Think about a movie, what would get the audience's attention. Don't try to be subtle, if there is not enough interest from the players about the subtle thing to make even that dramatic.

Except the players (save maybe for one of them) didn't enjoy the game at all. They said the system kept them from role-playing. They said the dice tactics felt like "Magic" etc. They said too much depended on how well you rolled. They said they were too tempted to min-max their characters.

Some of this is more about their habits, I think. When people see so many dices, they tend to begin to micro-manage the conflict like a micro-game inside a game. This is completly wrong and can really ruin the game. It's not that people shouldn't "play well" (I really don't like games where you have to forget basic strategy to play...), it's that they should undestand that the best strategy in dogs is really simple, and it's about "knowing how much you can stand to lose to get what you want", and not about micro-manage the number of dices to win the stakes.

It's not enough to tell people this, though. (I always tell it anyway, it can' hurt and it help processing what they see in the game). You should show this in the game. When they begin to micro-manage, you wait for your chance (that could never arrive, if you play with four dogs all together who can always help each other) and hit them with an imparable raise that really hurt them. They have their strategy that will make them win and you are like "OK, but the child die", or "OK, but to go on you have to take 4d10 fallout", or "OK, but your family heirloom is destroyed". This usually shock them from their attention to "win" and force them to decide between taking the raise of give.
When they have decided, and you see that you have not the dices to make another strong raise, just give. 

You should totally play to get moments like these. If your dice are not good enough, just give. Even if you could give them some little fallout, who cares? Stay in conflicts only if you can force them to decide AGAINST basic strategy to get something they want in the "story". Only this (coupled with the realization that they can easily win every time) can stop the micro-management of the "game inside a game".

Another point was that they found the NPCs too powerful, especially the fact that I could pick the right traits during the conflicts, whereas the players had to chose their traits at the beginning.

This sound really strange to me. This is not how DitV works. (but maybe I simply misunderstood what you wrote)

To be sure, I will write the way conflict works:

1) you set the stakes
2) you roll ONLY the (2) stats and eventual relationship dice, and NO OTHERS. No traits, no material possessions, no helping dice, nothing.
3) then, every time you bring a trait or an object in the narrative of a raise or a see, you can roll its dice (even if you don't use these exact dice in that occasion). You can only roll the dice of a trait or object one time for conflict, but you can roll for how many traits you want (if you can get them in the narration).

So, if you said that you have to choose the traits that go in the conflict at the beginning, you misread the rules.

If instead you are saying that the Dogs have the traits already written on the sheet, and the npc doesn't, this is correct, but remember that the NPCs have a lot less traits (4) and usually a lot less dices than the PC (you did use the proto-NPC rule, right? It's not "optional" at all. It balance the game)

This probably had to do with how I managed conflicts with multiple opponents. When there were several Dogs, I let Dogs aid each other by giving two dice. I figured this was simpler than running everyone's raises and sees.  But I reckon it made the Dogs much weaker than they could or should have been. Even when it was one on one though, the Dogs sometimes had a hard time.

Mmmm...  I don't like this at all. The way raises and sees work is the heart of the conflict system, they move the story and provoke conseguences. See what I talked about the micro-management above.  I think that you reduced the conflict ONLY to micro-management of dices, instead of a strong narrative. The fact that they even got weaker (and more helpless to move the story) is just icing on the cake.

If you ever feel that a big conflicts with a lot of raises and see is becoming boring, just give. This is all you need to do. There's no reason to change the rules to avoid something that is already avoided by following the normal rules.

OK, besides from bitching, I also have a few concrete questions.

Question n°1: Once I've escalated to fighting, say by hitting my opponent, can my subsequent raises be talking?

Yes, but remember that a valid raise is "something that your opponent(s) can't ignore", so they have to be words with a weight.   (the usual example is "Luke, I am your father" from "The Empire Strikes back". It was after a lightsaber fight, but it was still an hell of a raise...)

If so, what would the fallout be like from those last "just talking" raises?

