[RPG]: Dogs in the Vineyard, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (3/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12382.phtml

Christopher W. Richeson's Summary:

Dogs in the Vineyard provides an interesting game system to support its flavorful setting that borrows heavily from pre-statehood Utah.

Go to the full review for more information.

[Dan Davenport]

Excellent review, Christopher!

Are supernatural abilities -- divine and demonic -- handled just like any other ability, or is there a special mechanic for them?

[C.W.Richeson]

I'm answering without the book handy, so please excuse any terminology mistakes.

First, supernatural abilities the Dogs have are handled like any other Trait. So a character may have Healer or Laying of Hands at 2d6, for example.

Demonic abilities are a little bit different. The default assumption is that the Dogs would never tap into demonic power (that's sorcery and it's evil) though they can if they like. Basically the demonic influence can either represent literal demonic influence in a community, with a person using sorcery and everything at the core of it. It can also just represent things having gone bad for the community; crops failing, diseased animals, etc. In both cases the demonic influence can be added to rolls.

Example: The Dogs finally discovered Old Man Winslow has been practicing sorcery, and that's why so many women have been having dalliances with him. They confront him on his farm, and he seeks assistance from the demonic forces. He may be adding quite a few dice to the encounter as he draws on their power to fight the Dogs.

Example: The Dogs realize that if they don't do something about the crops here, the people will starve. They set about back breaking labor to try and save as much of the harvest as they can, but the whole situation seems to be against them. Here that same demonic influence represents misfortune and/or the natural result of a community becoming sinful, and likely will be used as a dice pool against the Dogs efforts.

Effectively the demonic influence is a dice pool set aside to be used in situations such as the above. While Dogs is a narrowly focused game (which I think is great) it also has a surprising amount of flexibility as to how a GM wants to use some of the mechanics.

Originally Posted by Dan Davenport

Excellent review, Christopher!

Are supernatural abilities -- divine and demonic -- handled just like any other ability, or is there a special mechanic for them?

[Eclectic Wave]

I had a chance to play this game at ConGames convention in Arizona. I found the mechanics very unique, and very fun. The way that the dice rolls and traits work together actually makes the players role-play, trying to get a better roll, then most other games, where dice rolls tend to "stop" the role-playing. The flow from having a religious argement with someone, and then straight into combat, and back out to role-playing is seemless and smooth. Something I have not seen in any other game system. The mechanics are just genious, and work so well with the setting and tone of the game.

The setting though... is another matter. I have some personal problems with the Morman religion (that I will not delve into) that made me uncomfortable with the game setting. I still had fun but... it put me off somewhat. The fact that it captures the setting so well, is actually a little un-nearving, making one wonder if you are playing a game or that you are in some sort of weird Morman indoctrianation program... I can see it really being a problem for some people.

On the other hand, I have never seen a game that pits the players against such hard moral choices almost all of the time. You have to consider Sin, and community well-fair, vs doing the right thing. And the game is built for the players to have to face the results of their choices, later in the game.

I found it actually very hard to get your characters killed by the way, the damage results tables are weighted heavly toward the players not getting killed, at least by normal combat. Combat vs the supernatural is probably another matter (something I didn't get to see in the demo)

[runtime]

The book was not produced by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society. The game's designer, Vincent Baker, just used the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's free fonts:

http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/P...PropFonts.html

[Starshield]

The setting though... is another matter. I have some personal problems with the Morman religion (that I will not delve into) that made me uncomfortable with the game setting. I still had fun but... it put me off somewhat. The fact that it captures the setting so well, is actually a little un-nearving, making one wonder if you are playing a game or that you are in some sort of weird Morman indoctrianation program... I can see it really being a problem for some people.


I respect your position, but personally, I don't see any difference between this setting and any other fantasy setting. The author makes it clear that the setting is based on Mormon history and frontier society, but that's all. From what I know of Mormon and western history, there were no Wandering Avenging Priest Gunslingers called by the Mormon leadership to keep the faithful in line. The setting could be about the Amish if you wanted. The game is about the choices confronted by the characters and their consequences, not about the Mormon church.

On the Forge there is lots of discussion about using the rules for all kinds of settings where there is some form of Moral Authority in a closed community. Some that jump to mind are Judge Dredd or priests in the Inquisition. I would say that even a James Bond type game where the characters have a License to Kill would work, even without the closed society. There are lots of games that use the Catholic Church as an inspiration or straight from the whole cloth for their setting. Ars Magica is a notable example. Clerics from D&D were inspired by medieval priests.

If you don't believe in a specific religion, what is the problem with roleplaying it's trappings as a kind of clerical magic? If you do believe in that particular religion it seems much more likely that one would be offended. I feel like the author was extremely careful about this issue, and showed great respect and sensitivity for his source material. He walked an extremely fine line almost perfectly.

I've run this system twice as is, with the Faith and it's default setting, and once, with some minor adjustments, using Charles DeLint's setting of Newford for a modern urban faerie/magic game. After studying lots of different game systems, I found that Dogs has a distinctly literary feel because of the Fallout system and it's direct affect on the characters and their traits.

All three times, my players and I had an absolute blast. It was extremely Narrativist, with the players choosing when to escalate or bow out of conflict based on the available dice. This equates into a simulation of reality, where the dice represent the characters' best guess evaluation of a conflict situation and their odds for success with different strategies. Often, in games that I have experienced, there isn't that natural sense of what's stacked against you. It made for much more authentic reactions in my players.

