As mentioned in the other thread (which I found super useful, thanks everyone), we've just wrapped up our fifth Dogs town, and are moving on to our sixth. 

We've been playing with the GM role revolving between players, in part because for most of us, it's our favourite part of play, and also to accommodate people dropping in and out if they can't make it (although in practice we've all made it every time).

Each of us has a slightly different take on the supernatural in the game.  Steve plays at about a 1 or 2 (out of ten), Malcolm runs his towns at about a 3, and I run towns at a solid zero.

I guess what I'm wondering about is what obvious supernatural stuff adds to the game.  In the towns I've played, supernatural stuff has tended to make things much easier to judge.  When someone "vamps out" with supernatural things going on, the reactions from the dogs is typically "oh, so you're the bad guy then."  In towns where there's less supernatural, it seems more ambiguous.  You're never sure if the person you're judging is really at the root of the problem.

So what I'm asking I suppose is what does supernatural stuff add to the game?  More broadly, what do the demons add to the game?  What do you lose if you don't define what the demons want?  I'd like to go a little more supernatural in the next town I make, but I'd like to do it right.

Help me understand!

Why would you like to go more supernatural?

How could you do it wrong?

-Vincent

I think I might be following your concerns. I'll try ot unpack a bit.

First, Demonic Influence doesn't have to be obvious--Possession in particular is the "vamp out" stuff.
* What does DI get you? d10s to use against the Dogs (i.e. about the only7 way to REALLY hammer more than one Dog into giving).
* What does Possession give you? A bunch of sweet powers that makes a Sorcerer even MORE difficult to defeat.

And here's a though: have you considered making the embodiment of Possession something... angelic-looking? If "vamping out" looked to the False Worshipers like the coming of Gabriel, then you get NPCs piling into the conflict, too. (This might not be "canon" for the RAW.)

Also, don't forget that "conventional" DITV play is VERY open, GM-to-players. If you enjoy "investigation," then fine--go for it, have a ball, and the vamping out must be minimal. But if you play vanilla DITV, the "perps" are crystal clear to the players; it's not so much "who's the bad guy" as "how do I deal with the bad guy that's my aunt/brother/5-year-old cousin?" Remember the DITV Mantra: "Oh, really? OK, how about NOW?" If you are using relationships and pushing at the Dogs (or even dividing them, when players have disagreements about "morality"), then a vamp-out won't much matter: they know it was the aunt/brother/etc all along, NOW the town knows... but NOW it's a hell of a lot tougher to deal with (buncha d10s, buncha powers) and I *still* ain't gonna put bullet holes in a misguided kid/my aunt/my brother!

That said... many DITV games are blood baths. Which is why I like to play pacifist Dogs: I don't HAVE the luxury of just filling all the corrupt with lead and letting the town try to rebuild with fewer work hands (keep that in mind, too, by the way: every strong person put in the ground is one less person to keep these small towns viable--this is STILL a frontier, mind you!).

Hope this helps... I might be way out in left field vis a vis your questions (I don't feel Vincent's confusion... so maybe I'M the huckleberry....)

I like playing Dogs in the Vineyard with the supernatural dial turned to eleven.  I rarely build towns that don't got to Hate & Murder and my Sorcery is always over-the-top horribly impossible stuff.

This is common concern: Why doesn't the presence of overt demonic action null and void the moral questions underlying the game?

Answer: Trust town creation.

Everyone thinks town creation is awesome because it's this explicit process for creating scenarios.  Pffft.  Call of Cthulhu has an explicit process for creating adventures.  Here's what REALLY makes Town Creation different.  In Call of Cthulhu you usually START with the REALLY BAD GUY/THING.  You work backwards from that so all you really have is the bad guy and the bad thing he's doing.  In Dogs in the Vineyard you start with ordinary sympathetic folks and you work forward to the REALLY BAD GUY.

That means that shooting the bad guy doesn't solve the problem.  In fact, it can often make the problem worse because now that the really big scary dude is gone everyone else kind of flips out because hey, they were buddies with the really bad guy, does that mean the dogs will kill them next?

Example:

Pride: Brother Callan, the 15 year old son of Brother Joseph and Sister Constance, thinks he's old enough to have his own family.
Injustice: Brother Callan is always off "courting" Sister Emily, the 13 year old daughter of Brother Ebediah instead of helping his father work the fields.

Sin: Brother Callan and Sister Emily sleep together.
Demonic Attacks: Sister Emily gets pregnant and Brother Ebediah is killed in a farming accident that Brother Callan could have prevented had he been there.

