Dogs in the Vineyard, in the words of its creator, is a game in which the characters are “God’s Watchdogs in a West that never quite was.” It’s a really interesting game, well worth the time to check it out for yourself.

In the screenshot above (you can click on that to get a better look), the tabletop shows a Dogs in the Vineyard conflict in progress. In Dogs in the Vineyard, conflict resolution is handled by a roll of the dice followed by a poker-like series of “raising” and “seeing”. The conflict starts with both the player and the GM building a dice pool from traits that are relevant to the conflict. You can see in this example that the player with the gold dice has managed to bring in a d8 to bolster 6d6. The GM, with the dark red dice, has 8d6 to bring to the conflict. Both roll their dice. Now, they take turns raising and seeing. In this example, the player with the gold dice says what his character is doing and puts forward a 4 and an 8 for a total of 12. The GM is unable to match a total of 12 with just two of his dice, so he has to put forward a third die. He puts forward a 5, a 4, and a 3, describing how the NPC responds. This continues until one side gives or is unable to match the raise.

I’ve greatly oversimplified the conflict resolution of Dogs in the Vineyard. It’s a really interesting mechanic, and it has the effect of making a player keep reevaluating just how far he’s willing to take a given conflict. The point, though, from an EpicTable development perspective, is that this is a game that requires more of the tabletop than just a landing spot for the dice. EpicTable supports that with a shared surface that allows you to place and move and roll dice. Along the way, I’ve added some creature comforts like different surface textures. What you see in this screen shot is a light brown distressed leather, which seemed more appropriate to the Western setting than a wooden tabletop. The red and gold dice are (to this colorblind developer’s eyes) matched to the colors of the Dogs’ coats.

If you’re interested in this kind of tailoring of the virtual tabletop to the game, stay tuned. One of my goals for EpicTable is to make it easy for you to create support for the games you want to play. In upcoming posts, I’ll talk about the options you’ll have for creating character sheets, adding your own surface textures, game pieces, etc.

Closing Thoughts

As always, I appreciate any questions and feedback that you have. Please chime in on the forum via the comments link below.

Credits and Sources: Dogs in the Vineyard is a game by D. Vincent Baker. Die images by Brennen Reece. Leather texture from iStockphoto.

Premise

In Don’t Rest Your Head, you play one of the Awake, insomniacs who have stopped sleeping entirely (they hope) and who have become able to traverse the portals from our world to the Mad City. Your character tries to achieve his goals (tied to what’s keeping him awake) before he falls asleep and becomes meat for the Nightmares of the Mad City.

I have to admit that I haven’t actually gotten a chance to play Don’t Rest Your Head yet, but it’s a bit of a perfect storm for me due to my love of…

• Dark City (think The Matrix with less philosophy and more Clive Barker)
• Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (The series is good; the book phenomenal.)
• the notion that exhaustion can make you supernaturally better at something (I’m rolling black dice most nights working on EpicTable. That might make more sense in a bit….)

Dice Mechanic

The dice mechanic used for conflict resolution in Don’t Rest Your Head fits the theme perfectly. The player rolls a combination of white, black, and red dice.

• White discipline dice reflect the character’s skill and are safe to roll.
• Black exhaustion dice let the player tap into his exhaustion to call upon extraordinary abilities; but it comes at a cost.
• Red madness dice allow the character to exercise overtly supernatural powers, but carry significant risk of the situation spiraling out of control.

The GM rolls pain dice, and when these dice dominate, win or lose, there’s no sunny outcome for the character.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is along two axes:

1. The person with the highest number of successes (1s, 2s, and 3s) wins the conflict.
2. The pool (discipline, exhaustion, madness, or pain) with the high die value is dominant and shapes the outcome, regardless of whether the character won or lost.

The player has some choice in how many of each color dice are brought to bear in the conflict. More dice means more chances to win the conflict, but more chance of the exhaustion or madness pool dominating the outcome. This creates a really interesting range of outcomes.

Character Creation, Hope, and Despair

The character creation process is also really engaging. Its questionnaire seems inspired by Spirit of the Century, but the result is wholly appropriate to the theme. There’s also an economy of Hope and Despair coins, which seems interesting and somewhat akin to fanmail or action points, but again, done in very thematically appropriate way.

