Out on the frontier, a group of religious pioneers struggles to make lives for themselves. The Faith faces freezing winters and blazing summers, but the greatest threat to their survival comes from within. You play one of God’s Watchdogs, tasked with holding the faith together in the face of sin, heresy, and demonic influence. The Dogs ride from town to town rooting out pridefullness and false doctrine, exorcising demons, dispensing justice, and keeping the Faith together. Their word is both law and gospel, but with ultimate authority comes ultimate responsibility.
Dogs in the Vineyard is a narrativist indie tabletop RPG masterpiece. Everything, from the setting to the damage rules, focuses directly on making interesting and exciting stories about moral decisions. In each town the players encounter, there is sin going on. Discovering the nature and cause of the sin, and resolving it is the meat of the game. This is a radical departure from mainstream RPGs, where the main question is: “How do you kill the goblins?” Instead it might be: “This man cheated on his wife because she was cruel to him. Do you keep an unhappy marriage together, or set an example that rewards infidelity?” That would just be one strand in a web of sin, all of which would need unraveling in order to save a town from itself.
Before any sin can be resolved, however, the players will experience a series of conflicts. As a narrativist game, Dogs in the Vineyard strongly facilitates roleplay and story creation. Winning a conflict requires involving your character as personally as possible, drawing on their past history, relationships, and personal belongings to gain bonuses. The system also encourages thorough description of actions, and discourages repetition, making the conflicts more interesting and the characters more deep. The level of detail involved in each contest makes them well suited to handling critical plot points; anything less important is handled by simple narration. Baker’s excellent GM advice is: “Roll dice or say ‘yes’. If nothing is at stake, say ‘yes’ [to the player’s request]”.
The most important feature of conflict resolution is escalating. In Dogs in the Vineyard, a conflict can be over anything, including ideas. In the struggle against sin, winning an argument is just as important as winning a gun fight. In fact most gun fights start as arguments (very Wild West), because if one side doesn’t want to be convinced they can always draw and let their gun do the talking. This brings back the moral dilemmas and puts them in what would normally just be a fight scene. It’s awful hard to fight lead with words, but is it worth shooting an unrepentant drunk just because he doesn’t want to stop drinking? The shooting stops as soon as one person doesn’t want to keep going, but that’s the side that lost the argument.
While this all works very well for achieving narrative goals, other aspects of RPGs come a distant second. Players looking for a more gamist experience will quickly complain that the end results of conflicts are preordained, with little room for tactics or surprise. Other players may be put off by the rules’ disregard for simulation of the natural world (“realism” if you will). Even if you just want to collaboratively create a story, the system tends toward several types of unintentional abuse. While it’s all good and well to create engaging narratives, it’s no fun if some players always get their way with the story and the other players don’t. There are ways to compensate for this, but it has to be done outside of the rules-as-written. While it would be nice if the rules did more to mitigate such problems, and if they satisfied everyone, this is an impossible goal. A game cannot contain the best simulation of gunshot wounds, the strategic depth of Go, and consistently produce gripping stories about moral dilemmas. Sacrifices must be made, and Dogs in the Vineyard makes the right ones.
Absolutely agree...
Dogs in the vineyard is an incredible piece of work. One of the things that really makes it for me is Baker's light touch with the setting leaving it more or less up to the players what kind of world their characters inhabit, I like the fact that you can make as much or as little of the demons/ religion element as you like, basically filling in the details as you want (we generally play it with a stern old testament style monster god but don't introduce anything supernatural other than in the ways that the characters perceive things, all talk of demons etc is ultimately metaphorical (though the characters won't necessarily see that)).
I have to say we've not encountered much of the kind of one player getting her own way kind of thing you mention but can see how this might be a problem. That said I never feel disappointed when my character fails, the whole stake raising mechanic just makes the whole thing such a rollercoaster that it' always enjoyable to me and I love the fact that psychological and physical damage taken can enrich a character and make the group dynamic increasingly tense and interesting.
Another thing the rules seem to lend themselves too is the development all kinds of fun narrative devices, flashbacks within flashbacks, dream sequences, bullet time divine revelations and of course loads of theological argument.
So yeah, basically awesome.
hell yes
this fucking game i have been screaming at people to play this game for a million years
the first time i played it my inital conflict was 'AM I ABLE TO USE A SPOON"
i wasnt able to use a spoon
Allows for only one kind of player
The setting of this game is awesome. The idea that you are dealing with moral issues is fantastic. However, only one kind of player can enjoy this game: the kind that wants to talk to NPCs and other players IN CHARACTER.
For RPers that are new to RPing or just don't like to contribute by talking in character, DIV doesn't work very well.
