Last Thursday, we've finally managed to play a full town using my Ninja Princess Usagi-chan mod. The session lasted about five hours, and we finished well past 1 AM. Despite some irritating technical problems with Skype throughout the first half of the game and tiredness impeding our performance in the last hour, I'd say it was a pretty fun game. Possibly my best experience with DitV so far, even.

Actual Play reports and discussion of character creation and initiation conflicts can be found here.

[center]The Village[/center]

The situation in the village was as follows:

Eijiro, cat samurai and the captain of a nearby fort fell in love in Yukiko, a bunny, despite inter-species relationships being forbidden by tradition. She rejected and humiliated him. In his grief, Eijiro ordered his boar underlings to go hard with the villagers. His second-in-command, Kobo, didn't like this and tried to reason with the cat, but couldn't show disloyalty. Responding to the aggression of imperial soldiers, Takuya, the village elder and Yukiko's father, turned for help to the Darkness. He summoned evil spirits to protect the villagers. Koji the piglet got possessed, murdered a boar guard, and was sentenced to death after being caught covered in blood. As the piglet was waiting for the execution, Eijiro announced that he was looking for a bride, promising an amnesty on his wedding day.

At this point bunny ninja princesses arrived, sent by the Empress to investigate the case.

If they never came, after the piglet's execution Takuya would continue conjuring evil spirits, changing the villagers into monsters and sending them against the imperial force. Eventually, his own daughter would be transformed and subsequently killed by Eijiro. The cat samurai would go insane knowing he killed Yukiko with his own hands, and would be put down by Kobo in turn. Ultimately, the Darkness would hold sway over the area.

[center]The Game[/center]

I started the session by narrating two short scenes to introduce the situation.

In the first scene, Yukiko was approached by Eijiro as she was sitting near a stream alone, brushing her hair and apparently daydreaming. They soon started struggling. Yukiko slapped Eijiro in the face and run. The cat was boiling with anger. Note that I only described the actions, without any words.

Next, I narrated a ritual conducted by an old bunny in a ruined temple. Then, I moved the to the village, describing a piglet whose eyes suddenly started glowing red, and an unsuspecting guard. I depicted the murder as shadows on the wall: tentacles shredding the boar to pieces.

After the introduction, the bunnies entered the village.

They immediately headed to the elder's hut, but they split seeing a squad of boar samurai making a mess on the street and bullying a villager. Maromi approached them. They were rebuking the carpenter for not having the cross ready yet, for his own son's execution. She had a talk with Kobo, who explained that they were following orders, and demanded to be taken to their commander.

In the meantime, Yuan met with Yukiko in elder's hut. The girl was worried about her father, who was disappearing in the woods at nights recently. I did stress that there are no other bunnies in the village, making it obvious to the players that the elder was responsible for the ritual from the introduction.

The characters met by the gate to the fort and were brought to Eijiro. They learned about the murder and asked to see the prisoner. It was rather apparent that the piglet wouldn't be able to kill a boar, especially unarmed, but all proofs pointed directly at him. The princesses demanded that Koji be freed. However, Eijiro didn't want them to undermine his authority – never mind that both he and Kobo were convinced of the piglet's guilt.

A nice conflict ensued, with the princesses stomping their feet, crying and all, for great love and justice. After the cat denied their status as imperial ninja princesses in his jurisdiction, Kamil raised with Maromi asking to be imprisoned as well. So I took the blow and a moment later she was looking surprised from behind the bars (now, that was a cool exchange ^_^). In the end, Eijiro got persuaded to free the piglet, but his sentence wasn't canceled and Maromi remained in the cell as a hostage.

Yuan went back to the village with Koji. The villagers, especially the carpenter, were happy that the piglet got freed and they no longer need to look for a bride for Eijiro, and Yuan was told about the amnesty issue. The joy didn't last long, obviously, as they soon learned about the circumstances. Yuan wanted to meet with the elder, but he was nowhere to be found, and someone told her he was probably praying in the old temple.

Koji guided her to the ruins, where she found a hidden entrance to an underground tunnel. The piglet was afraid to go down, so Yuan left him alone on the surface, explaining what will happen to him if he tries to run away. She descended to an underground cave, where she discovered traces of a recent ritual, including some blasphemous scrolls which she took with her. Once she emerged on the surface she found Koji in a strange trance, his eyes glowing red. She brought him around, tied him and headed back to the village with him.

