Experiences with Dogs in the Vineyard

[lin_fusan]

I would say that any concept of morality and ethics, both religious and non-religious, would give this game oomph. I myself am very non-religious, and I find the game very fascinating.

Upon character creation, the GM should take note on what skills, relationships, and objects the players have chosen. That should be a clue on what they want to test and try out during the game.

But it is always good (nay, essential) to sit down and ask them if there are any taboo subjects.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've played in a very enjoyable game of Dogs where we were all Jedi padawans, and it was lots of fun and ended up pretty morally grey. I know the same GM ran a game a couple of years later and (I'm guessing from memory here) it was set in the zombie apocalypse, took place in a claustrophobic setting and the three players were a priest, his daughter and her seriously ill vampire lover, or something like that. Turned out to be very intense by all accounts

 

[jmstar]

As a player you could also take traits like "The King of Life does not speak through me" and "The Faith is broken", and seeing those tested would be super interesting. I don't get the objections based on player beliefs or dynamics, unless as a group you don't trust or care about each other. If you do, a little diversity is just sauce in the pot.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I would ask myself the question, "would I feel comfortable discussing a serious real-world moral question, with political and religious overtones, in this group?"

But it is always good (nay, essential) to sit down and ask them if there are any taboo subjects.

a little diversity is just sauce in the pot.

Thanks all! Those are good tests and thoughts. I think I'll pick it up to give it a try for one of my groups but not the other.

...must spend some XP before giving it to Cerebral Paladin again? Whaaat?

 

[chaochou]

Even though the game assumes that the authority is religious, do you think the non-religious players could get in the right frame of mind by seeing it as a game about the limits of authority in general (i.e., not specifically religious authority)? As a non-religious person it seems like I would be able to draw from the quandaries of having total moral authority and moral doubt. Or do the moral perspectives that the players bring need to be religious since religion is such a part of the setting? (Hopefully I'm asking that clearly.)

Also, my group has a wide spectrum of political and religious views. Do you think it works well in groups of mixed morals or is there too much room for arguments to spill off of the table and into the real world?

I think Paladin answered this as well as I could in general terms.

What I was struggling to express is that the option to engage with the 'hard moral choices' is with the players. The option to be divided is as well. Maybe there's a lovely old granny brewing and selling moonshine as the only way to avoid starvation after her cattle died. Now you can have the PCs divided on that situation and suddenly you have a great situation brewing. But if they all agree to gun her down without a hint of remorse or self-doubt, that's not so great.

Speaking personally, I think with my group a certain cynicism about organised religion amongst the players is what came through at times. I believe that resulted in some of the moments where it became more parody or satire rather than morality play. I haven't had the same thing with Mouse Guard, which can veer into very DitV morale conundrum territory but with mice who are more musketeers than religious enforcers.

As I tried to say in my second post, I think a) it was a quirk of my individual group and b) it's a fine game which I would wholeheartedly encourage players to explore for themselves.

 

[KidSnide]

I played in a great Star Trek: TNG Dogs game--the crew of the Enterprise was struggling over how to resolve the moral question of the week, and it ended with a great conflict with two of the PCs on one side and three on the other. It's also best if it's at least imaginable that the PCs will fight each other (hence part of the appeal of using a Jedi background story--they both have moral authority and could reasonably conclude that another Jedi who refuses to agree with them on a really major issue is turning to the Dark Side and should be fought if necessary, with the concomitant issue that a Jedi who pulls a lightsabre to enforce his or her will too readily might actually be the one on the path of the Dark Side).

I ran CP's Star Trek: TNG Dogs game (I call it "Trek in the Vineyard"), and I agree that it's setting flexible so long as there are substantial moral questions to resolve. (Note: technology in Star Trek functions the way magic does in the out-of-the-box Dogs setting.) That said, I think TNG is a substantially better setting than the other Star Trek series simply because TNG features moral dilemmas more often, and the characters have interesting, differing and flexible moral compasses which allows a cooperative group of PCs come out on opposite sides of an issue.

Personally, I don't think Jedi Knights are particularly well suited to Dogs. Their position in Old Republic society is comparable to the position that the PCs hold in the default Dogs setting, so I agree that there is a nucleus of a good idea here. However, the types of stories that most people want to tell in the Star Wars setting tends to be the sort of fast-paced adventure stories that aren't well suited for Dogs. So, yeah, you could run a Jedi Dogs game, but it probably won't feel much like Star Wars.

One other important aspect of Dogs that CP didn't call out, is that Dogs is unusual for having a mechanically robust system for persuasion by argument. That means you can have conflicts that are ultimately about whether the PCs persuade a character (PC or NPC!) to take the action they want. That's part of why PC vs. PC conflict is so good in Dogs, but it also means that "talking down the bad guy" is a reasonable climactic encounter and you can play out conflict-laden adventuress in which there aren't any action scenes. To me, opening up these kinds of genre games is what makes Dogs so fantastic.

-KS

 

[amethal]

How easy would casual gamers find it to play?

My regular gaming group are very much of the "kick in the door" school of roleplaying; we have a lot of fun that way but I don't think they'd enjoy this game.

However, I have some other friends with much less RPG experience who would enjoy the moral choices but might be put off if there's too steep a learning curve to play the game. (They are still "gamist" enough that telling them not to worry about the rules wouldn't work; they'd need to know enough to be confident that what they proposed to do wouldn't give the opposition an easy shot at a triple word score / allow them to gain control of all the provinces of North America / etc.)

 

[jdrakeh]

It's a decent game but, mechanically, I never got what all the hype was about. Really, when you cut through the high falutin' Forge speak, it's a pretty traditional RPG at heart. That said, I like rules-light games and I like Westerns. Dogs presses both of those buttons for me, so I play it whenever I get the chance.

 

[lin_fusan]

How easy would casual gamers find it to play?

My group took some time to understand the flow of the dice pool and bidding system, but it was the flow of the game, not the mechanics that took getting used to.

The hardest part, for me, was as a GM, trying to set up a compelling situation and framing conflicts. If you are running the game, and people aren't quite clear on their goals, then the conflict resolution system will fall flat.

 

[jmstar]

It's worth noting that you don't have complete character monogamy in Dogs - it's entirely possible to be persuaded, by the flow of the dice, to do something or believe something that you don't want your guy to do or believe. This is either the best thing ever or a kick in the junk, so know your friends tolerance and preferences.

If your friends want to kick in doors, Dogs is probably a poor choice. Every problem in Dogs can be solved by kicking in the door in about four minutes, so that's not going to be super fun. Now one guy who is a spiritual absolutist eager to put bullets in sinners heads in a group of more thoughtful types is pretty fun, though. The game is made for that.