My God's Bigger than Your God

First ever playtest.

At the third Glasgow Indie Gamers meet-up I ran a game of MGBTYG at Keith's behest. Truly I am honoured, no-one has ever requested to play one of my game chef entries before!

The game worked far better than I had anticipated and provided us with a tremendous amount of fun.

To begin I read out a couple of paragraphs from the text-

"This game is an exploration of faith, blind obedient faith.
Eons ago, a city, marooned in the desert,  became the most holy place in the world. The seat of faith for millions. This game is the story of that city.

Each player controls a religious Faith – not a God per se, but you're not going to tell the sheep that! The objective is to grow your religion to the point where it becomes the dominant faith in the city. "

Without further ado we were onto DIY deities:
Stuart came up with the faith of Cactron, god of plants (mainly cacti).
Max created The Cult of The Silent Stone.
Keith went for Zotan – Hound of the Nightime.
Last (and inevitably least) I generated Nukundu, Mother of all Scorpions.

Pretty cool, and coming up with our beginning Decrees and Promises was hilarious.

Nukundu promises protection in the afterlife from the dread scarab army.
Thou shalt not wear robes of finery.

Zotan promises the faithful will rule over all creation as lords of darkness.
Thou shalt offer up your blood to Zotan.

The Cult promised to grant eternal silence, like the stone.
Thou shalt never speak directly of the stone.

Cactron promises that you will not hurt yourself on pointy objects as much as you would otherwise.
Thou shalt not harm a flowering plant.

Thus we embarked on storytelling hijinx. It's worth pointing out that My God's Bigger Than Your God is very much a storytelling game rather than a RPG. I make this distinction because there are no PCs as such.

Ye story
Zotan's prophet emerged, a rabid dog known as The Black Hound of Death. Upon a failed edge scene we were forced to mutter "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty dog". Instead the Hound became an armed prophet, embroiled in a bitter holy war with Cactron. 

The Cult of the silent stone were very popular – despite not being able to talk about their faith. An enterprising preacher penned the first holy text – an allegorical Mills & Boon-esque adventure story 'The Life and Times of John Stone'.

Nukundu became the first of the lost gods, after losing a lot of followers to the Stone. Not even stealing their holy book and re-writing it as 'The Life and Times of The Scorpion King' helped much.

Cactron sent his Messiah, Spiney (Norman we inevitably called him). He taught the faith many important lessons, in no way influenced by their dealings with Zotan.
Thou shalt always kick a dog you pass.
Thou shalt be given stout boots.

As the dust settled on The City, Cactron worship was the major faith, with The Cult of The Silent Stone still proving popular and Zotan relegated to the fringes of society.

Food for thought
We had some fruitful discussion about miracle scenes – that they should provide a way for a weakened Faith to get back into contention. Mechanically, if you get all heads on your follower coins then a miracle occurs! You gain a follower from each other Faith and you gain an Edge.

God coins were a bit over-powerful. I'm going to limit their uses to once per round next time.

Schisms are to be altered slightly – after a schism any player without Faith can immediately adopt the schismatic Faith. Otherwise schisms can get hoovered up too quickly.

I’m thinking about dropping Powers and just having Promises.

Maybe bringing in a Decree or Promise, should provide a bonus coin on your turn.

Can My God’s Bigger than Your God do serious as well as Life of Brian? My instinct is probably, but it might be less fun.

Thanks to Jonathon Walton for hosting Game Chef and for his thoughtful review. I like the idea of simultaneously declaring tactics and using cards. I’m looking at doing something similar for Golden Age Contenders anyway!

Could this be the first GC entry I see through to publication?
We shall see…

Cheers
Joe

I got to play this (as a two-player game) with Joe this week.

We implemented an "order" on which scenes take place rather than going around the table in fixed order, i.e. we chose our scene types in secret, revealed them and then went through the scenes in order (Preaching is before Jihad, for instance).

It was a lot of fun, and reminded me of a Race for the Galaxy and things like that.

I liked the coin tossing, and it was easy enough for me to figure out a strategy on the fly. Though with experience I'd have more options. Getting a Holy Book helps on most tings, but getting to re-flip tales because you have a Prophet or Armed Prophet is pretty cool and useful.

I'd like to see a bit more restriction/advice on Decrees and Promises. Thou Shalt... seemed a good restriction for the wording for Decrees.

Play also flagged up some edge cases that Joe needs to address. There's only 1 Messiah at a time, what if two Prophets are up for it and they both succeed? I also would like to see it possible for a Prophet to become a Messiah without becoming an Armed Prophet first.

That's my take.