[DitV] Dogs using Sorcery

[neelk]

Through a somewhat complicated path, three of the five Dogs in my game have decided that using sorcery, while in general bad, is really okay in this particular situation. They ran into some abolitionist sorcerers, and now have a bunch of runaway slaves in their care, along with aforementioned abolitionist sorcerers. The ex-slaves' leader won a conflict last session persuading the Dogs to actively collaborate with the sorcerers, becase a) both the Dogs and the sorcerers were helping them, and b) he'd really rather not see himself and all of his people hung by the Territorial Authority.

So, my question is, what are the mechanics for a Dog receiving demonic assistance? Not all of the Dogs in question have relationships with the demon, so the sorcery rules don't seem to quite fit.

[Jason Morningstar]

I'd suggest that using sorcery implies a relationship with a demon, whether the Dogs want to admit it or not.

[lumpley]

Yep. Nobody without a relationship with a demon gets demonic assistance.

Sorcerers can give demonic assistance to their friends however, contributing the current demonic influence dice to one side or the other of a conflict they aren't themselves involved in.

Your group might very reasonably decide that a sorcerer can say "demon, go with this guy and throw in on his side of every conflict" and the demon will.

Being a non-sorcerer Dog going along with a sorcerer Dog is a very, very interesting thing wrt possession, by the way.

-Vincent

[neelk]

Okay, it sounds like I should do this:

1. Terpsichore (the sorcerer) can add the demonic influence to the conflict, and then I can put the 4d10 onto the table and tell any Dog who wants it can just grab them and use them.

2. If they need more dice than that, they can take a relationship with the demon (using their unassigned dice) and roll that, plus the demonic influence again.

Also, can you explain the possession thing to me? Wouldn't that be me, the GM, saying that the PCs have created a False Priesthood for themselves? I thought that whatever the PCs did defined the doctrinally correct thing to do.

This is kind of theoretical for what's going on right now in my game, though -- the demon got a name and a personality, because the players wanted to talk to it. Since I wanted moral agency to remain in the hands of the NPCs the players could pass judgement on, I added that Red Orc couldn't or wouldn't possess anyone against their will: they had to invite it in. Still, I'm curious about this because there can be other demons.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Also, can you explain the possession thing to me? Wouldn't that be me, the GM, saying that the PCs have created a False Priesthood for themselves? I thought that whatever the PCs did defined the doctrinally correct thing to do.

This is actually one pretty beautiful aspect of DiV design, because as I'm reading it, that PC power over morality is 90% about setting design, not any systemical property (aside from explicit instruction to the GM that he shouldn't push outside morality in his scenarios). That is, the game world is as it is, things in it mean what they mean. It just so happens that the PCs are in an office where they can pass judgement on things...

... but there's limits to it. It's NOT a rule of the game that anything the players say or do is doctrine. It's just a fact of setting that their characters are in a position to have authority to pass doctrine. As I read the book, this authority is ultimately limited by good, old-fashioned setting reality: when your PCs start giving out judgements that are just unbelievable enough for the NPCs, they just might start complaining and going to the elders of the church. At which point it's schism in the faith, assuming that the PCs won't back down.

Remember, the Faith does have all those rules and theology. If the PCs consistently go against them in ways not explainable as interpretation, they're apostates as far as the setting is concerned. They have no meta-ability to be always right, only a very strong authority position to make others believe that they're right. This whole thing about divine inspiration the dogs have is cultural justification for that authority, not a rule of the game stating that the players are always right. Any elder of the faith with enough cajones can quite legitimately call them on it, at which point it's conflict time.

That's my read, anyway. It should be noted that apparently the book encourages the GM to let anything pass as long as it has any kind of basis in tenets of the Faith, community survival or plain good sense. In that sense PCs siding with sorcerers is still easily within the area where the GM shouldn't start pushing repercussions, as long as the players think that the PCs are still doing the right thing. The point: whether what the characters are doing is doctrine is dependent solely on in-game reasoning based on the Faith, not on anything else. How you do that reasoning depends very much about the play group. Some leave it to the GM to reason, some play completely No Myth (basing the reasoning on what's been explicitly said thus far), some make a conflict out of it, some base it on RL mormonism, whatever.

