[FitV] First impressions using the Dogs in the Vineyard System
Altaem:
I'm GMing a session of FitV (Dogs in the Vineyard, Firefly Verse) and things aren't going that great. My story is hanging together quite well, but the DotV engine is slowing the action to a crawl.
This is our 2nd session in this campaign. Total play time up to this point maybe 5 hours. At this point we're all feeling underwhelmed by DitV .
The players are restless and really want a gun fight. Cue the final scene. This the decider, do we ever play DitV again?
Player Characters:
Captain Gabriel
Sniper Donnie
“Steampunk Samurai” Koji
NPC crew:
Medic Leon
Pilot Duke
Tech May
Ship:
Hearts and Clubs, firefly class transport.
Background Summary:
The PCs are trying to evac refugees from Lilac between reaver attacks. Hearts and Clubs has life support for maybe 30 people. They're looking for any means necessary to increase this number. A little PC brainstorming reveals that spaceship fuel cells are fundamentally oxygen tanks. I'd already described a crashed transport they'd flow over on the way in, so they set to work retrieving fuel cells from the wreckage. It's a brilliant idea. So brilliant I conclude that the locals had beaten them to it and removed 3 of 4 cells already.
They fly over the wreckage and quickly resolve a talking conflict to scare off the scavengers.
They'd barely started cutting the remaining cell free when they see a ship flying low, coming towards them. It's a mercenary firefly, bristling with fire power. Gabe gives the order to stage a retreat. Hearts and Clubs flees, but practically the entire crew hides among the wreckage. The mercenary firefly lands next to the wreckage and the cargo ramp opens. Four mercs come down the ramp and start scanning the wreckage for stragglers.
Conflict:
Stakes: Do we take the merc firefly vs Are we captured?
We roll a bucket load of dice and then some.
We have 3 PCs, supported by 6 NPCs.
There are 4 Opposing NPCs on the ramp + an unknown number still on the ship.
Koji opens with a large raise and I rule he and Donnie make it successfully into the cargo bay undetected in place of taking fallout. There's a lone gunman on the gantry who Donnie drops with a single well placed shot. Hearing the gunfire the mercs spin and fire at the pair of them. It's a reasonably high rasie but Donnie dodges behind cover, while Koji's armoured jacket takes the hit. Gabe follows up igniting a merc's grenade belt with pinpoint accuracy. The resulting blast floors the mercs, but their armour absorbed the blow.
(That's a lot of action for a single round of raises and sees!)
Koji's turn and he wants to use a grapple gun to advance deeper into the firefly. But a raise should do something to the opposition, just moving around doesn't count. We rule that he lays claim to the gantry securing the mid section of the ship. I block this by introducing a 5th merc to the fight, emerging from one of the shuttle bays.
Donnie is asking “Can he shoot this guy? Does he have line of sight?” I say it doesn't work like that. It's your turn to raise, if you use big number then you must have been able to take the shot.
He pulls a 14, I take the blow with 6 dice, that's one very dead NPC.
My turn, and I have 4 mercs lying on the ground. So much for shooting all the PCs.
I reveal my ace in the hole. The merc firefly opens up with nose mounted machine guns. Gabe is pinned down in the wreckage.
Koji races to eliminate the new threat. A single raise covers sprinting half the length of the firefly and hurling himself into the cockpit and at the pilot manning the gun.
The fire fight continues between Gabe, Donnie and the mercs. It's going to get really messy soon, everyone is running low on dice. A highlight includes a grenade I lob at Gabe which he easily dodges. (Thanks to Gabe for introducing grenades to the narration, I didn't plan the mercs to have those.)
Final round. I prepare my last raise, I've got a pair of eight's and I'm planning on using them to gun down Donnie. Looking across the table I see Koji also has a pair of eights. So who has initiative? We compare our next highest die. My 5 to Koji's 6.
Koji turns the machine gun on the merc. His aim is just of and the merc dodges into the cargo bay with the ground exploding just behind him. Out of large rolls the merc fires inaccurately at Donnie before being blown away by Donnie's return fire.
Gabe wins the conflict by bringing in Hearts and Clubs directly over the merc ship preventing it from going anywhere. With no dice left to see I have the few remaining mercs throw down arms and surrender.
Impressions:
DotV conflict resolution feels very slow. It takes forever to resolve the smallest of conflicts.
We had a lot of fun with the final gunfight, but lesser conflicts are painful.
I suppose with practice we could judge both parties rolls and have the weaker side just give without the sequence of raises and sees. But that seems like not really playing.
I'm left feeling I need to house rule something in. A quick conflict using only 1 stat and 1-2 traits.
It could be I'm missing the point of “Say yes or roll” and I just need to say yes more often.
However often I want that yes to come at a price, and I'd like a faster way to determine that price.
One thing I found really interesting about the poker style aspect was the desire to win. Usually as a GM I'm content to let the players win every adventure. In DotV I find myself trying to beat them down in every conflict.
We've decided it was fun enough to persevere with. Hopefully it all speeds up with practice.
Noclue:
DitV isn't supposed to have small conflicts. If it's not worth throwing down say Yes And move on. Also, why aren't you Giving?
Noclue:
DitV's GM advice encourages the GM to look for givable stakes. You don't need to beat them down in every conflict. Just make sure those conflicts are about the things they hold most dear.
Altaem:
I read the GM advice that conflicts should have stakes that balance giving, escalation and taking fallout.
In practice I'm finding the system a little slow if the stakes are that small.
As a result conflicts are being saved for when it's really important but it's not supplying those opportunities to give.
My report doesn't cover nearly the whole session. We had many smaller talking conflicts to gather information. Invariably I gave on those pretty quickly.
I could have skipped them altogether but I needed some early safe conflicts to ensure all players understood the rules.
We had one scene where the players were exploring a drifting transport ship. The ship was trapped, rigged to blow if the distress signal was switched off.
Sure enough, Koji's 1st action is to turn of the distress signal.
All my GM background is screaming for an awareness or mechanical knowledge check to spot the bomb.
I had to just go with "say yes or roll".
"Gabe enters the cockpit taking in the scene with a single glance; Koji reaching for the distress signal switch, the wires somehow out of place. No time to explain. Gabe pushes Koji flying across the cockpit screaming bomb over the coms."
We're continuing this Friday. It'll be interesting to see if I can scale the conflicts correctly this time.
Noclue:
Well at least you learned one kind of conflict that Dog's resolution mechanic is not built to resolve. Really, I think you'll find your biggest problem is that you want action and Dogs is built for moral dilemmas. Dogs is about giving a group of teenagers absolute authority, total responsibility, and guns. And then confronting them with problems where guns are the wrong tool for the job. The mechanic basically mirrors Vincent's idea that when your losing a fist fight you're more likely to pull a gun.
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