I ran Great Ork Gods last night and it may have saved my game group. We haven't been playing much for the last few months, but last night we had three hours of nearly non-stop hysterical laughter (okay, the beers might've helped too). The game is a real winner--my players couldn't stop talking about how funny the game is, and how well the rules acheive what we had last night: three hours of constant mayhem, cruelty and silliness.

Unfortunately, there were two things that I did that weren't strictly by the rules, so my experience may not be exactly the feedback Jack is looking for. But first, my favorite quotes from last night:

Ork 2 is wrestling with the mailed Dwarf, and Ork1 is looking on.
Ork 1: Wait! Is the crotch armored?
Ork 2: Mine or his?

After dropping his weapon during a fight.
Ork 3: Good thing I've got these brass knuckles, and this hobbit!

And my favorite, after failing to incorporate Goblins into a Spiteful contest with the Obscurer of Things.
Ork 4: It's hard to kill Goblins when you're trying to think.

The first, inadvertent, rules change was the God of Death. I dunno whether it was in an earlier incarnation of the rules or my own insanity, but I had it in my head that the GM ran the God of Death. I can't seem to find that in the rules anywhere in the sober light of morning, but there you are. What this meant was that I called for contests vs Death and assigned the difficulty. It also meant that there was less spite going around because I didn't take spite when an Ork cheated Death. Reading over the rules now in a less beery state, I realize that was a fairly major rules alteration.

The second change was this: at about the halfway point in the game, two of the Orks were racing each other to the Mayor's house, when one of the Orks decided to try to push the other off a bridge. A fight to the death ensued (if you can call a prone Ork being kicked with a spiked shoe a 'fight'), with each player trying to one up the other with ridiculous-yet-murderous actions (in between laughing so hard that we couldn't speak). I was narrating so furiously that I suddenly found myself coming up dry, but rather than break the action I pointed to the God that just adjudicated the roll and said "Okay, you get to narrate the failure". That changed everything.

We liked it so much, the rest of the game was played that way, with Orks getting to narrate their successes, and Gods getting to narrate failures--with the caveat that no God could narrate anything that required a roll vs Death. So you could put an Ork in a situation that was likely to shortly result in his Death, but you couldn't narrate a spiked shoe penetrating his bony skull. I didn't think it was possible, but that made the game even more fun. Suddenly, the grudges that were being played out with Spite moved into the narration--and everyone tried to one-up each other with funny ways of screwing each others' Orks when they failed. GM narrated failures where the Ork and God were the same player.

That is not to say that the game was entirely about Ork on Ork violence. There were many touching moments where Gods judged tasks to be Easy when they were clearly pretty challenging, just to help a brother Ork. Hmm. Or was it just to get spite? :)

We had 5 Ork fatalities in 3 hours, with most of them coming in the vicinity of the Elf. Although one Ork was killed during the pre-game when he backtalked the Troll giving orders. One player's Ork nearly survived the entire game, until the others realized he had more Oog and was going to "win".

Gods, Spite and Difficulty:
The gods were divvied up like this:
Player 1: Artefacts, Strength
Player 2: Movement, Gab
Player 3: War, Stealth

The God of War was judged a little too powerful. Actually it was less that he was powerful, and more that the other Gods needed to be used more. Artefacts, Stealth and Gab in particular didn't get too much play. Although Artefacts and Gab had some very memorable uses.

My players felt very strongly that there should be two additions to the pantheon: God of Fire and God of Pain. I'll admit, there were many, many instances where an Ork was in severe pain and trying to do something in spite of it, whether it was bearhugging a spikey dwarf, having his feet catch fire in a fight, or being clubbed over and over and over while trying to keep possession of a dead halfling. So a Pain god might be a good idea. And I think God of Fire speaks for itself.

Regarding the God of War, there was a point near the middle of the game where the player controlling the Wargod was repeatedly trying to hit the elf with a flaming tree branch, and failing. While the other Orks were doing all kinds of crazy things, he just kept doing the same thing over and over. I couldn't figure out why he was being so boring until the end of the game, when I realized that he was trying to take advantage of the contest being easy. It's a damper when players are trying to only use their own Gods during a crisis instead of being creative, and the War god is especially succeptible to this because of his utility.

