Concept talk: playing gods [D&D 3.5]

[Myth and Legend]

Oh this sounds like so much FUN! OK here is my proposal:

We create the God's personality and background. We can use official sources as inspiration - mortals acceding trough the murder of a God, a God granting some of his power to a mortal or lesser deity, a God springing up after a mass of believers start praying to him/her etc.

Having an Overdeity create everyone will not explain the fundamental differences in character they will have. Why not make everyone lawful for example, so they don't stab each other in the divine backs?

So after we make the God's personality, we choose domains. For the sake of power we should equalize them (Jemal's writeup seems OK). For example, a God with two very strong Portfolies (Death, Time) should be equalized by a Deity with six or even eight lesser Portfolios (magical beasts, light, rivers etc.)

Overall the power levels should be the same. The deities should not be able to destroy each other directly (immune to each others Salient Life and Death abilities), and as such, should attempt at manipulating the events in the Prime Material plane so that the rival deitie's followers are either converted or exterminated.

They can do that via the promotion of champions or even trough the springing of an Avatar (that costs a lot of power so can be done only once in a while). Avatars are CLVL 50 characters that we have pre-generated.

At the start of the game everyone has some time to roleplay as we shape our own little niche in the world, complete with followers, religious cults, temples, whole countries following us, geographical and other details etc. Then, we have at it!

 

[Voda Vosa]

I think the creation of the world would be the most fun part. After the primordials left the world only with the basic four elements, each god should have to create the creatures the would inhabit it, as well as shake the elements into mountains, rivers, oceans etc.
Gods with shared portfolios would have to solve their differences, either by diplomacy or war.
Alliances and war between the gods would be in my opinion what would make it more interesting.
As for character creation, I'd suggest start out with 20 HD of outsider, and 1 epic character class level.
That would give:
160 hit points (+Con mod x 20)

+20 BAB

+12 Base saves

184 + (Int bonus x 23) skill points (max ranks 23 for class skills, 11 1/2 for cross-class skills)

10 Class Skills of the player's choice

7 Feats

5 Level Based Ability Score increases (+1 at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 HD)

Darkvision

Proficiency with all Simple and Martial weapons

20 (1 per HD) Special Traits

Special Traits

These can be any special ability possessed by a monster in the SRD (though not class features). Think of monstrous size, special abilities, spell like abilities, etc

 

[Rathan]

Those ideas are really sound and great guys.... but is one of you willing to step up and run something like this?... That's the ultimate question here.. heh

 

[Voda Vosa]

Not me! Heh, I've enough to worry about. I thought Sunking was the DM

 

[jager0727]

Just a thought, perhaps using a point system similar to the one in the linked word doc above to get a basic personality and basis for interests for individuals to play but with limited points, then setting up a world/cosmology/races building thread where the players role-play that aspect of it and the GM keeps track of which players are concerned with what, and how the gods are roleplayed and assigns additional domain points based on this.
For instance, if someone was constantly playing the role of mediator and insisting on balance, then they'd probably be given points in the balance or fate domain. If someone else liked the idea of a race of wandering merchants/gypsy's and thought that race should be given a natural wanderlust to achieve it, they would be the primary (creator) god of that race (and probably be asked to design and name it as well).
This discussion could also be used to assign alignments rather than having them set out at the start. After all, what does alignment really mean to a creator being, they're all doing what they feel is the right thing to move toward their own vision of creation.
The only problem I could see would be players meta-gaming to get what they perceive to be the most powerful domains. I think the only way to work around that would be to rely on the GM for overall balance when assigning points.

Once it's all wrapped it could lead to a really cool shared setting we could use in our own future games too.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

While I rarely blow my own trumpet you might want to check out two books I created for 3.5.

Immortals Handbook - Epic Bestiary: Volume One
Immortals Handbook - Ascension

RPGNow.com - Eternity Publishing - The leading source for indie RPGs

For anyone wishing to play a 3.5E Immortal based game I don't believe there are any finer books...though of course I am biased.

I should also note that from about mid-late March, revised and updated print copies of both should be available from Drivethru/RPGNow.

I also have my own forum here at ENWorld if you have any questions

Eternity Publishing Hosted Forum - EN World D&D / RPG News

and my own website with supplementary material.

Immortality

Good luck with your endeavours.

 

[HolyMan]

Well everyone is a little interested and I will run something a kin to this but don't want to use SunKing's thread so I made a new one here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/talking-talk/271702-you-all-gods.html

HM

 

[Sunking]

Im back and like what im seeing, I have been taken in by the weather and so have my 2 little boys so havent had time on the net, sorry for that
once im totaly fresh and my sons to ill look into starting this campagin
(Have to see if there is intrest in 2 campagins so similary before starting mine else it will come later, because it will come at sometime I promish)

Until that go to holyman (I know i will both for inspiration and to be a player)

 

[HolyMan]

Thanks SunKing

Come on over and help out (I could use a co-DM), and I don't have the Dieties and Demigods book so any info on a rules front you could help out with would be great.

HM