Quote from: fonkaygarryIt's far too late to mention that the Dogs aren't even Mormon, isn't it?

They are Mormon.  

Baker just wussed out at the last minutes and changed the names to protect the victims, in Dragnet parlance.  

Quote from: J ArcaneThey are Mormon.  

Baker just wussed out at the last minutes and changed the names to protect the victims, in Dragnet parlance.  

When I see a holy tree in my step-grandmother's yard, I'll buy that for a dollar.

Until then, I'm hanging my hat on The West that Never Was*.

(*In addition to Not Mormons, TWtNW has steam powered locomotive mecha and lycanthropic Lakota who wield sentient war lances that feed on honor.)

Take a deep look:

Quote Sydney,

have you played the Colorado City Branch town in DitV? I played it two or three times before realizing it was based on the real-world Jeffs.

Otherworld is fine. I can play a dude with pointy ears in a land that never was.

But this Vincentspeak... I've lived in this country for a decade, and it still sounds like crazy moon language. Setting-wise, compared to DitV, Jorune is intuitive.

When I played Dogs it wasn't that different either to most other rpgs, except that whenever anything interesting happened we stopped the game to play some dice bidding mini game that took ages and that held no interest for me whatsoever.

I mean seriously, massive fucking dice pools, allotting dice in bids and raises, if I want to play a dice game I'll play a sodding dice game.  It did wreck immersion, as really it devolved into finding reasons to use traits to justify dice and then metagaming how to use the dice, but more than that it was slow and just plain dull.

I find though a lot of the indie games have this real gamey element to them, often with little connect to the actual action.  These guys love the system really intruding into play, but if I want that I'd rather just play a game of cards.

Dogs, the Puddle (a Pool variant), Heroquest to a degree, when stuff happens we play out some bidding minigame which is slow and has little to do with what's actually happening in game.

I like the bidding minigame in DitV. I think it's kind of fun to make a telling narration and accompany it by pushing forward a 6 and an 8. It's tactile.

Maybe people need to do it quicker?

Quote from: droogI like the bidding minigame in DitV. I think it's kind of fun to make a telling narration and accompany it by pushing forward a 6 and an 8. It's tactile.

Maybe people need to do it quicker?

Well, it's an issue of taste like many things, I don't enjoy bidding minigames in my rpgs.  The one in the Puddle is very fast indeed, but I still hated it.

Quote from: fonkaygarryIt's far too late to mention that the Dogs aren't even Mormon, isn't it?

They belong to a religion which originated Back East but had to migrate west because people weren't too tolerant of them, they believe that the natives are remnants of an ancient civilisation which used to practice the Faith as the Dogs practice it but fell into barbarism due to corruption, they have a religion which is presented as being highly divergent from the gameworld mainstream, and they practice polygamy.

Sure, letting the players decide what doctrine dictates in each particular instance means that the Faith in DitV is going to differ from Mormon on specific theological details, but in presentation and execution they're Mormons with the serial numbers filed off, to the point where you have to suppress any knowledge you have of real-world Mormonism in order to accept them as being entirely different entities.

Quote from: WarthurThey belong to a religion which originated Back East but had to migrate west because people weren't too tolerant of them, they believe that the natives are remnants of an ancient civilisation which used to practice the Faith as the Dogs practice it but fell into barbarism due to corruption, they have a religion which is presented as being highly divergent from the gameworld mainstream, and they practice polygamy.

Sure, letting the players decide what doctrine dictates in each particular instance means that the Faith in DitV is going to differ from Mormon on specific theological details, but in presentation and execution they're Mormons with the serial numbers filed off, to the point where you have to suppress any knowledge you have of real-world Mormonism in order to accept them as being entirely different entities.

Where in the book does it mention they're polygamists? I must've missed that part.

But yes, it is clearly based on Mormonism. I live in Utah, about 30 miles from the real Bridal Veil Falls, so I can vouch for that much of it.

