Dogs in the Vineyard

--Matts 13:36, 24 February 2007 (MST)Since we've played the system, why don't we put our thoughts on it up here?

General impressions

the below was copied from Talk:Nephon Sector One-Shot
--67.183.58.127 13:50, 24 February 2007 (MST)This system was the opposite of less is more. That concept is based on the mathematical idea of elegance, that no matter how complex something looks on the surface it can be reduced to a simple, profound core idea. This system over complicated the vast majority of conflicts by equating all conflicts. The rules are 160 pages to describe one extremely focused kind of encounter. And even in that tiny microcosm it was convoluted, unclear and unweildy in many common situations. Its probably the most overly complex system I have ever experienced; even the seemingly most simple task is clouded in handfuls of dice. There were good story elements but they were entirely unrelated to the system at hand and would have occurred had we been using Hero, White Wolf, Twerps, Palladium or no particular system at all. I understand you like the mechanic, and if you choose to use it thats cool. But this system is most certainly not less is more. This system is the lifeline from Donnie Darko: everything is either this or that. Facts are borderline irrelevant, lets roll some dice and let them determine truth. I am not against playing this; I am, however, against giving it accolades it does not deserve.

--Edmiao 20:12, 25 February 2007 (MST) I agree with the above except for the last sentence. I am against playing this system for a prolonged game, unless it is used as an overlay on top of another system only for use to stimulate back and forth PC/NPC conversations. I do see the benefit of this system for use in one shots; it has simple character sheets and only one type of dicing off mechanic to learn, so is easy to pick up.

--Matts 00:17, 26 February 2007 (MST)Is your main criticism of the system that it's not comprehensive enough with respect to character generation, or is it not concrete enough in the way things are resolved?

--Edmiao 09:54, 26 February 2007 (MST) The character generation is very superficial. you have, what, 4-6 traits and that's it. Then there are formalized relationships, which most other systems would let fall on roleplay. That's about as minimal as it gets. And then we end up metagaming, (guilty, but can't help it) trying to get those traits worked into a conflict. Conflict dicing is used in place of roleplaying to convince NPCs to spill the beans. As Jason pointed out, who cares about the facts it's all about who metagamed to get their "2d8 likes bunnies" and "1d6 smells like cabbage" traits worked into a conversation. Sure, you can work out the bugs and make the stakes of each conflic low but then the conflicts get very drawn out. If you think our games move to fast, then we could use this to draw them out. In sum, I just didn't like it.

--Matts 11:20, 26 February 2007 (MST)What mechanical weight can we give 'just roleplaying' in other systems? In most games, let's say I have a talker and you have a fighter. You can stab me, and the mehcanics say incontrovertibly that I'm dead. I can try and convince your character that it's a bad idea, but it's up to you as the player to whether your character is convinced or not. That's a mechanical imbalance in favor of the fighter, and it basically means that if you want to play a character who has the wieght of the system in his favor, you need to play a fighter.

What bugs me is that the 'simple' activities are just as important to the game's drama, and having a well-developed set of binding rules makes the stakes in those situations important. In Hero, what does making your conversation roll mean? What does making your trading roll mean? We know exactly what happens when you land an attack; you injure your opponent. What happens when you make your conversation roll is basically up to the GM. Look how we played fellowship in WHFRP; the stats basically didn't matter, Anjou roleplayed it out, and got some good stuff because we were all (or maybe just I was) entertained. But if we don't have stats there, why have them at all? Why didn't other people in that game have the opportunity to engage in the same type of play as Anjou, even if their players weren't as interested in outrageous accents or roleplaying conversation?

I'll leave out the argument on the merits of DitV making active roleplaying a more critical part of the mechanical process, since I'm pretty sure it's just a fetish of mine. But it really bugs me that in most systems, combat is given the most mechanical weight, and is often the only time where your the system measures your characters' actions in a definable, consequential way. That leads to combat being the primary or only way to resolve conflicts, and while I like combat as much as the next guy, I'd like a game where it's not the primary focus.

--Edmiao 11:32, 26 February 2007 (MST) I'll disagree with everything you just wrote. Sure, a conversation roll or a fellowship roll is a soft call made by the GM as to how much you get out of it. The GM must make the exact same call in DitV by setting the stakes, it just gets drawn out.

As to roleplaying making fellowship skills obsolete, that is up to the GM also. If I had been GM in WHFRP, I would have asked Anjou to make many fellowship (wasn't there a skill for lying also?) rolls. Yeah, great roleplaying, but that wine shopkeeper has been selling wines for 30 years and some punk ass frenchie isn't going to pull the wool over his eyes so easy. So I'll chalk that up to Matt was highly amused and so gave Ben anything he wanted. Personally, I rolled my eyes every time Ben connes some wineseller out of his best wine, give me a break. That's not a system breakdown, its just the ability of a player to woo the GM.

