[The Great Ork Gods] Nothing but mayhem

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I should preface this by mentioning that I and the others in this group have played, within the last year, extensive games of:
- kill puppies for satan
- Tunnels & Trolls, of a particularly macabre and zany sort
- Elfs
- Fairy Meat

I don't mind saying this game is brilliant. It's like an unholy hybrid of Elfs (failin' all over the place, player/character division) and kill puppies for satan (the goblins, nuff said). Ork games come in two sorts: noble savage (Earthdawn, Orkworld) and brutal guilty pleasure (Ork!, Orx, The Great Ork Gods), and TGOG simply cries out for publication.

TEXT COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

Throughout: "die" is singular, "dice" is plural.

p. 5
"those who should be looking out for their green-skinned hides"

Finish the Assigning Hate section with the Vomit Skullsplitter example from p. 6; just 'port it over.

p. 6
Move the Vomit Skullsplitter example as described above.

The Assigning the Gods section is a bit hard to parse. We had three players. I laid out all seven gods, face down, in a row, and turned over three at one end. We finished out these three (forcing the last-to-go person to take the remaining one, no matter what), and then turned over three more (leaving one face down), and did it all again. Then the final god was automatically given to the first-to-go person.

Am I reading this right? It works, but I'm not sure if it's what was intended, as starting Spite was kind of low (one player had one Spite). I did like the way that the first-to-go person had the best choices of what she wanted (and would start with three gods instead of two), but would automatically start with no Spite, and the last-to-go person had no choice at all, but did have the best chance of starting with Spite.

The Performing Actions sections strongly needs a system for determining which ork's action is resolved before, during, or after the resolution of another ork's action. Bluntly, the game suffers from the classic IIEE lack - you can't tell how announcements among the real people relate to starting, carrying out, and finishing actions among the imaginary characters. This was not a serious problem in our group, but it easily could have been (and one crucial judgment call on my part in this regard did affect the overall outcome significantly). See my review of kill puppies for satan for some comments about this issue in general.

p. 8
Suggested rules change: when an ork kills an ork of higher Oog, the slayer earns the difference between their Oogs (hence taking on the killed ork's Oog value). A very nasty opportunity, I think.

p. 9
You seem concerned with monitoring the presence and availability of goblins who happen not, at the moment, to be orks' direct followers. I suggest that this is unnecessary - most of the time, goblins are just "around," and in moments when that would make no sense at all, the GM just says so. Useful goblins are a fairly limited resource due to Oog, so there's no need to limit them further in most cases.

p. 10
All right, the single most brilliant element in this game design is the Oog rewards relative to the mayor's daughters. Here's why:
a) Return all three to Dursil, and everyone gets two Oog.
b) Kill any one of them, and you alone get one Oog.

Game theory, anyone? Very, very fun. The first half of the scenario is all about obstacles (dwarf, guards, etc) and burning buildings. The second half kicks into "Survivor" mode as everyone wonders just what's better: two for us all, or one-to-three for me? Especially considering that at the point of decision, the orks' Oog values are almost certainly not the same, and furthermore, the players now have an immediate history of screwing or not screwing one another via Spite.

I strongly recommend that this principle be outlined, explained, and given multiple possible examples in the text. Without this particular feature in the scenario, in some fashion (any good book or site on game theory will provide multiple possibilities), The Great Ork Gods is unplayable.

What, no Oog for killing Dursil? My players decided they would get around to doing this in the first few seconds of play. Once the daughters got waxed, Dursil's fate was sealed (or it would have been if the single surviving ork had succeeded).

p. 11
Orks in Dungeons, and related - I tell you, you do not have to worry, ever, about making foes "easy vs. hard." This is not a problem at all. The players are very committed to foes being appropriately difficult, relative both to the initial difficulty and to Spite. The problem with orks in dungeons is the implication of teamwork, and that's a matter of setting goals as I mention above.

IN PLAY

Well, they all died, or rather, the final three orks died in addition to the casualty along the way. One lived to bring the daughters' corpses near Dursil (in hopes of luring him there to kill him) but was killed by the troll. Highlights and observations ...

