Hi Everybody,

There’s been some talk about a certain game of Dogs in the Vineyard that happened at GenCon. It contained some serious and disturbing events that had happened in the town, and raised issues for the actual people involved. So, I will proceed by discussing the general in-game events and my own issues with what transpired, and leave everyone else to address their own issues as they wish.  If we all observe this boundary, I believe we may be able to have good discussion while respecting everyone’s privacy.  Tom and Meguey have given a good example in their posts about the game of Bacchanal played at the Embassy (also on Saturday night, no coincidence in my book) of how to discuss touchy issues sensitively.

Enter the Vineyard
The group of us took part in the game, 4 players & 1 gm. There were many strong bonds of friendship between the people in the group. The characters were a slow Dog with simple faith (male), a solid Dog with a strong faith (female), a world-wise Dog who had strong skepticism about the faith but who was versed in it front and back (male), and a combat-strong  Dog who was struggling with issues of anger & forgiveness with his family. Players matched gender of characters, gm was male. 

So the initiation conflicts spotlighted issues we chose:  self-doubt, forgiveness, inspiration & belief, helping others believe.  The characters, to my eye, formed an interesting web of overlapping issues, I couldn’t wait to see how they would interact with the story unfolding.

Broken Arrow Proper
We get to the town, Broken Arrow Branch. True to form we are brought into it from the first. The whole town is gathered together, neglecting the fields to sing in the church, praying together for deliverance from the wrath of demons or G*d that were smiting them.  It turns out that for the last year or more no child had been born living to the town.  The current Steward was taking the place of the old one who had lost his faith.  With the continued loss of the babies, he had begun preaching that the Faith was a lie and had taken to a retreat in the woods, abandoning the town. 

The Dogs responded to these issues. We split up—two of us going to speak to the old Steward, one to talk to the midwife, one to the graveyard where the children were buried.  No dice (figuratively speaking) with the midwife—she already knew to sterilize here equipment. No dice with the Steward, he chased us away with a barrage of shot-gun fire coming from (presumably) others who had joined his false Priesthood.  The trip to the graveyard ended with the souls of the children sent to heaven.  Inspiring and very productive, but not leading to an end to the troubles.   A bifurcation in the experience of the characters began here: the one with simple faith sent the souls to heaven & had a strongly supernatural experience; the skeptic spoke with the midwife, and for him the trail was grounded in the material of the earthly plane.

But when the Dogs delivered the mail to the family of a young 14-yr old mother who had lost her child, it all exploded.  In the mail was a doll her family had ordered to help her greive, she broke the doll & ran.  She wanted to die, felt she had done wrong, felt the towns’ loss was her fault, but it turned out she had been raped by two young men of the town. 

Lines, Veils, Father, Sons
At this point we discussed, as players, how we felt about these issues: were there lines we needed to not cross, were their veils we needed to draw?  Context of the situation was discussed: 14 was marrying age for the setting, very different from present day.  The rape was likely in the order of date rape, non-consensual but with grey lines.  We discussed it and were content that all were okay with what happened before going on.

The two Dogs who confronted the young men happened to be my own (the female with strong faith) and the skeptic.  We shook down the father, and made him bring forward his two sons. He denied the allegations at first, then blamed himself, saying he had let down his family & his father in how he’d raised his sons.  Of the two sons, when questioned, one was quiet and troubled, he smirked and acted unrepentant, inciting us.  The Dogs were at the pass—did they enact justice & save this town by killing the young men who had wronged the girl, ending the horrendous trauma that had swept the whole town, or act with mercy, or look to other authorities? 

My character had helped a friend believe that he could become a Dog during her initiation conflict.  She had strong faith in the efficacy of faith and the power of transformation.  The skeptic had a strong belief in the authority of the Church, but no faith in the supernatural effects of God or demons.  He put the gun in the hand of the father, telling him to put right what he had done wrong in raising the boys.   The repentant boy was to be pardoned, sent to the Territorial Authority, but the other, to be punished on the spot. 

Ms. Dog & Isaac
This was an interesting point for me.  All along, the others had checked in with me to see if the events as narrated were within my comfort zone. I was the only woman.  Would I take the events more personally? Would I be horrified by the narration of a cold blooded execution before my eyes?  I had to take a moment to look deep inside myself.  I was not triggered, I was not horrified.  These actions fit the characters, fit the time, fit the setting & the mission of the game.  Or rather, I was horrified, of course, but in the way that art horrifies.  It takes us by the hand, and walks with us to the edge of horror, allowing us to look with our own eyes upon what things we might otherwise look away from. Things of the world, things of ourselves.  What we are, and what we are not.  So that we can look upon eachother with greater understanding, and hopefully, more compassion. 

