Ran my first game using DitV system tonight. It was pretty fun, but reactions were mixxed by the end of it.

Part of the problem was in order to motivate some of the players to try the game, I had to use their favorite setting. The premise of the setting is fundamentally silly:  It's an alternate universe, set in the future during world war four, where Bob Marley lives and formed and a neutral benevolent fascist nation based on drugs, free love, and reggae music. The peace is enforced by the authoritarian "Bong Nazis," who solve problems, enforce mandatory happiness laws (at gunpoint if need be), and serve as symbols of the state. (The term Bong Nazi's is very unfortunate for many reasons - remember the setting was fundamentally designed to be absurd. In the setting they are meant to be very benevolent persons. In a Happiness-is-Mandatory, Computer-is-your-friend, way at least)

So I created Bong Nazis in the Hempfields.

the town generation was: (skip to next post if not interested)

Pride: Hans, father of Billy, is lazy and neglects his duty to the State and his son.

Injustice: Hans' son, Billy, tells his dad that he's found the dead body of a possible foreign agent. Hans' pride causes him to not believe him. Billy goes back tot he body and sees the "body" is now alive and breathing. He goes back and this time persuades his dad to come and see. When he gets there the ex-corpse is gone. Again, the father does not believe Billy, and orders Billy to not tell the Steward, or anyone, as it will cause too much trouble.

Sin: Billy keeps his secret; Hans' gets stressed out and starts to overdo the weed. This causes him to neglect his girlfriend, Elizabeth, and his son. Elizabeth feels bad about being neglected, and starts to refuse to participate in community orgies (a sin in this world)

Demon attacks: Stuff starts to go wrong in the Apartment Complex. The Steward becomes paranoid that he will get a bad report mark, so to compensate he makes parties and orgies mandatory, and 7-days a week, even on the day of personal-rest (Weed-day). When the Steward tries to get the over-drugged Hans to a party, there is an accident, and Hans is hurt. To shut up Hans, the Steward bribes him with even more drugs, putting Hans in a perpetual stupor watching the 24-hour teletubbies channel. Billy finds some technology left behind by the foreign agent, and injects himself with some nanites. The nanites make Billy superhumanly strong and powerful (Read: demons) but make him immune to drugs and weed. Mary, a young woman in the complex, gets sick. The Shephard refuses to send her to the hospital because it would put a bad mark on his record.

False Doctrine: Billy, immune to drugs, starts to beleive that using drugs is bad, while using humanity-destroying cyberware is good.

Corrupt Worship: Billy, now made super confident and attractive by the nanites, starts to have sex with girls around the apartment complex, in order to pass around the nanites. (This is corrupt because sex is supposed to be done communally, in orgies only)

False Preisthood: Billy manages to infect two women, Sally and Mary, with nanites. The nanites cure Mary. Both begin to agree with the doctrine that nanites=good, drugs=bad.

Sorcery: Billy now counts as a sorceror (e.g. has superhuman powers, like super-strength, resistence to bullets, etc.)

Steward wants BN's to give him a clean report, and Elizabeth to join the orgies
Carl (a random apartment dweller) wants the BN's to make parties optional on Hempday
Hans wants to be left alone
Elizabeth wants Hans to be restored to normal
Billy wants to be left alone to spread the cult, or for the BN's to endorse the cult.
Mary and Sally want to spread the nanites to the BN's
Demons are figurative, but I supose they "want" the BN's to endorse the cult and be infected by nanites. A masacre would be cool too though

If the BN's do nothing, eventually enough people get infected that the State notices, and razes the place, killing everyone.

We started a little late. Character generation went long, but people seemed to really enjoy it. There were four players, and I encourged questions and kibitzing too each other. The 4 inroductory challenges also took a long time, but again people seemed to have fun. (One player specifically said "this is cool") One player, however, expressed tremendous confusion about what the traits and relationships and dice "meant." I told him that traits were signals about how he wanted conflicts to go, and relationships were signals about what kind of conflicts he was interested in. I also told him that d4s meant things that might help with a goal, but could backfire. d8s and d10s meant traits where it was possible to do super-smack-down "critical" successes in conflicts. He felt a little more comfortable after the intrroductory conflicts, but I think he never really got a good feel for them.

