Theory Context:”Say Yes or Roll the Dice”
I often feel like 75% of the vitriol towards Forge-identified concepts, theories, and ideas comes from people who have only heard them second or third or fourth or twentiethhand, out of context, misunderstood and misapplied. Hell, 9 out of 10 podcasts that present themselves as authorities on any given subject did little, if any, due diligence, and flat out distributed incorrect information as if it were accurate. Irritating.
Back in 2004, Vincent Baker released Dogs in the Vineyard. It had quite a few good design things in it, but an idea which found it’s way into the general tabletop scene is “Say Yes or Roll the Dice”.
Like many of the things that spilled out from the Forge forum crowd, it would become a thing people say, shifting the idea and losing the original context. Now you can find people arguing “But if a player wants to have their character punch the planet in half in my gritty realistic detective game, do I have to say yes or roll the dice?!? This is ridiculous!”… So, context.
Structure
First, it’s important to know the basic structure of Dogs in the Vineyard – the player characters are special religious deputies, whose job is to go into towns and fix their conflicts and problems.
There’s basically two axis’ of conflict:…
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