[Great Ork Gods]

[Sean]

Paul's excellent "Fruits of Woe" game, being set in a dungeon and all, had a fixed pool of floater goblins that you couldn't do anything with (except narrate funny stuff) until you won them under your influence with Oog. When new orcs came into the game, their goblins didn't come out of the pool, but all in-game goblin recruitments came out of the pool. I think we started with six extra in the pool (over and above the one each we started with). We did run out of floaters at some point, but it was late enough in the scenario that it was OK.

Oh - important though. When an orc died and still had goblins, that orc's remaining goblins got returned to the floater pool, ready to be recruited in case of new acts of Ooginess by the orcs.

I thought this method did provide a fun optional variable. On the other hand, the game doesn't need it - the random roamin' goblin pool so every oog-gain involves goblin-gain would work fine too. But tightening up the goblin-economy puts the screws on play nicely in certain ways too.

Oh yeah, and I agree with Ralph, this game plays tighter than Angus Young, and the economy of spite and goblins is the main reason why. I definitely favor goblins being a quantified resource for game purposes (though if you have 'free floaters' I suppose you can narrate their death for shits n' giggles too, but not for a die roll bonus), however that works out. Maybe there's a section called 'Optional Goblin Rules' marked off from everything else that opens up discussion on different forms of goblin-stealing, fixed numbers of floaters, the consequences of killing floaters in games with a fixed number, or whatever, but however it turns out there should be a definitely stated baseline goblin rule that strongly and clearly supports the really, really fun metagame competition that powers this thing.

My opinion and $3.75 will get you a mocha frappucino at Starbuck's, but there it is.

[Emily Care]

The way we played with Tom (at least this was how I was playing it) goblins weren't linked to Oog, but you could only use one per action, which kept a lid on the character ability to hose god/spite opposition.

--Em

[Eszed]

eh, ya'all've changed my mind.  Ralph, very convincing.  I didn't get my mind around it until I saw it layed out like that.  I like John Harper's suggestion of different colored stones for Oog and for Goblins.

Now I REALLY want to run GoG again.

Thanks!