Hello everybody - I'm new around here, and new to DitV, but I thought I'd share my experiences in playing the game for the first time.

I had to improvise because the guy who was running our current game cancelled two hours before gametime, so on a lark I convinced everyone to give DitV a try.

Here's how it went:

There were 4 Dogs, three of whom won their initiations. One was a Mountain Person who wanted to become a Dog, and his stake was whether or not he'd suffer persecution when he did. There were some tense moments, but that went well. The second Dog wanted his initiation to be that "he'd learned to value people more". We set up a scene in which somebody from his town was visiting Bridal Falls, and wanted to spend time with the Dog-to-be. Only she kept coming up with excuses as to why the Dog didn't have to spend time with her, to see how he'd react. In the end the Dog ended up walking back with the girl to see her off at the stage coach. I thought the scene was initially awkward given his goal, but seemed to work out OK in the end. The other Dog had a rather un-Dog stake - he wanted to see that nobody danced with a certain girl he thought was unseemly. He ended up escalating and kicking a suitor in the ass to prove his point.

The Dog whose initiation failed wanted to make his daddy proud by showing he knew the Book of Life better than anyone else. Seems his father had spent the Dog's life reading and rereading the BOL to him as a child. I rolled really, really well and he rolled really, really badly, so it didn't go how he'd imagine it. The Dog almost escalated the conflict by going physical and whapping the scripture teacher with his copy of the BOL, but in the end conceded.

We played out the Whitechurch town in the book, and got the Dogs to stop in town when the horses strangely threw their shoes. They met Hiram, the Steward's son, and were unable to convince him to woo Constance in a more seemly way. They then talked to the Steward and agreed to try and change Hiram's mind again. They had several conversations and learned of the general storekeeper's (David) price gouging, and had a almost-deadly conflict when visiting a Dog's cousin (seemed the cousin didn't immediately recognize the Dogs, and came out of the porch threatening to shoot unless they left....)

When they got back from the cousin's farm to find Hiram, the biggest conflict of the game occurred. Turns out a mob had formed outside David's store complaining about the high prices. The Dogs banded together to fight it - they tried their best to talk the mob down, but the mob escalated by picking up rocks. Inititally they broke the store windows, and were about to start pelting the Dogs when one of the Dogs decided to shoot the ringleader dead. The mob was pretty much out of dice by this point, and I figured that them pulling out guns was probably not in the cards, so that act dispersed the crowd.

The Dogs then used the fallout to force David to reveal everything he knew about what was going on in town - after suggesting that David's right hand "just might have to get cut off in the manner of a thief", he broke down and admitted that all the trouble began when Constance rebuffed Hiram and he started selling stuff to pay for expensive gifts to change her mind.

We were going to wrap with confrontations between the Dogs and Hiram and Constance, but our host was getting tired, so we adjourned.

Everybody had a great time and absolutely loved the conflict resolution system. One of us said "it really forces you to role-play to consider how you can get your Traits involved in conflicts." There were several white-knuckle conflicts, and even the ones with small stakes held a high level of excitement among everyone, even if they weren't themselves participating! I loved that there was a way to mediate social conflicts in a satisfying way that blended mechanics and role-play.

Very cool!

I ask everyone: how did you characterize the demons and supernatural? You say the horses "strangely" threw their shoes. Did the supernatural make any subsequent appearance?

-Vincent