The fallout always depends on "what happen in the fictional narration", so for example if you say "I am you father" it's d4, but if you raise with "I scream and he jumps for the surprise and fall from the ladder" it's d8, even if you only "talked".

Question n°2: What's the fallout level if I'm just talking but my opponent's all the way up to shooting? I guess I'd take d10s and he'd take d4s, but I'm not sure.

You are right, but with the precisation above (another example: if he shoots,but he say he shoots in the air to scare you, and you take the blow like "I am scared by the shots", you take d4s...)

Question n°3: Say the stakes are "does the PC expel the demon from the NPC?".

Just as an aside, you shouldn't set the method with the stakes. In this case, the stakes would be "is the demon expelled from xxx?". Then it's the conflict resolution that say if this happen, who do that, and how.

One of my raises is "the NPC gets up and strangles the PC". The PC's out of dice, and gives, but there's not much fallout to speak of. The PC loses the conflict, and the NPC is still possessed. So far so good. But is the PC now dead, because he couldn't see my strangling raise?

Not at all. He blocked your raise, because giving BLOCK EVERY RAISE, no matter how many dices got pushed . It's the heart of the conflict strategy for the GM. All you have to do in a conflict is having a raise so bad (in a good way) that the players prefere giving up even on a conflict they would win. In this manner you defeat micro-management and force the predominance of the choices in the narrative over the dices.

This is a very, very important rule. And I have seen so many people miss that (and so play a broken game) that I would advice Vincent to put that in a big bold bright red font on every page in the next printings...

Question n°4: Are stakes like "the NPC persuades you to do this or that" legit? 

No. See this thread

Question n°5: Can I force a dilemma on the players? As in the classic "she's giving birth, it's going very wrong, and you can only save the mother or the child". When I sprang that one, the player said "I want to save both, let's have a conflict".

They are right, you shouldn't pre-set the ending of a conflict. But you could totally make that a strong raise (I already talked about this at the beginning of this post)

OK... Uh, let's end with something constructive... thing's I'd do differently, if I could do it all over again:
- less PCs (say, two or three);
- insist on simple accomplishments;
- use the "multiple opponent" rules, instead of just the "helping" ones;
- clarify that the rules are good at creating an interesting story, not simulating things accurately.

Well, you already got most of the things I talked above, so take this post like a support for the conclusions you already arrived to, plus some more advice.

Best Wishes for your next DitV game!

[The Mule]

Question n°4: Are stakes like "the NPC persuades you to do this or that" legit? 

No. See this thread

Incorrect! 
Vincent makes some comments on stakes forcing the Dogs to do things

Original poster, regarding your questions.

How on earth can you min/max Dogs?  There's no mins!  Min-Maxing is finding the most cost efficient ratios of character effectiveness currency; finding harmless flaws to pay for the most potent advantages.

Dogs has no flaws.  d4s aren't flaws.  Traits that don't seem universally applicable?  Not flaws!  Why not?  They still are universally applicable, they just make you stretch your imagination.

I have "Courageous 2d8"; a friend is trying to convince me to stop loafing around and help him.  He raises "There's cute girls there!"  and I use my courageous trait in my raise "I can get cute girls whenever I want."

So you can't make a character that's somehow "too powerful".  The Dogs are supposed to win.  One Dog should wipe the floor with any nonpossessed NPC.  Absolutely take him to town.  A pack of Dogs working together should steamroll the whole town.

So why even bother rolling?  The GM's job is to ask "O RLY?!", and the dice let you do that.  When the GM raises, he's not saying "I'm trying to stop you from getting the stakes," he's saying "Do you think getting the stakes are worth this happening?"

Try saying that before your raises, I found it helped me get in a good mindset for making proper raises.  If the answer is obvious, then it's not a good raise.  Not every raise needs to punch the player in the face, but that's the general idea you're going for.

There's nothing the players can do with with the rules to stop you from being able to do that.  You need to convince them that there is nothing wrong with any attempt on their part to maximize their effectiveness.  This is SUPER IMPORTANT for them to realize.  I'm pretty sure Vincent Baker has flat out said "If you're powergaming Dogs, you're playing it right".

