[DitV] Willow Tree Branch

I ran Dogs for the first time tonight, with two players: my brother, who hasn't played RPGs for years, and my LARP friend Rachel.

The town was a variation on DamianNeil's Lone Tree Branch. I really liked this town when I read through it, but wanted to tweak it.

So the brief story is this: some Faithless people have set up caravans near Willow Tree Branch. One of them, Frank Miller, is selling moonshine to the townspeople. And his son, Joseph, got drunk one night with one of the town girls, slept with her and got her pregnant. The town steward, and the girl's father, are adamant she was raped.

Where this differs from Damian's Lone Tree Branch is that Joseph is still alive. In his version, the town steward had just hung him; I was sort of hoping the Dogs would shoot him instead. Which, as it happens, they did, in the first few minutes of play.

So the two Dogs, Aaron and Bethany, arrive in town as night is falling. Talking to some of the locals, they hear that Sarah was raped.

So early the next morning, they go to Frank Miller's caravan and demand what happened. Things get heated, his son Joseph comes out of the caravan talking big, and Bethany gets angry and shoots Joseph. He dies in his father's arms.

Slightly at a loss, the Dogs head back into town and confront Sarah's father. They find out that he'd been sending Sarah to Miller's caravan to procure moonshine. Aaron tries to get the truth out of him about the moonshine, but he's reluctant, and Aaron ends up dragging him into the town square and making him confess his alcoholism publicly.

So now there's a crowd in the town square and the Steward makes himself known. Bethany tells the Steward he's incompetent for allowing his people to turn to alcohol. The Steward takes things a little too literally and accepts he shouldn't be steward any more.

Bethany launches a conflict "To persuade him to stay as Steward". Halfway through this, things get physical, and the Steward hits Bethany and tells her her place is in the home. Bethany quickly changes her mind about him being Steward.

This eventually resolves when they appoint a young zealot as Steward and persuade the Faithful to let the Faithless work in the fields.

In any case, Derek and Rachel seemed to really like the game. I'm particularly pleased that Derek liked it, since he hasn't played RPGs for about fifteen years now. He started out playing for comedy and, once things started getting dark, quickly started playing seriously. At one point he turned to Rachel and said "We're really bad people".

I wasn't sure on many rules, so I winged it, making stuff up on the fly. (I think a "Last Rites" ceremony was introduced at some point). It was all fine. I'll probably have rules questions once I've read the rules again and realised where I went wrong.

And I've got to say it's one of the most entertaining roleplaying sessions I had. Derek and Rachel kept making jokes to counteract the seriousness of what they did. "Yeah, sorry about your son but, you know, can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." "Oh, you're the Steward? Hi. Sorry about your town."

All very entertaining.