Okay, I started this game being fed up with games like Lost Gods, Black and White, the Last Exodus, Nobilis, etc. for various reasons.

My goal, in creating this game, was to create a game where the PCs start off as new, up-and-coming gods with one (or more) followers. The setting is remarkably similar to present-day Earth, with some exceptions:

The Big One is dead, or might as well be. He (She? It?), through an aggressive campaign of swordpoint-conversion, propaganda, and various double-dealings, took over control of every aspect of reality. Long story short, it went straight to His head. With great power comes great responsibility, and The Big One became so hubris-ridden that He became detached from His duties, and thus Unbelief crept in.

See, the universe runs on Faith, at a very deep and necessary level. When Faith dries up, things start to fall apart. This creates Unbelief, which is the universal equivalent of radioactive waste. The Big One's withdrawl from the day-to-day running of the universe radically increased Unbelief, to the point where it gained sentience, and manifested as The Nihilist God. It is Entropy personified, and will not stop until it has so clogged up the functioning of the universe that everything comes crashing down.

Luckily, there is a force at work older than the oldest gods, possibly older than the universe itself: The Wheel. The Wheel is the embodiment of the universal desire for growth and order. In reaction to the growth and sentience of Unbelief, The Wheel sent out agents among the only sentient creatures in the vicinity capable of generating Faith: humans. In various spam e-mails, unsolicited mail advertisements, and word-of-mouth campaigns, the servants of The Wheel have gathered together the ambitious, the daring, the imaginative, the creative, and others who weren't doing anything better at the time, and posed them two questions: Could you run the world better than it's being run now, and if so, are you willing to try? Those who answered yes became Embodied Gods, still-mortal manifestations of a particular portion of Reality called a Dominion, whose next step was to go out and gain believers. (Dominions are basically nouns: Roads, Freedom, Hedonism, Love, Mysteries, Literature, The Internet, Racism, War, Luck, etc.) Once the believers' Faith gained critical mass, the Embodied God would transcend earthly form and move up to being a Minor God, an incorporeal entity made entirely of Faith who could only be hurt by loss of Faith. (These new Gods were encouraged to pick their Dominions carefully; too small, and no one would bother following them, too big, and they'd spend too much of their time fighting for territory amongst other Gods. They were all encouraged, however, to pick Dominions they were interested in; The Wheel is willing to use competition as a way of weeding out the incompetent.) And so on, until a new Supreme Being could be chosen.

Experience and "levelling up" in this game works in a similar fashion to network marketing (think Amway): Gain followers, keep them, and improve them until they're ready to take over your Dominion. In conjunction with that, add more Dominions to your control so that there's room for advancement. (Try to stick to related Dominions in the early stages; it's easier that way.) Groom them to gain followers and diversify their portfolios, lather, rinse, and repeat. Use your stores of Faith to maintain your nascent pantheon, choke out Unbelief, and keep the universe running smoothly. Whatever you do, don't let your power go to your head, or you'll be overthrown by your competitors, if you're lucky, or by Unbelief if you're not.

Premise: What would you do if given the power of a god? Could you run the world better than it's being run now? How would you go about it? What are you willing to do to keep and build on your position? How would you combat apathy and its physical counterpart, entropy?

It's late, and I'll post my ideas for mechanics and where I feel I need help sometime later today. This was just to give you an overview of what i'm trying to do with this game, so that I could gain feedback on whether or not my mechanics were helping or hindering the ideas behind this game.

I love the idea, mainly because it takes itself a bit less seriously than Nobilis. This is just my impression of your first post, but it seems the core of play is inter-character coercion, intimidation and interaction in an effort to have them join the Cult of Nicotine or what-have-you. Is that what you imagine players actually doing when playing this game or am I reading it incorrectly?

Thank you, Mr. Solis, for allowing me to fill in something that I forgot to mention earlier: what the hell the players DO during the game!