Final conclusion: whether the players are setting up a false priesthood is a 100% in-setting issue. Rules-wise nobody needs to know it either way. The important thing is what the characters, both PC and NPC, think. Incidentally, I can't think of any way to systemically find out whether they're a false priesthood or not, unless you can frame a suitable conflict about it.

[lumpley]

A sorcerer, including a PC sorcerer, can perform ceremony to invite demons to possess his or her followers. The follower need not be willing.

Is a sorcerer's fellow Dog a follower? Could be. Consider: who defers to whose decisions and who agrees with whom?

So then, as GM, you're within your rights to say "what's at stake is, does the demon possess you?"

Ultimately, it's up to no one - the group, everyone individually and privately, or no one - to decide whether that makes a false priesthood or not.

Incidentally, I can't think of any way to systemically find out whether they're a false priesthood or not, unless you can frame a suitable conflict about it.

I'd go so far as to say that framing a suitable conflict about it should be impossible. Conflicts should be between the people - so "does he come to see that I'm right?" not "am I right?" It's like Einstein's line turned on its head: nobody plays dice for God.

-Vincent

[Sydney Freedberg]

Wow.

But yeah: Even if there's a "schism in the Faith" and the Ancients, Elders, and all the other Dogs all come after the player-characters... maybe they're still right.

[Simon Kamber]

But yeah: Even if there's a "schism in the Faith" and the Ancients, Elders, and all the other Dogs all come after the player-characters... maybe they're still right.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if the players believe their characters are right, they are!

[ravenx99]

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if the players believe their characters are right, they are!

I'm very reluctant to go that far.

I see Dogs as an exploration of responsibility and power and their abuse.  You can't explore that space, in my mind, if you rule that the player can, through his character, rewrite doctrine at will.

While I see the collaborative nature of Dogs, I think there has to be a line drawn somewhere for the exploration to be meaningful.  For me, I draw that line at "a Dog cannot contradict established doctrine."  The Dogs are interpreters and enforcers of established doctrine, not the ones that establish it.

For a Dog to be faced with an instance of sin and feel sympathy for the sinner, his choice of mercy or justice has to be made against a solid basis of right and wrong.[/i]

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I see Dogs as an exploration of responsibility and power and their abuse.  You can't explore that space, in my mind, if you rule that the player can, through his character, rewrite doctrine at will.

If you, as GM, take the responsibility of that decision away from the rest of the players, you've taken away their fun. There's no moral choice for them to make, there's no conversation with the King.

Ask the players if they feel that what their characters have done is right. They don't have to agree. That's where the King of Life comes in. Ask them what the King thinks of their behavior.

If you're not doing that, you're breaking the game. Seriously. It's as bad as not setting Stakes in conflict, softpedaling conflicts, or making up an ending when you write a town.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I see Dogs as an exploration of responsibility and power and their abuse.  You can't explore that space, in my mind, if you rule that the player can, through his character, rewrite doctrine at will.

If you, as GM, take the responsibility of that decision away from the rest of the players, you've taken away their fun. There's no moral choice for them to make, there's no conversation with the King.

Nae, Nikola, you're dogmatizing the rules. As I wrote previously, nowhere is it stated that the players are right all the time. It's an in-setting condition that the characters have a position to convince others, but that doesn't mean that the players are right whatever they decide.

On the other hand, the GM is in the same boat, for he has no last word about morality, either. The rules are very clear on that: nobody has the moral last word, not the the GM, not the players.

What this means in practice is that the GM is perfectly within his rights to challenge the notions the players hold, as long as he does it through the established setting and NPCs instead of some voice of God. If my players suddenly decide that the Faith, as outlined for the setting, is wrong about something central, they will certainly have to face suspicion and ostracition from fellow believers.

That description of the Faith isn't in the book just for fun. It's there to give you a baseline you can use when figuring out how NPCs think. It's something you mirror the players on. A player that, for instance, sets aside the communal nature of the Faith and starts spouting nietzchean liberalism, has taken a two-fold step:
1) he's set his character against the Faith in-setting
2) he's not necessarily wrong.
That second step is what you should mean by player freedom to set morality. The players should not hold onto any moral limitations, even if all the characters do. While the GM desists from personally judging the player's opinion, his job is still to play the setting, including all these Faithful who might have words with somebody who's drifted so far out of the Faith.

