Well, Great Ork Gods has finally been written up to a stage where I think it's ready for playtesting. I've got a website up for it from which you can download the latest rules.

However at the time of writing, the domain name has not resolved, so you'll need to go to http://66.98.138.15/~greato00/ and the email addresses on the site will not work so please post any responses here.

I'm looking for any comments and feedback on the rules. Both mechanics wise and in terms of presentation and clarity. I'd also really appreciate anyone who can take the time and effort to playtest it. Finally, I'm really not too good at the whole marketing speel thing, so I could do with some help on suitable 'bullet points' for the game.

Those of you who haven't visited the earlier Great Ork Gods may find them worth referencing:

[Great Ork Gods] Latest Rules
[Great Ork Gods] Actual Play
[Great Ork Gods] Early Ideas

Jack, I'm psyched. These look great--I'm up to "Assigning the Gods" now. When do you expect to have illustrations? Those I can't wait to see.

Minor typo, p5, "God Cards" Section, 1st paragraph, last sentence (italics mine):

If you haven't any card protectors, and managed to avoid CCGs you can just use them as bits of paper--they just want be as pretty.

Loki wrote: When do you expect to have illustrations? Those I can't wait to see.

p.6 "Assigning the Gods"
"After each player picks, if there are any cards left not out, put a new one ...."
What is meant by "left not out"? (I know how it's supposed to work, but the line is very unclear IMHO) Why aren't all the gods laid out at once? Redrawing seems unecessarily complex for no good reason. Besides, especially for small number of players (like in your example) this seems to distort the – AFAIK intended – effect of rating gods according to the value they have for players, by bringing in more fortune.

"Performing Actions"
First of, it's a bit unclear, what happens if multiple gods are relevant. From the rules, it seems that only then everyone may add Spite. This (a) doesn't make sense, only the gods concerned should be allowed to add Spite IMO and (b) contradicts the latest rule version I am aware of, in which everyone was allowed to spend Spite all the time. Besides, why not make two or more tests if two or more Gods are relevant?

I also don't really like the idea of having all tasks for which one's own gods are relevant be easy. With a good choice of gods in the beginning a player might set themselves up for virtual immunity that way.
The new "whining" mechanic OTOH is brilliant.

"Spite"
I'm not a big fan of unassigned Spite. IMHO each God should have their own Spite. Admittedly I have no idea how to implement this without adding a lot of unwanted book keeping.

p.7 top left:
"he throws a 3 a two 6's" > "a 3 and two 6's"

General:
- I've been wondering what success on a "That which guards..." roll means. Probably the Ork doesn't get hurt, although an attack was successful (or rather, the Ork's defence was pathetic). ((Just found it, it's answered in the player's handout. Should be included in the main text IMO))
- You _must_ come up with a new name for the GM. I hate the practice as much as the next guy, but in your game, with all those gods, you just need to come up with a cool name for the Big One.

Playtest:
Unavailable at the moment, seems my PnP group wouldn't like to playtest it. I'll try to persuade them or otherwise set up an online game. For that I'd have to translate at least the God names, so I might not get round to actually doing that.

Hi Montag,

Thanks for the feeback.

montag wrote: Why aren't all the gods laid out at once? Redrawing seems unecessarily complex for no good reason. Besides, especially for small number of players (like in your example) this seems to distort the – AFAIK intended – effect of rating gods according to the value they have for players, by bringing in more fortune.

First of, it's a bit unclear, what happens if multiple gods are relevant. From the rules, it seems that only then everyone may add Spite.

Besides, why not make two or more tests if two or more Gods are relevant?

I also don't really like the idea of having all tasks for which one's own gods are relevant be easy. With a good choice of gods in the beginning a player might set themselves up for virtual immunity that way.

I'm not a big fan of unassigned Spite. IMHO each God should have their own Spite. Admittedly I have no idea how to implement this without adding a lot of unwanted book keeping.

I've been wondering what success on a "That which guards..." roll means. Probably the Ork doesn't get hurt, although an attack was successful (or rather, the Ork's defence was pathetic). ((Just found it, it's answered in the player's handout. Should be included in the main text IMO))

You _must_ come up with a new name for the GM. I hate the practice as much as the next guy, but in your game, with all those gods, you just need to come up with a cool name for the Big One.

Unavailable at the moment, seems my PnP group wouldn't like to playtest it. I'll try to persuade them or otherwise set up an online game. For that I'd have to translate at least the God names, so I might not get round to actually doing that.