Players that enjoy talking to NPCs will enjoy DIV. The rest of us will have a hard time.
blamdarot, when you say in
blamdarot, when you say in character does this include saying things like, 'my character says ...', or 'John says ...'? If not, why do you think DitV would not work for this type of player?
The game is a lot of
The game is a lot of in-character speaking or announcing what your character will say. As a player, I feel frustrated when required to speak for my character (in all RPGs I've played). I prefer the strong, silent type of character who is defined more by their actions (or lack thereof). This game does not allow for that type of character/player.
The offensive DitV
While it’s all good and well to create engaging narratives, it’s no fun if some players always get their way with the story and the other players don’t. There are ways to compensate for this, but it has to be done outside of the rules-as-written. While it would be nice if the rules did more to mitigate such problems, and if they satisfied everyone, this is an impossible goal.
I think the standard response to this is, if someone takes over the game, you stop playing with them. In a sense, there's not really any reason why the game rules should have to deal with it.
Anyway...I'd heard a lot of interesting things about Dogs in the Vineyard, but...The idea of playing characters that force people to conform to some arbitrary religious idea? I find that deeply disturbing and offensive.
Offensive?
I realize that DitV has mature content, with difficult subject matter, but I'm surprised that you find it offensive. Is it the religion that you find offensive, or the idea of forcing other people to behave by someone else's standards?
Basically, would the idea of roleplaying police be any different? Forcing people to conform to some arbitrary laws?
(It's worth mentioning that DitV's setting includes people who aren't part of the Faith, and you don't have any authority over them. Their sins or good works aren't your problem, as long as they don't hurt the Faithful)
Forcing people to behave by
Forcing people to behave by some other standards is an idea that always disturbs me. However, the idea of roleplaying police is less disturbing, because you assume you're operating under a set of laws that have been arrived at by mutual debate and consent. (Unless you're playing as the enforcers of a totalitarian regime, in which case, yes, definitely disturbing.) Because it's a religion, there's really no justification.
Different P.O.V.
I can understand where you're coming from, but I just don't see it that way. The difference between religious and secular laws is pretty small for me. Both can lead to the same abuses. (In Pennsylvania it's illegal to sing in the bathtub) In DitV everyone is a volunteer member of a religion, so there's a lot more consent than any government I've heard of.
Of course, in every DitV game I've run, the religion isn't a sham or anything. There really are demons out there, and you do need the King of Life to keep them at bay. So the laws of the Faith aren't arbitrary at all, they originate from a benevolent god and are interpreted by his chosen ministers. The PCs are those ministers, trying to take simple rules like "no stealing" and apply them to complex situations.
(Other people run DitV with differing levels of divine involvement. Some run games where his existence is more questionable, and others have him raining lightning down on the unjust. Every game has Demonic Influence though, based on how much sin people are up to.)
Regardless, if playing a religious enforcer is off-putting for you, then DitV is probably not your game. A lot of people have prejudice against organized religion, and not without reason. As a player who always tried to incorporate more theology, prayer, divine guidance, and above all morality into my D&D Clerics: I thought it sounded awesome.
That's the cool thing about Dogs
John Evans; you bring up an interesting point, and DitV provides an answer that is vital to playing the game as intended.
The doctrines of the faith may dictate some things are sinful and others are not. But the King of Life is also pragmatic, and allows those He has deemed worthy to judge exceptions to Doctrine in order to preserve the Faith as a whole. This is the job of the Watchdogs (i.e. the PCs)
Every Watchdog has a mandate from the King to give judgement on individual cases and can take whatever steps are necessary to preserve the faith of a branch. But Watchdogs only rule on a case-by-case basis; so, for example, as Doctrine says that homosexual marriage is wrong, it is wrong for everyone - except those the Dogs have married because they have special dispensation. If a Dog kills someone in cold blood, it is because the King of Life wanted it. This is important: Every decision, every action that a Faithful Watchdog makes is the will of the King of Life, no matter what the Dog does.
So the PCs are basically free to enforce whatever rules they think is best. If the PC decides that he wants to let a woman who has been a pillar of the community take two husbands for whatever reason, then despite doctrine saying "no", the Dogs actions are righteous. Of course, they still need to enforce and carry out their decision; perhaps the prospective new husband has already proposed to another young lady, and they aren't going to want to split that up to make this old woman and some out-of-town Dogs happy.
So that kind of situation leads to the conflicts -- Your character might start in an argument with this good young couple, trying to convince them to put their feelings aside for the good of the community, but if the dice go bad, does your character escalate and try to shoot this innocent young lady in order to marry her fiancee off to someone else?
That kind of thing is where Dogs in the Vineyard shines!
I disagree
There's nothing in the rules that requires you to talk in character and I've played a successful campaign where one of the party was mute, the player just narrated gestures and actions. The rules aren't prescriptive about this kind of thing.