Which brings up stunts. I never disallowed a stunt. My players rarely tried to avoid Gods by stunting, and even when they did the same thing multiple times--like throwing the Halfling around--it was always different and funny. Speaking of stunts, in the first minute of the game an Ork wrapped a goblin in his loincloth and flung him at the Elf like a sling stone. That was when I knew the game was a winner.

We did come up with an impromptu mechanic for dealing with the one instance where there was some question as to avoiding the proper God. The Gods voted (which in a three player game was fast). Everyone enjoyed that.

The starting Spite in a 3 player game was judged to be so small as to be nearly meaningless. Most of the in-game spite was garnered by War, with lesser amounts by Movement and Strength. At the beginning and end of the game there was almost no Spite flying, but in the middle there was a spate of Spite that was very entertaining. I think this had to do with the players figuring out how to get Spite by allowing Orks to succeed by assigning easy difficulties.

Speaking of difficulty levels, for the most part this was self-regulating and the players assigned fair levels. However, at key moments, especially at the end of the game, it all became personal. Alliances between Orks formed and dissolved as fast as Oog was gained and rolls vs Death were failed, and what was easy a minute ago became hard, with Spite. Very successful and capricious, in my opinion. Everyone loved the dice mechanics and 'got' the game almost immediately.

On Goblins:
Everyone felt that the rules about Goblins were a little vague--on the one hand, they were useless when commanded, on the other, they were extremely useful as the fall-guy for Orks. Everyone loved sacrificing Gobs, but there was only one command in total issued to the Goblins during the entire game: charge!

We decided that when I narrated Goblin activity, it detracted from the intensity of the game. As one of my players put it: Goblins aren't actors, they're props. After the game I told them about the optional rule where a number of Gobs equal to your Oog follow you around, and they thought that was a step in the right direction. As it was, I had the Goblins just kinda "hanging around" whereever most of the Orks were. The feeling was that since they're so useful, Goblins need to have very concrete rules about when they are available to Orks.

Other random things:
I awarded Oog on an ongoing basis (ie not at endgame). This made the competition to rack up a "score" more intense, especially toward the end of the game when only the three daughters were left alive, and a couple of the Orks were within one or two points of each other. We all also felt that since it's unlikely this game will be used as a campaign, the "survival" and "treadmill" Oog were irrelevant.

As a corrolary of awarding Oog for any especially Orky activity, I awarded a point of Oog whenever an action, successful or not, made everyone at the table laugh. This mostly involved successes with massive Goblin fatalities, although sometimes involved hitting people in the crotch.

A value of 1 was judged to be too low for Hate. A minimum of 2 worked out better for everyone.

The names of the Gods were judged to be too "un-Orky", especially since so much attention was given to Ork names. One of my players thought that funnier/more Orky names would also give the Gods more character and I agreed.

The term "Oog" also bothered the group. Other terms (beans, stones, mojo) were thrown around, but we settled on "dabu"... one of the catch phrases said by Orks in the WarCraft computer games. YMMV.

There was a point early in the game where the Elf shot an arrow at the Orks, and one player asked if that meant that the GM had to roll vs the War God. I said "they're the Great Ork Gods, not Great Elf Gods" and we all laughed. However, because this is a departure from the 'traditional rpg' you might want to include an example of play or explicit note that the GM just narrates what the non-Orks do or don't do.

A last thought about the War God's utility. We sat and threw around ideas for dealing with it. We decided that the War God should be important, it's a game about Orks, after all. However to spread out the fun/spite, some kind of God rotation was thought to be a possible solution. Perhaps all gods, or just the War God, stay with a player for a number of contests before passing to the left. The players thought that if the number of contests was known only by the GM (probably generated by rolling d6) it would make it harder for devious players to plan ahead.

The problem with the War God--and it wasn't a severe problem--might've been mitigated had another player been running Death. Next time we'll run the game by the book. And yes, there will be a next time: more than one of my players have volunteered to run their own scenario.

It was everything I hoped for and much, much more. Keep up the great work.

