[DitV] Narrativist Blueballs

[Joel P. Shempert]

A couple of weeks ago, I GMed my first Dogs town. Well, half of it, anyway. Which is all I'm gonna get. Which is frustrating.

Maybe I should back up and explain.

I first ran Dogs at Go Play Portland, at Jake Richmond's house, last month. We only got as far as Initiation. That was a bit of a letdown, but we were all interested enough to pick it up again for the next Go Play, which we did, two weeks ago. I thought, with Initiation out of the way, playing through a whole town should be a snap. Boy was I wrong.

I was using the Coach-Whip Cut-Off Branch. Its basic trouble is, the young second wife of a town elder, terrified by scare stories from the unwelcoming senior wife, was reluctant to consummate, then killed the husband when he drunkenly forced himself on her. Now the town's divided over what should be done with her, she's come to believe it was providence that helped her save herself and that polygamy is wrong, and she's started a cult with her true love, her late husband's adult son, and another dissatisfied wife.

The players were:

Annie, my Fiance, with Brother Caleb, a visionary Dog whose premonitions ward off danger but lead him to overconfidence,

Charles with Brother Nathaniel, a pacifist Dog

and Julie, playing Sister Bethia, a know-it-all, schoolteacher's daughter with a desire to prove herself.

What we did play through was fun. The Dogs ride in and find a crowd on the street arguing whether to turn young Dinah, the accused murderess, over to the Territorial Authority. Nathaniel stays outside to quell the mob, and the others head into the house where Dinah's holed up with her father and the steward. A lot of questioning and getting to the bottom of things between Dogs, Dad, and Steward, then Dinah comes down the stairs (I cast her as Bryce Dallas Howard from the Village, Lady in the Water, etc) declaring that she can speak for herself and pronouncing her anti-polygamy doctrine.

Everything up to that point was "Say Yes" free play. I could've had a conflict to quiet the townsfolk, but didn't think it was nearly as interesting as the root conflicts of the main actors, so I let it go. This was all smooth and easy, up to a point--I did find that "Say Yes or Roll the DIce" caused some awkwardness (or my handling of it did). We were well into the conversation between the Dogs and Dinah before I realized we had a conflict on our hands. Which meant a lot of great lines of dialogue had gone by that would have made killer raises and sees. "Say Yes" had the effect of numbing me toward spotting that point where a conflict should begin, that "OK, you're trying to convince Dinah of something here, go to the dice" moment. Loads of roleplaying history with "just talking" having no mechanical ties or suppport makes it hard to switch in mid-conversation, and with Dogs you've really got to get those dice out at the start of a conflict, there's no "OK, roll to see how well you've been convincing her" or whatever. So, challenging.

So we did have a short conflict, over something like Dinah submitting to the Dogs' Authority (certainly NOT changing her mind about Polygamy!). Dinah gave and considered Caleb's proposal (to have her transferred to another parish under a Steward's guardianship until she is ready for marriage), and asked to sleep on it.

The Steward then invited the Dogs to Supper at his house, before which they wanted to stop in on Madeline, the Senior wife and now widow, who's come down with whooping cough (inflicted by Dinah via demons to silence her, natch). David, her son, escorts them, so they take the opportunity to grill him on what happened the night of his Pa's murder, how he feels about this whole mess, and such. We had a moment where I had David be all shyly evasive, and the players all picked up on it exactly like I wanted them to--"Oooh, he's in love with Dinah!" I love roleplaying bits like that. And I got there by following exactly the GM advice in the book. Thanks, Vincent!

So yeah, the Dogs are hot on the trail of the whole romantic subplot and incidentally the festering Cult of the town. They ask David to try to reason with Dinah about having her moved out of town, and he promises to do that. 'Course, he and Dinah are going to sneak off in the night for a little False Worship and Book of Life-twisting and fortify their heresy. Fun!

So the Dogs check pin on the Widow Sharpless, and we do a healing conflict. it's pretty hairy as the demonic ailment wracks Madeline's body and toward the end choking her on her own spittle, but of course three Dogs vs. mild Demonic Influence is a foregone conclusion. The real fun is when Madeline sits up, and without missing a beat, proclaims "thank the King of Life! You have come to deliver me and enact justice on that little she-witch who afflicted me and infects the town with her lies!"

