PEACH Godsrealm - A Divine Somewhat Free Form TTRPG

[Anubis Dread]

Hey all, first time posting in this part of the site! And what a way to start.

So this is going to take a little bit of introduction. I'm sure a fair few of you are familiar with god like games in PbP forums, where players take the roles of gods and work together to create a world. I used to be fairly into them, and was also on a big home brewing streak. So I ended up writing up a rough outline for a TTRPG that took the basic rules of the format of the game, formalized them, and added enough structure that it would be possible to play a table top version of the classic god game. Then a contest on Enworld shows up, and I decided to take that rough structure, polish it a bit more, finish it and enter it as an entry. It did relatively poorly, most likely due to it being visually bland compared to other entries and a HORRIBLE editing mistake on my part involving a botched 'replace all' in word that I didn't entirely fix.

Anyway, as fits of home brew came and went I suddenly had a huge urge to play something that I'd created. The only problem being that I hadn't created anything far enough to play it, not even just alternate rules or scratch built classes etc from other games. Then out of nowhere I remember this game, and think it could be cool to play on a PbP or something. The problem of course is that I created this last year, and thus it may not be up to par. Plus once again it DID do pretty poorly in the contest.

So basically, I have a game that may or may not be in dire need of revision before 'play testing', and would love some second opinions before I subjugate other people to it! I apologize that it may be a bit to go through (it WAS supposed to be finished enough to be entered in a contest after all) but I really want to actually finish a game to the extent that it's playable and this is the closest I've ever gotten.

Without further ado here's the link to Godsrealm - a god based TTRPG:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=78

Yes I know it's a pdf, but it's also Enworld so it's at least a reputable source? :smallredface:

Things I would really love feedback on:
-Rule dysfunctions/omissions
-General power levels
-Clarity

Things I would NOT love feedback on:
-Having the word Morph instead of Form. Yeah I know it's an issue, I'll fix it once I can convert this damn pdf into something editable since my hard copy is long lost with my old computer :smalltongue:

Thank you kindly in advance for any feedback!

EDIT: It's not as pretty, but an updated version is now on Google Drive! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yMgdRFWZXYJ7xCCxeU8r3Acy9VoW6P-7UYtJKI7nihg/edit

[Milo v3]

Within four pages I'm wondering how you'd be doing the map at a table. Considering it would be getting changed amazingly often.

With other games I can draw up a map, but with this that would be painful since it'd have to redraw it every turn.... Which would take a lot of paper.

Edit: The current archetypes are rather restrictive.

Edit: What does voting do mechanically? It looks like it just allows you to say, "I agree."

Edit:

A race must be humanoid, at least for the most part
Why?

Edit:

You can change the terrain of a square, to an extent. For every DP invested, you can change half a square to accommodate a new type of terrain, assuming those squares all share the same feature. All squares affected must also be adjacent to at least one other square that is Altered as part of the same action. As some examples, you could convert an empty square into being completely filled with forest for 2DP, or create a mountain range taking up half of two different squares for the same amount.
I don't understand this wording.

Edit:

DP (creation point)
Should be divine point (I think).

[Anubis Dread]

Yeah I freely admit that if I still had the original and didn't need to eventually copy and past all this into a document to be able to edit it I would definitely have cleaned up a fair bit of this before posting. As it was I wanted feedback before I lost the courage to ask for it, so to speak.


Within four pages I'm wondering how you'd be doing the map at a table. Considering it would be getting changed amazingly often.

With other games I can draw up a map, but with this that would be painful since it'd have to redraw it every turn.... Which would take a lot of paper.

This is actually a very good point I didn't really consider. When I originally wrote it I imagined that it would just be notated what is in what square rather than drawn out, but that does require a second document or even set of documents just to use the map. Hm :smallannoyed:


Edit: The current archetypes are rather restrictive.

Really? I tried to make them as broad and all encompasing as possible, including the ability to choose two to define your god rather than one. Do you think archetypes should just be done away with entirely and domains given more omph to compensate? Or would just making some more archetypes to fill in some roles I missed suffice?


Edit: What does voting do mechanically? It looks like it just allows you to say, "I agree."

Agreed, I was scratching my head over that too when I re-read it. I'm thinking the entire council phase in general should just be scrapped.


Edit:

Why?

Ah this is actually kind of interesting - originally this was going to be two games baked together into one book. The first was the god game here, the second was a game where you took the role of the mortals you created in a prior god game. As such this was baked in so that when you played the second game you didn't have huge mechanical issues just functioning as a non-humanoid in a dungeon crawl. Without that context though it really doesn't make much sense that's true, and even with it it's questionable.


Edit:

I don't understand this wording.

Hm, it could use some rephrasing. Basically it's like a Create and/or Nourish plants and animals action, except for terrain. The caveat being that rather than operating off of whole squares it operates off of half squares, and you don't need to fill up both halves of a square before moving on to another one.


Edit:

Should be divine point (I think).

Yes. Yes it should :smallredface:

[Zale]

I rather like the archetypes myself.

They cover most of the possibilities I can see.

And the fact that I could totally use this to make giant-beast riding warrior civilizations has it's appeal.

I did find it amusing that differing levels of war-tech don't seem to matter. The fact that you have stone hatchets is a +1, and if the enemy has magical golem-cannons that's also a +1.

[Anubis Dread]

I rather like the archetypes myself.

They cover most of the possibilities I can see.

