I finally get to play in a mini-campaign of DitV and things aren't going so well.  We're doing a 'rotating GM' thing where each of us takes it in turn to run a town for the other two.  The first few towns went well.  The trouble is, for the last couple of towns (with me as player then GM), I've found that there's been very little tension in the conflicts we have.  This is because the long-term fallout and experience the Dogs have undergone has given them each two or three traits in the 3d8 to 4d10 range, and these traits are applicable in most conflicts.  This means that the Dogs are in almost complete control of how the conflicts go, what blows are taken, and what fallout dice are distributed. 

As I understand it, the GM's role is to make the players think hard about what conflicts to engage in, and how hard to push those conflicts.  The mechanics are there to inform those decisions.  The GM can make the players think by doing three mechanical things:

• Win conflicts: the easiest one to aim for, as it means that the Dogs' opponents get what's a stake.  Unfortunately, this doesn't happen because the Dogs can bring two to three times as many dice to the table as any NPC.
• Raise with a blow the Dogs' don't want to take: plenty of fine examples of that, but tricky to do when the Dogs have all those d8s and d10s at hand.  The Dogs can Block just about any Raise the GM can make, and choose when to take the blow to generate lots of d4 fallout when it doesn't really matter in the SIS.  I have, however, been using the Viciousness power for a lot of the possessed.
• Escalate and have the NPCs take terrible fallout: about the only option left.  Trouble is, two of the three Dogs are set up as talking types, so most of their raises are non-fighting ones.  It's difficult to stack up a big fallout total when the NPC is taking mainly d4s and d6s

So, what to do?  One answer is to give the NPCs more and bigger dice so that the Dogs get a run for their money.  What's preventing me is the general well-crafted nature of the DitV rules.  I'm concerned that the problems I'm seeing are more to do with our misapplication of the rules than genuine failures in the rules themselves. 

Any thoughts?

Neil.

Do the Dogs always agree with one another?

-Vincent

We've only three players, so 1 GM and two Dogs.  That leaves little room for disagreement between the Dogs.  So far, there's been no strong disagreement between them.  This could be because each of us used a 'starter' town for our first run, so the problems were fairly straighforward and easy to judge.  There weren't many shades of grey or, if there were, the players saw them the same way. 

But that doesn't solve the problem I see: the Dogs, even acting alone, don't run much of a risk when going up against NPCs.  Or are you saying that satisfying DitV play requires that the players are in conflict with one another?

Neil.

If you find yourself often without enough dice to "push" a hard raise to the players (in the sense that even if you say "you have to choose between saving x or you, the players can easily see with big dice and say "no, we save both") a possible solution I have used sometimes is to begin a lot of conflicts, see what dice you all rolled, and "give" without even playing the first raise if you see that you have not the right dice. (You'll need a couple of big numbers, like 9 or 10, more than the players. The demonic influence is very useful for this). You "keep" only the conflicts that you see as "interesting" in the "numeric" sense (this could mean giving early in a big duel in the main street, saying "you kill him, whatever" and staying later in a conflict that seems less important. Doesn't matter, find a way to make it important enough for the dice, and start raising). So you begin a lot of conflicts but don't lose time with the ones where you don't have the right dice.

I would not suggest raising the dice on the NPCs or using Mobs. These tactics smell of "GM force", and you don't need NPC strong enough to win a conflict. You only need a couple of "10" at the right time, to make the PC's life more... interesting!

Another advice: make the conflicts be against people the PC care about, or that are indispensable to the community. Then show the players that you can "see" with a lot of "1" against their gun any time you want (killing the NPC you are using, even if they did not want that). You can use their big dice AGAINST them, making them be much more careful about using them.

But the best solution is still having the Dogs fight between themselves. But to do so, you have to leverage your knowledge of the players, and see the way they are playing, there isn't a hard and fast method to get to that point.

How are you doing with sorcerers and possessed people?

Watcha all,

I'm one of Neil's players. My recollection is a bit different to his. Despite having a Dog with two fairly good traits the final two conflicts in the last session drove me to relying on lucky dice rolls (one by me, the other by Neil) to avoid my Dog taking some big fallout. In one Neil kept the tension going by burning low dice and keeping a big deterrent '9' sitting on the table which made the pair of us grub around for traits to avoid the blow being turned. The other was a different kettle of fish, as both sides dice drained away and we were all grubbing around for traits again to try and deliver something that would end the conflict.

Interestingly (and this an observation which might indicate another way of keeping the tension up) in one of the conflicts I couldn't use my Dog's most effective trait and in the other I had to make the conscious decision to not use my Dogs second most effective trait to avoid killing the person the conflict was with.

Moving onto player disagreement... I think the other player and myself have similar world views and we were quite happy working together. Our character's agendas were compatible enough which helped.

Cheers,

Ash

And I'm the other player.

I think the apparrent lack of tension was more an arteifact or the way in which we were playing the game, i.e since only one character at a time continued from one town to the next and no character ever went more than two towns in a row before being 'rested', there was very little chance to build up the relationships & motivations that the characters had. With more consistency, it would be possible for a GM to use the strategies already mentioned in this thread for developing tension.

