Action-Adventure Dogs - Playtesting, Info, Play Experiences...

[zornwil]

Well, just lost the post I was starting to write...

Anyway, this is a follow-up to something that's been mentioned in this forum before, using Dogs in the Vineyard's core mechanics to support action-adventure style play.  I'm linking here the document that is the current *DRAFT* for this in order to get feedback and even encourage playtesting if anyone is so interested/inclined.  There is definitely work to be done, including notably building rules for the ladder that leads to a Big Bad (essentially something similar to Afraid's ladder for Monsters), the ladder for Opposition Influence, guidelines on SFX/setting and how those affect power level/narration, and the like.  Ideally, I imagine putting out a complete game with this but that requires some discussion with Vincent since, after all, it's his mechanics.  As a minor note, these rules (mostly I think, depending on how careful I was...) use the terms Challenge and Answer from Afraid instead of Raise and See; however, I'm probably going to change that again to "Action" and "Reaction" as I prefer those more generic terms, possibly with some different "flavor" terms for other games (superheroes might be, for example, "Framing the Panel" and "Finishing the Panel" for Raise/See)

The current draft is at http://www.realschluss.org/action_dogs/Dogs-provisional-action-rules.doc  (note that at the end of the doc, "Options for Disavowed" and "Options for X-Champions" are specifically for games in our home group and examples of using the rules, not the rules themselves)


Regarding the current draft of the rules, here's a few comments I think should be added:

New Character Templates - frankly we found that in action-adventure, with the emphasis more on "balance," that the preexisting templates for Dogs were unbalanced a bit (which is probably fine in that game, I'd like to state, all comments here are how these rules relate to the action-adventure genre and should not be taken to reflect on the original game), and as evidenced by Afraid there's certainly room to maneuver here.  There was some crude mathematical analysis as well here if anyone wants to take that off-line/know more.

Relationships to Sins/Belief - the brief section in these rules belies the importance of these; in action games we see this as important to reflect where Beliefs such as "Four Color Hero" or "Power is everything" or "Knowledge is critical" or the like come in; as Beliefs are generally interpreted broadly and reflect the "why" (often) a hero is a hero, these basically replace the "I am a Dog" sort of thing from the original game

Group Abilities - I'd really like to see this playtested; our local home group doesn't work like a team enough to really use this!  It may be that the mechanic doesn't provide enough incentive, though an extra "free" dice to my mind is worthwhile for a group that's going to develop some skills or costumes in common or the like. 

NPCs and Concentrating Dice - Basically, the idea here is to allow NPCs, whether they are individual participants in a Conflict (i.e., just like PCs) or a single Group NPC (as with Afraid, especially) to "stack" Raises with extra dice just like PCs, as part of action-adventure balance; I am not sure this section is clear enough, so wanted to call out the intent.  Also note I am considering and we discussed in our group to let Big Bads (major villains) do something similar, basically adding a die to a Raise but that reduces a later Raise by one; may go as far as to let Big Bads borrow further against the future, not really sure as that probably gets out of control/too lethal.  The essential issue is how PCs can stack dice, especially with d12 Schtick dice in play, and be extremely effective, which isn't bad per se, but has to be more of a balance consideration in an action-adventure game.

Constructing NPCs - This is a rough section, I hope it makes sense.  Still some flux here but I think so far the Big Bad power level is okay, requires more testing, and the "Average PC" build seems to mostly work, will discuss below in play experience to date.

[zornwil]

Re our current playtesting/play experiences to date -

I really want to take more time with this, but for now I'll hit the highlights.  As a general statement, we found the style hit the mark well for most people for a high-powered superhero game, as well as for a mid-power agents-against-occult-and-weird-mysteries sort of game.  I'm going to basically bullet point a bunch of experiences to date below.  These observations are from just 4 games so far that I've run, and a cohort has just run his first session using this system.  The only difference between his and my games right now is that he started with Slow Growth in place (which is great as we need to playtest that from the get-go; eventually the rules would include elaboration on when to and when not to recommend using this).

- inter-PC conflicts - This system didn't make them happen more, but made them more important and made the players focus on resolving them - or Giving with dice to someday follow up with.  In fact, the whole tracking of dice from Conflicts is already an interesting aspect of the game - you can actually see grudges and unresolved issues piling up, and who knows how they'll manifest?  There is a munchkin aspect that can lead some players to go for inter-PC conflict as "gimme" experience/fallout opportunities, but for now this has been okay as the players aren't munchkins themselves plus even if one does try to munchkin this, you end up forcing the game into an interesting direction, anyway, as these Conflicts really enforce character development and relationship/Relationship-building.  For our group, which has always had inter-PC conflicts, this well suits us, but definitely adds the edge that it's no longer "just a bunch of talking," it has in-game real effect.

