Concluding Mr. Johnson’s comprehensive review started Monday…

STORYTELLING
Here at last Dogs of War gets into the nuts-and-bolts of bringing military and paramilitary settings and stories into your WoD chronicle.

One of the first things that caught my eye is the “trigger system,” an alternate take on the Morality rules in the World of Darkness base system.  This new system seems to present a much more realistic view on the acts a soldier must commit and how it might affect him.  Applying the base Morality rules might well drive a combat solider mad even faster than would happen in a “real” war, and this new system takes this into account.  Killing for a cause, after all, although horrendous, shouldn’t have the same moral effects as cold-blooded murder.  In a sidebar, the book also suggests the trigger system might work well in crime, police, or other high-violence chronicles.  Although I’ve never used this new system in play, I would caution against being too liberal with this new system, lest you take the teeth from the Morality rules altogether.  War tests the soul like almost no other circumstance, so while the trigger system seems to work well in this setting, I’d probably leave it there.

In their section; “Life in the Hot Zone,” Dogs of War takes a look on what it must be like to live in an actual combat area.  The narrative text gives a prospective Storyteller all kinds of ideas about how to describe life in a war zone to players.  These include things you might see, smell, and hear; the behavior of civilians caught in the crossfire; and possible ideas for supernatural involvement.  None of them are pretty.

With the “Situational Awareness” rule, however, Dogs of War gives a fast, easy way to put players in the chaos of modern combat.  The rule is quick and simple, with random attacks coming “out of the blue” based on a Wits + Composure roll, with some modifiers.  These attacks can represent anything from unseen snipers to mortar shrapnel, and by hanging this proverbial “Sword of Damocles” over the players’ heads, manages to give a real sense of threat in a dangerous setting.

In the “War Games” section, Dogs of War tries to provide a slightly more detailed, less narrative resolution system for large-scale battles in which the player characters might find themselves immersed.  I might’ve been a little hard on this section, because me and most of my own troupe came up in actual table-top wargames long before we ever got into role-playing.  This, plus our heavy military interests, have resulted in some very involved “house rules” for mass combat in Storytelling System and WoD games.  Acknowledging that we’re the exception and that our level of mass combat detail is probably far greater than most role-players want, I made the following observations.

Some of the ideas presented in the “War Games” section are half-measures of which I’ve never really been fond, such as reducing health levels of so-called “extras.”  The idea of rolling a single attack and then applying it to a random character (modified by certain overall-all combat conditions of the battle) works a little better, in fact this is how I usually resolve certain “random” attacks like artillery and mines.  Picking one “commander” on each side to roll initiative instead of rolling initiative for all individual PCs and extras is an excellent idea – not only does it save immeasurable time but it also recreates the importance of combat leadership.  Dogs of War also suggests having the enemy attack “in waves,” a good idea if you want a high enemy body count.  Just be warned that this gives your players a huge advantage, allowing all their firepower to be assessed against portions of the enemy in detail.  Another suggestion made is to assess all damage against one extra at a time, rather than “spreading it out” amongst them.  This definitely makes the storyteller’s paperwork easier, but again, gives a somewhat unrealistic advantage to the players, with all bullets magically hitting the most vulnerable targets.  Then again, the PCs are supposed to be “heroes.”

The “Strike Power” characteristics given for sample units, and the system whereby you can create your own units and resolve them in combat, definitely comes the closest to an actual “wargame” simulation of tactical battlefield events.  Many of their values seem a little off (only +5 for a bomber air strike?), and their measurement for the size of the unit is question seems a little simplistic.  But overall the system is fair, elegant, and fast, usually what’s required in a role-playing game.  Their quick three-stage “combat round” reflects pretty well the ebb-and-flow of a battle.  After all, whether you’re simulating Roman legionnaires or Navy SEALs in Afghanistan, your combat has to be fast.  One last thing I liked about this system is the suggestion that a combat unit can be defeated by losing “strength points,” which also reflects morale as well as the composition of the unit.  Almost never does a unit lose a battle by dying to the last man, instead suffering irreparable damage to its courage, spirit, and will to fight.  This is one of the most realistic aspects of the system Dogs of War presents.

New optional rules are also presented for explosions, firearms, “bleeding out,” and shock, all of which are designed to make the battlefield an even more unpleasant place.  Most of these are pretty well-presented, realistic without making the game outright murderous or bogged down in detail.  I especially liked the rule about characters caught close to an explosion’s epicenter taking an additional 50% damage.  Blast and shrapnel damage close to ground zero is indeed horrendous, but falls away with surprising speed as the distance from the epicenter increases.

Lastly, Dogs of War presents a number of NPC templates and character ideas for how to incorporate vampires, werewolves, mages, changelings, and even Prometheans into “military” units.  Of course the bulk of this text outlines just how hard it would be for any of these character types to even contemplate service in a conventional military unit.  Vampires are almost impossible to feed and can’t fight during the day, werewolves can’t be controlled by human officers, changelings are half-mad, Prometheans typically have difficulties with their appearance, etc.  But Dogs of War gives ideas and examples of less conventional “paramilitary” options for these kinds of characters.  My favorite was the “guerilla pack” idea for werewolves, an idea our own troupe has in past military chronicles with great success.  Many times there is a “war within the war,” with WoD factions fighting back and forth in the shadows while the “real” armies duel on the battlefield around them.  Missing persons, dismembered bodies, explosions out of nowhere, and massed gunfire – typically the kinds of things WoD characters have to avoid in a civilized setting – are sadly typical on the modern battlefield. In such a setting, supernatural combatants can quite literally “get away with murder.”

CONCLUSION                                                                                                                        
In all, Dogs of War is a solid sourcebook for any players or Storytellers interested in bringing a military feel into their World of Darkness chronicle.  White Wolf has kept up their tradition for good black-and-white artwork, superlative research, and rules that toe the line between nuts-and-bolts accuracy and narrative playability.  The sidebars are well-stocked with ideas for military story threads, rules explanations, and explanations of real-world aspects of the military world.  In short, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a serious treatment of the military in a World of Darkness chronicle.