[DitV] Rules question: A mob of possessed people led by a sorcerer

[Paul T]

A very quick question, but one that I can't quite figure out, and I wonder if different people are doing this differently:

You have an angry mob in your game. It's led by a sorcerer. There are possessed people in the mob.

Lots of threads on this forum advise this as something you should use in Towns, at least from time to time. But none (that I have been able to find) talk about the mechanical specifics.

So, again:

Mob. Led by sorcerer. Includes possessed people.

What does this look like, in dice?

The book includes a great example of a "mob", and the dice it gets. But how do you alter that when it's a) led by a sorcerer, and b) includes possessed people?

Share your "stat block" for such a mob!

[lumpley]

The sorcerer means that the mob's side gets 5d10 for demonic influence. Possessed people in the mob means that the mob inflicts fallout a die size bigger, or choose another of the options if one seems better -- you can get some dice if you prefer, but viciousness is my favorite.

-Vincent

[Paul T]

OK, cool, I figured it was something like that. But I'm still really struggling with the "mob" thing in Dogs: last night, I ran a Dogs game with a group conflict, and several things jumped out at me I was completely unsure about. I couldn't find anything in the text to confirm or deny my assumptions, either. So, please help!

Here are some points of confusion:

1. Those "extra dice" for the mob--like "Cunning" for a possessed person, right? Does it matter if I have one possessed person in the mob or three?

1. b. Where do those dice come from? Presumably, they come from the mob's Trait/Relationship dice, right? But in that case they're not getting any more dice than they normally would--it's not actually helping them win the conflict. Is this correct? Or do you add dice on top of what the mob would normally get?

2. Item use and such by members of the mob. I had four men with rifles. When one of them drew his rifle, I threw in dice for it. But it seemed excessive to add rifle dice four times, for each of the members, so I only rolled them in once. What do you do? How many dice would you have rolled in for a group of armed NPCs?

3. Fallout. I Took the Blow when one of the Dogs shot at the group by narrating a member of the group taking the bullet and going down. Then several more times, in other contexts, as the violent conflict went on. But once it was over, it was really unclear to me what the Fallout meant, in the fiction: am I now rolling to see who's injured and who's dead? But only one guy's been shot, and we've pretty much narrated him being dead. What are we rolling those d10s of Fallout for, then?

So, in a "mob" situation, who does Fallout apply to at the end of the conflict?

Thanks, Vincent. On the up side, we playtested my suggested rule, where a NPC gets to reuse dice from Sees against multiple Dogs so long as they use one new die for every See, and it worked very satisfactorily for all of us. We liked it in effect and in the way it felt at the table.

[lumpley]

1: It doesn't matter. If you have 3 possessed people, you get 3 possessed people's dice. If you have 1, you get 1's.

1b: They're coming from the NPC's relationship dice, but no, that doesn't mean you'd get them anyway. Consider, for instance, an NPC who has a 2d4 relationship with the Dogs, a 1d8 relationship with the demons, and cunning. That person would roll 2d4 into any conflict with the Dogs -- as normal -- and would in addition get to roll 1d8 into social conflicts.

Compare with an NPC who has a 2d4 relationship with the Dogs and a 1d8 relationship with her mother. She would roll 2d4 into conflict with the Dogs, but she'd get to roll the 1d8 in addition only if her mother's on the Dogs' side or her mother's at stake.

Oh, but that's except sorcerers. Sorcerers get a 4-die relationship with the demons in full addition to their listed relationship dice.

2: In strict rules terms, you decided to give the mob one belonging, its rifles. Same as how a player would give her character "my fancy pen set & stationary 2d6," not individual dice for each fancy pen and each sheet of fancy paper. That's how I usually do it with mobs too -- their weapons are one belonging. You don't have to do it that way, you can give the mob dice for its each individual rifle, if you want to. I do that only if their rifles really oughta be somehow distinguished from one another, like if I've already established that one of them has a super fancy rifle or whatever.

3: If it's not perfectly clear who should suffer the fallout, use the excellent fallout option for NPCs: give the players the two high fallout dice for their next conflict.

Since I always use the simplified NPC rules for mobs, I always use that fallout option for them too. I recommend it.

-Vincent

[Paul T]

OK, great! Almost there. Many thanks for your patience, Vincent.

Two final points, however, to make sure I got you right:

1: It doesn't matter. If you have 3 possessed people, you get 3 possessed people's dice. If you have 1, you get 1's.

1b: They're coming from the NPC's relationship dice, but no, that doesn't mean you'd get them anyway. Consider, for instance, an NPC who has a 2d4 relationship with the Dogs, a 1d8 relationship with the demons, and cunning. That person would roll 2d4 into any conflict with the Dogs -- as normal -- and would in addition get to roll 1d8 into social conflicts.

The reason I say "they'd get them anyway" is because a large mob "uses up" those relationship dice for additional members. "Each member is a Trait ... use the NPC's relationship dice if you run out of Trait dice". So, given a mob that has used up all those dice (i.e. has seven people in it, if I remember correctly), I'm not rolling in anything extra for possessed people. Is that right?

How does this work with the simplified rules, then?

* Basic dice per escalation level,
* +1d6 per additional member per escalation level,
* + [what?] for possessed members? Nothing?

3: If it's not perfectly clear who should suffer the fallout, use the excellent fallout option for NPCs: give the players the two high fallout dice for their next conflict.

Since I always use the simplified NPC rules for mobs, I always use that fallout option for them too. I recommend it.

That's a great idea, but:

If you want to see what the repercussions of the Dogs' violent actions are, how do you determine them?

What I'm getting from the book is:

* You can totally just narrate the death of one of the members of the group as a See (e.g. the "Bodyguards" example from the book).
* After the conflict, you split up the Fallout dice among the members of the group as you see fit. So, if you Took the Blow once for 5d8, you could, after the fight, roll 2d8 for one member of the group and 3d8 for another.
* If rolling doesn't make sense (like in my situation, where the guy who Took the Blow from the gunshot was narrated as dead), give the PCs two dice for a follow-up.

Is that how you do it?

Thanks,


Paul

[lumpley]

No prob!

1. It's been a long time since I looked at those rules. I always use the simplified NPC rules for mobs anymore.

Ah! Here it is, p128, under Groups: "First fill out the traits you already have dice for on the NPC sheet. Then steal the NPC's listed relationship dice, unless the group needs them for Relationships (which is up to you to decide). Then you can pull as many of your Free Dice as you can spare [again, up to you], and after that each additional person gets 1d6."

So, make the mob as big as you want it. Use up its trait dice, then go straight to those free d6s. Use its relationship dice, then your free dice if you want, for relationships with the demons, for cunning and ferocity.

Using the simplified rules, you're right, +nothing. It's okay -- preservation and viciousness are the better abilities, and you don't need to worry about dice with them.

2. Yes.

I pretty much always incorporate consequences into my sees -- and my raises too! -- then give the players the 2 high fallout dice. I assign fallout to NPCs only when it's clearly the right best thing to do.

-Vincent

[Paul T]

Thanks, Vincent!

You rock.

(Although I'm not sure why Preservation is a big deal--do the PCs really care how much Fallout the NPCs take? I usually have NPCs Take the Blow in order to frighten the PCs, and having them take less Fallout seems counterproductive rather than anything else.)