- character generation and growth - Following up on above, we see PCs taking more and more non-power/non-"stuff" abilities and traits and focusing more on character, personality, motifs, beliefs, etc..  In some ways maybe we lose some focus on the whiz-bang fighting stuff (more on this below).  People like seeing Conflicts result in very specific things on the character sheet.  Re speed of growth, this can really be an issue, I find, especially as players get good at "using" the system to grow.  The issue is not the growth itself, it's simply the number of dice and the implication that has for Conflict duration.  For now it seems okay, but only after 3 superhero sessions that I've run we can see dice adding up aand can already see some time increase.  We'll have to watch this.  Corresponding against this, some people's vision of how their character looks doesn't reconcile well to them in terms of a "few" Traits and Resources adn Relationships, so they feel they need "more dice/more Traits" to accomplish that.  In some part, to me as well as to some other players, this is "merely" a matter of just how you write Traits and realizing not every contact/characteristic really needs to be codified in dice; however, to other players, this feels like a real gap and they want to have dice that reflect the mechanical impact of their varied and sundry contacts, abilties, etc. (and without resorting to things like "Lots of contacts everywhere"). 

- fighting - Talking matters - talking REALLY matters!  This fits our group well.  I think it fits lots of action-adventure in general well.  Some may not - but I think if not, then maybe this isn't the system for you to  use.  There is a tendency for PCs to avoid fighting because talking matters, though, and I have some mixed feelings on this dynamic.  Some of this I think is just inexperience (feeling out how far we can push fighting/lethal combat), some of it is good/justified, and some of it does relate back to the chilling effect of "real" lethality in an action-adventure game (I say this as so many RPGs don't have real risks of lethality).  The fact that every Raise "matters" shifts the dynamic from traditional tactical games where some number of moves are solely about positioning and chipping away.   I find that each Raise matters makes it easier from a GM perspective, but has to be carefully balanced against PC abilities/player expectations.  If Mr. America is invulnerable to most physical attacks, then you have to respect that in a Raise, and you also can't abuse the "kryptonite solution" and keep badgering with the same weakness every time (though to be fair some of this is also just good character construction and reasonable limits, that is really a writing issue every bit as much as it is a gaming issue).  Some players do struggle with this, though, and the lack of "absolutes' in this system.

- disadvantages/weaknesses - One thing noticably missing, and maybe it doesn't need to be addressed, hard to say, is how in many (most?) action-adventure games you have a weakness or several that essentially either grant the opposition an advantage or create narrative control elements for the GM.  This system doesn't really enforce that.  I have considered some variation of Traits/Relationships to address this but found nothing satisfactory.  I really don't want to get into dice-bargaining/minmaxing-by-points via some solution such as "you can have a d4 Weakness Trait, that gives you an extra die to add to any other Trait but as GM I get to roll 1d6 when your weakness comes up," or the like, too messy, opens a pandora's box of unpleasant minmaxing.  It might just e a narrative-enforced elements for certain genra, such as superheroes, "pick a weakness."  Don't know.  But we definitely see the loss of that - our character vulnerable to cold is managed fine narratively but there's no incentive for the PC to actually be "vulnerable to cold".

- NPCs - so far NPCs seem okay.  I pretty much threw out the "environmental" sort of opposition, the 4d6+4dX, as that's just so incredibly easy for PCs to deal with after a bit of experience.  Not in the rules (yet), but I instead usually build an environmental opposition exactly as a normal NPC, using the exact same rules according to the level of challenge I want from the obstacle.  Anyway, so far NPCs are working to create good challenges.  The Average PC build is good for that as you might expect - EXCEPT that the existence of PCs at varying ends of that curve of number and type of dice makes for some unnevenness in that the Average PC might be far below the top-end PC of the group while far above the bottom-end PC.  Whether this is a vice or virtue is a matter of taste, I feel.  Where the PCs are mostly present, it doesn't really show up as quite as much of an issue, as they can work together.  Where the PCs go one-on-one, it definitely can be seen, but it also reflects their relative abilities.  The percentage-randomized NPC creation I've only done a bit of, I think maybe it should be removed and replaced with guideliens on making NPCs more or less powerful; the time I really used it I just took low and high values for a couple specific attributes, really, which is more sensible and practical.

That's what comes to mind for now.  Still going through recordings of games so more may come up later.

[zornwil]

I think this might be of interest as actual play experience.  The below is first a narrative descripton of the imagined scene the roleplaying generated, I include it because I think it's vital to the commentary following it, which is the commentary that we as a group had in discussing how it went afterwards.  (We were more attentive to that than usual given we had just switched the game from HERO to this adapted version of Dogs, and wanted to do a pulse check)

First a quick note on the below description - everything here was from Raises and Sees as part of a single Conflict, which was basically "Does the Justice Squad stop Eternity?" (Eternity being a nemesis, I won't provide background to the conflict as I don't think it's important to the point of this thread)

*************************************** BEGINNING OF PLAY RESULT
   Suddenly, before the Justice Squad has had a chance to regroup, tentacles burst into the skies and throughout the world, as witnessed prior in the digital dimension - except they are not infinite tentacles.  The beginning and end of them can be seen and it's clear Eternity is not entirely whole.  Much of the ectoplasm becomes visible as Eternity materializes. 

   The Justice Squad - like many of the people of the world - hears as thoughts in their  head from Eternity, "I've had enough.  I will end this planet now, and I will ingest it and I will grow that much more."  Robots and many of those with happy thoughts do not "hear" his declaration.  Schizophrenics, sensitives, and other such sorts hear it much louder, though.  His "words" are harsh to any who can perceive this, causing pain and emotional trauma.  Even the Justice Squad can feel this.  Hundreds of millions of people around the world pass out.  The entity goes on to say, to the Justice Squad specifically, "I know what you all think.  I know how you all think."  Eternity is using what he's learned about the Justice Squad as they've fought his Heralds and such.  Eternity's words ring in their heads, echoing.  Nexus cannot shake off the stunning revelations and fear running through him and is dazed.  Laughton's mental defenses are not strong enough, either, and his mind and strange alien body feels a heretofore unknown fear paralyzing him momentarily.  Sammy is petrified, fear manifesting in pain racking his body. 