So, it was fine for me.  But I and my conception of the character did not want the young man to be executed.  I wanted to affirm the theme of transformation that I had brought in with my character’s story.  I wanted the defiant young man to change.  To have the option of change, to be able to truly heal this town, rather than to tear out the festering wound by cutting off an arm.  I said much of this, the other players knew my intent. So, I had my character who was standing near the two sons and the father, allow the father to raise the gun.  The father clearly did not want to do it.  Then, in a raise or a see—I don’t recall which—the other brother put himself in harms way.  Again, my character had the option to affect this, but did not. Again, the father did not want to kill his son.  At the last moment when he had made the decision to kill the son, I would say, you do not.  We arranged for a follow-up conflict to follow the current one which would have the stake “does the young man truly change”.  And then, the unexpected happened.

The player of the skeptic had the raise or the see as the father held his gun to the repentant son’s head.  And in his narration, he jostled the gun so that it went off.  The player was dead to rights (so to speak) in his right to make this happen, but still, I recall him checking with us all to be sure this would not upset us as an outcome. It would have taken some conversation to figure out how it would have gone if any had said no, but it was okay. We accepted it.  It occurred.  The follow-up conflict happened. The gm gave.  The son changed. 

...Makes us Stronger?
Strong, strong stuff.  It affected us as people.  It brought us to our own feelings about these events. For some the impact was stronger than others.  And then, we had the pinball effect of reacting to each others’ reactions.  Dogs allows (encourages?) you to take a stick to the hornet’s nest.  Can we blame the designer if we get stung?  We spent a good couple hours checking in with each other afterwards, talking about the issues that had arisen.  We found out a lot about each other we hadn’t known, little and big things.  We left, I felt, better friends for having gone through a harrying experience together.  As the gm said,  Moose in the City had a similar outcome but was much more fun.

Another aspect of the game that I saw, was that the issues we bring into play with our characters are not  necessarily what will be addressed in the game.  They may be over time—there is plenty of advice for the gm in the game to watch carefully what your players write on their sheets about their characters, watch their choices, and build towns that intersect with them. Poke your players where they show they want to be poked.  But in a one-shot what you get is that the characters are going to influence the answer to the questions posed by the gm in the town.  A pair of young men rape a girl causing the death of countless innocents—should they be shown mercy? Is a change of heart enough to redeem them? Is justice in the death or in the life? 

I’m deeply glad I was part of this game.  I am glad for the depths to which the others were prepared to go with me and with eachother.  Also, I’m sad that it hurt so much.  A large part of what we talked about after the game was:

If we are going to do this together, how do we do it so we don’t hurt one another?  Can we? And if so, how do we write our games so that other people can do the same? 

These are the questions.  What are our answers? What are the questions we haven’t touched yet?  This is new territory, we need new ways.  But, also,  hurting one another in gaming is very much not new.  It happens over and over, we all know the stories.  How do we take what we are doing and help people be kind with one another, rather than just giving them new tools to inflict old damage?

Best,
Emily

Hello,

I was not in the game. However, I have suffered many hours of debriefing about it and would like to use them as legal tender to participate in the discussion. Furthermore, I am not going to discuss events in the game at all.

Instead, I will offer an interesting difference between two "superfamilies" of highly Narrativist-focused game design (yes, the ones on my diagram that I waved around the whole con; people who haven't seen it, too bad).

Well, a little orientation. This is a diagram of techniques families. No one post it, please; I just fixed it and your versions are tehsuxx. On the left-hand side, one superfamily is rooted in stuff like Over the Edge and Cyberpunk and goes on through the "door" of Sorcerer, branching apart from there. It includes Dogs in the Vineyard.

On the right-hand side, the other superfamily is rooted in stuff like Story Engine and Soap, and it goes on through the "door" of Universalis, branching apart rather drastically from there. It includes (via MLWM) Polaris.

All you people who are crazed with anticipation, just settle down. All that matters now is one single point, and you don't really need the diagram for it. Except to see Dogs 'way over on one side and Polaris 'way over on another, like critters in vastly different sectors of a phylogeny.

