The Forge Archives

Unfortunately, I still haven't had a chance to play yet, but this thread made me remember a question I had about character generation.

Every category of dice pool in Dogs has a limit, except for your belongings.  Well, that's not true, you're limited by what your fellow players think you can reasonably carry with you.  In some cases, such as the fellow armed to the teeth, that's not much of a limit.

So, my question goes directly to Vincent;  Could you shed a little light on what led you to the different limitation rules for belongings?  Why not follow the same pattern as Stats, Traits, and Relationships, providing a certain number of dice based upon your Background?

Not that I think there's anythin wrong with it as it stands, I'm just interested in looking behind the curtain in your brain.

-Eric

Boy there's a lot of stuff in that question. On the "why don't ducks wear pants?" principle, I'm going to start with:

a) "Complicated History" and "Strong Community" and so on just don't line up at all with "rich" and "poor." There's no way to reasonably attach dice limits for Belongings to the existing background options.

b) Belongings tend to contribute their dice high up in the escalation process. A die in a gun is pressure to escalate. A die in a knife is too. A die in a horse is, even. Since I want you to be under pressure to escalate, the more dice in Belongings, the better.

c) But "the more dice in Belongings, the better" is only a slim little thing. If you have no Belongings at all, it doesn't break the game. You've still got Traits and improvised things to keep the dice interesting.

Thus d) no need to do anything with Belongings other than "give dice to what you've got."

Make sense?

-Vincent

Quoteb) Belongings tend to contribute their dice high up in the escalation process. A die in a gun is pressure to escalate. A die in a knife is too. A die in a horse is, even. Since I want you to be under pressure to escalate, the more dice in Belongings, the better.

So simple...yet so profound...

Take as much rope as you need to hang yourself real good with...

Makes perfect sense.  Thanks Vincent.

I, too, especially like 'b'.  That's the magic bullet for me.

I knew the system is good, but it's nice to be able to explain to my players & potential players why it's good.  

Thanks again.

-Eric