Ideas on a Tabletop God Game.

[Hobbit4Hire$]

Hello everyone.

In games like The Primal Order and New Gods of Mankind and Senzar, there are rules for playing as gods, based on the assumption that the gods are dependent upon worshipers or belief. No worshipers, and the gods die. Essentially, the gods are like the contempory "egregore," an "spirit" or super-powered entity that in some way emerges from, and feeds upon, the collective belief and behavior of a community.

However, in much theology and mythology, as well as in games like Runequest, the gods pre-exist mortals. For example, in settings like Glorantha from Runequest or Pathfinder, the gods pre-exist mortals, and do not need worship for survival.

This has me wondering, how would one set up a god-game in settings like Runequest or Pathfinder, where the gods do not depend upon mortal belief for survival?

My own take is that the gods themselves seem to exist outside of mortal time and place, and thus cannot be properly "statted" or quantified by mortals. In-universe, mortals cannot affect the gods.

However, I do think one can stat out, and quantify, the "divine manifestation," of the detectable presence of a divine force working in the human world. The idea is similar to the thinking of Jonathan Pageau, who, inspired by Platonic and Christian metaphysics, argues that:
"these things [angels, demons, and other spirits" manifest in the world through humanity, whose action “provides body” for them. In this way the pattern of the being above receives concrete expression in the potential below. Top-down emanation meets with bottom-up emergence. In Pageau’s model, this bidirectional flow seems to be necessary in all cases. Every higher-order system is the meeting of a spiritual principle with the substantial constituents of its body. ... the bodies of higher beings seem to be highly variable in terms of character, size, and makeup. Sports teams, corporations, remote-control robots, cities—all of these disparate types of entities have at various times been characterised by Pageau as higher beings. ... The various human and material components come together in synchrony, united under the common identity that is the principle of their organisation. ..." (read more here)

I am still working on the idea. I would love to know your thoughts.

 

[dbm]

There are several games that feature characters at this level of power.

Have you checked out Amber, Nobilis and In Nomine for ideas?

 

[Theory of Games]

Superheroes have been compared to ancient gods of mythology. Marvel has Thor. DC has Wonder Woman. Both have mythological backgrounds.

So a system like Mutants & Masterminds or Champions might work?

 

[Reynard]

As with most things when designing RPGs, you want to know what it is the players and their characters actually do in order to determine what sort of systems to employ. Is a God game just a specific kind of supers game where good and evil punch each other in the heavens? Or is it Game of Thrones writ large? Either of these would ask for different kinds of systems.

If I were to make a God game I think I would have the PCs function as players of their own games, manipulating mortals and the physical universe for their own benefit. Alliances among and between both PCs and NPC gods would be constantly shifting. Actual play would happen at a high level mostly as PCs use the world and time like a chess board.

 

[Hobbit4Hire$]

There are several games that feature characters at this level of power.

Have you checked out Amber, Nobilis and In Nomine for ideas?

I have checked out these various options.
Nobilis seems to me to be a bit too rules-lite. I prefer crunch.
Amber can be useful. I really liked the book series.
In Nomine also looks promising. I really like the idea of characters ascending to be given Words. If I may detach the idea from the pop-culture pseudo-Christian cosmology of In Nomine, it looks like the idea of a godlike character growing to become a kind of anthropomorphic personification of a Platonic Ideal. I think that is a very good idea.

 

[Hobbit4Hire$]

Superheroes have been compared to ancient gods of mythology. Marvel has Thor. DC has Wonder Woman. Both have mythological backgrounds.

So a system like Mutants & Masterminds or Champions might work?

Thanks for the reply.
I was trying to re-create a "god game" scenario, a bit like the video game Black & White.

 

[Hobbit4Hire$]

As with most things when designing RPGs, you want to know what it is the players and their characters actually do in order to determine what sort of systems to employ. Is a God game just a specific kind of supers game where good and evil punch each other in the heavens? Or is it Game of Thrones writ large? Either of these would ask for different kinds of systems.

