Hi all,

I'm looking to prepare a one session introduction to Dogs, which would conclude character creation and play in 4 hours.

Two requests directed at experienced GMs of Dogs:

1) How deep into town creation would be right for one introductory session, in your experience?

2) Can you recommend any of the many Towns already created here for this purpose?

Thanks!

- Alan

Alan wrote:
Hi all,

I'm looking to prepare a one session introduction to Dogs, which would conclude character creation and play in 4 hours.

Two requests directed at experienced GMs of Dogs:

1) How deep into town creation would be right for one introductory session, in your experience?

2) Can you recommend any of the many Towns already created here for this purpose?

Yeah; I agree with Harald -- if you create your own first town, go all the way up to Hate & Murder. It makes things more "in your face" and shows how bad things can get.

And as for a prebuilt introductory town, I (and many others, I think) have had great success with Tower Creek in the main rulebook. (Although I make the mother of the stillborn child a close relative to one of the Dogs, to give that aspect a little more 'punch').

I'd definitely 2nd Tower Creek. We were able to make characters and finish the town in 6 hours. A bit more prep and a bit more focus from the players and you might be able to cut that down some. I like how the town goes all the way up to hate and murder but doesn't bog down in extra detail. I was able to re-format the text to fit on a single sheet of paper. You will probably be able to do the town with a single sheet of NPCs also.

Warren - adding more relations to the PCs sounds like an excellent idea. In fact, if you could potentially use pre-gened PCs, each with a built in relation (you could leave some trait dice open for player customization).

Frank

People would think I'd gone missing if I didn't pipe up here to recommend Tower Creek, for reasons listed at http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18826 .

Definitely link relatives in, and making the baby's mother a relative of one of the Dogs is a terrific idea!

And having run a few dozen demos, I recommend VERY strongly to NOT use pregen characters.  Create the characters with the players all together at the start of the game, and do accomplishments.  I'd rather do that and get half-way into the town than use pre-gens and finish the town.

I like to emphasize at the beginning of character creation that people shouldn't silently create their character, they should be talking to each other, offering ideas, asking each other for ideas, and playing off each other.  Links between Dogs that arise during creation and accomplishments can echo beautifully in the town, for much fun.  (One of my favorite moments: In one Dogs' accomplishments I raised with "One of your fellow candidates uses his horse to drag you through the cactus patch!" (expecting it to be an NPC) and another player enthusiastically asked "Oh! Can I be the guy who did that?" and both players got BIG grins.  It was awesome.)

I print Vincent's excellent character sheets on antique-looking paper and let the players take their character away with them at the end.  Having the rules summary on the same page is tremendously useful.

I also find it very helpful to have a copy of Martin Higham's one-page summary of character generation http://www.flick.com/~cdr/rpg/dogs/ditv-chargen.pdf for each player, but I also talk them through it.

--
Carl Rigney

"Getting escalation in your game is founded on character creation, not on resolution rules." -- Vincent Baker