First, the players in this game don't play just the ELD, they also play the worshippers/sub-dieties as well. The fun part is: the ELD and the followers don't always see eye-to-eye on things.

If you start playing on follower-level, you primarily have two core stats: Competence and Faith. Competence stands in for fighting, persuasion, knowledge, quick-thinking, and basic skills in general. Faith is how well you channel miracles from your ELD as well as how well you resist temptation to stray from the path. As your Competence increases, you can expand his/her repertoire (skills, talents, etc.) or you can sacrifice two points in your Competence Score to add a point to your Faith. (I envision each PC believer to start off with ten points to split between Competence and Faith; usually you end up with a follower whose competent and capable, but could be easily converted by a rival deity, or a "god junkie" whose loyal and devout and won't stray, but will probably eat a chunk out of your Faith pool casting miracles. ) You are essentially on the earth plane to be the sensory organs, arms, legs, mouth, and any other neccessary appendage of your deity. Due to rules against direct intervention between deities and their followers, they can only get obscure messages between the two. So, armed with their wits and their access to their deity, they have to promote their ELD's religion and goals.
The more Competent they get, the easier it is to get their job done; the more Faith they have, the larger the Faith Pool the deity has, but the easier it is for the follower to siphon off that Faith for miracles that may or may not be necessary.

If you're playing the ELD, you have to 1) manage your Faith Pool so that it doesn't run out at a critical juncture, 2) groom your believers to be competent, but not so competent that they lose Faith, 3) set up challenges to rival deities to either secure their own Dominion or steal a Dominion from another deity.

ELDs have scores in various miracles: Wrath (getting Biblical on some sorry m-----f----r's ass with plagues, lightning, etc.), Creation/ Preservation (pretty much what it says), Proclamation (twisting fate and luck to the deity's specifications; there is no "predicting the future" in this game, only believers who have expounded on their god's most recent Proclamation), Omnipresence (shifting between times and places; no, you cannot see or manifest in the future nor can you change the past), Aura (deals with possession, mind control, and exorcism; no, you can't use this to get Faith, because that has to be given voluntarily), and Dominion, which allows you to add to your other scores if you thematically tie them in to your Dominion.

The main attribute scores for a deity are Focus and Hubris. Focus is the ability of the ELD to figure out what's going on and act accordingly. Hubris is the ego of the ELD; too little Hubris, and the believers can siphon off miracles at a whim, and the ELD can be cowed or bullied by those with a higher Hubris. Too much Hubris, and the ELD risks getting cut off from his/her followers, thus following the Big One down the path of oblivion. Hubris accumulates; the only way to lower the score is to lose in a confrontation (nothing like defeat to wake you up!) or to make a roll of Focus vs. Hubris at the end of a crisis. If Focus wins Hubris gets lowered, if Hubris wins Focus gets lowered.

Now add all this to fact that each player also has to interact with the other players, either as allies or enemies, and you see how complicated this game can get.

The thing is, I'm looking for a rules-light system where each stat is important, yet they are balanced against each other so that adding to a score is equally a good idea and a bad idea; every score is equally important, none should be neglected, but trying to do an equal spread isn't such a hot idea, either. I do not want a Sim-heavy rules-set trying to cover for each and every possible situation; with this game it would be impossible and cumbersome, and I hate those systems anyway. I also want to emphasize through the mechanics that each decision is a balancing act on a very high and thin tightrope, thus my idea that the character stats should be minimal and occasionally in opposition to each other. I'm also looking for help on my reward system, to encourage players to roleplay the divide between ELD and believer, believer and believer (same Diety), believer and heretic (believer in some other ELD), and finally Deity vs. Deity ("There can be only one...") .

The goal of play still seems a little nebulous. For the followers, they're supposed to be the liason acting on behalf of the ELD, yes? So, to what end? If the players are playing both the ELD and the follower, does that mean they give themselves their own missions?