After Magdalena's scene we moved to Kamil, who decided that after the sunset Maromi used her mad ninja skillz to escape the cell. Sneaking on the roofs she reached Eijiro's balcony, where she saw the cat gasping to the moon and uttering Yukiko's name, lovesick apparently. She revealed herself and learned about his romantic problems, including the promise about the wedding amnesty.

They argued for a while about that, as Maromi concluded he framed Koji. Once the cat accused all bunnies of having hearts of stone, blaming the Empress herself for the law against inter-species marriages, Maromi promptly administered her Secret Technique of Budda's Paw and lectured him severely. She requested that he apologize Yukiko for everything and supported her demands with further kicking. Kamil escalated the conflict to sharp things, as Maromi smashed Eijiro's head with her spiked nun-chuck. Finally, the cat agreed to apologize Yukiko... and fell to the ground, into a quickly widening puddle of his own blood. And we cut the scene, leaving the first aid conflict for later and switching to Magdalena.

Yuan returned to the village, where she saw Takuya, the elder, standing on some crate and speaking to the villagers, instigating an uprising against the imperial tyranny. We started a conflict with his authority over the villagers at stake. Yuan hopped next to him and accused him of practicing forbidden magic, presenting the scrolls as a proof and Koji as a witness. However, the piglet was under Takuya's spell. His eyes glowed red again, and he denied her claims.

Once she escalated to combat and hit Takuya with her Arcane Thunder technique, knocking him down, the elder called the Darkness. The scrolls started glowing and as the eerie light fell on the villagers they started sprouting tentacles, transforming into mindless monsters. It wouldn't be complete without the tentacles, heh. Cackling maniacally, Takuya kept shouting that it's all for their own good and he meant it, of course. Surrounded, Yuan tried to run, but she bumped into transforming Yukiko and wound up grappled. Strangled, she escalated to sharp things and cut the tentacles off to free herself, but Magdalena finally gave up the conflict to dodge Takuya's beam of crackling black energy.

Takuya retained his power over the villagers, but the Fallout he took when Yukiko's tentacles got cut killed him. Seeing his bleeding daughter and thinking she was dying, he commanded the monsters to destroy the fort. As Yuan stood in the rain (cause, the scene wouldn't be complete without the rain washing the blood from her blade) he started accusing the Empress for everything, coming closer to the princess and, in his blind fury, falling on her katana. At that moment, Yukiko woke up and, blaming Eijiro for everything, headed to the fort as she changed into a monster again.

We played out Eijiro's first aid conflict, which I gave up almost immediately, to keep the dice.

Finally, the monsters assaulted the fort, and a fierce battle ensued. Eijiro grabbed his sword and rushed into the fray, shouting that he must protect Yukiko. And of course, he met her in her monster form. He didn't slay her, though as the princesses jumped between them and Yuan revealed the truth. The cat was ready to let her take his life, but the players initiated a conflict to calm her down. It involved hugging and signing (!) and finally, group crying as the princesses won and Yukiko turned back into a bunny. Yuan, however, took some Fallout and was dying – we came to a conclusion that she fell on Eijiro's sword while grabbing him with her ears. Kamil managed to win the first aid conflict and saved her, though.

We could have play out a conflict to solve the rest of the mess, but it was already very late, so I simply assumed that the villagers regained their normal forms once Yukiko changed back. Kamil and Magdalena decided to leave everybody at their own and disappeared in puffs of smoke in the best ninja style, heading to the next village.

[center]Conclusions[/center]

It was a fun game – we had a healthy mix of drama and humor, and some pretty strong conflicts. Kamil commented that things were much more powerful than in our games of vanilla DitV. Actually, I was a bit surprised how quickly things got violent and blood got spilled. I've deliberately made violence a part of the setup, but I'm still amazed how quickly things escalated from love and cuteness to life and death.

