I recently ran DitV for a group of friends - the first time playing for all of us. We had a bunch of rules questions come up, and a few of them I haven't been able to answer even with a re-read of the rulebook:

[I'll add, just in case anyone gets the impression that I'm just griping, that we enjoyed ourselves, and that when the conflict rules clicked for us they really worked well. Ironically, one of those times was the first time we used them, in the first character's accomplishment]

1) Tied "Best Rolls"

Who goes first when best rolls are tied? This is a trivially small point I know, but it actually came up twice in play.

2) Multiple Opponents

The rules (p70, c) state that you Go by order of Best Roll - which sometimes left the initiator of the conflict near the end of the round. We found that often until the conflict initiator had made his first raise, it was hard for anyone else to narrate how they were trying to stop him.

I understand that this may just be a symptom of mushy Stakes, but it'd be nice to get a definitive answer. We ended up playing as though the relevant sentence said "If it's not clear who should be going next, Go in order of highest Best Roll".

3) Narration of Taking the Blow

Does Taking the Blow mean that what the raiser narrated has come to pass, in full?

The rules say "Say how the attack lands and how your character reacts" - do you have the option of narrating that the Raise has only part of it's effect?

3a) if you Give, does the Raise come to pass?

I'm assuming that be default this should be "yes, unless you frame a follow-up conflict about stopping it"

4) Acceptable use of Traits; acceptable narration of Raises and Sees

The biggest single problem we had was the murkiest - what counts as acceptable invokation of a trait, and what is acceptable narration of Raises and Sees.

I fully understand that to a large extent this is something that should be decided by the group (p77 - GM should follow the groups lead), but when none of us have played DitV before it's hard to even get on the same page with this. Also, as we all come from old-school RPG backgrounds, so by default we were only allowing (or even thinking of) traits that would help the character out, rather than traits that could just be used in the narration.

What was acceptable narration for Raises and Sees was similarly difficult, for the same reasons.

The single biggest asset here was the examples in the rules, but these examples are fairly conservative in their use of traits. Trawling through this forum has given me a broader understanding of what may be acceptable, but it's hard to (a) know what is widely accepted, and (b) be able to point the players to a single place where acceptable examples can be found.

What I'm really looking for here is some real-world examples of play, with players negotiating about what the stakes are, people making raises then people interjecting with suggestions as to what would be cool, both good trait use and someone objecting to weak trait use, etc.

5) Strong Community & one-use Relationships

One of the players took the Strong Community background and was irked to discover that his strength - Relationship dice - are "one-shot" things ie once assigned, they're assigned forever, and the episodic nature of DitV means that there's no particular guarantee that you'll be able to use them ever again. Since this was intended as a once-off session this is only of theoretical importance, but it's be nice to know if there's a standard answer for his concerns.

Thanks,
Chris

Chris wrote:
Who goes first when best rolls are tied? This is a trivially small point I know, but it actually came up twice in play.{/quote]

I usually go with next best pair. Or highest trio. Or I pick someone. I'm sloppy like that. Vincent will be along shortly to tell you that I smell and am ugly, as well as how to do it the right way.

Chris wrote: The rules (p70, c) state that you Go by order of Best Roll - which sometimes left the initiator of the conflict near the end of the round. We found that often until the conflict initiator had made his first raise, it was hard for anyone else to narrate how they were trying to stop him.

Okay, where do you start your conflicts at? Before anyone has actually done anything, or after someone has done something that starts a conflict? I normally have the conflict set up and someone starts pushing, and then we roll to see how things fall out after the conflict has started, rather than having people roll first and then having people start pushing.

<a href="http://yudhishthirasdice.blogspot.com/2005/11/dogs-initiation-conflict.html">In this actual play, for example, we set the scene and pose the start of the conflict (the Sister coming and begging for help) and then roll the dice. If we rolled before she started the conflict, I don't know how Issac could have raised.

(Note, I do sometimes have everyone roll first -- but usually only when everyone is going in cocked and ready with their own desires already evident.)

Chris wrote:
Does Taking the Blow mean that what the raiser narrated has come to pass, in full?

So long as it was a legal raise (doesn't complete the stakes of the contest in one raise or somesuch), then yes.

Chris wrote:
3a) if you Give, does the Raise come to pass?