Is combat more valuable than conversation or other skills? No. 95% of gametime is spent out of combat. This means that you have opportunities to use stealth, haggle, lying, fellowship, whatever, 95% of the time and combat skills only 5% of the time. The outcome of combat is more concrete, but the outcome of the rest of the night advances the plot and tells a story more. Thus, I think fellowship and weapons skill are equally balanced.

--Matts 12:02, 26 February 2007 (MST)They may have a similar magnitude, but upon wholly different axes. But, I understand if you've got a different viewpoint.

--Gdaze-- I didn't even play the game, RAWR! Actually since the topic got on conversation and stuff like that... Too many times I have fealt like I've been forced to have the conversation skill. There have been a few times where I've talked with an NPC, and even though I am able to do it, I'm still forced to make a conversation roll. I see conversation as more of a skill if the player can't come up with anything to say. Like.. wow I'm not quick with my tongue in real life... but I'd like a character who is... I'll take the conversation skill! Although we should act with-in out stats at most times I guess... Robert however, as the avatar of being an asshole, I did all those things on purpose(still not sure how I "cheated" Matt I'd really like you to tell me sometime why you think I did!). His world was falling apart so he coped with it by fighting and lashing out at everything. He didn't care if he survived or not, he just wanted to loose himself in bloodshed and battle. He had a high fellowship... yeah. But after the events that happened I didn't see that really coming to play. Anyway, maybe this should go in another section.... but I'm lazy.

--Jason 12:44, 26 February 2007 (MST)The DiTV didnt put any extra mechanical weight on roleplaying, its as much perception as any other game. If my dice say I win this conversation, I could push forward some dice and say 'tell' then wait for you to push your dice then 'me' then again wait and 'what' then after youre exhausted push forward 'I want'. The system didnt favor roleplaying, it favored making things more drawn out. You say extra roleplaying in the system, but it isnt inherent any more than any other game. Its what you chose to find because you liked the mechanic. We could use stakes and have opposed conversation rolls to achieve the same effect, determining that winning by 'x' amount is a reversal.

And in response to what Gabe said, if your character doesnt have conversation (more than the everyman version) no matter how smooth you sound saying something, the character doesnt sound smooth. Its no different than you saying your character does something totally super cool, like a martial maneuver, that he doesnt have the skill to do.

--Matts 12:54, 26 February 2007 (MST)What I'm saying is that the Dogs system attaches to a mechanic a collaborative description of the conflict. Sure, we can make house rules like that for Hero; we can make house rules for any system. To dismiss the value of a mechanic because it can be implemented in any system cheapens the discussion.

The raise-see is explicitly attached to a description. In my mind, this means that even someone who's not interested in (or not confident enough to) participate in the descriptions of things is required to participate in the collective narrative. Sure, someone doesn't NEED to, if they're adamantly opposed to the whole idea, they can just spit out canned descriptions. But in my ideal flower world, this means everyone gets more involved in the narrative, and everyone gets more interested in the game.

--Jason 13:05, 26 February 2007 (MST)It wouldnt be a house rule, it would be a GM ruling on scope. Thats already what conversation is for. It is to determine if you get the information you want, convince the person, etc. Conversation is already about resolving a conversational conflict. The mechanic isnt being dismissed for the reasons you state; we acknowledge its novel. Yet, in the end thats all it is. Was it particularly effective? No. I didnt see a single conflict that was something better than what we see every game. If we need a mechanic to get people interested in the game then we are failing as players. You even said this yourself, the mechanics should be to facilitate gaming, not to generate gaming interest. All of these handfuls of dice forced us to resolve conflicts at the pace the dice set. It did not allow us to roleplay situations and watch them come to their natural conclusion. I found myself putting low dice forward in an attempt to let the opponent get a reversal just so I could hear their best arguement, which hopefully will have some details or logic, so I can then throw my 'attention to detail 2d8'. Thats not roleplaying for collective narrative. Thats metagaming inside of a strictly confined box that I had been forced into by rules constraints.

--Gdaze-- Yeah guess that makes sense... but I'd like to see less rolling if the player actually makes up a good conversation! I think it was in a whitewolf book I read that rolling should never be done when rollplaying could be used instead (but if unable to, or if its contested or very important then yeah roll but with bonuses or minuses[as you said about Examplers]!)

--Jason 13:21, 26 February 2007 (MST)The problem with that is if you are a smooth talker, your character doesnt need those skills, in effect they get them for free. The underlying idea is good, but in the end what your character can do compared to what you can need to come into play at some point.

--Gdaze-- Yeah, I'm saying I agree with that you need the skill! I just think it'd be nice to see a reward for good roleplaying.... which is spelled rollplaying above...

