So this weekend, I sat down with three of my regular players and we made up characters for a Dogs game (completely separate from the solo game I'm running with my kid that I talked about previously). I'll post up the characters and initiation soon, but chargen did raise one question and I want to talk about that.

The possible problem that we as a group identified (and which raised this question) came up with a character who's basically a reformed bandit who found the Faith and joined the dogs. Eli was basically *not* a nice man back in the day -- his initiation contest was "I hope Eli gets some sign that redemption is possible and that he's not just paying off his past." -- as a result of his past and his bad habits, he has a (completely realistic, in character, and believable) LAUNDRY list of pistols, bowie knives, pig stickers, et cetera.

Normally, this isn't really a problem, except for this: what happens when you've pulled out, say, a regular old pistol (1d6+1d4) and in the process of the conflict, also yank out a massive hogleg with pearl grips (2d8+1d4) with your other hand, either for intimidation or to blast away with both hands?

I can see that it would be easy if you were adding an excellent gun (2d6 + 1d4) to regular gun ... just roll another d6 for the difference... but in that example above, you're switching die types somewhere in the middle. That gets weird.

Or here's a similar question: I've got a 2d6+1d4 pistol pulled out. I pull out the other one of the matched pair (also 2d6 + 1d4) with my other hand. What happens, dice-wise?

I don't want to say "don't do that" unless the simple fact is it breaks things. (I *can* see an argument for "you're mixing up dice sizes on your "Pistol" trait," so it's okay if that's what you guys think is going on.)

Thing is, it's a valid kind of situation for the genre.

At the same time, I know this guy is a hardcore gamist and at least partly came up with a character concept who would logically have a lot of guns because he (the player) doesn't want to run out of ammo... which almost makes me laugh to say it in context of a Dogs game, but there it is.

I'm tempted to say "Call the pair of weapons 'Big' and make the pair 2d8+1d4), but then you're back to 'what if you draw one'?

I hate to post a crappy little sim and/or gamist question, but I'm very curious what kind of out-of-the-box thoughts or solutions people have on this.

(My current thought is that he has three basic "belonging traits" that this stuff compresses down into: My [adjective] Rifle, My [adjective] collection of pistols, My [adjective] collection of knives. The rest -- the different pistols and whatnot -- it's all really just window dressing in the narrative.)

Cool thread title. My only thought right now is that he oughta take a trait, "I got more guns than you".

Doyce wrote: So this weekend, I sat down with three of my regular players and we made up characters for a Dogs game (completely separate from the solo game I'm running with my kid that I talked about previously). I'll post up the characters and initiation soon, but chargen did raise one question and I want to talk about that.

The possible problem that we as a group identified (and which raised this question) came up with a character who's basically a reformed bandit who found the Faith and joined the dogs. Eli was basically *not* a nice man back in the day -- his initiation contest was "I hope Eli gets some sign that redemption is possible and that he's not just paying off his past." -- as a result of his past and his bad habits, he has a (completely realistic, in character, and believable) LAUNDRY list of pistols, bowie knives, pig stickers, et cetera.

Normally, this isn't really a problem, except for this: what happens when you've pulled out, say, a regular old pistol (1d6+1d4) and in the process of the conflict, also yank out a massive hogleg with pearl grips (2d8+1d4) with your other hand, either for intimidation or to blast away with both hands?

James is right. Every gun he pulls, he gets its full dice.

Wicked pissa, huh?

You can ask him to justify pulling another gun, but if he's at all with it he'll be able to justify handily. You provided good justifications (blast away with both hands, wave the bigger gun around for intimidation) right in your examples. And there's always "[Raise] I empty the cylinder at him and throw the gun to the side... [Next Raise] I pull out my next gun, empty the cylinder at him and throw the gun to the side..."

Totally legit. Yes, he'll get a metric buttload (2.2 buttloads Imperial) of dice. Yes, it'll take a mob armed to the upper teeth of NPCs to even make him nervous.

And remember that he gets to decide which guns he cares about, and he almost certainly cares about all of them, so he can go ahead and stat the lot.

But it's all just fine. The more dice people have in their guns, the happier I am, as GM. Every die in a gun is a die that wants you to shoot someone. When you put all those dice on your character sheet - they're yours, all you have to do is point a gun at someone - you set yourself up for hard decisions about life and death.

Doyce, those guns are his gift to you. Accept them with a glad heart!

-Vincent

Thanks, guys: couldn't have asked for a better set of replies. I particularly like "Every die in a gun is a die that wants you to shoot someone." That's just poetry.

I was once asked how a bunch of adventurers (using GURPS) could ever hope to take on a village of giants, because the giants could just squish the PCs. My advice was, if you don't want your PCs to get squished, come up with some other way of confronting the giants. Maybe they're greedy and you can convince them to do something for a reward. Maybe you dump cow flops in their well and they all get diptheria. Maybe they want to trade with the PCs.

If the guy's overinvested in shootin' and it's messing up everyone's fun, make the problems unshootable; make them economic, or romantic, or political. He'll start getting traits like "I don't think I can solve everything with a pistol anymore, 8d4" and it will be fun.

If it's not messing up everyone's fun, let the bullets fly!

The point of the game is not the shooting, but what it means: how the Dogs have passed judgement. It doesn't break anything to have him being super shooty as long as everyone playing is into it. It sounds like he might even be good to have around in a pinch.