THis is a very neat game. To be clear, this is not dogs in waistcoats. This isn't "The Winds in the Willows" with talking animals stealing cars. This is playing dogs doing doggy things. You are defending your home, chasing cats, and running off strays. You are trying to please your human, or you are living the free life on the streets or out in the woods. It's a dog eat dog world...and you are striving to be top dog. The system itself has a nice level of complexity but is still easy to understand and quick to learn. It provides a wide range of types of dogs to play, and there is a great deal you can do to make your character unique. The book is not exactly beautiful, but it is very well laid out and nicely written. It has a tongue-in-cheek humor that comes across endearingly. I found myself chuckling at several points as I read it. I can see a lot of enjoyment from this game. So I recomemd going out and living a Dawg's life.

When I saw this come across the site, I blinked at it. "Did someone actually write the fictional RPG that B.A. Felton did in Knights of the Dinner Table?" I asked. The answer is yes, yes they did. And, perhaps surprisingly, it's quite good!

First, let's get something out of the way: this is absolutely, positively NOT a parody game. It's humorous, with all sorts of dog- and pet-related humor, but the humor isn't parodying roleplaying games at all. This is a real game. It is really meant to be played, for real, no takesy-backsies.

In this game, as you can see from the description, the players take on the roles of dogs. Each dog has several statistics describing their strength, fighting ability and ability to influence humans and other animals. The system is a simple roll-over percentile system for most tests. You also have "Tricks", special doglike activities that give you particular abilities (such as shaking a smaller opponent like a ragdoll in your jaws). Combat also follows this simple system, with the tens digit on the percentile die being the base damage you inflict to a target that fails to dodge.

The character generation system lets you pick the breed of your dog and their situation. The game seems well balanced in this area. A well-bred dog may have better attributes but is not as flexible. A dog that lives with a family lives under a lot of strictures and may not have the "street" skills of the stray, but is going to be more well-fed and healthy.

The only area in need of improvement is in the GM section, which is a bit of a mish-mash of topics that should be better organized. Some of the ideas are hilarious and make you want to run the game right away, it's just difficult to keep track of them all.

In short, this is an excellent little mini-game that should be a lot of fun. Kids would also like it, as it's simple and they can imagine themselves as their pets!