--Edmiao 16:11, 26 February 2007 (MST)Jason's point is what I was saying about Anjou and the wine dealing. just because ben is smooth doesn't mean that anjou is. thus we have character stats

--Jason 16:30, 26 February 2007 (MST)This is one of those issues where we need to have flexibility. If its just a straight dice roll, why roleplay at all (which is one of my problems with DiTV)? Some bonus must be afforded for creative roleplaying. This is one area where WHFRP was seroiusly lacking and hindered our ability to roleplay as well. Its one thing to hit 35% of the times, in three turns you will probably do something serious at least once. But when it comes to being conversational, a 35 FEL is not something that ca be relied upon, things are too contentious. That is, of course, unless we were to break up the contests into individual conflicts over stakes, such as was done in DiTV.

--Matts 16:47, 26 February 2007 (MST)I don't understand how rolling dice and roleplaying are mutually exclusive. The reward of roleplaying should be that you're fleshing out a scenario on the fly that the dice have created the skeleton of. Otherwise, why have dice at all?

--Jason 16:59, 26 February 2007 (MST)Dice and roleplaying are not mutually exclusive, necessarily. But when you say that breaking conflicts into pieces that are decided exclusively by dice rolls (as in DiTV) encourages or facilitates roleplaying, what it makes the actual roleplaying irrelevant because it no longer has any effect on the game itself. As previously mentioned, it doesnt matter if you have the facts if you have the dice. No matter how the conversation matures and unfolds, and no matter what insight one player or the other has during it, if the other guy has a stack of 7's and 8's and you dont, your incredible soliloquy and in character acting is nothing but an ineffectual performance. Once the dice are rolled you have essentially predetermined the immediate future, and nothing can change it without rewriting the rules and gutting the games intent. This is why in normal games we say what we attempt then roll dice, not roll then do as in DiTV.

--Jason 17:04, 26 February 2007 (MST)I guess that last piece was the most important insight on DiTV as yet. The way to fix this is to have a pool of your usable dice next to you, and the defender does the same. The instigator starts by rolling any two of the dice in his pool. The defender than rolls one die and checks for reversal, if he doesnt get it he rolls another and checks for a block. At this point the defender (if they havent succeeded) may choose to roll again and accept fallout, or give. This would reduce the metagaming and also make things more fluid (no strategizing) as well as remove the predestination.

--Gdaze-- I always thought the role of dice was to determine things that aren't always certain. Like... Do I hit the bad guy? Do I notice the sneak attack? Now of course when your trying to impress a NPC, or get information from them, it is not certain. However to leave a roll as stright, with no bonuses for good roleplaying, then the game becomes nothing but %'s and such. Also when you start needing dice rolls for every action, then the game overall I think becomes less fun. And RPGs are about having fun. Like you said it is about telling a story. But if the players are going to have no bonus for good rping, then the motivation just won't be there. Why give some long winded speech if your just going to have that same 35% FEL roll? I mean really, even when Robert approuched people with a more "normal" attitude, my FEL never came into play. And well, I liked that. I almost never even used my FEL cause Robert just wouldn't use it. B'ah, I'm just going off on nothing! And respond to my talk Matt! Heh heh!

--Matts 17:56, 26 February 2007 (MST)I feel like I'm making this point over and over, but to me, attaching dice to the minutae of actions *encourages* roleplaying, because you have to describe your characters' actions, and *more importantly*, you need to reconcile them in play with the actions of everyone else involved in the conflict. It doesn't matter *how well* you roleplay, but it shouldn't. Whether you say, "I block his punch," or whether you say, "I duck in past his arm and try to push him off-balance," or whether you say, "I think you're wrong," or tirade for a minute about God's holy wrath shouldn't matter. What does is that everyone is contributing to the story, and that everyone's piece has equal weight by the rules. Sure, it may lead to a night of boring raises and sees, and if that's what happens then it'd be crystal-clear it's not the right system. But ideally it'd free people's creativity from the constraints of success or failure.

Ultimately what should decide whether your character succeeds at a roleplaying scenario should be your characters' stats. If we assign bonuses for "good roleplaying", then people who are "good roleplayers" get more bonuses than those who aren't. That is unfair. Furthermore, it, to my mind, encourages more outrageousness, because we all laugh when people are outrageous, so why not call that good roleplaying?

I understand that Dogs is not the kind of way people want to play, but to me it adresses what I consider to be key shortfalls of other systems and games I've played in. More than anything else, this is a roundabout way of expressing my personal roleplaying tastes.

Furthermore, I want to come out explicitly against jury-rigging a system until it works for all cases. The more special cases we have the more unwieldy the system gets, until we just start not using the rules altogether.