Jack Aidley wrote:

First of, it's a bit unclear, what happens if multiple gods are relevant. From the rules, it seems that only then everyone may add Spite.

Eek! That's not the intended reading. I've looked over the text, but I can't see how you've drawn that conclusion from it. Could you point out the text that led you to that idea?

I also don't really like the idea of having all tasks for which one's own gods are relevant be easy. With a good choice of gods in the beginning a player might set themselves up for virtual immunity that way.

This can be a problem, however the chances of one player getting all the 'best' gods seems small. In any case, Spite is capable of counter-acting any difficulty setting anyway - it seems to work in play. How would you prefer to see it done.

I'm not a big fan of unassigned Spite. IMHO each God should have their own Spite. Admittedly I have no idea how to implement this without adding a lot of unwanted book keeping.

It makes no difference anyway - any God can spend spite on any test.

When the final version is finished, it is likely (likely, not definate) that german, french and possibly dutch translations will be offered.

A suggested edit for the section "Assigning the Gods", 3rd paragraph, last sentence. You have:

After each player picks, if there are any cards left not out, put a new one on the right of the line so that you maintain a line of one card for each player.

Question: is there some reason not to just deal all the Gods face up and allow players to proceed down the line, adding spite until they get to the God they want? That would ensure a greater amount of spite for unwanted Gods. Or did you find that would result in too much spite

Makes sense to me. Thanks for the explanation.

Jack, I've got a question about the stunting rules. The rules say:

If a Stunt is not allowed, two rolls must be made instead--one to resolve the usual action, and one to resolve the fancy effect the player desires.

The stunted roll completely replaces the original roll, so any consequences the original roll would have had on failure apply to failure on the stunted roll.

Our group ran the "module" included in the back of the playtest .pdf last Thursday.

All in all, we had a real hoot.

I can't say enough good things about this game, provided that it's approached from the right perspective. Our group embraced the base silliness and tomfoolery that makes this game rock, and that really helped. (As a case in point, one of our original cast of characters was Grishnak the Grammar Ork.)

Some of the stumbling points we found were mostly related to Goblins and actions (in general).

re: Goblins. The players didn't embrace them, and had a hard time working them into play -- eventually they did, but it was a hard path to tread. One player in particular always wanted to narrate the use of a goblin BEFORE any difficulty/spite was determined. I think that part of this stems from the rather free-form way that gobbos are handled -- they just "float", and many of the players found this confusing.

re: actions. As GM, I found it tricky not to make everything into an action. By the end of the evening, I realized that a lot of stuff that shouldn't have been rolled for had been. It's an easy trap to fall into with most RPGs, but I found that GOG is particularly prone to this GM pitfall.

my feeling is that these are both minor points, but some sort of mechanic to help solve them would be nice.

suggestion re: gobbos. have each ork trailed around by a number of gobbos equal to their Oog. That way, the player always knows his extra resources available. any extra gobbos can float, chase ducks, whatever. as gobbos die, they are replaced by gobbos from the pool after a reasonable duration (this may also be based on Oog).

Once the pool of "unaligned" gobbos is depleted, then the "ordering" mechanic will come into play more, as orcs of higher Oog steal their compatriot's gobbos. This should enhance the adversarial nature of the game, and would be good fun.

re: rolling for EVERYTHING, I'm not sure what would help fix this issue. Perhaps a bit more detail on what most "average" orks can do would be good. I think it's probably mostly a practice thing, and in the end too much rolling isn't as poisonous to GOG as other RPGs, as the whole difficulty/rolling mechanic is half the fun of the game, as it's entirely based on interplayer interaction.

in summary, a grand game. loads of fun, and thoroughly exhausting. I had a blast, and was completely tuckered out by the end -- it was an (albeit enjoyable) chore trying to keep up with my players, and they really kept me on my toes. I think this is due mostly to the fact that the system forces them to take ownership for the quality of the gaming experience.

You've got a winner on your hands.

Cool; valuable responses.

Re: Assigning Gods: You see that's the great thing about the Forge, you get the genius of top class designers for free. I picked up Ralph's suggestion wholesale for the reasons I gave above - turns out there's a cunning reason I missed entirely.

