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February 21, 2005
Dogs in the Vineyard == Awesome
I just finished the first session of my Dogs in the Vineyard mini-campaign, and it is really great. To pick three conflicts:
- A PC rode to a "heathen" family with Christmas gifts, and we determined whether her charity would be false and condescending or true and generous by inventing anecdotes about her childhood memories of her parents' dealings with nonbelievers.
- Another PC decided whether to write to his (lapsed in the Faith) parent, and the action rounds were lines from the letter and Cyrus's drafts.
- A rabbi sent his star pupil to visit a PC and convince him to unconvert -- their theological debate about which religion was right was the conflict.
What impresses me is that the Dogs rules make it dead-easy to mess around with temporal sequence and play the game for maximum story punch -- my players are great, but this makes it even easier for them to shine.
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Comments
Indeed, this game is powerful stuff.
Posted by: Vaxalon at Feb 22, 2005 7:26:55 AM
Neel! You made my morning. Most people who play Dogs fall into the old familiar I-hit-you-hit scale and rhythm. That's fine, the game works for that, and it makes sense that that's where people would start. I'm psyched to hear about someone exploiting the rules more fully, though!
Posted by: Vincent at Feb 22, 2005 10:51:47 AM
Vincent, even the more conventional conflicts went much more smoothly than I'm used to!
We really liked the conflict escalation thing -- Brother Exhumation's accomplishment test was a debate with another racist Dog trainee who distrusted his Mountain Folk background, and they argued for a while and then shifted to brawling one another. It was "normal", temporally speaking, but the game shifted gears from words to violence really nicely.
The players seemed very taken with the idea that having a dramatic showdown starting with words and then escalating to violence made the characters more successful than resorting to sudden-death ambushes. Likewise, using Fallout for experience was also well-liked -- characters who get hard troubles advance the fastest.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 22, 2005 11:52:35 AM
I should note that I forgot about advancement, and we only started doing it after another playing double-checked the rules. More eyes good!
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 22, 2005 11:53:14 AM
I'm hoping I have lots of equally interesting stories to report after we play on Thursday.
Posted by: Ginger Stampley at Feb 22, 2005 1:16:29 PM
We definitely need to get back to this in my local gaming crew.
Posted by: *** Dave at Feb 22, 2005 1:38:04 PM
Just a follow-up: due to illness we only finished up initiations, but we got some rocking play out of the conflicts, and they were very internal conflicts: would Brother Pleasure get over his grudge against Brother Levi, who used to push Pleasure's baby brother around, and would Sister Boo learn to control her temper?
It was great to watch Sister Boo grab the Book of Life and hold it to hold in her anger. Not something you'd get out of most systems.
Posted by: Ginger Stampley at Feb 25, 2005 7:38:28 PM
The conflicts in my game were just the initiation accomplishments, too. Maybe you could post your notes on the first town to the blog, and I can too, so we can compare?
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 26, 2005 6:18:08 PM