Impact on EpicTable

From an EpicTable perspective, supporting Don’t Rest Your Head means support for mixed-color dice rolls and yet another reason to implement success counting. You can read more about this in my post on EpicTable’s Dice Cup Designer. It also means support for token pools (though my recent foray into Primetime Adventures had already planted that seed).

Closing Thoughts

The first nine pages of Don’t Rest Your Head are available on Evil Hat’s site, and they’re quite possibly the best nine pages of game material I’ve ever read. I can’t wait to play this game, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say once I get the chance. In the meantime, I’m going to grab some black dice and get back to implementing that success counting mechanic for EpicTable….

My Life with Master is, by all accounts, part of the story game canon. The premise is that the player characters are minions of an evil master. Quite unlike the typical, heroic characters of D&D or other RPGs, the minion player characters are deeply flawed. They struggle to find the courage and the will to resist the increasingly malicious commands of the Master. There’s no Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution here, folks. You’re working with the Fear and Reason of the environment, and your character’s Love, Weariness, and Self-Loathing. The characters strive to establish connections with the fearful townsfolk, thereby gaining enough love (basically, human connectedness) to finally turn against the evil Master.

“It didn’t matter that my character was not powerful in the traditional sense.”

Here’s an example of just how different My Life with Master can be. My character, Ilian, was a young man who had been beaten and kept locked in a small room for most of his life. His only companionship was that of a family of small birds, and his only joy, their songs and visits to his solitary window. Upon his parents’ death, Ilian was freed from the prison of his room, but found that he remained trapped within himself. Having almost never spoken with other people, Ilian’s speech was littered with irratic halts and starts. His mannerisms were birdlike–abrupt and nervous; his darting glances, half-fearful, half-furtive. The townsfolk shunned the odd young man, driving him into the clutches of the Master.

From a game mechanics perspective, Ilian was all but incapable or unwilling to defending himself physically. And his only special talent was his ability to imitate bird calls. Who needs a magic sword, when you’ve got all this going for you?

Now, I imagine that one can create more capable characters than Ilian. In a sense, I was trying to stay as far from D&D as I could, because this was a new experience for me. But here’s the thing: It didn’t matter to the game that my character was not powerful in the traditional sense. From a roleplaying perspective, and in the pursuit of making connections with the townsfolk, he was as playable as any of the other characters. That’s what’s so compelling about a game like My Life with Master. Playing a character like Ilian definitely changed the way I approached situations, but it didn’t make me less capable of dealing with them. The mechanics of the game not only support roleplaying, they demand roleplaying.

My Life with Master is a roleplaying game by Paul Czege. You can learn more at http://www.halfmeme.com/master.html. If you’re interested in playing My Life with Master (and you should be), you’re likely to find players and GMs at the Four Ugly Monsters forum or Pixels and Polyhedrons.

Maybe at first, and certainly there are still some companies in a holding pattern, waiting for details about Wizards of the Coast’s licensing of 4th Edition. But not everyone is waiting. Some companies, like Paizo and Green Ronin, have created their own systems. For others, d20 was never relevant, except in its mindshare dominance. So-called “story games”, which focus on the narrative aspects of roleplaying, have never been tied to Wizards of the Coast and d20, but neither are they very widely known.

Don’t Wait—Explore

Over the last few months, I’ve seen something unexpected and exciting taking place. More and more companies—and more and more gamers—are looking elsewhere rather than waiting on Wizards. This is a Good Thing.

I don’t have anything against WotC, but it’s past time that innovation migrate into more varied hands and minds. “The Wait” has forced many companies to go their own way and has rewarded others by raising the awareness of non-d20 games. Gamers are benefitting as well, as new game systems—and players for them—are springing up seemingly every day. In some cases, the games are new. In other cases, they’re just receiving well-earned attention during this period of “downtime” between the announcement of 4th Edition and its release.

My advice: Check out 4th Edition when it comes out. It promises to be a real improvement over 3.5. Many of the weaknesses cited for the creation of non d20 games have been the target of the designers of 4th Edition. But don’t just wait. Take this opportunity to look around and see what’s out there. There’s a lot more to gaming than d20.