On the side which includes Dogs, single participants have overriding, brutal, arbitrary authority over the "II" of IIEE. In other words, what their characters want to do and start to do cannot be overriden or even mechanically modified by anyone else at the table. If you state, "He kisses her," and the group goes into the Conflict Resolution system, it's established, the kiss is both intended and initiated.

On the side which includes Polaris, the entire IIEE of any character's actions/etc is subject to vetting of some kind, whether it's negation, modification, or letting it lie, and whether it's full-group or by a designated person. All actions are subject to drastic reinterpretations of the outcomes of Conflict Resolution. Including the first "I," intent, of IIEE. If you state, "He kisses her," then eventually, the way the scene works out, it's at least possible that he never even thought about or tried to kiss her.

Bald, painful fact: the left-hand side is socially more dangerous, and the right-hand side is socially safer. And it strikes me very firmly, after discussing this game with a number of people who were involved, that at least a couple people were approaching playing Dogs as if it were in the other "superfamily." They assumed that if they were uncomfortable with what a given PC was about to be doing, that they had a say in vetting that stated action. Whereas, bluntly, the game is set up for exactly the opposite.

Best,
Ron

Thanks for the low-down, Emily; we Gencon-limited have been on hot coals about hearing what the session was all about.

Ron: it's really, really good of you to post that. When you showed the diagram to me in Stockholm I took it into my backbrain, but didn't really process it yet. Then I started playing humongous amounts of Dust Devils, and noticed that the one thing I absolutely love about the game is the manly, gloves-off gambling rights the players have on stuff. It's not a weak-livered concensus building exercise, it's something where each player has the right and the means to stand his ground. Then I started thinking on it, and what do you know: I came to this exact conclusion, that one fundamental difference between the two historical "traditions" you outlined is in how they deal with player-character rights. Thanks for affirming the idea.

Ron, I like what you wrote. Group consensus is required in Dogs to hit the Conflict Resolution system, though. So I think this is maybe where the 'schizophrenia' you're talking about comes from: once you're in the process you're in it, no going back, and people can do things to each otehr, but you don't have to 'go there' in the first place until everyone agrees.

Emily said

If we are going to do this together, how do we do it so we don’t hurt one another?  Can we? And if so, how do we write our games so that other people can do the same? 

Meguey wrote:
It sounds like everyone was being fairly careful to check things first, and then it hit a wall. I hope other players can add more light to this.

I'd like to lay out the game's ultimate two conflicts, if I may. I don't know about anybody else but I found them both technically and emotionally devastating. In a good way; in the best way.

---

So they've found the two brothers out. On the town writeup it says "older brother (Joe) wants the Dogs to punish him; younger brother (Sam) wants the Dogs to forgive him" - so that's how I'm playing 'em. Sam's disturbed, quiet, and he's just admitted that they'd raped the girl; Joe's smirking, flip, and I don't believe he's going to live through this. The Dogs present seem very inclined to give both of the brothers just what they want.

The father's just protested that it's his fault, not his boys'. One of the Dogs - Clinton's - responds with a horrific pronouncement of judgement: "then it's yours to punish." He forces his revolver into the father's hand.

Conflict: Will the father kill Joe? Emily specifies that it's will the father, not does the father, to give herself room for a followup.

Talking raises and sees, physical raises and sees, and finally the father escalates to fighting: he starts stomping the shit out of his own son, so he won't have to shoot him. The Dogs pull him away and I'm out of dice, I give. He'll do it. He points the gun at Joe's head.

Em has her Dog put her hand on the gun. We're all going, Abraham and Isaac. Conflict: Will Joe change? The players are on the side of yes he will, I'm on the side of no he won't.

Em and Clinton roll; I roll the two brothers as a group NPC. I have wicked big dice, including a 2d10 relationship - and they all come out high. I'm looking at a roll that can beat two Dogs: practically every die showing a 5+.

I raise: Sam [the younger brother] kneels and pulls the gun over to his own forehead.

Clinton's first to see, he takes the blow. He could have blocked, but instead he kept his high two dice. If he uses them on his raise, I'll have to take the blow.

He looks at me with god damn a terrible look. I know what he's going to do. He raises that the gun goes off - but he can't quite even bring himself to say it. He gestures, starts and stops, he lets me tell it. The father blows his other son's brains out, the younger son, the son they were going to forgive and rehabilitate.