[Simon Kamber]

Nae, Nikola, you're dogmatizing the rules. As I wrote previously, nowhere is it stated that the players are right all the time. It's an in-setting condition that the characters have a position to convince others, but that doesn't mean that the players are right whatever they decide.

Hmm. It's a question of interpretation. But the way I read "Your character's conscience and your own(p26)", the player IS the only one who can say if his character is morally on right ground.

And the way I understand it, that's the whole point. Yep, the whole world might disagree with his judgment. The elders might disagree. But then the elders are wrong. They might string the dog up, but that doesn't make the dog any less right. Now, are you willing to die and be forgotten as a bad apple if that's what it takes to do the right thing?

[Eero Tuovinen]

And the way I understand it, that's the whole point. Yep, the whole world might disagree with his judgment. The elders might disagree. But then the elders are wrong. They might string the dog up, but that doesn't make the dog any less right. Now, are you willing to die and be forgotten as a bad apple if that's what it takes to do the right thing?

Yep, and here the important point is that the GM must be willing to push it there. Just because we accept that the player has a right to moral determination (we should accept that in real life too, it's just D&D that claims to know better than real people), we don't need to let his character be accepted by other characters all the time. So the GM should pull no punches just because the player takes some stance.

I'm honing the point because I'm seeing some people applying a kind of double-think on the matter: there's the "bad" NPCs that might disagree with the PCs, and then there's the good Faithful who agree on everything. Because, the dogs are the Gods servants, see, and they're always right and the GM is breaking the rules if he actually casts doubt on those decisions. That's not how it's supposed to go: all NPCs, all the time, have their own notions about what the Faith is about (based largely on the description given by the book), and they try or try not to convince the dogs about their viewpoint. The only power the players have is to agree or disagree with those NPCs.

[neelk]

I'm honing the point because I'm seeing some people applying a kind of double-think on the matter: there's the "bad" NPCs that might disagree with the PCs, and then there's the good Faithful who agree on everything. Because, the dogs are the Gods servants, see, and they're always right and the GM is breaking the rules if he actually casts doubt on those decisions. That's not how it's supposed to go: all NPCs, all the time, have their own notions about what the Faith is about (based largely on the description given by the book), and they try or try not to convince the dogs about their viewpoint. The only power the players have is to agree or disagree with those NPCs.

In the last session, the slave leader, Samuel Langdon, tried to convince some of the Dogs that colloborating with the sorcerers was a good idea, which is something he honestly believed because both of them were helping him and his people. The Faithfuls' Steward, Archibald Sixth, got a different Dog to tell him, in writing, that the first batch of Dogs were possibly tainted by demons and that he had the doctrinal authority to ignore them until the Elders pronounced them doctrinally sound. He did this because he was worried that the other Dogs would try to order him to help the freed slaves, and he feared that his branch would become known as abolitionists and then face pogrom and murder themselves. So he wanted the legal standing to tell the Dogs to go pound sand.

Now, note that the Dogs are in disagreement with each other. I'd be undercutting the conflict if it were mechanically clear that one side or the other was actually right according to the King of Life. And the place where that can possibly come up is when the supernatural touches the game. Ergo, I ask questions. :)

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

the important point is that the GM must be willing to push it there. Just because we accept that the player has a right to moral determination (we should accept that in real life too, it's just D&D that claims to know better than real people), we don't need to let his character be accepted by other characters all the time. So the GM should pull no punches just because the player takes some stance.

I totally, 100% agree with you. That's the game: does the moral vision that the player is putting forward work in this situation? Or this other one?  Totally vanilla Dogs.

I also think that the characters can have the right to rewrite the dogma if need be. They operate on revelation. That doesn't mean that no one's going to object, but that's normal, run-of-the-mill "What's at stake is if she accepts my authority", which is a conflict that gets run at least onece in pretty much every town.

Now, if you're objecting, as maybe you are, to the players writing dogma that fits their moral system (for instance, taking out the polygyny and racist implications), just discuss it up front. You don't want your players playing a game that they're not prepared to play. My players totally balked at enough stuff that the setting is wildly mutated, but I still get to put them in dicey moral situations.

"Say yes or roll the dice."