1. Replacement orks tended to get poncy names, as the benefit of even one extra starting goblin was brutally illustrated in the first scenes of play.

2. Everyone decided that the dwarf must really be a bad-ass, and so killing him turned out to be very perilous, plus that gave me time to give him Sean Connery's accent. He survived multiple encounters until he got his axe taken away. The elf was tough too, but it helped that the building got lit on fire underneath him and I decided his bow was useless after he had to leap down through the trap door.

3. The halfling ... well, OK, the halfling. I decided that he was hiding in a wagon, spying on the orks as they approached. So Maura's first ork gets nailed between the eyes by an elvish arrow, and her second decides to charge the wagon and push it across the little arched stone bridge, using it as cover - especially because she set it on fire, successfully. Because there's hay in it, right? (I said, yeah, hay! All right then.) And then Julie says (and remember, I hadn't revealed the halfling yet), "Is the halfling hiding in the hay?"

Oh my. Of course the halfling is hiding in the hay. And we add insult to injury because as the wagon crests the bridge, the squealing and flaming halfling leaps from it into the water, and Maura's ork (Peaseblossom, I believe) doesn't notice.

4. I really, really like the way that the distribution of gods among the players has a tremendous impact on the orks played by that player. Tod controlled the Gate and Sneakings. That meant his ork was very good at ambushing and survived lots of things, but was also pretty damn incompetent. He was kind of the hard-luck, get-ass-kicked-but-not-die ork.

Julie controlled Slashings and Lying, and her ork was accordingly quite a bad-ass. Although that didn't help much when trying to get the daughters out of a burning building: "I tie ropes around their necks, and rig them into, um, harnesses, yeah, and make them go out the window." Failed roll. "Ooops." (Clarification: Tod's ork managed to steal one of the daughters during this process; when he saw the others do the hangman's drop-kick dance, he just pushed his off the roof for the Oog.) Oddly, her ork didn't lie much.

Speaking of lying, Tod's tried (brilliantly) several times but was hosed by the dice (easy rolls, too). I would really have enjoyed it if his attempt to lure the dwarf into the spiked-pit trap had succeeded.

Maura controlled Flailing, Lifting, and Obscuring, which meant her ork got a lot done but had a harder time when the face-the-foe moments came. She sure destroyed a lot of buildings though.

5. Only one ork died despite quite a bit of adversity, which was lower than I expected. To some extent, it was a matter of lucky rolls against the Gate, some of which were quite difficult, but I'm interested to see what the range of body-counts will be across several instances of play.

6. Goblins died in terrible, terrible ways. They make great launching pads and quickly-snatched arrow-blockers, apparently, but I was most impressed by the one which got stuffed up the chimney (until it stuck - crunch) to keep the elf from escaping downwards, and especially by the one who, as Tod's ork tried to lure the daughters out of the building, got tossed up among the daughters in order to "prove" that the goblins were already in the house. (That lie failed too, unfortunately.)

7. Establishing difficulty was no problem at all. Often a single, not-relevant-at-the-moment statement of mine about an NPC or a situation was utilized soon afterward by a player in establishing difficulty of an action, and thus a great deal of "shared imaginary space" was agreed upon consensually without much effort. The players understood the "be fair" dictum and valued it greatly.

8. Understanding the goblin currency is very important: remember, spending your first goblin reduces the difficulty to Easy, whether from Medium or Hard. After that, it's one goblin cancels one Spite. We stuck to this carefully and doing it right makes a big difference.

In all, Jack, this is a magnificent little game. It is tremendously playable.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

The Assigning the Gods section is a bit hard to parse. We had three players. I laid out all seven gods, face down, in a row, and turned over three at one end. We finished out these three (forcing the last-to-go person to take the remaining one, no matter what), and then turned over three more (leaving one face down), and did it all again. Then the final god was automatically given to the first-to-go person.

