The Forge Archives

Hi,

So, I gathered four suitably orkish types after scifi yesterday and went off to try this out.

Firstly, God breakdown.

MM:  Slashing and Slaying, Flailing Limbs.
J:     Obscurer of Things.
MH:  That Which Guards the Gate, Lying Tongue, Twisting Words.
T:     Pounding Rock, Lifting Stone, Sneaking and Peaking

(I think, I might have sneaking and lying swapped.)

This leads me to my first comment.  It's a pity that there's a prime number of Gods.  Particularly with four players, one player only has one God and this could be a major disadvantage.  I tried to balance by making the person who chose first the person with one God.  (And letting him choose from a line of five rather than four - he passed up That Which Guards the Gate.)

Eight would be a better number.  In play, all the Gods except Sneaking and Lying got a good amount of use, so that's pretty good.   Everyone had one God that was relevant.  The Obscurer of Things became the God of setting fire to things without burning yourself - as that was all brains was used for.

Let's take my first aside.  T's first character immediately tried to grab and eat a milkmaid.  MM's hit him over the back of the head with a warhammer and we had our first dead ork.  A replacement ork turned up, went into a house to set it on fire, set self on fire, tried to use a goblin as a fire blanket, died.  The next ork arrived, tried to leap to a roof top, missed, died.  The next ork arrived, tried to grab and eat (a common attack style) the halfling, got stabbed and died.   Saying that it's an easy game to die in is something of an understatement.

I think the clause about tasks to your own God's being automatically easy is unnecessary, and I pretty much ignored it.  In practice every such task was easy - but it was fun to watch the players providing in game justifications for this (often when another Ork had just tried the same thing) while the other players screamed favouritism and reached for Spite.

The Spite rules are impressive.  Players pretty quickly realised that suceeding against your own Gods brought three Spite into the game and none of it was yours.  In this environment, people are tempted to do things which call on other people's Gods and spend a Goblin rather than give all that Spite out.  In light of this, I see no need for a restriction on stunting to your own God.  (Beyond the possible veto for repeditive stunts.)

Which brings me directly to my favourite quote of the evening:

"You've got to spend goblins to earn goblins."

We had a real Goblin economy going, you use a goblin to kill the elf, which earns you a Goblin to get past the guards, which in turn earns you one to eat one of the mayor's daughters.

The goblins were pretty abstract, and the rules seem to work very well.  There were quite a lot of goblin sacrifices that seems to involve goblin heroism though.  I had to stamp on this a little towards the end.  A lot of actions were announced with the expenditure of a Goblin, effectively skipping the set difficulty phase.  This didn't cause a problem, but is worth commenting on.

There's a weird asymetry here in actions to your own Gods.  When using your own God, you only use goblin's to cancel Spite, so a Goblin is worth one less dice, but to other people's Gods it cancels two dice (hard->easy).   It seems to me that you could slightly simplify these rules by making a Goblin worth two difficulty levels, eg:

Difficulty is medium(2 dice), Player B spends two spite, difficulty is very hard(4 dice), Player A sacrifices Goblin, difficulty is medium.

Difficulty is easy(1 dice), Player A sacrifices Goblin, difficulty is very, very easy (-1 dice, but you always roll one.)  Other players spend four spite, it's now hard ( 3 dice ).

Just a thought, and it ensures that the set difficulty is always relevant.

My last comment on Goblins is to notice that if you spent a Goblin to help you attack and fail, you still have the poor unfortuanate to save your life.  Not a problem, but weird.

I followed Ron's trick of requiring two successful actions against the Dwarf and Elf (I didn't require them to be consecutive, though.), which worked really well.

I also want to echo Ron's comments on IIEE.  The orks all barged in on the daughters at the same time, and with one daughter left two orks shouted "I eat her".  Who acts first needs to be sorted.  I ruled that it was a pounding rock challenge to push the other ork aside, and flipped a metaphorical coin to see who was pushing and who was being pushed.

I really should have given out more random Spite.

I'm sure there were lots more things - but let's just finish by saying fun was had - it's a great game and I think everyone got well into the spirit of it.  Throwing spite around, trying to take out Daisy the unkillable ork who survived the whole game, etc.

But, there's definitely room for moral dilemas:

"You enter the town square and see another ork has just knocked down the dwarf.  Do you try and finish off the dwarf, or take out the ork?"

