[Dogs] Buildin' towns and settin' dials.
Joel P. Shempert:
Hi! I played a game of Dogs for the first time in a while. It was my second time GMing, and my first time GMing through a whole Town. I loved it, my brother--an enthusiastic Dogs newbie--loved it, and I was really satisfied with the events of play. I already posted a vignette of play over on Storygames, but I thought I'd bring the interesting issues that popped up over here for feedback. This is pasted from the original thread:
First: my game facilitation skills still need work. We did much better than my first Dogs outing--getting through the initiations AND a town and all--but I still had some awkward stuff going on. Like group character creation--everyone more or less knew what to do, so they sat in stony silence scribbling away, me not sure what to do to break the silence. Well, actually, I found my attention taken up just enough with rules questions and dice-assigning help that I was unable to get in obvious questions like "so, Willem, what idea are you working on over there?" Anyone have any tips on how to facilitate group character creation that actually functions as such--not just by virtue of happening to occur all in the same room?The Town itself was an interesting learning experience; it was my first time designing my own. I deliberately left things just at Sin and Demonic Attacks, just ready to spill over into Corrupt Worship and False priesthood--mainly because I wanted everyone to be as sympathetic as possible, not eyes blazing with demonic fury, plotting ruin and stirring up a cultish following. Just people acting out of understandable motives, all mired in a mess. Thing is, that gave me little oomph in conflicts--no Demon dice--and the Dogs walked all over the townsfolk, especially when they united at the end. That's not a bad thing necessarily: the town was interesting and engaged the players. But I'd like to figure out how to calibrate towns more expertly.One nice thing about the town I designed: it was layered. Like, there was the immediate level of badness that could be addressed fairly simply and directly, which the players did. And having limited time, I said "OK, town solved," and we called it a night. But there was also a lot of conflict waiting in the wings, that if we were down or a more extended play experience, I could have easily brought in to escalate and complicate the nice tidy solution. Even emergent elements of play supported this, like Azariah gaining temporary Fallout in being cowed by the Dogs, setting the stage or him stirring up more trouble as he licks his wounded pride, and as things get worse instead of better. I'd love to do the "long form" version of this Town sometime! But it was awesome that it worked for a quick game as well.Another thing I've noticed about Town design (or rather, their effects on play) is that the local Steward tends to be pretty limp-dicked and wishy-washy. I think it's a natural result of a Town being in trouble--if the Steward was doing his job, that presumably wouldn't happen. But it'd be nice to have a Town where the Dogs don't uniformly go "Steward, you suck, guess we're doing your job for you now."One last thing: had some trouble with the Supernatural dial. There was some mismatch between where different players were drawing that line, which I think was a communication and engagement issue that's too complicated to go into here. But I wanted to highlight a couple of aspects: first, it was difficult to communicate where on the Sin ladder we were at vis a vis Sorcery and such. Willem's character went straight to "I cast out the demons!" when there was in fact no possession--just a bitter, grasping old man. Players know that "sin leads to Demonic Possession and Sorcery," they see an obvious Sinner, they make that mental leap and make with the exorcism. But things might not be that far yet. How do you deal with that in play, in real time? And second, Dogs' text says stuff like "follow the lead of the pickiest player," without actually telling you what that looks like. If player A furrows his brow at player B's input, what do I do? Do I actually call "hey, that's too much/too little/too whatever, let's tweak it" on the spot? Or just push thing in that direction with my own narration? What trips me up, it doesn't just say 'back someone up when they object, it says "follow their lead when they frown." That's tricky territory for me.
Peace,
-Joel
Noclue:
Well, as for the Dogs jumping in with the demons at the drop of a hat, I found this post of Ron's that might be useful. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=24067.msg235460#msg235460
For group character creation, I suggest after you've determined what backgrounds they have, ask if any of them knew each other before they came to bridal falls. Also, ask that they pause before assigning relationship dice so you can all read their traits aloud. See if everyone is happy with their characters at that point or if they want to change anything based on the other characters. Then ask if there are any relationships among them before moving on. For a con game I also threw out some NPC names from the town and asked them to choose some relationships there to make sure there were some interesting situations when they got to town. That worked well.
I think the Steward is only limp-dicked if you make him that way. If you make him the one who asks the Dogs for help and play him as earnest, hardworking and faithful, but just outgunned by demons, you'll get a different result. If you give him a shotgun, a couple of bullyboys and some sorcery, you'll get and even more different result.
jburneko:
For some strange reason the whole idea of the Dogs being the final arbiter of morality trips some people up with regard to how that interacts with demons. If someone isn't possessed according to the GM's prep/in-game decision, etc than that person isn't possessed. Period. No matter what the Dogs think.
My way to handle it is that I assume the Dogs are competent demonologists and simply let the player know that, "No, he's not possessed." The player has a choice at that point (a) simply retract his stated action based on this corrected information or (b) accept that his Dog is making a mistake and move forward from there.