Nope. That is one of the joys of giving. If you're about to get nailed to a tree, give up and roll with it. Its a great way to not get shot in the face.

Chris wrote:
The biggest single problem we had was the murkiest - what counts as acceptable invokation of a trait, and what is acceptable narration of Raises and Sees.

Do you have any examples of this from play? I feel like I'm guessing at a lot of these things.

Chris wrote: by default we were only allowing (or even thinking of) traits that would help the character out, rather than traits that could just be used in the narration.

Nothing wrong with that, unless you're finding yourself really unhappy about the results. I know some people do raises like "I take off my glasses and start shooting" to bring in "I wear glasses d10" -- but my groups don't usually do that. OTOH, we do use things like "has a weakness for women 2d10" when fighting to defend a lady's honor (even if that lady does, in fact, happen to be a whore). Its really what makes you comfortable.

Were you happy with how it went down in game? Did you want more, or is it just that you feel you should have had more?

Chris wrote: What I'm really looking for here is some real-world examples of play, with players negotiating about what the stakes are, people making raises then people interjecting with suggestions as to what would be cool, both good trait use and someone objecting to weak trait use, etc.

Try the link to the actual play above. If you find it useful let me know, I've been thinking about posting the rest of the session (another 4 initiation conflicts), but just haven't had time.

Chris wrote: 5) Strong Community & one-use Relationships

The official answer, so far as I know it, is in three parts. The first is, yes, that's just how relationship dice work. They give you a very strong stake in the story, so you only get to use them sometimes, while traits give you a weaker stake in the story but work all the time. The second part of the answer is that you can reuse relationships if people move around and show up more than once, with the rarity of this depending on what the group finds acceptable and believable. The third part is that if you really want to keep your relationship dice huge and plentiful, use your between town reflection to get more.

These all work together to make relationship dice fun. After all its important to remember that characters change a lot durring play. If you start with low traits you're just a few experience fallout rolls away from high traits. If you start out with few traits you're just a few fallout of any kind from lots of traits. Same deal with relationships. Your "strengths" from your type are what you start the game with. Given the nature of fallout they won't be what you're using exclusivly for the whole game.

On relationship dice: If you want to make sure that your relationship dice stay in play, town after town, take relationships with your fellow Dogs.  I'm surprised, reading characters that are posted online, how rarely this is done.

I don't happen to know whether Brand's smelly and/or ugly - his BBcode is ugly anyway - but he's right, down the line!

All I have to add is:

For the first raise of a conflict, if it's obvious who's going first, yes, have that person go first. Best pair order is for when it's not obvious.

By the end of the second session your group will nail down what's a valid raise, what's a valid see, what counts as bringing a trait into a raise or see, all that kind of stuff. When I wrote the game I expected every group to struggle with it for the first session; it turns out that in reality only maybe a quarter of groups do.

Oh and relationships with your fellow Dogs do indeed rock.

Are those good enough answers, or is there more I can tell you?

-Vincent

Brand:

Thanks for your answers, and that example of play. It was exactly what I was looking for.  I'm sure I'd come across it before, but lost the link. And yes, more of the same would be great! (and get Vincent to put a link to it on the DitV homepage)

Vaxalon:

Thanks for that suggestion.

Vincent:

Thanks for your answers, and for the game!

----------------

About acceptable uses of traits:
It's not so much that we couldn't decide what was acceptable, but that the players were being very conservative with their trait use, so that most of their traits were not used in _any_ conflict. I'm guessing there needs to be some sort understanding of acceptable trait use when the characters are being generated, at least for players who care about character effectiveness.

About narration of Raises and Sees:
In retrospect, I think that a lot of our problems here were either bad stakes or ignoreable raises. So getting these things right would go a long way to fixing the problems we had.

Thanks,
Chris

Chris wrote:
About acceptable uses of traits:
.... I'm guessing there needs to be some sort understanding of acceptable trait use when the characters are being generated...

One thing that I wish were made more clear in the rules (not that it isn't clear, just that it could have been emphasized more) is that a raise should be something that can't be ignored; it has to be something that is either opposed or submitted to.

An explicit rule that allows someone to refuse a raise, that is, to just ignore it, and put the onus back onto the raising player to come up with a better raise, might have been a good idea.