I beleive there was a major problem with my alternate setting: the citizens were too scared of the BN's (totalitarian state) and the BN's may have been too benevolent (although to some extent this was player choice). In practice, it meant we never escalated conflicts. All conflicts were "just talking" (except for one hacky sack game, which was physcial but non-violent). When the BNs were winning a conflict, I backed down. When I was winning a conflict, the BNs backed down. (and this was rare, because there were 4 BNs).

Part of the problem is that we ran out of time, because of the long introduction (we played 4 1/2 hours in total), and I guess also my town was too large. This prevented the big, pontentially major, conflict with the sorceror (although, its hard to say if the players would have confronted him violently) and the reflection-stage of the game.

The comedic tone wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, although it may have contributed a bit to players being benevolent/soft on the NPCs.

After the game we went out to dinner and discussed the game. We all agreed the game was very much worth trying again in the default setting. However, there were some reservations. One of the players (the one that struggled with what traits "meant") felt strange that, on the one hand, he felt the game was trying to empower the players. On the other hand, he also felt the rules got in the way. He expressed the view, and others agreed, that if one is going to empower the players, one might as well be more freeform about it.

Another player complained that there was maybe a little too much dice rolling. I found this surprising because he was always the most gung-ho about battlemats and combats in games like DnD.

For myself as GM, I really liked the game was easy to setup. I also gained some satisfaction discovering what the players would actually do and being surprised by their choices. Howevever, I also get that sort of feeling with traditional games I run. On the other hand, I felt very... hmmm, what's a good word? Uninvested in the game? I didn't care about the NPCs, setting, or anything really. Part of this is that I personally dislike the BN setting (its a creation of one of the other players). But part of it is that I did not really put any energy in crafting the NPCs and town, making them fully three dimensional. Furthermore, there were no long-term consequences or ripples to the events in game, because every conflict was self-contained in the "town." Of course some of this lack of investment comes from the understanding the game was essentially a one-shot. Still, even in a one-shot, I generally feel more invested in the game. Overall, I'd say it was a low-cost but low-benefit experience as a GM.

We all agreed that we'd like to very much try the game at least once more in the default setting. I beleive there will be more opportunity for mid-level and high-level conflicts, that dropping the comedic color/tone and focussing more on drama will help, and that the default DitV setting is just more fundamentally interesting and rich.

forgot to sign

-William

Hi William, welcome to the forge!

cydmab wrote: After the game we went out to dinner and discussed the game. We all agreed the game was very much worth trying again in the default setting. However, there were some reservations. One of the players (the one that struggled with what traits "meant") felt strange that, on the one hand, he felt the game was trying to empower the players. On the other hand, he also felt the rules got in the way. He expressed the view, and others agreed, that if one is going to empower the players, one might as well be more freeform about it.

For myself as GM, I really liked the game was easy to setup. I also gained some satisfaction discovering what the players would actually do and being surprised by their choices. Howevever, I also get that sort of feeling with traditional games I run. On the other hand, I felt very... hmmm, what's a good word? Uninvested in the game? I didn't care about the NPCs, setting, or anything really. Part of this is that I personally dislike the BN setting (its a creation of one of the other players). But part of it is that I did not really put any energy in crafting the NPCs and town, making them fully three dimensional. Furthermore, there were no long-term consequences or ripples to the events in game, because every conflict was self-contained in the "town." Of course some of this lack of investment comes from the understanding the game was essentially a one-shot. Still, even in a one-shot, I generally feel more invested in the game. Overall, I'd say it was a low-cost but low-benefit experience as a GM.

Callan wrote: You might like to ask them and yourself "Ok, it restricts still - but what is it that it isnt restricting?"

cydmab wrote: 4. Limited in-game hammer of judgement for "bad" behavior (although last campaign I ran, using traditional system, also had PCs in authority with significant leeway)

5. No out of game hammer of judgement for "bad" behavior, like alignment systems. (We haven't used such systems for 10+ years though)

*snip*
Is my list incomplete? Is there something else DitV is trying to empower?

Then I'd make a few comments:

1. The light-hearted nature of the bong nazi setting I think completely compromised exploring the moral void, or at least sapped it of any drama. Choices were constantly made, but everything was just too benevolent.

