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

[Filip Luszczyk]

Regarding temlates, I'd like to learn the design decisions behind stadnard DitV backrounds as well, actually. I've been pondering this recently, and I've been considering starting a topic about this. However, I don't really expect that there was any real math involved in this.

Last time I've been re-working backgrounds, by the way, I've been simply assigning each die a point value equal to its maximum result possible, regardless whether it was in Stats, Traits or Relationships. The method is flawed as far as balance is concerned, obviously, but I've been looking for mathematical symmetry in the first place. I doubt it's really possible to balance (or maybe rather unbalance?) things in DitV that way - in the end, too much depends on the group's standards of trait applicability, and technically it's always possible to roll more dice for improvisation, which kind of undermines the value of non-d10 stuff.

The main problem here is that in Dogs you are not really limited by the number of dice on your sheet - it's rather, you are limited by your ability to work within the boundaries of group consensus, your creative juices and your own willingness to prolong the conflict. However, a lot depends on how strict the group is with improvisations and how Belongings in general and group conflicts are handled, as there no hard constraints on these. The whole economy is entirely group-dependent as a result.

As for the Resources, one thing:

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.

Wouldn't it effectively just be the same as changing the Relationship into a Trait?

Also, a general note regarding Group Abilities:

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.

You seem to struggle with a basic design problem. You want to include an option, however, you have a silent assumption that it won't be used (or, will be used only in extremely rare circumstances). However, once you put a rule in there, it's there for the players to use. It's usually more effective not to include an option at all (or mechanically restrict it only to those very specific circumstances when it's legit).

At the same time, you can have rules that are for some players and not for others. Only, those who are willing to use the rule properly don't really need restrictions and options for using it the way they wouldn't do it anyway. Those who shouldn't use the rule in the first place, in turn, don't need the restrictions because they don't need the rule at all.

Just some general principles, dunno how they fit in your design paradigm.

Now, concerning challenge levels:

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.

I can't know how exactly it worked in your games. However, my experience from games that followed a similar model is that despite "outgrowing" old enemies, the group was meaningfully interacting only with opposition on par, anyway (i.e. facing old enemies again wasn't engaging, so to make things interesting the GM had to continually introduce balanced opposition). Therefore, it rarely made any difference that the numbers on the sheet were higher and indicated greater power levels - in practice, the relative effectiveness remained more or less comparable all the time. To the point that as far as challenge level was concerned, the characters and their adversaries could just as well stand in place, math-wise.

I've seen two models where advancement actually affected gameplay:

First, in games where advancement opened new meaningful, tactical options for the player (e.g. various d20 games) raising in power was important as it was efectively making gameplay different, affecting its complexity. In DitV, however, this is not the case - tactical options remain the same all the time, and not even narrative constraints change (i.e. they are entirely group-dependent). The only thing that changes is that narrating this or that can be meaningful mechanically.

Second, if there was an pre-made adventure in use that defined the opposition prior to the start of the game, and it made enough place for serious advancement at the same time, it was important who the players face and in what order. It worked because challenge levels were pre-defined and set in stone rather than dynamic. There was a stable environment in which the players had to maneuver rather than one constantly adjusting to their characters. Again, I'm thinking about some d20 modules, but vanilla DitV follows a very close model (i.e. challenge levels are set objectively and do not adjust to the group).

All in all, I think the main problem here is that you seem to aim for lon-term campaign play. However, DitV as a system doesn't support this very well. It requires some rather fundamental changes.

And the last issue:

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.

The thing is, the rule requires considering the participants in terms of their sides, but everyone always is only on one's own side. Not even helping other PCs/NPCs or Raising against them changes it (i.e. it only means that in this particular moment doing this furthers one's private goals). Deciding who is affected by a Raise is straigthforward - you simply say who is, and narrate something that can't be ignored by those named. It's hard for me to imagine a situation in which it wouldn't be possible to affect everyone in the conflict, in some way. Now, in case of this Concentration rule, you need to dig into character's motives in the conflict, and these can be very fluid and not necessarilly fully explicit. It's not easier to adjudicate whether the PC supports NPCs than it is to adjudicate whether the PC supports another PC.

[zornwil]

Regarding temlates, I'd like to learn the design decisions behind stadnard DitV backrounds as well, actually. I've been pondering this recently, and I've been considering starting a topic about this. However, I don't really expect that there was any real math involved in this.

Last time I've been re-working backgrounds, by the way, I've been simply assigning each die a point value equal to its maximum result possible, regardless whether it was in Stats, Traits or Relationships. The method is flawed as far as balance is concerned, obviously, but I've been looking for mathematical symmetry in the first place. I doubt it's really possible to balance (or maybe rather unbalance?) things in DitV that way - in the end, too much depends on the group's standards of trait applicability, and technically it's always possible to roll more dice for improvisation, which kind of undermines the value of non-d10 stuff.

The main problem here is that in Dogs you are not really limited by the number of dice on your sheet - it's rather, you are limited by your ability to work within the boundaries of group consensus, your creative juices and your own willingness to prolong the conflict. However, a lot depends on how strict the group is with improvisations and how Belongings in general and group conflicts are handled, as there no hard constraints on these. The whole economy is entirely group-dependent as a result.

Sure, and that's a big part of why I see balance is illusory in a way (in virtually any system).  However, I think it's important so prefer to consider the value of balancing for the ideal-type group, which I owuld see as maximizing their dice in Conflicts, in which case every valuable Trait and normally every Stat, and Relationships of course vary more but you'll see higher dice in things people will find a way to bring in within any Conflict that "matters."

As for the Resources, one thing:

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.

Wouldn't it effectively just be the same as changing the Relationship into a Trait?

