Willards Fork: Revisiting Dogs

Dogs in the Vineyard is a tabletop roleplaying game published in 2004 by Vincent Baker. Now best known for Apocalypse World who influenced a ton of other games with its concept of ‘moves’ and ‘playbooks’. Dogs in the Vineyard was a smash hit of its own in the early wave of American Indie Games. This weekend I had an opportunity to revisit the game as I ran a session with a local group here in Stockholm.

The game has three killer features that are still unique in the otherwise vast trove of games out there. The premise, the conflict resolution system and the scenario creation guide. It is no longer in print but it is still a great game.

The premise

In Dogs in the Vineyard you play teenagers with guns facing moral dilemmas as religious doctrine meets reality. 

Stories play out in a fantasy old west setting. You are part of a community of faithful that have settled in the west away from the decadent east and to live according to traditional values and customs. If you squint and think Mormons in pre civil war Utah, you are not wrong.

You are member of a religious police, the King’s Watchdogs. Your duty is to the community. You travel the towns of the faithful, carrying mail and rooting out sin. Investigator, prosecutor, judge, and executioner in one. One team. A dog never travels alone.

The conflict resolution system

Where other games evolved into a single die roll deciding the outcome of a conflict (or branching point in the story), Vincent went the other direction with Dogs in the Vineyard.

In Dogs you roll scores of dice, then you use them to detail the conflict, blow by blow, by pushing dice forward to attack and defend, until one side yields. Voluntary by agreeing to the stakes set for the conflict. Or forced as you run out of dice. You get more dice by bringing in relations, traits, and belongings. When you run out of verbal arguments, you escalate to violence. Nothing wins an argument like a sixshooter. As long as you accept there will be a little collateral damage. 

Not only does this produce cool bullet time fiction, it also frequently takes you down a rabbit hole of accusations and dark secrets revealed. You can also decide that putting a bullet through someone’s chest is not the best way to get them to do what you want.

The scenario creation guide

In Dogs a scenario is a town. The dogs arrive to a town to service the faithful and quickly learn that all is not well. Left and right townsfolk have opinions about what the dogs should do for them. All the bad things that has come upon the town, who is to blame and what should be done to fix the situation. 

You create a town (a situation) by following specific steps. It start with Pride. Someone thinks they deserve better than someone else. That then leads to Injustice which again lead to Sin. Once someone in the community has sinned, the town is vulnerable to demonic attacks. Famine, draught, disease, accidents. When not dealt with, the steps lead all the way to murder, false prophets and the ultimate destruction of the community.

This simple ladder helps you create juicy situations. It is brilliant. It’s like a solo game in itself. When done, you can’t wait for your players to get themselves entangled in the situation. 

No longer available

Dogs in the Vineyard is no longer available for sale. If you are lucky you can find a print copy second hand. But the game is out of print and Vincent Baker does not offer a pdf as he pulled it from publication. 

This is due to how the game portrays indigenous people. 

In the game, the people living in the lands when the faithful settlers arrive are called Mountain People. They are not central to the game but you can explore stories where the settlers interact with the indigenous population. While the setting is fantasy, this is a minefield. 

One thing is to pretend you are a white settler with a big gun and a holy book. Another is to dream up savage warriors, noble squaws, and enigmatic shamans. There is no way to do that with finesse and nuance without that taking up all the oxygen in the room.

Leaving out indigenous people entirely is also problematic. Pretending the problem doesn’t exist also promotes a wrong narrative. I can see why Vincent Baker chose to pull the game entirely, not just “repair” it.

For this specific session, I choose to leave out the Mountain People as well as settlers who are not of the Faith. The game still has a lot to offer by examining conflicts within the community of the faithful. 

The playdate

I offered to run a game of Dogs for a new-found friend when we went for a hike earlier this summer. Fellow blogger, history nerd and gaming enthusiast, he has a large network of people to play games with that I could tap into. He plays games like Delta Green, Dragonbane and Brindlewood Bay, games centred around discovering and solving mysteries (with or without violence). 