   Pyewacket helps Nexus try to find a special extra-dimensional portal open to attack Eternity, but their view is clouded, unable to find what they're looking for.  Laughton reflects on his forms' various weaknesses despite their inscrutability as opposed to what they know about Eternity, and takes a moment to scan the situation and try to find a way to get Eternity without actually coming to direct blows.  But Eternity half-materializes, passing among the Justice Squad, and distracts Laughton in so doing.  Laughton, however, surmises that depriving Eternity of information or material would further harm him.  Laughton and Nexus telepathically muse on moving everyone to a pocket dimension, leaving Eternity alone. 

   Before they can decide, Sammy weighs in, appealing to Eternity, "Great being!  I understand hunger!  Don't eat this world, there's too many marvelous things that would be lost if you did that.  You need to appreciate this world." 

   Eternity does pause, responding, "Maybe I'll linger and enjoy it a lot longer.  Yes, I'll think of that."  The pace of destruction around the globe slows; Eternity concentrates more on the Justice Squad.

   Sammy thinks maybe he can make a friend out of Eternity after all.  Meanwhile, Nexus consults with Gere-luce about a way to get a huge explosive within Eternity. 

   Eternity then moves his tentacles, attempting to slice through the Justice Squad.  Nexus moves his cape and shifts through a dimensional escape in the nick of time, avoiding Eternity's dimension-spanning tentacles.  Laughton activates his Omega armor force field, now attuned to Eternity's energies, out of his "klepto-pool" and blocks the tentacles, but it's not enough against Eternity's concentrated awesome power.  Sammy volunteers for a Laughton special maneuver, and is turned into the mercurial blob form fitted with the force field, managing to rescue both Laughton and Sammy from Eternity's effects and absorbing the blast into Sammy's transformed body.  Laughton moves to counter-strike, but Eternity saw this coming, and uses his uncanny abilities to transform Laughton from  his protected state into a helpless purely-Laughton form!  This also makes Sammy revert to his normal form.  Sammy stays with trying to convince Eternity to appreciate the planet, but at this point Eternity ignores him. 

   Nexus readies the bomb he and Gere-luce have hastily concocted, putting it into the Black Buick and launching it into Eternity!  Laughton signals for the satellite systems to make the emitted anti-Eternity radiation into coherent light, blinding Eternity to the Buick.  Eternity attempts to shift dimensions himself, realizing the Justice Squad can affect him materially, but he cannot escape in time.  The bomb causes vast parts of Eternity to blow apart, though he manages, barely, to survive. 

   Desperate, Eternity reaches out to attempt to summon the T'suara-beings.  Chills of fear ripple through Nexus and Sammy (who thinks Eternity just wants friends and offers up they can be friends).  Laughton, picking up on this attempt, transforms to T'suara and declares, "We're already here, buddy."  Eternity pauses, thinking he can turn this to his advantage as he believes that T'suara works multiple sides and can be manipulated.

   Nexus transports Laughton instantly to the Justice Squad space base, where Laughton momentarily manipulates the satellite network to further tear away at Eternity's defenses and distract him.  Nexus transports Laughton back in a moment to then surprise Eternity with a turn-to-putty attack!  Eternity's voice echoes, "You'll never stop me," as he starts to become affected.  At the last second, before turning to putty, Eternity says "Wait," and shrinks to a humanoid being, "I am the manifestation of the Eater.  The one advance scout I had, Lovecraft, called me Cthuhlu, a stupid name... I will leave your Earth dimensions alone.  I am done.  I will never touch it again.  And consider that I am just another natural force.  I will move on to weaker places, less interesting ones even."  Then it is turned to putty.

****************************************  ENDING OF PLAY RESULT

So afterwards as we talked about this, the group felt good about this reflecting superhero "stuff."  One of the biggest favorite maneuvers and the one seen as ideally replicating superhero action was the Lend a Die mechanic.  This was considered to feel like very much like the way superheroes join together to topple a Big Bad - and as a personal note, I think this is a good demonstration of the strength of the Dogs-style mechanics, as you simply don't see this kind of action in many if not most more tactically-based/traditional RPGs professing to support this style of play.

The narrative-focused style also supported, we found, the broad sweep of super-duper hero action.  It becomes easy to say, with a Block, "He foresaw the future!" basically.  It gets easy to have things happen as in another big battle immediately prior to this one such as having an opponent grow to giant proportions and try to smash the Justice Squad's space base with one of the PCs inside. 

Individual Raises/Sees have interesting degrees of mattering and whether a player wants his PC to Take the Blow.  Above, when I attempted to introduce the T'suara-beings (long story...) into the battle, I wanted to test to see just how badly Laughton's player might want to block that one, because while the Laughton character is super-curious, he's also extremely averse to actually finding out more about his own people, out of an ego-based fear that they could actually be more intelligent and more powerful than he is, as well as he is actually scared a bit of why/how they would have stranded him on Earth with no memory or direct knowledge of them.  So the player and GM get to have some interesting plot/story-affecting moments incorporated into those Raises and Sees, again working for our mysteries and style of play, and representing that Taking the Blow can have strong long-term repercussions outside the immediate Conflict.