So there's a fresh conflict between Brothers Caleb and Nathaniel, and Madeline, over Madeline charging off and doing something about little Heretic Dinah right now. (Sister Bethia had taken fallout and went off to be alone, coping with the horrors of the demonic illness she'd just witnessed.) They argue about whether Madeline's illness was Demonically inflicted by Dinah, the Dogs push for Madeline to relent and forgive the girl, and Madeline escalates from talking to physical: "well, if you won't take action, I'll just have to do something myself!" while springing to her feet and charging out of the room. Caleb stands in her way, and Nathaniel walks beside her, counseling and quoting scripture at her. She sees they're not going to let her alone, and begrudgingly agrees to publically forgive Dinah.

Aaaaand that's all we had time for.

And we're not going to be continuing.

See why I'm frustrated?

We were having a great game, and I personally was finally getting a payoff from two years of owning Dogs and longing to do something with it. . .and it was cut short. We just didn't have the time to finish (due to other activities eating up time at the start), and we all agree that there's no way to get together and continue, and we should sack it in favor of future roleplaying pursuits. I mean, I agree with it, but I don't like it. So much wasted potential never to be utilized. I will never get to see that town resolve, at least not with that group of players. That makes me sad.

And gives me the Narrativist blue-balls something terrible.

There's a payoff thing going on with a game like Dogs, and we didn't get it. Vincent says the real payoff is actually 3 or 4o towns in, but we didn't even get the initial payoff  of a single town. That town is supposed to do something to make everyone go "Ooh!" or "Aah!" and it didn't. It never will.

But lest I dwell overmuch on the negative, let me highlight some things that were cool about the game session. The "Say Yes" thing worked great aside from the aforementioned hiccup, and I especially liked the "David's in love" bit that I mentioned earlier. The conflict system, once engaged, worked like a charm, with none of us (armed by our initiation test-drive last month) had to go "huh, what now" or "how's that work?" too much. I especially enjoyed the last conflict, playing a strong-willed NPC with no holds barred and losing, but doing some damage along the way. I learned as GM to maximize my dice for inflicting optimal fallout, rather than winning. It was heaps of fun.

There was a wierd thing I ran into on that conflict. . .Annie, playing Caleb, had assumed (or at least had her character assert) that Madeline's sickness was perfectly natural, and the accusations of Sorcery just paranoia. But the sickness WAS in fact Demonic, and persumably a group of Dogs would be at least generally disposed to believe that. So what to do? Do I mention "you realize, of course, that this whooping cough is demonic as hell?" to make sure everyone's on the same page at least as players? Is that too much "you're not playing it right?" or is NOT mentioning it too much secret-keeping and "guess what the GM's thinking" play?

I kept mum, and after it was clear we weren't playing farther, spilled that Dinah did in fact inflict the couch sorcerously. I got a nice "Agh, of course" collective groan from the players. When I confessed I was uneasy about keeping that secret, Annie was like, "no, don't worry about it. It's good for Caleb to not be right ALL the time."

Let's see, what else? Oh yes, the players' judgements! It was really cool and intriguing to see the conclusions everyone came to at least in what we DID manage to play through. For starters, I was all focussed on Dinah and the killing, but Annie had Caleb be all like: "Wait a minute? He was drunk? There's liquor making its way through town? Sounds like this whole parish is going all worldly and soft." So right off there was a whole other dimension to the Town's troubles that I hadn't planned for (which we sadly didn't have time to explore. And reinforcing the "worldly and soft" judgment was the Town Steward, who they immediately wrote off as weak-willed and ineffectual. Also, Julie's reaction to Polygamy being challenged was great--OOC she was all "yeah! Go Dinah! I like this girl!" Though she was unsure of how to portray it IC (I told her "however you want--if you want Bethia to question Polygamy as well, go for it--she's already shown a tendency to question doctrinal interpretations."), and she seemed to express a bit of fatalism, like a "it's great that she's challenging the society like that, but it'll never work--she'll get beat down in the end" kind of attitude. I tried to counter it with emphasis on the Dogs' freedom of judgment, but we'll never know how that could have resolved.

Overall, though--while I'm frustrated at being interrupted before climax, the proto-judgments of the players, general roleplaying, and fun system that engages neatly with what's happening fictionally, all combined to make quite an enjoyable experience. Thanks Vincent, and I can't wait to play your game completely one day.

Pece,
-Joel

PS. I love roleplaying. It's the only activity that lets me to say to my future wife, "You, being a man, couldn't possibly understand," and mean it.

[Web_Weaver]

Hey Joel, Loved this post.

