DitV Town: New Gidea

[Judd]

Town: New Gidea

Pride: Master Printer was on his way to kill the man who raped his sister when the bandits attacked.  Through fate he killed the leader and the rest surrendered.  Then he killed the man and the man's wife.

He believes himself above the law, an instrument of God.  He believes he is a Prophet of the Gun.

Injustice:  The rape of his sister, the murder of the man's wife, vigilante justice, mobs hunting the typesetter.

Sin:  Murder, heresy as he begins to worship the gun.

Demonic Attacks:  An oppressive heat hangs over the town and it will only break when the town is either diffused or riots.  Weapons and tools that can easily be used as weapons seem to be always within reach during moments of wrath.

False Doctrine:  The Gun is the Lord.

Corrupt Worship:  There aren't three yet but almost.

False Priesthood:  The type-setting is printing a bible called the Book of the Gun.

Sorcery:  Violence begets violence.

Hate & Murder:  Every little grudge in town will turn to violence of the situation isn't seen to.

What do the people want?  The people want justice and peace returned.

What do the demons want?  Demons want the town's bible printing to grind to a halt so all holy books come from Back East.

What would happen of the Dogs didn't come?  The town would erupt into riots as the Steward attempted to hunt down the type-setting to save him from the lynchmobs that have formed.

Townsfolk:

Seth Betheldon - Master Printer, educated Back East
Leah Betheldon - wife who is hiding her husband and enduring the townsfolk's disdain
Clarissa Betheldon - sister who feels the death is her fault (suicide?)

Elihu Steading - Steward
Amasina Steading - Steward's wife, former Dog but rendered blind, respected advisor

Kyle Richards - killed by Seth
Naomi Richards - killed by Seth, beloved in the congregation
Balaam Richards - Kyle's pa and foul-mouthed rabble-rouser

Absolom - apprentice type-setting, leading mercy posse to find Seth and save his life

Other players:  Territory Regulators, lynch mobs, surrendered bandits

Notes:  New Gidea is a burgeoning town on the eastern edge of the desert.  If the town is successful it will be the first large scale Book of Life printing outfit in the territory.

Seth was a Printer, apprenticed and educated Back East.  When he got a letter from his sister, saying that she had been treated roughly by Kyle, Seth made his way west thinking only of killing the man.

When he arrived in New Gidea he was to head up the printing operation but he had only violence in his heart.  When bandits stood in his way to revenge he got lucky in a shoot-out and killed their leader.  Then he stumbled into town in the middle o the night and killed Kyle and his wife in a rage.

Enter the Dogs.

Territory Regulators are on their way to pick up the captured bandits.

Lynch mobs prowl the streets in the humid night.  Some want to kill the bandits before the Regulators, some want Seth hung and others want Seth safe.  It is only a matter of time before the mobs begin fighting.

The Steward leads a Mercy Mob to find Seth and send him to safety until a Watchdog or an Ancient can be called to adjudicate.  His blind wife, a former Dog, could be a nice role-playing opportunity.


Problems:  I want women to play more of a role.  I feel like they are ornaments or vicitms and that bugs me.

Is this too much of a shitstorm all at once?

[DannyK]

I don't have the game yet; I have nothing constructive to say.  But this is an awesome situation for roleplaying.  I think you could push the situation really hard, keep the Dogs scurrying from place to place trying to put out fires before a conflagration starts... given the demon influence you mentioned, maybe a literal conflagration.

Oh, I do have possibly constructive thing to say: if you're concerned about there not being enough stuff for the women of the town to do, perhaps you could create more female faction leaders?  If that doesn't fit the setting, they could be indirect leaders -- a Lady Macbeth type, or an older woman who carries some weight with the town's women.  A female schoolteacher?

[Emily Care]

My favorite part of this is that it evokes a basic conflict about the nature of the dogs themselves--they are the arms of the lord of life, but they live by the gun.  This false doctrine could be compelling to a dog who has lost their sense of priority.

Also, just because  Clarissa got raped that doesn't make her either a victim or an ornament.   Don't kill her off, have her engage with the crowds, with the dogs.  Her position is complex, let her be filled with rage and power, rather than cutting her out.

yrs,
Em

[lumpley]

Judd, care to say a little about how creating the town went? Like, did you start at Pride and work up through the steps, or did you have an end-state in mind and shake Pride etc. out of it?

-Vincent

[Judd]

Judd, care to say a little about how creating the town went? Like, did you start at Pride and work up through the steps, or did you have an end-state in mind and shake Pride etc. out of it?

-Vincent

I have been starting with one little bit of Pride and letting it explode onto paper, seeing how bad it can get.  I want a town at that simmering to boil point just as the Dogs step into town.  With the two towns I've created it started with one breach of pride and watched it get bad on paper as I went through the steps.

I'll have a few ideas, two or three sentences about the town, usually derived from the name I came up with.

I knew I wanted some Territorial authorities in this game, just to drive home the fact that there is an earthly law but most towns are mostly Faithful, so the Dogs need not worry.  So I wrote the Territory Regulators into the mix.

I had to really work on not making it a mystery.  This game is not about the tense discovery of the situation.  To me it is about discovering the problem ASAP and getting the Dogs set to setting it right with little bits here and there to turn up the heat when needed.

My next town is an abandoned Mountain Folk village now inhabited by a small congregation called Jericho Flats but that's all that is there right now.  I know Jericho is a city in the Bible that was flattened-- something about a horn tearing down its walls, I think.

So for the next town I'll start there and build out, probably taking the issues in New Gidea and how they were dealt with.

