Listed among the Dogs duties is carrying mail, news, and dissemination of new interpretation of scripture. Has anybody actually used these as part of a Dogs game?

Also, these somewhat imply the possibility of... for lack of a better phrase, "inter-townal stuff".  IE Sister Josephine asks the Dogs to carry a letter to her cousin in the next town... what does the letter say? Is it really to her cousin, or to her secret boyfriend, or fellow cult member, or...?

Or, if the Dogs are bringing new doctrine, different towns are going to react to it different ways, probably.

Or, what happens when the Dogs leave a town in flames (or whatever the case may be) and Brother Abraham, the Steward of the next town, says "Oh, you guys just came from Fiddler's Peak? How's my son Lemuel handling his Stewardship there?"

Anybody got any actual AP examples?

I've only used that as color -- I deliver his letter and question him why he's been acting so shady.

I believe it's Ben Lehman always writes "big, excellent mail, 2d8" on his character sheet.

-Vincent

lumpley wrote:
I believe it's Ben Lehman always writes "big, excellent mail, 2d8" on his character sheet.

-Vincent

From now on, I'm also adding:

Excellent news 2d6.  "Oh, that's excellent news!"

and

Crap interpretation of scripture 1d4 "Yeah, now we read that as saying the pi is definitely equal to the three.  Sorry, man."

yrs--
--Ben

I know we've frequently used mail carriage as a conversation starter with the Branch Steward, but except for a few personal cases (Malachi delivering a letter personally to his cousin... from his mom, I believe) we've not really delivered mail personally to the townsfolk. We've also done some dissemination of news, but I don't think we've had any new interpretation of scripture. We've also done some of the other additional duties, such as presiding over/blessing a marriage, sanctifying the dead.. No babies to name, though.

Old geekery rears its head ...

[font=courier]"Gangway!"
         
      #           
### ---.--------     
  ##.........d.|     
    |....&@....|     
    ------------      [/font] 

Julie

jrs wrote:
Old geekery rears its head ...

[font=courier]"Gangway!"
         
      #           
### ---.--------     
  ##.........d.|     
    |....&@....|     
    ------------      [/font] 

Julie

I am a failed geek. What's this thing?

-Vincent

<a href="http://nethack.org/">NetHack

Required for game designers.

yrs--
--Ben

@ = you, or rather, the intrepid dungeon adventurer
d = tame dog (both "tame" and "dog" being variable)
& = represents demons as a class of monsters, in this specific case it represents the mail daemon (tenuously portrayed by the "Gangway!" line comment that I believe only comes from the mail daemon when it overruns an existing monster)

As Ben already mentioned, it's from Nethack which originated as a unix based game.  It can be compiled to interact with the player's account such that notification of new email is indicated in game by the delivery (by said mail daemon) of a "stamped scroll" that self-identifies as a "scroll of mail" once read.

And, yes, I have wondered way far away from the topic at hand.

Julie

You know, if NetHack had been multiplayer, it would have ruled.

Although I never could get past the third level.

Oh, and Julie... you're a geek.

We used the delivering of the mail several times in our game to meet the NPCs of the towns--we always delivered it personally, usually by setting up in front of the Branch at sundown and having people file through.  A few times, if I remember correctly, it was an actual method of letting us know about the Sin.  Damned if I can recall how specifically, though.  We also named children *all the time*.  It was pretty much just color, but I think we were all tickled by the idea.

In a recent one-shot, I used mail delivery as the basis for a trait as well: I read other people's mail, 2d6.

Nick

ironick wrote:
In a recent one-shot, I used mail delivery as the basis for a trait as well: I read other people's mail, 2d6.

As I read it, Dogs is an old-fashioned game in terms of GM authority over NPC's.

"I look through the letters I'm carrying.  Are any of them for Sister Lavinia?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, you have one... it's quite old, an oilskin envelope tied with string.  It's one of the ones you got when you left Bridal Falls City.  It looks like it's been dragged from town to town looking for Sister Lavinia for a long time."