Your comment about NPCs being too powerful is a warning flag!  Follow the rules!  All of them!  It's super, super important.  That should absolutely not happen unless the Dogs aren't using their traits for some reason.  If that's the case, tell them "use your traits!  If it's not obvious how, be imaginative!"

NPC should have no more traits than the Proto-NPC rules tell you.  As long as they follow those rules, even with the GM assigning traits' names on the fly the Dogs shouldn't have a problem with their dice.

[Moreno R.]

Question n°4: Are stakes like "the NPC persuades you to do this or that" legit? 

No. See this thread

Incorrect! 
Vincent makes some comments on stakes forcing the Dogs to do things

Mmmmm.... I interpret that post in a different way.   What I got from it was that the Stewards of the faith can FORCE the Dog to repent in public (If they win that conflict), exactly as the Dogs can force to repent in public the townspeople, but what the Dogs REALLY BELIEVE can't be at stake in a conflict.

Oh, well, only Vincent can say what he really meant. I hope that he will read this and tell us.

But in any case, I don't think I will ever frame a conflict like "if I win all you dogs will believe this about the faith" or even "If I win you will judge the sorcerer innocent and hang the victim".  The way I see the game, it would have the same sense that having the moral decisions of the dogs rolled on a table.

I could instead frame a conflict where social pressure (even from the other dogs) force a Dog to do something that he believe it's not right. At that time, the dog has to choose between be convinced to do something he believe is wrong, or escalate. I agree that this is powerful conflict, but is powerful because it force the character to make a difficult choice.

But if the stakes are about what the dog THINKS, (as for example In a normal conversation where somebody, talking normally, say something to the dog, to convince him), it's difficult to justify in a narration the dogs that use the gun to avoid CHANGING OPINION. What you get is (1) a boring conflict (if the player choose the simulation of the character's mindset over the victory over the guilty) or (2) a gamist drift (where you begin to play dogs to win the conflicts that allow you to discover the guilty)

[The Mule]

Your conscience can't be at stake.  That doesn't mean people can't persuade you to do things, or even think things.

NPC X can have stakes "Convince you he's innocent".  NPC Y, who you *know* is a Sorcerer, can have stakes "Make you fall in love with her".  I'm pretty sure the GM can even have an NPC set stakes "Makes you forget XXX ever happened".

So your mind isn't safe!  Just your conscience. 

Now, I think the initial question of "belief" touches more on conscience than I initially thought in my first reading, so my correction of your statement may have been out of place.  In which case, I apologize.

Nobody can tell you "what is the right thing to do".  People *can* force you to do things, which includes thinking things!

If NPC X convinces you he's innocent, you can still shoot him anyway.  That just means your character shot a man he thinks is innocent.  It's up to you the player to then answer how he feels about it.  If NPC X convinces you not to shoot him, that doesn't mean you think he's innocent; you may be letting a murderer live!  How do you feel about it? 

If think you wouldn't feel happy about it, remember that it can only happen if you Give, and I have yet to see someone Give because they literally did not have anything left on their sheet.  I've only seen people Give because they thought a Raise wasn't worth Taking the Blow or escalating.

Sidenote: Why would I play dogs in order to discover the guilty?  The town literally throws it's problems at my feet!

[Adam Dray]

The Dogs make Brother August admit to drinking and publicly humiliate him. They save Sister Marilla's life when she gives birth. Another awesome conflict: Sister Temperance begs a Dog to take her to the Steward's home, planning to ask him to marry her to him. By that point, the Dog had had enough of talking, so he hits her and shoves her aside, so as not to give, knowing she might be badly hurt. The Steward and his wife save the woman's life, and bring her back to their home. Finally, the Dogs try to exorcise a wounded Sister Temperance, and end up killing her. So far so good.

Except the players (save maybe for one of them) didn't enjoy the game at all. They said the system kept them from role-playing. They said the dice tactics felt like "Magic" etc. They said too much depended on how well you rolled. They said they were too tempted to min-max their characters.