Okay, this is kind of an off-the-wall idea, but it might be entertaining if the players were all followers, or at least have that as a clearly defined "theatrical mode" or something. The GM, acting as the deity, creates a mission for a follower. To bring across the sense of incompetance getting in the way of correctly interpreting the deity's mission, the GM begins a game of "telephone." The GM tells the mission to another player who relays the message to another player, and so on until finally reaching the follower. The mission has most likely become so garbled that the player can have some fun trying to make sense of it in the context of his deity's general dominion.

For some reason, I get a Blues Brothers vibe. ("We're on a mission from God.")

See, one of the ideas I had was that the players are sliding between levels. It's set up kinda like Trollbabe, where there are different levels of Stakes and Consequences. On the "personal" level, the player plays a follower struggling with the demands of real life versus the demands of his/her faith.

The ELD, on a broader scale, has to 1) keep his followers both happy and fixated on spreading the word, 2) keep his Dominion and encroach on other Gods' Dominions to keep his importance strong and his "franchise" growing, and 3) commit to chipping away at Unbelief and the Nihilist God's minions. The ELD cannot directly intervene (unless his believer(s) directly invoke him); he needs followers to act as conduits to the mortal world. There's also setting up an appropriate afterlife for the faithful, building reliquaries and churches (which act as "banks" of Faith, which accumulate extra Faith between sessions), and so on.

The Wheel's (GM's) job is to shift between these "levels", following the player's general direction while throwing occasional curve balls to keep the players hopping. Players sort of pick and choose their battles, and whether or not to intervene in crisis situations. (That doesn't mean that the players won't regret not being involved later...) A big plus to this is that (like Trollbabe) the players narrate the consequences of their failures while the GM narrates the result of successes. I'm envisioning a sort of Gamist/Narrativist hybrid, where the mechanics simulate the results of the decisions the ELD and his followers make.

It's partially meant to be a comedy of errors (based on the sometimes conflicting understandings and goals between Followers and ELDs), partially a satiric jab at religion, but also partly an Exploration of Premise, and hopefully that adds more depth and complexity to the game.

Is this making any sense? Is anyone interested in this besides me, or should that even matter? If so, I'll post my (rough) idea of mechanics in this post and ask for some help. I want to keep it simple, but I also want to cover the bases for all kinds of whacky stuff. If there's any confusion about what I'm shooting for, please ask: I'll be happy to clarify.

Sounds like fun, Spooky! Finally, I'll have a use for Beyugias (bee-you-gee-ess), god of Cartoons and Comics!

You've got some vague mentions of mechanics - anything else floating in your head yet? I can see a Donjon-like pool system being used...

Do you have any details or ideas on how miracles work?

Do players create their ELD, when they start as followers? That would seem the obvious way, since at some point they're going to become ELD as well, and they must have something in mind. I take it an ELD holds sway over the Dominions below them?

One of the things I see here is the potential for PvP narrative. I'm finding the idea of that very intriguing at the moment.

More! More! Give us some More!

A.

Sounds perfectly suited for Active Exploits... although I don't know how you feel about diceless games.

Heh, sounds quite interesting. It's a different take to the other god games out there.

I like the competence and faith idea for followers. Though I think you should be careful with it, or it might distract from the core premise.

-Matt

PS, you mentioned Lost Gods not being what you were looking for. I'd appreciate any feedback on the particulars of that. But that's for another thread...

Okay, a number of inquiries have popped up when I wasn't able to get to the computer. Thanks for the interest! To address them:

taalyn wrote: Finally, I'll have a use for Beyugias (bee-you-gee-ess), god of Cartoons and Comics!

taalyn wrote: Do players create their ELD, when they start as followers? That would seem the obvious way, since at some point they're going to become ELD as well, and they must have something in mind. I take it an ELD holds sway over the Dominions below them?.

taalyn wrote: One of the things I see here is the potential for PvP narrative.

