Demigods as player characters [or: It's All Greek to Me]

[Nightfall]

Krusty, good luck then. As for things with me, they are going fine. School is starting up in week and I'll be busy during the nights. Otherwise I'm good.

*jumps back* I would recommend Krusty's project for ideas for running immortals since he's all about them epic stuff and gods.

 

[Impeesa]

Sounds like something I want to run as soon as a certain book comes out... vaguely inspired by the comic Sea of Insanity, it would feature gods of formerly great status in a modern world, with only a few crackpot worshippers maintaining their divine status. From that premise, you can do a whole bunch of different stuff, ranging from a grim Changeling-esque 'fading magic' sort of thing to a bastardization of Spycraft where the PCs' branch of the Agency consists of primarily divine beings.

--Impeesa--

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Hey Impeesa, that sounds a bit like American Gods. Did you read that? The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking "This would make a great campaign setting."

 

[JPL]

Hey Impeesa, that sounds a bit like American Gods. Did you read that? The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking "This would make a great campaign setting."

Oh, that book was da bomb. Great stuff.

 

[JPL]

Hi JPL!

Whether you are working with British Intelligence in a Cyberpunk 2020 setting to find the Sword of Kas; refighting the 2nd World War in an alternate Earth where the rennaissance and industrial revolution never happened; pretending to be a goddess (rather than a god) to gain a foothold in a matriarchy; warring with the Melnibonean Sword Gods; working with alien bounty hunters; time travelling to save your ancestors; starting a civil war in the Nine Hells or any of many, many other things we have accomplished along the way. I think the one thing that made it especially 'epic' was that there were no constraits - only consequences.

Heavy stuff, man. Heavy stuff.

I'm thinking about this concept as the basis for a whole campaign world...a fantasy world built around Greek myth and epic [with maybe some other influences too --- Egyptian and Sumerian, for example] rather than Norse/Celtic/Anglo-Saxon roots.

So when is Deities and Demigods going into the OGL?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi JPL!

Heavy stuff, man. Heavy stuff.

I'm thinking about this concept as the basis for a whole campaign world...a fantasy world built around Greek myth and epic [with maybe some other influences too --- Egyptian and Sumerian, for example] rather than Norse/Celtic/Anglo-Saxon roots.

Could prove interesting. I am envisioning competing City States each dominated by one deity vieing against the others for power and prestige...?

So when is Deities and Demigods going into the OGL?

I honestly don't know (or care at this point - since I have rewritten elements of the Immortals Handbook so as to only require the Epic Level Handbook*); but I would imagine a month after the ELH perhaps.

*While still being compatible in areas with D&Dg as well as roughly comparable in terms of power so as not to make that book wholly invalid.

 

[blackshirt5]

"Demigods as player characters" is pretty much the concept for Exalted, isn't it? At least the way I play it.

 

[JPL]

"Demigods as player characters" is pretty much the concept for Exalted, isn't it? At least the way I play it.

In terms of power level, absolutely.

I'd like to go the next step and throw in an active pantheon of true gods to meddle with and manipulate the PCs.

I think Exalted is a great example of building a fantasy world around some alternate premises --- ancient China and Greece, anime, swords-and-sorcery, wuxai, and patented World-o-Darkness angst.

 

[blackshirt5]

not to mention the ever-present manlove of WW.

But you also have a huge animistic pantheon for Exalted; I just know that I've overlooked it in the past, something I'm determined not to do this time.

 

[JPL]

not to mention the ever-present manlove of WW.

But you also have a huge animistic pantheon for Exalted; I just know that I've overlooked it in the past, something I'm determined not to do this time.

See, I'm too old to learn the nuances of a massive fantasy world...

Y’know, I bought Exalted, I read it, I dug it, and I got rid of it. Neither anime nor the Storyteller system are really my cup of tea, and I already buy too many game books without getting hooked on a steady stream of fatsplats. But they’ve certainly created quite a world.

I’m a genre monkey. I love to look at something and break it down and figure out what the influences were. And most of my gaming ideas start the opposite way — combining different elements and shaking them up and seeing what happens. So I have total respect for Exalted’s creators for trying something so unusual.