[DitV] Conflicts are tensionless

[Noclue]

Couple of ideas:

1. one sorcerer with a couple of possessed henchmen.

2. Mobs are always fun, too. Demon possessed mobs are even more fun.

3. Try to get one dog to take a liking to a character ("Reminds you of your kid sister") then put them in a place to be judged by another Dog and see if any tension develops.

4. Dont let the Dogs off the hook by making up there minds for them that something is a sin. Let them struggle with things. Its hard to shoot someone who may be a messenger from the King himself. Its hard to shoot someone who may have been misled by someone else.

[John Harper]

You said that the Dogs have a lot of oomph in talkin', yeah? A thing I've seen a few times is 'just talking' raises which ain't really raises. Like, "I say, 'Let 'er go, Jonas.' I raise with 12." Feh.

A raise is something that can't be ignored. This is an important standard. As soon as it gets lax, 'just talking' becomes crazy powerful voodoo. A Dog can have a simple conversation with someone and, problem solved.

My advice is to never, ever let that stand. It should be a challenge to come up with a thing to say that a body can't ignore. 'Just talking' doesn't mean just talking, in other words. If you can't come up with the thing to say that your opponent can't ignore, too bad. You give, or you escalate.

YMMV, but being a hardass about this (as a group) has made our games better.

[Noclue]

You said that the Dogs have a lot of oomph in talkin', yeah? A thing I've seen a few times is 'just talking' raises which ain't really raises. Like, "I say, 'Let 'er go, Jonas.' I raise with 12." Feh.

A raise is something that can't be ignored. This is an important standard. As soon as it gets lax, 'just talking' becomes crazy powerful voodoo. A Dog can have a simple conversation with someone and, problem solved.

My advice is to never, ever let that stand. It should be a challenge to come up with a thing to say that a body can't ignore. 'Just talking' doesn't mean just talking, in other words. If you can't come up with the thing to say that your opponent can't ignore, too bad. You give, or you escalate.

YMMV, but being a hardass about this (as a group) has made our games better.

Agreed 100%

[aescleal]

Ash, in the last few sessions, I didn't get the impression that the players were agonising over whether to continue with a conflict or give early.  It seemed to be a pretty foregone conclusion that the Dogs would win the conflicts, and win handily. (Note that I was GM in the last session and a player in the session before

Hi Neil,

In the last town the gunfight (second to last conflict) had me wondering on two occasions whether to give. The first was when my Dog took a bunch of physical fallout and the second was when he made the committment to draw his gun. I lost three nails in that conflict, something that an RPG hasn't done to my hands for a long time. I can't say I was agonising over the choices but the choices were there, conscious ones and made of whatever passes for free will in my mind. To me it had all the possibilities of being a perfect Dogs conflict - we'd made our choice to use lethal force and the result was going to be a bunch of dead bodies on one side or another.

After that lot I found the final conflict a bit anti-climatic. The forces of secular law and order seemed to have the edge over the forces of darkness in that town. Even in that conflict while I wasn't faced with the choice of whether we'd win (you had mostly crap die rolls if IIRC apart from a couple of biggies) I was faced with trying to see it through with some lowish traits rather than have Boaz draw his gun. Had Sister Lucy ripped off Sister Anne's arm and started laying into us with the bloody end it might have elevated the tension a bit. Must... resist... crap... jokes... about... armed... conflict...

Anyway, it was the most fun I've had in a long time - especially the gunfight. Thanks for running it.

Cheers,

Ash