As one of the players during this session, I'd love to point out what a winner this game is. It just had all the feel of a bunch of orks attacking the local village. We burned, raped, pillaged, murdered, and killed each other.

just overall super fun. If you want a good one-off or periodic fun flavor game, give this a try. We played the whole scenario in about 2 hours and there was never a dull moment: from one orc learning that his spiked feet couldn't break through plate armor to another one trying to bite through plate armor.. it just never really slowed down.

:)

One of the orcs carried around the dead hobbit the ENTIRE game. He even had a fight to the death with another orc over who got to carry him.

gk3

Excellent! Glad you enjoyed yourselves.

Loki wrote: Unfortunately, there were two things that I did that weren't strictly by the rules, so my experience may not be exactly the feedback Jack is looking for.

The first, inadvertent, rules change was the God of Death. I dunno whether it was in an earlier incarnation of the rules or my own insanity, but I had it in my head that the GM ran the God of Death.

We liked it so much, the rest of the game was played that way, with Orks getting to narrate their successes, and Gods getting to narrate failures--with the caveat that no God could narrate anything that required a roll vs Death.

Although one Ork was killed during the pre-game when he backtalked the Troll giving orders.

The God of War was judged a little too powerful. Actually it was less that he was powerful, and more that the other Gods needed to be used more. Artefacts, Stealth and Gab in particular didn't get too much play. Although Artefacts and Gab had some very memorable uses.

My players felt very strongly that there should be two additions to the pantheon: God of Fire and God of Pain.

Regarding the God of War, there was a point near the middle of the game where the player controlling the Wargod was repeatedly trying to hit the elf with a flaming tree branch, and failing.

Which brings up stunts. I never disallowed a stunt. My players rarely tried to avoid Gods by stunting, and even when they did the same thing multiple times--like throwing the Halfling around--it was always different and funny. Speaking of stunts, in the first minute of the game an Ork wrapped a goblin in his loincloth and flung him at the Elf like a sling stone. That was when I knew the game was a winner.

The starting Spite in a 3 player game was judged to be so small as to be nearly meaningless.

Speaking of difficulty levels, for the most part this was self-regulating and the players assigned fair levels. However, at key moments, especially at the end of the game, it all became personal. Alliances between Orks formed and dissolved as fast as Oog was gained and rolls vs Death were failed, and what was easy a minute ago became hard, with Spite. Very successful and capricious, in my opinion. Everyone loved the dice mechanics and 'got' the game almost immediately.

Everyone felt that the rules about Goblins were a little vague--on the one hand, they were useless when commanded, on the other, they were extremely useful as the fall-guy for Orks.

I awarded Oog on an ongoing basis (ie not at endgame).

A value of 1 was judged to be too low for Hate. A minimum of 2 worked out better for everyone.

The names of the Gods were judged to be too "un-Orky", especially since so much attention was given to Ork names. One of my players thought that funnier/more Orky names would also give the Gods more character and I agreed.

The term "Oog" also bothered the group. Other terms (beans, stones, mojo) were thrown around, but we settled on "dabu"... one of the catch phrases said by Orks in the WarCraft computer games. YMMV.

Next time we'll run the game by the book. And yes, there will be a next time: more than one of my players have volunteered to run their own scenario.

I wanted a meaningless word. "Dabu" is fine, but ties it too closely to Warcraft for my liking. Why did your group dislike the term 'Oog'?

Heya Jack, I'll try to answer some of your questions.

Re: the God of Death--we'll definitely play that way the next time, but I think my group enjoys the narration tweak a lot, so no promises there. ;)

The reason the first death occurred during the pre-game was because I gave them the intro text and said "any questions", hoping the Halfling question would come up. A player said "you ugly" instead of asking questions. Troll honor dictated an appropriate response.

Re: god names, we started with the full names, but very quickly reverted to their plaintext equivalents. This had something to do with the length of the names, and something to do with our minor dissatisfaction with the longer names.

Re: Fire and Pain. I didn't realize that Gods were meant to control Ork actions. With that definition, I can see why Fire doesn't work. You may also be right about Pain. The way I was tempted to use Pain was to ask for a roll when the Ork was doing something instead of extinguishing his burning feet, pulling a pitchfork out of his back, or trying to hold onto a dead Halfling while having his skull bashed. In other words, dealing with things that have failed to kill an Ork previously, but are still affecting him.

