ANDREAS MELHORN'S REVIEW

Dogs in the Vineyard

Dogs in the Vineyard is a new game that comes from The Forge. It can be bought on the homepage of the author ($14 for the pdf, $22 for the book). The Cover is nice. The rest has no illustrations. I love the writing style used in the book. Vincent Baker, the author, writes in a very direct, sometimes even harsh tone, but always entertaining and easy to understand.

The players are Gods Watchdogs in a magical Wild West that never was. They travel through the land and try to fight sin and demons and generally make things better.

But how do they react on sin, heresy and violence? That�s for the players to decide. And sometimes it will not be ease, because more often than not there is no �bad guy�. What is if the woman who spreads the heresy that women should be allowed to have more than one husband, just had found some nice guy who dried her tears when her husband treated her badly. She would never act against her marriage, that would not be right, but she should have the right to go to someone else from time to time. That�s what she thinks. But unfortunately her heresy will bring demons who will spread violence and death.

Enter player characters. What will they do? Will they punish the woman or probably her husband?

The game is played like a TV series with one village per episode.

The rules are not too complicated to grasp. It will probably take some dice rolls to get used to it, but after that everything should run smoothly.

Character generation is easy. There is a number of dice that must be distributed between some stats, traits, things and relationships (yes, even things and relationships). Only the stats are set in stone the rest is made up by the players.

Conflict resolution is the work of a genius. The dice are rolled and left on the table. The rest is a matter of �raise� and �see� from the opponents (the opponents can be one man against another man or healer against sickness).

Raise: �I go to the man with the gun: �Do not shoot the woman. You still love her.��

See: �Go out of my way. She is not the woman she used to be. She is evil.�

Traits and things are rolled when they come into play. And all the time all opponents can escalate the conflict to violence. That means you get some more dice, but it also means that a conflict can head to an undesirable direction.

The game world is not described in detail. Mostly, the descriptions are about the people, how they live and what sorts of responsibilities they have and how demons and sin can cause problems. There are also tips how a village can be created. The story will come from this information. You get some people with goals and problems and you have the Dogs, who come and try to make things right.

Dogs in the Vineyard is a game with a high potential for some really intense roleplaying. Here you can tell real tales without prepared plot but with lots of difficult decisions. I love it.

Andreas Melhorn