I played an interesting scenario with a neat group of people today. I hope the GM may post on the game in fuller detail here, but I wanted to get a few of my own thoughts and questions down before they went away (which mine tend to do within 24 hours or so).

- Grabbing other people's goblins is a neat trick. Is this really OK? It's a hell of a thing...I tried at one point to seal another ork ('Mook') in a pit trap we were crossing by hurling one of Mook's own goblins at a rock keeping the pit open. Had I succeeded, Mook would have been trapped and lost a goblin. Is this legitimate?

- Playing to win. I had this impression that I was supposed to be the ork with the most Oog at the end, and as a result I was somewhat nasty, especially towards the end of the game, engineering the death of one Tang, another player's second orc and the deserving star of much of the adventure. Maybe we were all just too nice a group, but I felt sort of bad about basically throwing everything I had into hosing him. Should I have? The whole game (the currency of spite and goblins, the god distribution, etc.) seems set up to encourage this sort of competition. Or is this just the ol' primate coming out? Either way is cool with me.

- At least I won.

- I don't think d6 extra hate is a sufficient penalty for the extra point of Oog either, given the rapidity of ork death. Or maybe the rule's there to inject variety? Everyone took 'straight' names on their first orc, but two of the three of us went for poncy names on our second orc. (Mine was Fleur de Lilly.) Past the halfway point it seemed a no-brainer to go poncy: every point of oog you can get at that point matters. We got 'hosed' with 2 and 3 extra points of hate respectively. Maybe you should make it a fixed number like four or five hate instead?

- The GM did what I would have done with the game, namely, try a dungeon scenario. If others are contemplating this, I strongly recommend treating the dungeon Donjon-style in all but the core oog-gathering situations: let what they players try to do more or less dictate what happens. When we didn't do this, some of us started Simming things out, which threw everyone off a little. More seriously, though, the in-game effects of the rolls (when oog is not at stake) are just color anyway, so hand over the narrative rights to the players and empower their actions liberally. (My 2 cents worth is that this is so and that there ought to be some explicit text on it in the game, though I may have missed it (read rules 3 times but not highly carefully)). The competition in this game is at the author level, with the mechanics of setting difficulty levels by god, spite, and goblins, and trying to come out with the most Oog at the end. Or at least that's what I thought I was supposed to be doing.


OK, I guess those are my main points for now. Hopefully the GM and some of the other players will post their thoughts as well.

- I don't think d6 extra hate is a sufficient penalty for the extra point of Oog either, given the rapidity of ork death. Or maybe the rule's there to inject variety? Everyone took 'straight' names on their first orc, but two of the three of us went for poncy names on our second orc. (Mine was Fleur de Lilly.) Past the halfway point it seemed a no-brainer to go poncy: every point of oog you can get at that point matters. We got 'hosed' with 2 and 3 extra points of hate respectively. Maybe you should make it a fixed number like four or five hate instead?

Hello,

Here are some my notions about these points.

1. Grabbing one another's goblins hasn't happened much in our games, and to some extent a kind of "hands off my goblins" unspoken rule has applied. One of the reasons for this, I'm sure, is that I don't practice any sort of goblin-limit on characters' immediate surroundings, and so every time in my two games so far, a new point of Oog results, biff-bam, in another goblin in your pocket. So it's just plain safer to go for another Oog point by demolishing a building or doing something outrageous than it is to start back-stabbing to that degree.

Furthermore, the tactic strikes me as potentially game-breaking if two orks are in direct conflict, especially combat with one another. Who gets whose goblins? If it's through "whoever shouts first," then you have a shouting match (no fun). I'm actually a bit of a foe of the goblin-stealing rules, the more I think about them.

In line with the above, I think Great Ork Gods is all about playing to win, and so Sean, I think you're right on the money. Am I right in thinking that you found goblin-stealing to be powergaming (using my very specific definition from the Gamism essay)?

2. I do think the extra die of Hate is a good counter to the poncy names ... but not because it's supposed to be disincentive. Because in our games, the extra die resulted in low numbers too. No, I favor the current poncy/Hate rules, because they are dead bang fun. It's great to see Orgurok the Nads-Gnasher keel over with an elven arrow in his eye, to be replaced by Peaseblossom who charges in and stabs th'fucker. I don't think the rules are built to encourage orky names; they're built to mock orky names (and as such, are a fantastic counter to the game Ork!). And the potential bad roll of getting 5 or 6 more Hate just adds some risk across many instances, which is consistent with the rest of the game as well (remember: a little hosing, a little benefit, a little cooperation, a little back-stabbing, etc).