Here's a fun example: when the players found Hans in his room, completely stoned out staring at the teletubbies show listening to Reggae, they Judged the Situation as Perfectly Acceptable. They also judged the Steward playing a hand in overdrugging Hans as acceptable behavior for a steward as well. Which we all thought was hillarious. So the judgements were unexpected, but it was comedic and light hearted, at most ironic (we're supposed to be helping people, but we sincerely declare someone permanently stoned out of their mind 24-7 was an OK state), and not dramatic at all.

2. Exploring the moral void, reacting to it in unexpected ways, is something we have done already, for the last 15 years or so, with traditional and semi-freeform styles. As far as whether this game was better at it, in terms of this session - no way, total disaster. But of course that might have been because some were still getting used to the rules, and the bad setting choice. So we'll have to wait for the next game for me to make a fair comparison between our regular play and DitV.

3. As far as using DitV for comedy, the session did pretty well, better than our GURPS comedy games, but I think we'd be better off with Toon or freeform. However, we rarely do comedy games, and I personally have nearly zero interest in them.

1. I'm not sure I really agree - certainly the the scene and BN choices doesn't blow my mind, but it does raise some interesting questions. I'm not that familiar with DITV, but some sort of conflict where the guy over doses on drugs would seem a way of exploring what they've just said is fine and peachy.

2. I'll be blunt - I'm skeptical. You've mentioned bad behaviour in terms of alignment and in your last campaign players had significant leeway'. Its sounds like they can do alot, but if they go to far you can step in and change what their character does. Even if you never really exercise this power, it undercuts the exploration of the moral void - the point of such play is to bring to the surface the characters intentions. A GM having the ability to block that in the interest of a better story implies a better story comes first. So moral exploration falls to the wayside and probably dies in the ass. That's as I understand it.

What I've observed in actual play accounts here at the forge, is where gamers who come to something like capes for the first time (a nar facilitating game) almost always do a straight up joke fest of a game. My hypothesis - its a social escape route. They are afraid that if they portray their character the way they dearly want to, the GM will block them. And then it will be player facing off against GM - ugly stuff. But hey, if your just joking around and your character just, ha ha, puts the granny in the dumpster, if the GM blocks you, hey, you were just joking so no face off. Just a joke, never mind.

The joking is a phase - it's probing to see if they really have the authority to explore the void fully. It'll pass once they realise their rights to explore it are assured. Might take a little while, but it'll happen, is my estimate. The whole bong nazi game world seems to be such a joke - bring in horrible issues like nazi fascism - err, but its all drug related - so they can blow it all off as a joke when they get serious about something, but they also get blocked on it.

However, that's if they want to explore it - someone who doesn't will never get into it cause its just something they don't want to do. I'm wondering if the guy you mentioned is like that.

Do you think I'm way off for being skeptical?

1. But no-one there really cared, because it was in large part just a joke to us. The same scene would have been much more meaningul if we had come to the table with the attitude that we would be exploring moral issues. Instead we had this fuzzy attitude, split between "This is all a joke" and "we have to help people - what is the right way to do that?" because, in part, of the setting.

As far as your alternative explanation, that people treated the game as a joke because they were uncomfortable with having authority (and not because the setting choice), this session was way, way waaaaay less dramatic/tied to moral questions/etc. than both our ordinary traditional and freeform games. Players are more than happy to explore those issues in the ordinary campaigns. I can say with a fair amount of confidence it was the setting's fault. (Either that, or the system, but I really don't think we gave the system a fair test with the setting)

Callan wrote: You've mentioned bad behaviour in terms of alignment and in your last campaign players had significant leeway'.

One other thing that occurred to me. I should of probally changed the escalation levels to something like:

just talkin' d4- hacky sack game d6- hard drug use d8- bureaucracy d10

Raise, BN: "I'm afraid I'm going to have to write you up for insubornation, citizen (escalate to bureaucracy)
Block, citizen: "Oh yeah! My uncle works in the department of records."
Raise, citizen: "You'll get your ass fired if you mess with me!"

These probally would of been more appropriate, and make everyone (both citizens and BNs) more comfortable with escalating.

See, I think that the thing here is that you haven't adapted the hierarchy of sin to the setting well enough.  A sin in Dogs should make us, the players at the table, tremble.  "Not participating in the mandatory orgies" just doesn't strike me as too deep a sin.

Let's try this on for size, based on my contact with communal living situations in northern california (about as close to this setting as you're going to find.)

0) Everyone's cool.  The ideal community is one where everyone is totally cool with everything, just living in the moment and letting the experiences of life happen to them.