On a mechanical note, the Big Bad build rules seemed to work.  Against the single Big Bad of Eternity, 2 of 3 PCs in this Conflict were nearly entirely in on their Traits and all.  One PC had a few d10s left to roll.  But I was also holding back a bit, as Eternity had no NPCs assisting him and I also played him as over-confident so I blew big dice early on deliberately.  So it seemed a good challenge.

One player commented "It modeled comic book flow."  Another said "Playing Nexus this way is a lot closer to the way I envisioned Nexus."  The Laughton player did feel he needed to leverage relationships better, something he had figured out in working around/through HERO but feels he lacks some dice there in this version. 

For me, the most interesting thing is the way to change people's minds and influence their actions without over tmind control but using words and meaningful trickery (not just a simple roll with a high stat but competitively and interestingly). 

[Filip Luszczyk]

Oh, looks like there are still no comments.

So, I've read this a while back, and I plan to give you some feedback eventually - only, more pressing things were cropping up lately, and I just don't have time to write anything substantial at the moment.

[zornwil]

No worries, thanks for that note!

[Valamir]

Perhaps the easiest / cleanest way to address classic "weaknesses" using Dog's style mechanics is just to let the OTHER side claim those dice.

"I'm going to nail you with my power blast...so now I'm rolling my Power Blast 2d8 dice"

"Great, of course we already know there are civilians and lots of private property around, so I'm going to claim your Power Control 1d6 die" and then in his block he can narrate the Power Blast blowing some some parked cars and sending civilians running for cover.

The only rules question then, is do you identify things specifically AS "weaknesses" or just allow any trait to be claimed like this if it can justifiably be used against them in the current conflict.

That would be be fun.  Imagine a character with "Every problem is a nail to be hammered 2d10" on a romantic date that someone turns into a Conflict.  If I'm the adversity trying to make the date go south, I'm totally claiming that Trait and having lots of fun narrating it.

[zornwil]

Right, the problem I've had to date is exactly that nuance, beyond just people roleplaying/voluntarily self-limiting, how to make a weakness "worthwhile"?  Also, mechanically, how can a condition be undone/turned back, e.g., "this Trait doesnt' work in cold," Raise by GM is "Mr. Freeze shoots the ray," but later say a player wants to do a Raise "My PC's heat engine dispels the cold, saving my friend," how would this all work reasonably?  It gets twiddly beyond what I can see so far makes sense, detracting from the flow as well as having no in-play impetus to use this mechanically, and Dogs is strong for its mechanical tie to "weaknesses", such as why players are willing to Take the Blow.

[Valamir]

Not sure I'm following the example bit.

Say you have this:

GM:  "Mr Freeze turns his freeze powers on Sidekick Boy, encasing him in a block of ice".  If the Player doesn't Take the Blow, SB is just fine.  So we'll say player Takes the Blow.  Dang, poor Sidekick Boy is on ice.

Later the Player says:  "Heat Meister uses his Engine of Heat to make the block of ice melt and free Sidekick Boy".

If the GM Takes the Blow, then SB is free.  If not, not.

Why would it need to be more complicated then that?


If a player has a Trait that "Doesn't Work in the Cold", then if its cold, he doesn't get the dice.  No different then a player who has "Mad Knifefighting Skillz" doesn't get to use them when he doesn't have a knife.

Now if it wasn't cold initially, and player DID use those dice, and then Mr. Freeze steps in to make it cold and thus "turn the power off" there are a couple of easy ways to do this.

In either case I'd build the "make it cold enough to turn off the power" be an effect that has to be declared as part of a raise.  If the player Takes the Blow his power turns off.  If he blocks he gets to describe how he managed to keep the power up despite the cold.

Assuming he takes the blow than:

1) the easy way, just narrate the effects of having the power turn off and be done with it.  The impact is just color, but perhaps meaningful color if it means some effect (like imprisoning the goons in a force field cage that just turned off) ends.

2) the fiddly way, track which dice came from that power and if they haven't been used yet, ditch 'em.

3) my favorite way, claim those same dice for the other side (which avoids the whole fiddly tracking thing).  So you had "Force Field powers 1d10" which don't work in cold.  Mr. Freeze just made it cold.  Your Force Field powers turn off.  The GM now claims 1d10 for their side to balance out the 1d10 you claimed for yours.  You now claim the 1d4 (or whatever) for the Weakness Trait because your weakness is now part of the story.  Alternatively, you could just define Weaknesses as not having a die trait association.


Now, as to why a player might take "doesn't work in cold" as a limitation...I doubt you'd really have to work too hard at that, after all players generally enjoy hosing their own characters as long as its fun to do.  But the easy solution to encourage it is just to build it into both character creation and as a choice on the fallout tables.  You could say "every power has a Weakness".  Or you could tie more weaknesses into more complicated backgrounds (or whatever your equivalent packages are).  Or you could just let them come up or not as players see fit.

