Dogs in the Vineyard
Here's a good stab at one of my current projects. I welcome comments from anybody who happens to read this.
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Dogs in the Vineyard.
Dogs in the Vineyard is set in a fictionalized, fantasized pre-statehood Utah, with demons, monsters, magic, and a supernaturally charged landscape. The PCs are like circuit preachers, missionaries and marshalls - they travel from congregation to congregation, holding the "vineyard" together both socially and spiritually. They're responsible for the faith of the communities they visit, which will often mean identifying, getting to the heart of, and resolving the sins of the community members.
The how-to-play is like crime fiction or some westerns. The PCs come into town (actually, small communities, almost like medieval manors more than towns. Congregations). Anyhow into town. The people in the community like it when the PCs come; they've been holding off baptising their children or getting married because it's an honor to have the PCs officiate, that sort of thing. The PCs are what connect the community to the larger society, too, carrying letters and news.
In every community there are some certain people you create in advance: someone representing the secular government, like a marshall or a tax collector or a census guy, someone representing the church, like a bishop, with a bishopric and clerks and things if the community's big enough, and for each PC someone connected to the PC by blood. The community's a circle; these people are dots inside the circle with arrows crossing out of it, pointing to what they point to.
(This is right out of Ron Edward's the Sorcerer's Soul.)
Now there's something wrong in the community. Of course. That's what makes the game interesting, otherwise you're just roleplaying being welcomed by the people and kissing their babies and shaking their hands. The PCs are specifically called
by the church to deal with what's wrong in the communities. That's their job. When they show up, amidst all the baby kissing and being welcomed, some people are acting odd, or something bad has recently happened, or there's something just not right. The GM's job is to reveal the manifestations of the wrongness, not to stonewall - although NPC stonewalling is fine, when called for.
"Something wrong" falls into a tidy little progression, which looks like this:
Pride (manifests as injustice)
-leads to->
Sin (manifests as demons outside, like famine, plague, Indian raids, outlaw bands)
-leads to->
False Doctrine (manifests as corrupt religious practices and heresy)
-leads to->
False Priesthood (manifests as demons inside, like sorcery, possession and demons passing as members)
-leads to->
Hate (manifests as murder)
So GM prep for the game is to figure out who's doing wrong, what level of wrong they're doing, what the specific manifestations are, and how the wrongies are connected to the dots with arrows people. Which all seems doable to me.
Then in play the PCs have to resolve it. Sometimes that'll mean solve it like a mystery, but usually it won't be that mysterious, it'll be entangled instead and tricky to navigate. Like as I say crime fiction and some westerns. Also, the PCs
are answerable to God, not to the law; bringing a murderer to justice isn't their goal, but helping the community recover from the murder and the murderer's actions.
I said Indian raids, but it'll be a little different. In the game, the desert people will be demonstrably the fallen remnant of an offshoot of the First People. I want an almost sword and sorcery lost civilization feel, unlike the real-world West, where instead of being alien, the natives are familiar enough to be creepy and wrong. Uncanny valley stuff. I'm also trying to work in some sense of sacred landscape, but that'll have to come. Anyhow.
There will be some fighting, with dedicated fighting rules. They'll be quick, brutal, bloody, and rarely fatal. The typical outcome of a fight will be one person disabling the other: intimidating him, disarming him, knocking him down, knocking
him out, breaking his arm, up to killing him. Most of the time if you kill someone it'll be because you needed to stop him HARD and he didn't recover. There'll be guns but they'll be pre- and early-Civil War, revolvers and carbines the shape of flintlocks, before the Colt Navy and its distinctive sixgun shape.
You know how usually the GM gets to have God as an NPC? Not in this game. In this game, you the player are responsible for your own PC's religious experiences, with some clearly defined mechanical options and no oversight from the GM or anybody. Which will mean that you're responsible for judging your character's righteousness, with a totally free hand and like I say no oversight. If you say that your character's conscience is clear, God agrees with you. If you say that your character has sinned, so he has, and you decide yourself if he can make amends and how.
Each prob resolved will be a significant piece of character improvement. The PCs start out competent and get really competent fast. But! there are a variety of ways for them to leave play, including falling into sin. When your character leaves play, you get his full value back, plus a bit for your trouble, to put into your next character. Ending your character's story won't cost you any kind of effectiveness, it won't set you back as a player, so hopefully we'll see a fair bit of it. A common ending will be that your character becomes so involved in a particular community that he stays there; I'll encourage you to play him as an NPC next time you visit and have him help out as occasion presents.
I have a cool visual thing, too. The PCs' uniform, their like badge, is a long coat, hand-pieced and quilted by their families or the people in the communities they've helped. I picture the PCs in like Eerie canal boatsman shirts, Quaker-oat-guy hats, and these long, beautiful, colorful Seminole-pieced coats. I like it as a nod to Joseph in Egypt.
Ad and/or back cover copy:
Called to stand between God's law and the good intentions of the weak...
Called to judge the wicked, but offer compassion to the sinner...
Called to give solace to the downtrodden and lead the righteous in triumph...
Called to preserve the faith of a people beset...
Dogs in the Vineyard
a roleplaying game
---
Questions:
1) What do you think of the title? It's been growing on me a lot.
2) What do you think of the "something's wrong" progression?
