[Great Ork Gods] Actual Play (and what play!)

[Jack Aidley]

Those of you who follow the Indie Game Design forums may remember this thread from last year in which I outlined my early thoughts on a game I've been working on called Great Ork Gods. Last night I finally had a chance to test it out in actual play.

(My memory's not that great so if I misquote any of my players or give the words to the wrong one of them, they have my apologies)

Rules in brief

Before I tell you how it went you'll probably need a quick run down of the rules (which have been altered since the above thread; I'll probably start a new thread in Indie Game Design sometime soon to discuss what's been happening with them). In Great Ork Gods each player controls an Ork, and one or more Gods. There are seven Gods in Gog, each controlling a broad area such as War, Death, Movement or Artefacts. Each Ork is hated differently by the different Gods (in other words each Ork is defined by seven numbers, describing how much the Gods hate him). Whenever an Ork wishes to take an action the player controlling the God responsible decides whether that action should be easy, medium or hard (one, two or three dice); additionally each player has a 'pool' of Spite which they can spend to make the task harder (one Spite = one extra dice). If any of the dice thrown come up less than or equal to the Ork's Hate for that god then the task fails. If they succeed the God's player gains a point of Spite. I had some little decorative plastic crystals that we used as counters for Spite.

One last thing, in Gog, the players are aiming to gather 'Oog', Oog is a kind of Orkish measure of respect, kudos, brass or bottle. Oog has very little in-game effect; it's more a kind of score than anything else. The player Orks are backed up by small groups of Goblins who are basically useless. Goblins will obey a command from an Ork until told otherwise by another Ork of equal or higher Oog.

Setting Up

I had three of my usual players for the session, but unfortunately not the fourth. The three players were Pete, Gilli and Ant (all of whom I've mentioned in other threads).

I began by explaining the system and a bit about the setting (standard fantasy-esque), and giving each player a handout detailing the names and areas of all seven Gods. To create their Orks, they had to split d6+18 points of hate between the Gods, and then think of a name. If the name is 'un-orky', or otherwise offensive to the Gods (as judged by me, the GM) then the Ork suffers another d6 hate, but does get start with two points of Oog rather than one (after all an Ork brave enough to offend the Gods with his name must have mighty big beans). The players have a ten minute time limit to generate a character in Gog.

As it turned out each player rolled 22 points of Hate. I can't remember how they distributed them now though.

Gilli's Ork was called Barf, Ant came up with Vomit Skullsplitter while Pete brought Grug Ug Nunk to the table.

Next up was God allocation, I got them each to roll a d10 with highest picks first and then 'bounced' back and forth through the rest. Ant went first and picked That Which Guards The Gate, God of Death. Gilli was next and picked The Obscurer Of Things, God of Artefacts, then Pete picked Sneakings and Peekings, God of Stealth and the God of Movement who I hadn't managed to thing of a decent name for but Pete dubbed him Here and There. Gilli then picked Lifting Stone, Pounding Rock, God of Strength thus leaving Ant with the choice between the God of War and the God of the Gab; strangely enough he picked Slashings and Slayings, the God of War. Finally Gilli got Lying Tongue, Twisting Words, God of the Gab.

How Ant was allowed to end up with both Death and War is anyone's guess.

Finally I explained the adventure they would be undertaking, I think said something like this: "Just as Goblins fear and obey the Orks, so Orks fear and obey the Trolls. It has been your misfortune to fall in with Trellik the Dark Troll. This day you have been commanded to attack the picturesque village of Little Umblington, arrayed prettily at the bottom of a valley."

Ant: "Does it have little picket fences? And people skipping in the streets?"

Me: "Oh yes. And neat rose gardens and children laughing and playing. It is however guarded by an Elf, a Dwarf and a Halfling. There is also a mayor of the village who has three daughters. Your aim is to smash and burn stuff, kill the three protectors and kidnap the mayor's three daughters. You will gain two points of Oog each if you successfully retrieve the mayor's daughters alive, or one point for you alone for each of the daughters you kill."

