Dogs in the Vineyard

So two weeks ago my gaming group (two bad dudes I met on the internet) and I played our first session of Dogs in the Vineyard.

In case you don't know, DitV is a Role-Playing Game, which means, yes, "that Dungeons and Dragons thing". Except that in Dogs in the Vinyard you don't play heroic dwarves fighting their way through dank dungeons and slaying foul dragons. You play a member of the Order Set Apart for the Preservation of the Faithful, otherwise known as: God's Watchdogs.

The game takes place in the 1800's in the fictional Deseret Territory (Utah-ish), within a cloistered religious community that has set up their lives out here in order to flee the vice festering in the Decadent East. It's clearly inspired by early Mormonism.

So in the game, you play as one of the Dogs, 17-19 year olds who are chosen to spend a few years of their young lives serving their communities by going from town to town, delivering mail and blessing babies.

Oh yeah, and rooting out sin, too.

All for the greater good of the Faith of All Things in the King of Life, Reborn.

Dogs are beholden to no one save other Dogs. What they judge to be righteous, the King of Life decrees is righteous.

It's a game about making tough choices and learning to deal with the consequences. It's a game about morality.

You get into these characters and play them straight, un-ironically, no matter what your opinion of fundamentalist religion.

Back to the top: We had our first session, and it was unbelievable. I'm pretty new to actually playing role-playing games, as opposed to collecting and reading them, and playing DitV a couple weeks ago was quite possibly the most concentrated fun I've had in my life. Quite possibly. We play again tomorrow, and I'm stoked.

Here's a quick recap of our first session, to get me in a good head-space for the game tomorrow, and to share what makes this game so awesome. I'm going to forego describing the game mechanics (though I love them, and enjoy talking about them at length) for now.

We created characters first, a process that takes a little time but is completely worth it, as you come out of it with a concept of a living, breathing person. You give your character a name, and he or she has various levels of ability in four basic stats: Body (physical power, fighting), Will (um, the strength of your will), Heart (interpersonal strengths as well as empathy and charisma), and Acuity (intelligence, quickness).

Then you create Traits, which are phrases describing your character that tie into an ability the character has. For example, some of my character's traits:

1. "My mother taught me how to cook a fine meal."
2. "I prefer to fight without guns." and
3. "I'm the man in my family."

So whenever a situation comes up in the game that has to do with the trait, I get a bonus to my ability to be succesful in that situation. If fighting breaks out, and we're fighting without guns, I'd get a bonus to my chance to beat the guy I'm fighting with.

After Character Creation was done, we played through our initial conflicts. These are something that take place during the Dog's training at their Temple, before they're sent out into their communities to cleanse them of sin. The initial conflicts are something the character wants to accomplish.

For example, my friend's character, Althea Griffiths, wanted to impress her teacher with her hand-to-hand fighting skills, so the teacher set up a fight with another (male) student who kept berating her for being a woman and not knowing her place (Oh man. I almost want to show/tell you the dice mechanics here, but that would bog things down. They are SO. FUCKING. COOL. I am gibbering about this game right now, mad with joy). Althea kicked his ass and quoted scripture at him at the same time ("All are children of the King of Life"), so then my friend added the trait to his character, "I impressed my teacher with my fighting skills."

My character wanted to distance himself from the reputation of his failure of a father, who was once a Dog, but deserted his post during active duty, came back to the Temple with his tail between his legs, and now serves food to the Dog trainees. We had a conflict with a fellow trainee in the mess hall, with Hiram the trainee calling out my character, Brother Judah, for being a weakling and coward like my father. Brother Judah froze up, his worst fears made public, and couldn't respond to Hiram.

Finally he slammed down his plate, stood up, pointed at his father, and vowed that he was not like the man. Hiram undercut him with, "You're acting like an ass in public, just like him." Judah would've been out of it at that point, but he escalated, grabbing Hiram by his shirt, looking him in the eyes, and spitting the words, "I am not the man," then hauling off and landing only a glancing blow. Hiram shot back with a solid punch to the face, with Judah bleeding from his nose all over himself and looking stupid.

I ended up losing the conflict, so I took the trait, "People associate me with my failure of a father". Also, I took Fallout, which means something negative happens to my character as a result of the loss, and so I decided to lose the knife my father gave me, which my mother made me promise I would carry, by chucking it in a rage into the grain fields right after I was humiliated in the mess hall. I also learned something from the conflict, so I decided to strengthen the existing trait, "I'm the man in my family", to represent my character further resolving that his father is a weakling, and he wants to be nothing like him.

Oh man. There's nothing cooler than sitting at a table with people and doing this.

It probably doesn't make much sense to those who've never played an RPG, but I was trying to get across the story of what happened, you know, what actually came out in play, rather than give you the nitty-gritty of how the game works. Perhaps in another post.