Last night I was the second game of Dogs in the Vineyard I've played, and my first time being the GM. The chargen and the first town can be found in the thread [DitV] Our First Session(s): Char Creation and Cedar Falls. In reply to Vincents comments there, just a note: thankfully Alisanne seemed much more into it this time around, I think it's just a learning curve issue, and that she's working a lot lately and therefore pretty tired. Oh, and so far GM-rotating seems to work well. More on that in a seperate post, this post looks like it'll be huge already, and I'm digressing.

When the Dogs get to town, they find out that a young girl, Angela, had been badly beaten by an unknown assailent, and had been unconscious for days. I introduced this fact as what the Steward speculated might be the cause of a lot of irrational behaviour on the part of the female population lately. Sympathetic concern making them moody, "you know how emotional women can be," etc. I wasn’t sure how the players would approach the situation, but I don’t think I could have planned a better approach than how they took it. Two of the three characters went to the girl’s home. One character (Solomon) went because of his sympathy to children trait, and the other (Malachi) went because he had a better acuity than the others, and it was clear the girl needed medical attention.

So our first conflict was Malachi trying to stabilise the girl – the stakes were, “Does he heal her wounds?” which he did. That went pretty smoothly, though it was interesting to see how the trait “insatiably curious” was legitimately used in a conflict like this; the theory was, his burning curiousity over what happened to her empowered him to help her and therefore help to find out what happened.

While this was going on (narratively speaking; mechanically speaking, after we’d finished that conflict), Solomon spoke with the girl’s mother. This didn’t turn into conflict, as what the mother wanted from them didn’t seem to warrant it at that point. She told them she had not been there at the time, and the only one to see anything was her other daughter Maureen, the girl’s older sister.

Based on what Maureen wanted from the Dogs, this was resolved through conflict, not narrative. The stakes were roughly, “Does she give us a lead to go on?” I gave her some of the best stats on the pre-rolled stat-sheet and made good use of them. It was a fairly close call, and Solomon had to not only call on several traits, but then escalate to physical (by giving her a hug) and even roll a couple extra dice for adding Malachi to the conflict. (The narrative for that went that that was the point at which the other character had finished healing the girl, and came in to see what how his Brother was doing with counseling the family and looking into what happened.) So after a lot of back-and-forth, and pretty much every possible die used on the part of both, it turned out that Maureen didn’t see some one else attack her sister; she did this. A short narrative in which Maureen explains that her sister is always bullying her, even though she’s the younger sister. Specifically, Angela prevents her from fulfilling her Stewardship; pushes her out of the way when trying to take care of their younger brothers or do her chores. Angela is not the only one who seems tohave this opinion, their mother often treats them as if Angela were the eldest, bestowing the greater responsibilities on her instead of Maureen.

As GM, I purposefully pulled my punches slightly, in order to allow the character to figure out what was up. Interestingly, the player (BrendanC) figured it out a few sees and raises before his character did. Brendan purposefully took a little fallout, on the theory that what Solomon discovers shakes him up badly. He felt that this should be a conflict that resulted in some amount of personal heartache.

At this point, our third character (Gabriel) had a minor conflict, a discussion with a local teenaged girl, about why she has been acting strangely lately. It comes down to her last dice and all she’s got is a three to try and See his Raise that was something like ten. So she visibly sagged in reaction to his question, and that was her Giving. We reverted to narrative and she explains that she doesn’t know why she’s been so rude to her older sister lately, or why it’s been consuming her thoughts the idea that her sister is a terrible mother. She explains that it’s very odd for her to look down on her sister this way, that she and her sister are best friends. And she doesn’t say so in so many words, but she pretty much is asking him what’s wrong with her, and can he help. Gabriel is a highly devout type, traits like “can quote perfectly from the Book at the drop of a hat” and “blind to any inconsistancies in the Book or the Faith” and so his reaction (at least the player, though my impression was that this was more the internal reaction for the character) was to point and yell “demon!” Basically, his narration was that he assured her he’d try to figure out what was going on, counseled her to try not to act on these feelings she couldn’t explain (as it was hurting others), and did his best to put some amount of Blessing on her. He then sought out his fellow Dogs to tell them what he’d learned.