Great game, Jack.  How about coming and running it at Scifi some time.

Adam.

Hi Adam,

Wow, folks at my old uni playing my game. That seems... odd. But cool.

Regarding the number of Gods. There's seven gods because that's the number of roles for them I could think of -I don't think adding another God would really help because they'd simply be another hardly used God. I also don't think it matters much that it doesn't divide by the number of players - Great Ork Gods is a pretty unfair and arbitary game anyway; and that's part of the fun. And it's quite possible for a player to win with a poorer God selection.

Finally, although eight would fix it for four players, there'd still be a problem with three. Better, I think, to have a uneven allocation of Gods be a standing feature of Great Ork Gods.

QuoteI think the clause about tasks to your own God's being automatically easy is unnecessary, and I pretty much ignored it.  In practice every such task was easy - but it was fun to watch the players providing in game justifications for this (often when another Ork had just tried the same thing) while the other players screamed favouritism and reached for Spite.

The clause is there to help maintain the appearance of fairness in allocating difficulty. By removing the choice for the players facing their own God it helps stop any 'my God for me: easy - my God for you: hard' style of play from emerging, and instead has players only judging the difficulty of others actions.

QuoteIn light of this, I see no need for a restriction on stunting to your own God.

I'm inclined to agree with you. There may be a slim possibility of abusing this though. Not sure yet.

QuoteWhich brings me directly to my favourite quote of the evening:

"You've got to spend goblins to earn goblins."

We had a real Goblin economy going, you use a goblin to kill the elf, which earns you a Goblin to get past the guards, which in turn earns you one to eat one of the mayor's daughters.

Excellent!

QuoteI really should have given out more random Spite.

Spite? Do you mean Oog?

QuoteGreat game, Jack.  How about coming and running it at Scifi some time.

Maybe. It's a long time since I had anything much do with the uni.

Glad you enjoyed it,

Jack.

Regarding the numbers of Gods - yes, the player with one God did very well - it was one of those things that you worry about before play rather than during - so I guess not a big problem.

Sure, eight wouldn't fix it for three players, but 3/3/2
(or 3/2/2) seems less of a problem than 2/2/2/1.

I agree though that there's no point in adding a weak God for the sake of it unless you have a good idea.   The idea in my mind is a God of Destruction, called upon for setting fire to things, tearing things, smashing things, and otherwise burning and pillaging.

By the way, is setting fire to things the Obscurer?

QuoteSpite? Do you mean Oog?

Um... yes, Oog.

Adam.

Hi Adam,

Quote from: cthulahoopsI agree though that there's no point in adding a weak God for the sake of it unless you have a good idea.   The idea in my mind is a God of Destruction, called upon for setting fire to things, tearing things, smashing things, and otherwise burning and pillaging.

By the way, is setting fire to things the Obscurer?

Yes, fire is under the obscurer.

Trouble is, if I added such a God he'd be treading on the toes of the existing Gods. Is pushing a wall over Destruction or Lifting Stone, Pounding Rock? Is burning that toddler Obscurer of Things or Destruction?

See what I mean?

Cheers,

Jack.

Just a random thought that I'm not taking seriously:

Smoking Ears
God of Knowledge


Incredibly un-orky. But potentially useful depending on what kind of game you're running... for instance, if you were to take GOG and run it in a Call of Cthulhu scenario. Although I'm uncertain how to incorporate goblins into rolls for Smoking Ears... Maybe have them do the thinking, then the ork smashes them once the idea is out.

Yes, I'm incredibly weird for thinking of such things.

Hiya,

For what it's worth, I like the fact that seven gods makes it very likely that gods will be unequally distributed throughout a given group. I don't see it as a problem in any way at all, and it emphasizes plenty of strategy of different kinds during various different phases of play.

Notice, for example, that you make up your first ork before choosing gods. You may well not have good matches of Hate and godliness for that first ork, eh? But your subsequent fellows can be strategized differently (which ties into the common trend of increasing pansiness in the names as play continues).

But say you want to have a strong Hate/god relationship across your ork's scores, right out of the gate. So you'll have to be sneaky and lucky to get the god you need, and that might entail giving up on breadth and ending up with only one god.

So yeah, seven gods is great.

Best,
Ron