[OOC] Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

[Crispy Octopus]

I added a few comments, looks good!

[Double Capybara]

...fill out some Google doc with a description of Mk. 3's most important mechanics, and get that posted on here within the next 36-60 hours.

Cyclone, Roughly 3 days ago

It took a little longer than I'd hoped, and it's far from complete, but at least I've got something to show!

@Cyclone

Okay, a few suggestions.

Avatars should be treated as a relic without specific rules. A god with 10 avatars is about as dangerous as a god with 10 magical swords anyway. Maybe a power debuff is in place unless it's like the one avatar of the god, which has always been seen in the underlining of MK2 and Godspeed anyway.

Formalize the middle realms that intersect with Galbar. Right now the concept is nebulous. I think a big difference should be that they are easier for mortals to live in. Walking into the fairyland is not the same as walking into heaven or the underworld, though there is that rule about not eating fairy food. I also think you will have a lot of trouble with gods who don't follow the greek model, which left a lot of the primordial to the titans, is a god of forests Upper or Lower?

Edit:
Ah, and don't forget to bring some clothes, making materials is hard without might and walking around naked in late December is awkward, someone might catch a cold, I'd personally suggest christmas sweaters, though you might need some big ones if we have dragons and orbs of flesh around... I mean, probably don't need sweaters but at that point we just can't leave them behind, it would be just mean.

[Cyclone]

Okay, a few suggestions.

Avatars should be treated as a relic without specific rules. A god with 10 avatars is about as dangerous as a god with 10 magical swords anyway. Maybe a power debuff is in place unless it's like the one avatar of the god, which has always been seen in the underlining of MK2 and Godspeed anyway.

@Double Capybara

Avatars have yet to even come up on that Google doc, as the pertinent section for MP spending and abilities etc. has yet to even be started. I'll keep this idea in mind or when I do try to tackle that part.

Formalize the middle realms that intersect with Galbar. Right now the concept is nebulous. I think a big difference should be that they are easier for mortals to live in. Walking into the fairyland is not the same as walking into heaven or the underworld, though there is that rule about not eating fairy food. I also think you will have a lot of trouble with gods who don't follow the greek model, which left a lot of the primordial to the titans, is a god of forests Upper or Lower?

I'm interested in hearing others' opinions on this. Do we want a third group of gods, the middle ones? It might not be necessary. Right now I'm tempted to say that just as the dirt god whose Sphere is literally five feet below Galbar's surface is a 'lower' god, the forest god whose realm is the canopies of big trees a hundred feet above the ground is technically an 'upper' god. Such distinctions probably don't matter to the ones so close to Galbar nearly as much as they do for the ones that are miles underground or so far into the sky that they can barely see the planet.

[Double Capybara]

<Snipped quote by Double Capybara>

<Snipped quote>

I'm interested in hearing others' opinions on this. Do we want a third group of gods, the middle ones? It might not be necessary. Right now I'm tempted to say that just as the dirt god whose Sphere is literally five feet below Galbar's surface is a 'lower' god, the forest god whose realm is the canopies of big trees a hundred feet above the ground is technically an 'upper' god. Such distinctions probably don't matter to the ones so close to Galbar nearly as much as they do for the ones that are miles underground or so far into the sky that they can barely see the planet.

@Cyclone

Well, in Shinto they divide it between Heavenly Gods and Earthly Gods. The advantage of Earthly over Chocaholic is that it embraces both Land and Underworld, so there is no need to think if it the seed/root being underground or the canopy being up in the sky, it also eliminates the middle realm, as fairyland would be earthly.

We don't need to change the word Chthonic, but just give a heads up that it also includes all the surface.

[Crispy Octopus]

I'm interested in hearing others' opinions on this. Do we want a third group of gods, the middle ones? It might not be necessary. Right now I'm tempted to say that just as the dirt god whose Sphere is literally five feet below Galbar's surface is a 'lower' god, the forest god whose realm is the canopies of big trees a hundred feet above the ground is technically an 'upper' god. Such distinctions probably don't matter to the ones so close to Galbar nearly as much as they do for the ones that are miles underground or so far into the sky that they can barely see the planet.

@Cyclone

I don't like that honestly, because travel between spheres is supposed to be hard right? If a gods sphere is like a foot below the surface any joe with a shovel is digging into a gods sphere.

I think it should be basically impossible to physically tunnel into lower spheres or fly to upper ones. We know there are overlapping spheres so I'd almost rather double down on that than deal with the headache of spheres a foot below the ground.

