(DitV) film recommendation for Gojoe

[lin swimmer]

Has anybody heard of the Japanese film Gojoe by Sogo Ishii? It just dawned on me the other day that if guns were swords, Mormonism were Buddhism, and the old west were feudal Japan (that paticular connection has been around forever), then you'd have Monks in the Rice Paddies...

Hmmmm.  Does anybody have any experienced opinions on the amount of actual work it takes to run an alternate environment? The mafia enforcer one sounded very interesting to me, but the Buddhist monk model would be really very similar to the existing game...

In the meantime I'm just looking forward to our second session. Our last game I had my character come down with fever and fall off his horse, otherwise known as I'm GMing, but my guy'll be there as soon as I finish.

Ryan Theodores

[Eric Provost]

Well, no.  No actual experience converting DitV to other settings yet.  But, one small piece of advice;  Play lots of Dogs before trying to convert it.  From personal experience, the more we play Dogs, the more we understand it, and the more we understand it, the more satisfying a conversion will be.

-Eric

p.s. Welcome to The Forge Ryan.

[lin swimmer]

Thanks. Glad to be here, where conversation tends to avoid, "So this orc hit me with a +5 large club of buttkicking, and it was critical."

I'm dying to play more. The will is there, but it seems that the most universal hindrance is just scheduling.

RCT

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Yeah, play at least 5 or 6 towns before you make a conversion. It'll be much easier to understand what the stuff is that you need to convert once you do that.

Consider these:

Fallout is determined by narration. How much do you want people to get hurt by things? In my Space Wuxia setting, martial arts are as deadly, or deadlier, than guns.

What is the moral authority of your protagonists? Who can recognize it?

Escalation is connected deeply to color. Someone suggested adding another level of fallout for their setting, and it just doens't make sense. If there are nukes in your setting, then they take the place of guns. Make guns less. Or the same. It doesn't matter.

Ceremony is a matter of raising, not escalating; in fact, it's one big example of particular raises for a particular setting. In a magical Buddhist setting, the color will be entirely different, assuming the existence of actual demons. If the setting were modern, they'd probably be psychological actions. If demons don't exist in your Buddhist setting, ceremony could be completely different or ignored altogether.

There's more, but the point is, a conversion to another setting is fun but technical, so know the medium first.

[Yokiboy]

Fallout is determined by narration. How much do you want people to get hurt by things? In my Space Wuxia setting, martial arts are as deadly, or deadlier, than guns.

Do you have a write-up of this anywhere?

There's more, but the point is, a conversion to another setting is fun but technical, so know the medium first.

Please continue, I'm saving this as a future reference, but of course as you point out I should at least play the game as is first. I'm just having the darndest time getting my Swedish buddies to wanna play cowpokes. I am dying to try both Dust Devils and Dogs, but no luck as of yet.

TTFN,

Yoki

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Do you have a write-up of this anywhere?

Yes, but don't go a-convertin' until you've played.

[Lance D. Allen]

See, I can understand the push to play the canon setting.. But categorical advice to not play conversions until you've played canon are questionable.

For instance, me. I wouldn't mind playing canon. Hell, we're barely playing a conversion as it is. But when Lx first started pushing the system, I was 100% NOT INTERESTED. The dice mechanic grabbed my attention, but if he'd have insisted on canon setting, it would have been a deal breaker for me.

A well-written conversion setting, done by someone who HAS played canon, and knows how the game is supposed to feel and play, might just be a really good way to get people into the game. The setting isn't the important part of play; The moral absolute authority placed into the hands of the players is what's important, no matter the setting. There is a certain zest and bite to the canon setting that I love to read about, and could definitely enjoy playing.

But for many, western is a dead turn off.

[Valamir]

But for many, western is a dead turn off.

I make it a point to never trust a person who doesn't like westerns....

...or ships


..........or dark chocolate.


What?....

[lumpley]

I'm torn!

