Hammesdorf met the group at the railroad construction site and demanded the real gem, and this time they were all ready to jump him and kill him … not that they had any real motivation to, but thankfully the witch hunter, who was doing the talking (the one Hammesdorf has hired) gave him the gem. Then he instructed them that he would be giving a party and a demonstration the following evening at his mansion (their first hint that he has all of the gems and is ready to assemble the Occhariad) and that he would be needing them to provide security at the party, partly to make sure no one without an invitation got in, but mostly to make sure no one left before or during the demonstration.
Night of the party: the characters prepared a horse bomb, rigged up with sticks of dynamite purchased at the general store and railroad stakes they found. (Note: no animals were harmed in the creation of this imagined story. At first the player with the idea wanted to use his own horse, but I ruled that out since he has written on his character sheet that he has a strong relationship with his horse.) They have an artist who can draw a picture of a place and briefly make it into a doorway, so he was stationed on the third floor and they brought the horse in there, where he could look over the balcony at the ball room and draw another picture for the horse to go through to the main floor. Meanwhile, they were all just watching to see what would happen. Finally Hammesdorf came out and started blathering on about the new era that is at hand, etc. etc. Also during this speech, he said that the problems with the railroad route have been resolved and they’ll be proceeding as planned (not taking a week to re-plan the route, as the characters expected). Two of his henchmen then brought out something really heavy looking, which turned out to be a clock (from an idea of one of the players, equating the twelve twelve-sided gems of the Occhariad with a clock – I decided that Hammesdorf was building them into a really fancy clock for channeling the Alchemical energies).
Hammesdorf then announced that he would demonstrate the power of this fully armed and operational battle station – oops, wrong game. He grabbed a metal rod built into the back of the clock and held his other hand above his head. His hand began to glow a bit. At this point, the ninja decided that he should never have let Hammesdorf grab that rod, and he moved in to cut off that hand. Hammesdorf blocked him with a force field and shoved him backward, and at one point in the conflict shoved him through the plate glass window. The other characters joined in and started swinging their swords, throwing shuriken, etc., and Hammesdorf and his two henchmen held them at bay until one character took control of one of the henchmen and had him shove Hammesdorf and the clock over onto the floor, underneath the chandelier.
By this time, Hammesdorf and his henchmen were running out of dice, but so were the characters. They decided to throw everything they could at him and run – so the horse bomb came through at about the same moment the guy with the rifle shot the chandelier so that it fell down onto Hammesdorf, and people were diving out of windows, etc. And *that’s* where we left it, because time had run out. It was pretty exciting – and of course, they don’t yet know the fate of Hammesdorf. And neither do I.
This was the biggest conflict I have run using the Dogs in the Vineyard mechanics. It did *start* to feel a little long, because there was a little bit of waiting for the players between their turn to do stuff, but I have to say again that it was still superior to the D&D experience. We had seven people involved, and it was still much faster than D&D combat with the same number of people. But more importantly …
The culture that this game creates is one where everyone is involved a high percentage of the time. At one point the ninja moved in for the kill with the two 10s he had been holding in reserve (this is the best number you can do an action with in the game unless someone else is helping by adding a die to your raise). He said he was going to cut off Hammesdorf’s hand, but the other players wanted him to go for the head. He changed his mind, but for the rest of the combat he regretted it, and kept saying stuff like “go for the head, you said. Never mind the hand, you said. Now look where we are! He still has his hand on that thing!” The game mechanics encourage everyone to be focused on what’s going on because it takes the collective brainpower of everyone in the game to create the best game experience, mainly to make sure that characters in conflict are doing or saying something the opponent can’t ignore – but also to refine what the player comes up with, so that the character does or says something *cool* that the opponent can’t ignore.
I should say that the most important criterion I’m using in my ongoing comparison of D&D vs. DitV mechanics is suitability for play with larger groups in libraries. There are certainly pros and cons to each game. But in this area, D&D suffers, and DitV is particularly well suited.