"You're Green, You're Ugly and the Gods Hate You."

Here I shall relate my latest thoughts on Great Ork Gods, following on from my early ideas. If you’re not read this first thread, it’s probably worth reading before you read this one.

In my first post I’ll describe the rules I used in the playtest, and then I’ll add a second post describing my thoughts since running the play test. It is probably best if you don’t reply to this post until I’ve put the second one up.

The Gods

The gods remain much as they were in the original thread, but now most of them have names, as follows:

Slashing and Slayings (God of War)
That Which Guards The Gate (God of Death)
Lying Tongue, Twisting Words (God of the Gab)
The Obscurer of Things (God of Artefacts)
- Also the God of Knowledge, and anything else ‘thinky’.
Sneakings and Peekings (God of Stealth)
Lifting Rock, Pounding Stone (God of Strength)

I haven’t yet thought of a name for the God of Movement, the current frontrunner is Between Here and There, but I’m not really satisfied with it, any suggestions? I want a name which doesn’t follow the pattern of the others: i.e, not Leapings and Runnings or Dancing Foot, Climbing Hand – as Czar pointed out in the original thread Ork God names shouldn’t be too consistent.

I encourage calling the Gods by name in game. And in the playtest we developed a habit of calling actions by saying ‘Oh, name of god, how hard is action’. I rather like this convention.

Resolving Actions

As before Orks have a hate value for each God, so in combat (for example) the Ork's Slashings and Slayings hate is used. However in a reversal from the early ideas the Hate value defines the target number rather than the number of dice, and the God chooses the number of dice. The God can choose to make a task either easy, medium or hard; corresponding to one, two or three dice thrown. Additionally each player (shared by all their Gods if they control more than one) has a Spite pool, which they can spend to make the task harder by one dice for each point spent.

Should the Ork’s player also be the God's player then the task is automatically easy, however any other player can spend spite to make it harder; as opposed to usually when only the adjudicating God can (the Gods hate favouritism).

As before if any of the dice (d10’s incidentally, not sure if I mentioned that rather important point earlier) come down equal to or lower than the Hate the Ork fails in the task. If the task succeeds the God in question gains a point of Spite (the Gods hate uppity Orks) unless the Ork and the God have the same player in which case the player only gets a point of Spite if one or more of the other players intervene by spending Spite (the Gods do not like their affairs being tampered with).

Creating your Ork

I wanted Ork creation to be really quick in Great Ork Gods, and Orks to be fairly undistinguished characters (No Ork Is A Unique And Special Butterfly), so they are defined by just three things, their name, their seven hate values and the current level of Oog (see below, again).

Players roll d6+18 (which may be a bit much; more playtesting is required) for the amount of Hate their Ork has; they then divide these points as they please among the seven hate values. Then pick a name.

If, as judged by the GM, the name chosen is un-orky or otherwise offensive to the Gods (e.g. Daisy Twinkletoes, Lothlorien of the Bow, He Who Laughs At Death And Runs Away) the Ork gains another d6 points of Hate. However they do start with two points of Oog rather than the usual one, after all an Ork brave enough to offend the Gods with so trivial matter as their name must have mighty big beans indeed.

Players have a time limit of ten minutes to create their characters; failure to do so results in another d6 hate points (although this should never happen).

Goblins and Oog

Oog is that which Orks value most, a kind of fearful but envious respect is held for those with high Oog. Oog is a measure of bottle, guts, success and dumb luck. The rules for gaining Oog are as for the rules for ‘Respect’ I outlined in the previous thread. Oog doesn’t have a great deal of in-game use, the only real effect is that when an Ork gives an order to a goblin the goblin will only change orders for an Ork of higher or equal Oog to the one that gave the order in the first place. Oog is basically a 'score', and playtesting thus far has shown that players are more than willing to covet it.

Whenever a group of Orks are out and about they’ll be accompanied by a small band of Goblin fan-boys. About twice as many as there are Orks (at the GM’s discretion; more may be added later if all the Goblins die). Any Ork can order a Goblin to do something (although Goblins aren’t very bright, are extremely literalist and will tend to interpret any command in the way that serves them best) and off they’ll trot to try and do it. What happens is left to GM fiat, however there are two rules of thumb they can apply: first, roll d10, on a 1 or 2 the Goblin succeeds, on 3-6 it fails and on 7-10 they die, preferably amusingly; second, Goblins should never succeed at doing something central to the game – i.e. they can’t kill the Elven hero.

Comments, suggestions and other input is most welcome.

I feel that the playtest went well enough to show these rules are capable of producing a really enjoyable game; although with a few too many deaths. I also felt the game needed some way of reducing task difficulty, and a better way of dealing with 'stunts' in combat.

I promised I also want to outline my thoughts since running the playtest.

Too Many Deaths

Over in the playtest thread, Ralph suggested that I use Goblins as 'hit points', allowing them to heroically take the death. However I feel this would a) make the Goblins both too useful and too heroic and b) reduce death too much. Ah, what a careful balance we tread.

