[RPG] The Dogs read the fine print

More Dogs last night. More sympathetic characters I enjoyed playing, more discussions about our own morality on the van ride home. Thanks to Mike for lending me this game.

Again, character generation took a wee while. I think it might be good to just devote a whole evening to that if I run Dogs again - give people a chance to feel comfortable with the setting and each other & to come up with solid ideas for their characters at their own pace - rather than me rushing them through it in order to get onto the next town.

The town in question was Livingstone Branch, a reasonably large community that finds itself in the middle of a war between two rival newspapers. Most fun moment of the night for me was the confrontation was Sister Marie, one of the publishers. Wayne thought that it would be a simple matter of lecturing Sister Marie and getting her to admit she was contributing to the problem. I decided Marie would never admit such a thing. It was a full-on social conflict that Celeste backed out of halfway through - in a move that I thought was awesome for her character - and it left Wayne realising he had no way to win unless he drew his gun on this woman. He wasn't prepared to so he had to abide.

Conflicts were less frequent in the session and (I think) more meaningful. We had 2 - maybe because there were more players or maybe because I took to heart the advice in the rules to either say yes or roll the dice. However, my new rule of thumb is that if the Dogs ever disagree, that's worth starting a conflict over.

Each of the Dogs has been loaded with enough issues that I can create at least one town for each of them that plays right to their concerns. Hope I get a chance to continue running this game.