Am I reading this right? It works, but I'm not sure if it's what was intended, as starting Spite was kind of low (one player had one Spite). I did like the way that the first-to-go person had the best choices of what she wanted (and would start with three gods instead of two), but would automatically start with no Spite, and the last-to-go person had no choice at all, but did have the best chance of starting with Spite.

There should always be a number of gods face up equal to the number of players.  That way if the third god keeps being the one chosen, the first 2 will build up more spite.

[Ron Edwards]

Rules don't say so. Is that right, Jack? We puzzled mightily about this as we started, much like orks trying to figure out a catapult (oops!).

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

At the beginning of each session, the Gods need
to be assigned to the players. Begin by shuffling
the God cards and then laying them out in a line,
face down, in front of the players. Have the players
roll dice to see who goes first, then turn over a
number of cards equal to the number of players,
starting from the left.

The player whose turn it is to pick can choose
any of the face up cards, but must place a Spite
counter on each card to the left of the one he picks
- so if he picks the card on the left he doesn't lay
any Spite counters down. If there are any Spite
counters on the card he picks then he adds them to
his Spite pool. After each player picks, turn over
the next face down card (if there are any left).Repeat this process, starting again with the first
player if you have been through them all, until all
seven Gods have been assigned.

Emphasis mine.

[Ron Edwards]

Yeah, Ralph, but ...

(and this is really for Jack, to let him know how badly people are going to twist his words when they read them ...)

... we read the emphasized text to mean "after all three of you are done choosing." Wrong? Probably. But that was our reading.

Best,
Ron

[Jack Aidley]

Hi Ron,

I don't mind saying this game is brilliant.

I don't mind you saying it either. Thanks!

Throughout: "die" is singular, "dice" is plural.

I know. I know because the D&D rule books say so. Thing is, I have never once heard anyone who uses it like that. People everywhere, it seems to me, use dice as both singular and plural in natural language usage, thus that's what I've gone for in the rules.

The Assigning the Gods section is a bit hard to parse. We had three players. I laid out all seven gods, face down, in a row, and turned over three at one end. We finished out these three (forcing the last-to-go person to take the remaining one, no matter what), and then turned over three more (leaving one face down), and did it all again. Then the final god was automatically given to the first-to-go person.

Ralph is right about they are intended to work (he should be, the rules were his idea).

Gah! I worked a lot on the text for these bits between the first and second playtest rules, seems I've still got more work to do. Did you read the example given? I'd hoped that would pick up any 'stragglers' from the rules text.

Starting Spite is intended to be low. This is to encourage the players to garner most of their Spite through allowing others to succeed. In the original God assignment rules no Spite at all was given to the players to begin with.

The Performing Actions sections strongly needs a system for determining which ork's action is resolved before, during, or after the resolution of another ork's action. Bluntly, the game suffers from the classic IIEE lack - you can't tell how announcements among the real people relate to starting, carrying out, and finishing actions among the imaginary characters.

Reading your review of Kill Puppies for Satan, I see what you mean and I agree I should write something about it. This is the kind of stuff that I find it hard to see as 'rules'.

All right, the single most brilliant element in this game design is the Oog rewards relative to the mayor's daughters. -snip-

I strongly recommend that this principle be outlined, explained, and given multiple possible examples in the text. Without this particular feature in the scenario, in some fashion (any good book or site on game theory will provide multiple possibilities), The Great Ork Gods is unplayable.

I was rather pleased with that bit, and the 'How to run Great Ork Gods' text I've been working on does include a section on this very point. However I don't agree however that the lack of this feature in a scenario would be so damaging as to make it unplayable. Players are willing enough to alternate between helping and hindering each other without needing the adding incentive and my experience of playing in a game of GOG run by a friend backs this up.

What, no Oog for killing Dursil?

It hadn't occurred to me that the players would try; it didn't come up in the games I played. The Trolls were mostly out-of-game.

Replacement orks tended to get poncy names, as the benefit of even one extra starting goblin was brutally illustrated in the first scenes of play.

