I ran my first game of Dogs today at SteveCon in London. I thought it went pretty well. Neither I or any of the players had played the game before, although both Steve and I had read the rules. Steve had the rather nice printed rulebook; I have the PDF.

The town was a slightly tweaked version of Clinton's Widder's Canyon.

Character creation: I didn't save any of the sheets, but it's still pretty fresh.

Paula created Sister Hannah, a clever young woman from a strong community. During the game, I didn't really bring up her relationships at all, which was a bit of a goof on my part. Her effectiveness wasn't really impeded, I don't think, but it would have been nice to put them in the spotlight. Her Accomplishment was to feed a group of dogs-in-training off the land while they were lost in a snowstorm -- she failed it (crap die rolls, really). My final raise was "as you're just about to dish up the soup, the snow stops and the sun comes out. The other trainee Dogs are like, yay! We're going down to that town to get a real meal!"

Steve created Brother Zachary, son of a family that had apostasized and moved back East, but who returned to the fold when his father died. His accomplishment was to persuade a jaded Easterner to convert to the Faith, which he did pretty handily; he did take some fallout, though, which manifested as a feeling that things weren't really all so bad back East.

Jim created Brother Elias, illegitimate son of a Faithful woman and a Mountain Folk father. Picked on as a kid, he's kind of a cranky so-and-so, but a mean theologian. His accomplishment was to resist temptation of the flesh, which he did handily -- and somewhat spitefully, humiliating the young woman who was trying to flirt with him.

So the Dogs ride into Widder's Canyon, passing by the temple where there are five new child-size graves; the young ones who died during the Demon-caused sickness that swept the town. Brother Zachary talks to the Steward, who is frustrated having to deal with the tax-collector, Brother Jehu, and his constant demands that the Steward help him win Sister Ruth for his wife. The Steward affects a kind of worldly-wise persona: "It'll sort itself out in the end," he says. "You know how it is with men and women -- well, no, I guess you don't."

Sister Hannah and Brother Elias go to the graveyard, where they meet the mourning mother of three of the dead children. They ask about the sickness, but she's pretty broken up. At one point, though, she makes some kind of apotropaic gesture at Brother Elias when he's not looking; her husband's boundless hatred at the Mountain People he believes responsible for the deaths is replaced in her by terror. This catches Hannah's attention; Something, she reckons, is Up.

The Dogs have dinner with the Steward; they hear more of his live-and-let-live talk. This makes them a bit unhappy; they think he's lax. They're right. "Why don't you sort out this Zadok [the Mountain-Folk-hating father]," they ask. Why indeed?

The next day, they go to Zadok's place. There's a conflict with his son Benjamin that doesn't go well for Brother Elias -- it's hard to rock your theological knowledge when the other person is simply ignoring you. But it's Zadok they have real trouble with: there's a conflict over whether he should be allowed to have this weird pamphlet about the Mountain Folk which is clearly influencing his view that they're evil. When Sister Hannah points out that he's clearly upset about the kids, not thinking straight, needs some time to get his head straight (she said it much more soothingly), he says "did you call me crazy, you bitch?" and takes a swing. The conflict goes around Zachary and Elias, who do their best, but Sister Hannah shows what Faithful women are made of when she draws down on Zadok. Staring down the barrel of Sister Hannah's revolver, with no dice left to roll, Zadok Gives. They give him nice soothing herbal tea and lock him up in a nice quiet room at the Temple where he can contemplate what a crazy fool he is. There's a brief incident here where they stop Benjamin trying to shoot some Mountain Folk; it doesn't come to a conflict. Without his dad, Ben's pretty whipped.

While Zachary and Elias are praying with Zadok, Hannah talks to the schoolmarm about the disease, and the Dogs have a talk about it. They resolve to get to the bottom of the sins that are causing all the trouble. First stop: a talk with Ruth. Ruth and her parents spill the beans about Jehu's trying to squeeze them financially, but the Dogs are still mad at Ruth for not just marrying him -- after all, he's a respectable guy. So what if he's a bit of a worldly, Easternized dandy? Nobody's perfect. Her refusal made him sin, etc., etc. Ruth bursts into tears; Elias tells her to pull herself together.

As they're going out to meet Jehu, they meet Jacob coming in. Jacob is a respectable fellow, polite, maybe a bit of a doofus, and would clearly like to marry Ruth. Hannah is frustrated with him not just coming out and asking her. They tell Jacob to wait and go across the street to give Jehu the Business.

And give it they do; the dice hit the table, and Zachary breaks down Jehu's resistance with a quickness. By the end, Jehu's blubbering as Zachary harangues him about worldliness and pride, and how he only wants Rose as an ornament like his pomade and fancy Eastern catalogue clothes. But "I've been Back East," says Zachary. "They'd laugh you out of town." Harsh words for the local dandy.

