I ran Dogs in the Vineyard for the first time last night, with a group of players, also all new to the game (one had heard about it before, the others had just heard me talking about it).

For background, these are all people I met through the Vampire LARP here; I've run a couple other less common games here--Dread and the Parlor Larps--and these are some of the people who seemed to really enjoy those, which is much of why I invited them to my first try.

The hardest part, actually, was character creation, during which I got a lot of blank stares as I tried to nudge them towards creating characters (I think because they were confronted with a bunch of decisions but didn't know what appropriate criteria were to even get started).  Once we got over that, things went pretty smoothly.

Our first accomplishment was P's character, Brother Jacob.  He took Complicated History, representing the fact that he'd been given a hard time since his father was a convert.  His traits included "I'm quick with a gun, 4d4" and "I'm familiar with many heretical books, 2d6" (later on, his favorite argument became, "You sound just like that person from this book...and he was a heretic!")  His aspiration was "I hope I overcome my impatience."

We settled on the scripture teacher at the temple ordering him to copy some sections of the Book of Life.  Jacob made the tedium bearable first by inserting phrases from those heretical books instead of the proper book, and then by "mishearing" which sections he was supposed to copy.  ("Chapters one through fourteen?  I thought you said one through four...")  At this point he stumbled across a passage in the Book about the sanctity of the Book itself and one's duties to it.  He responded by giving up entirely and spent a few goes physically intimidating the scripture teacher into letting him leave, closing with, "I know the Book tells me not to use this on you, and that's good enough."

He ended up with a relationship with the scripture teacher as fallout ("Brother Thaddeus thinks I'm an unworthy dog") and "I'm not intimidated into inaction."

Next came B's character, Sister Ann, a well-rounded farm girl with traits like "I read a book...once, 1d4," "I had to run for my life from a mad cow for almost a full hour, 2d6," and "I always have good advice, 2d8."  Her aspiration was "I hope I converted a sinner."  We established that, one evening in Bridal Falls, she encountered a TA official with a bottle of wine.  A brief argument ensued over the fate of his soul, but Ann settled the matter with a not-so-veiled threat to demonstrate her faith's superiority.  She got, "I convert sinners."

The last was C's character, Brother Gabriel.  He decided to play with the system a bit; his aspiration was, "I hope that Mountain Person I killed really was a heretic."  We decided to start in the moment he shot the man, and settle the matter by flashback.  It opened with Gabriel shooting the man (raise), whose last words were, "May the King of Life preserve me" (see).  From here we flashed to earlier, when Gabriel went to his house and saw that he had the Book of Life (raise) which he'd stolen from his neighbors (see).  Gabriel had been told he was a heretic by his father (raise), but the Steward had just recently mentioned a new convert (see).  And the Book of Life in the man's home was open to a passage about welcoming converts (raise), but was surrounded by other heretical books, also open to random pages (see).  And, indeed, Gabriel had taken those books as evidence of the man's heresy (raise).  At this point, I was out of dice, so Gabriel got "I'm good at identifying heretics," but took fallout upping his relationship with the man to 2d4.

On to the game itself.  We played Tower Creek Branch from the book, so as they rode into town, the Steward, Brother Bartholemew, welcomed them to his home, and mentioned that his new wife wasn't pregnant yet, and perhaps the Dogs could give the King of Life's blessing.  They ate dinner with the Steward and his two wives, who clearly didn't get along.

After dinner, the family scattered, and Sister Bethia, the older wife--and Brother Jacob's cousin--asked the Dogs to dissolve the Steward's second marriage as inappropriate.  She launched a conflict, and lost badly, although Ann got temporary fallout, "I'm worried about the Steward's marriage, 1d4."  The next morning they talked to Sister Edie, who complained that Brother Barthlomew was neglecting her, but the Dogs didn't take her seriously (I'd played up the fact that she was much younger than the Steward, so they took it as whining).

Sister Ann blessed her, and the three went off to find the Steward, who was about town.  On their way, they were interrupted by Brother Cyrus, who asked them directly to dissolve the marriage between Edie and Bartholomew and marry her to him instead.  Here, it was P who interrupted my arguing for Cyrus and asked if we shouldn't just start a conflict.  So we did, and Cyrus, of course, lost (although Ann's fears about the Steward's marriage cropped up).  Cyrus kept raising by bringing up reasons that his position was basically a foregone conclusion...like the fact that they's sort-of been married by Sister Wilhemina anyway...and had consummated that marriage.

At this point, the Dogs were pretty upset.  They split up, with Sister Ann checking on Wilhemina, while Jacob and Gabriel found the Steward.  They informed the Steward that Sister Edie had been blessed, so they should "couple" as soon as possible.  And, as an afterthought, that Cyrus had been sleeping with her.  The Steward was furious ("We found out Cyrus was with Edie, but don't worry, it won't happen again."  "Oh no it won't!"), grabbed his gun, and wanted to go shoot Cyrus on the spot.  Conflict ensued, and when Jacob raised with, "No, that's our job," Brother Bartholomew took his last 6, gave, and launched the follow-up, "Do the dogs go shoot Cyrus?"  Gabriel didn't want to, but Jacob agreed with Bartholomew, and together they prevailed.

