Dogs in the Vineyard

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 3:50 am

I know very little about this game. Apparently, you're Mormons with magical powers sent to do God's bidding, keeping the folks on the straight and narrow. There's some wacky dice "bidding" system. Can anyone tell me more?

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:00 am

It is hugely popular and successful with the indie set and is made by a guy who made a game called "Kill Puppies For Satan" a while back.

I can't tell you any more about it since I don't have time to play it (too busy with my Shadowrun campaign, my D&D campaigns, and playtesting RPGs I wrote myself) but there's a bunch of actual play threads about it at The Forge, if you can stomach their ivory tower airs.

K · Post by K » Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:05 am

The Forge does seem to love dice-bidding.

It's like that place is a museum for failed RPG mechanics.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:34 am

Dogs in the Vineyard is by the same guy who went on to write Apocalypse World. In my social circle, everyone who liked Dogs liked Apocalypse more, largely because the dice mechanics were way less complicated.

Meanwhile, most of my social circle found Dogs confusing and uninspiring.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:37 am

Dogs in the Vineyard is by the same guy who went on to write Apocalypse World. In my social circle, everyone who liked Dogs liked Apocalypse more, largely because the dice mechanics were way less complicated.

That other thread spawned this one; I just didn't want to derail. Can you go into DItV/AW in greater detail? I'm perusing the mechanics and it seems very...unusual for my style of play.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:42 am

My knowledge of DitV is limited to some descriptions from the people who played it, but I can definitely do a more thorough AW review. As far as comparing the two, I can't go in-depth due to not knowing DitV.

DitV has
--some kind weird dicepool thing where you roll talking dice and then shooting dice. Basically what PhoneLobster proposed a while back I think.
--I think most all rolls are opposed?
--Normal RPG assumptions (players operate as a team to sovle a GM-generated problem)

AW has
--Everything is resolved by rolling 2d6
--No opposed rolls except in certain PC vs PC edge cases
--PCs aren't a team and don't have a task

Personally, it's the last that really sold AW to me. rules-lite is frustrating to me when you're supposed to operate with a team, because it's hard to get everyone on the same page. It's also rough when the MC is supposed to write up "an adventure" for players to "solve" because then you've gotta be worried about them blitzing through it too easily or whatever. In AW you really spend most of the time just watching the players go off and start shit on their own, and life just sort of grinds on until you get bored. the loose structure and the loose mechanics match.

More detailed review follows.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 6:53 am

DitV is one of those games games where "Is moderately strong (d8)" is substantially better than "Is very strong (d6)". The story goes in escalation cycles, and as I recall there are three (talking, shoving, shooting). Once you escalate things, you can't go back. Play goes around with people naming a trait and then rolling the die attached to it. Winning and losing rounds get you bonus traits with dice attached to them. A trait like "seriously injured (d10)" is actually really good to have, while a trait like "Is feared and respected (d4)" is fucking worthless.

DitV makes almost no sense and actually isn't very good. If you read between the lines, the game didn't even function when the author was playing the test game that he used for the example of play. The players had no idea what they were supposed to do and didn't really want to do what the DM ultimately railroaded them into doing.

DitV gets props for thinking outside the box, and probably belongs in the discussion about what an RPG is and where the genre should go. But that's all there is. You wouldn't actually do things like DitV, because it sucks. You'd just consider things as original as DitV.

-Username17

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 6:58 am

That's a perfect description of how DitV went for our group, right down to the confused railroading.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:01 am

I think if the rough setting (mormon cowboy paladins evading the federal government) were transplanted into a better system (dice pool or d20 or whatever) then you'd come out with something that people would want to play.

Everyone I've told the game's outline to has wanted to play it, until they've heard about the strange-wacky rules they had to learn to play.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 9:34 am

mormon cowboy paladins evading the federal government

Wow. That sounds like a pretty awesome setting, actually.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 2:45 pm

Yeah, any setting that encourages playing Joshua Graham is OK in my book.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 3:09 pm

All I know is second hand.
That said, the thing I kept hearing was that you don't have winning or losing, you have outcomes. So if you "win" a fight, you're actually just choosing the outcome (other guy is killed, other guy is disarmed, bystanders are impressed, etc.) and the loser also gets to set some outcomes ("winner" injured, crowd disgusted, etc.). That sounds more interesting than most games, and seems like it would work really well in a very political game. The problem is that I've never even heard of a DIV situation or character that I cared about.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:02 pm

A trait like "seriously injured (d10)" is actually really good to have, while a trait like "Is feared and respected (d4)" is fucking worthless.