Easygoing me: hey, the more the merrier! The game's easy to adapt, just rewrite the sin list, the ceremony list, and put your fetish object (kung fu, lightsabers) in the place of guns. Don't screw with the town-in-crisis progression unless you REALLY have to. No sweat!

Hardline me: I wrote this game as a western because a western's what it is. If you don't like westerns, big duh, play some other game instead.

Usually easygoing me wins, just because I'm usually easygoing.

-Vincent

[Emily Care]

What! Has no onw mentioned Yojimbo yet?  Not quite monks, but talk about demons and mercy and judgement.  

Japan & westerns go together like p&j.

[b_bankhead]

Dogs is one of those wonderfully structured games designed to model issues that are highly independent of color and setting elements, like SorcererTSOY,Trollbabe,Inspectres etc... For example the structure of the typical Dogs scenario is very similar to that of L Ron Hubbards heroic space superdoctor, Old Doc Methusaleh.  It would do the job with a little tweaking.

In fact it should be possible to produce a book of alternate Dogs setting with modified color and setting elements and suitably modified rules.

I have plans in the hopper to do such a thing with Trollbabe and call it Trollbabe Heresies, but as a title
DitV: Heresies

works better.

[lin swimmer]

Hardline me: I wrote this game as a western because a western's what it is. If you don't like westerns, big duh, play some other game instead.


-Vincent

Hardline noted, but, er, I love the game.  I guess no one has seen Gojoe, so it's hard to tell if people think it would help lend credibility to an alternate environment. It dawned on me while remembering a scene where the main character stops a group of villagers from killing a pregnant woman who is clearly possessed by devils. Through chanting and ceremony, the devils are exorcised. Like Mormonism in DitV, you wouldn't be able to just use Buddhism as is. It would just be a base to launch off from. This is all purely theorizing, as I still need to play the game as is for a while (a long while), before even attempting any type of alteration.

As Emily stated, westerns and feudal Japan just go so well together. The oppression and poverty and suffering, the spontaneous judgement from anyone that has the capability of dishing it out (and that includes a lot of people). It appeals to that moment in your childhood when you realize that, in ways, history can be just as intense as straight-up fantasy.

If anyone has the opportunity though, I would strongly recommend the film. I really can't imagine being disappointed by it; it's bloody gorgeous. Ishii's other film, Electric Dragon 80,000 Volts is also awesome, as is clear from the title.

Peace,
Ryan C Theodores
PS Our group is having difficulty getting together for another session, so I'm trying to feed my cravings with Have Gun Will Travel. What a great business card he's got. Job description. Wire Paladin. San Francisco. We spent a while debating if his first name was Wire. Decided against.

[ptikachu]

Haven't seen Gojoe, but I seem to recall a Dogs-for-Samurai conversion floated around a while ago, on someone's Livejournal.

I love the default setting enough, and my players are Western-friendly enough, that I haven't had to spring my 21 Jump Street (substitute Johnny Depp for Dogs, switch troubled high schools for towns, GO!) conversion on them yet...

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

What! Has no onw mentioned Yojimbo yet?

Repeatedly and vociferously.

My point is not "don't play until you've played it by the book" but rather "don't convert the game until you've played it by the book."

It's not immediately apparent which parts are important to change or keep until you see what they mean.

As for Vincent's hardassedness, I don't buy it. The reason my krewe is playing with the space wuxia thing is because a) we'd just done a Western using PTA and it resolved nicely. We didn't want to dilute the experience, I think; b) the misogyny inherent in both the canon setting and a historical rendition of the period really bothered one of the players. The reason I don't buy it is that that's what my group wanted. I was playing along with my group's desires, same as any other value judgement we make in the game. (I wanted to do the canon setting because I thought it would be really interesting to confront the misogyny of the system, but that was not to be.)

If you keep in mind that the game is about what happens to a society when people are shitty to each other, and the people who have the moral authority to reward and condemn those involved rewarding and condemning, conversion shouldn't be a big deal. If you think it's about demons and showdowns, you'll miss the point. Here's the snatch-the-pebble question: when you know how to treat demons in your conversion, you'll know how to do the rest of it.