Nomic-style campaign world creation

[Matthias]

Has anyone ever attempted to build a campaign world via committee in the style of metamorphic gaming such as Nomic or 1000 Blank White Cards? (See Wikipedia if you're unfamiliar with these.)

If not, would anyone like to try? I don't expect it to progress further than the "thought experiment" stage, but if some thoughtful and creative contributors get on board, something gameworthy might develop out of it.

 

[Systole]

Over at GITP, they often run PbP semi-free-form god games. In other words, you take the role of a fledgling god in a brand-new universe and build the world from scratch.

I've often wondered if a group of players could get together and agree to stop at a certain point and make the world available for play with mortal characters.

[sblock=God game ruleset (my personal variant -- there are MANY)]
In a God Game you take on the role of one of a pantheon of gods as they jointly create, populate, and generally mess around with a world. You are free to do anything godlike: forge mighty artifacts, carve majestic mountain ranges, create a race of sanity-shattering horrors from beyond, or inspire your goblin worshipers to rampage across the face of all creation.

Gods begin play with two major spheres. These are the defining aspects of your god and should take the form of large, expansive concepts: Darkness, Fire, Knowledge, Magic, War. Gods may NOT share major spheres, so it’s first come, first served when it comes to character creation.

Gods also begin play with 3-5 minor spheres and can eventually have as many as six. Minor spheres are more specific than major spheres, and include things like weapons, patience, clouds, etc. Minor spheres CAN overlap with another god’s major or minor spheres. Acquiring another minor sphere costs 5 AP and occurs in conjunction with a related action. For example, if you spend 10 AP to raise some mountains, you can spend an additional 5 AP to pick up ‘Mountains’ as a minor sphere at the same time.

Gods begin play with 30 AP. All gods get 10 AP per round automatically. Worship may increase this total slightly (by about +1 or 2 AP per round or so), as will world events – a winter god may find himself rather invigorated by an ice age, for example. Also, if a god performs an action which substantially alters the course of Fate, he may receive a one-time bonus at the GM's discretion. (Note: Seeing as we’re talking about gods, the bar for this is set very high. It is meant to reward a clever application of powers, and not standard godly things like creating a race of elves. Whoopee, elves.)

All actions take 10 AP (with the exception of acquiring minor spheres as noted above), and will be capped at 50 AP. Rounds will be four days long, or until everyone has posted at least once. Naturally, talking is a free action.

• Alter the World: Create mountains, valleys, deserts, oceans, caves, shrines, mineral deposits … almost anything is fair game, including the laws of chemistry and biological inheritance.
• Alter the Firmament: Create suns, stars, moons … floating palaces, constellations, vast nebulae of toxic space dust. Alter universal physical constants so that parallel lines converge or pi is whole number.
• Create Life: When life is created, you must define what it looks like and its general behavior, which should relate to your spheres. Life may be sentient or not, as you prefer. The first few generations of a sentient race will worship you automatically; after that, worship may begin to wane if you don’t pay attention to them. Note that any sentient life you create will possess free will, and may not behave exactly as you’d like.
• Alter Life: Gods may of course warp the creations of other gods. When life is altered, about a third of the race is changed in a way related to your spheres. This may or may not be considered an unfriendly act.
• Create Minions: Minions are divine creatures which serve your will. They are powerful beings, such as angels and demons. Minions are more powerful than mortals, but less powerful than avatars.
• Create an Avatar: Avatars are corporeal versions of your god, which can directly interact with the world and its peoples. Beware, however: Your avatars represent a distinct vulnerability. If your avatar is destroyed, you lose 10 AP, and the other god feasts on its divine energies, granting him 10 AP. Avatars can be disincorporated for free as long as they aren’t in combat or otherwise in dire straits. This loss of AP can bring you to negative AP.
• Empower: Empowering mortals, your minions, or your avatar raises their effectiveness for one turn. Empowered mortals are on par with minions; empowered minions are on par with avatars.
• Create an Artifact: Artifacts are powerful tools, weapons, armor, or items. When creating an artifact, remember that power levels are divine, but not infinite.

Seeing as the game is freeform, feel free to expand on anything within the realm of reason.


Sample Major Spheres (Choose 2): Love, Rage, Life, Death, Peace, War, Chaos (CN), Wickedness (NE), Purity (NG), Order (LN), Righteousness (LG), Tyranny (LE), Slaughter (CE), Utopia (CG), Balance (N), Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Darkness, Light, Animal, Plant, Knowledge, Freedom, Travel, Strength, Madness, Storm, Science, Magic, Runes, Ice, Sun, Moon, Fertility, Cosmos, Craft, Time, Afterlife, Emotion, Pleasure, Pain

Sample Minor Spheres (Choose 3-5): Iron, Clouds, Roads, Family, Harvest, Assassination, Nobility, Blood, Sloth, Chastity, Caves, Luck, Disease, Insects, Patience, Stealth, Treachery, Lies, Kindness, Humility, Poison, Courage, Weapons, Books, Rivers, Childbirth, Clothing, Celebrations, Monsters, Duality, Motherly Love, Writing, Languge, Books, Prophecy, Invention, Industry, Machines, Aging, Desire[/sblock]

 

[paradox42]

Both could be very cool. I'd be happy to participate in either, myself.

I ran two games using divine PCs (using the Immortals Handbook: Ascension rules that were released for 3.5, tweaked for the setting) that eventually merged right before the Big Finale. One game involved PCs in a well-established pantheon and world, so no world-building there, but the other had the PC deities gallivanting all over the universe- and they founded cults on several worlds.

One thing that I did was that, instead of checking for Random Encounters, I checked every game day for Random Prayer Events. This was sort of based on the old rules in 1E and 2E for divine intervention, which basically came down to "roll a d% if you the DM feel like it, and if it comes up 00, the gods intervene." For my own games, I reversed that: I decided that each day, there was a 1% chance for each PC deity that a prayer by one of the PC's followers would make it up through all the sub-layers of processing involved, and catch the attention of the PC's full consciousness. At that point, I would roll on some random adventure tables (often, but not always, the one in the 3.0 ELH), tweak the numbers and plot to make it suitably divine, and then formulate a prayer that was actually heard by the PC. The PC would then decide whether to tell the other party members about it, and what if anything to do about it.

Several of the games' most memorable adventures started as Random Prayer Events.

 

[GlassEye]

I've played in two god games and participated in one group world creation game where we later played characters in that world. The two god games were hindered by a lack of any sort of guidelines concerning god action and all three eventually died from lack of DM participation/intervention. Looks like those god game rules Systole posted were what we needed.

I'd be interested in either idea.