[zornwil]

Mandating capital-W Weaknesses would be against what I think makes sense or should happen, personally, in terms of strict mechanics.  That said, while not written, there does have to be some forms of weakness for Raises to work, such as with Superman - if you build that character, you have to say "okay, what makes him not completely invincible?" 

Mechanically, though, the point would be as you say some dice trade-off, similar to your #3, declare a Weakness to a power, add a d4 if it comes into play but the GM gets the same level of Trait.  However, that's not balanced - a d12 versus a d4 Trait have very different effects if a Weakness adds a d4.  Might be possible to say a Weakness gets you 1dX where X = -1 to the d-type of the Trait, no Weaknesses for a d4 Trait or such.  Not sure this is balanced. 

In any event, balance is much more important in this type of game compared to regular Dogs, given the game is as much or possibly more about PC-versus-NPC/environment than PC-versus-self/other PC. 

The issue is the detail you gloss over - what to award and how to balance it against a character's many Traits/Relationships-Beliefs. 

I don't see any issue with narration-based weakness stuff, that's fine, but if a mechanic exists it has to be both balanced in PC-vs-PC/NPC and systemically against what might be personal narrational weaknesses.  In the latter case, I mean tha if someone finds during developing a character that there's a weakness to a Trait they should have reasons they might or might not convert it to a Weakness.  (the capitalized version being the mechanical one, the lower case the narration one).

Though, anyway, I like your +d4 idea, though refined as I mentioned in this post.  Will run it by the group.

[Valamir]

I wouldn't overobsess about "balance".  I understand the different flavor you want, but really I don't think it will be an issue.  Its a weakness.  You're supposed to be hosed by your weakness.  That's why its a weakness.  The very nature of having one is to immediately unbalance the situation.  I think if your players enjoy the genre they really won't be concerned by that.

Personally, I wouldn't even give the d4.  But if you really want to, just let it be bought up with fall out like any other Trait.  No need for a special rule.

Dog's is a super resilient system.  I wouldn't worry about it.  If the weakness "unbalances" things such that players get a beat down where they otherwise wouldn't, that's great.  Its totally in genre.  PLUS mechanically it probably means they got a horde of fall out and likely some experience dice...so getting beat down is self balancing.  They'll use those fall out traits and experience to overcome the unbalanced weakness and it will all work out in the end.

[zornwil]

As you say, you're supposed to be "hosed" by your weakness - that's why balance is important.  If the weakness doesn't hose you, or if you can manipulate the system too easily to get better/worse levels of hosing, then it's not working.

As a player, I'm not going to take a weakness that gives the GM the same dice if I'm not getting anything for that - just like I wouldn't take Fallout if it didn't lead to a reward.

I'm not sure what you mean by "let it be bought up with fall out like any other Trait." - let what be bought with Fallout?  An additional d4 Trait you mean, "I am weak to (x)"?  Again, if I'm going to buy that as Fallout, which is fine, then mechanically I should just get the d4 and the GM shouldn't get anything if there's "no special rule."

It's discussions like this that would make me believe it'd be better not to attempt to embed weaknesses into mechanics.

[Filip Luszczyk]

Ok, I finally managed to get down to it...

First, I'd like to see the math behind the template changes, and learn your reasons for doing it this particular way.

Beliefs sound like fun. However, have you considered using Bonds from Afraid? I think the mechanic could be fitting here.

As for Schticks, I wonder why the rule about declaring one Trait/Relationship as such. Wouldn't it be easier to simply give every character a chosen Schtick at 1d12 right away?

Resources seem kind of awkward. Given that they have no mechanical effect, what's the reason for limiting their numbers, tying Fallout to them and all? All in all, they are purely descriptive and I wonder whether there would be a point to bother with them at all. Why not simply leave all this stuff implicit in character concept, or treat them as Traits, Relationships, Belongings or Temporary d20s?

Group Abilities sound like they are not worth the bother. You put a whole lot of constraints there, only to limit gaining this one bonus die. With all the restrictions, I'd expect them to be very difficult to gain in the first place, and probably not attractive enough to even try. The rule about the players missing sessions sounds to me like a real killer here.

Now, the concept of Group Abilities in itself is cool. However, I suggest streamlining this part. I think you could safely wave most of the restrictions and, say, limit these to Reflection Fallout to get rid of potential acquisition issues. Or, it could be done another way. What if players had a Fallout option of designating their stuff as part of a Group Ability, naming the ability and giving it a single die when the first Trait, Relatinship or Belonging is designated and adding one more die (or pumping the d-size) for each additional designation in the group? Then, these bonus dice could be brought to the conflict if the players use all the designated traits and aggree about tapping the Group Ability.

Say, three of the four players have: Red Avenger 2d8+d4, Blue Avenger 2d8+d4 and Green Avenger 2d8+d4, each designated as part of The Ultimate Avenger 3d6 (or 2d8, or 1d10). Once all three players bring their vehicles to the conflict, they can decide to combine into the Ultimate Avenger, rolling its dice (who exactly would get the dice, I have no idea - maybe the players need to agree about their distribution in the first place, or the Group Ability doesn't work). Now, it wouldn't matter that the fourth player does not contribute to the Group Ability - but later, he could add White Avenger 2d8+d4 and with subsequent Fallout designate it as part of The Ultimate Avenger Group Ability, improving it by one die or d-size. From then on, the combination wouldn't be possible without his participation.