Kind of, but even if we grant that it is, that's a different mechanic and you can't do that within the mechanics as they stand.  So if this is desired, there would need to be a way to do it.  Plus it changes the nature of the Relationship, to, by changing it to a Trait.  The point here is to have narrative individual player control over the Relationship without changing the nature of that Relationship.  But as I said, it's just a consideration of a value for Resources and their relationship to Relationships. 

Also, a general note regarding Group Abilities:

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.

You seem to struggle with a basic design problem. You want to include an option, however, you have a silent assumption that it won't be used (or, will be used only in extremely rare circumstances)

Not at all.  Why do you say that?  Rather the assumption is its quite useful for groups.  I simply pointed out SOME groups won't use it.  I won't address the rest as your fundamental assumption is mistaken, and I'm sorry to have given that impression.

However, once you put a rule in there, it's there for the players to use. It's usually more effective not to include an option at all (or mechanically restrict it only to those very specific circumstances when it's legit).

At the same time, you can have rules that are for some players and not for others. Only, those who are willing to use the rule properly don't really need restrictions and options for using it the way they wouldn't do it anyway. Those who shouldn't use the rule in the first place, in turn, don't need the restrictions because they don't need the rule at all.

Just some general principles, dunno how they fit in your design paradigm.

Now, concerning challenge levels:

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.

I can't know how exactly it worked in your games. However, my experience from games that followed a similar model is that despite "outgrowing" old enemies, the group was meaningfully interacting only with opposition on par, anyway (i.e. facing old enemies again wasn't engaging, so to make things interesting the GM had to continually introduce balanced opposition). Therefore, it rarely made any difference that the numbers on the sheet were higher and indicated greater power levels - in practice, the relative effectiveness remained more or less comparable all the time. To the point that as far as challenge level was concerned, the characters and their adversaries could just as well stand in place, math-wise.

My comment is that this discounts the level of the PCs interacting with what used to be lower-level NPCs.  This gives PCs a sense of their level of power, the contrast to what they once were. But, don't get me wrong, interested in the feedback.

I've seen two models where advancement actually affected gameplay:

First, in games where advancement opened new meaningful, tactical options for the player (e.g. various d20 games) raising in power was important as it was efectively making gameplay different, affecting its complexity. In DitV, however, this is not the case - tactical options remain the same all the time, and not even narrative constraints change (i.e. they are entirely group-dependent). The only thing that changes is that narrating this or that can be meaningful mechanically.

Just as a related aside, the notion of moving from "regular" fast growth to Slow Growth has this effect - Temporary d20s aren't useful until players hit Slow Growth, as long-term getting the d10s and d12s is much more valuable.  Although there's a different effect on games that start out immediatley with Slow Growth, so the "texture" of the d20 option varies.

Second, if there was an pre-made adventure in use that defined the opposition prior to the start of the game, and it made enough place for serious advancement at the same time, it was important who the players face and in what order. It worked because challenge levels were pre-defined and set in stone rather than dynamic. There was a stable environment in which the players had to maneuver rather than one constantly adjusting to their characters. Again, I'm thinking about some d20 modules, but vanilla DitV follows a very close model (i.e. challenge levels are set objectively and do not adjust to the group).

[]All in all, I think the main problem here is that you seem to aim for lon-term campaign play. However, DitV as a system doesn't support this very well. It requires some rather fundamental changes.

Exactly, as discussed.  Bear in mind Victor's comments that even as is Dogs remains viable for a fairly large number of sessions, I can't remember where he listed it but it was an impressive enough number that using that as an assumption it's, as you say "rather" fundamental but probably not effectively impossible.

And the last issue:

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.

The thing is, the rule requires considering the participants in terms of their sides, but everyone always is only on one's own side. Not even helping other PCs/NPCs or Raising against them changes it (i.e. it only means that in this particular moment doing this furthers one's private goals). Deciding who is affected by a Raise is straigthforward - you simply say who is, and narrate something that can't be ignored by those named. It's hard for me to imagine a situation in which it wouldn't be possible to affect everyone in the conflict, in some way. Now, in case of this Concentration rule, you need to dig into character's motives in the conflict, and these can be very fluid and not necessarilly fully explicit. It's not easier to adjudicate whether the PC supports NPCs than it is to adjudicate whether the PC supports another PC.

I think you're way overcomplicating it.  At its most complicated, if a character has made a Raise against another character or is acting like he's in opposition (has a history of it, etc.), he's agin' him.  If the play group dynamic is the typical "bad guys fight good guys", it's equally easy.  It's the same way an NPC potentially in opposition makes any decision.  Some play groups might allow for some shading of this ("My Raise is to convince him he's on my side...", or who-knows-what).  But I don't see any belabored motivation questioning going on.

Sure, there might be unusual situations.  Some groups might say to the GM "the bad guy's never seen my PC before, my PC didn't show up with these guys, I don't think you can count me."  From my perspective, that could be said in a typical Raise as well.  The play group can either go by what I call this "SFX standard" (i.e., in this example, "you're right, the NPC doesn't know anything about you, so he won't include you) or by a truly mechanical and narrative standard (i.e., in this example, "Yeah but storyline-wise, you said your PC is on the same side of the Stakes as the others, right?  So I'm narrating as "his bullets go stray and include you, bystanding 'stranger.'").  But this is no different from any Dogs game or much of any game for that matter.

At it's most simple, he who is not my ally is my enemy.  Just think like Bush II. 

[zornwil]

Argh, sorry about the formatting mistake!

[zornwil]

Last time I'll touch this thread - I just realized I should at least indicate this has been continued in a newer thread to indicate revisions, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25310.0 .  If/when I do the same in abandoning that thread for a new, "fresh" one I'll post the successor thread in that.  Just figured I should do this in case anyone bookmarked or subscribed this thread but wasn't watching the forum.