My new idea is this: any time you are attempting a roll you may use one or more nearby Goblins to 'assist' you. You must describe this assistance in a way that is likely to result in the Goblins death. Each Goblin either reduces the difficulty to Easy, or negates a point of Spite. If you suceed in your task the Goblin(s) are killed, if you fail they live to die another hour. You may not reduce the difficulty below one dice.

What do you think? I will probably have to increase the number of Goblins if this rule is used.

Stunts

Several times in the playtest tried to do interesting combat actions (such as throwing the Halfling in the pond, rather than killing him directly) at the time I required one Slashings and Slayings roll (to avoid being chopped by the Halfling) and one Lifting Rock, Pounding Stone roll (to throw him into the lake). I think now this was a mistake. However I also wish to avoid letting players avoid Slashings and Slayings rolls altogether by constantly applying such tricks.

My idea is this: a player can use another God (if it is appropriate to such a stunt attack) instead of rather than as well as the Slashings and Slayings roll iff the action is entertaining, they attack first against a single opponent and they aren't repeating an early action (so they can only use a stunt once in a session).

A short list of Suggestions for God of Movement names:


• Places to Go (or Going Places)
• Zoom (this is very "doesn't follow the pattern of the others" and definitely invokes the concept of movement)



Beyond that: I like the idea that a Goblin that "assists" will die, but makes the task he's assisting easier. It feels more appropriate. Makes Oog a bit more important, too, since you can't get a Goblin to assist you if he's obeying an Ork with more Oog.

As for Stunts: I think the "attack first against a single opponent" rule is a bit much. Between "same stunt only once" and "action must be entertaining" you seem to have enough in the way of limitations.

I like sacrificing goblins to make a task easier... actually I like everything about the goblins, their literalness, their awe of Oog. But one thing occurs to me. If one Ork has higher Oog than everyone else, won't he just order the goblins to follow him around and take the fall for him? Seems like a pretty big advantage.

Then again, it is yet another reason for Orks to try for Oog (beyond the glory and Trollbabes that come with it), and might be a good source of Ork v Ork combat. :) Probably something that needs to be answered by actual play.

Re: god names, have you considered making that part of the game? It seems like during your playtest, you guys decided to parody the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon name for your gods. That works, and was probably good for some laughs. However, the next time you play, the gag is old, so you'll want to come up with some other "theme" for your god names. Why not make each player brainstorm a theme and a few god names. The one with the best idea gets three spite points, and everyone that comes up with a good god name for the rest of the gods gets a point.

Another idea is to encourage players to brainstorm funny god names during play by rewarding their rolls. For instance, during the ritual ‘Oh, name of god, how hard is action’, if the player comes up with a new, funny name for the god, he gets a point of spite (or some other appropriate reward). Admittedly, coming up with new god names every game might be impossible after you've played a few times.

A final goblin idea. A successful roll kills goblins. What if a failed roll spawns goblins? That would be one way of making sure there were plenty of goblins around.

I love this game. My group is psyched to play it. If you need any playtesters, please let me know at chrisgeisel at yahoo dot com.

Mr Jack wrote: I promised I also want to outline my thoughts since running the playtest.

Too Many Deaths

Over in the playtest thread, Ralph suggested that I use Goblins as 'hit points', allowing them to heroically take the death. However I feel this would a) make the Goblins both too useful and too heroic and b) reduce death too much. Ah, what a careful balance we tread.

Loki,

Loki wrote: I like sacrificing goblins to make a task easier... actually I like everything about the goblins, their literalness, their awe of Oog. But one thing occurs to me. If one Ork has higher Oog than everyone else, won't he just order the goblins to follow him around and take the fall for him? Seems like a pretty big advantage.

Re: god names, have you considered making that part of the game? It seems like during your playtest, you guys decided to parody the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon name for your gods.

A final goblin idea. A successful roll kills goblins. What if a failed roll spawns goblins? That would be one way of making sure there were plenty of goblins around.

I love this game. My group is psyched to play it. If you need any playtesters, please let me know at chrisgeisel at yahoo dot com.

Ralph and Alexander,

You're both right. I was propossing excessive restricitions on stunts.

Ralph,

Good call on not letting you stunt to yourself.

After that let them stunt as often or as similiarly as they want. If the other players at the table are enjoying it...good for everyone. If the other players think the player is trying to be a weasel and get out of rolling on hateful god, they will start upping the difficulty for everything and throwing spite at him.

I'd recommend two things.

1) in any game which encourages player vs player rivalry the rules need to be cleaner and tighter than in a more cooperative environment. The less left to the subjectiveness of the GM the better. I would lean heavily towards making hard and fast goblin rules.

In this case I would set Goblin followers equal to Ork Oog, period and not let higher Oog orks order other orks' goblins around. Each Ork has his own gang of followers. This is clean, and simple, and keeps the PvP aspects focused on the Gods and Spite mechanic. I wouldn't compound the opportunity for confusion by moving PvP to the goblins also.

Its also a flavor issue. A high Oog Ork could exert undue influence on the Gods by threatening the goblins of the God's player. Players could start cooperating "I'll go easy on you with difficulty if you order that guys goblins to follow me instead". This doesn't strike me as desireable for this game. Ork gods hate orks, they don't negotiate with them, and they don't answer prayers. I wouldn't allow a situation where players can wrangle favorable treatment from other players' Gods, and your current Goblin mechanic does allow for that possibility.