I give at once, I shove all those big 5+ dice away from me. Joe changes, you can bet your ASS he does.

---

The game was problematic. Here's my free advice: think hard before you decide to bring two brothers raping a 14 year old girl into your game, and then think hard again before you actually go through with it. And yeah, I worked that out all by myself.

But damn, those two conflicts, those were pure and perfect.

-Vincent

Ron wrote:
And it strikes me very firmly, after discussing this game with a number of people who were involved, that at least a couple people were approaching playing Dogs as if it were in the other "superfamily." They assumed that if they were uncomfortable with what a given PC was about to be doing, that they had a say in vetting that stated action. Whereas, bluntly, the game is set up for exactly the opposite.

Best,
Ron

lumpley wrote:
The game was problematic. Here's my free advice: think hard before you decide to bring two brothers raping a 14 year old girl into your game, and then think hard again before you actually go through with it. And yeah, I worked that out all by myself.

I'm watching this so closely you won't believe it. Awesome write-ups, people, and please continue. One thing that jumps at me from the last few posts:

executing the boys without trial in cold blood

Hello,

Ben, you misunderstand me. Again.

I see no point in my continuing the conversation. If anyone can see where my point plays a role in what Ben said (because his text is, I think, 100% compatible with what I said), then make whatever use of it you want. I'm out of it.

Best,
Ron

This is what dogs does.

I don't understand why Ben is uncomfortable with Clinton's character's actions.  Shouldn't he be allowed to author his own character's actions?

When the game works, Dogs begins with players being excited about their ultimate authority and ends with the terrible weight of that kind of power pressing down on them.  The end result of their actions, for any solid session, ends with the players at the table in some manner of ethical debate.

Paka wrote:
I don't understand why Ben is uncomfortable with Clinton's character's actions.  Shouldn't he be allowed to author his own character's actions?

Thanks Matt.

Although I don't think either person's opinion was as unreasonable or abhorrent as

"I think all people with brown hair are scum, and my character's going to kill them all."

I'm sure that that's pretty much hyperbole, though.

The game brought up the issues.  The issues weren't about the game as a game.  Dogs in the Vineyard, as a game system, performed admirably.  As I understand it, it is designed exactly to bring up such issues.  It certainly has for me every time I've played it.

I think there's a couple of places we could go from here.

1) We could talk about the issues that came up between Clinton and I in more specific detail, and not talk about the game.  (I'd rather not do this in great, graphic detail, honestly.)

2) We could talk about how we handled those issues, during the game, and how the game brought them up.

3) We could talk about the game itself, which had a bunch of stuff that was also pretty fascinating.

4) We could talk about the discussion afterwards, which is tangentially related to #2.

Other folks who played?

yrs--
--Ben

Emily's post way up at the top asks questions about how we can hit these hard, thorny issues without getting/causing hurt and how we can write games to facilitate that kind of hurt-free play.  Sadly, I don't have anything smart to say on it, but I think that direction is more interesting than any of the four options that Ben's presenting.  I've played some hard issues over the years and never been hurt by them.  What I'm wondering now is if I've ever hurt others with my bull-moose "lines and veils are for pansies" attitude.  I think it's possible.

I was reading Emily's post and thinking, "So?  Looks like perfectly normal play to me.  What's the big deal?"  Of course, I believed there was something personally revealing to the players involved because Emily said so and she wouldn't lead me astray.  Would she?  But I didn't see it at all.  The issues weren't anything unusual, they were just your standard R-rated movie issues.  I mean no disrespect.  I just didn't see anything out of place.  I mean, if you aren't feeling anything while playing then why are you playing?

So then I read Ben's post and maybe started to see what all the hubbub was about.  If this is really about Clinton and Ben's personal differences in perspective colliding then I can see how that would be significant.  If the game became a vehicle for forming a bond between the players, some "real life" connection was made, then I see the significance.

I'm sure you can design for this kind of get-to-know-each-other play, but I'm not convinced you can engineer a game system to do it safely.  You need mutual respect to talk to others about personal issues.  That can be moderated by another person, but you can't actually create it - it has to be both voluntary and conscious.  How you choose to go about discussing those issues is just going to affect how effective it is.  Perhaps you can engineer distance to the issues into a game, and therefore some artificial safety, but if you don't start bringing the issues close at some point you won't get any personal growth.  Well, that's how I see it anyway.