Matt wrote: I like the competence and faith idea for followers. Though I think you should be careful with it, or it might distract from the core premise.

Matt wrote: PS, you mentioned Lost Gods not being what you were looking for. I'd appreciate any feedback on the particulars of that. But that's for another thread...

taalyn wrote: You've got some vague mentions of mechanics - anything else floating in your head yet? I can see a Donjon-like pool system being used...Do you have any details or ideas on how miracles work?

RanconteurX wrote: Sounds perfectly suited for Active Exploits... although I don't know how you feel about diceless games.

Spooky Fanboy wrote: As a Believer, it involves balancing your ability to function in the everyday world (Competence) versus their responsibilities to their ELD, which allows them a "direct hotline" to the ELD in emergencies (Faith).

gobi wrote: So there is some kind of dual-natured/mutually exclusive trait thing happening here? Higher competence means lower faith and vice versa? That's an interesting way to set things up since higher faith makes you look less credible to potential converts but higher competence distances you from the source of your faith (and funky abilities).

Matt, this is important: I do not think your game, given the mood and theme it aims for, would necessarily benefit from additional mechanics for upward mobility. I like the game you made; I think it's well-designed for the stories you want it to tell.

Now, when your worshippers call on you they roll their Faith in a contested roll versus your ELD's Hubris. If the Deity wins, the miracle doesn't come off; the Miracle points necessary are saved. If the Believer wins, the miracle is invoked. (Obviously, more work is needed on this...)

Another problem:

I note that, by starting Crises off at the Believer level, I'm taking the ELD out of the picture bit by bit. I'm trying to balance it so that both the Believers and the ELD are given screen-time. Is this, in fact, impossible? Should I stick to Believers (still allowing for multiple characters per player), and have them design the Deity based on Faith points?

Perhaps that might be the way to go: have the players write up a Believer, let the GM control the ELD, and focus the game on letting the Believers convert followers (thus gaining more characters to play), sabotage rival Dieties, defuse similar sabotage directed at their Deity, and reap the rewards for success/punishment for failure.

Any thoughts?

Bunch of ideas for you:

- since you've got these dichotomies at the heart of the system (Hubris/Focus for example), why not have every roll involve both? That is, every player has one die representing one half of the dichotomy, and another die representing the other. I can see same die types, but different colors, or different die types as the "rank" of the trait. I can see this making for fun and complicated explanations, depending on win/win, win/lose, lose/win, or lose/lose.

- I'd want to play both believers and ELDs. None of this Wheel-as-ELD stuff for me, thanks. I wouldn't worry about screen time, as it seems to me that different aspects of the story, or even different stories altogether, would focus on one or the other. Sometimes I'd get to play converting other to the proper worship of Beyugias, and other times I'd get to play Beyugias smiting the temple of another god. Fun!

- I wonder if you can do Believers (instead, call them the Faithful?) something like Incarnate does past lives. That the ELD starts with X points as a Faith pool, and the Faith pool can be used (among other things) to define the Faithful. Of course, that makes it a little more complicated...

- ...but, it would introduce a nifty power level differentiation. The Faithful have the dichotomy, and ELDs have a Trichotomy (Hubris, Focus, and Fate?), with progressively more powerful deities having duadratomies, pentotomies, etc. Or maybe this is a crap idea....

- Miracles: don't have them rolled to succeed. Instead, have consequences, especially since the Faithful and the ELD are played by the same player. Miracles go off, if the player says so, and the the Faithful PC's Faith is high enough, but that causes a drop in the ELDs Faith pool. If the player decides no, the miracle doesn't go off, then the Faithful loses Faith. More of that fine jugggling act.

- Low Faith = bad for ELD, I like. In particular, I wonder if there isn't some way that the ELD's traits would be defined by his Faith pool? If Beyugias' Faith pool is 42, then that means he has Hubris X and Focus Y. If through miracles or Faithful attrition, his Faith pool drops to 27, then he has Hubris Z and Focus Q.