Problem solved, right? Back to Ruth's place they go to tell her that all is well, and now she can marry Jacob. But Ruth's not having him: since she's no longer under pressure to marry Jehu, the prospect of life with stolid, unexciting Jacob doesn't appeal. She turns him down and he storms out. Much remonstration with Ruth.

But a few minutes later, here comes Jacob down main street with his carbine. "You whore," he's yelling. "You told me it was all right! You told me we would be married. You made me a sinner!" It turns out Ruth and Jacob have been fornicating -- which the faith thinks is maybe OK sometimes if you're prevented from marrying by inescapable circumstances, but they were really doing for carnal lusts (Jacob) and getting back at Jehu (Ruth).

All of which means that Jacob's now had the one way he could think of himself as not a sinner closed off, and he's freaking out. Zachary tries to reason with him; Jacob's hysterical. Jacob tries to push past Zachary into the house. They struggle in the doorway. Jacob Escalates again, to guns: he starts firing at random into the house (I reckon it must have been one of those old revolver-carbine things). With the lead flying, both Zachary and Hannah Give. I think they did this almost without realising what they'd done -- now only Brother Elias and his gun stand between Jacob and Ruth.

And it's a hell of a fight. Elias won't let Ruth be killed, no matter whether it's her fault to begin with or whatever. The two blast at each other through windows and doors; Jacob nails Elias through the window and tries to rush the house. Elias stops him cold with a bullet. When the smoke clears, both men are flat on their backs. 18 and 19 fallout respectively. Yeah.

So Sister Hannah swings into action, desperately trying to staunch the blood from Elias's wound. But the fallout dice are heavy; I decide that with the flying window glass, and the fall, and the bullet, Elias is leaking like a sieve, and each new raise is a new horrible wound she finds. In the end, Sister Hannah wins it by one. She takes long-term Fallout, too: a shaky relationship with Brother Elias. She knows that he came within a hair's breadth of death because she ducked out of the fight with Jacob.

Zachary tries to save Jacob, but after a couple of raises it's clear he's got a bullet in the lung or something. Zachary anoints his forehead with sacred earth and calls out to the King to save this poor sinner. But it's all for nothing. Jacob bleeds out, as the shocked villagers stand around him. Zachary took the blow here, too; there was permanent damage to the coat, if I recall.

And that was that. The Dogs whipped Ruth through the streets of Widder's Canyon before sending her off to live with Sister Hannah's elder sister, a real dragon. And when they get back to Bridal Falls, there will be hard words about the conduct of the Steward.

So, yeah!

I think everyone had a good time in this one -- I thought the climax came out in a really dramatic, exciting way, and I was genuinely moved by poor Jacob's death and Zachary's attempt to save him, as well as Elias's heroic, bloody defense of the house and Hannah's Taking the Blow to save her dying comrade.

Especially good points: I think everyone dug on the setting, on the issues, on the less-mystery-more-problem structure of the scenario.

Possibly idiosyncratic weak point: our table was very cluttered (we were playing in a pub, so there were glasses, crisp packets, as well as character sheets and so on), and I think this hampered the dice thing, made it a bit balkier than normal. There really are a lot of dice in this game. I bet a couple more sessions will make this seem easy and familiar.

Overall then: top-notch. A good SteveCon for Indie games, too: HQ, DitV, MLwM.

I really enjoyed this game. I think that the focus on meaningful conflicts which have a clear escalation mechanism from talking to pushing to fighting means that, as a player, you are really aware that something is always on the line and you might have to be prepared to die for it.

Although we rolled lots of dice and there is a danger that it becomes a game about rolling dice, James always made sure that we were focussed on what was being said and done.

Making the Dogs the final arbiters of what is right and wrong rather reference to any outside agency means that all the conflicts are here and now, rather than deferred to some other authority. That's the essence of good drama.

We got hit pretty hard by fallout, but then it was a one-off game. We needed all that escalation to make it work as a single drama. But I think the system would also work really well in supporting a slower build-up over several games.

Finally, The background has a richness that satisfies my need for good colour but James never made it so specific that we had to keep checking our facts in a book. The essesnce of the game was conflicts and James did a great job of making them meaningful without getting bogged down in non-essentials and he never let us of the hook easily.

Paula also greatly enjoyed this game. She loved the background and the emphasis on conflict resolution in a general sense. Pulling the gun on someone and having that resolve the conflict is far more satisfying than just having to shoot them.

Paula hates games that are mostly about fighting, which is pretty much why she won't play fantasy games. I think that also has something to do with wanting to have a quicker relationship with the background that you get from games set in worlds close to our own (in time usually).

About the dice system, she said that she was really into the game, felt pretty much in the situation herself but that having to snap out of it to resolve dice was a wrench, more so as the conflicts escalated. Sounds like a description of immersion to me and I must say that I too got a very visual sense of the game as we played it. I'm a bit more forgiving of mechanics so was less affected by the dice than Paula was.