Cool enough. I like the strong contrast between the cute part and the violent part. Kamil's conflict with Eijiro kind of reminded me about Jubei-chan: The Ninja Girl. I.e. the protagonist changes her opponents' lives by beating them up. Only, the anime didn't involve actually spilling their blood and piercing their eyes in the process (I couldn't help but give the cat Even though I don't have an eye, I can see the justice now 2d4 as Fallout trait). Maromi furiously teaching Eijiro that all bunnies are pure and innocent and nearly killing him made me wonder about the alleged fanaticism of Dogs in the default setting, heh.

Definitely, Afraid's escalations variant had its part in it – the free block is very tempting. A small mechanical issue connected with it emerged though, as at one point Kamil escalated on his See before Magdalena had any chance to use this option. I suppose Seeing in the Best Roll order should solve this.

There was a little problem with the Best Roll order in general, however, and it often happens in our games. The book doesn't make it clear what to do in case of a tied Best Roll (or I can't find the specific rule for that), Until now we've been comparing the next two dice on ties, but it's somewhat confusing if there's a lot of dice at the table. I think it should be more simple if we break the ties by adding only the next highest die to the Best Roll total.

Another rules issue we had concerns improvised items rules. We're barely ever using them in our games. Actually, every time I'm about to reach for the dice for improvised items, I have this feeling that it's kind of weak. I have some trouble assigning Belongings to NPCs, too. For the record, for a long time I've been convinced they don't get them at all – I suppose my mind somehow refused to acknowledge the existence of fiat-based bonuses in a game that otherwise beautifully controls adversity levels. Even after grokking the justification behind this part of the rules, using it still feels somewhat unnatural to me.

I have a set of rules modifications that makes DitV much more tight and tactical, in a board-gamey manner. They include budgeting of NPC's Belongings, and remove the rules for improvised items entirely. Yup, it changes DitV into a completely different game effectively and I'm perfectly aware of that. However, we're not using that hack this time, as the aim of the bunny mod is strong drama rather than tactical play. So, we're playing with only a small number of rule modifications, the majority of which are cherry-picked rules from Afraid, and Belongings rules remain unchanged in this game.

Now, I look at the NPCs sheet, and I don't see any Belongings listed. Not that they were really needed, but I find it interesting that it didn't even occur to me to give them some stuff.

There was one instance of using an NPC as an improvised item, however, when Magdalena wanted the piglet to support Yuan's accusations. My immediate reaction was that the piglet is crap, and I felt like I'm unfair giving her only d4. Even after I reconsidered this assessment (the piglet really couldn't be better than crap), and even though it was only about a single die, the feeling remained.

Another system issue that came up was after Magdalena's conflict, when we weren't really sure who should die from the Fallout (well, I mistakingly put Takuya's Fallout dice next to Yuan's, and for a moment we thought it was she who died, but that's another thing, heh). The conflict was only with Takuya, and I've been using villagers and Yukiko through his Relationships. However, it was Yukiko who got seriously cut up. I like the resolution we arrived at, but it left me wondering about the rules a bit.

In the Eijiro's first aid conflict I rolled very well, but I concluded that I'm more interested in the cat remaining alive, so I gave Kamil an opportunity to eat some Fallout and kept 10 and 9 for the final conflict. Note that the rules from Afraid we're using include the one about keeping two best dice on giving. Also, we're assuming that kept dice can be used in any later conflict, not only in the follow-ups. Works well, as it provides serious incentive to give up at times. As a side note, we're using Afraid's variant for short term Fallout as well, and similarly, in our games dice kept from Fallout can be used at any later time. It makes for some fun resource build-ups, and we have a clean “keep two best dice from the pool” pattern.

Lately, I've been wondering about the issue of names in our games. I totally forgot to name the village, and even though I thought up some name at the beginning of the session, we didn't use it even once. I had important NPCs named (L5R handbook came in handy, heh), but more often than not we've been using labels like “the elder”, “the bunny girl”, “the cat” and so on. I'm considering adopting an explicit policy that names are assigned and used only on popular demand.

[center]Magdalena's First Indie Steps[/center]

Magdalena's habits from traditional gaming were visible.

She noticeably maintained party mentality. It wasn't a real problem, but it can become one if it starts limiting her options in future games. She had some issues with splitting at the beginning, it seems, and there were “I'm on Kamil's side” moments. We tried to explain her that the system is built in such a way that she's always on her own side, and should follow her own, rather than group's agenda.

