The Slaughter at Corinthton, a Dogs in the Vineyard game
Judd:
It was one of those Fridays where the regular game fell through but we knew it far enough ahead of time so that we could pick up the pieces and play another game. Dogs it is, though single Dogs towns leave me cold. I want a half-dozen at least. Hopefully, we can get together again and wash the taste of Corinthon from our mouths.
Bret - my roommate, gentleman friend to:
Ellen - who is fairly new to town, so she hadn't met:
Julie - who came home from Dreamation with a powerful hunger for gaming.
Leah is a former Dog. Julie had an older, favored sister who died while wearing the Watchdog's quilted coat and I knew then that Leah had served with Julie's PC's sister.
So, Leah led a small group against some Territorial Authority soldiers because they were setting to mistreat a young girl of the Faith. It was a slaughter. When the Dogs roll in, the bodies are still rotting in the street and one of the boys, Harry, from the T.A. is dying slow of a gut-shot. Poor effin' Harry, man.
The players find Harry in the street, bleeding, being watched over by Malvina, the girl the soldiers were about to handle roughly. Malvina has been given a shotgun and is watching the boy die, just as Leah told her to.
The players want to help Harry; I describe him as a kid no older than them, dressed in a Territorial Authority uniform, moaning softly as he dies.
The conflict with Malvina is brutal. They give. My 5d10 Demon dice from the murder are too much.
Enter Leah, a conflict to get her to clean up her mess. Coming up with the conflict is a muddled mess but we figure it out post-mortem. But again, the 5d10 is too-too much.
Now the table is in a kind of shock. They have seen the Demon Dice in action. I am worried about roughing them up too much. I stop pushing conflicts.
They go to the T.A., explain what happened. I make the Major in charge of the Fort a decent guy with a tough job, as I had planned to but man, I can't help but think that I made him nicer. No dice are rolled, the Major wants names of the ring-leaders who ambushed his men, bodies if possible. The Steward is visited next. This guy just wants things with the T.A. smoothed over so he can have his congregation back. He blubbers. I blubber.
There is talk of shooting Leah in the street, of going to Malvina and giving Harry some help but the 5d10 Demon Dice are looming large over the rest of the night. Dice would not hit the table again. The players were not having it and I was not pushing it. Suck.
They find the names of the four who ambushed and they give them to the Major. They ride away.
Bret says that he thinks his character might retire.
The End.
Holy shit, what a downer.
I should have kept pushing conflicts. I should have done my job as a GM and I just didn't. I backed off and asked them what they were doing a whole lot, rather than saying, this is what is happening, what are you going to do about it.
Bret Gillan:
Honestly, if you had pushed more conflict I would have vaporized on the spot.
Judd:
Quote from: Bret Gillan on March 06, 2009, 10:08:58 PM
Honestly, if you had pushed more conflict I would have vaporized on the spot.
I could truly feel that, man. That is why I slammed on the breaks.
I was at a loss. In the old days, I would have flat out started fudging die rolls behind the screen. Tonight I just didn't push conflicts so we didn't have to go to dice. It is an odd sensation that I am not used to.
I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the night.
James_Nostack:
Judd, can you describe how you went about resolving scenes without using the dice? I had something similar happen during a few points of this week's Trollbabe game: the players got kind of clobbered early on, and then did their best to approach scenes . . . obliquely, in a way that wouldn't lead to head-on conflicts given the interests of the NPC's and the nature of the scenario.
Now, it's true I could have changed NPC personalities, shifted the backstory, and generally re-written the whole scenario on the fly, so that the players' perceptions of the NPC's interests were suddenly dead wrong. Sort of like, I'm in the GM Car of Death, and no matter which way the players flee I chase them down and force a Conflict on them... but that doesn't always seem fair.
Or was this something totally different? Was this, "Let's just free-form it because the rules are too harsh for the mood we're in?" And thus there were dramatic conflicts going on but just no dice involved?
Judd:
Quote from: James_Nostack on March 07, 2009, 11:56:51 AM
Judd, can you describe how you went about resolving scenes without using the dice? I had something similar happen during a few points of this week's Trollbabe game: the players got kind of clobbered early on, and then did their best to approach scenes . . . obliquely, in a way that wouldn't lead to head-on conflicts given the interests of the NPC's and the nature of the scenario.
Both of those characters were filled with info that needed dumping, so I did so. I just didn't push towards any conflicts in between, ushered the players from one scene with an info dump NPC (Major Everson) to another (Steward Cuthbert).
Quote from: James_Nostack on March 07, 2009, 11:56:51 AM
Now, it's true I could have changed NPC personalities, shifted the backstory, and generally re-written the whole scenario on the fly, so that the players' perceptions of the NPC's interests were suddenly dead wrong. Sort of like, I'm in the GM Car of Death, and no matter which way the players flee I chase them down and force a Conflict on them... but that doesn't always seem fair.
I didn't change anything about the adventure but my level of aggression changed. When they couldn't save Harry, the wind really went out of their sails.
Quote from: James_Nostack on March 07, 2009, 11:56:51 AM
Or was this something totally different? Was this, "Let's just free-form it because the rules are too harsh for the mood we're in?" And thus there were dramatic conflicts going on but just no dice involved?
No, there were no conflicts without dice. I just said, "Yes," a whole lot and honestly, the players were not pushing.
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