(If my players are seeing this it's fine for you to read, it doesn't have spoilers.)

I have a mechanics question (eventually)! First some context. Brother Jabez, Brother Thomas and Sister Love are in their second town, Last Springs, on the edge of the scrublands. On the way there they rescued a widow and two little babies, one her own son and the other a mountain folk orphan girl. The widow and babies had been left behind by a wagon train when her husband died of what looked like some plague (typhus or what have you) and the babies showed symptoms. Cruel, but it's a cruel land, and the wagon master wasn't going to risk the whole train and the town they needed resupply from. The wagon master and most of the wagons have moved on but a few of the wagons are camped outside Last Springs, and those folks and the townspeople refused to let the Dogs bring the plague victims into town, where everyone might all be put at risk.

There was a tense confrontation at gun and torch point, with the stakes "Does the Steward allow the sick into town" settled by the Steward offering up materials for building a plague house well away from the other houses, and Brother Thomas pointing out the townsfolk could all pitch in to build that (small) house since there wouldn't be anyone sick in it until after it was built, and someone pointing out that a house built by the townfolk is thus part of the town, so both sides were satisfied and the Steward gave, and the house was built a hundred yards away from town, far enough to not risk spread of plague, but close enough to be defended by the town, since there were rumors of Mountain Folk raiding wagon trains.

As part of the Raising and Taking of (verbal) Blows in all that it was settled that all the townsfolk Brother Jabez (who had been exposed) had been close to had to go into quarantine in the plague house too, meaning the fancy eastern Doctor and his mute and possibly deaf sister Rose, and the storekeeper's wife, Sister Judith. Brother Thomas hadn't actually been in contact with any of the plague victims so he was free to wander about, and as a followup conflict Sister Judith (using her trait "Nag the Fleas off a dog 1d8") convinced Thomas to convince the Steward that she hadn't been exposed any more than Thomas had.

After some conflicts and lots of townspeople asking for this and that, not relevant to my upcoming question, and someone trying to burn down the plague house (now being called a hospital, although it's just a 10 by 10 shack of sod and enough wood to be burnable) in the middle of the night and failing, its time to move things along so the Dogs can wander freely, and I'm wondering how to handle the plague (or lack thereof). There's the NPC fancy eastern doctor, his sister, Brother Jabez, Sister Love, the widow, and the two sick babies. So far only the babies are showing symptoms, and it might just be baby stuff, and her husband's untimely death after finding the mountain baby might have just been very bad timing from unrelated causes.

It's an article of faith among us that NPC/NPC interactions are not a good use of screentime; PCs should always be involved. So I'm looking for ideas for stakes and mechanics. "Do the babies die?" Or start simpler, like "Is it really plague?" Who should be rolling dice, opposed by what? The NPC doctor should clearly be involved somehow, at least providing his "Fancy Eastern Doctor 2d8" trait to the PCs (and maybe 2d6 to Acuity).

One very wierd thought I had was that I'd use the Doctor's dice (with 1d6 for the baby's Body), and the players would take the part of the plague, getting either the default 4d6+4d10 or maybe just 4d6+2d10 (for demonic attacks, the worst evidence the PCs have seen so far being crop failures, disease, and alleged mountain folk raids on outlying farms and wagon trains), with the stakes being "Does a baby die of the plague?" with followup conflict possibly being "Does anyone else in the hospital catch it?" But then, the players could just Give after the first raise and save the babies with no drama. But maybe it's right to put the babies' fate in the hands of the players. Or maybe that's just too wierd.

(I already know we can play it anyway we like; what I'm looking for is ideas on how to frame the stakes in an interesting fashion, win or lose.)

Or am I looking in the wrong direction and the stakes should really be "Do the Dogs get out of the Hospital?" with raises being the babies running a high fever and sees being the PCs calling on the doctor's medical expertise or their own faith or what have you, and maybe a raise for the Dogs falling sick, and who winds up dead or not will just be determined by fallout.

We hope to finish the town when we play next time, 2 weeks from now. I still need a lot of work on my escalating and driving towards conflict, but that's a topic for another post, sometime.

Hmm. The whole idea of Dogs being forced to stay out of town strikes me as odd. If those guys want to get into town, they have the authority to do it. If the townspeople oppose it, the dogs might agree on their own accord, but if the dogs dont and the townspeople keep standing up to them, the townspeople are standing up to the king of life himself.

Or, put another way, if the players are constrained from acting out what the dogs are, the will of god, then something's going the wrong way. If they're staying out there, it should be because of the players' choice.

Sorry if that was unclear. The two exposed Dogs are staying in the Plague House because the players think that's the right thing for them to do. They could leave whenever they want, and then maybe the armed men outside that are worried about their own families might shoot them, or they might not, we'd see.

So far the players (and therefore their Dogs) have been very reluctant about escalating to gunfighting to solve probllems, which is fine by me, they always have the option, but probably indicates I'm not escalating things enough as the GM, or may just be a character arc as the new Dogs start out careful instead of arrogant, and as the towns get harder we'll see what they think IS worth shooting someone for. "IF that's not worth shooting someone for, is this? Is THIS?"

It's generally known that those who survive plague are safe to go amongst the healthy once they've recovered. Maybe suggest the conflict that the two Dogs who've been exposed end up sick, and have to fight off the sickness. When/if they succeed, they get to move among the townfolk, and it's justifiable to them.

If you want to do something with the babies, just set the scene that one or the other or both of them come down and are dying. Let the Dogs try to save them, and if they take fallout, maybe they'll choose to take "Plague" as fallout.

However you choose to do it, I'd personally recommend against the idea of the players taking the part of the plague/demons. Remember that the GM's job is to be the author of adversity in the game, and to actively expose the town during play. Anything that keeps those two Dogs stuck away from the other happenings in town is hindering that second goal, and should be dealt with post haste.

Carl, you can just announce that if the Dogs don't do anything about it, the plague will rampage through the town. Let them propose stakes.

The fancy Eastern doctor can be on either side of that conflict, depending how you want to portray him. He can interfere with the Dogs' attempts to deal with the plague even if he has every good intention, if that's how it goes.

-Vincent

cdr wrote: Sorry if that was unclear. The two exposed Dogs are staying in the Plague House because the players think that's the right thing for them to do. They could leave whenever they want, and then maybe the armed men outside that are worried about their own families might shoot them, or they might not, we'd see.