False Doctrine: The Steward, Brother Garret, believes that the youth is wasted on the young.
Corrupt Worship: Sister Emily is banished (still pregnant) to live in a shack out in the desert plains.  Every Sunday Brother Garret has the childen of the town line up and he whips Brother Callan as a reminder of what happens to those who give in to youthful indiscretion.

False Priesthood: Sister Constance, Brother Ebediah, and Steward Garret agree that something must be done with youths who transgress.  Also, Sister Constance agrees to become Brother Ebediah's second wife.  They have bonded over shared family tragedy.
Sorcery: Steward Garret sends all youths who step out of line to a nearby silver mine.  While working there they rapidly age and Sister Constance, Brother Ebediah and Steward Garret all grow younger.

Hate & Murder: Brother Nolan is one of the youths sent to the mines.  His brother, Brother Cameron, age 16, goes looking for Brother Nolan and discovers what is going out at the mines.  Steward Garret has Brother Cameron publically hanged as another "example."

I won't go into the What do the Demons Want and What do the people want from the Dogs stuff.  I think most of that is pretty obvious from what's here.  Two important things of note:

1) When I run this town I always start with the Dogs seeing the scaffold with Brother Cameron's body hanging there.  I mention there's a sign posted that reads, "Spare The Rod, Spoil The Child."
2) I immediately follow this with someone in the Town mentioning that they hope the Dogs stay long enough to bless the upcoming marriage of Sister Constance and Brother Ebediah.
3) I never have Steward Garret affraid to go all demon crazy.  I change it up a bit from run to run but I mean, in one game he had wings and talons and fangs!

So yeah, at some point Steward Garret dies.  That's really not an issue.  He's effectively a vampire.  But what he's done and how ridiculously evil he is, is not the issue.  He's just a bit of fantasy fun.

What's really stake is:

1) How culpable are Brother Ebediah and Sister Constance?  Their families were legitimately destroyed and they were just following the leadership of their Steward like good faithful.  Is their marriage a good thing?
2) What about Brother Callan, Sister Emily and their baby?  Is that a family or just children playing parenthood?
3) Another interesting thing is what the Dogs choose to do about the children who have been aged.  Since the supernatural dial is so high that's wide open.  I've seen everything from, "Sorry, enjoy what little life you have left" to "We use Ceremony against the demons to reverse the process."  That's not an insignificant choice.

Does that help?

Jesse

After our game I thought about this, Simon: the demons give us someone to blame.

Say the supernatural dial is turned way down low. That means the Faithful are sinning and screwing and generally being human. But we can blame it all on the demons and the hierarchy of sin. After the Dogs perform a few exorcisms and slap a few people around (and possibly do both of those things at the same time), we can say the demons are gone and the sin's been punished.

Say the supernatural dial is turned way up high. That means the Faithful are sinning and screwing and generally being human, but there are freaking demons and people with cats eyes. Man, of course we have to blame all the problems on the demons and the hierarchy of sin. They're right there in front of us. After the Dogs perform a few exorcisms and shoot a few people around (and possibly do both of those things at the same time), we can say the demons are gone and the sin's been punished.

In both cases, the Faithful are seen as the victims of the demons. The demons give us someone to blame; they give us an excuse not to face up to our own culpability, our own human responsibilities for causing the sin in the first place.

hix wrote: After our game I thought about this, Simon: the demons give us someone to blame...they give us an excuse not to face up to our own culpability, our own human responsibilities for causing the sin in the first place.

Hold for Simon please, everybody! This could become a whole theory- and nuance-thick conversation, and that could be really fun, but we gotta do right by Simon first.

I really hope you'll answer my questions, Simon. I think they're good ones.

-Vincent

Hi Vincent!

Sorry it took me a little while to get back to this.

They're good questions.

The reason I want to go more supernatural is, I think, because I like the aesthetics of it.  I'd like to do something that's a little bit creepy and obviously superntatural, but explore the human factors behind that.  Mostly I think I'd like to experiment with different ways of playing the game.  I've got a handle on very low-supernatural play, and I'm interested to see what I can do with supernatural stuff.

That said, I'm very happy with the effects of low-supernatural play.  The most recent town I ran had a very powerful ending that I think was enhanced by the very human nature of the events in the town.  Brother Jackson had been sleeping with a prostitute, and was betrothed to another woman in the town.  The Dogs told him he'd have to call off the wedding, confess to his father and his betrothed, and live with their scorn.  He refused, and set out to go to California with the prostitute.  The dogs tried to get him to accept their judgement, and feel some remorse.  He pulled a gun, and they killed him.

