Finally started a Dogs game!

[daftnewt]

After having Dogs for about a year and fiddling with it on and off, I finally got a group together to play the game as written.

And it turned out very cool!  I used a starting town I found in this forum, in this thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14865.0

We played it through in two sessions, and everyone had a good time. I wrote up the town in the Actual Play forum.  The characters and the first session are here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26858.0

and the second session and some afterthoughts are here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26863.0

This is a very new style of GM'ing for me; I had lots of time to think about it so it went smoothly enough, but I'm still not too confident. If anyone reading about the game has advice or thoughts about what I did wrong or could do differently/better, please tell me!

We also had some questions about things that confused us...

1.  Is it true in Dogs that if you Escalate, you don't have to See?  If so, I'm wondering about the pattern this makes sometimes. Frex,

-- You do a nasty Raise against me in Talking. I escalate to Physical; now I don't have to See and you lose those dice.

-- It's my turn to Raise; I put my dice forward.

-- You decide to escalate to Physical to match me; now you don't have to See, and I lose those dice.

Is that right?  Or does my escalation escalate the whole conflict, so that if you want to pass on that next See you have to escalate -again-?


2.  Related to that, a player was asking me if it was really true that if, say, someone shot at his character putting forward two 10's or something awful like that, he could choose to escalate to Talking to avoid any effect?  I told him yes, and that meant people had to be a bit tactical with their dice, and not blow the big ones too soon


3.  Should a murderous attack that fails raise the Demonic Influence to "Hate and Murder"?


4.  I read a thread here that answered most of my questions about Relationships (yay!) but I'm still kind of wondering...does anyone else find character sheets cluttered with old Relationships after a while? Or players using some of those "useless" scores to soak up negative Fallout?

5.  Where do people stand on the idea of NPCs using conflicts to force actions on PCs? What about forcing beliefs on them ("There's nothing at all wrong here!")?  What about PCs making other PCs agree or take action against the player's inclination?

Vincent had an answer for this in the second part of my writeup, and I think it's a good one, but I'm curious what other people have to say.

That about does it for the first session

[lumpley]

I like rules questions!

1.  Is it true in Dogs that if you Escalate, you don't have to See?  If so, I'm wondering about the pattern this makes sometimes. Frex,

-- You do a nasty Raise against me in Talking. I escalate to Physical; now I don't have to See and you lose those dice.

-- It's my turn to Raise; I put my dice forward.

-- You decide to escalate to Physical to match me; now you don't have to See, and I lose those dice.

Is that right?  Or does my escalation escalate the whole conflict, so that if you want to pass on that next See you have to escalate -again-?

2.  Related to that, a player was asking me if it was really true that if, say, someone shot at his character putting forward two 10's or something awful like that, he could choose to escalate to Talking to avoid any effect?  I told him yes, and that meant people had to be a bit tactical with their dice, and not blow the big ones too soon

I hope that's not true. I invented that rule for Afraid, a Dogs hack that hasn't materialized. I HOPE I didn't write it back into Dogs in the Vineyard. Did I? I don't have a book handy but I'll look it up when I get home - do you happen to have a rule quote or page reference for me?

3.  Should a murderous attack that fails raise the Demonic Influence to "Hate and Murder"?

Decide case by case. If it feels like it does, it definitely should. If the PCs' preventing the murder (for instance) feels like it keeps the demonic influence in check, that's probably what should happen.

4.  I read a thread here that answered most of my questions about Relationships (yay!) but I'm still kind of wondering...does anyone else find character sheets cluttered with old Relationships after a while? Or players using some of those "useless" scores to soak up negative Fallout?

I've personally never had a problem with it.

5.  Where do people stand on the idea of NPCs using conflicts to force actions on PCs? What about forcing beliefs on them ("There's nothing at all wrong here!")?  What about PCs making other PCs agree or take action against the player's inclination?

Vincent had an answer for this in the second part of my writeup, and I think it's a good one, but I'm curious what other people have to say.

Other people, chime in!

-Vincent

[bvierthaler]

Ad 1.

As far as I can see, you have to See even if you Escalate. See page 60: "So you see my outstanding 7 with your 4 and your 3, and put forward two of your 5s to Raise."

[lumpley]

Whew, that's a relief.

-Vincent

[Moreno R.]

Hi Vincent!

I think I know where the Afraid rule got into DitV rules:  in this thread:
If u knew then whatcha know now...

I never used there rule variations because, having to teach people how to play, I prefer to stick pretty closely to the written rules, so I don' know their effect in game: can you tell us more about why you don't think anymore that the escalation=see rule don't work well for DitV? What about the other rules suggestions in that thread?

About NPC changing the Dog's mind about something, I have used stakes like that sometimes in my first games but I didn't like the results, so now I sticking to the policy "stakes are for concrete action". So, if a NPC want to flee from the dogs, convincing a dog to let him free is a raise (or, better, a series of talking raises), the Dog can escalate if he don't want to be convinced (and the plead from the NPC should be plausible in any case) and after the concrete action stipulated in the stakes ("he let her go free") he can change his mind back when he want.

[daftnewt]

Thanks for everyone's replies - I appreciate it!

Vincent wrote:

I hope that's not true. I invented that rule for Afraid, a Dogs hack that hasn't materialized. I HOPE I didn't write it back into Dogs in the Vineyard. Did I? I don't have a book handy but I'll look it up when I get home - do you happen to have a rule quote or page reference for me?

No, you didn't; I got it from Afraid backed up by the same thread Moreno R. linked to, and somehow over time this got changed in my mind to "This is how Dogs is really supposed to be." 

The point, I was thinking, was to have it be an additional temptation to escalate - which it certainly was in the game I ran.  "You mean if I escalate to Physical I don't have to See that 14? Okay, I push the old man out of my way!"  I kind of liked that. (The old man in question didn't like being pushed and that conflict got a bit ugly.)

I need to think some more if I want to keep that variation or go back to just straight Dogs. I'm mostly concerned about pitfalls I'm too inexperienced to foresee - but then, what's life about, anyway?

The question of what're appropriate stakes when characters try to convince each other I'll set before the group. I'm pretty sure what they'll decide.