Have any of you picked up the newest issue of Details magazine? Don't let the fact that Ben Affleck's on the cover keep you away; there's an interesting article in there about shady goings-on in the modern-day Mormon Church. ("The Lost Boys," page 174.)

Basically, if the allegations in there are true, there's an offshoot branch of the Mormons in Colorado City, Arizona where young men are getting excommunicated for the most minor infractions. Friends and family cast them out on the word of Warren Jeffs, the local prophet. The suspected ulterior motive: Men outnumber or equal women, so the elders have taken to casting out the young men so that they can marry multiple wives. (Yes, this group has continued the tradition of polygamy, even though the main LDS stopped it in 1890. Warren Jeffs reputedly has anywhere from 40-70 wives and even more children. His entire family lives behind a walled compound of houses, and is extremely distrustful of the media and outside law enforcement.) There is currently a lawsuit planned on behalf of some of The Lost Boys; others, having no idea of what the outside world is actually like (these guys make the Amish seems like CNN and MTV junkies!) are crashing and burning when they are forced out headlong into the outside world. These are kids whose whole families sometimes have been split apart at the behest of the prophet; almost all are invited to leave and never come back, sometimes for things as ridiculous as video games, the Internet, movies, talking to girls outside one's family, etc.

Yes, this is happening in modern America. Makes your heart beat proud, doesn't it?

What, I wonder, would the Dogs do? After all, if there was a branch in sore need of cleansing, this would be it...

I'm glad that you bolded the "if." Because I think there's a lot here we don't know about that might make this all a lot more innocent than we're seeing. But as a hypothetical where we assume the worst for purposes of play only, yeah, it does sound like a good scenario.

What I'd do is write it up in system terms. 40-70 wives and more children? Sounds like a town in effect to me.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I'm glad that you bolded the "if." Because I think there's a lot here we don't know about that might make this all a lot more innocent than we're seeing.

Brand_Robins wrote: And yea, it sounds like a ripe situation for Dogs play, either in modern times or cast back into the world of Dogs. In fact, in Dogs it could be even more morally wrenching, as what the elders are doing could be not only legal, but the actual manifest will of God. And what, exactly, is a Dog to do then?

Mike Holmes wrote: That is, you can't base the PC morality off of modern American values that might contradict these, can you?

I see your point. I guess what I'm worried about is how it would affect play of the game. Like your last statement above. That is, it seems that the standard set-up (and this is from the lightest of readings of the game, mind you, so I may well be wrong), is that the PCs are confronted with people who are objectively wrong morally. Can the mechanics handle conflcits whith those who are objectively correct? Or conflicts with those who are in grey territory?

You tell me, I really can't say.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Can the mechanics handle conflcits whith those who are objectively correct? Or conflicts with those who are in grey territory?

If I were going to write up this town (something I tremble at doing), I'd definitely set it during the standard Dogs time frame. Polygamy is still part of the equation then (before the Mormons officially banned it), and I can't imagine that something like this hasn't happened before. (Not faulting the LDS for this either, polygamy is tricky under even the best, most tightly-controlled standards.)

Something that occured to me, as I was reading the responses: While it's true that ultimately the players must pass judgement on the setting, the GM designing the towns does have a small amount of input into this. He is the one initially defining which activities the Demons are exploiting and how. Depending on how this town was initially written, the branch Steward could be made to be forming False Doctrine, or, if the GM decides to make the conflict more abstract, the Steward could simply be acting as his faith and vision of the problem dictate.

In the article, the lawyer defending Warren Jeffs stated that a lot of these young men have had problems with drugs and alcohol, which is why they got kicked out. He also said that this was a largely religious matter, a matter which the people took seriously, and if the church was not allowed to excommunicate those who violated the teachings, how were they supposed to keep the faith pure?

So suppose the town Steward, rather than out for personal gain, simply sees the younger generation of men as not living up to the teachings of the Elders and the King of Life. His generation turned out alright, but something's just gone wrong with this current crop. (Demonic Influence?) So he's kicked a lot of the young men out, and the women have to go somewhere, and as for families split up, well now there's women and children to reintegrate, not to mention possible problems with Territorial officials... Going this route would make the decisions a lot more painful for the Dogs, as they'd have to solve the mystery of what happened to cause a whole generation of young men to turn bad, and what do they do about all the exiled men, some of whom are coming back and challenging the Steward's authority?

It's all on how you set up the town, as far as the GMs are concerned: do you assume from the get-go that the King of Life is The Truth, the Elders and the Stewards know what they're doing because they receive instruction directly from the King, and that it's weak human nature on the part of the men who couldn't handle the responsibility of being a part of the One True Faith? Or do you assume that "weak human nature" exists at all points on the chain (exempting the King of Life Himself for game purposes)? Either way, I think the GM does have a vote in how it plays out, and casts it at town creation. If so, for dramatic purposes, creating a town is becoming a more subtle art that I thought, and may require more ambiguity than I realized for meatier play.