3. Sean, you wrote,

The competition in this game is at the author level, with the mechanics of setting difficulty levels by god, spite, and goblins, and trying to come out with the most Oog at the end. Or at least that's what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

Well, sorry for pointing it out, Ron. It's a really interesting point, though. Because the more I thought about GOG, the more I thought: now this is a case where you can sort of do a whole-hog 'player narration' style of play, y'know, the one we associate with Narrativism, but it's put at the service of a Gamist CA, because the real action of the game is actually at the author/game level. A lot of what happens in the imaginary space is in a certain sense just Color, though very important to the action of the game proper (as color often is). That was a pretty eye-opening experience for me.

I enjoyed this game quite a bit, though I think I might have enjoyed it even more if I'd known that's what I was going to be doing from the beginning. It's almost more of a 'party game' type RPG, I think - it would mix well with beer.

That's all unpolished and I can't review it now - gotta go.

S

Hmm. More time now. The only other thing I have to say about this concerns the goblin-stealing rules. The obvious solution to the 'what if two players grab the same goblin?' problem is to say that the goblin-owner has dibs. But - and this is an important point - if the instinct I have about high freedom of player narration is correct (Jack? Too busy with 'Assault on Dawn Ice Island' to comment?), that really doesn't mesh well with goblin-stealing. (Also, if that is correct, the relative latitude of players in constructing the imagined space for themselves ought to be emphasized a little more. We fell into a fair amount of sim-by-habit initially, maybe partly because of the dungeon environment. Also, though, there was a fixed pool of floater goblins to draw our new converts from down there in the dungeons, though new orks didn't draw from it.)

I'd also agree that goblin-stealing was, subjectively, for me, a form of Powergaming. I was like: "Oh really? So goblins are common property? I know whose goblins I'm not using now until everyone else's are used up..."

Hello,

No, not too busy to comment: you just mentioned that some of the others who'd played might comment and I was waiting to see whether they did before weighing in with my own comments.

Grabbing other peoples Goblins - nasty isn't it? It seems you think it's too nasty. I figured that anyone who practiced it would face the hardcore smack-down from whoever he had so insulted, and GOG provides plenty of opportunity for putting the boot in.

Playing Donjon stylee - I think you should always play GOG Donjon stylee, regardless of whether your down a dungeon or not. I think it is really, really important to the way the game plays that 90% of the action should be entirely player-led. This is not a game for carefully planed encounters, it is a game for giving the players a playground and letting them play.

Player Narration - This has come up before, and I believe some groups are playing it that way. I intend to include it as an optional rule in the final game. However, the main rules are not written that way because me and my roleplaying group have never really got on well with full-on player narration. I also rather like the arbitariness of GM narration, it keeps the player Orks in their proper place near the bottom of the food chain.

Ron wrote: Furthermore, the tactic strikes me as potentially game-breaking if two orks are in direct conflict, especially combat with one another. Who gets whose goblins? If it's through "whoever shouts first," then you have a shouting match (no fun).

sean wrote: The competition in this game is at the author level, with the mechanics of setting difficulty levels by god, spite, and goblins, and trying to come out with the most Oog at the end. Or at least that's what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

sean wrote: I enjoyed this game quite a bit, though I think I might have enjoyed it even more if I'd known that's what I was going to be doing from the beginning. It's almost more of a 'party game' type RPG, I think - it would mix well with beer.

Re: goblin stealing

In our game (the one that Ron wrote about here, [The Great Ork Gods] Nothing but mayhem), I think I'm the only one who used someone else's goblin. And it wasn't because I was lacking my own goblins or to be nasty to the other character, it simply seemed like a good idea at the time. The goblin had just survived being thrown through a second-story window (the player failed his roll), so I in turn chucked the very same goblin back out the window (I failed my roll, so the goblin continued to survive). It was more about how to heap further abuse on some nameless goblin rather than a get the other player kind of action.

Julie

I'm not a huge fan of the goblin stealing rules. While I've no doubt they can be quite fun, I'm not sure the game really needs another element of chaos.

Hello,

Back to the issue of player-narration, I think it should be reserved for added Color. Maybe this is also a good time to remind people that narration (describing events) is not the same thing as Director Stance (changes in the immediate environment/situation). I think that narration per se is fairly trivial; apportioning and determining the acceptable scope of Director Stance is a more serious issue.

So, to be clear, I recommend that "GM-task-empowered" Director Stance is probably better off, for Great Ork Gods, kept in the GM's hands. I totally agree with your food-chain observation, Jack.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ron -

I agree with you that narration apportionment in this game is not a big deal (I think that's what you said). However, I would favor giving players lots of director stance power in terms of setting up their actions. (So for example if you want to make a goblin-catapult to put a goblin in the fort, you just let the players assert a useful lumber-pile and toolshed, say.) I guess it depends a little bit on the setup, but my point was that I think that since the real competitive currency of the game involves the gods, goblins, and spite combo, you don't need to sweat what exactly goes where. In a certain sense unless you're going for oog right then anything you would introduce into the game's environment is just color.