Group NPCs modification and Concentration options sound interesting.

What's the reason for awarding Reflection only for defeating the Big Bad? Notice that it shifts the overall direction of play strongly. In vanilla Dogs the group effectively gains Reflection Fallout when everyones feels like it (i.e. when they decide there's nothing more to do in the town) and it doesn't depend on their overall success. In Afraid, on the other hand, Reflection is gained both for defeating monsters and when somebody gets defeated by it. Here, you have a straigth arcade-ish "beat the boss" situation - which is not bad in itself, but I think it's worth considering carefully whether it works exactly the way it's supposed to.

Regarding slow growth options, I think they don't go well with standard Fallout charts. Basically, instead of short- and long-term Fallout you have immediate and short term Fallout (i.e. how many times per session you have a chance to use those long-term Fallout dice before they evaporate?). What if the charts were modified for this option? For example, you could merge short and long term Fallout together, having only one type of session-long Fallout (e.g. one pick at 1-7, two picks at 8-11, three picks at 12+), and possibly something like lasting Fallout at 16+ (that would always be permanent, instead of the group choosing one player to receive long-term changes). Or something in these lines.

NPC creation rules seem somewhat problematic to me. First, those percentages and stuff sound more fiddly and time-consuming than needed - what's the point of bothering with all the math, really? It doesn't seem to be worth potential payoffs in balance and challenge level. Second, I don't like the concept of "average PC". It does, indeed, ascertain the group will be facing appropriate challenges from session to sesssion. However, what's the point of advancement, then? The opposition levels up along with you, so the only real effect is that conflicts become longer and longer as you deal with growing and growing buckets of dice. I believe a gradual increase of challenge levels is fitting here, but I'd suggest dropping the concept of mathematically balancing things to each single point (in fact, I think your HERO background surfaces here, but such approach doesn't work evry well paired with the nature of DitV mechanics).

Now, there's this pool of free dice you roll for each batch of Proto-NPCs. What if every so often the number of rolls on the Free Dice chart was increasing by one? Maybe it could happen with every new six-pack, or with every session, or with every defeated boss. Either way, I think something like that would ascertain gradually raising challenge levels, but without overbalancing things to the point when the advancement effectively dillutes.

[Filip Luszczyk]

Oh yeah, one more thing came to my mind.

There's a potential trap in the Concentration rules. Deciding which characters are "eligible" is tricky. By definition, everyone plays his or her own side in DitV conflicts.

[zornwil]

AARRRGH, I had this long response nearly completed and accidentally hit the back button, and had forgotten to copy everything as I went.......grrrr...........

Ok, I finally managed to get down to it...

First, I'd like to see the math behind the template changes, and learn your reasons for doing it this particular way.

The reason was simply that in playing over time we learned that some templates were simply much more powerful.  In regular Dogs and the way interaction works this is less of a concern (if at all, that could be argued/discussed but is not the point of this, anyway), but in an action-adventure game, especially for each PC to shine properly against NPCs, it's important to have tighter balance (though alternately some templates could just be indicated as weaker, to be fair). 

Although coincidentally to your writing this, I was just starting last night to write a note to Vincent to see if it would be at all possible to get an "under the hood" glimpse to guide this, as we'd also like to start doing templates that are different to incorporate other genra/viewpoints such as "Mutant," "Super-skilled,", etc., and also create guidelines for creating templates.  I don't pretend to understand the math/work that went into the initial templates or how the Afraid ones were arrived at.

The process to date has been simply using dice averages for the Stats and Traits, and for Relationships doing mostly the same except multiplying by a partial value, given they are not universally used, with a higher partial value for the higher value dice (after all, you know they're going to get used more) and a lower partial value for the lower dice.  And also comparing number of dice, since that's important as well.  I do not claim it's perfect, at all, but using these variables we attempted to get the templates all within the same numbers ballpark. 

So far the new templates seem reasonably balanced, though it's always difficult to judge with varying player skill levels.

Beliefs sound like fun. However, have you considered using Bonds from Afraid? I think the mechanic could be fitting here.

Thanks, yes, looked at this but as per some comments on their actual use (including from Vincent) stayed away from for now as it didn't seem they were lending enough and we couldn't find enough value - but really did think about it/'want" to use them.  in the end, though, Relationship (which is really all Beliefs are in the end, no difference than to a Sin or such) mechanics seemed to cover this just as well.

As for Schticks, I wonder why the rule about declaring one Trait/Relationship as such. Wouldn't it be easier to simply give every character a chosen Schtick at 1d12 right away?

We've found d12s are pretty darn effective, and feel so far the d12s for Schticks do a nice job of making these abilities stand out. 

By not enforcing a d12 Schtick at once, it leaves Schtick development to character growth and in-play decisions, so people get to sculpt and interact as play develops.  This seems to work nicely, nobody is tied down to the Schtick until they've developed their character as appropriate - but once they choose to go to d12s, they have to choose which thing is "their" thing.

Resources seem kind of awkward. Given that they have no mechanical effect, what's the reason for limiting their numbers, tying Fallout to them and all? All in all, they are purely descriptive and I wonder whether there would be a point to bother with them at all. Why not simply leave all this stuff implicit in character concept, or treat them as Traits, Relationships, Belongings or Temporary d20s?

