The Gaming Den

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Except of course that in DitV, it is not uncommon for the stakes of a conflict to be 'I kill you.'

While you can have that kind of stakes, it doesnt look a common occurrence at all. As Chamo said, the game is about personal conflicts and morality (instead of killing things to take their stuff), so common stakes would be "I want to stop him from beating the boy" or "I want to convince her to stop cheating his husband" or "I want to impose my authority so he obeys me". Of course, any of those can escalate from just talk to pushes to gunfight, but thats a consequence of the initial stakes, not the stakes themselves.

virgil wrote:Giving doesn't become worse because you have d4s left unused

Sure, but they become a risk when you exhausted all (or most of ) your other dice. And, perhaps most importantly, they tempt you to keep on fighting even against the odds just by "being there" at the table/your sheet, which may prove to be a bad gamble in the end.

I cant see a problem with the existence of the d4 fallouts. What I see as a problem is that its much better than any of the other fallout options, like Chamo said. If there are situations where you cant choose d4 traits as fallout it would make more sense. So, for eg, after losing a conflict for trying to impose your will, you should lost a Will (the stat) die, instead of gaining a d4 trait. That would make more sense to me.

silva wrote:

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Except of course that in DitV, it is not uncommon for the stakes of a conflict to be 'I kill you.'

While you can have that kind of stakes, it doesnt look a common occurrence at all. As Chamo said, the game is about personal conflicts and morality (instead of killing things to take their stuff), so common stakes would be "I want to stop him from beating the boy" or "I want to convince her to stop cheating his husband" or "I want to impose my authority so he obeys me". Of course, any of those can escalate from just talk to pushes to gunfight, but thats a consequence of the initial stakes, not the stakes themselves.

Where that falls short is that it requires all players to accept the premise that DitV takes place in a reality akin to that of a TV show, a place of Chekov Guns, and characters who exist to serve a session's plot, rather than serve their own ends. Dogs depicts a world without central authorities of note, readily available firearms, and the only major law enforcers being a version of 2000 AD Judges that espouse a particularly unpopular religion. Played straight, a lot of conflicts in this setting WOULD be deadly.

If I am at all on the mark on what the system is focused on trying to do, then I'd say Primetime Adventures would have an even more "conscious design" towards this purpose, and you could do more than Firefly + Mormon Cowboys with it.

silva wrote:

virgil wrote:Giving doesn't become worse because you have d4s left unused

Sure, but they become a risk when you exhausted all (or most of ) your other dice. And, perhaps most importantly, they tempt you to keep on fighting even against the odds just by "being there" at the table/your sheet, which may prove to be a bad gamble in the end.

Are you even listening to yourself? As Frank said, d4 > d0. Its value compared to a d8 is a non-sequitor, especially since at no point does the d4 supplant the better dice. Now, in your mind they may be bad, because having d4s means you actually have to think about what your doing; which I suppose where this 'hard choices' malarkey is coming from.

Also, really? An old west genre game, with guns, doesn't mean fights to the death are a downright expected possibility?

silva wrote:

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Except of course that in DitV, it is not uncommon for the stakes of a conflict to be 'I kill you.'

While you can have that kind of stakes, it doesnt look a common occurrence at all.

Hey, armchair analyst, fuck you! I've played the game, and run it, more than once of each. It comes up. And it doesn't have to be common to explode the illusion.

I went into Dogs in good faith, actually wanting it to deliver on its promises. But the incentives are just really badly structured. Players are rewarded for doing things that make no narrative sense, like winning a chase because they have a gammy leg. So they do those things, and then the whole shared fiction crumbles just as hard as when someone gets xp for sewing their own wounds in RIFTS, and then rips out those stitches to sew them again.

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Where that falls short is that it requires all players to accept the premise that DitV takes place in a reality akin to that of a TV show, a place of Chekov Guns, and characters who exist to serve a session's plot, rather than serve their own ends.

DitV is about putting the characters in positions of authority and testing their moral limits. I cant see how that is more or less qualifiable as "TV show reality" as any other game premise. In fact, there are lots of DitV hacks that deal with popular aesthetics grounded on that premise (Jedis, Samurai, Delta Green investigators, Harmonium factotums, WoD Hunters, Mafia troubleshooters, Spanish Inquisitors, etc).

Dogs depicts a world without central authorities of note, readily available firearms, and the only major law enforcers being a version of 2000 AD Judges that espouse a particularly unpopular religion. Played straight, a lot of conflicts in this setting WOULD be deadly.

And it totally can end in deaths. But as a figure of authority, specially a religious one, that should not be your first line of action. Redemption, Salvation, etc. should be, and then, if that fails, resorting to killing should be an option (as it is).

angel wrote:Hey, armchair analyst, fuck you! I've played the game, and run it, more than once of each. It comes up. And it doesn't have to be common to explode the illusion.

The very author of the game adviced against setting conflict stakes as "I want to kill him". Which doesnt mean it cant come up. And if you dont like the game, thats fine. I dont like it too.

silva wrote:The very author of the game adviced against setting conflict stakes as "I want to kill him". Which doesnt mean it cant come up. And if you dont like the game, thats fine. I dont like it too.

Really? When and in what format did he advise that? Because in the published text, he gushes about how such things are perfectly okay and supported (p. 89, 'Ambush'). Hell, the very first example of conflict in the book is an 'I want to kill her' challenge (p. 54, 'The Simple Case'). The actual introduction of the resolution system to the reader includes as the stakes a binary fucking life or death outcome for a character.

virgil wrote:Now, in your mind they may be bad, because having d4s means you actually have to think about what your doing; which I suppose where this 'hard choices' malarkey is coming from.