The players were very conflicted about the decision to kill him.  There was a moment where they were still trying to convince him to accept their judgement, and he'd pulled a gun.  They could have stayed in the conflict, and they almost certainly would have won, but they gave, and then killed the guy, because they'd decided he wasn't worth saving.  It was a very powerful moment, and I think giving the guy some obvious demonic power wouldn't have added anything to the game, and would possibly have robbed the situation of its ambiguity.  That's what I'm worried about when I say I'm worried about doing it wrong.

Does that make sense?  I'm happy to clarify further.

Oh no problem. Take your time.

Was Brother Jackson a sorcerer? Did that town go to hate and murder?

-Vincent

Oh I also wanted to say. The basic trick for making a town with a strong villain, but preserving difficult judgment, is to make the villain be a reaction to the town's underlying problem, not the cause of it.

I'll quote myself from another thread:

lumpley wrote:
Here's about humanizing the murderous sorcerer: Don't. He's not human anymore. The Dogs will kill him and it's the right thing for them to do. When have you seen a Western when the guy in the black hat deserved to live?

What to do instead: make sure that it's someone else's pride, not his, and someone else's sin, not his, and maybe even someone else's false doctrine, not his.

Vincent, that's useful advice, and directly relevant.

Brother Jackson wasn't a Sorcerer.  The town only got as far as "Sin", I think.  Respite is a tiny town of only three families.  There were these three prostitutes who got stranded in the town by a blizzard on their way to California.  The steward (not knowing they're prostitutes) thinks the town can handle a few unfaithful for the winter, so they put them up.  Trouble ensues, as one boy falls in love with one of the prostitutes, another (Jackson) is sleeping with one of them to "get the curiosity out" before his wedding to another woman in the town, and the prostitutes themselves all have their own agendas. 

The whole town was a tangled mess of conflicting desires, and it worked out really intense in play.  I think this is  the first town where the dogs have actually set out to kill someone - i.e. judged them deserving of death.  Granted, Jackson had kind of threatened to kill one of the Dogs if he revealed what had been going on, and then later pulled a gun on them, but it was still a strong judgement.  There was a moment when we knew that if they pushed, they could get him to repent and give up, but they gave, and then killed him.

So I guess this kind of ties into a larger issue.  I've found the towns which stop before "Hate and Murder" generally much more interesting from a moral perspective than others.  "Hate and Murder" towns are often really intense, and push the characters hard, but less intense towns are often more subtly disturbing, and so far have had the most impact in terms of challenging the characters' beliefs.  I'm having trouble understanding your advice to "almost always" go to hate and murder.  To my mind, those are the less interesting towns, both as a GM and as a player.

Well, that's fine, of course. If that's what you find more interesting, that's what you find more interesting. It doesn't explain what we're doing in this thread, though. After all, supernatural special effects don't even exist before the town develops a sorcerer, and the only purpose of a sorcerer is to commit or inspire murder.

I can repeat that "[h]aving a monster in town doesn't make the town easy [or morally unambiguous], it makes the stakes high," but if you haven't found that to be true, my saying so won't make it so.

I can talk about writing up towns that go all the way to hate and murder without becoming morally black and white, but only if you're interested in writing up towns that go all the way to hate and murder in the first place. (The answer is: don't make Jackson the sorcerer. Post your town writeup and I'll bet we can find some better candidates.)

So, your call. You're already playing the game (a) correctly and (b) just the way you want to. How come you want to play it differently, again?

-Vincent

You're making some good points. 

Part of it is about working out how to play the kind of towns I'm already enjoying even better.  I feel like the "what do the demons want" step is probably important, but it hasn't felt so in the games I've run.  I'm not sure when I'd invoke the demons.

Another part is about expanding the scope of what I'm comfortable running.  I've run two pretty successful towns (and played in three good ones too), but the towns I've run have been pretty "samey" in terms of having little supernatural stuff, and not going much past "Sin" on the ladder.  I'd like to know how to go up to "Hate and Murder", as well as including supernatural stuff, without making the towns less ambiguous.  Mostly what I'm interested in preserving is the really human interactions between the Dogs and the townsfolk, the sense that these are real people, with understandable problems.