And the fact that I could totally use this to make giant-beast riding warrior civilizations has it's appeal.

I did find it amusing that differing levels of war-tech don't seem to matter. The fact that you have stone hatchets is a +1, and if the enemy has magical golem-cannons that's also a +1.

There is a small static bonus/disbenefit when it comes to civilizations fighting if there's a huge disreprency (iron vs non-iron, magic vs non-magic) but I agree that techs need a HEAVY rework in general. They're kept vague for a reason, but when some things lean heavily on them (most notably warfare and with the definition of a 'primitive civilization' for certain god and domain features) they need to be slightly more codified.

[Anubis Dread]

Good news, I've finally managed to get this thing up on google drive (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yMgdRFWZXYJ7xCCxeU8r3Acy9VoW6P-7UYtJKI7nihg/edit)! The bad news - it completely borked the formatting. Even with working on it for some time it's nowhere near as pretty looking as the pdf. Oh well.

Also made some changes, most notably with the way techs work. To reflect this and to prevent having to read the whole thing over to see the changes I highlighted everything I changed from last time minus extremely minor formatting issues and the like.

[avr]

A few questions. Only read it thru it once so I may have missed answers to these.

Does adjacent mean just horizontal/vertical, or do diagonally adjacent squares count too?

How many DP would you start with in the first turn?

What can you do if you have no DP's? If you're 2nd level you'd get at most 2 DPs per 7 turns on a standard map, if I'm reading the rules right. Of course I may not be.

[Anubis Dread]

Keep in mind I need to go over things with a dine toothed editing comb, so everything I say here is RAI, but may not yet be RAW. Ideally it SHOULD be, but you never know what you can miss even with several read throughs.


A few questions. Only read it thru it once so I may have missed answers to these.

Does adjacent mean just horizontal/vertical, or do diagonally adjacent squares count too?


It's never specified, but it is supposed to be able to work with diagonally adjacent squares as well.


How many DP would you start with in the first turn?

How DP generation is supposed to work is that you gain DP at the start of each turn equal to how many squares worship you, to a minimum of one and maximum fo your level. So since there are no worshipping squares and the gods are 1st level, the first time would have 1DP. Keep in mind that discounts from domains and archetypes still apply on the first turn, so a god is still capable of making 3DP or even 4DP actions in some cases.


What can you do if you have no DP's? If you're 2nd level you'd get at most 2 DPs per 7 turns on a standard map, if I'm reading the rules right. Of course I may not be.

Either you're misreading it or I miswrote it, but either way what's supposed to happen is DP is gained every turn. What happens every 7 turns is a level up, which might be where the confusion is coming from?

As a side note, after Milo's comment on the archetypes I decided the best thing to do was introduce five additional archetypes to the game to cover the five remaining combinations of actions. Nothing is written down yet, but so far the working list is, if memory serves (away from documents right now):

-The Ideal - A Create and Guide specialist. It's most powerful ability is Mantra, which bars a certain domain from the Ideal based on their first Domain chosen, but has a powerful benefit to make up for it.

-The Blood Tyrant - A Wrath and Guide specialist. It's most powerful ability is Blood Festival, which gives one of their races great power and makes then more pliable to influence while active, but rapidly lowers their population and can drive them extinct if left active too long.

-The Ancient Titan - A Wrath and Form specialist. It's most powerful ability is World Breaker, which allows them to Form land right from under populaces without penalty, with disasterous consequences.

-The Divine Smith - A Form and Nourish specialist. It's most powerful ability is Deific Artifacts, which allows them to form artifacts which give a discount to certain actions. They can even give these to other gods.

-The Doom Prophet - A Wrath and Nourish specialist. It's most powerful ability is Prophecy, which allows them to know the exact outcome of an action they would take before they make it.

I also need to clean up some wordings and try to work out how all these archetypes and domains balance against eachother before finally starting a test game.

[Anubis Dread]

Did a chunk of work last night, hopefully all of it in the right direction!


-Clarified DP gains. Also for some reason I originally had the DP generation as HALF level rather than level. Either approach is valid, but level is easier and gives more opportunities for shennadigans sooner, so changed it to level.

-Buffed Wrath and nerfed Nourish. Nourishing races was too easy, while weakening races was too hard. Also divided Wrath into Ravage and Erase, meaning it's now possible to buff the ability to decimate a populace through abilities and domains (healthy) while not buffing the ability to outright destroy it (not so health).

-Changed Teachs to grant a static bonus to Civilization Strength rather than having to compare/contrast all the time. In retrospect this MAY make Techs a little too strong, I might need to double the bonus gained from population stages or something. Still that's what testing and asking for opinions is for.

-Archetypes now have five abilities and not three! At least a chunk of them - still haven't done any lower than Lover of Mortals. There is also now a mechanic known as Miracles that adds a little bit more thought and tension to the game.



-Finish giving all current archetypes five abilities.
-Write up the new five archetypes
-COMPLETELY rework domains from the ground up. Currently everyone has sort of a hodgepodge. What I'd like is for every god to have three domains from each of their speciality actions, then one domain for every other action.
-Do a sweeping balance read through to try to get everything to about the same level.
-Do a complete re-read and re-write to catch any unclear passages, bad positioning and so forth.
-Start playtesting!


A quick question for everyone - what archetypes do you think are pretty powerful right now? Which ones are weak? Along the same lines, are there any that are particularily fun or boring?