I know these stakes are crappy but they came up in actual play and I am unsure how to proceed.

Situation: pissed off NPC town person, gun in hand, approaches a PC.

PC stakes: disarm situation, keep them from committing violence.

NPC stakes: embarrass the PC in front of the town's people.

Question: does this mean that the NPC is prohibited from escalating to fighting or shooting? Because if they escalate, the PC automatically loose their stakes, making the conflict pointless.

Disallow the PC stakes outright.

"This guy comes up to you itching for a fight. Stakes are, does he humiliate you in front of the town?"

Paired stakes, one for the PCs one for the NPCs, aren't part of Dogs' resolution rules.

-Vincent

Cool.

This question is theoretical and not backed by actual play but say the situation is:

Situation: PC approaches angry mob ready to burst into all out violence.

Stakes: Does the mob burst into all out violence?

Question: does this mean that the mob is prohibited from escalating to fighting or shooting? Because if they escalate, the stakes are resolved irrespective of the conflict's results.

Generally, I have the PCs reword the stakes around why the mob might burst into violence in the first place.  Does the mob lynch the steward?  Does the mob burn the tavern setup by the easterner?  Does the mob wipe out the mountain people?

Then the mob can get as violent as they want, but their violence either does nor does not further their agenda.

Jesse

Jesse's way is excellent.

You can also zoom in instead of out. If the stakes are the mob's violence, you can choose some ringleaders in the mob to be the active NPCs. They can start shooting, but unless they win the conflict, the mob doesn't follow their lead.

-Vincent

Great solutions!

Am I correct in saying:

Stakes can never restrict the ability to escalate to violence in anyway.

You're not!

But what you want to do is find acceptable stakes that don't restrict escalation, whenever possible.

-Vincent

Interestingly, I ran into a similar situation during character generation.  One of the players wanted to include a similar caveat about "not doing violence" in their stakes.

After beating my head against the wall trying to articulate why they shouldn't do that (and failing), I settled on this course of action:

1) ask them if we can suspend their initiatory challenge temporarily, and upon getting an OK,
2) moving on to someone else's, and settling on stakes that were bound to involve violence at some point
3) after that challenge was resolved, point out to the first player how much the conflict would have sucked if player two had included the same caveat.
4) finally articulating why that caveat doesn't work: it allows you to win (mechanically) by losing the stakes.

The player and I then worked out new stakes that worked really well.  (Can't remember what they are now, but the result isn't the point).

In hindsight, I wish I'd had the advice we both have now -- that stuff about zooming out to a bigger "why" and in to a tighter "how" are pure gold.  That's getting tucked away, count on it.

No, you don't understand...

If someone picks an initiation challenge, where they say, "I hope I did such-and-such without doing violence" and they give...  then they do violence.  You narrate them giving in to their angry urges.

I guess what I'm getting at is that other than at the social contract level, there's nothing stopping someone labouring under that caveat from resorting to violence before deciding to give.

Darcy, tell us the whole stakes of the conflict in question?

There's a rule right in the text that says "if a raise would resolve the stakes all by itself, you can't make that raise." It's not at the social contract level at all, it's a genuine rule.

But I do want to hear the whole stakes.

-Vincent

Vincent --

I can't properly articulate the stakes any longer -- it's been too long.  But they took the form of "Accomplish (or prevent) X without resorting to violence."

And as for the rule that you pointed out, yup, that sure deals with the problem doesn't it?  Chalk another needless post up to me not reading the book carefully enough.

Thanks