Dog Eat Dog is a roleplaying game of colonialism and its consequences. As a group, players work together to describe the conquest of one of the hundreds of small islands in the Pacific Ocean, defining the customs of the native people and the mores of the outsiders arriving to claim it. One player then assumes the role of the Occupation force, playing their capable military, their collaborationist government, and whatever jaded tourists and shrewd businessmen are interested in a not quite pacified territory. All the others play individual Natives, each trying in their own ways to come to terms with the new regime.

The game begins when the war ends. Through a series of scenes, players explore the inevitably conflicted relationship between the two parties, deciding what the colonizers do to maintain control, which natives assimilate and which run amok, and who ends up owning the island in the end.