They did all that and they don't think they role-played? It sounds to me like they role-played a lot but didn't get out of it what they expected. What do you think "role-playing" means to them? Is it a talking-in-voices, being-the-character thing? If so, maybe it's just a matter of pacing. If they're willing to try the game again, give them more time to chat between dice rolling. When they're ready to kick ass and take names, they'll reach for the dice. Push for conflict in the fiction and let the dice come to the forefront when everyone agrees it's time for that.

I read the "dice tactics felt like 'Magic'" comment as a failure for everyone to really connect the dice mechanics to the fiction. Basically, you're doing one thing on the table with the dice, and you're talking about this other thing happening in the story, and people don't really think they're connected enough. Obviously, they're connected in one direction (dice affecting the fiction) but maybe that connection doesn't make sense to them. What's their specific beef with it? Is it that they don't like social-force mechanics (the dice can't make my character / "me" feel a certain way!)?

It might be that they just don't like this sort of game. Maybe they want to get into their characters and "be there," and they aren't interested in all this making-a-point stuff. Don't force it if that's the case.

Maybe give a couple short examples of Actual Play that really worked with these guys -- any game system. What expectations do these players have when they sit down to play Dogs in the Vineyard or The Mountain Witch?

[Callan S.]

Except the players (save maybe for one of them) didn't enjoy the game at all. They said the system kept them from role-playing. They said the dice tactics felt like "Magic" etc. They said too much depended on how well you rolled. They said they were too tempted to min-max their characters.

Perhaps a common pattern in gamers is
A: They think leaving arbitration to the GM rather than dice still leads to unexpected results.
B: They haven't realised that they can often subtely manipulate the GM, thus getting exactly the results they want.

Particuarly with B it's a very comfy zone, apparently full of danger but with a comforting propensity to 'surprisingly' always go the way you wanted it to (unless someone doesn't read someone elses signals right - at which time howls of outrage happen).

You might be stuck - unless a person has realised that and/or gotten sick of it, they'll stay there (or your dealing with a new to roleplay player and they never entered that zone to begin with).

Have any of them expressed any desire to have things happen without just deciding it all? Do they all think they are playing dangerous when it's entirely up to the GM to decide how things pan out?

[JC]

hi guys n gals!

I've only got a minute, so I just wanted to say thanks for all the great replies (all your comments are spot on) and I'll post answers as soon as I can

[Brand_Robins]

If think you wouldn't feel happy about it, remember that it can only happen if you Give, and I have yet to see someone Give because they literally did not have anything left on their sheet.  I've only seen people Give because they thought a Raise wasn't worth Taking the Blow or escalating.

I've seen it. More than once.

[JC]

I don't know if this contribuited to the problems or not, but usually is good advice for novice players to play a town where everything got so bad to go to "Hate & Murder". More simple, basic emotions and reactions are much easier to play than more nuanced social problems (you can shoot a murdered, and it feels good. When you have to convince a wife to return to his husband and you are not used to the social weight of a dog's judment, it can be hairy)

good point

I felt it would be more interesting to have the killing start after the Dogs arrived, but I should have gone for the sure hit at this early stage

A thing that could cause problem is the pre-setting of the results in the case of Sister Marilla's pregnancy. When you say that the dogs can save only the mother or the child, but not both, you are pre-setting a result that should be played instead. "You can save only the mother or the child, but not both" should be a strong raise you make during the conflict, not a pre-set ending condition.

okay, I'll remember that

Other than this, I have some doubt about some other aspects of the town (some parts of the sin ladder seems to me upside-down) but I am not sure about this and in any case from your account the problems you had were more about the technical aspects of the game.

that's right

I'd still be interested in your advice though

not sure which thread would be most appropriate...

Did you talk with them about the objective of the game, about the kind of game it is? They are familiar with a kind of game where the objective isn't to win or "be something", but to create a satisfying story all together?

