Dog Eat Dog is a brilliant, laser focused game about the dire consequences of privilege and the violence of colonial occupation. From the start, the game provokes. The Occupation is played by the richest player. Everybody else are Natives, inhabitants of an imaginary Pacific island who will play important roles in the drama to come. Collectively, the group works out a set of rules about the sides. The Occupation is a democracy. The Natives worship many totemic gods, etc. Oh, and there's one master rule: The Natives are Inferior to the Occupation.

From there play proceeds in a series of scenes, set and narrated in what's become story game RPG standard practice. Dog Eat Dog adds in the twist that conflict is escalated first to chance, and then to fiat from the Occupation. After each scene the group passes judgment, awarding tokens to Natives who followed the rules, taking away tokens from Natives who broke rules, and creating a new rule. The basic token economy paces the game, and describes whether the Natives wind up running amok in a suicidal display of futility, or assimilate to the Occupation. The roughly 20 pages of rules are followed by a essay of equal length on the design of the game.

This is a reading, not a playtest review, and like all narrative games, it requires buy-in from the players, but I think this game shines. I've come to the opinion that RPGs are about asking each other "what happens next" and we have rules to help support making the answer to that question interesting. Dog Eat Dog is a stark and provocative game that puts you inside the violence of colonization. There is no out.