Yup, thats it, but not only that: the fact you have those d4s available in front of you means you have to ponder whether or not using them, and if you do use them the more you risk fucking yourself up. At the same time, each blow you take its something bad happening to you in the fiction. Hard choices, sucess at a cost, and all that. Its basically a proto-Apocalypse World.

You've got it straight from the horse's mouth, folks. Thinking and having choices (instead of just bears) is explicitly bad in his mind.

Exactly. Having choices, hard choices, is the entire point of the matter Virgil. Not only from Dogs, but all games by the same author. Thats why the moves structure and sucess at a cost exist in World games, and thats why the complication dice (d4s) exist in Dogs.

*EDIT*

Sakuya wrote:If I am at all on the mark on what the system is focused on trying to do, then I'd say Primetime Adventures would have an even more "conscious design" towards this purpose, and you could do more than Firefly + Mormon Cowboys with it.

Dont know Primetime Adventures well, but I heard only good things about it.

/HEADDESK

silva, I'd like you to try something. Make a character for DitV. Have him fight himself in whatever challenge you think best represents the game. Run that fight several times to make sure that each identical clone has the same win rate. Now add a bunch of d4s to one of the clones on top of whatever else he has for various traits picked up due to injury and see if the injured clone loses more often. If he does, then the system is working and having extra d4s is worse than not having any dice. If he doesn't, then that part of the system does not work.

Interesting proposal, Poet, but I cant test it right now. Though I think a better test would be pitting the clones (the d4s-rlying one and the other) separately against opponents of increasing power. I suspect the d4s-relying clone would breeze through the lower challenges but get drowned in crap against the higher challenges, while the clone that dont relies on d4s would have lower winning rates against lower challenges but higher winning rates (and with safer outcomes) against the higher challenges. Overall it seems a case of playing risky (the d4s clone) vs playing safe (the non-d4s clone). What do you think ?

Now, supposing youre right, and the d4s clone get statistically better at all challenges (and the system indeed has a problem), what would be the better way to fix this ? As I said earlier, the d4s are direcly linked to character progress, so taking em out looks problematic.

FATE provides one alternative in a system that's trying to perform a similar emulation.

Having the "shot in the foot" temporary aspect, a -2 penalty on checks involving moving quickly can be levied against you. However, if you want to do the "cinematic" thing and push through regardless, you can spend a fate point. Similarly, if you can think up a clever way to use your injured foot to your advantage, you can.

The important part, is that the injury is attrition, not a buff.

silva wrote:Interesting proposal, Poet, but I cant test it right now. Though I think a better test would be pitting the clones (the d4s-rlying one and the other) separately against opponents of increasing power. I suspect the d4s-relying clone would breeze through the lower challenges but get drowned in crap against the higher challenges, while the clone that dont relies on d4s would have lower winning rates against lower challenges but higher winning rates (and with safer outcomes) against the higher challenges. Overall it seems a case of playing risky (the d4s clone) vs playing safe (the non-d4s clone). What do you think ?

Now, supposing youre right, and the d4s clone get statistically better at all challenges (and the system indeed has a problem), what would be the better way to fix this ? As I said earlier, the d4s are direcly linked to character progress, so taking em out looks problematic.

I think you either don't understand how DitV works or don't understand how math works.

Why can't it be both fectin?

fectin wrote:

silva wrote:Interesting proposal, Poet, but I cant test it right now. Though I think a better test would be pitting the clones (the d4s-rlying one and the other) separately against opponents of increasing power. I suspect the d4s-relying clone would breeze through the lower challenges but get drowned in crap against the higher challenges, while the clone that dont relies on d4s would have lower winning rates against lower challenges but higher winning rates (and with safer outcomes) against the higher challenges. Overall it seems a case of playing risky (the d4s clone) vs playing safe (the non-d4s clone). What do you think ?

Now, supposing youre right, and the d4s clone get statistically better at all challenges (and the system indeed has a problem), what would be the better way to fix this ? As I said earlier, the d4s are direcly linked to character progress, so taking em out looks problematic.

I think you either don't understand how DitV works or don't understand how math works.

I'm inclined to believe both.

He thinks the fewer dice people will have better success rate against the harder challenges.

...I have no answer to that.

So, what should be a good fix to the d4s ?

A completely different system.

What if drawbacks gave your opponent an extra d4 instead?

Seems like that cements conflict resolution only ever being two-sided. I.e., you can't do the Good, The Bad, And The Ugly final standoff.

Having extra d4s increases your average result by substantially reducing your chances of getting a terrible result. Every extra d4 you add cuts the chance that your lowest used die is going to be a 2 or less in half. If you roll two d8s, you have a 1 in 64 chance of getting snake eyes. But if you roll two d8s and two d4s, your chances of rolling snake eyes is less than one in a thousand.

Your high results and indeed your median results are almost unaffected, but your chances of rolling very badly decrease really substantially if you have some extra d4s to call upon.

That is simply a failure of design. The traits do not do what they are supposed to do. Mathematically, it's fucking wrong.

-Username17

And what your suggestion for fixing it would be, Frank ?

TiaC wrote:What if drawbacks gave your opponent an extra d4 instead?

That would make more sense from the math POV, but then why would the player ever choose to gain d4 traits in the first place ? (except if he was compelled to take it)

Related: what helos should the piasecki helistat have used to avoid crashing?



(answer: it's a bad plan no matter what)

What is it about DitV that needs fixing? What about its core resolution mechanic needs to be kept intact, instead of using another system that also uses high drama and Crowning Moments of Triumphs as mechanical conceits?