Loki,

Loki wrote: Does this mean that if my Ork is trying to throw the Halfling into the pond, either his stunt is allowed and he stunts to Lifting Stone or his stunt is not allowed and he rolls twice (once to the appropriate god, and once to Lifting Stone)?

Does that refer to all stunts--merely saying "if you stunt instead of stabbing the Halfling, the stunt roll is the only roll used to determine success/failure"?

Hey, Jack, last night in indie-netgaming there was a brief discussion that almost turned into a game of Great Ork Gods, but more than half the group could not reach your website for some reason ("unrecognized"). How new is your sitename... is this just a matter of DNS propagation? Or is there something more sinister at work (some Orkish God of the Internet trying to spite you?)

Hi Alexander,

The site name is new (registered last tuesday). For some reason www.greatorkgods.co.uk is not working at all, but http://greatorkgods.co.uk is, my webhosts are looking into at the moment - so hopefully it will be fixed soon. In any case http://66.98.138.15/~greato00/ should work for anyone, regardless of any DNS issues.

(edit: And remember I spell Ork with a 'k', not a 'c').

Cheers,

Jack.

Oh, NB: I've got a couple of bits of art through from my artist (actually my brother) - if I get time I'll put them up on the site tonight.

My webhosts have sorted things out, so www.greatorkgods.co.uk is working at last. I've also got a couple of pieces through from my artist - you can find them on the site.

Eggo,

One question: how many deaths did you get in your game? Did you find the mortality rate too high/low or about right?

Cheers,

Jack.

I don't know exactly how many dead orks we produced. However, no player ended the game with their original character (that's at least 4 deaths), and most went through more than 1 extra.

Let's guesstimate at around 6 or 7 fatalities, spread out over 4 players. (Including one at the hands of the halfling, for shame!)

With regards to the fatality level, it didn't seem excessive.

What was both challenging (and fun) was coming up with new ways to introduce characters.

I had one or two just "wander over the hill". Another couple were "reserves" that Dursil had held in reserve, expecting his main force of boyz to fail. One was even the long-lost brother of an original character, who had accidentally got himself stuck in his brother's bag of holding.

Bag of holding you say?

Yup. When we equipped the orcs, one player asked for a bag of holding. I said "sure", since the BoH is a whole whack of fun even in a serious game.

It's comic potential is limitless in an Orky game.

At one point, the mayor and all three daughters were in the bag, and all the orks were fighting each other off, trying to steal it. Then one got the bright idea to start STABBING the bag.

Nothing like making a "killing" action one governed by The Obscurer of Things...:)

'twas fun.

Hi Jack,
Unfortunately I won't get to play this any time soon, but GOG sounds like an absolute hoot. Love the twist-on-a-twist: players don't roll their OWN stats, they roll for the "favor" of the gods (now thats serious pawn stance...)--but its a negative roll! Fabulosi.

Anyways, I have some minor comments on layout. Its nit-picky-level stuff so YMMV.


• SPITE
Any reason you don't put the SPITE explanation further up? Currently, you first mention Spite (as part of the explanation about Assigning the Gods) before you've explained what it actually is. This seemd a little jagged to me. It might read more smoothly if you defined the term before using it in the text--maybe where you define Hate & Oog would be a natural lead-in for Spite as well?

• FLAILING LIMBS
Flailing Limbs is described as she--should she be described in the text as a "Goddess"?

• SHOOTING WITH CROSSBOW EXAMPLE
In the example in the text about shooting the crossbow, you say it uses 2 Gods, but don't name them (presumable Slashings & Obscurer). I thought explicitly stating them might be a nice opportunity to nail one of the core game concepts with a concrete example, rather than leaving it to the readers (who know almost zilch about the game at this stage) to guess.

• MAIN USE OF GOBBOS?
The most fun way to use Gobbos in play seems to be to use them aid Ork rolls. Would it be worth emphasizing this as their 'Main Use' in the text? One way to do this might be to mention this use first in the rules, and then, second, to mention the 'oh yeah, you can also get them to run around & do stuff', as a way of showing in the text exactly what you expect the players to prioritize in the game. Currently I read it as the reverse, because the first use for gobbos in the text is the "running around doing stuff", & the "sacrifice them to their master's whims" is mentioned last.




I also had some ideas about a few conceptual things. I have no idea if they'll make any sense to anyone except me, but I thought I'd throw them out there.