[Double Capybara]

<Snipped quote by Cyclone>

I don't like that honestly, because travel between spheres is supposed to be hard right? If a gods sphere is like a foot below the surface any joe with a shovel is digging into a gods sphere.

I think it should be basically impossible to physically tunnel into lower spheres or fly to upper ones. We know there are overlapping spheres so I'd almost rather double down on that than deal with the headache of spheres a foot below the ground.

@Crispy Octopus

I'd say that is relevant to the distance between the spheres. In Aristotlean's stuff, everything below the moon (air and fire) are more reachable than everything up in the stars. Perhaps dividing it in four areas overall, with an upper celestial (stars and sun and stuff) lower celestial (wind and thunder and maybe the moon and stuff) upper chthonic (forests and rivers and shadows and stuff) and lower chthonic (underworld and magma and Cthulhu and stuff), indicating closeness to Galbar and ease of mortal access, could work?

[Cyclone]

<Snipped quote by Cyclone>

I don't like that honestly, because travel between spheres is supposed to be hard right? If a gods sphere is like a foot below the surface any joe with a shovel is digging into a gods sphere.

I think it should be basically impossible to physically tunnel into lower spheres or fly to upper ones. We know there are overlapping spheres so I'd almost rather double down on that than deal with the headache of spheres a foot below the ground.

@Crispy Octopus

This is actually a really good point. Ir's probably fine for the sky god's sphere to be the stratosphere or the ocean god's to be the Marianna Trench, but having your realm so close is a contradiction.

<Snipped quote by Cyclone>

Well, in Shinto they divide it between Heavenly Gods and Earthly Gods. The advantage of Earthly over Chocaholic is that it embraces both Land and Underworld, so there is no need to think if it the seed/root being underground or the canopy being up in the sky, it also eliminates the middle realm, as fairyland would be earthly.

We don't need to change the word Chthonic, but just give a heads up that it also includes all the surface.

@Double Capybara

Well, Chthonic does literally mean 'of or relating to the underworld'. We probably would need to rename it to be Celestial gods vs Earth Gods. The Chthonic ones would be a subset of Earth gods, I guess.

[Cyclone]

Ninja'd by Capy's post here.

<Snipped quote by Crispy Octopus>

I'd say that is relevant to the distance between the spheres. In Aristotlean's stuff, everything below the moon (air and fire) are more reachable than everything up in the stars. Perhaps dividing it in four areas overall, with an upper celestial (stars and sun and stuff) lower celestial (wind and thunder and maybe the moon and stuff) upper chthonic (forests and rivers and shadows and stuff) and lower chthonic (underworld and magma and Cthulhu and stuff), indicating closeness to Galbar and ease of mortal access, could work?

@Double Capybara

Four divisions is probably too much. This makes me awfully tempted to follow the original suggestion of having 'lower', 'upper', and 'middle' gods. Rewording the OP could make it so that these 'middle' Spheres like the bottom of the ocean and the upper parts of the sky are indeed much easier to reach than the ones like the underworld or moon. In these cases, the barriers would be more physical than magical.

Does this seem like a good solution?

[Crispy Octopus]

@Cyclone

Mmm. To an extent I also think a forest God doesn't *need* a sphere in direct contact with the world. After all when the rp starts there *will be no forests* so if a God later evolves into a forest or nature God but still has their sphere in the celestial realm or the underworld that makes sense.

These are God's and their spheres are their private abodes, if they choose to focus on Galbar rather than their spheres and become gods with a deep connection to the physical world I imagine they might develop a magical connection with Galbar.

So maybe in a deep forest a portal to the forest gods sphere is formed or something.

There's no need for God's to be directly linked to Galbar after all.

If... That makes sense.

[Cyclone]

@Cyclone

Mmm. To an extent I also think a forest God doesn't *need* a sphere in direct contact with the world. After all when the rp starts there *will be no forests* so if a God later evolves into a forest or nature God but still has their sphere in the celestial realm or the underworld that makes sense.

These are God's and their spheres are their private abodes, if they choose to focus on Galbar rather than their spheres and become gods with a deep connection to the physical world I imagine they might develop a magical connection with Galbar.

So maybe in a deep forest a portal to the forest gods sphere is formed or something.

There's no need for God's to be directly linked to Galbar after all.

If... That makes sense.

@Crispy Octopus

It's what I'd originally envisioned, although some will probably feel frustrated if they have to make their god start as something significantly different from what they actually want to do. But for the sake of consistency this approach makes sense.