--Jason 18:22, 26 February 2007 (MST)If you feel you have made this point over and over, at some point you should either question the strength of the point itself, or try explaining it more plain terms (maybe we dont understand?). My question is, why or how could attaching dice to actions (when the success or failure has already been determined) encourage roleplaying? What is the motivation? Those things that you mention, needing to describe actions and reconcile them, are NOT required. This is what you fail to discuss every time. You can address those items (describe, reconcile) in play if you want, but even if you dont your dice said you succeeded, so you did. What in DiTV makes it necessary, or advantageous at all, to roleplay well?

Consider: roleplay well+ bad dice=fail
roleplay poorly+ bad dice=fail
Dont roleplay at all+bad dice=fail
roleplay well+good dice=succeed
roleplay poorly+good dice=succeed
Dont roleplay at all+good dice=succeed

Clearly, the only variable is dice. Roleplaying is completely irrelevant. The same table could be made to include describing actions and reconciling and there would be no change.

If only stats determine whether or not you succeed then we should just play Necromunda (skill+die=7 then you succeed). Players shouldnt get bonuses for good roleplaying? What? Just as with any other game, if you are good at it, you should succeed more. The best way to encourage good roleplaying is to reward it. Knowing you have failed does not do that. Neither does knowing you have succeeded.

I just spent about 2 hours reading stuff on the indie-rpgs site and found that DiTV is considered even there to be very narrow. The things people claim to enjoy about it are escalating groups of moral choices. You would do this to win, well how about this? Dogs is a focused game of booleans and really nothing more. The roleplaying is secondary, it is really only about exploring your own morality in a different frame.

Think back to the game Friday. Give me an example of a situation that you thought the roleplaying was better than what we normally see AND it was caused explicity by the system. Explain to me how you came to this conclusion.

--Edmiao 18:59, 26 February 2007 (MST) I want no more that 1000 words or two pages, double spaced, due by 6pm Monday 2/26/07. Late papers will be ignored.

Matts 19:17, 26 February 2007 (MST)You're right; it didn't lead to demonstrably better roleplaying. I had fun, though, and I was personally more affected and able to play my NPCs. I can't empirically tell you why.

The part I was talking about in the dogs rules is that you have to describe your action any time you see or raise. It's not just a dice game. But if describing shit isn't your bag, you shouldn't have to, right? Why should I get any benefit because my mind is more liable to wander and come up with elaborate stuff? Why should you be excluded from the story because you're more terse? Dice are boring in ANY system; it's how we interpret them that's interesting.

Why should better roleplaying lead to an increased chance of success? Failure is as key a part of drama, more key even, than success; how does making a task or conflict easier in the presence of 'good roleplaying' put us in situations where we're going to get valuable drama? Sure, I don't need to take the bonus. Why have it then?

thoughts on disadvantages

--Matts 13:36, 24 February 2007 (MST)My thoughts re: disadvantages: I think that, in order to give players' disadvantages weight (especially because we're doing 'roleplaying' as opposed to 'backseat moralizing'), your d4 traits are mutually exclusive with at least one other trait. Let's say Matsumoto eats another pecan pie in front of Mr. Tester; he gets his 'd4 instigator' trait. However, that trait is basically the times when his 'cool-like zen' don't work, because he's instigating. In fact, we could say that he's "Cool Like Zen 2d6" "except when he's instigating d4".

thoughts on relationships

--Matts 13:36, 24 February 2007 (MST)Ben brought up a great point about loyalty vs relationships. After further thought, here's my position: A relationship is basically a two-fold emotional bond: conflicts over or involving that relationship are that much more intense for your character because of his feeling.

For something like giving an order, Relationships are only somewhat appropriate; if I tell Rina to do something she doesn't want to do, we get in an argument, right? So, for an order, I'd say the command structure would be best implemented through Traits. "Captain of the Bishamon d8" for instance, or "Loyal Soldier". Those dice would come into play when the command structure is being used or followed.

thoughts on multiple combatants

here's what the creator said (here [1]) about entering conflicts already in progress:

Dog 1 starts a conflict with NPC 1. During their initial, just-talking part of the raise,see, raise process, Dog 1 announces that he wants to pull his pistol and start shooting! Dog 2, who up until now has not been involved but concerned that this is now out of hand, wants to prevent Dog 1 from shooting NPC 1.

How is this handled? Should Dog 2 be involved from the start?

Dog 2 should not be involved from the start.

This is a strong GM moment. This is a moment where you, as GM, tell both players that they can't just have what they want.

"Dog 2, you can't participate in this conflict. Dog 1, you and I must play this conflict to its conclusion in the instant between when your hand lands on your gun and when Dog 2 catches your arm. All our raises and sees have to fit in that tiny space. If you can't do it, you have to give."

The players have to obey the rules for conflicts, the conflicts have to obey the causality of the in-game fiction.

-Vincent