Unless... I'm still missing what's special here?

Hi Jason,

Jason wrote:
I was reading Emily's post and thinking, "So?  Looks like perfectly normal play to me.  What's the big deal?" 

Although I don't think either person's opinion was as unreasonable or abhorrent as

"I think all people with brown hair are scum, and my character's going to kill them all."

I'm sure that that's pretty much hyperbole, though.

The account of what happened and the discussion of the theraputic effects of gaming got me thinking about this other post of Emily's.  How does that curve apply to this game?  You were all friends, so was skipping the warm-up OK?  Is this very discussion part of Integration?  Is it possible to consider all elements of that curve when you're playing a one-shot?  It seems that to whatever extent this will sprout ideas about game design methods, the techniques of psychodrama will be fair game.

Emily wrote:
Hi Jason,Because a big difference in Dogs, as I see it, is that it strips away many of the distancing techniques that role playing games (and video games & films etc) use to allow us to skate through the treatment of huge and horrible situations.  Take killing an orc.  The most standard of role playing situations. As emotionally un-problematic as it gets.  Why?  Imagine your own self in the position of standing over an enemy with a sword & cutting their throat so that their blood gushes over you & the last light of sentience ceases in their eyes right before your own.  No, the experience is never like that. "Orcs" have been demonized, we can imagine killing them in droves & not bat an eye. We as people have so little connection to them as a concept that the intense violence we hand out affects us not a whit.  As I'm sure we've all noticed, Dogs is different.

Thanks, Emily.

I don't think bad communication is to blame.  There is a bit of a veil over the events and motivations of the people involved, so it's hard to get a grip on the whys.  I've never met the people involved in person, so I can't really reconstruct the interactions.  That's perfectly fine, I wouldn't ask for otherwise.  That leaves me a bit fuzzy on the chain of cause and effect, and hence the significance - even with Clinton and Vincent's additions.  However, I'm quite honestly content to stay fuzzy (I hate shaving anyway), seeing as the topics for the thread can be discussed in the abstract.

So... hmmm... grief...

I tend to think of the effects of grief in circles of empathy.  The closer you are to a loss the more severe the grief - this is usually associated with actual physical proximity (how close it is to your perceptions).  You might feel more grief when your cat dies then when your uncle who lives in another state dies.  Or you might feel more grief when you run over a cat then when someone tells you their cat died.

Your father dies of liver failure after struggling in the hospital for 2 months.
Your father dies young of a heart attack while helping you shingle your roof.

Your friend tells you their cousin was decapitated by a bridge in a boating accident.
Your friend then tells you their cousin's eight year old son was in the boat watching.

What makes certain events more painful than others?  How is grief, and empathy with the grief of others, made more intense?  Did my use of the word "Your" in the above statements instead of "Someone's" have any effect?  Does a change to daily life increase the perceived "amount" of loss and hence the "amount" of grief?

Anyway, what I'm getting at is:  Is there anything specifically about the structure of Dogs that closes the circle?  I've read a few actual play threads and a briefing of the mechanics, but I haven't actually read the book or played it, so I certainly don't know.  I do see how it being setup to have more intense issues will increase the chance of emotional collision, but is there anything that increases personal significance? 

I'm not sure how or if this relates to Ron's categorization of Dogs.  If players have more control over events then they have more ability to create some distance for themselves.  However, that can be a doubled-edged sword if other people's control can be used to prevent you from turtling up.  I know Dogs has a rule about allowing you to veto stakes before hand, but based on the play examples I've seen that rule doesn't seem to get much use, and without it control is allowed to come in both flavors of ugly.

Even though I've seen some pretty vicious behaviour from characters in Dogs, I don't think that they've been malicious or aimed at upsetting other players, but you can guarantee that players won't get upset if what transpires is close to home. Players have their feelings and they bring them to the table. I guess the important thing is not to take away from the table feelings of antipathy towards other players. I don't see that there's any shame in moving away from the table if you're uncomfortable about the game, but I'm not so sure that it's possible to play Dogs under censure. I think this might change the focus from exploration to avoidance.

Every time I've run Dogs I've been a pretty agressive GM but this has stayed at the table. The viciousness is aimed at the characters and making their lives more interesting, and hence, hopefully, more enjoyable to play. Dogs is about moral choices and consequences so I give 'em that, in spades.

