God Games (NOT D&D)

Staffan said:

Monte Cook Games has Gods of the Fall as a setting for the Cypher System. In that setting, the realm of the gods fell to Earth (well, not our Earth, but still) which killed all the gods off and has caused a lot of trouble since in the form of various curses and monsters and stuff. But now, 42 years later, some beings have gotten divine sparks and are on the path to become proper gods. Of course, the process of doing so isn't easy - there are powerful people in the world who have a vested interest in the current god-less state, and there are prophecies to fulfill, and so on.

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Sounds intriguing!

So it's not so much a game about being a god as it is about becoming one.

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One of the frequent contributors on the SJGames GURPS forum has a long-running fantasy campaign with a similar premise. The PCs in his game started as 1000-point characters (that's the low end of potentially heroic in GURPS 4e). Now, ~400 sessions later, they're over 4000 points; the rulebook defines 500-1000 points as superhuman, so this is fairly extreme! The adventures of these new gods will be the myths of future generations. I cannot imagine, as a GM, managing to scale a single campaign across such a power range, but they're loving it.

Staffan said:

Monte Cook Games has Gods of the Fall as a setting for the Cypher System. In that setting, the realm of the gods fell to Earth (well, not our Earth, but still) which killed all the gods off and has caused a lot of trouble since in the form of various curses and monsters and stuff. But now, 42 years later, some beings have gotten divine sparks and are on the path to become proper gods. Of course, the process of doing so isn't easy - there are powerful people in the world who have a vested interest in the current god-less state, and there are prophecies to fulfill, and so on.

So it's not so much a game about being a god as it is about becoming one.

I haven't gotten around to playing it though. I'm not sure the Cypher System is really my bag.

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Might have to look that one up.

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Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but I backed the Godsfall Worldbook and the adventure path Rise of the Demigods for 5e. I was a fan of the first season of the live-play podcast and find the world and concept intriguing.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...k?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=godsfall

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/godsfall/rise-of-the-demigods

From the official description:

A land in which the Old Gods slaughtered one another in a great war that ravaged the world and stripped divine and arcane casters alike of their magic. It is a world where the five kingdoms that remain bicker over resources, taking up arms to defend shipping lanes and tariffs instead of a common defense.

It is ninety-eight years after the destruction of most of the known world and all her Gods, but a God can never truly die. Their power is seeping back into the realm of mortals to anoint new Deities - and you are one of the chosen.

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and from the adventure path:

[FONT=&quot]In this book, players create their own custom demigods and introduce them to the world of Khalgun before the destruction of the Godswar. Rise of the Demigods will have custom spells, divinities, divine feats, creatures, places, maps, and the introduction to the first Godsfall adventure: [/FONT]Spark of Divinity.

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I’ve been getting into the “Tiny D6” Games from Gallant Knight Games lately. “Tiny Gods” is what you’re looking for here.

You start off playing gods creating a world together, building lands and kingdoms, creating races, etc.

Them once that’s done, you start playing the demigods scattered across the world, having epic adventures of the sorts you could imagine a Hercules or Perseus having to deal with.

I might suggest the Fate World: Gods and Monsters.

I ran a combo Aria/Primal Order game about a zillion years ago. I'm not sure that the extra mechanics ended up being worth it.

I think from an "Interesting game" perspective, I might just use a modified Marvel Heroic (If you have that available.)

uzirath said:

Beyond some of the mechanics, though, I would imagine a Living Gods campaign would share elements with epic level D&D. (I wouldn't want as much focus on dozens of specific spells. Broader powers and abilities related to the god's portfolio would make more sense.) But adventures could easily involve fighting other gods, foiling their diabolical plans, jumping to other planes or dimensions, locating obscure artifacts, fulfilling ancient prophecies, and similar tropes.

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That's a pretty good description of my experiences of epic-tier 4e.

uzirath said:

one way that a deity-tier campaign would be interesting would be to focus on those flaws and weaknesses. That could be accomplished through mechanics or session zero agreements between players and the GM. To me, this would differentiate the tone of play from simply high-powered adventuring. If I'm playing someone like Aphrodite, I would be disappointed if I just ran around using my charm and beauty powers all the time without some complications that created dramatic tension between my basic desire for good and my vicious jealous streak (e.g., stopping some evil plague vs. getting revenge on the queen who dared compare her beauty to mine).

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4e D&D won't deliver this out of the box - you'd have to do some work (both around play expectations and, probably, mechanics).

In this respect, I think [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION]'s suggestion of Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic is a good one - that system will support the "epic tier" hijinks and also builds this sort of character stuff right into the system (via the Limits rules and the Milestone rules).

Thanks everyone!

ccs said:

A very long time ago I played in an Amber Diceless game. For any practical purpose our characters were demigods.
I didn't like the rules & the mix of players/GM wasn't quite right, so I didn't really enjoy the game. Fortunately it didn't last very long & then we were off to systems better suited for that group.

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You know, I think Zelazny fans could sustain a pretty epic argument around the sentence I italicized in your quote. My own take is that the way the Chronicles are written always give the impression that any Prince or Princess of Amber could die at the hands of a mere mortal (or a mere monster) if they were caught slipping, even if they never do, which to me keeps them from feeling godlike. But strictly speaking I mean, within the cosmology of the universe, I guess they are all descended from the primal fabric of reality which would make them demigods by definition.

I have always wanted to play Amber Diceless but never gotten the chance. Pour one out for the late, great Eric Wujcik.

pemerton said:

Do you count Epic Tier 4e? If so, yes (one PC is a god, another a demigod, another an emergent prioridal). If not, no.

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Heh, I think that readers around here might be noticing by now that I don't tend to include 4E in ANY of my questions, calculations, or opinions. But in this case, the answer is no, because that is not a game ABOUT being a god which is what I'm talking about. It's a mode of a game about being murder-hobos where it happens that you hobo-murdered your way into becoming a god.

Umbran said:

Nobilis is a game in which you play the the personification of a concept/aspect of reality. You may be the Noble of Time, for example. Or Doors. Or Christmas. Within your sphere, your power is great, outside it... not so much.


I think Wikipedia does a better job than I could at giving an overview of the system.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobilis

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This is much more like what I'm asking after, which is to say American Gods. But I'm less interested in the system than in your experiences of play in Nobilis, if you'd care to share.

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I added a ("NOT D&D") to the topic OP. D&D is brimming with interesting ways for characters to start with, attain, defend, and/or lose godhood. I am more interested in gods that aren't necessarily omnipotent and a setting a little bit more like the real world and now and a little less than the wide open high magic high fantasy playing field of D&D cosmology.

ParanoydStyle said:

Hey, you guys ever play any RPGs where you play as a god or demigod or some kind of autonomous divine entity? (The angels in In Nomine would not count.)

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I was going to say no, but now that you mention it, I was in an odd Hero System game back in the day, where we were dark takes on divine archetypes.

The ones I remember were: 'I' - a nigh-omnipotent alien thought-entity that accidently annihilates all life on earth, so re-creates it; a rogue angel that nurtured and hyper-evolved a surviving patch of slime pre-dating said annihilation into some Deep-One-like sentient carnivores; and a conceptual divinity that started as a harvest goddess and eventually became Death. I think there was a succubus and vampire in there, too, for some reason, and maybe an analog to Prometheus?

ParanoydStyle said:

It's a mode of a game about being murder-hobos where it happens that you hobo-murdered your way into becoming a god.

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That's not a very good description of the 4e game I was talking about.