Interesting. I didn't get a similar effect. Did you pick up on the rule about Orks with poncy names getting more hate? I found that to be a bigger penalty than the extra Oog was a bonus.

I really, really like the way that the distribution of gods among the players has a tremendous impact on the orks played by that player.

It does; doesn't it? Somehow in the first game I ran one of the players managed to get both Slashings and Slayings and That Which Guards the Gate – his Ork lived a very long time...

Goblins died in terrible, terrible ways. They make great launching pads and quickly-snatched arrow-blockers, apparently, but I was most impressed by the one which got stuffed up the chimney (until it stuck - crunch) to keep the elf from escaping downwards, and especially by the one who, as Tod's ork tried to lure the daughters out of the building, got tossed up among the daughters in order to "prove" that the goblins were already in the house. (That lie failed too, unfortunately.)

Excellent. I'm really pleased with how well folks seem to understand, and enjoy, the roll of Goblins in the game. My favourite Goblin death so far was actually one of mine. We were invading a wizard's tower and came across a room containing a variety of magic potions. I grabbed a Goblin, forced it to drink a whole load of different potions (which we knew reacted violently), shook it up and threw it into another room as a kind of bomb.

Establishing difficulty was no problem at all. Often a single, not-relevant-at-the-moment statement of mine about an NPC or a situation was utilized soon afterward by a player in establishing difficulty of an action, and thus a great deal of "shared imaginary space" was agreed upon consensually without much effort. The players understood the "be fair" dictum and valued it greatly.

Playing Great Ork Gods, I've been very impressed by the players devotion to being fair and creating consistent difficulties for things and, in particular, playing up on the strengths and weaknesses of characters in the world.

In all, Jack, this is a magnificent little game. It is tremendously playable.

Thank you; glad you enjoyed it.

All-in-all it seems like your game went down much as I'd have hoped. Pretty much all the reports I've got back so far seem similar – people had a lot of fun and played a game a lot like I envisioned despite getting a rule or two wrong.

Oh, and by-the-way I've been calling the game Great Ork Gods rather than The Great Ork Gods - the 'the' will be dropped from the final title.

Cheers,

Jack.

[jrs]

Replacement orks tended to get poncy names, as the benefit of even one extra starting goblin was brutally illustrated in the first scenes of play.

Interesting. I didn't get a similar effect. Did you pick up on the rule about Orks with poncy names getting more hate? I found that to be a bigger penalty than the extra Oog was a bonus.

Replacement ork, my foot.  My ork started as Thumper and not all that much additional hate to distribute.  Having that extra oog was good.  (Can we say gamist anyone?)  It made it much easier to dispatch the elf--heh, heh, heh, pretty elf.  Every one of my rolls succeeded except that last one when I failed to securly tie that goblin/grappling hook and the idiot goblin was flung clear of the burning building while I crashed through the floor to my fiery death.  

The game was tremendous fun.  The halfling in the hay and the dwarf taunting had everyone at the table laughing so hard we were incapable of speech.  

Julie

[Tod Olson]

The Assigning the Gods section is a bit hard to parse. We had three players. I laid out all seven gods, face down, in a row, and turned over three at one end. We finished out these three (forcing the last-to-go person to take the remaining one, no matter what), and then turned over three more (leaving one face down), and did it all again. Then the final god was automatically given to the first-to-go person.

Ralph is right about they are intended to work (he should be, the rules were his idea).

Gah! I worked a lot on the text for these bits between the first and second playtest rules, seems I've still got more work to do. Did you read the example given? I'd hoped that would pick up any 'stragglers' from the rules text.

Wearing my user interface hat: numbered instructions may be harder to misinterpret. You might try something like:

1. turn over three gods
2. player picks a god and assigns any spite
3. turn over next god, if any remain face down
4. next player starts at 2
5. continue until all gods are allocated

Maybe that works, maybe not.

Great game!

-Tod

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Both orks with poncy names (#1 ork for Julie, #2 ork for Maura) rolled a mere 1 for extra Hate.

Best,
Ron