Dogs could be considered Lawful Good D&D Paladins, if anyone played Paladins correctly that is. I think the Faith issue is at best secondary to the enforcement of Doctrine. That being said, Dogs could be enforcers for ANY religion that considers Doctrine to be worth enforcing at the [point of a sword/end of a gun/etc.]

Quote from: WerekoalaWhere in the book does it mention they're polygamists? I must've missed that part.

There's a long section in the book about the Faith's attitude to marriage, which mentions that people can be allowed to marry additional wives as a reward for good service to the faith.

Which raises a point I've discussed with Dan, but which he doesn't really address in his review: while the Dogs book forbids the GM from passing a moral judgement on the PCs' actions - from a perspective of real-world morality or from a perspective of IC morality - on an IC basis the designer himslf sets out in the main rulebook some decidedly set-in-stone moral laws for the Faith, and hence presumably is making a judgement on the IC morality of the issues involved. The players can't, if they are playing Dogs by-the-book, declare that gay marriage is a-OK, for example.

This might seem like a small thing, but it means that Baker-as-designer is apportioning to himself more authority over IC morality in Dogs games than the game allows the GM to exert. If you run Dogs as written, the GM isn't allowed to make any moral judgements, but Baker does through the guidance on the Faith in the rulebook.

Which puts you in an awkward position as a playing group. You can either say "the stuff in the rulebook is 100% mutable, and the judgement of Dogs overrides all of it" - at which point, you run the risk of losing the flavour of the Faith entirely because the PCs can replace it with something far more palatable to the players - or you can say "The stuff in the rulebook provides the basic ground rules for the Faith, let's try to keep our invented doctrine broadly in-line with it", at which point you are letting Baker's judgements on IC morality influence your actions.

Quote from: WarthurWhich puts you in an awkward position as a playing group. You can either say "the stuff in the rulebook is 100% mutable, and the judgement of Dogs overrides all of it" - at which point, you run the risk of losing the flavour of the Faith entirely because the PCs can replace it with something far more palatable to the players - or you can say "The stuff in the rulebook provides the basic ground rules for the Faith, let's try to keep our invented doctrine broadly in-line with it", at which point you are letting Baker's judgements on IC morality influence your actions.

This was not much of a problem for my group.

Regards,
David R

I think DitV as it is written is a setting AND a rule-set, obviously. Maybe that's why there are so many examples of people taking the basic mechanic concepts and moral dilemma bits and using them in OTHER settings. I think you have to seperate the "official" setting (with its inherent moral views) from the rules if you want to discuss them logically, because neither one is fully dependant on the other. You could take the setting of DitV and run it using GURPS if you wanted to, I'm sure, just as you could take the mechanics from DitV and do a passable Firefly or Star Trek game.

Quote from: BalbinusIt did wreck immersion, as really it devolved into finding reasons to use traits to justify dice and then metagaming how to use the dice, but more than that it was slow and just plain dull.

I find though a lot of the indie games have this real gamey element to them, often with little connect to the actual action.  These guys love the system really intruding into play, but if I want that I'd rather just play a game of cards.

That's a very good point. It's why I intuitively disliked the duel of wits in BW. That mechanic transforms roleplayed social interaction into a high school debating club (or the Oxford Union, for our British friends). The substance of the argument, and the PC's investment in it, don't matter at all, except as modifier to a roll. What matters is the player gaming the system at the very moment when the RPing should be at its most intense.

As an afterthought: Given that what one dislikes about this type of mechanic is the way in which the G produces (or codifies or steers or whatever) the N, how come one is madly in love with random chargen in Traveller?

Quote from: Pierce InverarityAs an afterthought: Given that what one dislikes about this type of mechanic is the way in which the G produces (or codifies or steers or whatever) the N, how come one is madly in love with random chargen in Traveller?

Leaving aside the letter codes that no one cares about anymore:

Character Gen doesn't intrude in the play at the table, unlike the mechanics being described here.

Just as a guess....