Resources are definitely a debatable experiment, and there was debate on whether to use them.  What they are there for is especially geared towards higher-powered play and picking up PCs "in progress," as these sorts of PCs often have many abilities and the like that don't constitute dice but do constitute SFX/narrative capability.  This allows a way to manage and constrain that, as well as, even in ongoing games, to add to Resources and declare "this is mine" even if the story itself didn't go there. 

As you say, the mechanical divorce is questionable.  One consideration has been to allow a Relationship to be invoked freely if it's also on the Resource sheet, i.e., the player has free reign for pulling in the PC's Resources at whim. 

So far, Resources have been at least a little useful as a way to track PC features that haven't come up directly in play or for which it wasn't clear the PC had "ownership" - but that's been about it, and we'll have to just see how it goes.  That said, also, the number of slots shouldn't be as written in the rules, they should be variable per group convention, assuming this survives - for example, in the game we just started, given the supers are both novice as supers and young, they got 5 slots.

Group Abilities sound like they are not worth the bother. You put a whole lot of constraints there, only to limit gaining this one bonus die. With all the restrictions, I'd expect them to be very difficult to gain in the first place, and probably not attractive enough to even try. The rule about the players missing sessions sounds to me like a real killer here.

Although I essentially understand/agree with the concern overall, I don't think I agree with, don't understand your comments on, or possibly you don't understand the missing sessions thing.  On the plus side, anyone missing the session gets a free benefit.  And in my experience, a group that is tightly integrated (in terms of how the players direct the PCs get along) will be much more likely than not to pick something an absent player woudl be okay with.  I think it would be quite rare for a player to rejoin a group and say "that's bunk, no way do I agree with that!"  Now, there are PC groups that deliberately don't coordinate/don't want to really cooperate, and that's fine - Group abilities are not for them.

That said, though, as I said I essentially otherwise agree, I think it does need to be sweetened as a deal or just dropped.  For now I'd like to see what our group discussion leads to in our novice super Reflection choices upcoming, and go from there as a cue.  Our other main PC group isn't a good judge, as that group is a divided group that doesn't (mostly) socialize with each other, doesn't coordinate except with one-offs among the group, etc..  It could be group dice get more than just the 1 extra or are just easier to gain.

Now, the concept of Group Abilities in itself is cool. However, I suggest streamlining this part. I think you could safely wave most of the restrictions and, say, limit these to Reflection Fallout to get rid of potential acquisition issues. Or, it could be done another way. What if players had a Fallout option of designating their stuff as part of a Group Ability, naming the ability and giving it a single die when the first Trait, Relatinship or Belonging is designated and adding one more die (or pumping the d-size) for each additional designation in the group? Then, these bonus dice could be brought to the conflict if the players use all the designated traits and aggree about tapping the Group Ability.

Say, three of the four players have: Red Avenger 2d8+d4, Blue Avenger 2d8+d4 and Green Avenger 2d8+d4, each designated as part of The Ultimate Avenger 3d6 (or 2d8, or 1d10). Once all three players bring their vehicles to the conflict, they can decide to combine into the Ultimate Avenger, rolling its dice (who exactly would get the dice, I have no idea - maybe the players need to agree about their distribution in the first place, or the Group Ability doesn't work). Now, it wouldn't matter that the fourth player does not contribute to the Group Ability - but later, he could add White Avenger 2d8+d4 and with subsequent Fallout designate it as part of The Ultimate Avenger Group Ability, improving it by one die or d-size. From then on, the combination wouldn't be possible without his participation.

I think as evidence to the basic complexity but also the difficulty of text-only asynchronous communication, I have a hard time exactly getting your suggestion, but definitely will give it some thought and look over more.  One holdover problem with this suggestion (as with my original version) is that a player could easily sabotage everyone by agreeing to an ability and then hardly ever allowing its use - probably one easy fix is to say that there's an additional dice for each party beyond the first who contributes to a group ability, or such.  But requires more thought so as not to get overwhelming, too.

Group NPCs modification and Concentration options sound interesting.

What's the reason for awarding Reflection only for defeating the Big Bad? Notice that it shifts the overall direction of play strongly. In vanilla Dogs the group effectively gains Reflection Fallout when everyones feels like it (i.e. when they decide there's nothing more to do in the town) and it doesn't depend on their overall success. In Afraid, on the other hand, Reflection is gained both for defeating monsters and when somebody gets defeated by it. Here, you have a straigth arcade-ish "beat the boss" situation - which is not bad in itself, but I think it's worth considering carefully whether it works exactly the way it's supposed to.

Yeah, it's definitely traditional "beat the boss"  Experience to date strongly suggests it works fine, the proper incentive is all there.  Although no doubt this part translates easily to trad players and less so for those not wanting that - although to be fair if you don't want to play that way you shouldn't play this game - you should play another game like Dogs in the Vineyard. 

That said, I do want to qualify what "beating" the Big Bad means - it could mean the PCs decide he's right and join him (and he accepts them) for all I or the mechanics care.  That isn't spelled out, but that's the intent and how I run games in general.  I've often seen PCs join conspiracies they originally fought.  That's certainly another way to win.  It's important that the Story Arc be fair enough in its goals and not NECESSARILY (depending on the group and all) be "kill or be killed."  But it is a basic zero-sum game in that the Big Bad will be somehow no longer a threat.