Just two things to say. Firstly, I totally agree that conflicts can just happen and you can be in the middle of them before you even realise that you should have picked up the dice. I have begun to attune to these situations, but that isn't always a solution either, because everyone has to be on the same page, and I have more than once stemmed the flow of the game by having to explain that everyone is getting ahead of themselves and we should all pause and set up the conflict. (As player and GM). I can only see two solutions to this, either everyone eventually gets tuned into this phenomenon and it becomes natural, or the GM is more aggressive with scene framing, and moves towards any potential conflict with this in mind. I think I prefer the former, it may take longer but it's got to be the best solution in the long run.

I also think these situations are best when the stakes are kept low, they are often the initial "feeling out the situation" conflicts and can easily be turned into different conflicts by giving and following-on.

As to the Sorcerous sickness or mundane sickness debate, I think that a lot of the game's potential is contained in these situations. It is perfectly feasible that the Dogs can take the slant that there is no demonic influence in the town. It is even possible that they can end up judging a false doctrine as compatible with the faith and accepting any sorcery as divine intervention. I like to design towns where this ambiguity can hold for at least a while, and the ones that demand negative judgement can be revealed in the middle of conflicts to great effect.

[Alan]

Hi Joel,

Are you saying that your group expects to schedule time for future roleplaying events, but won't do the same in order to finish the DiTV game?

[JC]

about the slowness: I think one of the answers is framing more aggressively

just skipping right to the good parts

play also speeds up after you get to know the rules a little better


about revealing the demonic origin of the sickness: I'd say, totally reveal it

tell your players something like "he's coughing pretty bad, and there's obviously some demons involved"

you want you players to know there's something really bad going on, and that if they don't do something quick, the whole town will fall to demons


that's my take on it, anyway

hope it helps

[Jason Morningstar]

Coupla things:

That thing where you're halfway through a conflict before you realize it?  Happens to me all the time.  Happened to me last weekend, and I was looking for it.  Tell your friends to keep an eye out for it and call it when you miss it.

Aggressive scene framing is good advice, but that's also a reasonably conmplicated town (I wrote it!).  Maybe choose something super punchy and to the point next time, and then be aggressive with time anyway. 

I think asking the players straight out if the whooping cough has a natural explanation is fine, if it's important.  But if they aren't declaring one way or the other, it probably isn't important to them. 

[Joel P. Shempert]

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

I forgot to link it before: Here's the AP report of our initiation session, if anyone's interested.

Jason: you designed that town? Rock! I loved it from the moment I saw it. The characters are engaging and the conflicts are grabby. I actually thought that town, of all the ones I perused, had enough going on to be truly engaging. I can see how it was maybe a bit overwhelmingly complicated, though. It's got a little bit of everything: murder, sex, some juicy heresy, shaky stewardship, Mountain People troubles, TA vs. Faith authority clash, and as Annie surprisingly highlighted, liquor trafficking! Whew! That IS a lot, but as I said it can be seen as a feature. The other towns I looked at seemed a bit bare, like: "Come to town, there's someone stirring up trouble, shoot 'er, chastise 'er, or side with 'er, done." Which, y'know, Coachwhip does boil down to as well, but there's enough of a tangled web around the root trouble that it's interesting and involving.

I think asking the players straight out if the whooping cough has a natural explanation is fine, if it's important.  But if they aren't declaring one way or the other, it probably isn't important to them. 

I'd say it was definitely important to them--they made a pretty strong and definitive judgment against its demonicness, in the face of the afflicted's insistence that it was. It was kinda awkward for me, 'cause from a fictional standpoint it's kind of a screwy judgment.--do the Ghostbusters come to your door, hear your complaints of an apparition, then go "eh, you ain't got no ghost" and leave, without taking any readings or nothing? Even after they see the plates flying around the room? 'Course, if the problem's on my end, with not conveying the demonic nature clearly enough, then there ya go. I thought I was clear, with how much I played up the illness and its fighting their attempts to cure it, but who knows? I'll have to ask Annie. I thik part of the problem may be the players' (including me!) newness to Dogs, and thus their not picking up on those kinds of cues as quickly.

Glad to know the "halfway through the conflict" thing isn't just me. I think it's a combination of, as I said earlier, the "talky parts aren't for rolling" habit, and the fact that in most games if you think of calling for a roll a bit late, you can still do it and work the results in, no prob.

