I have looked into several different god games from Godbound to Gods of the Fall, Primal Order, D&D's 3.5 Deities and Demigods even Theogenesis here on RPOL and there are many ideas I like from each one. I have been trying to work out how I would run such a game but not one system gives me what I want instead I am looking to stitch together a game built from concepts from all of them.

I have run a game here on RPOL for many years it was using the D&D god creation rules but the game has died and attempted rebirths over the years have not lasted long. I discovered a game called Theogenesis that was being played and it too has had multiple games and incarnations. Looking to create a meld of the best ideas together and get a game going again but I need interested gamer's to bounce ideas off and playtest. Something a little more than the "God Games" I see on here with their ACT's and such.

What are you after with the campaign? Where do existing rules not capture the right feel?

That would be the real question:

What exactly does 'god game' mean to you and what are you trying to accomplish?

Three things

First you have a idea now it desperately needs detailed definitions. So I would pick an established pantheon such as Greeks, Eygptian, Faerun, or Dragonlance as examples.

Second if you want help designing a game from the ground up let us start with a base and go from there. D20 is well rounded. D10 system over at White Wolf has a lot to offer. But the two best are GURPS and D6. Serious customizing can be done very easily with them.

Third I am merely pointing these out for you to start brainstorming. The actual discussion needs to happen in game. That in mind I have no problem helping design a game been wanting to do just that myself just needed a vision.

GURPS was amazing when I quit playing it because of unsupportive people over on sjgames. Even then I was willing to admit it was basically terrible for high power levels if you didn't use any fixes from Pyramid.

It does have really cool settlement generation and Mass Combat though, or it did when I played anyway.

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 5):

Right, but that was the beauty of GURPS. Hero System is another good one. Well 4th edition was good don't know about the more recent editions. Customizing was simple
This message was last edited by the user at 04:42, Sat 03 Dec 2016.

Savage worlds is also pretty good.

Granted, it is designed for a single tier of play, but it shouldn't be too hard to layer it into multiple tiers of power ranging from mortals to gods, or just use it as gods as a single tier if you don't want mechanical interaction with lesser beings.

I wouldn't call gurps or d6 as best. That depends entirely on what is desired. I certainly have no interest in playing either of those systems (a rather strong desire to burn them from existance actually), therefore, how good they are is not universal.

We don't have much to go on yet, so we can't give really good advice, just some generic pointers.

Savage worlds is a clean and simple system with great flexibility.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:21, Sat 03 Dec 2016.

In reply to Knight_Vassal (msg # 6):

What do you want the system you come up with to do?

Primal Order is very open ended, though it can take a long time to acquire power so it's not for those wanting to advance quickly.

Original D&D that allowed you to ascend was also somewhat open ended.

Deities and Demigods for 3.5 D&D is not as open ended as the original, however you might could change that. You might look to the 3rd party expansion Immortal Ascension to get a bit broader idea and abilities.

HERO System is very open ended, no matter what you want to do, a character built with a high character point total especially if it includes variable power pools could enable a character to do almost anything. The hardest part is making the characters.

In reply to JRScott (msg # 8):

I was suggesting basis for the system build. Both d6 and GURPS are easily modified as represented by the amount of sourcebooks for both. The original poster wants to design a system basically from the ground up.

There would be several aspects to said game

1.) Adventuring into new realms, navigating divine politics
2.) Apotheosis: Expanding your dominion, gaining new followers, completing challenges, supporting your portfolio
3.) World Building: designing you minions, servitors, artifacts, home plane, other controlled planes

The more you participate and do the more you are likely to rise in power

What I liked about Primal Order was that it could be used with multiple game systems rather than reinventing the whole wheel building a new entire game system. The book included at the back information on how to integrate the system into existing game lines. I'd be open to being able to use multiple different game systems for the characters "avatar" but really for a character I see them needing...

Ranks & Levels: I like the idea of Divine Ranks but also levels. Character progression is completing Challenges (Divine Labors) when completed its allows you to gain a rank. Characters can gain more power in different ways:

1.) Slaying another power "The Quickening"
2.) Entering into a covenant with another power "The Covenant"
3.) Gaining worshipers and followers "The Glory"
4.) Tapping the energy of your home plane, creating new planes "The Resonance"

Point buy system: I like in Godbound how they had Dominion points, Effort points and Influence points also liked Primal Orders Primal Points a method of gaining points from different resources and powering your Divine Gifts. (Immortal Super Powers)

Yes looking to use Pantheons and worlds people are familiar with. Character choose what universe they wish to influence to create their own experience of the game since I know there are various tastes but there can be wide variety available. It saves a lot of work when we are already familiar with the worlds and their gods plus much of my divine lore is taken from existing books.

D&D (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance etc)
Pathfinder (Golarion deities)
Rifts/Palladium Megaverse (Pantheons of the Megaverse)
Marvel Super Heroes (Many gods and cosmic deities)
Mutants & Masterminds (Freedom City, DC Adventures)
Storyteller: (Exalted, Scion)
Godbound
Cypher System (Gods of the Fall)

I am open to almost any setting that might be appropriate. Also where most games only advance to lower level divine status I have ideas to take things to a different level with the immortals taking on Primordial and Supernal levels of play.

If this peaks your interest and you'd like to discuss more let me know and we can continue the discussion in the game. I have a lot more I could go into and have a lot of the basic ideas and pieces but I just need some help to put the pieces of it together.

