Hello all.
I've been busily mashing away at the keyboard this past week or so to get a very rough draft of Lost Gods (08 version) live. I've put it on Google Docs, largely as I think this is a good location for collaborative work of this type.
As I mentioned in another thread, I was tempted to make it a Contenders Hack, until I realised that one of the key things was that your god needn't care about a thread (and may actively persecute them), and thus the dynamic needed to be different. Plus I was keen to get certain aspects of the Gaiman-esque fiction across, with the gods maybe not actually being the protagonists, so much as instigators of the real stories, depending on how play evolves.
As you can see from the document itself, there's a few things I'm particularly interested in feedback on:
-The belief / favours economies how tightly wound are they? Is it too much /too little?
-Do the God personas or the threads end up being protagonists?
-Do scenes need tying to influence rolls? (at the moment they're uncoupled for a certain, almost illusory amount of freedom, a stricter ruleset would have Contenders-like scene economy)
-Does there need to be a third economy? Are the belief / favour economies enough to keep flow interesting?
These will probably make more sense if you read the document. General feedback is welcome, but those particular points are what I'm looking for.
Answers
Submitted by Graham W on Tue, 05/02/2008 - 00:35.
The belief / favours economies how tightly wound are they? Is it too much /too little?
They're fine from the point of view of tightly wound. I do worry that the Belief economy is the one people will concentrate on, because Belief starts low and keeps ticking down.
-Do the God personas or the threads end up being protagonists?
Really hard to tell. However, I do notice that what happens to the threads is: they get doubt and belief.
Compare this to, say, Acts of Evil, in which you hurt the humans. This really encourages sympathy with them and, because of that, makes them into protagonists.
-Do scenes need tying to influence rolls?
The problem is that ticking down of Belief at the start of each scene, which means that starting a scene has a pretty serious mechanical effect.
I don't think you need tie one scene to one roll, but I think there should be a connection between the two. Such as, failing a roll ends the scene. Or gaining Doubt ends the scene. I don't know, exactly, but, given that scenes have a mechanical effect on the stats, I'd like to see some mechanical idea of how many rolls I can have in a scene.
Does there need to be a third economy? Are the belief / favour economies enough to keep flow interesting?
I think it's interesting enough as it is.
You've seen Acts of Evil, right? Have I asked this before? Probably. Sorry.
Graham
First I'll do the have you read game X thing.
Submitted by JoE PrincE on Tue, 05/02/2008 - 01:00.
So, have you read Acts of Evil? Cos I can see a lot of parallels between Lost Gods and AoE.
The gods are protagonists because they are PCs.
I don't know if any of the economies work because I don't know if anyone can tap a thread, I don't know what happens when belief=0 and I don't know what the point of the game is for the gods. Seems unlikely they'll last long as it's very difficult to gain the one belief per scene required to break even.
Stealing favours from other PCs seems overpowered though.
Yes the scenes need to be tied to influence rolls, either in a Contenders/MLwM style or an AoE increasing difficulty kinda way.
Third economy? I don't think it's needed.
Do the personal crisis do anything other than flatter Ron Edwards by ripping off Spione?
Is there any reason not to use a consequence? Or the same consequence over and over?
Is there any scope for Bedlamesque gods reminiscing about the glory days?
Apologies for being harsh Matt, but Lost Gods is a great concept and I'm sure it'll become a great game too.
Bring on the drastic changes!
cross-post a-rama
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Contenders
Submitted by Destriarch on Tue, 05/02/2008 - 06:56.
As I mentioned in another thread, I was tempted to make it a Contenders Hack, until I realised that one of the key things was that your god needn't care about a thread (and may actively persecute them), and thus the dynamic needed to be different.
Not that I'm trying to persuade you to make it a contenders hack - everyone seems to want to make one of those at the moment - but I thought I'd mention Nobilis for a second. There's a similar thing in Nobilis you see, where powers can kind of possess human 'anchors' which they buy with points at generation time. Thing is, each Power has to care about their anchors, but it doesn't matter whether they like them or hate them so long as they aren't indifferent. If you really wanted to make the game Contenders for gods, you could adapt the rule by saying it can be a love-hate thing. I mean, what would be the point of a character element that's so engrained into the concept and yet didn't affect the character at all?
That said, I've not read the rules yet - only just got up - so that may not make nearly so much sense in context as it does with reference to the post above and Contenders.
Ash
Good stuff folks
Submitted by Matt on Tue, 05/02/2008 - 10:16.
And just to say I appreciate the solid critique. I restarted from scratch with this, so it needs this kind of feedback as it moves forward.
I haven't seen acts of evil, so I'll have to find a copy to digest.
Do the personal crisis do anything other than flatter Ron Edwards by ripping off Spione?
Heh, I thought that'd be noticed. There was a line at the top of an earlier draft about it currently suffering from "last game I thought about" syndrome, and it still holds true to some extent...
More seriously though, there is a strong and real reason for those (and note how they are crises not trespasses). They are a shortcut to making the threads sympathetic characters and framing the situation (more like issues in shock in some ways). Because no matter what, somebody at the table has strong identification with their situation. That's a powerful tool.
-Matt
Realms Publishing