Here we cut to Sister Ann, who showed up at Wilhemina's house.  (I realized here that I'd made a big mistake: Sister Wilhemina was supposed to be Ann's aunt, but I'd forgotten to mention that when she first came up, and some of Ann's actions in the argument with Cyrus seemed to contradict that, so I let it drop.)  Ann tried to convince Wilhemina to admit the error of her ways, but I pulled out the Demonic Influence dice, and made sure that everyone knew what they were.  When the conflict started going poorly for Ann, the other players encouraged her to give that and launch the follow-up, "Does Wilhemina admit she's a witch?"

This time Ann won.  Since the stillborn baby hadn't come up yet, and since the players all seemed pretty low on supernatural, I fudged a bit, and dropped her sorcery to the level of giving Edie a concoction intended to make her more fertile using heretical knowledge of plants and such.  (I think this was a horrible violation of the principles of Dogs, but it seems to have worked okay in this case.)  We dropped OOC briefly to discuss appropriate levels of supernatural, but the PCs felt that was perfectly reasonable for sorcery, and said that, while there might be more overtly supernatural stuff later, they liked the idea of starting out without it.  (Although it was striking that they then started referring, both in and out of character, to witchcraft rather than sorcery.)

Initially, Ann wanted to convert her, but the consensus was that that was basically the same as getting her to admit the error of her ways, which Ann had already given up on.

So Ann tried to kill her instead.

Wilhemina fled, with Ann shooting after her from behind.  When Wilhemina ran out of dice to run away with (and had Taken the Blow twice), she escalated to Just Talking: "Please spare an old woman!"

Ann had enough dice left to inform her that she'd had her chance, and that was the end of Sister Wilhemina.

We cut back to the Brothers, who had a quick shoot-out with Cyrus.  They left his dead body in the middle of town, met up with Ann, and returned to the Steward's house.

Edie had just been told (by a gleeful Bartholomew) that the Dogs were killing Cyrus.  They went to talk to Edie, who admitted to the relationship with Cyrus, but said she didn't know that Wilhemina had been practicing witchcraft.

At this point, Brother Jacob suggested that they dissolve the marriage anyway.  Ann disagreed, stage-whispering (so that Edie could still hear) that Edie didn't have much chance of marrying again, what with the whoring.

Jacob launched a conflict to persuade Ann to annul the marriage.  In desperation, he even took a 2d8 relationship with her, insisting that he was the senior Dog in the group, but she held out.  Both took temporary fallout, and stormed off.

Gabriel, who'd stayed out of the conflict, decided to annul the marriage without Ann's approval.  He started the conflict, with Jacob's support.  Bartholomew sided with Ann and Edie with Gabriel and Jacob.  Jacob and Ann went back to arguing while Gabriel read from the Book of Life and decreed the marriage annulled.

The Dogs reminded Bartholomew to clean up Cyrus' body, and rode out of town.

The reaction was pretty positive, and there was definite interest in continuing.  I don't think they thought their characters were all that effective, and B, in particular, seems to dislike Sister Ann a great deal (mostly, I think, because she reminds B of people she's met and not liked).  The consensus was that we still weren't completely comfortable with the system--in particular, a lot of the conflicts seemed like somewhat stilted arguments, with every Raise and See being an argument and a response to it--but that it had gone well, and would improve once we got more used to it.

Henry

Hi Henry,
I'm also playing through first Dogs sessions so I thought I'd give my perspective on your play. Overall, seems like very cool stuff!

How did your players feel about taking opposite sides of conflicts? Was it a high point for them or soething they're still getting to terms with?

For your first accomplishment, did you play it straight or reversed? (I'm guessing reversed.) How did you settle on that - were the two alternative put forward for the group, or the player, or did you decide to do it that way?

Gabriel's accomplishment sounds way cool. That is all.

HenryT wrote:
I realized here that I'd made a big mistake: Sister Wilhemina was supposed to be Ann's aunt, but I'd forgotten to mention that when she first came up, and some of Ann's actions in the argument with Cyrus seemed to contradict that, so I let it drop.

Alex wrote:
How did your players feel about taking opposite sides of conflicts? Was it a high point for them or soething they're still getting to terms with?

For your first accomplishment, did you play it straight or reversed? (I'm guessing reversed.) How did you settle on that - were the two alternative put forward for the group, or the player, or did you decide to do it that way?

Alex wrote:
I found that forgetting about relationships was my most common mistake throughout running my sessions. SIlly, because it's right there in the conflict resolution steps. I think I get lulled by the fact that any other stat, trait or belonging can conceivably be brought in at any point in play, and forget that the rules demand relationships at the start or not at all. I'm a bit uncertain about the utility of this, and its something we might consider houseruling. Not sure that would resolve your situation, but perhaps one approach is to acknowledge that relationships can be complicated things, that aren't always acknowledged but can go off like a firecracker in the right circumstances.

Alex wrote:
The dispatching of Wilhelmina sounds brutal. How did characters react when it went off, and afterwards? There were moments of brutality in my game (from the player's characters) that shocked us all a little bit, I think, and made a lasting impression.