What's So Cool About Dogs in the Vineyard?

[lukzu]

Dogs isn't about setting fetishism. There's a good amount of background, and the game is wound tightly around the setting, but there's no "30 pages of setting."

Which is good. Because at the core of the game, you become an agent of god's law. You are given the authority to interpret and enforce that law. This conundrum is also wound tightly into the system and the setting.

Every thing about the game forces you to make choices and pass judgement. On your character, on your friends and on the narrative of the situation. From the way you are instructed in the Faith, to the nature of Sin in the game, down to the way you roll the dice.

And the dice in the game are awesome. Like sitting at the table with the devil, gambling for souls. "I'll see your corruption and temptation, Demon, and I'll raise you righteous fury and a jar of Blessed Earth."

That is, quite literally, how the game runs moment to moment.

And I submit that the game does not shy away from offending anyone, the CoLDS included. But it focuses on what's important about a game about religion: moral choice. And the morals aren't quite what you would expect them to be.

-Luke

 

[tetsujin28]

What one should really be asking is, "What isn't cool about Dogs in the Vineyard?"

Answer: nothing.

 

[tetsujin28]

In other words, it doesn't address issues like racism in Mormon history.

That's not entirely true. It does mention the forms of descrimination against the setting's versions of Native Americans.

 

[LostSoul]

I don't really like the fact that the rules are silent on whether the faith's belief system is real. For me much of the fun of a Mormon game is about exploring the logical consequences of the theology being real or not.

That's cool. I have a different view.

I'm glad that Vincent hasn't come out and say that the Faith is real. It allows each player (including the GM) to make a personal choice about that issue. For me, playing or GMing, the Faith is hogwash - and I think it makes the setting even better. But that's my own personal view, and I don't have the right to tell the other players what is true or not. (Although, in character, that makes for some fun conflicts.)

I also really like how the PCs are the good, avenging angels of the setting. And they're called Dogs. I use that as an epithet in my Raises and Sees all the time.

 

[NealTS]

This seems tailor-made to run the Dark Tower with. Cut back the explicit morality, ratchet up the action, and get rid of the fancy coats, and you could easily look at the flashback with Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain as a Dogs game.

 

[Tinner]

Haven't we done this already?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Last summer I played in a kick-butt game run by someone familiar with Dogs in the Vineyard. He ran it as 'jedi vs the dark side", seeing as jedi can function as absolute moral guardians with the right to make summary judgement, and the dark side fitted in nicely too.

The game mechanics were fun, and I particularly liked the simple mechanic for handline social interaction, through argument and fisticuffs to lethal weapons, with increasing amounts of dice wagered and potential threats.

One of the interesting factors is that even if you fail at something your character can grown through the experience, gaining a new low-value 'ability' which can be wagered in future conflicts. You see the character grow and develop in front of your very eyes during the game itself which is rather neat (especially for one-off adventures).

The only downsides that I can think of were

1) mechanics don't work so well for one vs many encounters
2) it is often advantageous to plan to lose an encounter to improve your character - a bit metagamey in that respect.

Super fun though. The ace GM is considering doing a Middle Earth version next year, with a bunch of low-ranking Wizards sorting out problems caused by the Shadow from Mirkwood or something similar.

Cheers

 

[Chaldfont]

Thanks for the replies. This game sounds a little heavy for my group. We lean quite a bit towards the hack-n-slash, cinematic heroic fantasy or self-centered treasure hunter campaigns.

 

[Nomad4life]

This seems tailor-made to run the Dark Tower with. Cut back the explicit morality, ratchet up the action, and get rid of the fancy coats, and you could easily look at the flashback with Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain as a Dogs game.

Man, I can’t begin to tell you the number of Dark Tower setting conversions I’ve started to lay out, or helped with, and never finished. Heck, I’ll wager that if you can think of a system out there, I’ve got a partial Dark Tower conversion written for it.

A couple of years ago, I linked up with an aspiring game designer (who will remain nameless) while in graduate school. We started putting together a fan-made from-scratch Dark Tower game called Other Worlds Than These. Most memorably, it had some kind of whacked-out Ka-Tet mechanic, which functioned sort of like a dice pool, except that you could “gamble” with it in order to cause highly improbable coincidences to occur in favor of that session’s Chapter Goals. This made it beneficial to try to enlist the aid of otherwise seemingly “useless” NPCs, if for no other reason than to temporarily boost the Ka-Tet pool score. (Oddly, from what I understand, some mechanics in DiTV also work on some kind of “gambling” principal?)

It was all just a labor of love in the name of fun and fanaticism… Or so I thought. Everything was going fine until this guy went Bozo-Show on me; he started talking about getting actual licensing so we could build an “official” website, etc, etc… I told him that I really didn’t think this was a good (or practical) direction to take the project in. We lost touch on bad terms after he accused me of “not taking the project seriously” and I pretty much told him that he was completely out of his mind.

I swear, something about this hobby brings out the crazies.

No, this rambling post had nothing to do with anything… Except that I guess I’m still always looking for potential systems to run DT under.

 

[tetsujin28]

Haven't we done this already?

Completely different.