Incidently, I ruled that an Ork only had to roll once vs Death for any given problem. For instance, if he was stuck with an arrow and survived, he could run around merrily with the arrow still in his head forever. Something else had to happen to make him roll again--maybe a comrade shoving the arrow deeper into his brain, maybe another arrow fired at him, etc.

Also on the subject of Death: I didn't realize that anytime an Ork fails a War contest, he should roll vs Death. If that's explicitly stated in the rules, I must've missed it along with the other things I missed. That would've probably doubled the number of Ork deaths in my game.

Regarding the utility of the War god, and the temptation of players to appeal to their own Gods: it's true that the other players could be smacking down the player in question with Spite. However, because the more your God is used, the more Spite you tended to have, what we found was that the War god tended to have most of the Spite. So IMO the War god has both more activity and more Spite--which makes him even more powerful than just being popular. I don't think this is a big problem, however. I think it's fine that some Gods are going to be more desirable.

Re: god names, I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions, just wanted to let you know how my group reacted to them. I love the rather dry, ironic sense of humor you've got in the text of the game: I think it helps set the tone of the game perfectly. Some of the God names (not their descriptions, mind you) seem to lack the same ascerbic wit. And they are all quite a mouthful, especally after the tenth time saying "Oh god of X how hard is Y". And especially if you've been drinking.

Re: Oog. After reading Valamir's post, I have newfound affection for the term. In the clear light of day, I can't for the life of me figure out why such a distinction was drawn between "Oog" vs "Dabu". Must've failed my roll vs the Obscurer of Things.

Edit: One last thing, regarding the situation in my game where the player controlling War appealed to himself a bit much. For the more powerful War god, you might set the difficulty for the player who controls them to "medium" rather than "easy". That would certainly make it advantagous for the player to spread out his activity, in the hopes of scoring some "easy" rolls.

just a few other things:

i had one suggestion for a god because it came up in gameplay. a god of slaughter.. orcs are all happy in combat and all that, but there's really something special about appealing to the god of slaughter once you get to the juicy unarmed civvies inside the village. This might also take some of the onus off the war god.

the god of pain would be for orks who like to torture their victims either before or after killing them (really a finer point to the orks as torturing doesn't require a live victim.) We had one ork trying to rape the dwarf (through his plate armor) while another was poking him in the eye with the hobbits kitchen knife. The dwarf had been dead for awhile.

i'd concur with making a hate of 2 minimum for the sole reason that rolling 5 d10s and needing to avoid a 1 is pretty easy. we had a lot of our spite burned on one of our min/maxed orcs who had a 1 for war. Its too bad that spite doesn't get recycled somehow.. after all those gods REALLY hate orcs.

loki, i think we were playing that a failed combat roll required a he who guards the gate roll. it was just that a lot of those inter-orc combats were being drawn out by my spiting them so biggy mcfixings (the gods really hated him) could have his way with the mayor's daughter while they were preoccupied trying to brain each other.

i just can't reiterate exactly how funny this gaming session was.. at one point my choad almost exploded onto my chair i thought i was going to bust.

Re god names and other gods: there was a contingent who didn't like the names.. part of it was that since we were just starting it was hard to remember the names (because of the beer) so we just said orky things like "i want to bash his head.." the gods had to figure out which god that was appealing to.

another optional rule (maybe you already have it) a guide for making up new gods.. i think what you said already would be enough: that gods need to guide ork actions. We also thought it might be fun to play a game without the god of hacking and slashing (ie have a pool of many gods and some games some don't get played). That way the god of strength would fill in when you want to beat in a hobbit's skull, and the god of flailing and falling would fill in when you wanted to chop of heads.

anyway, great stuff.. :)

gregkcubed wrote:
One of the orcs carried around the dead hobbit the ENTIRE game. He even had a fight to the death with another orc over who got to carry him.

gk3

Reading this thread made me want to run GOG for my group, so I downloaded it and read it and I've got some thoughts for Jack about it and about some of the issues raised in this thread. Note that we haven't had a chance to play it yet, these are just my initial impressions:

1. I could certainly see adding two new gods to the mix to help balance out War and Death. You might want to consider splitting War into two gods: Weapons and War (or Conflict), and Death into two gods: Pain and Death. Roll vs Weapons when attacking with an actual weapon, roll vs War/Conflict for all other attacks. This way attacks (arguably the most common orc actions) are split between two gods. For the Pain/Death split, roll vs pain for ouchy-but-not-deadly events (smackdowns, reckless behavior), and vs. death for the major stuff (weapon attacks or attacks by bigger creatures, truly dangerous behavior).