Jesse
Brand_Robins:
1) What has more often than not worked for me: Take away their pencils and paper. Have them sit back and talk.
No seriously. I used to do this with kids in elementary school, but it works with adults too. Very often we're so eager to "get to the good stuff" that we miss a lot of the good stuff along the way. Creating characters together, talking about stuff, setting up a little bit of the world -- its all fun to do, if you can sit back from the paper and resist the urge to start recording things and setting them in stone right away.
So no pencils, no paper. Have some drinks, chat it up, talk about characters and their history and if they can call fire from the sky or just make people rise up and walk because of the placebo effect, and generally interact about the game and your characters as a group. Then, once everyone is talking and good ideas are being pitched about, let everyone start writing stuff down.
2) I think the key here is getting things up higher on the chain but still having everyone be understandable. Like, false priesthood does not have to be demon possessed gibbering madmen dancing in the entrails. Someone who gets the radical notion, that say, a woman has the right to use priesthood to lay on hands and heal her children, then starts doing it, then gets other women doing it, and they go around town trying to heal kids... well, that's false priesthood. Or three kids who've been beaten on ever day of their life by bigger kids who decide it isn't sin to get revenge and start playing nasty pranks and stealing things, then get caught and accidentally kill the guy who caught them in a struggle... well, that's false priesthood gone to hate and murder.
If you just make sure to keep every step up the totem pole of sin human, understandable, something real people could do -- something you or people you like might do if forced up against the wall and left alone in a desert town with 100 other people who are kinda all self-righteous assholes -- then you can sometimes get hate and murder without terrible demon-worshiping villains.
3) Glad that worked for you! I've had mixed results with it, but it is nice when it comes off.
4) One of the things I often consider here is that example in the book where the Steward has been working and working and working with this one problem guy and just can't help him, then the Dogs come into town and blow the dude away. The Steward's job isn't to purge the congregation, its to heal it and to heal and help every member of it. If he's got this one drunken asshole guy who is always causing shit, well, he can't just kick him to the curb. He has to keep trying to help him, and often without a lot of resources. What do you, a normal guy out in some little town somewhere, do when you've no right to really inflict much punishment other than reprimand and disfellowship and such and you've got this guy who beats his kids and fucks whores at the railway station that is being guarded by Territory men with guns?
Anyway, the way that leads me in game is to having the Stewards of a lot of towns ask the Dogs in for dinner pretty early on, sit them down, and tell them about a million problems in the town and where they are. "So we've got brother Zach, and he has problems with booze, but we're working on it and he's repenting and trying real hard." Yay Steward! "But there's this other brother... Jerimiah, and he's hitting his wife and she's getting drunk, and when I went to try to help them she threw a vase at me and he told me he'd shoot me if I ever came back." Really, what the fuck was he supposed to do there?
5) As someone said, I say, "He's not possessed, so what do you want to do here?" For the rest of it, its a little more complicated. Some of the kind of talk we were discussing up in step 1 really helps with this. So does using raises and sees to try to work towards a consensus view.
Like, if someone keeps raising with things like "I summon fire from heaven to devour them!" and you're not really liking it, and its possible, do your best to block with a "No fire from heaven comes. Does it ever?" Or if you can't block it, take the blow with something like "she starts screaming like she's on fire, but no one can actually see the flame." Or if that doesn't fly with the group, assume that if they won then they won and that from then on the supernatural dial is there -- it got set in game, run with it. Fiction forward and all that.
Joel P. Shempert:
James: Those are some good prompts, thanks!
Jesse: Yeah, at this point I'm not confused about the fact of Sorcery or Possession, but how to handle it in the actual interface of play. Just telling players "actually, she's not" seems a solid option, but I worry about "blocking" in the sense of more or less telling the players "nope, wrong answer." But I worry on the other side as well: if I keep mum and just let things play out, will I set up false expectations and disappointment? One thing I absolutely DON'T want to do is foster an atmosphere of "get all the theology right and arrive at correct conclusions" play.
I'm wondering how the intersection of your reccommendation and James' quoted statement of Ron's looks to you:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on June 08, 2007, 05:43:43 AM
GM-described phenomena are presented in secular terms. However, Dogs' perceptions and responses (and the phrasing of NPCs, i.e., their point of view) often include the supernatural.
So the person starts seizuring and freaking out and saying awful things. The Dogs grab him, and one of them invokes his Name and Three-in-Authority to cast out the demon, as they perceive it.
If the roll succeeds, everyone says, "hooray, the demons are cast out!"
Ron's description seems to describe a situation where the person really is "Possessed" in the Dogs-rules-sense. But it seems to apply to any situation however the Dogs respond to it: don't discuss it, don't talk about what 'really" happened, just play the situation.
Adopting that methodology would seem to preclude yours. I'm really not sure which I prefer at this point.
peace,
-Joel
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page