That’s supposed to be Dogs In the Vineyard in Latin, but I doubt it actually is.
Dogs has helped my GM-ing immensely. It has pushed me to have NPCs who escalate action even when it’s a bad idea. “Say yes or roll the dice” is excellent advice which while I technically have known for ages, having it presented so succinctly was a useful boot in the ass. But the town creation guides have been great for creating conflict in any genre without needing a specific villain.
For those who don’t know, Dogs is about religious gun-slingers who ride from town to town in something like the American Old West. They’re tasked with rooting out problems in town and resolving them one way or another. It’s a fairly rule-light system where the dice rolls are conflict based as opposed to task-based. The system and set-up lends itself to being used in many different settings with very little work.
One setting that I keep thinking of using it in is Ars Magica—Guernicus in the Vineyard, perhaps. I’ve finally decided to run a session of it for my group. They’ll play Quaesitores and Hoplites at a Tribunal boiling over with trouble. And they have to sort it out.
But I’m having trouble coming up with the issues at hand. I think it might be because I’ve been away from the game for a while and need help getting back into an Ars Magica mindset.
Here’s how it works in Dogs: there’s a progression of sin. It starts simply, “Pride leads to injustice.” Someone is proud. And pride in this sense is the bad kind—someone thinks they’re better than someone else, more deserving, less at fault. When someone acts upon that pride, hurting someone else, it creates injustice.
And then it escalates from their, hopefully pretty easily.
But I need some suggestions for how one magus might be prideful over another in a Tribunal. Haughty and arrogant are easy, but how it relates to a brother wizard is the issue.
Anyone have a suggestion or two?
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