(Disclaimer: I am reading through Dogs, but have yet to play).

Assuming I have it right that the GM is forbidden to input any external judgement on whether the Dogs actions are good by any scale of judgement...

then is it desirable for the Dogs to revisit towns?

This would surely force the GM to improvise what happened as a result of their actions. Which would be cool by traditional RPG standards. But by its nature would have to reveal, to a greater or lesser degree, whether the GM though the Dogs solutions were 'correct'.

Comments?

That's a real interesting question.

One way to do the towns without being (too) judgmental would be to simply assume the judgment worked exactly as they intended it too, and then say "In this new, wholly sin-free (for the moment) town, where are the opportunities for pride?  For injustice?  For sin?"

I agree that it'd be real easy for that, in itself, to become a judgment upon the player's choices.  It's a tricky proposition, and I'll be reading the thread with interest.

If it was down to me, I'd say that a part of the post-Town reflection might well be "How do you think it'll work out?"

That's your springboard. If the Dogs have their doubts about their judgment on a Town, maybe that's fertile ground for a revisit down the road, after they've got some more experience under their belts. On the other hand, if the players are pretty confident they did right by the town, it seems a bit too much of injecting the GM's judgment into things to come back to it later and say 'nope, you missed a spot.'

It all starts with Pride, right? Not Sin.

What's to say that, after the Dogs leave, more Pride doesn't rear its ugly head and one thing leads to another and you have more demons mucking about in Town?

Hey Nick!

I've been trying to figure out how to answer this question so that it sticks for pretty much a year now. Maybe this time!

Here are four things that as GM you are NOT allowed to do:
1. Have a best solution in mind for the town.
2. Say what God thinks about anything.
3. Say how a PC's conscience feels about anything.
4. Grant or withhold dice to a player based on her characters' conscience.

For examples of the last, you aren't allowed to say this:
"You don't inflict ceremonial fallout on the demon, even though you did ceremony, because of your sins."
or this:
"You don't get to roll your relationship with the Dogs, because of your sins."

Here's a thing that as GM you MUST do:
Have all the NPCs in the whole game respond to the PCs just exactly as they would.

So, for instance, you're allowed to say this:
"The Prophets and Ancients organize a murder squad to hunt down and kill the lot of you, calling you blasphemers, sorcerers and renegades."

But you're not allowed to say this:
"God tells the Prophets and Ancients to organize a murder squad to hunt down and kill the lot of you, calling you blasphemers, sorcerers and renegades."

Now, when you revisit a town, as GM, you create the town anew following just the same old usual town creation rules: pride, injustice, sin, etc. The only thing you aren't allowed to do is make the pride or the sin be the PCs'; they have to be the pride and sin of NPCs.

For instance, you're allowed to have this:
"Pride: Sister Anabel feels that the Dogs' judgements were uinjust and thus shouldn't stand."

You're not allowed to have this:
"Pride: The Dogs judged unjustly."

Make sense?

A last word: as GM, you absolutely will, you will judge the characters' actions. Everybody at the table will. The only thing is, you aren't allowed to make your judgement mechanically significant. It's as simple and as dumb as "the players suffer no dice penalties for their characters violating alignment."

-Vincent

But "exactly as they would"... that's a freighted question, isn't it?  It has to do with interpretation of stakes, and how stakes stick over time.

Say, for instance, your Dogs declare that they've judged person X free of sin, and cleansed their soul, and you then decide that "exactly what that NPC would do" is to go out and commit multiple acts of heinous ritual murder in the name of a false god.  Doesn't that make your judgment mechanically significant?  What if the Dogs had won a conflict where the stakes were "person X is cleansed of sin"?  Does that make things different?

It's easy to tell.

Does the player feel that the NPC has betrayed her PC?

If so, you're fine.

Does the player feel that you have betrayed her?

If so, knock it off.

-Vincent

TonyLB wrote: Say, for instance, your Dogs declare that they've judged person X free of sin, and cleansed their soul, and you then decide that "exactly what that NPC would do" is to go out and commit multiple acts of heinous ritual murder in the name of a false god.  Doesn't that make your judgment mechanically significant?  What if the Dogs had won a conflict where the stakes were "person X is cleansed of sin"?  Does that make things different?

Sure... example time.  At the end of my run of Kettle Lake, Makepeace declared that he didn't love Mariah, and he didn't think he ever could.  Mariah still loved him.  The Dogs decided that the King of Life wanted them to be married, so they married them.

Now there was some idle talk along the lines of "Well, the King might awaken love in his heart for her,"  but that one sentence was about all the discussion it ever got.  My way of figuring things is that this is about the harshest punishment I've ever seen meted out:  He's got to live with the woman he loathes, and pretend that everything's fine.  She's got to live with the man who loathes her, and try to survive in the face of the constant tiny ways that his disgust will show itself.

Of course, God approves the marriage ('cuz the Dogs said He does), so she's going to get with child right quick.  And my sense of "What would happen" says that will make everything so much worse.  Completely separate from any second hierarchy of sin I could write up for the second trip to the town, my sense of continuity leans toward Mariah being absolutely miserable.

So what do I do on a second run through the town?  Do I make Mariah happy (the way the Dogs hoped she would be)?  Or do I make her miserable (the way I think she would be)?

Vincent: great stuff. As I've noted previously, this one seems to be the big sticking point for anybody who reads Dogs.

TonyLB wrote:
So what do I do on a second run through the town?  Do I make Mariah happy (the way the Dogs hoped she would be)?  Or do I make her miserable (the way I think she would be)?

Great example!

First a wha huh?

TonyLB wrote:
...God approves the marriage ('cuz the Dogs said He does), so she's going to get with child right quick.

Okay, cool.  Thanks!  I'm satisfied here.  Don't know about anyone else.

lumpley wrote:
Can somebody point me to the piece of text that people are sticking on? I can't figure it out.

Wow, that's strange. What that section says is that the GM can't award or withhold dice, that's all.

In Dogs, the GM has no opportunity to pass effective judgment on a PC’s actions. Talk about ’em, sure, but never come down on them as righteous or sinful in a way that’s binding in the game world. The GM can’t give or withhold dice for the state of a PC’s soul, and thus never needs to judge it.

I am satisfied with the answers. This is what I think was said:

* Abide strictly by what was established by the conflicts. These are the Rules based constraints.
* Use the group post-Town reflection as a means of feeling out things that might spoil the players enjoyment of their Judgement. These are Social constraints.
* Also use this reflection as a springboard for ideas about what the consequences of their judgement might be.
* Within the Rules based and Social constraints, play the NPCs true to what is known about them. Feel free to make the outcome dreadful as long as you are posing the question '... and even Now?".
* Dont even think about what God thinks about the Judgement. And don't apply any mechanistic penalties anywhere that somehow reflect what he thinks.

All of which falls under "Identify and challenge the PCs’ moral grounds, by provoking their judgment." (p57) as well as, you say' "... and even Now".

As far as locating the text in the rules that sparked this fear of revisiting towns, Iv'e had a good look and the closest I can find is p94

p94 wrote: In Dogs, the GM has no opportunity to pass effective judgment on a PC’s actions... Which is, in fact, essential. If you, the GM, can judge my character’s actions, then I won’t tell you what I think. I’ll play to whatever morality you impose on me via your rulings.

Excellent! Thank you, Nick.

-Vincent