Magdalena's character has a Relationship with cats, as they killed her family. I arranged the situation in town so that it hit some character's issues, creating a potential conflict between them. When it came to Eijiro Kamil worked with unrequited lovers Relationship. Magdalena was role-playing her dislike of cats, I believe, but I feel that she downplayed things and it had no real effect but color. I think she might have been afraid of actively creating conflict on her own, and possibly the party mentality could have played some role here, too.

Also, there was a classic “I want to tie the piglet up. Do I have a rope?” situation. After I asked her whether she has a rope, she answered that she doesn't, and I think she might have read that as me challenging her idea. Well, I explained her that she can simply decide that she indeed has a rope or that there's one lying around in the debris, and if by chance we didn't like the prospect we'd just veto it. Magdalena obviously didn't play with us long enough to know what is acceptable, but it's rather apparent that she's used to strong GM control.

Magdalena instantly picked up the rule about increasing the d-size freely rather than one size at a time. It wasn't so intuitive to me when I started playing, for example. However, one of our rule changes limits this rule to one size at a time. What Magdalena did at the time was improving her Arcane Thunder technique from 3d4 to 3d6, so I guess she was aiming at pumping it to 3d10 instantly. Another habit, I suppose. But I think she still needs to see how the development in DitV works in practice, and I don't really expect her to grok this aspect of the game fully through discussion alone.

All in all, I've seen players who had much more problems adjusting to non-traditional games than Magdalena, however.

[center]***[/center]

So, I count the session as a very successful one. There was a cool balance between humor and drama. Some very strong scenes emerged and I was constantly amazed by the vividness of the characters.  I'd like to run at least one or two more towns with the bunny mod, and I'm curious to see how things will be developing.

My two cents:
- Yup, this stuff was stronger than our normal Dogs, in which we or maybe it's just me fall into spaghetti western tropes and sometimes let them dominate. Bunnies were fresh and left out this I-know-it-from-somewhere feeling. Perhaps it was just me, though. Maybe the general fluffiness contrasted with blood and pain we dealt with and gave to others and made it more visible in comparison in spaghetti.
- The last hour was more exercise in overcoming tiredness than real game for me. I liked hugging and singing as escalations and sees but I'm sure I could come up with better stuff.
- One thing that wasn't certain at first is our(bunnyninjaprincessess I mean) authority in the village. But again maybe it was gender/cultural/whatever stuff.
- I haven't caught your clue with the only bunnies in the village and scene about rabbit summoning demons and piglet being the actual culprit. Sorry, I love crime stories but I suck at solving the intrigue.
- I like Bunnies in the Bunnyland, I like it a lot. I want to play it again and see how we catch on as a group with Magdalena.

Kamil Wegrzynowicz

Respect to all the Star Wars nerds, but this is my favorite alt-Dogs ever.

-Vincent

Vincent,

Why, thanks! ^_^

Kamil,

As for the intro, well, it seems I should have been more explicit about things. There was no intrigue to solve - my point for these scenes was to showcase the situation right away. I can see that I wasn't clear enough, however, as the hints should have been stronger and obvious.

It might be better if we clarify some setting stuff before the next game, including the princesses' authority thing, possibly fleshing out the politics and tradition of the realm a bit.

We've been all running out of steam in the last hour of play. Still, I don't suppose it would be the best idea to split the town between two sessions - we've been just to close to finishing it. I think we've lost almost an hour due to the initial technical problems and later fatigue, anyway. We definitely need to start earlier the next time.

Yes, I know, I suck :p Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the game. When Filip was telling me that besides the whole anime thing, this would be a serious game, I didn't know how could that be possible. But all in all, the really was serious. Well, except for Maromi crying in moments of danger, this seemed really funny for me.

About this being on Kamil's side thing. It's not that I was afraid of going in conflict with him, I just didn't see the reason to do so. It was in situation when he wanted to free the piglet. I asked him, why the hell he wants to do that? He and Filip interpreted it like I had something against it. It wasn't like that, I just thought it's worthless and gives us nothing. And actually I was right, and it was even worse, Maromi got imprisoned :D

Another thing is increasing the d-size of my Trait. It was tru that I wanted to increase it to maximum, it was obvious to me that this would be the best option :D I think it's another habit from traditional games, just hack&slash :D Too much of cRPG maybe.