That's what I was getting from reading the book. You can have bad traits that actually help you for some reason. No idea why.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 5:45 pm

Psychic Robot wrote:
A trait like "seriously injured (d10)" is actually really good to have, while a trait like "Is feared and respected (d4)" is fucking worthless.
That's what I was getting from reading the book. You can have bad traits that actually help you for some reason. No idea why.

It's a directed narrative, not a character quality rendition. So you get to roll big dice because you worked the directed narrative path segments into the story. If you use denigrated narrative elements instead, you roll smaller dice. That's it. The actual capabilities of the character are meaningless, the only input is using the favored narrative elements vs. using the unfavored ones.

-Username17

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Wed Jun 22, 2011 7:24 pm

Colonel Bowie has the trait "too sick to walk". He has himself carried across the line in the sand. That has a much higher impact than the folks who just walk across.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:50 am

It's a directed narrative, not a character quality rendition. So you get to roll big dice because you worked the directed narrative path segments into the story. If you use denigrated narrative elements instead, you roll smaller dice. That's it. The actual capabilities of the character are meaningless, the only input is using the favored narrative elements vs. using the unfavored ones.

The entire thing is difficult to wrap my simulationist-lite mind around. The idea that being a cripple can make you better in combat is troubling, to say the least. Unfortunately, if you're trying to overcome challenges, it seems to me that the game is going to revolve around using any high-die traits at the expense of making a lick of sense. Certainly, some traits won't be much of a winner in combat, but if your trait is 2d10 "hot temper," you can get a huge edge in basically every confrontation.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 5:15 am

Infuriatingly, his fans would probably say "you should just *choose* making sense over rolling high dice. if it doesn't make sense to you that your character would succeed, don't use your abilities to succeed."

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 5:57 am

Why make it a rule if no interpretation of it makes any sense?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:03 am

Infuriatingly, his fans would probably say "you should just *choose* making sense over rolling high dice. if it doesn't make sense to you that your character would succeed, don't use your abilities to succeed."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 7:14 am

The idea is that you are supposed to tell stories that involve major traits of the characters. So if you tell the story about how your character is impeded by his crippling injuries, you are rewarded mechanically by succeeding more in the overall adventure.

It's the same theory of storytelling that gives you FATE. You invoke negative traits to give yourself temporary setbacks and give yourself fate points that ultimately make you more likely to succeed at the overall mission. It's just that in DitV there isn't an intermediary step. There is just a single ongoing resolution score, so when you get rewarded for telling a story about how your limitations hold your character back, the increased resolution score happens immediately.

-Username17

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:42 pm

Chamomile wrote:
mormon cowboy paladins evading the federal government
Wow. That sounds like a pretty awesome setting, actually.

I don't know about you, but I play TTRPGs to escape daily life....

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:53 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:
Chamomile wrote:
mormon cowboy paladins evading the federal government
Wow. That sounds like a pretty awesome setting, actually.
I don't know about you, but I play TTRPGs to escape daily life....

You're a Mormon cowboy paladin evading the federal government? I think you might be a fringe case.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:54 pm

Oh lord no. I could never wear shorts in the winter time.

Nihlin · Post by **Nihlin** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 8:50 pm

Lokathor wrote:I think if the rough setting (mormon cowboy paladins evading the federal government) were transplanted into a better system (dice pool or d20 or whatever) then you'd come out with something that people would want to play.

Everyone I've told the game's outline to has wanted to play it, until they've heard about the strange-wacky rules they had to learn to play.

Conversely, swapping some version of the DitV rules (often heavily modded) into Old Republic Star Wars is quite popular, and actually rather close to what the author occasionally claims to have been going for.

See, you do not actually have god-given magical powers in DitV - at least, not by default - and by no means are your judgements divinely guided. By default, you have a gun, a socially-respected badge of office (the dog's coat), and stats that mean that you will almost always win a gunfight with the hoi polloi. That means that you typically either tell stories about the Taliban, or about young idealist cops that become old cynical cops due to the ills of society.

And that brings us to the Old Republic. Jedi also lack any actually divine guidance, though the force is quite a decent facsimile should they be inclined to follow it. However, regardless of Light or Dark inclinations, what all Jedi fundamentally have is a lightsaber, a socially-respected badge of office (the jedi's robes), and the ability to fuck up almost anyone in combat. That entails a hefty moral burden, but perhaps less problematic than the default setting.

Neigh-useless wikipedia article follows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_in_the_Vineyard

Nihlin · Post by **Nihlin** » Thu Jun 23, 2011 9:01 pm

Orion wrote:Meanwhile, most of my social circle found Dogs confusing and uninspiring.

My social circle is mostly that, too, but there is a subset that loves DitV. Mysteriously, members of this latter group are all from Massachusetts and picked up the game by playing it with the author rather than reading the book. I'm thinking that there may be a link.