[S]

My next town is an abandoned Mountain Folk village now inhabited by a small congregation called Jericho Flats but that's all that is there right now.  I know Jericho is a city in the Bible that was flattened-- something about a horn tearing down its walls, I think.

A wonderful name for the town, and great fodder for a DitV game, I'd say. Jericho is almost too perfect..
As the Israelites came into Canaan, their leader Joshua sent scouts/spies to get the lay of the land. They first went to Jericho, where they stayed at the house of a prostitute, Rahab. When the spies were found out, Rahab helped them escape the town - later, she and her family were spared because of this.

Jericho stood in the way of the Faithful (of that time), as the gate to Canaan. The Israelites marched around the city in ritual fashion, six times in six days and seven times on the seventh, blowing trumpets. With the help of God, "the walls came tumbling down", as the song says. Afterward, by God's commandment, Joshua and the Israelites razed Jericho - declaring that nothing should ever be built there again.

A whore with a heart of gold, miracles of conquest, the punishment of those who blocked the manifest destiny of the Lord's Faithful...  if you use this in your game, can I play? :-)

- S

Interesting occurrence afterward, should you want to parallel Biblical progression in your stories:
The Gibeonites (people of a minor local 'kingdom'), afraid of conquest, tricked the Israelites into making peace with them. This prompted the rulers of five Amorite hill kingdoms to make common cause against Gibeon - and Joshua and his people were called upon to defend that city. A great battle was fought in the valley of Ayalon, in which the Israelites defeated their opponents. As the day ended and the Amorite armies fled, Joshua called upon God:

Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.

Joshua 10:12-13 / King James Version

Note this is after the battle was won... Thus, over the course of a day and a half, the Israelites had light enough to chase down and slaughter all their enemies. In a DitV context: A miracle sent by the King of Life to protect the Faithful, or a sin of Pride?

See:
Jericho, Wikipedia
Jericho, JewishEncyclopedia.com
page on Gibeon

[Judd]

Thanks, S, for the links and the thoughts.

Much appreciated.

[Judd]

I made a mess of that one.

Job Gully was meant to be its own post.

Shite.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

My favorite part of this is that it evokes a basic conflict about the nature of the dogs themselves--they are the arms of the lord of life, but they live by the gun.  This false doctrine could be compelling to a dog who has lost their sense of priority.

Yeah, I want to know if the Dogs wind up feeling like he just needs trainin'. I can foresee a lot of interesting endings to this.

Also, just because  Clarissa got raped that doesn't make her either a victim or an ornament.   Don't kill her off, have her engage with the crowds, with the dogs.  Her position is complex, let her be filled with rage and power, rather than cutting her out.

Yeah, I agree with Em. She could want everything to go back to normal, she could want vengeance, she could be hiding, she could feel like it's her fault. All interesting fodder.

[lumpley]

J and anyone else interested, here is Judd's RPGnet writeup of what actually happened in New Gidea.

-Vincent

[Albert the Absentminded]

My next town is an abandoned Mountain Folk village now inhabited by a small congregation called Jericho Flats but that's all that is there right now.  I know Jericho is a city in the Bible that was flattened-- something about a horn tearing down its walls, I think.

A wonderful name for the town, and great fodder for a DitV game, I'd say. Jericho is almost too perfect..
As the Israelites came into Canaan, their leader Joshua sent scouts/spies to get the lay of the land. They first went to Jericho, where they stayed at the house of a prostitute, Rahab. When the spies were found out, Rahab helped them escape the town - later, she and her family were spared because of this.

Jericho stood in the way of the Faithful (of that time), as the gate to Canaan. The Israelites marched around the city in ritual fashion, six times in six days and seven times on the seventh, blowing trumpets. With the help of God, "the walls came tumbling down", as the song says. Afterward, by God's commandment, Joshua and the Israelites razed Jericho - declaring that nothing should ever be built there again.

A whore with a heart of gold, miracles of conquest, the punishment of those who blocked the manifest destiny of the Lord's Faithful...  if you use this in your game, can I play? :-)

- S

Interesting occurrence afterward, should you want to parallel Biblical progression in your stories:
The Gibeonites (people of a minor local 'kingdom'), afraid of conquest, tricked the Israelites into making peace with them. This prompted the rulers of five Amorite hill kingdoms to make common cause against Gibeon - and Joshua and his people were called upon to defend that city. A great battle was fought in the valley of Ayalon, in which the Israelites defeated their opponents. As the day ended and the Amorite armies fled, Joshua called upon God:

Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.

Joshua 10:12-13 / King James Version

Note this is after the battle was won... Thus, over the course of a day and a half, the Israelites had light enough to chase down and slaughter all their enemies. In a DitV context: A miracle sent by the King of Life to protect the Faithful, or a sin of Pride?

See:
Jericho, Wikipedia
Jericho, JewishEncyclopedia.com
page on Gibeon

A miracle, definately. Here's why:

The discipline to fight to the last man was known as "dying hard" in Kipling's time, and is one of the signs of a truly potent army. It is far more likely for an army to break and rout.

When an army routs, then you can let it go or you can chase it. If you let it go, then all those men can be rounded up and put back into uniform. To destroy a fleeing army, you have to chase those demoralized men down. This takes _hours_ to do, and anyone who hasn't been taken out by nightfall is going to get away.

Joshua called upon a miracle to give them light for long enough to completely destroy the enemy. Given the right kind of enemy, "Kill Them All" becomes the only viable option if you don't want them to kill you.

(Political note: The debate in America this year is whether we have to crush Islamo-terrorism(Bush) or whether it's a tolerable nuisance(Kerry).)

So, Joshua asked for a miracle to persue a legitamite military purpose.

-Albert