I am asking because I often see threads in internet forum where people tie themselves in knots trying to play the historical mindset of the times or trying to "realistically play mormons" and it seems to be that this "trying to play it like it was sim" is the most common cause of social-based problems some people have with the game (the most common cause of the technical problems is instead the thinking that some rules like the town and npc creation are "optional" or the misreading of the conflict rules)

I clearly stated that this was a "narrativist" game before playing

I also try and share my limited knowledge of RPG-theory once in a while with my gaming friends

but I didn't clearly explain what "narrativist" meant before playing

I'm not sure if it was because I forgot, or because I was under the impression everyone knew what was up, or that they would "get it" by themselves

after exchanging some e-mails after the game, I realized they had no idea that "narrativism" means "having the players make choices that affect the scenario"

they thought it was about having the players contribute to scene descriptions

so that's one thing I'm clearly explaining next time I play DITV

another thing I should have said is that this game is good at promoting narrativism, but not so good at simulating things, so they shouldn't be disappointed if very different things are handled in similar ways

From this description, it seems that the players got frustrated at some point from "all the talking". It's one of the reasons you really should go to "hate and murder" for beginning players, and in any case push for stakes that make something happen. "I convince her that she is wrong" it's not a good stake, because at the end nothing is visibly "happening". It should be "you force her to repent her sin in front of the entire congregation" or something like this (with raises even more dramatic, with screaming, with tearing of hairs, and if you played with the supernatural setting on "high", even special effects like red eyes and sulphur). Think about a movie, what would get the audience's attention. Don't try to be subtle, if there is not enough interest from the players about the subtle thing to make even that dramatic.

very good advice

the player actually told me since then that he had done that exactly because he was fed up with the game

I do get the impression though that he was reacting against what he felt was the game mechanics keeping him from doing what he wanted, rather than the talking per se

Some of this is more about their habits, I think. When people see so many dices, they tend to begin to micro-manage the conflict like a micro-game inside a game. This is completly wrong and can really ruin the game. It's not that people shouldn't "play well" (I really don't like games where you have to forget basic strategy to play...), it's that they should undestand that the best strategy in dogs is really simple, and it's about "knowing how much you can stand to lose to get what you want", and not about micro-manage the number of dices to win the stakes.

It's not enough to tell people this, though. (I always tell it anyway, it can' hurt and it help processing what they see in the game). You should show this in the game. When they begin to micro-manage, you wait for your chance (that could never arrive, if you play with four dogs all together who can always help each other) and hit them with an imparable raise that really hurt them. They have their strategy that will make them win and you are like "OK, but the child die", or "OK, but to go on you have to take 4d10 fallout", or "OK, but your family heirloom is destroyed". This usually shock them from their attention to "win" and force them to decide between taking the raise of give.
When they have decided, and you see that you have not the dices to make another strong raise, just give. 

You should totally play to get moments like these. If your dice are not good enough, just give. Even if you could give them some little fallout, who cares? Stay in conflicts only if you can force them to decide AGAINST basic strategy to get something they want in the "story". Only this (coupled with the realization that they can easily win every time) can stop the micro-management of the "game inside a game".

again, good advice

I did play agressively, as far as the dice were concernend, usually raising real hard right from the bat

but I guess that story-wise, my raises were probably too weak

the Dogs also had the impression that they were at a disadvantage when in conflict with an NPC

I guess I probably screwed up some important rule somewhere (see below)

This sound really strange to me. This is not how DitV works. (but maybe I simply misunderstood what you wrote)

To be sure, I will write the way conflict works:

1) you set the stakes
2) you roll ONLY the (2) stats and eventual relationship dice, and NO OTHERS. No traits, no material possessions, no helping dice, nothing.
3) then, every time you bring a trait or an object in the narrative of a raise or a see, you can roll its dice (even if you don't use these exact dice in that occasion). You can only roll the dice of a trait or object one time for conflict, but you can roll for how many traits you want (if you can get them in the narration).

So, if you said that you have to choose the traits that go in the conflict at the beginning, you misread the rules.

If instead you are saying that the Dogs have the traits already written on the sheet, and the npc doesn't, this is correct, but remember that the NPCs have a lot less traits (4) and usually a lot less dices than the PC (you did use the proto-NPC rule, right? It's not "optional" at all. It balance the game)

we played it like you say, except we did use some traits straight away, which was a mistake

I also don't get what you say about the Dogs having more and better traits than the NPCs

they seem pretty evenly balanced to me

but the main problem is what you're talking about below : giving kills the raise

Question n°1: Once I've escalated to fighting, say by hitting my opponent, can my subsequent raises be talking?