Alan: Let me clarify what the situation was. These folks aren't in my regular roleplaying group. I met them (except Annie, of course!) through Jake Richmond, who I met through a Yahoo group, and at whose house we gather roughly monthly to try out new games and stuff. They're great folks, and I'd sure like to game with them more regularly (I previously facilitated a Capes game that was just begging for a follow-up session, but we couldn't manage to all find a night to do it), but that's A) not the purpose of these gatherings, and B) not easy with most of our schedules right now. Especially right now, as I'm getting married in a few days and going to be out of town for several weeks. Anyway, we already pushed it in stretching this Dogs session into two of the monthly gatherings, but none of us want to take up another meeting with it (and Annie and I will be honeymooning during the next one anyway). If we could have found a separate night to do it that would've been great, but as things were we all decided to let it go.

And anyway, we delayed starting to play Sea Dracula, so I can't get too mad.

Jamie: Glad you liked the post! My AP reports seem to be kind of hit and miss in terms of generating interest and discussion, so seeing all these enthusiastic responses is nice. Anything to say in particular about how the post grabbed you? I'd like to refine my AP skillz. ANd good points, especially about the ambiguity.

Peace,
-Joel

[Web_Weaver]

Anything to say in particular about how the post grabbed you?

It was personal, honest, non-judgemental and despite some negative feelings you maintained a positive attitude, that is as much as anyone can expect in an AP post.

[Jason Morningstar]

I actually thought that town, of all the ones I perused, had enough going on to be truly engaging.

Since it is the player's decisions that are the interesting part, I've found that simple and direct towns, created using the rules, are fun, too.  I've had a lot of towns that don't go all the way to sorcery, or that have a single painful problem that isn't subtle.  These play faster and you don't lose any of the goodness.  You just want to make sure there's enough ambiguity that reasonable people can differ on the course of action.

[lumpley]

About noticing there's a conflict after the conversation's been well underway: escalate. Have the NPC get up and go to walk out (or something like it) and roll dice right then, for physical but not fighting. That'll engage the rules, hiccup-free, while validating the conversation that's already gone on.

-Vincent

[Joel P. Shempert]

Good tip, Vincent, thanks.

And Jason, I see your point, and I'll have to try that. Newbie that I am to this sort of play, I guess I kind of felt if the problem were too simple and direct, the town would be over in five minutes, y'know?

Peace,
-Joel

[Joel P. Shempert]

By the way, I talked with Annie and discovered thatthere was in fact no confusion over Madeline's sickness being demonic. It was seen (by Annie, at least, and I'm guessing the others as well) as of course demonic, and treated as such, the only in character contention being whether Dinah had caused it. Which is cool, that's just Dogs making moral judgments about those they encounter, and no GM description-failure or communication confusion or anything. So yay.

Peace,
-Joel

[GregStolze]

Maybe I'm missing a point, but how much does it matter whether the disease was (1) demonic or (2) just brought on by grief?  My reading of Dogs is that you can have demonic influence be metaphorical or metaphysical -- and I'd be inclined to push that notion a little farther and say that it's an artificial division.  Demonic attacks of whooping cough ARE natural when your husband's been murdered and you're under all kinds of stress.  Of COURSE you feel better after religious authorities lay hands on you. 

-G.

[Ron Edwards]

I wholeheartedly support Greg on this issue. I'm beginning to think that confusion over the supernatural dial in Dogs is like a key indicator of larger confusion about the game.

Best, Ron

[Filip Luszczyk]

Ron,

It's not the only confusion about the game people have. There are over fourty pages of threads on the forum, and a lot of them involves questions and clarifications. If you examine them, there's a number of issues that reappear frequently.

Also, there are occasional clarifications about things that may not always be apparent in the text, depending on the assumptions brought from previous role-playing background (although it's a rather minor point, obviously).

I think that at this point a FAQ would be useful.

[Web_Weaver]

I suspect that the supernatural dial (which is of course player focused and open to interpretation) can get mixed up with the main idea that the GM should not withhold things.

I personally use the openness of interpretation as a way of confronting the players/PCs. So if players were trying to work out if a disease was of supernatural origin I would clearly and openly leave that in their hands. It is all part of their judgment role, and so to say "its clearly demonic" is actually withholding in my opinion, luckily some of my players would probably say "it's not clear to my Dog".

In my games I might have this type of exchange:

GM: His eyes flash wildly as if illuminated from an unseen place.
Player 1: So is he possessed?
GM: You tell me, I am using demonic rules but your Dog gets to decide these things not me.

Nothing is certain until the town is finished. Hate and murder can be sanctioned and sorcery interpreted as righteous divine miracles if the players so wish.

I also tend to mentally reset the dials every town, because with dials set high all the time the players only need to react and the judgments become less  about moral interpretation and more about demon hunting. Just because the last town was infested with demonic influence at every turn does not mean that everywhere is the same.