That aside, I think another contributory factor towards a lack of tension is the essentially formulaic nature of Dogs: you ride into town, sort out the people's problems and ride on. We very quickly fell into meta-gaming each town, e.g. trying to identify who was on the side of the demons by speculating about their prideful nature and possible sins. Perhaps with more experience GMing the game, I could avoid creating towns that fell into the trap of being predictable, but its hard to break away from the central formula of creating a town without undermining the nature of the game. Has anyone come up with any answers to that?

Moreno wrote:
...a possible solution I have used sometimes is to begin a lot of conflicts, see what dice you all rolled, and "give" without even playing the first raise if you see that you have not the right dice.

lumpley wrote:
How are you doing with sorcerers and possessed people?

Neil wrote: This is because the long-term fallout and experience the Dogs have undergone has given them each two or three traits in the 3d8 to 4d10 range, and these traits are applicable in most conflicts.

Neil wrote:

Moreno wrote:
...a possible solution I have used sometimes is to begin a lot of conflicts, see what dice you all rolled, and "give" without even playing the first raise if you see that you have not the right dice.

That's certainly one idea.  Do you find that you abort a lot of conflicts doing things that way?

Neil wrote:
Ash, in the last few sessions, I didn't get the impression that the players were agonising over whether to continue with a conflict or give early.  It seemed to be a pretty foregone conclusion that the Dogs would win the conflicts, and win handily. (Note that I was GM in the last session and a player in the session before

James, town design is another issue.  I don't think there was anything wrong with any of the towns that we played through, or with any of the way the towns or NPCs were played.  My question here is a purely mechanical one: how can conflicts with ordinary people be made mechanically tenser?

Neil.

Oh, I forgot the kicker. The husband is lying there crumpled on the street and the Dog who hit him is having his "oops" moment. Then they all go into healing mode and save the poor bastard. Of course, since Will had won the conflict, he got the stakes. The guy took his wife back. So we narrated how his cousin comes up while they're struggling to save his life and there's this tearful "I always loved you scene."

See this thread where Vincent suggests that possessed people get the demonic influence dice.

Frank

ffilz wrote:
See this thread where Vincent suggests that possessed people get the demonic influence dice.

Neil wrote:
I finally get to play in a mini-campaign of DitV and things aren't going so well.  We're doing a 'rotating GM' thing where each of us takes it in turn to run a town for the other two.  The first few towns went well.  The trouble is, for the last couple of towns (with me as player then GM), I've found that there's been very little tension in the conflicts we have.
[...]
So, what to do?  One answer is to give the NPCs more and bigger dice so that the Dogs get a run for their money.  What's preventing me is the general well-crafted nature of the DitV rules.  I'm concerned that the problems I'm seeing are more to do with our misapplication of the rules than genuine failures in the rules themselves. 

Any thoughts?

Neil.

Couple of ideas:

1. one sorcerer with a couple of possessed henchmen.

2. Mobs are always fun, too. Demon possessed mobs are even more fun.

3. Try to get one dog to take a liking to a character ("Reminds you of your kid sister") then put them in a place to be judged by another Dog and see if any tension develops.

4. Dont let the Dogs off the hook by making up there minds for them that something is a sin. Let them struggle with things. Its hard to shoot someone who may be a messenger from the King himself. Its hard to shoot someone who may have been misled by someone else.

You said that the Dogs have a lot of oomph in talkin', yeah? A thing I've seen a few times is 'just talking' raises which ain't really raises. Like, "I say, 'Let 'er go, Jonas.' I raise with 12." Feh.

A raise is something that can't be ignored. This is an important standard. As soon as it gets lax, 'just talking' becomes crazy powerful voodoo. A Dog can have a simple conversation with someone and, problem solved.

My advice is to never, ever let that stand. It should be a challenge to come up with a thing to say that a body can't ignore. 'Just talking' doesn't mean just talking, in other words. If you can't come up with the thing to say that your opponent can't ignore, too bad. You give, or you escalate.

YMMV, but being a hardass about this (as a group) has made our games better.

John wrote:
You said that the Dogs have a lot of oomph in talkin', yeah? A thing I've seen a few times is 'just talking' raises which ain't really raises. Like, "I say, 'Let 'er go, Jonas.' I raise with 12." Feh.

A raise is something that can't be ignored. This is an important standard. As soon as it gets lax, 'just talking' becomes crazy powerful voodoo. A Dog can have a simple conversation with someone and, problem solved.

My advice is to never, ever let that stand. It should be a challenge to come up with a thing to say that a body can't ignore. 'Just talking' doesn't mean just talking, in other words. If you can't come up with the thing to say that your opponent can't ignore, too bad. You give, or you escalate.

YMMV, but being a hardass about this (as a group) has made our games better.

Neil wrote:
Ash, in the last few sessions, I didn't get the impression that the players were agonising over whether to continue with a conflict or give early.  It seemed to be a pretty foregone conclusion that the Dogs would win the conflicts, and win handily. (Note that I was GM in the last session and a player in the session before