Pete: "I think the mayor had better take out insurance on his daughters."

Gilli: "I don't think anyone would insure them."

Ant: "This isn't a co-operative game is it?"

Me: "Not really, no. Though you'll hopefully need to co-operate a bit to succeed. Finally, you'll get one point of Oog for killing the Elf, and one point for killing the Dwarf."

Ant: "What about the Halfling?"

Me: "He's three foot tall! What kind of Ork gains respect from beating something half his size?"

The Game

Man, this post is getting real long, real fast and I haven't even got onto the meat of the thing yet!

Play began with the Orks up in the rocks at the top of the valley; along with five Goblin minions.

Pete: "So who's boss?"
Gilli: "I am."
Ant: "No, I am."  (10 seconds in, the games first laugh.)
Gilli: "No, I am."
Ant : "No, I am."
Gilli: "Fight you for it."

20 seconds in and we have our first player vs. player. Barf (Gilli's character) wins, Vomit narrowly avoids death, and I award Barf a temporary Oog point for being the leader. Ant gains a point of Spite for Gilli's success. Moments later:

Pete: "Can we see what's going on in the village?"
Me: "Roll Sneakings and Peakings."
Pete: "That's me. I pass."
Me: "You see the elf has climbed onto the roof of a building and is pointing his bow at you."
Pete: "Boss! We should get into cover."
Gilli: "What? Why?"
Ant: "Panic!"

They argue among themselves just long enough to start getting shot. I ask them to roll a dice each, and tell me who got lowest. Ant lost.

Me: "Ant, you've just been shot by the Elf, roll Death."
Ant: "Shit, I lost."
Me: "Ah. You've got ten minutes to roll a new character."

17 minutes gone, and we have our first player death. Normally player death is a bit of a downer in games, but here it was just funny.

Ant: "What happens when I come back?"
Me: "You just appear in the next 'scene', if you get what I mean?"
Ant: "Not really."
Me: "Well, next time the characters are somewhere else, or finish what they're doing – you just appear."
Ant: "So did Trellik send me down to help them then?"
Me: "Whatever you like. Probably."

Pete started climbing trees and trying to effectively sneak down the valley side. Then Ant's new character Bunny Stabber appears.

Ant: "If I run down the valley and charge into the building with the Elf on, do I think I can knock the building down?"
Me: "I don't know, ask The Obscurer Of Things."

Ant makes a roll against the Obscurer Of Things, and comes away convinced he can knock the building down...

Ant: "I'm going to charge down the valley side and run head first into the building to knock it over."
Me: "God of Movement?" (Should have said 'Here and There', really. I found it gave a lot more flavour when the Gods were called by their names rather than function.)
Pete: "What is the terrain like? Are there lots of rabbit holes?"
Me: "Oh yes, and lots of Bunnies hopping about among the daisies."
Ant: "I'm going to try and stamp on them on the way down."
Pete: "Sounds hard to me."

Play continued with Bunny Stabber failing to knock the building down (it was solid stone after all), but eventually killing the Elf, pulling his head off and putting it on a stick (Elf-on-a-stick!). Grug ug ran into a building, used the fabulous line [/b]"Oh, Obscurer Of Things, are toddlers flammable?"[/b] and then managed to set fire to himself and very little else. Barf meanwhile got herself killed in a fight with the Dwarf. By the end of the game they managed to get no less than seven Orks killed, and all but one of their Goblins (who was left chasing a duck round the village pond) likewise. Only one Ork made it out alive. I won't give you a blow-by-blow account, but hopefully there's enough above to give you an idea of the kind of thing that went on.

Summing up

Great Ork Gods ran as least as well as I had hoped. All three of my players had a great time (and said so), and we all spent much of the session in stitches. I wouldn't want to try playing a campaign in it, but for a one session 'jaunt' it went down brilliantly. I was pleased, and surprised, by how ruthlessly fair the players were in judging difficulty as their Gods; more than once they declared a task as Medium, or Easy and then spent Spite to make it harder.

