[KueiCon] Dog Eat Dog

[Bankuei]

Hi folks,

On Sunday morning, we got to play the very awesome Dog Eat Dog, a game in development by William Burke.  Dog Eat Dog is a game about colonialism, imperialism, and host of other real world issues- minus hamhanded preachiness.

The group assigns traits that define the Natives, as well as traits that define the Occupation.   One player takes the role of the Occupation, while the rest of the players create Native characters.  Like General Mud's Soviet Rules, Dog Eat Dog has a set of Rules which are the rules the Natives are supposed to conform to in order to live in the Occupation's society.  During play, the Natives take what they've learned from the scene and create new Rules, while the Occupation controls reward/punishment through an economy of poker chips or tokens- a Native gets a chip for every Rule they fulfill, and loses a chip for every Rule they break.  (The Occupation also loses a chip if they break their own rules, though the chip is just removed from play).

When a Native runs out of chips, they go Amok, and the next scene they appear in, they die in an act of horrific violence, but the player gets full control and the Occupation loses a number of chips.  When the Occupation runs out of chips, they are forced to grant the Natives independence.  Endgame occurs either when the Occupation runs completely out of chips or the Natives all die having run Amok.  Natives with too many chips at endgame basically sell out, having totally accepted the Occupations' way of life.

There is an interesting conflict system that starts with negotiation, escalation to dice, and then finally fiat by the Occupation if they so choose.  The Occupation gets heavy fiat rights throughout a lot of the game, giving them a lot of control into the fictional elements.

We had the Amarans being occupied by the Arkians, who were both mining and using Amara as a place to build factories in order to not have to deal with the pollution in their backyards.  The Amarans were once many different tribes and peoples with a history of warfare between them, a complex religion with intense and long rituals, and generally nice and easy going types.  The Arkians were heavy alcoholics and bureaucratic types. 

I decided to go with continous hassle as the sort of conflict I wanted to go with- stuff like getting your car towed, minor local corruption, and ending in over-the-top riot tactics to break up a scuffle at a religious festival.  It was interesting to see the reactions- one player shot straight for going Amok, one player avoided trouble where possible, and the third swung from resistance to full collaboration with the Occupation.

I found the chip economy becomes more and more unstable (in a good way, that brings about endgame) as play goes on.  As the Rules stack up, the chips flow more freely. 

The one modification I made in play that worked really well was choosing that if a Rule was applicable to any one Native in a scene, it had to be applied to any other Native in the Scene, even if their actions weren't really applicable.  That is- if one Native clearly followed, "Be Meek in Public", but the other two didn't really do anything either way, the other two STILL had to be judged yes/no in an arbitrary way, even if it seemed a bit irrational.  This first prevented me from selectively applying Rules to a few and not others to completely lock down the chips, and second also highlighted the "Check one box only" sort of logic.

I hope others share how they felt about their experience with this game, I'm really excited to try it out again.

Chris