[Dogs] Observations from a first game

[DamienNeil]

Yesterday, I GMed my first game of Dogs in the Vineyard with three friends.  This was my first actual RPG session in about ten years, and my first time trying to run a game in about twenty.  The players were similarly inexperienced.  I posted an tediously long description of the game over in the Dogs forum, but want to comment on a few specific experiences now that I've had some more time to think the session over.

Our first "nifty!" moment came during character creation.  I'd been explaining game mechanics and leading people through what to do (I'm the only one who has read the rules), and we had gotten up to the accomplishment conflicts.  Which are, by the way, a bloody brilliant idea--they haul the core game mechanic out right at the start in a low-pressure setting, where you can have a good, long look at it.

So, there we are, with Brother Simon trying to see if he can sense the presence of evil.  I set the scene: He's in the chapel, praying as penance for some minor infraction, when a stranger walks in and kneels down.  Simon walks over and quotes some Scripture at him about good and evil.  I Take the Blow: the stranger starts up and stalks out without saying a word.  Two or three days later, during dinner in the common hall...and the players all burst out in the laughter of revelation.  It was like watching a light bulb blink into existence over their heads as they realized how you can shift time and location at will in a conflict.  It was awesome.

The game goes on, they get to their first town and start digging up sins.  After a while, they're out at the farmhouse where Brother Cyrus lives with his daughter, Sister Susan.  (Y'know, Cyrus was supposed to be a smith.  I have no idea what happened, but I ended up making him a farmer by the time they got out there.)  So, anyway, Susan is fifteen years old and six months pregnant with the child of her supposed rapist--although the Dogs aren't quite buying that story by this point.  So two of them take Cyrus out for a walk through his fields while the female Dog (Sister Marah) goes in to talk to the girl.

One of the Dogs with Cyrus wants to make small talk, buying Marah time. "So, how are the crops doing?  Well?  That's good!  How do you keep the insects off?"  And I look at his player and say, "I have no idea.  How DOES he keep the insects off?"

That moment was more liberating than I can say.  I've always had the feeling--without ever putting into words--that in a situation like that, it's the GM's responsibility to give an answer.  He's supposed to know this kind of world detail.  And up until reading Dogs, I'd have tried to make a noncommittal reply of some kind, something lame and halfhearted that would have taken everyone out of the story.  Not this time.  I don't know the answer?  No problem!  We'll talk it out together, or decide that we didn't really care in the first place.

A couple minutes later, they wanted to know if there was a well on the property.  I chucked that one right back at them again, and we decided that the place had a cistern, but no well.

Then we shift the scene to inside the house, with the interrogation of Sister Susan.  Marah's player starts a conflict to get to the truth of where Susan's child came from, I escalate to physical combat, and by the time I Give, Susan's got a handful of fallout dice.  (I was quite deliberately grabbing up as much fallout as I could here--Susan's fragile.)  I roll two sixes in fallout (injury), Susan doesn't make her roll to avoid serious injury, and Marah comes inches from having an innocent girl dead on the floor by her hand.  I grab the NPC character sheet and add the fallout to it: 1d4 relationship with Marah ("She *hates* you"), and a new trait: "I hate Dogs".

For the second time that evening, I see the lightbulb go on over everyone's head: Conflict fallout can be nasty, nasty stuff--and they're entirely capable of doing very bad things to this town just by pushing too hard.

Things wrapped up not too long after that. They'd talked to all the significant actors in town, had realized that there were demonic influences about, and suspected the presence of a sorcerer.  Finding him wasn't hard (he was the first person they'd talked to, actually), and they had a nice whiz-bang battle to cast the demon from him.  Lots of special effects, although a bit low-key: glowing eyes, swirling dust, and the like.

With the sorcerer down, they were out of opposition.  We shifted the scene a few days forward, they called a town meeting, told the townsfolk what to do next, and rode out of town.  End of game.

I'm not certain if this ending was a good thing or not.  The presence of the demon made their job much easier--when you're staring at a genocidal sorcerer with a demon in his heart, it's pretty easy to decide that some ass-kicking may be in order.  I wonder if I shouldn't have tried to give them some harder choices to make.

On the other hand, it's pretty hard to insert ambiguous morality when you start a game with the corpse of an innocent man hanging from the tree in the center of town.  And everyone did feel happy about the aforementioned righteous ass-kicking.  Plus, they surprised me a couple times in the resolution, which felt right and proper: They left the ex-sorcerer alive and installed a drunkard as the new Steward of town.  And y'know?  I hadn't realized it up until the very moment they did it, but that man's going to do a damn fine job of it, too.  Bet he never touches the bottle again.

I think we'll be playing again.  When we wrapped up, I don't think there was a one among us who wasn't curious about what these Dogs are getting up to in their next town.

[Meguey]

Sounds great! One of the things I like about Dogs is the number of surprises it can hand both players and GM.

[Brand_Robins]

On the other hand, it's pretty hard to insert ambiguous morality when you start a game with the corpse of an innocent man hanging from the tree in the center of town.  And everyone did feel happy about the aforementioned righteous ass-kicking.  Plus, they surprised me a couple times in the resolution, which felt right and proper: They left the ex-sorcerer alive and installed a drunkard as the new Steward of town.  And y'know?  I hadn't realized it up until the very moment they did it, but that man's going to do a damn fine job of it, too.  Bet he never touches the bottle again.

Sounds like an awesome game.

A couple of things about this point. There is a way in which the morality in Dogs doesn't have to be (and often isn't) that ambiguous. Ambivalent maybe, but sin is sin and the GM knows exactly who is a sinnin. Now, while a lot of us folks like to cut Dogs right down to the "everyone is human and just doing the best they can bone," there are demons and such in the game for a reason -- and using them is 100% pure good. That's because the ambiguity and abmivalence doesn't have to come from the town (though it sounds like you had some of that anyway), it comes from the players judgements of the town.

Really, the town might have some upity EVIL, but so? There were some not evil folk there to, right? And some folk who were in the middle? And the Dogs had to judge one from the other, and didn't always do it the way you'd thought they would, right?

Really, you end up with people hating the Dogs who beat on pregnant women, a sorcerer still alive, a drunk for a Steward, and all the rest -- sounds like there were some very interesting calls to me!

[DamienNeil]

Really, the town might have some upity EVIL, but so? There were some not evil folk there to, right? And some folk who were in the middle? And the Dogs had to judge one from the other, and didn't always do it the way you'd thought they would, right?

You make some good points!

The one bit that I'm still a bit unhappy with is that the presence of a demon actually made the sorcerer seem a bit less evil than he might have.  Sure, he's not a nice guy...but there's a demon in him.  Let's cast it out and call him cured.

I've got a fix for that, though.  Next town they visit, they're going to want to side with the sorcerer.

[Brand_Robins]

I've got a fix for that, though.  Next town they visit, they're going to want to side with the sorcerer.

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