1) Anxiety.  But someone gets anxious about something.  They don't have a problem with what's actually going on, mind you, but they're worried about what it means for the future, where it might lead, or that it might indicate other stuff.  They're no longer living in the now, being cool, they're thinking about the future, which is inherently not as cool.

2) Restraint.  Anxiety leads to restraint.  Either the person who feels anxious tries to restrain others from doing the thing he feels anxious about, or they are exerciseing self-restraint because of their worries about the future.  The restrained person is now further out of "be-here-now" and further disconnected from the community experience.

3) Selfishness.  Restraint leads to selfishness.  Either the restrained people escalate their restraint into looking out purely for themselves, or other people begin to imitate the restrained people but take it a step further into actively harming others for their own perceived benefit (either a profit or for safety.)

Selfishness causes bad energy.  Bad energy can manifest in any number of ways -- people get testy with each other, chores don't get done, milk goes sour, people have bad acid trips.

4) Mistrust.  In response to selfishness and bad energy, people lose trust in each other.  They start acting purely in terms of their own perceived interest, and they can't trust other people to do anything for them, or even to be true to their word.

5) Hierarchy.  Mistrust leads to hierarchy.  A hierarchy is a group of three individuals who have banded together for mutual assistance and protection.  Unlike healthy members of a commune, they aren't bound togther by love, but by suspicion and mistrust for each other.  Members of a hierarchy are subordinant to one leader who is making the plans for them.  SInce people can't trust the group, they trust one strong leader.

6) Hate and Murder.  A hierarchy will ineveitably start lying, cheating, stealing, and killing to further the ends of its ends.  If there are multiple hierarchies within the commune, they will fight with each other, with the honest members the first casualties.

How does that look?

yrs--
--Ben

Looks good; if I were to ever run a game like this again I'd probally try a similar system, but I honestly don't think it would have mattered for that session. Partly because I felt fine with there being enough NPCs with goals and relationships and such. But mainly because, again, no-one came to the table with a serious lets-do-drama feeling. At best it was a half drama/half comedic feel, at worst all comedy. This includes myself, because I was trying to match the humor mix to whatever the players wanted.

To put it slightly more broadly, I think, at least in my experience and for my group, at least 50% and maybe as much as 90% of the way to powerful drama is... if everyone at the table is focused on and wants powerful drama. If people just don't care, or worse, actively sabotage drama because they are looking for humor or something else, it's just not going to work. And if everyone IS looking for drama, you can get remarkable performance even out of "inappropriate" systems. System still matters, but attitude matters too. Attitude might even be more important.

So the next time I run DitV, it'll be with default setting, and I'll tell everyone to think about and focus on issues/story/character/etc.; It's what we usually do, but this session we had a guest player and old freind who REALLY wanted to do this silly setting.

Oh, and in case I haven't fully communicated how silly the world was... the characters were:

1. An ex-tobacco exec who's mission in life is to get people to stop smoking tobacco... and smoke weed instead.

2. A hobbit. Yes, a hobbit... from like a shire. The Shire is apparently located somewhere in Rastafaria. And there were goblins there, because his initiation conflict was to smuggle a bag of weed past goblins to the shire. His signiture item was a "Very big, very high quality bag of weed as large as he is 2d8).

3. A famous rap star (I forget which one. MC hammer or something).

4. A mad scientist/trivia master.

Callan wrote:
What I've observed in actual play accounts here at the forge, is where gamers who come to something like capes for the first time (a nar facilitating game) almost always do a straight up joke fest of a game. My hypothesis - its a social escape route. They are afraid that if they portray their character the way they dearly want to, the GM will block them. And then it will be player facing off against GM - ugly stuff. But hey, if your just joking around and your character just, ha ha, puts the granny in the dumpster, if the GM blocks you, hey, you were just joking so no face off. Just a joke, never mind.

The joking is a phase - it's probing to see if they really have the authority to explore the void fully. It'll pass once they realise their rights to explore it are assured. Might take a little while, but it'll happen, is my estimate. The whole bong nazi game world seems to be such a joke - bring in horrible issues like nazi fascism - err, but its all drug related - so they can blow it all off as a joke when they get serious about something, but they also get blocked on it.