So yeah, I'm not at all unhappy with my current experiences with Dogs, but I'm looking to expand what's possible, and understand how other people enjoy this kind of play.  Kind of "extra for experts" I guess.

Here's my prep for my town, Respite Branch. It's a little abridged because I'm going from memory.

Pride:
The Steward, Phineas, thinks that the town is strong enough to cope with three unfaithful women staying through the winter in their town.  The town's a tiny place with just three houses, a couple of barns, and a general store which services the wagons headed out to California from back east.  The three women are prostitutes headed out to California, stranded by a blizzard and abandoned by the stagecoach driver they payed to take them. 

Injustice:
The Steward's wife, Marilla, is jealous of the attention the steward pays to the eldest of the three women, Ana.  They share a love of books, and Ana's seen plays performed whch Phineas has only read.  The Steward's son, Jackson, lusts after the second eldest of the women, Sheila.  He neglects his fiance, Sister Obedience.  Obedience's younger brother, August, falls in love with the youngest of the prostitutes, Bethany.  Brother Roberts, the father of Obedience and August, and a convert to the faith, knows the women are probably prostitutes, and refuses to have anything to do with them.

Sin:
Jackson sleeps with Sheila, who is trying to get out of the town.  August and Bethany sleep together, planning to get married as soon as possible.  They're in love, and Bethany is willing to convert.  Roberts refuses to go to worship with the rest of the town, and conducts his own ceremonies for his family.

Phineas wants the Dogs to tell him he was right to let the women stay, and to bring Roberts back into the fold.
Marilla wants the Dogs to take the women away.
Jackson wants the Dogs to leave him alone, and get out of town.
Roberts wants the Dogs to run the women out of town, into the snow.
Obedience wants the Dogs to bring Jackson back to her.  She knows he's straying, but she loves him.
August wants the Dogs to marry him to Bethany
Ana wants the Dogs to leave them alone.  The other two prostitutes owe her money for the passage to California, so she doesn't want either of them to stay behind.
Sheila wants to get out of town.  If she can get one of the Dogs to take her, she'll be happy, otherwise she wants to keep Jackson as a back up.
Bethany wants the Dogs to marry her to August, and to help her convert.

Great!

If the Dogs never came, what would happen?

Personally, I think that Phineas is right. The town's strong enough to cope with all this. It's easy for me to write up a future for the town where the Dogs never come, but everything works out fine. (In fact, I've done that, I'll share it if you're interested.)

But you think that Phineas is wrong, and these three women will destroy the town? The town needs the Dogs to save it? How come?

What's the worst that could happen?

-Vincent

Oh man, I totally forgot that step.  But it's not really the women destroying the town, it's the men's reactions to them.

If the dogs never come, Br. Roberts finds out about August and Bethany, and whips August to a pulp.  August runs off with Bethany.  Sheila convinces Jackson to take her to California.  Phineas and Roberts never resolve their differences, and the town splits in two.  With the two younger men gone, there's noone to do the physical work around the place, and the town falls apart.  Roberts moves away.  Marilla doesn't trust Phineas any more, and with their marriage not working, they close the store.

Perfect.

Now if you wanted to make the town worse, turn it inward and more vicious, instead of letting it just split up  and scatter that way, what would you do? Ultimately you want someone to cross a line, to do something rash, wrong, and irrevocable - but still understandable and even, in its way, sympathetic - so keep that in mind, but let's take little steps.

The book says that right now the demons want (a) the sin to become habitual, (b) the sin to escalate, and/or (c) someone else to sin in answer to the existing sin.

What if it comes into Jackson's head that, hell, he pays for sex with Sheila, why can't he pay for sex with Bethany too?

Roberts is willing and able to beat August, obviously. What would it take to make him willing and able to beat Obedience?

August doesn't have it in him to turn on his father, only to run away, even when his father beats him. What would it take to give August the will to vengeance? (If Roberts beat Bethany, would that do it?)

Marilla isn't happy with Phineas. How bad would it have to get before she'd leave him?

Phineas wouldn't, now and as written, respond to an advance from Ana, that's obvious. What would it take for her to seduce him? What would she have to do, or hold over him? What if she pretended to be Marilla in the dark?

Any thoughts?

-Vincent

Cool, I see what you're doing with this.

Roberts beating Bethany, and August killing him for that seems the most plausible of those scenarios.  In play, Roberts was the kind of guy who's extra vigilant of everyone else, because he's prone to straying himself.  Someone who's extra pious to make up for not being born to the faith.  I can definitely see him beating Bethany.  August is a young man in love, and convinced that if he doesn't marry Bethany, that makes him a sinner for sleeping with her.  He'd absolutely be capable of killing, especially in the heat of the moment.