Dogs in the Vineyard sits close to that while at the same time adjusting the lens. It’s not about whether the players uncover the mystery and stop the evil in time. It’s about what the players decide to do about the situation once they have learned what is wrong. Dogs in the Vineyard is a good bridge between “traditional” roleplaying games and the narrative games that gets me excited but I rarely have the opportunity to play these days.

The deal was that I would run the game, while he would find players and host the session at his house. We settled on a date and set the plan in motion.

Preparing for the game

When I offered to run the game, I thought I would use a town I had created years ago when I last ran Dogs. But when I finally located my notes from back then on an old hard drive, I decided I wanted something else. I’m at a different stage in my life. The themes and issues that interest me today are different than when I was 30. 

I checkout a couple of towns still available on the internet but these were also not to my taste. 

In order to run a great session, I knew I needed to internalise the town, the locations, the people, and the issues. What’s important is not the notes on paper but the image you have in your head when you sit at the table.

So I decided to create a new town. Which also gave me the opportunity to use the brilliant town creation guide.

Creating a town

Taking inspiration from a town I had found that I liked best, I dreamed up a town where the arrival of a young school teacher from back East has stirred up trouble. A decade ago an epidemic of smallpox wiped out half the population. Now scores of young children again fill the streets and the old teacher is unable to cope. She is well liked but kids don’t learn to read and write and do them numbers.

I also took inspiration from my travels this summer. The centre of the town was a water mill. The town itself sat at the foot of high mountains around a fork in a river providing the town and the mill with a year round supply of ice cold water from the mountains. With vast plains stretching out at the foot of the mountains just waiting to be irrigated, this is the perfect place to settle.

When you create a town, you decide on two parameters. How explicit the supernatural is present. How far the town has progressed on the scale of sin towards damnation and destruction. 

For this session, I wanted to keep both dials low. When you dial up to murder and false priests possessed by demons, you lose the delicate shades on the moral greyscale. People doing the wrong things for the right reasons. 

Also, while the game itself sees the situation through glasses of religious doctrine (bad things can only happen if someone sins), I wanted a town where the situation could equally well be understood from a rational world view. The cherished teacher growing old and destitute, knocking over a lantern and setting the school on fire by accident. The hermit up at the reservoir no longer able to sustain himself. A new case of smallpox breaking out after the arrival of the Dogs.

The town with its people and locations evolved before my inner eye up until shortly before I arrived at our host for the game. As the final touch I settled on a name: Willards Fork. 

An exhumation and a wedding

So how did the game go? Great! The session ended with a wedding. Nobody died. Not a single shot was fired. So somewhat untraditional for Dogs in the Vineyard. Though not completely bloodless: there was a brawl and an exhumation. A few issues were left unattended to simmer and grow into trouble later.

One player created an old dog who had seen a lot of bad stuff. Another a woman healer and her brother who had his way with animals (except goats). Finally there was a young man well founded in the scripture. Initiation taught us the conflict resolution system and added depth to the characters evolving in our minds. Whether you win the conflict or not, we learn more about our protagonists. 

Thanks to my prep I was able to respond to the character that the players created and the things they brought into play. The old dog had naturally visited the town a decade ago and helped bury the dead. He was now guiding the three freshly graduated dogs on their first mission. 

Favourite moment and takeaways

The session clocked in at around 6 hours including a dinner break. I had created a town with many characters so I knew I had to strike a balance between show and tell. The early conversations we played out in full. Later on I summarised what was learned from meeting with a person.

I think it is well worth the time investment to have players create their own dogs at the table. The ownership you get from the players by doing this is key to experience. There is a thin veil between what the characters do to set things straight and what the players think is the right thing to do.

My favourite moment was when the dogs convinced the new school teacher to wear a traditional dress when teaching and also turned down her suggestion to have the children in the town vaccinated. These were liberal, socialist Swedes, mind you. The players were in agony but still thought it was the right thing for their character to do. Which is the core of what I find fascinating with playing roleplaying games. That you develop empathy, the ability to see things from the perspective at another person, and with nuance. With that comes also the ability to learn and grow and make smarter decisions in your own life.

I have uploaded my preparation for the session. Have a look. Maybe it inspires you to take Dogs in the Vineyard for a spin. If you can get your hands on a copy.