It happened that this conflict happened while the other two players were out, running a quick but neccesary errand. I have to say, it worked beautifully because it brought the “ah-HA!” factor over into the realm of players, not just characters when the three met back up.

After some discussion of what to do next, Solomon went to talk to the mother again, and explain what he’d found out. The mother seems strangely unsurprised, but when questioned about the attitude that Maureen is incapable of her Stewardship, she’s mortified. She confesses that in both physical appearance and mannerisms, Angela is a mirror of herself as a child, where Maureen is like her mother’s younger sister. She hadn’t realised she’d acted so much on this subconscious feeling that Angela is older, more mature, than Maureen. She shows remorse and the Dogs are satisfied that she’ll be treating the girls more fairly from now on.

The players decide it’s time to try a second healing on Angela, this time with the stakes of “Does she regain consciousness?” – this went fine, since Malachi got a very good roll and Angela’s unconsciousness got a mediocre one at best. (When I was down to the last two dice and Malachi’s player still had five or six totaling around twenty, we joked that Angela awoke by sitting bolt-upright in bed, screaming “Ok, ok, I’m up already!”)

When the players said that the plan was to have the same talk with her that they’d had with her mother, I told them it was going to be a conflict. See, Angela had been raised for all her ten years to believe she was inherently better than her twelve-year-old sister. She was not wanting to see there side at this point. The players chose to gang up on her, three of God’s Watchdogs against a stubborn, willful, self-righteous ten-year-old. I knew she wouldn’t win, but it made the most sense to have her fight the idea that she isn’t the boss of her sister. So we rolled up verbal stats, and a couple of us rolled any relevant starting traits. Gabriel started, quoting from the Book about Stewardship and the rights and responsibilities of the eldest child. Then Malachi (who also has a couple traits related to being a scholarly, rather devout Dog) quoted something else about being good to one’s sister. Solomon, not much for scripture and sympathetic to children, simply told her something along the lines of “I know this is hard for you, I’m sorry you’re so upset.” Finally Angela’s turn, I had rolled some relevant traits in order to Block all three Antes. Since she’d just been quoted at twice from the Book of Life, I chose to have her argue with a quote she feels backs up her position. It ended up being and interesting choice, since Malachi has a trait about being able to spot inconsistancies, but Gabriel has a trait that makes him blind to inconsistancies with regard to the Faith. Based on these traits, Gabriel’s player either chose to take the blow or block it (I forget exactly how it went), and Malachi either blocked or possibly even reversed that. The details of the rest of the conflict escape me, as it was late in the evening, and it was fairly complex playing three-against-one. But the end result was Angela saw reason, and the Dogs called an impromptu town meeting to explain to everyone what had happened, reminded them to fulfill their Stewardships and allow others to fulfill theirs.

There was some interesting fallout taken at the end of this session. One was that as part of his reflection fallout, Brendan gave Solomon a new trait relating to learning the power of a caring touch. It’s a trait that will come in handy in situations where he has to escalate to physical to win the conflict, but can escalate in ways like the hug he gave Maureen and a reassuring arm around the shoulder he gave Angela. This is especially interesting as his stats for verbal aren’t fabulous, and he already has two traits (short fuse and learned to control his temper) that can be called on when escalating.. or to avoid escalating. Since Malachi healed twice in this session, Alisanne concentrated on fallout that improved this, by adding one to her acuity and a new trait, “healed a girl who’d been badly beaten.” Matt increased the dice for Gabriel’s blindness of Faith trait.

I had a great time being GM for the first time, and looking back am interested and delighted to note that my players enjoyed the town even though it barely got past verbal conflict. Twice it was escalated to physical, but only in kind ways. What a great example of how DitV is an enjoyable game, even (possibly especially) when it doesn’t have to come to bloodshed.

Very nice. I think it's an important point that it's possible to escalate without violence. Something that may not have come up, but which is good to keep in mind is that it's also possible to escalate to a "lower" arena of conflict. If something starts out as a fist-fight, it's possible to escalate to talking, and eventually to escalate to physical but not fighting. The power of such things is understated, and is one of the things I really love about the game.

I think it's important to have a town like this every so often, especially if your game tends toward a lot of action and violence. For one, it allows those who emphasize the kinder traits a chance to shine, and it keeps the Dogs on their toes; Not every town is a firebomb with a short fuse.

I hope to hear more about your game as it progresses.