- It seems to me that the most important rolls would be in conversion and other ways of gaining Faith. Also very important is of course preventing the loss of Faith (particularly if the Faith pool is tied to ELD traits). I think the mechanic should focus there.

- I can see the need for a bunch of defining factors for the ELD, all of which would propel Faithful-level gameplay. Like Sins (Beyugias' #1 venal sin - eating pizza and reading comics simultaneously :), Temptations (the movie versions - Noooo!!), Blessings (superheroic powers), and so forth. It's probably obvious that Miracles would have to tie into domain - Beyugias' Faithful won't be inspiring romance, but they will be growing extra large boobs, long flowing hair, and suddenly wearing revealing and gravity-defying spandex. ;)

Spark any ideas? Talk to me, Spooky!

Aidan

What about having the players play followers of each others ELDs?

taalyn wrote: -since you've got these dichotomies at the heart of the system (Hubris/Focus for example), why not have every roll involve both? That is, every player has one die representing one half of the dichotomy, and another die representing the other. I can see same die types, but different colors, or different die types as the "rank" of the trait. I can see this making for fun and complicated explanations, depending on win/win, win/lose, lose/win, or lose/lose.

taalyn wrote: -I'd want to play both believers and ELDs. None of this Wheel-as-ELD stuff for me, thanks. I wouldn't worry about screen time, as it seems to me that different aspects of the story, or even different stories altogether, would focus on one or the other. Sometimes I'd get to play converting other to the proper worship of Beyugias, and other times I'd get to play Beyugias smiting the temple of another god. Fun!

taalyn wrote: -I wonder if you can do Believers (instead, call them the Faithful?) something like Incarnate does past lives. That the ELD starts with X points as a Faith pool, and the Faith pool can be used (among other things) to define the Faithful. Of course, that makes it a little more complicated....

taalyn wrote: -...but, it would introduce a nifty power level differentiation. The Faithful have the dichotomy, and ELDs have a Trichotomy (Hubris, Focus, and Fate?), with progressively more powerful deities having duadratomies, pentotomies, etc. Or maybe this is a crap idea....

taalyn wrote: -Miracles: don't have them rolled to succeed. Instead, have consequences, especially since the Faithful and the ELD are played by the same player. Miracles go off, if the player says so, and the the Faithful PC's Faith is high enough, but that causes a drop in the ELDs Faith pool. If the player decides no, the miracle doesn't go off, then the Faithful loses Faith. More of that fine jugggling act.

taalyn wrote: - Low Faith = bad for ELD, I like. In particular, I wonder if there isn't some way that the ELD's traits would be defined by his Faith pool? If Beyugias' Faith pool is 42, then that means he has Hubris X and Focus Y. If through miracles or Faithful attrition, his Faith pool drops to 27, then he has Hubris Z and Focus Q.

- It seems to me that the most important rolls would be in conversion and other ways of gaining Faith. Also very important is of course preventing the loss of Faith (particularly if the Faith pool is tied to ELD traits). I think the mechanic should focus there.

taalyn wrote: -I can see the need for a bunch of defining factors for the ELD, all of which would propel Faithful-level gameplay. Like Sins (Beyugias' #1 venal sin - eating pizza and reading comics simultaneously :), Temptations (the movie versions - Noooo!!), Blessings (superheroic powers), and so forth. It's probably obvious that Miracles would have to tie into domain - Beyugias' Faithful won't be inspiring romance, but they will be growing extra large boobs, long flowing hair, and suddenly wearing revealing and gravity-defying spandex. ;)

Marhault wrote: What about having the players play followers of each others ELDs?

Okay, I think I've gotten enough from here to help me with the basics. I just have to connect the dots at this point. I'll take our suggestions, add some necessary ingredients, and see what I come up with. Playtest document dead ahead!