Really interesting idea you have going on here. I would be interested in playing and helping once you get things rolling.

Hm

Are you sure that Godbound doesn't meet what you want?

I mean, the only part of what you laid out that it doesn't already do is split power progression between divine ranks and levels. (though it sort of does in a very broad sense)

One thing you might consider is taking many of godbound's mechanics and layering them on top of another game.

The influence/dominion and faction rules pull out quite cleanly and layer over other games without much issue.

Anyway, I am curious and would love to continue the discussion :)

Why was "Go play Nobilis" not the first response to this?

Also this seems a lot less like a God Game than a God-themed game.

Gods don't need to adventure you just DO things.

Scion is another one to try. If you put the setting in the heavens and hacked a brief system for domain crafting it would be pretty straight forward. The second edition has a mechanics preview out.

While that might be true, you'd be hard pressed to convince Kratos of that. :D

But I digress. OP posted further up the thread I've been thinking about for a while



So Dungeon World has a level scheme that goes from 1-10 and advances levels based on Current Level +7 experience (summing 8 to 17 experience would make the total 125 EXP). You could borrow from that, or even steal/use it directly for the level half, but make Divine Rank a second levelling pool with the same point breaks. Dungeon World has this nifty feature where you Mark XP when you fail, which is a 6- on 2d6 (the assumption I make is that you learn from the experience). You could expand on this by granting Divinity on any 12+

Since slaying another power is really only important if the other power is also divine, you might need to have your Divine Being have another Starting Move, something like "Ignores Mortal Armor". That allows you to create another Advanced Move to Increase Immortal Armor (in which you ignore mortal attacks entirely, AND reduce damage from Immortal ones)

To enter into a covenant with a Divine Being, you must perceive them without becoming Terrified (as per DW's Terrifying tag), thus another starting move would be Immunity to Mortal Terror (or perhaps any terror if that floats your boat)

"The Resonance" as you call it would be a Divine Starting Move. I would probably represent it with Gaining Hold at the beginning of a session to spend on miracles. Those miracles could gain you followers. You could start with any number of followers, but as an "Under the Hood" relating to adding the cost of Cosmic Power in GURPS to the cost of Rank in GURPS, and referencing the cost of the new advantage to the same value of normal rank in GURPS. If you go with a 10 level scheme that gives you

DR     Followers
1      500
2      2,000
3      10,000
4      50,000
5      200,000
6      1,000,000
7      5,000,000
8      20,000,000
9      100,000,000
10     500,000,000

You could either give players followers automatically when they mark enough experience to level, or let them mark experience when they gain a significant portion of the followers required for the next level, or a little of both.



This one is pseudo-occurring in Dungeon World inasmuch as  when you level up, you subtract the experience that got you the level. Dungeon World doesn't explicitly state particular Moves cost 8, 9, 10, etc points, or that abilities require specific levels (although about half the character's Advanced Moves require 6+)

You could grab a number of abilities from all your other sources, make them look like Moves in Dungeon Worlds would, and assign point values from 8-17, or level requirements from 1-10.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:08, Mon 05 Dec 2016.

As someone said above, if you're a god, you don't adventure, you just DO.

Tell that to the Norse gods and the Greek gods!

The Norse gods were always going on adventures, attacking trolls and giants, and causing problems for each other (i.e. Loki). Why do you think there was a Valhalla? And they always had Ragnarok hanging over their head.

The Greeks weren't much better. They were always screwing mortals and jockeying for more power within the pantheon. And then there are the Titans.

Once you get to the top (Odin and Zeus), that may mean you don't adventure any more, unless you are striving to protect your entire pantheon from some outside force.


If you want to model your pantheon after one of them, that's fine, but I'd suggest you use new and unique names... to set it apart from the 'real' one.


The D&D system uses Greater Deities, Intermediate Deities and Lesser Deities. In addition, there can be Minor Deities, Exarchs, and Demi-gods.

I'd see the last three as tools of the other deities, though that's not to say they can't strive for additional power, too.

For power levels, you might have more levels within each of the lower ranks. The number of levels diminish as you gain more power. If you want there to be a peak, then there may only be 1 level at the top. The problem with that, though, is that means there's nowhere to go from there but down.


Another thing you might want to consider is Portfolios, such as the god of fire or the god of magic. The more levels you have, the more portfolios you can have. The portfolios can be broad (like magic) or specific (such as the god of teaspoons). Portfolios can also be rather devious. For example, if you are the god of teaspoons, you might be able to see and hear whatever goes on anywhere there's a teaspoon.


Anyway, you probably want to start your game at this point, for design purposes. You've determined that you have interested players, and interested co-designers, so setting up a board is where  you should work out the details now.

I'd start with a single post called Design and put it under Group D. You can add more threads as you need to work on a specific aspect.

Nobilis and Scion while they provided some ideas and inspiration were not enough for me. Instead I have taken ideas from many different sources because I wanted to be able to create a game that could handle multiple genres. I leave it to the players to decide their experience of the game whether they are powers in a

Fantasy Setting (Gods of the Fall, Exalted)
Urban Fantasy (Scion)
Science Fantasy (Cosmic Adventures, most superhero comic books)

It depends on what worlds the character has vested interest in.

Godbound does have a lot of what I am looking for but no one game has completely satisfied me. Besides the epic gods should not be limited to one campaign setting or another but this is your game and the creative decisions we make as a group will shape the game to come.

The game

link to another game