Phineas' pride is in his faith, and in the town.  He thinks it's stronger than it is.  I'm not sure he'd ever be seduced, unless it was by trickery, as you suggest.  I'm not sure what Ana's motive would be for that though.

I can see Obedience killing Sheila, too, to bring Jackson back to her.  I can see Marilla condoning that killing also. 

I'm not sure how to get Corrupt Worship and Sorcery in there though.  Maybe Roberts decides it's right for him to maintain the spiritual purity of his family by force? So he beats August to keep him away from Bethany, and beats Obedience to stop her from going to Jackson, who he sees as a corrupted sinner.  Who's with him on this? His wife? That's possible.  Maybe August and Obedience accept that he has the right to do that?

Oh that's interesting. Know who might really like that belief? Marilla.

You can think of false doctrine as an excuse with a promotion. It lets somebody off the hook for their failure, or justifies bad behavior, or shifts the blame to somebody else.  "A father should keep his family pure, even by force" is a great example.

So my vote for a cult would be Roberts, Obedience and Marilla. Roberts and Obedience are bad cop / good cop on August, whom they're holding against his will. (I have an image of her bringing him water, stroking his hair, telling him to stop fighting and let his wickedness go, deep down scared to death that their father is going to turn on her.) Marilla is trying to bring Phineas around, she thinks that Phineas can beat Jackson back into line. What do you think?

-Vincent

Yeah, I can see that working.  I like that take on Obedience as well.

Cool. So we've got Marilla coming out to Roberts' behind Phineas' back, or against his will, to worship with Roberts' family. We've got August tied to a post in the root cellar, beaten to crap. We've got Marilla pressuring Phineas to do the same to Jackson. We've got Bethany ... what? Recovering from her beating in Phineas' house, still hoping to rescue August, marry him and convert? Jackson's still running after Sheila and Marilla still hates having Ana in her home.

To make this as bad as it can possibly be, who has to die?

What's important about the demons isn't their supernaturality, but their malice. (I expect you've noticed this.) They exist to get you to think about how things can go worse, not to think about how they can go oogy-boogy.

So who do you think? August looks pretty likely, doesn't he? Jackson doesn't mean to kill him, but how much punishment can the kid take?

If Roberts beats August to death, the Dogs arrive to him torn and cracking - he murdered his son, but now his son's pure and in heaven, but he murdered him, but for his son's good, but he murdered him. He wants the Dogs to tell him that he did the right thing and that everything's okay, and he's going to erupt if they tell him anything else. (Can they redeem him? They still could, just maybe. Will they?)

Obedience ... If it were me, here's where Obedience would find the coldness in her heart. There's no future siding with her dead brother, so she does the math and becomes her father's absolute ally and defender. If August had to die to be made pure, so be it. She wants the Dogs to beat Jackson pure in turn so that he'll come back to her and marry her. How much fun will it be if the Dogs come and Jackson's the sorcerer, but obviously in torment, and sweet little Obedience is just his follower, but this horror has burned her conscience out of her? Answer: probably a lot of fun.

Marilla's not touched by the tragedy in the same way. She thinks that if Phineas only takes Jackson well in hand, Jackson will repent sooner. If pressed, she may allow as how Roberts went to far, but she still thinks his philosophy was sound. She wants what Obedience wants.

August isn't the only possible murder victim, though. Bethany has tremendous promise - what if Roberts decides that the object of his son's lust has to die before his son's lust will? What if he murders her just before Phineas converts her, or just after he does? Good stuff.

So! Seem good? Do you have other thoughts about who has to die? Do you see it going a different way with anybody, Roberts or Obedience or anybody?

-Vincent

That sounds really cool, Vincent.  I can see how that introduces murder and sorcery without reducing the moral complexity too much. 

How would this town differ if we were playing with more supernatural stuff?

Okay!

Up to this moment, the town wouldn't differ in a single detail. You create a high-supernatural town just the same way you create a low-supernatural town, just the way we created this one: by regarding the NPCs with malice, doing terrible things to them, and having them do terrible (but understandable, but human) things to one another.

The demons don't have to be real in the game's setting. During town creation, you have to think like the demons, even if there are no such thing.

But then, in play, there are two things to consider, two sides to the question.