Yes, but remember that a valid raise is "something that your opponent(s) can't ignore", so they have to be words with a weight.   (the usual example is "Luke, I am your father" from "The Empire Strikes back". It was after a lightsaber fight, but it was still an hell of a raise...)

If so, what would the fallout be like from those last "just talking" raises?

The fallout always depends on "what happen in the fictional narration", so for example if you say "I am you father" it's d4, but if you raise with "I scream and he jumps for the surprise and fall from the ladder" it's d8, even if you only "talked".

doesn't that gut the escalation mechanic?

I mean, the whole point of escalation, to me, seems to be the fact that once you escalate, thing start to hurt, and you either keep taking the pain or you give

Not at all. He blocked your raise, because giving BLOCK EVERY RAISE, no matter how many dices got pushed . It's the heart of the conflict strategy for the GM. All you have to do in a conflict is having a raise so bad (in a good way) that the players prefere giving up even on a conflict they would win. In this manner you defeat micro-management and force the predominance of the choices in the narrative over the dices.

This is a very, very important rule. And I have seen so many people miss that (and so play a broken game) that I would advice Vincent to put that in a big bold bright red font on every page in the next printings...

yep, that's a biggie, right there

I totally missed that rule

thanks for pointing that out!

Best Wishes for your next DitV game!

thanks, and thanks a bunch for your advice

[JC]

They did all that and they don't think they role-played? It sounds to me like they role-played a lot but didn't get out of it what they expected. What do you think "role-playing" means to them? Is it a talking-in-voices, being-the-character thing?

you're absolutely correct about lots of cool things happening in the story (just like I said in my original post)

to them, roleplaying is immersion (it is for me too)

it might not be a very explicit/precise term, but I can't think of a better one

it's about experiencing the feelings your character experiences

that is compatible with Nar, right?

I believe experiencing the dilemma your character faces, and having his choice have a real impact on the scenario is totally possible, but maybe I built this whole thing on this faulty assumption

If so, maybe it's just a matter of pacing. If they're willing to try the game again, give them more time to chat between dice rolling. When they're ready to kick ass and take names, they'll reach for the dice. Push for conflict in the fiction and let the dice come to the forefront when everyone agrees it's time for that.

I read the "dice tactics felt like 'Magic'" comment as a failure for everyone to really connect the dice mechanics to the fiction. Basically, you're doing one thing on the table with the dice, and you're talking about this other thing happening in the story, and people don't really think they're connected enough. Obviously, they're connected in one direction (dice affecting the fiction) but maybe that connection doesn't make sense to them. What's their specific beef with it? Is it that they don't like social-force mechanics (the dice can't make my character / "me" feel a certain way!)?

it's sorta like that

one player said he wanted to roleplay, but the dice got in the way every time

they also don't feel they have enough control over their character (which I don't get, since they can decide what ther raises and sees are)

they feel they have to resort to ludicrous mind-bending word-associations to be able to bring their traits into play, so as to have the conflict go the way they want it to, even when faced with a 10 year old

that last bit is probably due to my bad use of the rules (see previous post)

It might be that they just don't like this sort of game. Maybe they want to get into their characters and "be there," and they aren't interested in all this making-a-point stuff. Don't force it if that's the case.

well, one of the players has actually expressed interest in trying again, so all's not lost, I guess

but the other ones are never coming near DITV again if they can help it :/

Maybe give a couple short examples of Actual Play that really worked with these guys -- any game system.

let's see...