[Edit: Just occurred to me that a better way to split War might be to have the War god handle weapon attacks and to have a god of Chaos handle other types of conflict or general mayhem. A Chaos god seems perfect for orcs.]

2. Seriously consider changing "oog" to "mojo". This is supposed to be a humorous game and familiarity is a big part of humor. (Hence the phrase, "guess you had to be there.") "Oog" sounds kind of funny, but it has no meaning at all outside of that, so it has no other humor to it. "Mojo" has an equally funny sound to it, but it also has the added benefits of familiarity. Most people have a concept of mojo as a silly sort of "coolness" factor and inexplicable influence over others (primarily from the Austin Powers movies). Austin has mojo. Fonzie has mojo. The image of an orc with mojo is, I think, a very humorous one and it ties in perfectly with your use of oog/mojo as a measure of an orc's abilities to get goblins to do his bidding. The mental image of a hulking, stinking, bumbling orc working his orc mojo on some poor goblin is inherently funny (at least to me).

3. I'd love it if there was a way to get the GM out of the game entirely. It really seems (on first read, anyway) that the game could work without a GM. Any chance that the players could provide more narrative and the GM decisions could be accomplished by player consensus or the roll of the dice or something? This would, I think, also broaden the appeal of the game to those on the fringe of the roleplaying hobby. For example, my best friend's wife has no interest at all in playing RPG's, but she really enjoys playing Munchkin with us. I think GOG could be positioned to appeal to a similar fringe market, but it'll be a harder sell with a GM requirement.

Anyway, those are just some initial impressions for you, Jack. Hope they spark some ideas. :)

Steve

PS. Thanks for the great initial post, Loki! It's inspiring to read such an enthusiastic account of a playtest session.

Valamir wrote: That's really interesting Jack. Somewhere along the line when you were stressing that Oog had no actual mechanical effect and was just a way of keeping score, I lept to the conclusion that Oog stood for "Out of Game"...which I thought was an incredibly clever and hysterical term for it...

Loki wrote: Incidently, I ruled that an Ork only had to roll once vs Death for any given problem. For instance, if he was stuck with an arrow and survived, he could run around merrily with the arrow still in his head forever. Something else had to happen to make him roll again--maybe a comrade shoving the arrow deeper into his brain, maybe another arrow fired at him, etc.

Also on the subject of Death: I didn't realize that anytime an Ork fails a War contest, he should roll vs Death. If that's explicitly stated in the rules, I must've missed it along with the other things I missed. That would've probably doubled the number of Ork deaths in my game.

I love the rather dry, ironic sense of humor you've got in the text of the game

One last thing, regarding the situation in my game where the player controlling War appealed to himself a bit much. For the more powerful War god, you might set the difficulty for the player who controls them to "medium" rather than "easy".

nahh, keep it easy. If you've got the war god that just makes you the fighter of the party, and if you've got the sneaking god that just makes you the theif. Which gods you have really are a proxy for Ork character class.

First time playtest reports are great. But its the third and fourth games with the same group that really tell. By then players will learn how to increase their combat effectiveness by calling on the gods they do have rather than everyone trying to be the warrior basher.

Edit: besides the blatant favoritism just adds fuel to the inter party conflict at the heart of the game.

Hi greg,

Thanks for the comments. Glad you enjoyed the game!

optional rule (maybe you already have it) a guide for making up new gods.. i think what you said already would be enough: that gods need to guide ork actions.

We also thought it might be fun to play a game without the god of hacking and slashing (ie have a pool of many gods and some games some don't get played). That way the god of strength would fill in when you want to beat in a hobbit's skull, and the god of flailing and falling would fill in when you wanted to chop of heads.

