Voices

You are an elite warrior who stalks the monstrosities that threaten your tribe and savage your land. With every tattoo inked in the blood of the beasts, you claim more power. With every kill, you prepare to face stronger foes. Only the most skilled and most cunning Beast Hunters survive. Will you?

Thus reads the back cover of Beast Hunters, a new two-player rpg from Berengad Games. In it, one player takes on the role of the titular Hunter, while the other becomes the Challenger, presenting the various obstacles and conflicts that the Hunter must face.( Read more… )

Like a lot of indie rpgs, D. Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard emphasizes non-traditional play elements in order to achieve a somewhat narrow purpose. DitV's purpose seems to be exploring the ideas behind ethical and moral codes or judgments made by groups and individuals.

The Setting

The default setting for DitV is the old west of pre-statehood Utah. The Dogs (PCs) are traveling warrior-priests of a religion referred to simply as The Faith, which is largely analogous to early Mormonism. The Dogs travel from town to town as religious circuit-riders, finding and solving problems, presiding over religious ceremony, and passing judgment on the Faithful. The GM creates towns as adventures; typically, a town will be entered, explored, and its problems resolved in a single session. On rare occasions, it may take 2-3 sessions before the Dogs move on to a new location, but this generally occurs only if there are multiple problems of a significant size within the town. The Dogs are empowered to make interpretations of doctrine and mete out reward or punishment as they see fit, up to and including death. Interestingly, however, whether or not the Faith is actually true is completely up to the GM (and the players in many cases, since DitV takes a very narrativist approach to roleplaying). The point of the game is not whether or not what the Dogs are serving is right or wrong, true or false. The point is what the Dogs do with what they think is right or wrong, true or false. There’s a world of difference.

The game is also highly adaptable to other settings, so long as the core idea of the game involves a group of individuals making decisions within a community based a code of conduct, and the individuals are willing to back up those decisions with deadly force, if necessary. Examples included in the book are: Mob enforcers rooting out disloyal or divisive members of the organization. Police officers rooting out corruption within a city, precinct by precinct (think The Untouchables). Wandering samurai purging disloyalty to the Shogun or Emperor. The list is nigh endless.

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