So, to sum up, I love the game. Being a bunny is something completely different for me, but it's a great experience. Getting to know the DitV rules is also very interesting, I think the mechanics is really good. As to the game of bunny ninja princesses - I highly recommened it!

Why did you change the die size rule, out of curiosity? It seems odd.

yrs--
--Ben

Magda,

In that conflict we weren't sure whether you had an agenda of your own - still, you've been taking Kamil's side. This is the party mindset thing I've been pointing at. The dice hit the table when there's a conflict of goals we want to focus on. There was an apparent and interesting conflict between Maromi and Eijiro, as they both desired something and there was no way for both of them to have it at the same time. Yuan was indifferent, however, and consequently, you had no real reason to care about the result of the conflict and participate actively in it.

Conflict rules are designed in such a way that everyone plays his or her own side, and the players normally support each other only if their desired results match. Since you desired no particular result at that time (i.e. neither to free the piglet nor stop Kamil), you shouldn't actually take part in the mechanical exchange. Normally, the conflict would answer how far are you willing to go to push for your goals - without the goal you'd care about in the first place, your mechanical choices are meaningless.

If it was a typical quests-focused game, you'd be ganging up on the opposition to increase your chances of solving the group-unifying quest. Here, there was no quest to solve - only a problem and your character's individual stances towards it. Basically, when we start a conflict you need to ask yourself what you want to get out of it, and if there is such thing, pursue it.

I'm not sure if it makes sense to you now - as already proven, our explanations suck :)

Also, doing seemingly random things just because it's fun is typical to Kamil's playstyle :) But since he didn't connect the intro to the piglet actually being the murderer, we can't be sure what he'd done if he was conscious about it as a player.

As for the d-size, I perfectly understand your point. Having the option to do so, you'd only play against yourself by not changing the d-size from d4s to d10s. The system, however, wasn't built with optimizing effectiveness in mind, and it doesn't handle such mindset well. You would probably soon discover that despite having your character optimized, it doesn't have exactly the impact on play you've been aiming for.

For similar reasons, there's not much point to worry about the initial dice distribution - you just assign the dice to traits according to their importance to you and the impact on play you want to give them. By putting d4s in a trait or a relationship you say that you want it to cause problems to your character. By assigning d10s you say that you want it to play an important part in her story. Either way, you will roll these dice one way or another, and winning the conflict is more often a question of your choices than of the dice, anyway.

Ben,

The rule was in the last version of Afraid I've seen. I'm not sure what was the specific justification for this design choice in Afraid or if it's still in there. I believe Vincent mentioned somewhere that there are some broken rules in Afraid, and I wouldn't be surprised if these were the rules I liked. Either way, I like the rule and it fits the way I'd like the game to play.

As I see it, I'm simply removing a non-choice.

With the standard rule, every time someone wanted to increase the d-size, we'd have to stop and carefully consider whether the person wants to do so for bad (i.e. jerkish/powergamey) munchkinish purposes or good (i.e. thematic) munchkinish purposes. Cause, doing it for bad munchkiny purposes would mean not getting it, not playing the game right and all the crap. But for most of the people I played the game with - myself included - not pumping the d-size to d10 given the choice would only mean playing against oneself.

So, I suppose we should consider every instance of increasing the d-size and say: "Hey, come on, you're doing it wrong! It's not how the game is supposed to be played!" whenever someone doesn't do it for good munchkinish purposes. The problem is, it would require us to dig into the player's motives, and these usually involve having fun. In this case it would go much deeper than considering aesthetic content, like with the veto thing.

And in the end, I blame the munchkinish option for making one consider munchkinish choices in the first place. No option - no problem.

For similar reasons I removed the "any dice" options for Reflection Fallout, substituting them with choices that are equally valid regardless of the underlying motives.

Also, I think the change increases the value of d10s. That way Strong backgrounds are not a worse choice than Complicated, dice-wise. I like symmetry.

Actually, I'm considering the dice number cap for traits now - it's another rule from Afraid that I like, but it wasn't included in this game yet.

I hope this answers the question :)

There's this thing, which is that my favorite thing in the game is when someone drops their d10 trait to a d4 trait with fallout. I'm worried you're going to lose that.

yrs--
--Ben

In fact, we've already lost it.