Hi Steve,

Steve Samson wrote: Reading this thread made me want to run GOG for my group, so I downloaded it and read it

You might want to consider splitting War into two gods

Death into two gods...

2. Seriously consider changing "oog" to "mojo"...

I'd love it if there was a way to get the GM out of the game entirely. It really seems (on first read, anyway) that the game could work without a GM. Any chance that the players could provide more narrative and the GM decisions could be accomplished by player consensus or the roll of the dice or something?

Valamir wrote: nahh, keep it easy. If you've got the war god that just makes you the fighter of the party, and if you've got the sneaking god that just makes you the theif. Which gods you have really are a proxy for Ork character class.

Valamir wrote: Edit: besides the blatant favoritism just adds fuel to the inter party conflict at the heart of the game.

However, I don't agree that which god you control is a proxy for a character class. For instance, I could have the God of Gab, but have a 5 Hate. It's only the combination of Hate and God control that gives that advantage. Just a minor point when evaluating how to tweak God-Ork interaction.

Jack Aidley wrote:

I don't want any more 'exception' rules than I can help. Great Ork Gods is a very 'pure' game - it takes a central concept and develops that and only that - and I want to keep it that way. I do have an idea though; what if facing your own God always resulted in a hard check?

Or maybe other players should all get spite if you appeal to your own god. that might be funny.

i think in keeping with the simpicity of the game and the fact that it can be played while drunk.. it might be easier to have two options for using your own god.. hard or easy.. if it's hard, then its like it is now.. if its easy then everyone else gets spite.

actually, that would be weird b/c then everyone could spite you and stay even in spite of spiting you.

hmm.. yeah its weird.. not sure it even has to change.

thing about this game is its self regulating... :)

IMHO the numerous little changes and tweaks to the game almost everybody seems to make or considers making actually might be a hidden feature, not a bug ;).
I think the system is perfect the way it is, mostly because it convey's the main ideas (do weird stuff, be mean to each other in a fun way) very clearly. I think it's because of this, that everyone can come up with modifications, because the systems transparency enables people to tweak it (*). So for further development, I'd humbly suggest looking for things to drop (maybe the goblin rules) and have all those other tweaks in a section of its own and saying: "Look this is the basics, which are there to do X. Here are some suggestions if you want to emphasize this or that aspect, use this mod. If you come up with a new mod, send it in, write why you did it and what effect it had on play."


(*) could this be "the next stage"? Empowering players to change the game system? Why not?

montag wrote: I think it's because of this, that everyone can come up with modifications, because the systems transparency enables people to tweak it (*).

(*) could this be "the next stage"? Empowering players to change the game system? Why not?

Valamir wrote: I hope so, because then in 10 years I can point to Rules Gimmicks in Universalis and pass myself off as a visionary pioneer at cocktail parties. Preferably as the cranky curmudgeony variety
;-)

While I agree with montag that there's something kinda cool about how easy it is to modify GoG, I think it might dilute the game to go in that direction at this time. I really think that with some more playtesting, GoG has the potential to be a really tight little gem of a game--in fact I think it's 95% of the way there.

Re: Valamir's suggested mod of the War God--I think that could create a situation where either 1) a ton of Spite was generated, which might devalue some of the fun of husbanding your Spite (ie scarcity) or 2) the War God would become the least attractive god. Of course, only playtesting can really answer that question reliably.

The only mod to the War God that sounds workable to me so far is making his player's Ork's difficulty medium. I think that would still make War a desirable god because of all the Spite he generates, with a trade-off in that your Ork will just have a harder time stabbing things. A trade-off that can be compensated for by having a really low Hate.

Incidently Jack, what do you think about having a random method of generating stats? With point buy, you are basically looking at very similar Orks if the players are at all inclined to min/max for Oog. 2 Hate in War, Death, Strength and the rest split up between the other gods. Since Orks are so disposable, why not make them really disposable and randomly generate the Hate stats. Players can still pick which stat goes where to give them something to do besides choose a name and which rusty farm implement is their favorite, but it seems in line with the cruel and capricious nature of the gods.

What do you think the implications would be?

p.s. should we move this to a design thread?

Loki wrote: p.s. should we move this to a design thread?