2) Why the restriction on Spite? Spite is a wonderful balancing mechanic. If you have a reputation for screwing others with difficulty, then they'll screw you with spite. However, the only way you can get more spite to screw them back is to actually allow Orks to win every now and then. Which is freakin brilliant by the way. One can just see the Ork Gods up their toying with you...letting you think you're winning...all the while accumulating spite for the ultimate smack down later.

I really believe this is self balancing. Especially if players don't get a large pool to start (so they have no spite buffer and must begin playing the balancing act right from the start).

In the spirit of KISS and letting the Spite mechanic run its course, I'd eliminate the restriction on only the god in question being able to use spite. After all, the idea of Ork Gods interfering with each other and screwing each other's favorites like brutish Olympians is a great one (I'd love to see a Illo where a bunch of large Ork gods in togas are learing down at little orks.




A third unrelated item is how the gods get chosen. I was thinking that maybe a mechanic similiar to the one used in the board game Vinci for selecting civilizations could work.

Shuffle a deck of Ork Gods and deal them out into a line infront of everybody. The first player can take any god he wants up to the Nth god where N is the number of players. If he doesn't take the first god, a spite token is placed on every god skipped. The process continues with frequently skipped gods getting additional spite. A player who takes a god with spite gets the god and the spite. Taking the first god in line adds no spite for your opponents to take.

What this does is a couple of things.
1) it serves as a group balancing mechanism. You as game designer don't have to decide which gods are the most useful or worry about balance. Each group based on its own play style will determine which gods are the most useful and which are least. They will skip the least to get to the most. The player "stuck" with the lesser gods is then compensated by a stack of extra spite in rough proportion to how much that group tried to avoid that god.

2) It helps protect against players manipulating their orks to be particularly powerful based on what gods they want. They make their orks first, but can't be certain which gods they'll get, and if the god they want is buried in the pile they may be awarding the other players alot of spite in order to get it.

It works well in Vinci where each civilization has randomly chosen abilities and the play group then decides on its own what a good combination of abilities is in what it choses to skip.

Anyway, an idea.

My two cents: Valamir's points 2 and 3 are right on target and the mechanics proposed are very elegant.

I also agree with his opinion that very tight Goblin rules are better than loose rules, though I'm still undecided about the implementation he proposes.

Jack, I'll wait for the real rules... especially if there's going to be illustrations. Incidently, since Val mentioned God cards, have you considered making up Ork cards? It might make the game faster if you pre-gen a big stack and just have players draw a new one in the likely event of Ork death. Plus that's a great opportunity for more illustrations/flavor.

Your point about naming the Gods and encouraging discussion of the game is spot on. I guess that's why you're the game designer, and I'm the rabid fan.

Valamir wrote: In this case I would set Goblin followers equal to Ork Oog, period and not let higher Oog orks order other orks' goblins around. Each Ork has his own gang of followers. This is clean, and simple, and keeps the PvP aspects focused on the Gods and Spite mechanic. I wouldn't compound the opportunity for confusion by moving PvP to the goblins also.

Why the restriction on Spite?

Loki wrote: Incidently, since Val mentioned God cards, have you considered making up Ork cards? It might make the game faster if you pre-gen a big stack and just have players draw a new one in the likely event of Ork death. Plus that's a great opportunity for more illustrations/flavor.

Mr Jack wrote: a name for the God of Movement, the current frontrunner is Between Here and There, but I’m not really satisfied with it, any suggestions? I want a name which doesn’t follow the pattern of the others: i.e, not Leapings and Runnings or Dancing Foot, Climbing Hand – as Czar pointed out in the original thread Ork God names shouldn’t be too consistent.

I'm still fond of "Zoom."

It captures movement in a way none of the other names really does. Except "Steven" - that's a good second choice.

LOL

Suppose you could spend a point of Oog to get a Goblin to do something for you; a higher-Oog Ork can countermand you, but this results in you both losing Oog.

When Goblins do things, they use your scores, but disconnect you from danger; this is a more proactive version of the 'Goblins as hitpoints' idea. Unfortunately, since you're weak and not accomplishing things the way you should, you actually lose Oog if the Goblin accomplishes anything significant, and instead of distributing Spite, Goblins explode when they succeed at things. Explode. There is more or less an eternal Goblin supply, since Goblins are so useless.

The point of this is that it gets across the point of Goblins being silly, inept followers who can't do anything right, but also shows that the Orks don't trust Goblins to do anything remotely important.

The God of Movement is currently going under the name of Flailing of Limbs. Zoom came a close second. Thanks for all your suggestions.

Anyone hate or love the new name?

Jack -- any word on the current status of the game?

Hi Mark,

Been busy (or lazy, depending on how harsh your being) lately - so it hasn't progressed as fast as I'd hoped. However a 'beta' release is about three-quarters done, so I should be able to get it finished this weekend. Just need to get the artwork from 'my' artist and a website set up then.

So, hopefully, early next week-ish.

Cheers,

Jack.