Regarding slow growth options, I think they don't go well with standard Fallout charts. Basically, instead of short- and long-term Fallout you have immediate and short term Fallout (i.e. how many times per session you have a chance to use those long-term Fallout dice before they evaporate?). What if the charts were modified for this option? For example, you could merge short and long term Fallout together, having only one type of session-long Fallout (e.g. one pick at 1-7, two picks at 8-11, three picks at 12+), and possibly something like lasting Fallout at 16+ (that would always be permanent, instead of the group choosing one player to receive long-term changes). Or something in these lines.

I think, based on what we've seen in play, the Long/Short Term Fallout still works great in a Story Arc, even if the Story Arc is a single session, as there are often (and generally ought to be IMHO) some number of Conflicts in a session. 

HOWEVER, as you say, there's some issues, and we've already just about jettisoned the notion of Session Fallout and Session Experience.  It was based on my own bad habits that almost never have things neatly fitting across sessions or such, but I can deal with that, and nearly everyone runs identifiable Story Arcs over some discrete period of time such as 1-3 sessions.  So we don't need a lot of that.

BUT, and YAY, I think you've helped a lot to fix an issue remaining here, in terms of keeping up with Fallout on the Permanent Sheet, I like the 16+ yielding Permanent Fallout.  Have to do a little analysis on probable/reasonable frequencies to more or less balance with Experience and be sure PCs have ongoing d4s in their mix, but something much like this if not this should work quite well and really fits!  Thanks a lot - and of course, should say now, thanks for ALL the comments, I really appreciate it.

NPC creation rules seem somewhat problematic to me. First, those percentages and stuff sound more fiddly and time-consuming than needed - what's the point of bothering with all the math, really? It doesn't seem to be worth potential payoffs in balance and challenge level.

Yeah, it's twiddly.     More likely it will be replaced with some guidelines/suggestions.  The bother was simply to experiment with a method to allow more variability, but I agree there's not enough pay-off for the complexity.

Second, I don't like the concept of "average PC". It does, indeed, ascertain the group will be facing appropriate challenges from session to sesssion. However, what's the point of advancement, then? The opposition levels up along with you, so the only real effect is that conflicts become longer and longer as you deal with growing and growing buckets of dice. I believe a gradual increase of challenge levels is fitting here, but I'd suggest dropping the concept of mathematically balancing things to each single point (in fact, I think your HERO background surfaces here, but such approach doesn't work evry well paired with the nature of DitV mechanics).

Now, there's this pool of free dice you roll for each batch of Proto-NPCs. What if every so often the number of rolls on the Free Dice chart was increasing by one? Maybe it could happen with every new six-pack, or with every session, or with every defeated boss. Either way, I think something like that would ascertain gradually raising challenge levels, but without overbalancing things to the point when the advancement effectively dillutes.

The central/important point is that the challenges should be equal as long as you play the game - it's not Dogs in the Vineyard, and instead there's a static nature to the opposition in these things, although typically one escalates the consequences of Stakes and so on.  The importance/point of growing more powerful is that you "pull away" from mere regular people in power (even in a non-supers action/adventure) but you also "outgrow" the Big Bads you once fought, they become ho-hum as you face them ongoing - remember, they are built statically, at one point in time, and PC growth necessarily outweighs Big Bad growth.  The new Big Bads/other challenges, however, do need to be on par - balance is very important.  Despite the inherent imbalance between PCs and NPCs (over time) in Dogs in the Vineyard, a big selling point of the system itself is its high degree of balance, given it's real divorce of SFX and mechanics (I'm not saying it's strictly balanced, I think perfect balance is an illusion given differing player calibers and more importantly (but related) the ability to so strongly influence SFX in narration in this particular game, but all of that is not really relevant, just some stray thoughts).  Of course, balance isn't (and oughtn't) be a primary concern of DitV but must be in this game.

The buckets of dice is a critical issue/side effect, agreed.  We discussed this a lot, including simply a "system" (guidance) as to when to "reset" a campaign, by which I mean at some point you say "we have too many dice, and we're really at a new level of power, so let's restart our characters understanding our SFX put us at this level but go back to fewer dice."  Nothing necessarily wrong with that and still could be considered. 

But instead we opted to try out the Slow Growth concept and the permanent/temporary character sheets as part of that.  As you raise, a key question (and one we don't have an answer yet for and likely won't for a while) is whether this works over a long period of time well enough.

That said, I do like the Free Dice expansion idea.  I was thinking of some total pool notions like this before.  Just haven't arrived at a good method, and still feeling that the Slow Growth route is likely to work.

Phew, this time I have this all saved and didn't lose it! 

Thanks so much, once again, for all your contributions.

[zornwil]

Oh yeah, one more thing came to my mind.

There's a potential trap in the Concentration rules. Deciding which characters are "eligible" is tricky. By definition, everyone plays his or her own side in DitV conflicts.

I don't see it as more tricky than ensuring a normal Raise does or doesn't affect everyone, especially when the targets are spread out.  But I think I don't see what exactly you mean in your concern?  Not to say that eligibility is 100% straightforward, but I don't see it outside of a very reasonable/easy judgement call as required.  Please elaborate, if you would, thanks.