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DOG TOWN introduces the Split System Core Rules by Cold Blooded Games. The 290 page book is available in PDF. This is a comp copy for review and it was not playtested.
Overview: Before describing the Split System, you have to describe Dog Town if only for the colorful language. The game of Dog Town is something of a niche product. Set in a fictionalized New York neighborhood during the 1970’s, your character(s) is a criminal who needs to score $100,000.00 in 90 days. Any level of vice or heist is open and the comfort of your fellow gamers is the only thing to hold you back.
That last little bit should be well noted – not everyone will be comfortable with the language used in the book. The objective is also something of an eye opener, you aren’t playing a hero – you are the anti-hero of Scarface, Heat, & Goodfellas. You might have some redeeming qualities but with the inclusion of vices, temper, & addictions players are guaranteed to sit back and watch as their characters do some really stupid crap.
The strength of DOG TOWN is that it is chalk full of color and originality. The weaknesses are organizational, editorial, and the occasionally confusing in game jargon. Currently, the book is being re-edited which will hopefully fix some of these issues. The book lacks an index and glossary both of which are needed when introducing a new system. To their credit, there are several well detailed examples that help.
The Split System is more of a simulationist’s game than I am used to playing to be honest. There are varying degrees of success or failure for most everything including combat and many actions require more than a simple roll. Players might feel stymied by some rules like BALLS – a bad balls roll might change your action from “jackin up a fool” to “sneakin away cause you just ain’t man enough.” Combat is well explained but can escalate into MTv’s Celebrity Deathmatch when the dice are exceptionally hot or cold. Combat is settled through Role-Master like charts replete with instant kills and maiming galore. All that aside the system seems to fit the subject fairly well and DM’s are encouraged to remove the more complicated portions of the system to suit their own taste.
Appearance & Layout: DOG TOWN is a pretty simple layout but occasionally the backgrounds obscure the tables. Speaking of tables, these are often widely spaced and only marginally laid out resulting in huge amounts of space waste - ditto on the art.
Art: One place the DOG TOWN hit the nail was in the art department. The black & white illustrations range in quality but they all have a similar tone and style which is perfect for the game.
Sections:
The Low Down – This is a brief introduction and hodge-podge chapter. There are some inventive maps to represent Dog Town and a rough outline of the neighborhood attitudes. The majority of this section seems out of place within the system book and may be an artifact held over from when the project was one book instead of three.Creating a Criminal - Doin a lil somin - Thug Life – Shootout These four chapters reveal the Split System, covering everything from Primary Stats, Derived Stats, Skills, Thug Types, Special Talents, Flaws and Vices. Vices deserve a little special attention – The majority of characters will have at least one vice and some will have as many as three (and a short life expectancy). Vices are not something that you can just walk away from in Dog Town, like real life they will sometimes drag you kicking and screaming down a dark alley where death waits. If you got a thing for heroin, you can bet your bottom dollar that on the way to the “big meet up” you can score some. Do you take it even knowing the boss don’t like junkies or do you pass it up? Well…To tell the truth in the Split System you just might go ahead and get yourself higher than a kite. Why? Cause you are a junkie and that is what junkies do. There are more than a dozen vices to suck you down but my favorite is Joe Peshi – Goodfellas style of Spite. If that doesn’t throw a monkey in the wrench I don’t know what will.
Once we have the various attribute sets and the character is built we get into the violent world of combat. Pervasive in this chapter is an analogy of using poker chips to represent action and whoever has the most poker chip goes next. This is simple and illustrative. Characters may take various actions that all have a point total to represent how many chips to remove. After reducing it down to a simple and elegant poker chip analogy, we head into chart territory. I have never been much of a fan of this so I will leave it at – “If you like charts, these are well done and comprehensive. If you don’t, they can be removed pretty easily.”
Director’s Chair – This section is filled with the usual suspects of gaming. Again, there are relics of this book being a single project instead of three primarily in the discussion of scheduled events that were clipped from this book.
Summation
– DOG TOWN has a lot to offer for those interested in this style of play and you know who you are! However, the book is difficult to assimilate and digest. Tables need work, organization is poor, and wording is occasionally confusing. Ultimately, DOG TOWN would make a fun game and a great one-off but the rules need some condensing and streamlining before that is possible.Eosin