It's not that much of a loss for us, though. Dropping traits and stuff was rarely chosen as Fallout in our games so far, and more often than not the player who did it regretted it later. Which means that most of the time, our Fallout choices boil down to deciding where to put the new d4. And I'm fine with that, adds more fun traits to the sheet :)

One of the things I liked in Afraid, though, were the trade-offs present on Fallout lists (i.e. looking at the list of options, it made perfect sense not to pick only the one that added d4). I adopted something similar in my tactical hack, but that's a completely different story. In the bunnies game, it would probably be detrimental.

Hey Filip.

Your reasons for the fallout die size rule make my head hurt (I think in sympathy) don't you think you might be over-thinking this one? Surely the best way of judging the dice size is to go with what the player feels is right for the situation that provokes the fallout. Maybe, not bothering to agonise over the whole munchkin issue and not having a veto for fallout would be easier.

I see fallout as the most personal part of Dogs, where I get to explore my character, map out how the stories are effecting the character, and describe the character's story arc. Vetoes in this area are generally not welcome unless there is a very compelling reason, primarily because the other players didn't experience the conflict from my perspective. Suggestions are fine of course.

Hi,
speaking from the player position. Call it badwrongfun or whatever but free changing die size doesn't really
matter that much to me. I can't speak for other players, of course, but I don't remember situation in which
downsizing actually happened in our group and in which my fun from the game suffered in any way because
of eliminating this option.

As for the most personal part and exploring characters. could you explain what you mean? Maybe it's beacause
we haven't played more than two towns in a row with the same characters the problem didn't arise but still we'd
been choosing other options in fallout. Did it diminish our game? I don't know but I didn't see lack of free die size
changing as a huge problem or any problem to be honest.

Jamie,

What can I say? It seems like you're digging a problem where there isn't any.

I wouldn't say I'm agonizing over anything. Actually, I'm giving this rule exactly as much attention and consideration as we normally tend to give any rule we use in play. In my experience, using systems blindly is too unpredictable to risk wasting precious gaming time on it.

The change results from a conscious need. Unless the rule proves to be flawed and starts getting in the way of fun, we have no reason to re-consider the default. So far, it worked fine and didn't cause any problems.

I think I understand your and Ben's perspectives, but frankly, it doesn't change the fact that your suggested approach to this aspect of the game feels somewhat alien to me. It's just, I can read about that indefinitely, but it doesn't make me want to play that way. Call it brain damage if you wish, but this perspective feels pretty sensible, by contrast.

If you examine Magda's posts here and in the first AP carefully, you'll discover that there is nothing about "feeling right for the situation". It's just, none of the people I played DitV with seemed to approach this issue as you do, with a possible exception of a couple of Irc games (in case of which I can't say). Myself, I simply feel it would be playing against oneself - making inefficient choices in the name of goals that could just as well be realized without such sacrifice.

As Kamil points out, in our games so far there were no instances of reducing d-size. A number of dice number reductions occurred, but they led to player's dissatisfaction. Also, every single instance of increasing d-size with the default rule involved instantly pumping it to d10. It's like the rule actually said "Increase your d-size to d10, period".

Surely, having an option to freely change the d-size or to reduce the dice gives the player more control over the character's development. The question is, does this increased control really adds all that much? For us it apparently doesn't, cause otherwise we wouldn't ignore large part of the possibilities we were given.

And so, removing the non-choice in favour of a tighter limitation seems only natural to me. There's still enough fiddly options for Fallout to represent the desired personal changes one way or another, and the house rule promotes variety.

Hi Filip,

Don't get me wrong I was just suggesting my way as an alternative, not as the right way to do it, (I'm not convinced there is a right way).

I perceived pain that was probably more in your careful expression of the situation than in your deliberation over fallout dice, and so if you are not feeling the headache I was picking up then all is probably fine.

ja-prozac wrote:
As for the most personal part and exploring characters. could you explain what you mean? Maybe it's beacause
we haven't played more than two towns in a row with the same characters the problem didn't arise but still we'd
been choosing other options in fallout. Did it diminish our game? I don't know but I didn't see lack of free die size
changing as a huge problem or any problem to be honest.