But maybe you meant something more specific by "GM-task empowered" director stance. Or maybe we disagree, in which case I appeal to Twisting Words, Lying Tongue, grabbing one of your goblins to stuff into your mouth while we dispute to lower the difficulty on my attempt. You mangle it furiously with your teeth while trying to argue, killing the poor blighter. (Last bit added because the goblin has to die if I am successful.)

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Jack, I got that it was a fun, competitive game from the rules, but I didn't get what kind of competition it was going to be until I actually played. The 'hose the other players' aspect of it, spite-spending and spite-accumulation, and the kind of constant second-guessing about who's going to do what when and when it's close enough to the endgame that you can start being a total bastard about Oog-gaining without losing your ork in the process, I didn't really quite get. But I haven't played an RPG like this one before.

I do think that this is crying out for a print edition with cool laminated cards and rules and dry-erase ork sheets so that you can play fast and furious with plenty of beer going around the table. I think that a game like this could get quite popular.

H'm, actually, Sean, that's a good call. I was thinking more in terms of really radical non-GM input. But in terms of setting up immediate opportunities, sure! I think my comments about the "Buck-stopper" in a recent thread do apply, but given my experiences with this and similar games so far, it's pretty easy.

this is crying out for a print edition with cool laminated cards and rules and dry-erase ork sheets so that you can play fast and furious with plenty of beer going around the table. I think that a game like this could get quite popular.

Hey Jack,

So yeah, as Sean posted, it was a dungeon crawl. I took the Dublin's Tomb dungeon from the back of the Story Engine hardcover and modified it:

• I changed the orks who'd taken over the first couple of rooms into man-apes. I figured aesthetically I needed opponents who were more primal than the player characters.
• I changed the name of the dead king. And I changed the animated skeleton guards to brass mechanical guardian constructs.
• I chopped out the last third or so of the tomb, everything after the room with the funeral barge, and also the room with the ghost of the queen. I decided the king's corpse was actually on the funeral barge. I'd selected Dublin's Tomb, because it was a short dungeon, but it wasn't short enough.
• And yeah, the Oog scheme relative to the daughters in the sample scenario was a real stand-out element to me as well when I read it. So I made an effort to come up with something similar. I decided the ork PCs were operating under the leadership of a half-ork named Chum Pail, and that his goal relative to the dungeon was one of revenge on a human enemy named Solomon. Chum Pail had procured five "fruits of woe" from the only tree where they grew in some remote valley. His plan was to penetrate deep into the tomb where there was a body of water drawn from the same aquifer as the well in Solomon's fort. Throwing the fruits into the water would poison Solomon's well. I explained to the three players that every fruit thrown into the well was worth three points of Oog that would be split among the surviving player orks, and every fruit that was willfully consumed by an ork (necessitating a roll against That Which Guards the Gate) or otherwise squandered or used brashly in combat would be worth two Oog to the ork doing so.

Early during the game, I had flashback scenes with individual orks and either Solomon or Chum Pail. Solomon revealed his awareness of Chum Pail's plans for revenge, and offered riches, status, a life of ease, and a sexy half-ork consort to two orks individually if they would foil Chum Pail in whatever he planned. For the other ork, I orchestrated a rather weak bonding scene with Chum Pail.

But ultimately I think the whole Oog/fruits scheme was over-wrought in its construction, and way weaker than the Oog/daughters thing in the sample scenario. Only one fruit was wasted during the game, and there wasn't hardly any conflict over the fruits and who would carry them and whatnot like I'd hoped. So at least for me the Oog scheme was a pretty desired game element, but not one that was easy to fabricate.

And just so you know, before I offer comments/suggestions, we had a blast. Great Ork Gods was a terrific icebreaker game for us that delivered a lot of humor. In fact, as we were wrapping up, Tom said, "I don't think it's broken." And it might not seem it, but that's real praise. We've playtested a lot of games, quite a few of which were our own designs, and not many are as mechanically solid as Great Ork Gods.

Now comments/questions/whatnot, in no particular order:


• At one point a player asked to search for secret doors. A roll was made against The Obscurer of Things. Success! But I was adapting the game from a published dungeon and the room didn't actually have a secret door in it. "Nope, no secret door." What would you have done? This is where Sean is coming from with his director power suggestion. I actually wouldn't mind playing the game this way now, with successful rolls resulting in the game environment adapting/conforming to the player's wishes, narrated by the GM. The sketchiness of the sample scenario, I think, imputes this particular handing onto gameplay. "Don't prep more than this. You'll make it up during play." But whatever your intent I think you need direct language and an extended example of play supporting it.
• Regarding goblin theft, what about if when you use another player's goblin and fail (and the goblin lives) you lose a point of Oog. "You thought you was brash and cunning but you was lame, har har."
• Most hilarious demise of goblins (to reduce spite on a die roll) was Sean's Fleur de Lilly simultaneously using two of them as floatation devices to lift himself above the surface of the water and shout (Lying Tongue, Twisting Words) to Chum Pail not to throw the fruit into the water.
• Just over half way through the game the players discovered using Lying Tongue, Twisting Words to issue commands to NPCs and to each other's characters. Some text should be devoted to whether or not this is allowed, and how it works.
• Danielle loved naming her goblins. My favorite was Smacky. Her ork perpetrated quite a lot of abuse on Smacky at the times when he was frustrated. In retrospect, I should have given her some Oog for all that.
• Somewhat problematic for us was clearly establishing when the consequences of failure would require a roll against That Which Guards the Gate. I recommend taking a cue from EPICS, with its mandate to the GM about making "time to survive" explicit. Basically, if Chum Pail realizes the extent of your betrayal and attacks you, the GM needs to establish up front that it doesn't matter whether you try to talk yourself out of it (Lying Tongue, Twisting Words), get the hell out of there (Flailing of Limbs), or fight him (Slashings and Slayings), if you fail you face That Which Guards the Gate. This rule would preclude endeavors such as appealing to Slashings and Slayings to disarm Chum Pail, thereby entirely avoiding That Which Guards the Gate, but the alternative is that whether or not you face That Which Guards the Gate post-facto is left open entirely to GM whim.

Anyway, it's a great game.

Thanks,

Paul

Y'know, I just realized that my last point isn't that well articulated. Of course you'd expect to not face That Which Guards the Gate if you were successful on a Slashings and Slayings disarm roll.

What I was trying to say is that design-wise, logically you have to allow for That Which Guards the Gate rolls following rolls against any of the other gods, not just Slashings and Slayings, but that it's not fair for the GM to spring a That Which Guards the Gate roll on an unaware player after the first roll in such a way that he/she didn't have a chance to spend goblins or Spite to improve his odds.

And for the life of me, despite several times feeling awkward about it during play ("Okay, I think you should roll against That Which Guards the Gate now."), I can't recall the specifics of any one of those times.

Paul

Lots to reply too.

Sean first,

Sean wrote: However, I would favor giving players lots of director stance power in terms of setting up their actions. (So for example if you want to make a goblin-catapult to put a goblin in the fort, you just let the players assert a useful lumber-pile and toolshed, say.) I guess it depends a little bit on the setup, but my point was that I think that since the real competitive currency of the game involves the gods, goblins, and spite combo, you don't need to sweat what exactly goes where

I got that it was a fun, competitive game from the rules, but I didn't get what kind of competition it was going to be until I actually played. The 'hose the other players' aspect of it, spite-spending and spite-accumulation, and the kind of constant second-guessing about who's going to do what when and when it's close enough to the endgame that you can start being a total bastard about Oog-gaining without losing your ork in the process, I didn't really quite get. But I haven't played an RPG like this one before.

I do think that this is crying out for a print edition with cool laminated cards and rules and dry-erase ork sheets so that you can play fast and furious with plenty of beer going around the table. I think that a game like this could get quite popular.

Hi Paul,

Sounds like an interesting scenario.

But ultimately I think the whole Oog/fruits scheme was over-wrought in its construction, and way weaker than the Oog/daughters thing in the sample scenario... ...So at least for me the Oog scheme was a pretty desired game element, but not one that was easy to fabricate.

In fact, as we were wrapping up, Tom said, "I don't think it's broken." And it might not seem it, but that's real praise.

At one point a player asked to search for secret doors. A roll was made against The Obscurer of Things. Success! But I was adapting the game from a published dungeon and the room didn't actually have a secret door in it. "Nope, no secret door." What would you have done?

The sketchiness of the sample scenario, I think, imputes this particular handing onto gameplay. "Don't prep more than this. You'll make it up during play." But whatever your intent I think you need direct language and an extended example of play supporting it.

Regarding goblin theft, what about if when you use another player's goblin and fail (and the goblin lives) you lose a point of Oog. "You thought you was brash and cunning but you was lame, har har."

Just over half way through the game the players discovered using Lying Tongue, Twisting Words to issue commands to NPCs and to each other's characters. Some text should be devoted to whether or not this is allowed, and how it works.

Danielle loved naming her goblins. My favorite was Smacky. Her ork perpetrated quite a lot of abuse on Smacky at the times when he was frustrated. In retrospect, I should have given her some Oog for all that.

Anyway, it's a great game.

That could work. I'm still not convinced it needs anything more than the penalty of pissing someone with the power to hose you off.

In re Mike's comment:

I will say that as soon as I thought it through, I basically resolved to use someone else's goblin whenever possible. That isn't 'always' - there are cases where you're separated, so the goblins are separated too - but for me it would certainly have been the go-to strategy once I figured it out. YMMV and all that, I'm just one data point.