I'm currently running a short Delta Green campaign with three of them

we had some good moments in that one so far

most of them are when the characters talk with each other after something happened (like an action scene, or talking to an NPC)

the characters are pretty hostile towards each other, so there's plenty of tension

they also like to describe behaviours that define their characters, even if they're trivial

like, say, biting their nails

another great moment was when the characters cracked under the stress of the situation and ended up shooting some pretty innocent NPC

the accumulation of stressful music, stressful scenes, etc., just made that one scene very real (in a surreal kind of way, if you see what I mean) and very horrifying to all of us

I don't know if that's the type of account you were asking for

I guess what I'm describing is straight Sim, but please correct me if I'm mistaken

What expectations do these players have when they sit down to play Dogs in the Vineyard or The Mountain Witch?

well, mostly, they have what I tell them, which is :
- "this new game I just got is about bad-ass samourai"
- "it's got these cool rules about trust"
- "it's a game that facilitates narrativism" (insert short and mangled attempt at explaining what that means, and assurances that it'll probably be a little weird to begin with, but that it'll be really cool once we get the hang of it)

I actually mean that last part

all these people are enjoying these games, so why not us?

I mean, how hard can it be?

[Moreno R.]

I did play agressively, as far as the dice were concernend, usually raising real hard right from the bat

I have seen that this isn't always the right choice. All you need is ONE big raise, and after the players learn this, keeping some big dice around make them more careful.

Usually I make the very first raises with rather weak dices, keeping all the 10s and 9s in reserve.  I accumulate fallout without caring too much about it (it's useful if the Dogs go to shooting but they don't want to kill their opponent. Remember that they have to defeat ALL the dice of fallout, rerolled, to cure a wound) , waiting for the time what they have used all the middle dices.  Then, they have to choose between using the big dices (and letting me make my unstoppable raise later) or the little one (risking a reversing of the blow)

This is one the biggest assets of the GM in the resolution conflict in dogs. You don't care a bit about the fallout you get. The players do.

Remember to tie every raise and see with a real, concrete action, that mirror it. If you make a weak raise, make the NPC make a weak point, or shoot with a trembling hand. Be fast, show them how the action and the dices mirror each other without any interrumpion in the game narrative.

but I guess that story-wise, my raises were probably too weak

As I said, there's no need to make EVERY raise a strong one.It would be difficult and tiring. Keep some big dices around for when you get a really nasty idea and make the other raises thinking about what you would like the npc to do.

the Dogs also had the impression that they were at a disadvantage when in conflict with an NPC

This shouldn't be the case. Even a beginning dog should win easily against a single NPC, and the dogs united should be almost unstoppable even by a large mob, barring a lot of bad luck.

I also don't get what you say about the Dogs having more and better traits than the NPCs

See the numbers. A beginning dog gets (in the well-rounded case) 17d6 for stats, 1d4 4d6 2d8 for traits + 1 d6 for the achievement, 4d6 + 2d8 for relationships, + dice for possessions.

A proto-npc gets 11-20 d6 for traits (the medium value is 15),  and 4 traits that can go from 1d4 to 2d10, but the medium values is around 1d8 or 1d10, and then rolls 2 times for relationships with a medium value of around 1d10 o 2d6.

So, at first, even a beginning dog has more dices that the normal npc. And how much time a "beginning dog" stay like this? At the first experience fallout he gets, he can change the dice of a d4s trait to d10s.  A Dog start with more dice and bigger dice than ne npcs, and grow even more powerful from here.

Dogs can even help each others (and this is their best tactic)

Not only the player characters are more powerful, but they SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT, to play in a more self-assured way and don't worry too much about "losing" or moving around alone withoit the other dogs.

The fallout always depends on "what happen in the fictional narration", so for example if you say "I am you father" it's d4, but if you raise with "I scream and he jumps for the surprise and fall from the ladder" it's d8, even if you only "talked".

doesn't that gut the escalation mechanic?

I mean, the whole point of escalation, to me, seems to be the fact that once you escalate, thing start to hurt, and you either keep taking the pain or you give

If escalating could hurt the one escalating, it would be a self-sacrifice, not an act of force...

And remember what we said before: think about "what happen in the story", the narration. It's not a "description of what the dice say" at all! The description of what happen RULE the dice. The fallout depend on this, and it's a good thing!