• LAYING OUT THE GOD CARDS
I found this passage kind of confusing, although the actual concept isn't difficult once you figure out what it is. I couldn't think of a clearer way to describe it though. Would it be easier to explain if you did it like this:
1) lay out all the God cards face down
2) turn up a number of cards = to the number of players
3) [go thru the choosing process]
4) repeat steps 2-3 until all cards are assigned.

If I read the rules right this is functionally identical to the procedure now in GOG, but (to me) its a little clearer to explain in writing. I don't know if it would make any difference to anyone else though.

• INDIVIDUAL SPITE
Why doesn't each God have its own individual Spite pool? It would be mechanically as easy as, say, putting the appropriate number of counters on or near that God's card. Individual Spite would add an element of 'characterization' of the Gods during play ('avoid Lifter, he's in a filthy mood lately!'). This may increase the fun as Orks try to pick off-the-wall actions which avoid calling on the Gods who have the most Spite (they probably already do this, or will--but its harder when a single player has mulitple Gods & a single Spite pool between them). It might potentially also lead to some chuckles as Orks try to maneuver each other into situations where they are forced to call on the most Spiteful Gods.
"Individual Spite" would reduce the overtly Gamist goal of "maximum player competition" (ie with Spite assigned to players, not to the individaul Gods, it seems to me more like the players are acting out the Spite than the Gods.) Depends what your goal is here I guess.

• ANNOUNCING THE USE OF GOBBOS TO BOOST A ROLL
Why can't they be announced before Spite is assigned? To me it makes more sense to do so when action is initially described (& would be simpler). Just curious :)





Great game, can't wait to play. The posts so far sound like a blast :)

Digging the artwork, it really suits the tone of the game. That's a talented family you got over there. ;^)

Hi there,

Sorry for the slight delay in replying, I've been ill for the last couple of days.

Darcy,

Eggo von Eggo wrote: With regards to the fatality level, it didn't seem excessive.

What was both challenging (and fun) was coming up with new ways to introduce characters.

I had one or two just "wander over the hill". Another couple were "reserves" that Dursil had held in reserve, expecting his main force of boyz to fail. One was even the long-lost brother of an original character, who had accidentally got himself stuck in his brother's bag of holding.

Unfortunately I won't get to play this any time soon, but GOG sounds like an absolute hoot. Love the twist-on-a-twist: players don't roll their OWN stats, they roll for the "favor" of the gods (now thats serious pawn stance...)--but its a negative roll! Fabulosi.

charles ferguson wrote: Any reason you don't put the SPITE explanation further up? Currently, you first mention Spite (as part of the explanation about Assigning the Gods) before you've explained what it actually is.

Flailing Limbs is described as she--should she be described in the text as a "Goddess"?

Currently I read it as the reverse, because the first use for gobbos in the text is the "running around doing stuff", & the "sacrifice them to their master's whims" is mentioned last.

Why doesn't each God have its own individual Spite pool?

Why can't they be announced before Spite is assigned? To me it makes more sense to do so when action is initially described (& would be simpler). Just curious :)

Loki wrote: Digging the artwork, it really suits the tone of the game. That's a talented family you got over there. ;^)

Eggo,

I am appalled at how quickly you seem to have forgotten the epic tale of Grobrot Blarg (not Grishnak) the Grammar Ork, AKA Grobrot the Elf and Halfling Slayer and Avenger of Grish (who wasn't quite dead yet)! Furthermore, you loathsome pawn of Dursil, I only had need for one further ork. It was heartbreaking and gutwrenching to see poor Grobrot ultimately meet his gods, but fortunately for all Scratch Bagitch the Bag-Stabber and Grandma Avenger was there to save the day. Phew! If good ol' Scratch hadn't have been there to stop the others from meeting their certain doom at the hands of those two kick-ass little girls we might have gone through about ten characters each...I never did recover my trophies though (the callender and straw wig). *shrugs*

Jack,

Mighty fine game you have there. Much hacking and stabbing fun was had by all in our playtest session. I cannot offer much in the way of suggestions for improvement because our session was such a blast. So when will you be coming out with the obvious sourcebooks (ie. Not-So-Great Ork Gods, Greater (and even Stupider) Troll Gods, Goblins Who Think They are Gods, etc...)? Congrats on a solid and entertaining game.

Glenn

I love this game.

*Pops Head Back Down*

Loki's playtest thread spun off into a discussion of various rules topics, I want now to bring those discussions back here and give my thoughts.

