new game: Dogs in the Vineyard

[cellio]

Saturday ralphmelton (GM), lorimelton, mrpeck, and I played our first game of Dogs in the Vineyard, which Ralph had picked up recently and wanted to try out. The setting: sort of the old west, in sort-of Mormon country. The PCs are newly-minted guardians of the faith (Dogs), travelling from town to town settling disputes, enforcing religious law, preaching, and more. The style of play is very focused on role-playing: this is cooperative storytelling, not a competitive slug-a-thon. The game mechanic for resolving conflicts is like nothing I've ever seen before.

I had a blast, and I look forward to playing again.

Characters

Characters have four stats: acuity (perception), heart (compassion), body (physical condition), and will (focus). For each, the value is a number of dice (d6); the minimum for any stat is 2 and typical values seem to be in the 2-6 range.

Characters also have traits, which can be expressed as skills, personality factors, history, or just plain likes and dislikes. Examples are "I am a good shot", "I'm good with animals", "I have memorized the Book of Life (holy book)", and "I am afraid of being ambushed". Traits might sound negative (like that last), but that's not necessarily bad (a point that was lost on me until late in the session). A trait is represented by some number of dice of a given size (d4, d6, d8, or d10).

Characters have relationships to people, places, events, abstract concepts, and probably other stuff. These, like traits, have variable dice associated with them.

Characters also have possessions, which can have dice associated with them (usually a minor factor, it appears).

During character creation, you are given a number of dice to divide among stats and, for each of traits and relationships, groupings of dice to allocate. For instance, you might have to come up with traits that cover 3d10, 3d8, and 4d6. That could be ten traits if you really wanted, but you'll probably want to use multiples for some. More and bigger dice correspond to factors that are more important to the character. (You have to allocate the traits; they suggest that you not allocate all the relationship dice, so you'll have some available for spontaneous additions later.) Allocation of stats, traits, and relationships is completely up to the player (with GM approval for the latter two).

Play

The GM sets the stage, typically starting by having the Dogs ride into a new town where something interesting is happening. There is a lot of talking and shared storytelling. There is a strong GM principle of "say yes or roll dice" in response to things the players say. "Roll dice" means to resolve a conflict.

The first thing to do in that case is for everyone to decide what is at stake. Sometimes it's easy: a PC and an NPC have gotten into a bar-room brawl and what's at stake is who wins the fight. Sometimes it's less clear: a PC is trying to persuade an NPC of the error of his ways, and the stake might be to elicit a particular behavior. The players and GM agree on what the stake is.

The conflict can be non-physical (verbal), physical (e.g. touching someone), fighting, or gunfighting. This is the usual order of escalation, though there's no expectation that you'll pass through all four. Which phase you're in determines which stats are relevant.

At the start, you roll one die for each point in each relevant stat, and the NPC (or "game world", if it's not a specific character) does the same. This gies you a pool of dice to work with. Now one side starts by using two dice to "raise" while role-playing an action. For example, I quote scripture in an attempt to persuade, or I describe the punch I'm throwing ("I feint and then punch him right in the stomach"). The other side has to see that raise by deploying dice that equal or exceed the value of the raise. If you can do it on one die, you turn the blow against the originator -- present a conflicting and superior soruce, dodge the blow while using the attacker's momentum to slam him into the wall, etc. If you can do it with two dice, that's a block. If you need three or more dice, you have "taken the blow" and there will be fallout later. It's then the other side's turn to raise. (Conflicts aren't necessarily one-on-one, by the way.)

As play continues you're going to want access to more dice (if you run out you have to conceed). That's where the traits and relationships (and equipment, minorly) come in. If you can make a case that it's relevant, the GM will permit you to add the appropriate dice to your pool. If the fight is not in a bar but in an alley where someone jumped you, that "afraid of ambushes" would come into play. In a verbal argument about sinful behavior, "memorized the Book of Life" could come into play. If you have a relationship with your opponent, that comes into play.

You can also get more dice by escalating, which lets you roll the stat dice for the new level. So, e.g. non-physical is acuity + heart; fighting is body + will. So if you escalate the argument into a fist fight, you add dice for your own body and will stats to the pool. (Note that until the other side also escalates, he doesn't have those dice. I can still be trying to talk you down while you're throwing punches at me.)

Tactics can come into play; you can look at your opponent's dice and decide that if you raise with this value, he will currently have to take the blow and maybe you want to force that. Of course, he can get more dice by bringing a trait, so it's not certain. (I don't know if traits and relationships are supposed to be public.) But even so, the strong focus is on the story-telling.

Fallout can be negative (e.g. penalties for your next conflict, reduced stats) or less-obviously-negative (e.g. take a new relationship at d4). Fallout can be short-term or long-term and there are lists for each; the player gets to decide the form of the fallout from these lists, with GM approval. Fallout is what changes a character. I didn't figure this out until fairly late, but this means you want some level of fallout. It can be worth taking a blow that you don't have to take in order to get that effect.

We played for about seven hours, including teaching the rules (only the GM had read the book), generating characters, and playing through one story to a satisfactory concludion. Our next adventure with these characters would go more quickly, now that we're more familiar with the mechanism, the setting, and the specific characters we've created.

We took notes and I currently have the character sheets, so in the next few days I will post a detailed description/log of our game.

Comments

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

not necessarily one-shot, though - the system is particularly geared towards episodic play in which the players get to wrestle with the difficulties that arise when people try to apply moral principles to specific human situations. in particular, character development occurs not so much in terms of characters becoming “more powerful”, but rather in terms of characters becoming “more complex”, forming connections with each other/NPCs/locations.

-steve