Miscellany: Dogs in the Vineyard first impressions

"Dogs in the Vineyard" is an independent tabletop RPG by D. Vincent Baker about a highly abstracted Old West "that never quite was." The setting is loosely reminiscent of pre-statehood Utah, and there's a lot of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-tinged culture inhabiting these stark valleys and scrubby deserts. The players are the King's Watchdogs, or "Dogs" for short, and they have absolute authority...for better or worse.

It's an incredibly evocative setting married to an interesting set of rules. Conflict resolution is based on rolling many dice based on your stats and any special circumstances. The resulting dice pool isn't compared to any kind of difficulty level or target number, but instead is used in a poker-style system where opponents Raise and See each other, narrating as they go. The way the rules are set up only allow your Dog to die when he or she is willing to die for something, which makes a heckuva lot of dramatic sense, IMHO.

I also like how the game encourages the GM to abstain from making any moral judgments about the characters' actions. True moral quandaries are rare in most RPGs (kill the monsters and steal their loot is the norm), so it's nice to have some interesting choices. Do you kill someone who's about to murder his wife because of an affair? Do you help them? What if that someone was your own brother? DitV seems to be about pushing characters as far as they'll go, which is inherently interesting.

Mind you, these impressions stem just from reading the game and not playing it. I hope to get a real playtest in soon. If it sounds like it's your cup of tea, you can order the softcover digest-size book from a few independent game stores, or you can buy the PDF directly from the publisher.