A question to Vincent.

[Lagnath]

So I'm gonna pose a theoretical question to Vincent and see if he's ever had any thoughts in this direction and if so, what they were.

I'm proposing to a group of friends that we might try running a slighly modified dogs/afraid game set in a medival fantasy setting. I've already drawn up what I think is an interesting game world that I've been working on for several years and I want some strong narrative capable mechanics to let the players drive themselves through unwinding the worlds story without having to resort to hack and slash violence at every turn.

So my question to Vincent is, Have you ever considered running a game with Dogs mechanics in a high fantasy setting? If you have considered it, would you make any rule changes?

Mostly i'm just curious if you've ever had thoughts in this direction before.

Thanks for your time in advance.

Anthony

[oliof]

Anthony,

I'm not Vincent, but I've run a Dogs game that was transplanted to Aldea, the world of Green Ronin's Blue Rose. It worked reasonably well, except that I was missing the immediacy of guns (which were replaced by holy swords). Here is an Actual Play report.

I'd recommend running Dogs as-is before transposing to another setting.

[Lagnath]

Although I don't get a chance to run it often i've run Dogs twice as is to get used to the mechanics. Neither session blew the walls off the house, so to speak, but everyone was really interested in the mechanics, I just can't drum up interest in a western setting. I'd personally really like to run several Dogs towns i've got sitting in my folder, but I'm trying to do what I can that will interest my group the most.

In any case, thanks for the play report. I'll look over it this evening.

[Moreno R.]

I'd recommend running Dogs as-is before transposing to another setting.

I concur. There are some nuances in the interaction between the setting, the system (including the city generation rules) and the characters that aren't apparent when you only read the rules. To do a good adaptation of the game to another setting, I think you should be familiar with the way it works with the regular setting (using all the rules as written).

[Gugliandalf]

First I'll subscribe to other's advice: run vanilla dogs at least a couple of times, and build a town, sticking to the rules.

Then, I say that we are currently running (and enjoying) a D&D port that works fine.

Some advice.
1. Magic takes the place of firearms. As everybody can use magic (but a couple of traits in it help A LOT), those d10 of fallout prevent casual use. Also, magic items get the +1d4 bonus.

2. Is very important that you develop some ethic/morale frame for the PC to fit in. We swapped "the Faith" and "the King of Life" for "the Empire" and "the Emperor", sorta law-vs-chaos as in OD&D red box.

3. It is also very important that you decide before about the "magic dial". We cranked it all way up, so PCs go around riding dragons and gold clouds: remember that there are no rules to limit its use. ;-)

Maybe our "sin" ladder can help:

- Pride (causes injustice)
- Disorder (allows forces of chaos to infiltrate)
- Conspiracy and Rebellion (peace and order are subverted)
- Riot and Treachery (ever worse...)
- WAR (Empire itself is in jeopardy)

Have fun. :-)

[oliof]

If you want to look at another fantsy implementation with another sin progression based on stability of hierarchy  (similar to Gugliandalf's), I recommend Clinton R. Nixon's The Princes' Kingdom.

[Lagnath]

Thanks for the suggestions.

After looking at all the background work i've been doing for Kel-Hal (the campaign world I plan on running this in) I noticed that I had already created something that could easily be turned into a "ethical ladder" long before I ever even heard of dogs.

So, that part is easy as following my own idea of several years ago to a new conclusion.

Anyhow, thanks for the suggestions. I'm still hoping Vincent can pop in with something when he gets a chance.

[lumpley]

I've been sitting here going "no, I don't have any thoughts about that at all," and then I remembered that I do in fact have a fantasy mod in the back of my mind.

Most of it is random stuff about MY fantasy world, but here's a cool thing I can offer up. A magic system!

You've got spell lists. Every spell is a named, pre-defined raise or see. "Fire falls from heaven and engulfs you!" "spinning copper discs deflect every missile that comes near me!" and so on. Casting the spell = making that raise or see.

Spell raises inflict their usual fallout. Being engulfed by fire from heaven is d10s. "A powerful force tosses you off your feet" is d6s. Same as always. You can see them using spells of your own or by making normal sees: "Fire from heaven! Engulfed!" "I dodge!"

But in addition, when you use a spell:

1) You add to the dice of your raise or see. Maybe you add a straight number, maybe you add a die. The number or the size of the die depends on your mastery of the spell or the school of magic of which the spell is part.

2) You get a fallout die of your own, for casting the spell. The size of the fallout depends on a different measure of your mastery of the spell or school.

Example

It's my raise. I push forward a 5 and a 3. I say, "I cast 'fury of blades.' [reading] 'A dozen volcanic glass blades whip around you, slicing and slashing.' That'll be d10s for fallout if you take the blow."

"Fury of blades" is listed on my character sheet with a +d8 and a fallout d6. So I take a d6 and put it with the other fallout I've taken. Then I roll a d8, and it comes up a 4. I put it with my 5 and my 3: "I raise with 12. Your see."

You say, "before the battle began I cast 'shimmering self' on myself. I activate it now." You put forward a 6 and a 4.

"Shimmering self" is listed on your character sheet with a +d6 and a fallout d8. You put a d8 with the other fallout you've taken. You roll your d6 for the spell: a 5. You put it with your 6 and 4. You're seeing with a 15, but it counts as two dice because the die you got from casting the spell is free.

You say, "I dodge with a 15! [reading] 'I am not quite where you thought I was.' The blades slash up my false image instead."

So then at the end of the conflict you'll have taken 1d8 fallout for casting the spell, instead of (at least) 3d10 fallout from taking the blow.

Make sense? I think it's pretty cool.

-Vincent

[Lagnath]

Measure for measure that is the exact kind of thing I was thinking of. Beautiful. I really think I'm about 95% done with this idea. If it gets players interested enough I'm gonna be running a rough and ready rules test this next weekend. I'll make a post about how things go if the play test does go down.