We had first session of Dogs in the Vineyard last night for the podcast. It went pretty well, considering we unfortunately had a 3 week break (due to plague) between character creation and our first town. I have a couple quick questions and thoughts, though.

The Situation: Sister Olive was teaching the Mountain People converts the Faith in their own tongue, but what nobody outside the Mountain People know is she’s teaching them to hate themselves, because she has a great Hatred for the Mountain People (2d8). One convert, Unity, was getting wise to the fact that maybe this isn’t how the rest of the Faithfull believe, but it was too late, she was already a cultist. Olive performed a ritual and got Unity possessed. The Demon then proceeded to inflict a terrible wasting sickness on Unity, taking her out of the picture before she could tell anybody what Olive was up to.

So, the Dogs gather around for 3 in Authority and try to exorcize the demon from poor Unity. Now, here’s my question:

Which dice do I roll to represent the opposition? I narrowed it down to 3 options:

Olive’s Acuity + Heart + Demonic Influence + Relationship with A Demon since she’s the one “cursing” Unity.
Unity’s Acuity + Heart + Demonic Influence + Relationship with A Demon since she’s the one possessed.
4d6 + the current Demonic Influence for the general possession?

Eventually I decided on Unity, which was cool because the demon refused to give, and she ended up taking enough fallout to put her in risk of dying. But I’d like to hear some feedback on reasoning for picking the other options.

I think, overall there are three things I should work on for next session.

1) Give early, set up future conflicts. Part of the session dragged a little long because I stuck with conflicts to the bitter end when I really didn’t need to. Like the Good Book says (lol) “It can be as soon as one side sees which way the wind’s blowing” I saw the wind blowing against me early several times (especially when multiple Dogs ganged up on someone). Exactly as the advice in the book says, part of the reason I stuck with it so long was because the stakes probably were a little higher than they should have been. That, and I always feel that interfacing with the rules is one of the main enjoyable parts of an RPG, so I’d stay in the conflicts to keep that going. Our time is short, however, and there are usually so many conflicts to get to in a session that I fear follow up conflicts won’t get their proper due.
2) Set smaller stakes. This is hard. I did successfully do it once, one player wanted to convince the Steward’s Mountain Person wife to redouble her efforts to save the marriage (she wanted out) and I negotiated it down to “How about she redoubles her efforts to learn English (which she didn’t speak at all) instead?” That worked out pretty well.
3) Don’t freak out if the Dogs handily defeat anyone they gang up on. From reading on here, that’s pretty much just how it goes. Instead, focus on making towns where simply killing the “bad guy” isn’t enough. The Dogs need to sort out HOW and WHY that badguy was formed, and as Vincent says, make sure the sorcerer got where he/she did because of someone ELSE’s sin. My town didn’t really have that. The Bad guy was bad because bad things had happened to her in her childhood, and she was angry about it. Pretty straightforward stuff.

Next town, though, I’ll try to build it to play with the assumptions the players made this time around. Now I gotta work in that “Even now? Do you still believe what you believe? How about NOW?” I didn’t work that in as much this time, which I suppose is where those follow up conflicts are important.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. Any feedback/advice is welcome!

I'd've gone with Unity too - if you want to think about it this way, you can: the conflict's with the demon, and since it's possessing Unity it gets Unity's dice.

I can imagine that there'd be circumstances where you might choose to use Olive instead, but by default, Unity. Either way, never go with 4d6+demonic influence when there's a person involved.

Your 1, 2 and 3 are good. For town creation, don't go insano with the "even now? even NOW?" You don't want to be like a hammer pounding unsubtly on things. Just let it guide you gently along.

-Vincent