Fragile Worlds

I have been considering the idea that it might be possible to simply use categories to describe a game world, which is a crazy idea but perhaps worth trying to make consistent.
So what better way than to make an entire campaign setting around that and start breaking it?

The idea here is that the gods embody philosophical concepts and when destroyed, the concepts themselves are destroyed... along with whatever they originally operated.
If you destroy the god of lightning, not only will lightning storms become just storms, the concept of lightning itself vanishes from the world. As the players are going to be divine assassins in this sort of game, working out the ramifications for the removal of the equivalent of logical axioms will coincidentally also help improve the consistency.

The gods are, unfortunately, rather weak, unprepared and "easily" destroyed with planning and high level power. Which leads to a Fragile World setting where higher level characters out to make a name for themselves can, with alot of work, put down a god and change the world. Others might wish to stop them but that's just something they'll have to deal with until the god of Opposition is killed... (after which, goodness knows how that's going to work; perhaps the more abstract concepts can be ignored)

A god can be found for most concepts, but obviously a list is going to have been drawn up first.

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The obvious ones are Life, Death and Existence. Kill Death and nothing can die, including the gods. Kill Life and everything dies immediately (including all the gods and thus the entire campaign world). Killing Existence leads to the end of the world. All lead to something rather boring.
Either way, destroying these major concepts should be immensely difficult if not outright impossible. Ending them also ends the campaign and requires a setting reset and so should be final targets.

The god of Speed/Movement would also be a rather... bad thing to off, as would the god of Shapes.


Other gods could be nested inside each other. The overall god of Earth would contain the god of Mountains and that would contain the god of Stone.

So, workable? Or about to go off the deep end very very soon?
How do you resolve a destroyed concept with the existence of history, at least until History is 6ft under? (eg. people used to get hit by lightning... which means what exactly?)

I think you should really look into Nobilis for this. And probably Exalted. The first is built on that idea, the second includes some of it as well.

Interesting idea.

As you noted, abstract concepts will be tricky. I would put forth that only things with some physical manifestation can have slayabe patrons.

Otherwise, why wouldn't the gods themselves have killed Death long ago, making the world a lot less fragile despite the host of problems it would create...

Moreover, how would you treat pantheons that blend together? At what point would the god of Good end and the god of Honor begin?

Is the god of gratification a hedonisitic god, or is that the god of hedonism? Where is the line

--- And many other head hurty issues ---

With more concrete and definable pantheons, both you and the players could identify the effects of removing a certain god. They could accomplish their goals while you could throw curveballs that they may not have thought of, which I think was the goal of your game.


Anyway, sounds neat. Keep Advil handy, though.

Interesting campaign world, but I have been in and run similar worlds based on the Mythos of Planescape.



Depending on how cooperative and restricted your so called "God Killers" are, and what exactly happens after killing even a Minor Deity which can be...confusing. Especially if anyone wants to bring up the ramifications of even killing a major abstract concept, your be doing more time philosophying then actually playing.


I give it 4 sessions before red polkadot bears flood the sky with their urine hands made of oatmeal. And that's a HOPEFUL future where Logic, Casualty, and Bodily Functions still existing.

Inevitably, "Fragile" Universes are too easily crushed under their own weight and sent back to the Void.

So, assuming everything, I think you may want to either avoid that or purposely try to cause that in the first place.

In a God Game I once played, killing another deity resulting in their portfolio slowly vanishing.

Kill the God of Fire and fires would grow smaller and weaker, harder and harder to light until they just stopped.

Ending in a whimper, rather than a bang.

So if you killed the God of Life, things would stop living. People would stop being born. Things would stop growing.

People wouldn't live. They'd merely exist for a few decades until life drained away.

I like the idea of the slow death, personally, and this is how I'd do it - When something is brought into existence, the relevant God invests it with enough mojo to keep it going. When that God dies, then whatever they've created keeps going, but nothing new of that sort can be brought into existence. I'd also play this off as a "Trial period", where new deities can grab hold of those portfolios before they die off completely.

In practice, it'd work out like this : If the God of Fire dies, then no new fires can be brought into existence from that point on. Any fires still burning, however, will continue to burn until they go out. Thus begins a race by everyone in the know, to keep every fire they can find alight, so that they don't have to go without.

For a more abstract example, Life. Killing the God of Life wouldn't mean everything dies, under this model. Instead, it means nothing new can live. Trees keep going, until winter.. at which point, they die for the winter, and never come back. Babies already conceived can be born, but no more will be conceived. The fate of the world becomes seeing all of those people alive slowly aging, and no one new joining the ranks of the living.

And to make things more complex, say Life and Death are both killed. Well, now you have an ever-aging collection of the Last People On Earth. They'll continue to grow older, forever, running for thousands of years on the Life energy they were provided at birth, energy which should have run out by the time they were eighty. They're still alive, technically, because they aren't dead, but there's no Life left in them. They're dull, listless, probably sitting in rocking chairs and staring out at the desolate wasteland that used to be their yard, and wishing there were kids around to yell at. They've been sitting there for thousands of years, and they'll sit there thousands of years more.

Killing off the gods of creativity and building, would turn sentient creatures into non sentient animals.

This is basically the goal of the villains in Nobilis, which was made for this kind of thing. Seriously, check it out. I can wait. You won't be disappointed.

As for murdering concepts, just because you kill Life doesn't mean that things immediately die or just keep going until they do die. It could also mean that things never really lived in the first place- all humans are really animate mud, or something like that. Say you kill Oceans- Sure, oceans as a thing are gone, but you'll still probably have these really big bodies of water that are probably lakes that may or may not be salty.

I'd also suggest going for the saving reality approach, as you start to run into major headaches when you kill too many fundamental concepts, like Color or the Scottish. Conversely, you could make the campaign out of just one concept- this also lets your players figure out how one goes about killing Ham Sandwiches, and all the difficulties therein.

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As you noted, abstract concepts will be tricky. I would put forth that only things with some physical manifestation can have slayabe patrons.

Otherwise, why wouldn't the gods themselves have killed Death long ago, making the world a lot less fragile despite the host of problems it would create...

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That's no fun- abstracts need love too. As for why they don't kill Death, it's generally agreed that killing the building blocks of reality is both a Bad Thing(tm) and in poor taste; besides, it doesn't actually stop you from being killed. It only stops you from Dying, whereas Absolute Destruction, Oblivion, Fading, and so on can still make short work of you. Don't be expecting immunity from being excised from reality just because you're deathless.

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Originally Posted by Geostationary

That's no fun- abstracts need love too. As for why they don't kill Death, it's generally agreed that killing the building blocks of reality is both a Bad Thing(tm) and in poor taste; besides, it doesn't actually stop you from being killed. It only stops you from Dying, whereas Absolute Destruction, Oblivion, Fading, and so on can still make short work of you. Don't be expecting immunity from being excised from reality just because you're deathless.

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This naturally raises the question of what happens if you kill Immortality.

It was more of a thought experiment than anything else. Basically, asking "what would the world be like if one or more fundamental categories were simply removed"?

As Eldan and Geostationary mentioned, Nobilis explores this theme to a considerable extent - definitely worth looking it up!

There's also the question of just how specific the gods in your world are? Is there a god of Divine Fragility, for example, whose death would mean all the other deities are so much tougher?

As for the 'what would the world be like', it's an awfully general question; I think you'd get more useful answers if you tried asking about specific categories :)

Well, yes, it is a general question because I am not approaching it from the perspective of making a game. Consider it an idle question, nothing more.