Widening Your Horizons

For those of you you coming here from the FUM (Four Ugly Monsters) forum, none of this is news, but for those looking to expand their notion of roleplaying, here are a few links to get you started. This is just a starting point. The web is full of outstanding roleplaying resources—you just have to be willing to look beyond Wizards of the Coast.

Four Ugly Monsters community

This is an active and friendly community of roleplaying gamers. There’s a wide variety of games discussed on this forum, and it’s a regular gathering place for virtual tabletop gamers. Campaigns are forming all the time, and in many different timezones, making this a great place to try a new game.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group

Makers of the Savage Worlds, Deadlands, and other games based on the premise that d20 is too slow. These games are familiar to d20 players, but attempt to streamline the rules to support more dramatic, cinematic gaming. Their products are extremely professional and polished.

Pixels and Polyhedrons

A social network of gamers focused on story games and virtual tabletop gaming.

Story Games codex

An introduction to story games.

The FATE roleplaying system

A free RPG system focused on storytelling.

The Forge

A site dedicated to independent roleplaying games.

I’ve said to myself all along that there are other aspects of the gaming experience that are important—especially to the more story-oriented crowd, and I’ve imagined EpicTable following the roleplay vector more than the wargame vector over the next several years. Don’t get me wrong—I think maps are important, and I’m a long-time D&D player, so I’m not throwing away my battlemat anytime soon…but I had an interesting couple of experiences this week that put virtual tabletops into a little bit different perspective for me.

Big Troll, Tiny Bridge

I run a face-to-face D&D game every week or two, and my last session underscored the value of physical, three-dimensional maps and miniatures. There was a mountain troll crossing a narrow bridge over a cavern abyss. (Silly troll.) Take a good look at the difference in size between the troll and the valiant characters striving to hold him back. This guy made a huge impression at the game table. The players were aghast as this thing emerged from the darkness on the far side of the bridge and started across to join the fray. Ultimately, the troll got dumped into the chasm through a series of clever tactics on the part of the players. As he fell, he made one last attempt to grab the paladin and pull him down with him. You could feel the tension in the room as the dice clattered across the table, and the exultation at the natural 1 that came up.

As I was cleaning up after the session, I thought about what made that encounter so great. Without a doubt, the GM had masterfully orchestrated a tension-filled scenario . And the natural 1 didn’t hurt. But what really sold it, what really pulled the players in, was seeing that ginormous troll plunked down on the battlmat. I don’t think I could have pulled that off on a virtual tabletop. It’s just not the same seeing a token drawn on the map.

Darker Than Real Life

My second illuminating experience was the next evening, when I played “My Life With Master” with some folks from the Four Ugly Monsters forum. At the opposite end of the spectrum, this game didn’t involve a map or minis at all. The action took place entirely in our imaginations and the shared narrative of the session. The virtual tabletop served only as a mechanism to share dice rolls and character sheets, and for the GM to display images of our villianous Master and the creepy old castle in which our characters served her.

While success of the the troll encounter was based on the physical size of the monster’s representation at the tabletop, the success of the encounters in the My Life with Master session was just the opposite. It was based on the imagination and narrative talents of the GM and players (and Phil, the GM, doing a great job of adjusting the lighting effects and displaying the right picture at the right time). Had we tried to put the encounters on a map, the game would have failed utterly.

What does this mean?

Well, it doesn’t mean that I’ve deleted all the mapping code written for EpicTable. Obviously, maps play an important role in many games, and I still believe that virtual tabletops have some clear advantages when it comes to mapping. On the other hand, this does reinforce what I thought I already knew about roleplaying in a virtual environment—that images are important, atmosphere is important, and ease-of-use is important. All roleplaying games take place, first and foremost, in the imagination. The virtual tabletop can help by streamlining encounters, by allowing the GM to share images without fumbling through papers and books, by creating enough distance that players drop their inhibitions and roleplay more. But ultimately, the virtual tabletop’s job is to get out of the way, to let you do what you need to do so naturally that the machinery fades into the background.

I knew all this…or thought I did. But thanks to a giant troll and an evil master, I know it a lot more vicerally than I did before.