The Goblins provided excellent comic side-kicks while being almost totally ineffectual, while some real moments of humour came from the run of events (notably Gilli having her Ork killed by the Dwarf while attacking with an Axe and help from the Goblins, and then Bunny Stabber beating him to death with his Elf-On-A-Stick). I was also pleased and impressed by the players' ability to play their Orks for laughs without crossing that line into absurdity. (Gilli's second Ork, Ruck, kicked the door down into the Mayor's mansion and then tried to convince the armed guard's inside that'd come to deliver some wood).

Everyone seemed to get really involved and we played really solidly for the two hours, without once getting involved in an unrelated discussion. The rules played out really simply and smoothly with the players taking only a few rolls to get completely to grips with them.

Still, there were a few things that I felt could have been better:

Cool combat actions tended to be slightly penalised. For example, Grug ug tried to pick the Halfling up and throw him in the pond. Now by the rules this meant he had to make a Slashings and Slayings roll, and then a Lifting Stone, Pounding Rock roll to succeed, whereas he would only have had to make one roll to simply kill the Halfling. I feel I could have handled this better; probably only requiring a Lifting Stone, Pounding Rock roll but at them same time I didn't want to let the players avoid making combat rolls by doing 'stunts' the whole time.

There were, perhaps, a few too many deaths. While I wanted the Orks to be expendable, seven in a two hour session is a hell of a death rate.

There were a few times were it became unclear whether the Gods should be deciding whether how hard it should be do something; or whether I should just declare it impossible.

Overall, I'm very pleased indeed.

[Valamir]

Sounds awesome.

As for too many deaths, how about using Goblins for hitpoints.

Maybe you get 1 goblin hanger on for every point of Oog you have.  

When you fail a roll (a die comes up under a given hate), you can ignore the lowest die rolled if you describe how the Goblin eats the failure for you...the goblin, of course, winds up dieing messily.  If you failed on more than 1 die, you can keep sacrificing goblin's until the failure is averted....or until you run out of goblins.

Goblins get refreshed whenever you return to the Ork Village and tell tales of your orkish prowess at which point lots of little 2 foot high fan boys want to follow you around.

[Loki]

Mr Jack,

Congratulations on what sounds like a great game, and exactly on target with what you were shooting for on the design thread. I was one of the fans rabidly anticipating the game, and I CAN'T WAIT TO PLAY/RUN IT!

Edit: this might be more appropriate for the IGD thread you said you're going to start up. If so, ignore.
Quick question: what are the Goblin mechanics?

[ks13]

This seems like a great game and wickedly good fun for last minute one-shots.

You can't beat 10 min. chargen, but I was concerned about how quickly the orcs were dropping. While a fresh pool of backups can always be nearby, the high turnover seems a bit distracting. I do like Ralph's idea about having the otherwise useless goblins turn into hit points. Having them dispatched at a quick rate and in all sorts of creative ways sounds like fun. I would give extra Oog to the orc that returns with the most goblins still alive.

Another options that I would suggest is allowing the player to spend Oog to turn death into a very humiliating situation instead, along with an extra Spite point since a god was deprived of the orc's death. Make the cost rapidly increasing (i.e. 1 Oog for the fist instance, 2 for the next, then 3 and so on), to balance survival against Oog. Thus an orc with no goblins and no Oog, is useless and as good as gone.

-Al

[Jack Aidley]

Loki,

As you suggested I might, I will explain how the Goblins work in the new mechanics thread which should be up on Monday (sorry, busy this weekend).

Ralph,

Interesting idea, thanks! I like the idea of the Goblins dying for the Orks, although I think I'll do it a little differently from how you suggest.

Cheers,

Jack.

[failrate]

There was a Star Trek computer game that used red-shirted ensigns for hitpoints.  Anytime the Away Team still had redshirts and were attacked, the Ensign would wander into the line of fire.

[Jack Aidley]

I've put up the promised rules thread, you can find it here.