Also, because they had to justify the dice they were choosing to use, they were coming up with all kinds of story elements that normally, if I wanted them included, I would have to create, but never could because I don't think like they do. Minor characters, weather phenomena, you name it. And because they were so involved in the story telling in the conflict, they felt free to do it throughout the narrative. I was hard pressed just writing down all the characters and their descriptions they made up on the spot so I could use them later because they were so cool.

I'd like to note here that all of my players had played RPGs before, but never like this. Mostly 2nd Ed. D&D and Hero System. My group also ran the gamut from guys who have played regularly since 1978 to my sister who had only ever gamed twice.

The reviewer did mention that the author encourages you (begs you, really) to not have an end in mind, but to let the players evolve the ending. I admit that this was really hard for me to do, to really let go, so I had to think quick on my feet to avoid having a great recurring character killed. It was worth it though, because my players and I created a fantastic ending together.

There are two important rules that encourage this player involvement that were not mentioned in the review. First, the Kibbutzing rule, where the author makes it practically mandatory for everyone to be involved at every stage. (I can't count the number of times I heard my players say "No, ...no wait! He should do this!" They also felt free to add description or personality to anything I or anyone else introduced, from details in the architecture to quirks and speech impediments.) Second, the Say Yes or Roll Dice rule, which applies only to the GM. The author encourages (ok, he begs; again) the GM to either give the players what they want, or turn it into a full blown conflict. This was hard to remember in play for me (I am a little old school.) But when I did it, everything worked really smoothly. I never felt cheated because I had to fudge something, and neither did my players. If it was important enough, it was a conflict. If not, it wasn't important enough to worry about.

Oh, a short note about supernatural abilities. All characters who are Dogs are required to take at least one of their traits in relation to the Dogs. If the group decides to play the setting with supernatural abilities as an option, just being a Dog is enough to have any kind of miracle working you'd care to describe. In the default setting of the Faith, it would probably be in the Biblical tradition, but it's not required to be so.

This is not to discourage anyone from having a particular gift as the reviewer describes, just that they would stack on top of the Dog trait if you were performing that particular kind of miracle (like the healing.)

I have to tell you that this game took me completely by surprise. I obviously love it, but for reasons I would never have guessed.

If $22 is too much for you, the pdf is $14. I recommend this game to anyone who loves collaborative story telling.

http://www.lumpley.com/games/dogsources.html

Christian Fasy
starshield@xmission.com

[C.W.Richeson]

My mistake, one of the fonts used was produced by that organization.

Originally Posted by runtime

The book was not produced by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society. The game's designer, Vincent Baker, just used the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's free fonts:

http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/P...PropFonts.html

[buzz]

Originally Posted by Eclectic Wave

The setting though... is another matter. I have some personal problems with the Morman religion (that I will not delve into) that made me uncomfortable with the game setting. I still had fun but... it put me off somewhat. The fact that it captures the setting so well, is actually a little un-nearving, making one wonder if you are playing a game or that you are in some sort of weird Morman indoctrianation program... I can see it really being a problem for some people.

What's worth keeping in mind is that the setting, in a way, is kind of irrelevant. That the game is about facing hard moral choices is what's truly important. The King of Life faith in the game as-written is a good vehicle for these tough choices, but, as Starshield has mentioned, any setup that puts the PCs in an authority role will work: mafia enforcers, jedi, gammaton clerics, whatever.

I found it sort of funny that, in a discussion on ENWorld, someone said they wanted to take the DitV setting and run it using some d20 engine. For me, this misses the whole point of the game. The "setting" is not what you're supposed to be taking away from this game.

[C.W.Richeson]

It can do a lot of different things, but the escalation system needs to be kept in mind. In the vast majority of Star Trek episodes the ship/station commander doesn't open up with photon torpedos to get his way. Similarly, colonists aren't phasered for their own good. Additionally, with Starfleet Command a comm channel away few situations will escalate to violence without permission.

It can run a lot of stuff, but an escalation to violence needs to be a reasonable choice in a lot of circumstances. If the characters are playing moralistic enforcers of good with no real supervising element then Dogs will do a great job.

[Warren]

Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson

It can run a lot of stuff, but an escalation to violence needs to be a reasonable choice in a lot of circumstances. If the characters are playing moralistic enforcers of good with no real supervising element then Dogs will do a great job.

I agree totally, but bear in mind that it is possible to redefine the Escalation levels to reflect what kind of attack has the most... "thematic weight" (urk!) behind it. I think I've explained that really badly, so let me give a couple of examples to show you what I mean.

In the supernatural horror variant Afraid, you fight normally (with whatever weapon) and escalate to "Murderous Intent".

Jedi: You don't escalate to "Gunfighting", you escalate to "Lightsabres". Shooting a blaster at someone is just good old fighting.

High Fantasy: You don't escalate to "Gunfighting", you escalate to "Magic".

Superheroes: You don't escalate to "Gunfighting", you escalate to "Superpowers".

Totalitarian Regime: You don't escalate to "Gunfighting", you escalate to "Beaurcracy" (Because in a totalitarian society, guns don't kill people. What kills people is the little check mark in their file that sends them away forever: "If you continue to avoid my questions, I will have to put you on report." What saves them is a shield of properly filled-out paper: "But I have this letter of authorization...." Pull out your documents and watch the man with gun turn pale.)