If I were to make a God game I think I would have the PCs function as players of their own games, manipulating mortals and the physical universe for their own benefit. Alliances among and between both PCs and NPC gods would be constantly shifting. Actual play would happen at a high level mostly as PCs use the world and time like a chess board.

Right, that sounds like something in epic poetry like The Iliad. That helps me focus on what I am aiming for. For me, a key idea I was thinking of is what exactly the players are competing over. I really want to avoid the whole trope of God's Need Prayer Badly.

I was perusing various texts for ideas, and I came across an episode in the Book of Daniel 10:12-14. I was also perusing In Nomine. This gave me some ideas.

To me, I think a good thing would be that players are more plausibly playing "divine manifestations", or a manifestation of some celestial spirit trying to form "access points" on earth. Each celestial spirit has some kind of portfolio and ideology that they want to propagate.

The players have the ability to try to manipulate probability, or inspire animals or humans, to organize themselves in a way that manifests and instantiates the spirit in the mateiral world. For example, a "water spirit" can manipulate the local enviornment so that snows melt and a river forms. A "war spirit" can try to inspire the local tribes to adopt a warrior culture and engage in endemic warfare. The more the culture and/or environment instantiates a particular ideal, the greater the spirit's presence in the empirical world.

In a modern urban fantasy with a Masquerade setting like In Nomine, the spirit's have to remain relatively hidden, appearing only in plausibly denial means. In a fantasy setting like Runequest or Middle-earth, the gods can take a step further, and more obviously manifest themselves in the form of physical bodies, or be directly summoned by their worshipers. (Of course, atheists could still exist an argue that such manifestations are merely just more technologically advanced species).

That is just me thinking outloud. I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[Reynard]

Right, that sounds like something in epic poetry like The Iliad. That helps me focus on what I am aiming for. For me, a key idea I was thinking of is what exactly the players are competing over. I really want to avoid the whole trope of God's Need Prayer Badly.

I was perusing various texts for ideas, and I came across an episode in the Book of Daniel 10:12-14. I was also perusing In Nomine. This gave me some ideas.

To me, I think a good thing would be that players are more plausibly playing "divine manifestations", or a manifestation of some celestial spirit trying to form "access points" on earth. Each celestial spirit has some kind of portfolio and ideology that they want to propagate.

The players have the ability to try to manipulate probability, or inspire animals or humans, to organize themselves in a way that manifests and instantiates the spirit in the mateiral world. For example, a "water spirit" can manipulate the local enviornment so that snows melt and a river forms. A "war spirit" can try to inspire the local tribes to adopt a warrior culture and engage in endemic warfare. The more the culture and/or environment instantiates a particular ideal, the greater the spirit's presence in the empirical world.

In a modern urban fantasy with a Masquerade setting like In Nomine, the spirit's have to remain relatively hidden, appearing only in plausibly denial means. In a fantasy setting like Runequest or Middle-earth, the gods can take a step further, and more obviously manifest themselves in the form of physical bodies, or be directly summoned by their worshipers. (Of course, atheists could still exist an argue that such manifestations are merely just more technologically advanced species).

That is just me thinking outloud. I would love to hear your thoughts.

If the PCs are just the avatars of even more elevated beings, what does that mean for their motivations? If they don't need followers, what is the purpose of their actions?

Let's say one PC is the earthly manifestation of a water deity, manifesting in late 1960s America before the clean water act. What does the character do? Why? How does that interact with the other PCs?

One reason I suggest that the god PCs exist on the higher plane and "play chess" with the world and people is because with avatars and manifestations, it quickly becomes a supers or urban fantasy game.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Sounds similar to what they were going for in Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth

 

[Necropolitan]

You could reflavor the rules of Godbound so that the players are playing avatars when they're creating their characters and repurpose the cult rules for their power levels.