First, a sorcerer's dice and mechanical abilities, and a possessed person's too:

Check this out. A sorcerer's villain's dice and mechanical abilities, and a possessed person's accomplice's too.

When you give Roberts his dice, give him a sorcerer's dice and abilities, absolutely regardless whether you're playing a high-supernatural game, a low-supernatural game, or a zero-supernatural one. When you give Obedience and Marilla their dice, give them a possessed person's dice and abilities too. This is their desperation, their anger, their will to violence; it's the coldness in Obedience's heart and the jealous resentment in Marilla's.

Second (and at last we get to your question), supernatural special effects:

Whatever! It's all good.

With everything else in place, you can feel free to give the coldness in Obedience's heart, for instance, a vivid hyper-reality, or a symbolic manifestation, or its own creepy voice, if you want to. Make Roberts' guilt and self-justification into a thing, capable of touching the landscape of the game directly, visible and isolate, if you want to. You'd do it for artistic reasons: atmosphere and tone, emphasis, the inscrutable dictates of your taste and vision. Or you wouldn't do it, for the same.

We're playing Dogs right now, and we're playing with no supernatural special effects. Nevertheless, you can BET that when Brother Swanson is in a conflict, I roll 5d10 in on his side. He's a vicious bastard, is why, with a heart full of murder. The rulebook says "add the current Demonic Influence to his preferred side of any conflict ... by introducing demonic special effects into a See or Raise." In our game, a casual contempt for the Faith counts as a demonic special effect. In games I've played in the past, it wouldn't, I'd need to bring in shadows, voices, blood, empty hollows for eyes, elongated teeth, the smell of brimstone. Either way, it's really his viciousness, desperation, and murderous heart that give him those dice.

Make sense? What do you think?

-Vincent

Yeah, I get it.

Maybe it's a bad habit on our part, but typically as soon as those 5d10 hit the table, we're like "oh, so you're the bad guy then?" Now it's possible that introducing a more complex situation for hate and murder will mitigate that.  Also we've tended to play like those demonic influence dice coming out is a big revelation, which I think is a mistake.  I think it'd be better (for our purposes at least, if not universally) to make the demonic possession pretty evident right away, so the players aren't all like *gasp*, and instead just treat it as one more aspect of the character.  Supernatural stuff could help with that.

I'm getting really excited to run my next town!

Cool!

That reminds me. It's super easy to just write "the demons want what the cult wants." But you can use what the demons want to remind yourself how morally complex a town is:

The demons want the Dogs to execute Roberts in his sins, instead of fighting to redeem him.
The demons want the Dogs to convert Bethany just because she wants them to, without first attending to her past and her soul.
The demons want the Dogs to marry Jackson to Obedience, as though that will heal her.

This'll set you up as GM to respond provocatively when your players leap toward those simplistic solutions. They'll be like "5d10? Kill him! Kill him!" and you'll be like "it may be your imagination, but, like, his hand is shaking when he raises the gun."

-Vincent

You know, oddly enough, this was real easy and clear when I ran a game of Dogs in a Star Wars universe.

Because the Demonic Influence was the Dark Side. And you can just tell when someone calls on the strength of the Dark Side, can't you? Their eyes go all grim, or they're overtaken with rage. But everyone knows they're still innocent people, at heart, just that they're using something beyond themselves because they're desperate or angry or hurt or in love.

Maybe what your Dogs game needs is a strong example of someone who's been possessed, or a sorcerer, and redeemed their way back to the Faith. Like Anakin/Vader does for the Star Wars-verse. Heck, maybe that should be in the book.

Great thread, by the way. Enjoyed it very much.

Whoa.

I bought the game today (waiting for it to hit my inbox), so I had obviously made up my mind that DITV was worth owning. But this thread and Vincent's involvement in walking Simon through town creation has me virtually frothing at the mouth to try the system out. The depth of storytelling options is astounding.

I am also really digging the idea that demons aren't scary for their spookiness so much as their desire to hurt and destroy. Wow. When I first started looking at reviews for the game, I got the impression that the Dogs might be complicated characters merely because they are self-righteous and above the law in a society that allows them to be such. Now I see that they actually have a valid role to play in their society, and they can choose to be a true champion of the faith or a tyrant. That is an "option" in a lot of other games, but you can see it float to the surface like cream in this setting and ruleset.

Whoa.

I don't know about other people, but our game is intersting because the Dogs are both at the same time.  They're tyrants and murderers, and saviours and saints.  And the contradiction is getting more apparent with each town.

I hope you have fun with the game!