"I open it up."

"Inside you find  a child's slate, as would be used in school.  It's like new.  There's also a letter, congratulating Lavinia on her new position as schoolmistress, and expressing certainty that she'll serve the town of Lookout Pine well."

"But we're not in Lookout Pine... Lookout Pine was the town we passed through where everyone was dead, and the buildings all burned down."

"Well, fancy that."

Vaxalon wrote:
As I read it, Dogs is an old-fashioned game in terms of GM authority over NPC's.

What?

Are you thinking the Dogs would read the mail they carry?

Or that the Steward would?

Personal mail secrecy... could be a forceful Demonic Influence. A Steward might have to think like that.

All kinds of evil can come from having the luxury of not having one's mail read.

In some towns, the Steward might have to read all the incoming mail (is that too flippant? paranoid?).

Complication: If the Dogs are reading the mail, it sets them apart from the other postmen in the young country. This makes them queer and different (in a True and Apostolick manner, of course - the World is a horrible place, who would not want to be different from it?), and fuck-the-law-esque.

Scene concept: a pack of Dogs meet other Post-riders. Their conversation turns to talking shop. The Differences start showing.

Mail is an area for some rich social interaction - something both personal and public.  Sorry not to have any good examples of actual play per the purpose of the post, but I totally want to write a town where the injustice is the Steward reading everybody else's mail and acting on this knowledge to keep things in order. 

This only buzzes if the Faithful have any expectation of privacy, which I suppose my players can tell me. 

Nev wrote:

ironick wrote:
In a recent one-shot, I used mail delivery as the basis for a trait as well: I read other people's mail, 2d6.

Now, see, that's the kind of thing I'm interested in.  So the Dog reads someone's mail. What does it say? Does the GM have something in mind? Do they just wing it? Do they let the player narrate the contents of the mail and wing that?

My real name's Fred.

Actually, it's inside a conflict... a conflict to which I say "Yes" instead of "Roll Dice".

The stakes are "Do we find anything interesting in the mail when we open it?"

Vaxalon wrote:
My real name's Fred.

Actually, it's inside a conflict... a conflict to which I say "Yes" instead of "Roll Dice".

The stakes are "Do we find anything interesting in the mail when we open it?"

That's exactly why I said "Yes" rather than "Roll Dice".  The alternative was uninteresting, and I saw no reason to roll dice.  Is this discussion getting circular?

Any time there are stakes, there's a potential conflict.  I don't turn any potential conflict into a diced conflict.

Vaxalon wrote:
That's exactly why I said "Yes" rather than "Roll Dice".  The alternative was uninteresting, and I saw no reason to roll dice.  Is this discussion getting circular?

I just want to point out that there are probably half a dozen different mechanical ways to use reading the townspeople's mail, some GM-controlled others player-controlled, all legit. There's no sense trying to establish any one of them as "the" way to handle reading the townspeople's mail.

I'm not saying that anybody doesn't already get it, I just want to make sure it's in the record.

-Vincent

Yeah, I had kind of forgotten this thread because it didn't yield what I was actually looking for...

I understand that mail or whatever could be used lots of ways mechanically. What I was actually requesting was examples of actual play (okay, I got a few bits, but nothing in depth). And it wasn't so much the mail thing, that was just an example of a convenient way to link towns together. Which is what I really wanted to know about.

Can towns be linked together, storywise? To what degree? Just cosmetically, or can "plots" or conflicts actually encompass more than one town? The Dogs find relatives in nearly every town, it seems safe to assume everybody has relatives in any given town. Surely these people interact in more than casual ways sometimes?

Or does the structure of Dogs discourage that sort of thing?

That's what I'm really after here.

I haven't had a game run long enough to see more than one town... yet.  We will shortly.

I fully intend for events in one town to have repercussions of various sorts in the next.