[FitV] First impressions using the Dogs in the Vineyard System
Altaem:
That critical element of total authority is something that simply doesn't carry over into the Firefly conversion.
The whole escalation thing feels. Just about every conflict in Firefly starts with heated conversation before progressing to fist fighting or a shoot out.
It's why I chose this world/system combination in the first place.
For the moral dilemmas I'm working the angle where they're among the few who have a space faring vessel.
With Lilac under imminent reaver attack there's no shortage of high value cargo.
Gabe turned the money down, instead choosing to ferry out refugees.
To my surprise this decision was backed by the rest of the crew. I had been looking forward to a PvP conflict to resolve that decision.
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Really, I think you'll find your biggest problem is that you want action and Dogs is built for moral dilemmas.
That's likely spot on. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out.
Gabe's player is seriously into the moral dilemmas and more importantly story telling.
Donnie's player tends to get bored if he doesn't get to shoot something every other scene.
I haven't figured out Koji's player yet. Always good to have a wildcard.
Oddly enough we found Dogs to work best in the action scene. Maybe that was blind chance.
Noclue:
If you can work out the Firefly equivalent to having to shoot your brother to stop his drinking, everything should work fine ;)
Altaem:
Thanks, I'll try to work in opportunities to do just that.
Web_Weaver:
The part of Dogs that seems missing from this discussion is the town creation system. It seems to me that that is a vital part of the mechanics of dogs, not just a prep aid.
The moral decisions need to be baked into the scenario. You may need to adapt the system but I recommend you have a close look at how that works, and how it integrates into the rest of the game.
Jamie
Ron Edwards:
At the risk of kneeing a sacred cow in the ribs, I have never quite understood why people think Dogs in the Vineyard is a good template/system for Firefly-inspired play. The key point to me is the mechanics, which don't match: the Dogs system promotes or even demands radical changes in characters, which is important in the context of the Dogs PCs beginning quite young and naive. Whereas the Firefly characters are more back-story heavy and they don't change as much as they are revealed.
Maybe there's an even more sacred cow, the idea that "comin' into town" and "fixin' things" is central to Firefly, whereas I think it's not. Granted, there are a couple really good episodes with some element of that (Jaynestown and that one with the whorehouse) but also some which are frankly stupid (The Train Job, and that one where Mal is stuck in a swordfighting LARP), and the conversation kind of has to get past the Firefly fan's notion that every single episode is every single kind of awesome.
Anyway, I can see that I'm practically spoiling for a geek-fight in a very geeky way, so I'll stop with that and try to place my above points into your specific situation: what about Firefly, to you, is really what you want to shine forth in play? There's got to be more to it than the fact that characters in the game and in the show wear dusters.
I do agree with you about the escalation issue, and I think that's why your action-y stuff is working out OK. I'm more interested in the larger-scale issues like scenarios and consequential decisions.
Best, Ron
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