And remember that the fact that the player said "I shoot, but not at him, to make him afraid" don't mean that you can't turn the blow with a big dice saying "Mary didn't see that you didn't aim at his husband, and she jumped in front of the gun taking the bullet. You killed her"  (remember that in this case, if the dogs give in the conflict, he can still start a follow-up conflict to save mary's life against the usual 4d6 + 4d10, but this mean losing what was at stake in the first conflict. Or they can continue the conflict accepting that Mary die)

[JC]

Except the players (save maybe for one of them) didn't enjoy the game at all. They said the system kept them from role-playing. They said the dice tactics felt like "Magic" etc. They said too much depended on how well you rolled. They said they were too tempted to min-max their characters.

Perhaps a common pattern in gamers is
A: They think leaving arbitration to the GM rather than dice still leads to unexpected results.
B: They haven't realised that they can often subtely manipulate the GM, thus getting exactly the results they want.

Particuarly with B it's a very comfy zone, apparently full of danger but with a comforting propensity to 'surprisingly' always go the way you wanted it to (unless someone doesn't read someone elses signals right - at which time howls of outrage happen).

You might be stuck - unless a person has realised that and/or gotten sick of it, they'll stay there (or your dealing with a new to roleplay player and they never entered that zone to begin with).

Have any of them expressed any desire to have things happen without just deciding it all? Do they all think they are playing dangerous when it's entirely up to the GM to decide how things pan out?

I think I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure

I guess they're in the "confort zone", just going along for the "immersion" ride, most of the time


have any of them expressed any desire to have things happen without just deciding it all?

not really, no

I think I'm actually the only one who is starting to feel the need for my decisions to have an impact on the game

that said, I still often have a great time playing in games where I have the impression of making important decisions, when everything has really been decided beforehand by the person who wrote the scenario


do they all think they are playing dangerous when it's entirely up to the GM to decide how things pan out?

well, they sort of trick themselves into believing it, most of the time

but we sometimes play games where the PCs' decisions really do have an impact

some scenarios we played at the annual parisian ruleless RPG convention come to mind (like the one where we played the people who decided whether to drop the atom-bombs at the end of WWII)

the DG campaign I talk about in my previous post is something else: the plot is pretty much pre-defined, but characters can die at any time if the dice say so

I also adapt the following session depending on the PCs decisions, even if I guess those changes are pretty superficial

[JC]

See the numbers. A beginning dog gets (in the well-rounded case) 17d6 for stats, 1d4 4d6 2d8 for traits + 1 d6 for the achievement, 4d6 + 2d8 for relationships, + dice for possessions.

A proto-npc gets 11-20 d6 for traits (the medium value is 15),  and 4 traits that can go from 1d4 to 2d10, but the medium values is around 1d8 or 1d10, and then rolls 2 times for relationships with a medium value of around 1d10 o 2d6.

So, at first, even a beginning dog has more dices that the normal npc. And how much time a "beginning dog" stay like this? At the first experience fallout he gets, he can change the dice of a d4s trait to d10s.  A Dog start with more dice and bigger dice than ne npcs, and grow even more powerful from here.

Dogs can even help each others (and this is their best tactic)

Not only the player characters are more powerful, but they SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT, to play in a more self-assured way and don't worry too much about "losing" or moving around alone withoit the other dogs.

thanks for taking the time to walk me through the numbers

I see the NPC is a little weaker

but since I can pick usefull traits for the NPCs, when the PCs' traits don't always apply, I'd say a beginning Dog doesn't always have the upper hand

maybe I should go easy when I pick the NPC traits

And remember that the fact that the player said "I shoot, but not at him, to make him afraid" don't mean that you can't turn the blow with a big dice saying "Mary didn't see that you didn't aim at his husband, and she jumped in front of the gun taking the bullet. You killed her"  (remember that in this case, if the dogs give in the conflict, he can still start a follow-up conflict to save mary's life against the usual 4d6 + 4d10, but this mean losing what was at stake in the first conflict. Or they can continue the conflict accepting that Mary die)

wouldn't Giving let the Dog's player say something like "OK, you win what's at stake, but that last raise where I shoot Mary never happened"?