There were four main things I wanted to comment on:

1. Ralph's idea for various difficulty altering the way Spite is allocated, strikes me as too complicated (who was it who last appealed anyway?) for an otherwise simple system.

A modification of the theme I do like is this: normally when an Ork succeeds the God gets a point of Spite (the Gods do not like uppity Orks), my idea is this: if the Ork and the God are the same, all the other Players get Spite if the Ork succeeds (the Gods do not like favouritism). Whatcha think?

I am not going to bring in special rules for Slashings and Slayings, either the problem can be solved by modifying the Gods, or by bringing in a rule that spans all the Gods or it'll be left as it is.

2. Rules mods/tweaks.

I have confidence players will mod or tweak the rules on their own. I think offering or encouraging this would dilute the purity that makes Great Ork Gods good - there are likely to be a couple of Optional rules in the final rules, but I don't want to go for a wholesale endorsement of moding.

3. Random Ork generation.

I had originally planed on giving this as an alternative generation system, but the idea got lost somewhere along the way. I'll have a play and see if I can come up with a good system.

4. God Names

I was rather dismayed by Loki and his merry bands' dislike of the God Names - is this a common perception? What kind of names would be prefered?

And one other idea I have been kicking around:

Regarding Goblins, and having some of them 'assigned' to a given Ork. I'm thinking rather than having a number of followers equal to Oog, Orks should just start with a fixed number (four? five?) and exhaust them as the game goes on. Making Oog==Goblins is making Oog more useful than I wish it to be.

Finally:

Over 120 people have now downloaded Great Ork Gods(!). I intend to put together a second playtest release over the weekend with some correction, clarifications and a few rules tweaks.

Cheers,

Jack.

Jack Aidley wrote: A modification of the theme I do like is this: normally when an Ork succeeds the God gets a point of Spite (the Gods do not like uppity Orks), my idea is this: if the Ork and the God are the same, all the other Players get Spite if the Ork succeeds (the Gods do not like favouritism). Whatcha think?

Loki wrote:

Jack Aidley wrote: A modification of the theme I do like is this: normally when an Ork succeeds the God gets a point of Spite (the Gods do not like uppity Orks), my idea is this: if the Ork and the God are the same, all the other Players get Spite if the Ork succeeds (the Gods do not like favouritism). Whatcha think?

This seems very elegant. I guess that's why you're the Troll and we're the Orks. Looking forward to the next release of the rules.

Hi. I just downloaded this a couple of days ago, and haven't followed earlier postings, so possibly I'm going to repeat an idea that's been put forward before.

When I was reading the description for Savage Ork Gods at the website, even before I saw the actual rules, I thought this might be a good system to handle, in a slightly more serious way, other mythological topics, where the gods often opposed and harassed mortal men.

Specifically, and probably because I have been looking at Wyrd and Rune recently, I'm thinking about Norse mythology. So as a variant to Savage Ork Gods (call it Grim Grey Gods or whatever), Orks become Vikings, and the gods change to the appropriate Norse analogues (Thor for strength, Loki for lies and twisted words, Tyr for war, etc.)

Hate becomes Fate, as the gods place obstacles and challenges in the path of Viking heroes, which the Vikings must either overcome to win greater Fame, or else perish. And Oog becomes Fame, which is used to number the lesser warriors (Thanes) who accompany a Viking.

Presumably much the same thing could be done for the Greek myths and legends, but I'm not in the mood for that right now. So, am I twisting this too far out of shape? Has anyone else thought about changing the setting by substituting a different set of gods?

Specifically, and probably because I have been looking at Wyrd and Rune recently, I'm thinking about Norse mythology. So as a variant to Savage Ork Gods (call it Grim Grey Gods or whatever), Orks become Vikings, and the gods change to the appropriate Norse analogues (Thor for strength, Loki for lies and twisted words, Tyr for war, etc.)

Hi Steve,

Steve Mitchell wrote: When I was reading the description for Savage Ork Gods at the website, even before I saw the actual rules, I thought this might be a good system to handle, in a slightly more serious way, other mythological topics, where the gods often opposed and harassed mortal men.

hermes and Jack, thanks for the comments. My idea of a Viking variant would still be, to all intents and purposes, a game about rampaging Orks, only now the Orks are called Bragi and Ragnar and Thorgrim, and they're bigger, better looking, and a little more cheerful. Especially when they're rampaging. . . .