Dogs in the Vineyard wraps up with the small ranching town of King’s Crossing. The players experiment with taking on conflicts solo, and finds some pretty serious challenges facing their characters. The defeats culminate with a very tense final showdown!

Unfortunately this is our last session of Dogs. We had a pretty rough three months this winter and have only managed to record twice due to plague, work, weather, and holidays. It was very difficult to keep the momentum going, but we all feel this is a good session to end on. The conflicts were tough, the morality fuzzy, and the ending suitably tragic.

Relevant Links

• Clancy Brown
• Deadlands: Los Diablos
• Little House on the Prairie
• Wolf Brother
• Conner from Angel
• Silent Lucidity

Crunchy Bits!

• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 3: 2 Hours, 34 Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 3 Part A: 65 Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 3 Part B: 1 Hour 28 Minutes
• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro music from “God’s Gonna Strike You Down” by Johnny Cash.

And here we have our first full town for D. Vincent Baker’s Dog’s in the Vineyard. The gang learns a few good lessons this session. Namely, there’s pretty much no stopping a group of Dogs when they team up, and no matter how bad you don’t want your cousin to be a Sorcerer, sometimes you just have to face facts.  This town was created by Jason Morningstar, and is based on the true story of Olive Oatman. When Jason found out I was running his towns, he shot me an email warning that a few of his early town designs aren’t the most ideal. I thanked him for his concern, but went ahead anyway.

Since then, I’ve done a LOT of reading on the lumpley forums on The Forge about town design, and gotten a bit of play under my belt. I now know what Jason was concerned about. I’m not sure if it comes through in the recording, but this town lacked the tension of some later ones I’ve run, and I know exactly why: The situation was too clear, the antagonist too one-sided, and the problems of the town hadn’t escalated to Hate and Murder yet. Vincent recommends ALWAYS designing a town up to Hate and Murder. I learned a lot from running this town, and my second town is one I made myself, and I think really hits all the right spots for what a town should be. Stay tuned for that!

Relevant Links

• Dogs in the Vineyard
• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Dogs in the Vineyards Forum
• Kevin’s Post on the DitV Forum about this session.
• January Branch Document
• Jason Morningstar’s awesome play aids
• Mouse Guard
• Wheel of Time
• Detect Evil
• Carnivale
• Deadlands
• Unknown Armies

Crunchy Bits!

• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2: 2 Hours, 51 Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2 Part A:  Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2 Part B:  Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2 Part C:  Minutes
• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro music from “When The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash.

Everyone here at The Walking Eye has been champing at the bit to finally get some sweet, sweet Dogs in the Vineyard action. It marks the half way point of or Vincent Baker Marathon (the final chapter will be Poison‘d) and it’s been an absolute blast. In this first session we handle character creation and establishing the basic facts about the world. It’s a good demonstration of how to pick Traits, and gives three different and interesting Initiation Conflicts. Check it out!

Relevant Links

• Lumpley Games, Vincent Baker’s website and blog.
• Dogs in the Vineyard materials
• State of Deseret
• The Noble Savage
• Blade Barrier
• Mouse Guard
• Deadlands

Crunchy Bits!

• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 1: 2 hours
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 1 Part A: 53 Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 1 Part B: 62 Minutes
• Intro and Outro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)

In early April Jen and I took a road trip up to Forge Midwest 2009 in beautiful Madison, Wisconsin. We played a lot of games and met a lot of cool people, expect a fair amount of content related to that in the upcoming weeks. One of the high points was a chance to play Hero’s Banner with it’s creator Tim Koppang. After running it for myself and two others (Edward “Sabe” Jones and a dude named Tim who’s contact info I didn’t get) I grabbed Tim (Koppang, not the player) and did a short interview with him. We discuss his inspirations for the game, the term “Storygames” (he’s not a fan), his gaming history, and whether free will actually exists or not. It was a real pleasure to meet and interview him.

Relevant Links:

• Hero’s Banner Homepage
• Song of Ice and Fire
• Bill Mudron (Cover Art for Hero’s Banner)
• Keith Senkowski
• The Forge
• The Gaming Outpost
• GURPS
• Deadlands
• Shadowrun
• Story Engine
• Dust Devils
• Storygames Forum

Crunchy Bits!

• Interview 5: Tim Koppang 30 Minutes
• Intro and Outro Music Provided by Oh Possum