Like I said above, I'd be real unsure about how to write up this town. The GM can also be a victim of modernist viewpoints, and I think that will affect play. I dropped the article in initially because it seemed like a good real-world example of the issues this game raises. Actually playing it, though...that's begging for a gallon-drum of worms to be opened.

(Edited for clarity)

I feel obligated to point out that the textual mention of Polygamy says

Polygamy (technically polygyny; polyandry isn’t allowed a’tall) is, in the Faith, a reward to men for long-term service and dedication. No man under, say, 30 has a second wife, and no man under 40 has a third (or fourth, or fifth, or sixth...). To get official allowance to court a woman after your first wife, you must:

- have been called upon by the King of Life to do so, as confirmed by the person with Stewardship over you.

- be fulfilling the Stewardship of your office in the Faith in an exemplary fashion (or have retired from a lifetime of doing so).

- have a woman in mind.

- be able to support the addition to your family, including the inevitable children and elder parents.

I meant, Brand, objective in terms of the game. I had thought that the "rules" posted, such as what Trevis posted were, in fact, an objectively true morality in the context of the game. If I'm wrong about that, and it's the dogs that determine what's objectively true, as you say, then the scenario should work just fine.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I meant, Brand, objective in terms of the game. I had thought that the "rules" posted, such as what Trevis posted were, in fact, an objectively true morality in the context of the game.

Because of how resolution works?

Cool.

Mike

I'm trying to figure out this thread. Please help!

Who decides whether Warren Jeffs or the young men sinned? The GM does.

Who decides what should be done about it? The Dogs do.

Would somebody please go ahead and write up Colorado City, AZ as a town? Sticking strictly to the town creation rules in the book? I think that might help the discussion of "whose morality is it?" considerably. If nobody else wants to, I will.

-Vincent

I would certainly like your interpretation on this Vincent.

1) You're the creator of the game. How would you, as a GM, handle writing up the town, and how would you handle it if the Dogs came at it and judged things differently than you might have had in mind?

2) My copy of the game is due back to Mike and Kat Miller ASAP, so I won't have the book to look at to set up the town.

The thing that's puzzling me is, how do you set up towns for players while keeping the mindset of the era and that this is the One True Faith without letting your vision of right/wrong getting in the way of things, or should I even bother separating the two to begin with?

I think that last is the key issue.

Mike

That's the thing. I don't get the issue a'tall.

Carl wrote: The thing that's puzzling me is, how do you set up towns for players while keeping the mindset of the era and that this is the One True Faith without letting your vision of right/wrong getting in the way of things, or should I even bother separating the two to begin with?

lumpley wrote: So now, Mike, Brand, Carl, am I answering the issue or am I going off on some random tangent?

Well, I was already convinced. But this is great. :-)

Mike

Yes you did, and I now feel foolish for reading too much into it. That's what happens when you tend to post in the wee small hours of the morning.

So realistically, three whole towns could be made out of something like this. I gotta actually get this game.

lumpley wrote: Also, I think it'd be super sweet if somebody wrote up Colorado City Branch (ii), where the Pride is "several young men of the town think they should be allowed to marry even though bro Jeffs has righteously prevented them from doing so." And if somebody else wrote up Colorado City Branch (iii), where the Pride is "the girls of the town have decided that if they can't marry bro Jeffs, they won't marry anyone."

Anybody who feels like doing either of those, please do!

Sweet! Perfect.

I dig the scene in my head where bro Jeffs explains to the Dogs that, yes, in the last month or so he's married these fourteen or fifteen - he can't remember - girls, he can't remember all their names, and he certainly hasn't consummated the marriages - but marrying them seemed like the best way to protect them, and his real wives are giving him grief, and can the Dogs please help him find a way out of this mess?

"I mean, just because I married them - that doesn't mean I'm married to them, right?"

Anybody feel like taking on iii?

-Vincent

Mike Holmes wrote:

Brand_Robins wrote: And yea, it sounds like a ripe situation for Dogs play, either in modern times or cast back into the world of Dogs. In fact, in Dogs it could be even more morally wrenching, as what the elders are doing could be not only legal, but the actual manifest will of God. And what, exactly, is a Dog to do then?

Well, this is sorta my point. If it is the will of god, then there's no moral question at all - just folks behaving in a good fashion. Even in the modern sense, who is to say that the Mormon Elders have the right of it, and not these individuals?

That is, you can't base the PC morality off of modern American values that might contradict these, can you?

Mike