Ricky wrote: Callan, I wanted to add that I totally agree with you here, but in my experience it goes beyond Narr-facilitating games. It happens whenever players who are used to have tight constraints on their ability to affect the game suddenly have those constraints removed. They start doing weird and goofy stuff for a while just to see if they can; they want to understand where the new boundaries are, now that the old ones are gone.

Ricky wrote: It happens whenever players who are used to have tight constraints on their ability to affect the game suddenly have those constraints removed.

Hi William,

I think I was wrong to be skeptical about what you have done - I really don't know anything I should know about it.

This is an absolute non-issue for our group, and I feel we solved it quite easily by junking alignment and a social contract of GMs being light on use of authorities in game.

I agree with your theory, sorta. However, the key extra assumption is: "they learn that every time they go in directions that don't satisfy him, he grabs the rudder." No one has ever observed our GMs go to the rudder for 10+, maybe even 20+ years with regard to "bad moral choices." I can't think of a single example under the rubric.

On the other hand, they have observed the GM go for the rudder... well, worse, more like the pistol... when players take risks with their characters. So we've had significant problems recently with players being too cautious with their characters. As GMs (half the players at the table have been GMs one time or another in the last few years, and we all have had problems with killing off PCs too easily) we have noticed the problem, and we've, to one degree or another, promised to cut back on character death. But there's a serious time-lag between that verbal promise and players internalizing it, and so we've still had cautious player problems. I've switched to explicit 100% script-immunity rules when I GM now to try to break the problem, and I have been advocating the other GMs do the same.

So yes, what you describe is a real phenonemon. But not a concern for our particular group with regards to moral choices.

Oh, and I should of been more clear about this. During the game I was 100% AOK with the restrictions put on me as the GM by the system. Even the restrictions that made me go hmm (e.g. don't prep after the initial town generation). What we were uncomfortable with were the remaining few constraints remaining on the players.

So, to butt in:

Mandatory alternative DitV setting experimented with: Check.

Group committed to playing another session in the original setting: Check. Excellent.

Discussion about whether freedom breeds silliness: Irrelevant (in the context of this thread).

Discussion about "removing the rest of the player constraints", based on the evidence of this actual play: Even more irrelevant, if you are committed to playing DitV-as-written. Freedom in DitV is not about the "freedom to do anything you want", but "freedom to make interesting personal moral choices", and that's what the rules push for. And that's where you have not been yet, as you explicitly stated in part 2 of your original post - you, as a group, have not escalated within conflicts, and you, as a GM, have not taken a player decision and pushed the issue, escalating to the next conflict.

Thus I am very much looking forward to your next AP post. In regards to the pushing and escalating, I hope you have read Vincent's excellent posts about the matter, here and on his blog.

Cheers,
Mikael

Hi William,

My overall impression is that you and or your group have an issue with the term freeform, and that you introduced the game by tempting them with its freeform nature.

I am not sure I can see what you are actually referring to, DitV is in no way a freeform game, and it does not set out to "lift restrictions". Sure, as Mikael also alludes to, the core of the game is allowing the players to make moral choices and judgements, without reference to a pre-defined setting constraint. But the central theme of the game involves confronting the PCs and indeed the players with the implications of their choices, by testing these judgements by saying "really, what about when...?".

If you focus on "freeform issues" whatever they are to your group, you may miss the central issues. Indeed, the actual conflict resolution system is very system heavy, and will always frustrate those seeking total freedom of narration.

Discussion about "removing the rest of the player constraints", based on the evidence of this actual play: Even more irrelevant, if you are committed to playing DitV-as-written.

that you introduced the game by tempting them with its freeform nature.

And that's where you have not been yet, as you explicitly stated in part 2 of your original post - you, as a group, have not escalated within conflicts, and you, as a GM, have not taken a player decision and pushed the issue, escalating to the next conflict.

cydmab wrote:
NOOOOO....

The particular example that comes to my mind is DitV in the Paranoia setting. If one were thinking of doing this conversion, but preserve the silly-crazy-dark humor aspect of Paranoia, I'd recommend one think twice before going forward with such a project.

cydmab wrote:

And that's where you have not been yet, as you explicitly stated in part 2 of your original post - you, as a group, have not escalated within conflicts, and you, as a GM, have not taken a player decision and pushed the issue, escalating to the next conflict.

To be clear, I agree with this statement.  This is what I believe we did wrong, and why we have to try DitV again, "for real" next time.