3) Mormons are my target audience, but I hope to make it interesting enough to appeal to nonMormons. What do you think so far?
---
Dogs in the Vineyard.
Dogs in the Vineyard is set in a fictionalized, fantasized pre-statehood Utah, with demons, monsters, magic, and a supernaturally charged landscape. The PCs are like circuit preachers, missionaries and marshalls - they travel from congregation to congregation, holding the "vineyard" together both socially and spiritually. They're responsible for the faith of the communities they visit, which will often mean identifying, getting to the heart of, and resolving the sins of the community members.
The how-to-play is like crime fiction or some westerns. The PCs come into town (actually, small communities, almost like medieval manors more than towns. Congregations). Anyhow into town. The people in the community like it when the PCs come; they've been holding off baptising their children or getting married because it's an honor to have the PCs officiate, that sort of thing. The PCs are what connect the community to the larger society, too, carrying letters and news.
In every community there are some certain people you create in advance: someone representing the secular government, like a marshall or a tax collector or a census guy, someone representing the church, like a bishop, with a bishopric and clerks and things if the community's big enough, and for each PC someone connected to the PC by blood. The community's a circle; these people are dots inside the circle with arrows crossing out of it, pointing to what they point to.
(This is right out of Ron Edward's the Sorcerer's Soul.)
Now there's something wrong in the community. Of course. That's what makes the game interesting, otherwise you're just roleplaying being welcomed by the people and kissing their babies and shaking their hands. The PCs are specifically called
by the church to deal with what's wrong in the communities. That's their job. When they show up, amidst all the baby kissing and being welcomed, some people are acting odd, or something bad has recently happened, or there's something just not right. The GM's job is to reveal the manifestations of the wrongness, not to stonewall - although NPC stonewalling is fine, when called for.
"Something wrong" falls into a tidy little progression, which looks like this:
Pride (manifests as injustice)
-leads to->
Sin (manifests as demons outside, like famine, plague, Indian raids, outlaw bands)
-leads to->
False Doctrine (manifests as corrupt religious practices and heresy)
-leads to->
False Priesthood (manifests as demons inside, like sorcery, possession and demons passing as members)
-leads to->
Hate (manifests as murder)
So GM prep for the game is to figure out who's doing wrong, what level of wrong they're doing, what the specific manifestations are, and how the wrongies are connected to the dots with arrows people. Which all seems doable to me.
Then in play the PCs have to resolve it. Sometimes that'll mean solve it like a mystery, but usually it won't be that mysterious, it'll be entangled instead and tricky to navigate. Like as I say crime fiction and some westerns. Also, the PCs
are answerable to God, not to the law; bringing a murderer to justice isn't their goal, but helping the community recover from the murder and the murderer's actions.
I said Indian raids, but it'll be a little different. In the game, the desert people will be demonstrably the fallen remnant of an offshoot of the First People. I want an almost sword and sorcery lost civilization feel, unlike the real-world West, where instead of being alien, the natives are familiar enough to be creepy and wrong. Uncanny valley stuff. I'm also trying to work in some sense of sacred landscape, but that'll have to come. Anyhow.
There will be some fighting, with dedicated fighting rules. They'll be quick, brutal, bloody, and rarely fatal. The typical outcome of a fight will be one person disabling the other: intimidating him, disarming him, knocking him down, knocking
him out, breaking his arm, up to killing him. Most of the time if you kill someone it'll be because you needed to stop him HARD and he didn't recover. There'll be guns but they'll be pre- and early-Civil War, revolvers and carbines the shape of flintlocks, before the Colt Navy and its distinctive sixgun shape.
You know how usually the GM gets to have God as an NPC? Not in this game. In this game, you the player are responsible for your own PC's religious experiences, with some clearly defined mechanical options and no oversight from the GM or anybody. Which will mean that you're responsible for judging your character's righteousness, with a totally free hand and like I say no oversight. If you say that your character's conscience is clear, God agrees with you. If you say that your character has sinned, so he has, and you decide yourself if he can make amends and how.
Each prob resolved will be a significant piece of character improvement. The PCs start out competent and get really competent fast. But! there are a variety of ways for them to leave play, including falling into sin. When your character leaves play, you get his full value back, plus a bit for your trouble, to put into your next character. Ending your character's story won't cost you any kind of effectiveness, it won't set you back as a player, so hopefully we'll see a fair bit of it. A common ending will be that your character becomes so involved in a particular community that he stays there; I'll encourage you to play him as an NPC next time you visit and have him help out as occasion presents.
I have a cool visual thing, too. The PCs' uniform, their like badge, is a long coat, hand-pieced and quilted by their families or the people in the communities they've helped. I picture the PCs in like Eerie canal boatsman shirts, Quaker-oat-guy hats, and these long, beautiful, colorful Seminole-pieced coats. I like it as a nod to Joseph in Egypt.
Ad and/or back cover copy:
Called to stand between God's law and the good intentions of the weak...
Called to judge the wicked, but offer compassion to the sinner...
Called to give solace to the downtrodden and lead the righteous in triumph...
Called to preserve the faith of a people beset...
Dogs in the Vineyard
a roleplaying game
---
Questions:
1) What do you think of the title? It's been growing on me a lot.
2) What do you think of the "something's wrong" progression?
3) Mormons are my target audience, but I hope to make it interesting enough to appeal to nonMormons. What do you think so far?