[DiTV ] All the Dogs do is talk!
Lance D. Allen:
A few ideas:
Escalate fast. Start out with talking, so the NPC gets those dice.. then escalate, and escalate again until they've got all the possible dice they can have at that moment. The Dogs will be staring at the NPCs full compliment of dice right away, and maybe their talky dice won't cut the mustard.
Threaten something important: As one of the earlier posters said, you've got to push buttons. Have an NPC take a a relative hostage, or a child, or the Steward.
Have strong, hard raises: Not "I shoot at the Steward," but "I blow the Steward's brains out." with big numbers, so the Dog has to take the blow with their current dice, unless they escalate and can roll really well.
Make THEM start the conflict: Don't even reach for the dice. Do something ugly and hard to ignore, and do it as pure narration. Unless a Dog decides to contest it, it happens. Cut up the young woman's face. Slap a woman's baby out of her arms. Make the Dogs mad.
Offer up hard stakes: (this one seems a little shady; call me on it if it seems that way to you) When a Dog contests something, or when you contest something the Dog does, offer stakes that are painful to lose. Advice is often given to make stakes give-able, to encourage people to give on a conflict, well, this is the opposite. They have the right to make a counter offer on your stakes (as I understand it) but sometimes they won't. Instead, they'll just be determined to win, by any means.
And a bit of advice for Peturabo: Utilize the "and now? how about now??" concept. If your Dogs are stone-cold killers, pull their strings. Will they shoot a man in the back? Will they kill a child? Will they kill a mother who's just acting to protect her baby? Also, toss in the occasional revelation... They killed this person who they thought was bad, but it turns out they acted on incomplete information, and killed one of the only true innocents in town. If that doesn't shake their murderous rampage.... then you are playing with some scary people.
phargle:
That's all good advice, but it goes back to my original problem: with my Dogs, I can't find the line between "this is worth dying for" and "we'll talk him down." I know, if I start baby-slapping and whatnot, they'll have no problem escalating. What I want to do is play to the game's strengths, and put the Dogs in positions where they could probably win if they escalated, but they have to decide whether or not it's worth escalating. Waving big red flags will make it always worth esclating.
I also have to be careful with having NPCs escalate. If they escalate fast, the Dogs will feel attacked and will feel totally justified in defending themselves.
I really want to play the game in such a way that Dogs have to really decide what's worth fighting for and what isn't. As it is now, they are strong enough at character creation to talk down situations that aren't worth fighting for, and anything that has enough dice to challenge them - a sorcerer, typically - is going to just get shot because you obviously shoot sorcerers.
As a player, I once (just once) had a situation where I was asking an NPC for information and he got belligerent. He wasn't actively hiding anything. He was just pissed that I was prying. My character was very new and I actually ran out of dice to just talk when he got physical and grabbed me, and then I ran out of dice when I slapped him for grabbing me (my character was female). And then I was still losing and had a choice: gun the guy down to win the conflict, or pull my head out and realize that this wasn't worth shooting a man over. That's the one and only time I've seen Dogs work that way, and I'd like to figure out how to make it work that way more often. I intuitively feel like there is something mechanical at work, because I know that, had I had dice left to talk the guy down, that's what I would've done - but I actually ran out of dice.
I guess I can also grasp that rejecting ignorable verbal raises can be a GM tool, but that feels a little weird to me. Can't _everything_ verbal be ignored? What is the nature of an unignorable verbal raise?
JC:
Quote from: Wolfen on January 25, 2008, 03:04:21 PM
Escalate fast. Start out with talking, so the NPC gets those dice.. then escalate, and escalate again until they've got all the possible dice they can have at that moment. The Dogs will be staring at the NPCs full compliment of dice right away, and maybe their talky dice won't cut the mustard.
I agree with all the rest of what you've said, but I'm not sure about this one
we agree that everyone who participates in a conflict gets dice from escalation at the same time, right?
meaning that when someone escalates, they escalate the whole conflict for everyone involved
phargle:
A note on that conflict where I had to choose between escalating and giving: I was alone. It seems to me that Dogs functions best when the Dogs are forced to go into conflicts alone, and that is something that runs counter to my GMing instincts, especially since a Dogs conflict can mean the other two players aren't as involved for what could be a longish time. But does that mesh with other people's experiences? Are individual conflicts more intense in terms of "Is this worth getting violent over?" I suspect so. If so, then I just need to figure out what would motivate the Dogs to split up. I suppose a town where too much is happening to just focus on on area would do the trick. Hmm.
JC:
Quote from: phargle on January 25, 2008, 03:26:31 PM
That's all good advice, but it goes back to my original problem: with my Dogs, I can't find the line between "this is worth dying for" and "we'll talk him down." I know, if I start baby-slapping and whatnot, they'll have no problem escalating. What I want to do is play to the game's strengths, and put the Dogs in positions where they could probably win if they escalated, but they have to decide whether or not it's worth escalating. Waving big red flags will make it always worth esclating.
after giving this a few minutes thought, I think the key might be low stakes and big bad raises
low stakes, because, like you said, otherwise they won't hesitate for a second
big bad raises, because those'll make them want to escalate
that way, they face the dilemma between escalating to stop the horrible raises, but all for modest global stakes
(oh and when making those big raises, try to show how it's justified from the NPC's point of view)
the reason I'm saying this, is that all my DITV games have featured this quite heavily, and it has usually made for intense conflicts
the individual raises would always go way further than initially anticipated
Quote from: phargle on January 25, 2008, 03:26:31 PM
... you obviously shoot sorcerers.
oh yeah?
even if they're little kids?
even if they're your sister?
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