Ran my first Dogs game last night and it went down GREAT!  I’ll spare you the details, but I’d love to share a couple highlights and get feedback on a rules call.

Players: Jonathan Tweet (Brother Zebediah), Clint “Ogre” Whiteside (Brother Shadrach), and Richard Garfield (Brother Uriah). 

The primary town situation was inspired from the parable of the prodigal son.  Lots of internal family drama which Uriah solved pretty-much single-handedly by confronting the family patriarch during family dinner.  It was a good thing I took the advice from y’all and “went deeper” during town creation or the ending would have been too short and anti-climatic.

Fortunately for the story, the prodigal son had returned home with “a friend”, Brother Harland, who turned out to be possessed by a very lustful demon who was charming various women and young ladies about town.  This was my version of "the community under attack by demons."

This ultimately led to a boss fight right in the middle of town out on main street. Harland was hanging out at the school yard during recess, watching all the young lasses awkwardly try and flirt with him. The school marm, also overcome with lustful desires, approached Harland just as the Dogs strolled up.  There was no question what was about to happen, the conflict went directly to gun fighting.

It was vicious.  All three PC’s took gunfighting fallout damage, which resulted in “long term” for Shadrach, “injured” for Zebidiah, and “badly injured” for Uriah.  I was sweating bullets, I really didn’t want to kill off two of the industry’s leading game designers in their first session! Fortunately everyone made their healing rolls. Whew.

There was one call I made which I’m not sure was exactly legal or not so I’d love to get feedback on it.  After the second round of combat (when the villain raised with a 17 and everyone took damage!) when it was Ogre’s raise Brother Shadrach put out a strong raise of 13, “leveling my rifle right where his heart is --- or where it would be, if he had one.”  He thought he had me ‘cause I was running low on dice.  But I decided to give the villain relationship dice for the women and girls he was seducing with his demonically-enhanced seduction skill and rolled 2d8.  The result, a 14.

How do you block a bullet with a relationship?  <evil grin>

Oh yes I did!  “Brother Shadrach, your aim was true, the bullet went straight to the chest. Unfortunately, ‘brother’ Harland pulled the school teacher in front of him as a human shield and she absorbed the blow, and is now slumping to the ground, quite dead.”

Technically legal or not?  Either way, it was the highlight moment of the game for sure.

The table was stunned. Ogre had that look of shock you only rarely see in a player’s eyes, especially valuable when encountered on the face of a player as experienced as those of us in the indie RPG scene.  Of course Jonathan Tweet had to immediately rub it in. “Wow, Brother Shadrach, I’m really impressed with how you put down that school teacher to get to the demon. Don’t think I’d a had the heart to do that.”

Even better, the school teacher’s husband was a blood relative of Shadrach. Shadrach now has a new trait, “Killed my cousin’s wife in a gunfight.  2d8”

Not to let it drop easily, during reflection Tweet observed, "I think I like Ogre's character a little less now..."

Goddamn I love this game.

--Peter

Great!

That move with the schoolteacher? Technically legal like crazy.

-Vincent