I haven't so far gone deep into any idea of social contract, nor have I given any warnings with Dogs. I've just gone with a gut feeling that the players can handle it. So far, I've not been proved wrong. And several of my players have bought Dogs on the strength of this too. But a warning at the start about content of the game is not necessarily out of place, especially if you don't know the players well.

I don't agree with Clinton's bit about group therapy. It's only therapy if you want it to be, and therapy is quite resistable. I generally don't go along to learn or grow as a person and the gaming set-up is often false. But as that's not really up for discussion, I'll just show that I'm sitting on the other side of the fence.

A things that's interesting about Dogs is how some players use it as an opportunity to move away from the White Middle Class Liberal mindset that is pretty much the norm for roleplayers (well in the UK and France it is), and play characters with much more absolutist views. Given that there tend to be different degrees of this movement away from liberalism around the table, it inevitably leads to conflicts between the characters, conflicts that would not occur between the players under usual circumstances.

A few examples of this are:
- on meeting starving children who looked enviously at his food, one Dog beat them and decried their sin of envy.
- another Dog, on finding out that someone was a cannibal, shot her straightaway.
- several Dogs stood by and watched a man beat his wife with a stick, and persuaded another not to intervene.

(All this happened in Fort Lemon which is my favourite Town at the moment).

This whole thread is pretty fucking intense shit.

Christopher wrote:
Emily's post way up at the top asks questions about how we can hit these hard, thorny issues without getting/causing hurt and how we can write games to facilitate that kind of hurt-free play.  Sadly, I don't have anything smart to say on it, but I think that direction is more interesting than any of the four options that Ben's presenting.  I've played some hard issues over the years and never been hurt by them.  What I'm wondering now is if I've ever hurt others with my bull-moose "lines and veils are for pansies" attitude.  I think it's possible.

Larry wrote:
..."When does one have consent to step over that interpersonal boundary?"

Holy fuck if that ain't a loaded question. Answer wrong and people can get broken.

Larry wrote:
This whole thread is pretty fucking intense shit.

Because I think the real issue that came up in this game -- first in the fictional backstory in one context, fuelling what occured between the actual players in a completely different context -- is "When does one have consent to step over that interpersonal boundary?"

Holy fuck if that ain't a loaded question. Answer wrong and people can get broken.

Larry

"When does one have consent to step over that interpersonal boundary?"

How do we know we're crossing a line? How do we know each other's boundaries, especially in a game like this?

I'm sure it's tempting to think that this is all some kind of IIEE issue. That's good for theory. It's not though. This is about one player being made uncomfortable by another and it has nothing to do with mechanics or even the implied or explict social contract of the game.

Look at this:

Clinton:

All good role-playing is group therapy.

That's not a "theory" or anything. It's a tenet, something I believe like others believe in reincarnation or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever. Ya can't argue me out of it, but you can discuss it if you like. It's important for this.

Christopher wrote:
It seems that to whatever extent this will sprout ideas about game design methods, the techniques of psychodrama will be fair game.

Marco wrote: You could use a psychodrama group to address issues around rape and justice. However, if one participant was discussing fairly sadistic justice with great relish and enjoyment that would become a topic of the therapy and not a socially acceptable hands-off area of it. It wouldn't play out as described here. The techniques would also be substantially different. And when the issues that were actuall there out of the game came up, they'd be addressed between the people (where they really existed) and not in the game (where they didn't).

That's why IIEE doesn't apply to this.

Parting thoughts:

This thread was great, if a little touchy. Most of that's probably my fault: I spend a lot of time in my personal life making sure no one thinks I'm the bad guy, and that might have gotten transferred here.

If you asked me, "Would you play that game over again with the same people under the same circumstances," absolutely. In a heartbeat. For all the drama, it was a good game, and we became better friends. It's funny: it's like the dark sibling to my totally positive kill puppies for satan experience long ago that made my group better friends then. Discussing why DitV makes for rougher games than kpfs could be a whole thread.

The only thing I'm really disappointed with in this discussion is that Vincent described me pulling an awesome and trixy dice manuever in Dogs and we never got to discuss how awesome dice strategy can be in Dogs to get what you want. When I looked at his dice, which looked like he'd win, and looked at mine and realized I could beat him through forcing him to take a blow he didn't want to take, I felt like the world poker champ or something.

And I'd like to say publically, "Em, thanks for moderating this discussion."