Posted by Jim at July 23rd, 2005

I played in a game Friday night. Joe ran “Dogs in the Vineyard.” It’s a role playing game written by an ex-Morman that combines the mythology of the Wild West with mythology of the settlement of Utah. You can read Ed’s commentary about the game at Esoteric Murmurs.

People play the “God’s Watchdogs,” a group combining the functions of circuit riding old west preachers and traveling gunfighters. Their job is to keep order in the towns of “the Faithful,” a religious group that left the decadent east. A collection of small towns and villages in hostile territory, “the Faithful’s” settlements have no police force or judicial system. The “Dogs” protect them from threats from the outside and sins within.

Authority is a major theme of the game. No one keeps the “Dogs” in line. Any decision they make is assumed to be beyond question. They choose whether to punish or show mercy and how.

Our Group:

Sister Ruth: A healer and sharpshooter. Unlike most of the group, she’s level headed and prone to think before shooting.
Brother Everett: Raised in the east, he was kidnapped by a Faithful Uncle and brought west. Much of the time he’s been pretending to believe, but recently (and almost against his will) has begun to believe.
Brother Jude: Coming out of a troubled background, Jude distrusts authority despite having become the ultimate authority in many people’s lives. In an effort to avoid possession, he’s also come to have a relationship with a demon.
Brother Josiah (my character): Born into a Faithful family, Josiah nonetheless went to college in the east, learning a great deal about science. His family is strongly connected with the Territorial Authority (the government back east).

Which brings me to the games so far. Joe’s run three games. Here they are:

1. In the first game, we discovered that the town Steward was working with a local builder in a land grab scheme. After sneaking into the man’s house at night, Everett shot the builder in the street. The Steward (Jude’s brother) was sent back to the Dogs’ Temple for wiser heads to punish, barely escaping immediate execution by Jude.
2. In the second game, we discovered that the town doctor was allied with demons, Brother Everett shot the doctor, and incapacitated the Doctor’s demon possessed wife. Brother Jude picked up the Doctor’s spell book and only barely escaped possession himself.
3. The third game began began before the Dogs even rode into town. Finding a group of armed men menacing a farmer, we disovered that the local tax collector was corrupt. Not only was he taxing more than he ought to, he was focusing his efforts on a family of Chinese converts and keeping the extra money for himself. By the end, Everett killed half the man’s gang of enforcers (the four Boyce brothers) and the others left town, having been nearly killed by Jude. Owing to Josiah’s contacts within government, the tax collector will likely be stripped of his office and the remaining Boyce brothers will find their faces on “Wanted Dead or Alive” posters.

For me, the third game was the best of the three. It was the first game in which Josiah’s background actually mattered. It directly affected the story, forcing the Boyce brothers to stop collecting taxes because their methods (not noticeably different from highway robbery) were against the law. Not only that, it was the first time I was able to bring Josiah’s desire to invent devices into the game.

In previous episodes, he’s mostly (like Ruth) acted as a buffer between the townspeople and Jude and Everett’s tendencies to shoot first and ask questions later. Admittedly, this time he was enthusiastically part of Jude’s idea to drop by the tax collector’s house/store late at night and yank the guy out of bed for questioning. Still, Josiah has yet to shoot anybody. In the context of the game so far, that’s amazing.

I can’t think of anyone shot so far that hasn’t deserved to die, but I’ll be surprised if that continues. In the course of visiting three towns, we’ve killed 4 people and badly injured 2 more.

Young men with guns make for entertaining stories, but I’m glad I don’t run into them in real life.