I'm having a hard time making a decisive decision here because no matter what choice is made, I'm sure somebody will be unhappy. There's basically three options that I see:
A) Allow some gods to have "middle" spheres that are much more accessible,
B) Stick to our guns on Spheres being hard for mortals to access. Wannabe Forest God has to pick either a Celestial of a Chthonian Sphere and do something with it
C) Fudge the categories a bit and have 'upper Chthonian gods' and 'lower Celestial gods' as Capy suggested a bit farther up.

Option A seems like a slippery slope.

[Crispy Octopus]

@Cyclone

I'll be honest here, B is a far stronger thematic choice. A God who wants to develop a strong connection with the physical world should have to work to develop that connection. After all at this point the world is more or less formless and lifeless.

The gods that put in the most work shaping the middle sphere (Galbar) should see themselves developing a magical connection to that sphere and taking on portfolios related to it. After all what is an stone or dirt god if they didn't even raise a continent? A river god who carved no rivers?

If people want a god linked to the world they should endeavour to link themselves to the bloody world. Most of this will be done by the end of the age of creation anyway, its not like people are looking at a massive grind to be a forest god, they just have to shape some forests and trees! Once they've done the work and become a forest god perhaps in the darkest reaches of their forests fissures between their sphere and Galbar will develop.

(I'd caution that those fissures should be safe for gods and special entities, but might be extraordinarily dangerous for mortals. Thats pure balance, though.)

Option B allows for the best narrative and in my opinion provides more story telling opportunity. I realize I'm an outsider here, but thats my two cents.

[Double Capybara]

What is the point of stopping gods who want to have closer realms to have closer realms? I feel like this does step on the feet of anyone who will have land-based spheres (which again, are just not that well covered in Greek Myth), which yeah, include me. This was my idea for a realm:

My Hider

Description:
The Purlieu. An ever-shifting wildland with jungles and mountains rising and disappearing in days, home to the most fierce of storms and beasts, untamable to the point it can rust away metal and crumble recently built fortresses into ruins in mere days. It connects itself with Galbar at random, mimicking a road, bridge or field out in the frontiers of mortalkind and enabling people to walk into the endless wilds without even noticing or luring ships to its shores once they no longer have the eyesight of any land. It is also where the seasons go to when they are not ruling over Galbar.

I can adapt to a heavenly realm if necessary, I did have a secondary idea involving stars and some leftover Ilunabar stuff, but I feel this would inhibit the potential of land/earth realms and would be to the detriment of the game.

Of the options presented, I would go with C, as that is an aspect present in the source of what we are doing, with things below the moon acting differently to things above it.

[Double Capybara]

Snip

@Crispy Octopus

The problem is that Divinus does not follow a Cosmological line of birth like traditional Mythologies. You don't have that neat line of Cosmo God -> Sky God / Earth Goddess -> Thunder God, Ocean God, Sky God, Sun god, Moon Goddess...

You have people starting out as gods of realms that have yet to exist. Gods of life, of craftsmen, of rivers, of technology, of trade. Your idea kinda leans towards everyone starting with primordial realms but that is not what the players have done so far, unless that is what we are to do in Mk3

[Crispy Octopus]

@Double CapybaraSee I don't see why that can't be a celestial realm, and the magical roads and pathways that lure people in are naturally occurring portals that form due to a deep magical connection between that sphere and Galbar. Worst case, that sounds like it would be similar to a fairy world occupying the same space as Galbar. Just my opinion though.

I do agree though, B will step on peoples toes.

Ultimately I'm content with B or C.

EDIT:

<Snipped quote by Crispy Octopus>

The problem is that Divinus does not follow a Cosmological line of birth like traditional Mythologies. You don't have that neat line of Cosmo God -> Sky God / Earth Goddess -> Thunder God, Ocean God, Sky God, Sun god, Moon Goddess...

You have people starting out as gods of realms that have yet to exist. Gods of life, of craftsmen, of rivers, of technology, of trade. Your idea kinda leans towards everyone starting with primordial realms but that is not what the players have done so far, unless that is what we are to do in Mk3

@Double Capybara

Again, I am an outsider so take what I have to say with a cup of salt haha. Sure, there's no real reason why gods of things that are yet to be cant exist, especially if that's been a common thing up to now.

[Cyclone]

I'm going to defer deciding upon this for a little while so that @Muttonhawk and @BBeast can give their input on the matter.

On a side note, now also seems like a good time to announce that those two have agreed to help me out by being Co-GMs. I'm very grateful to have them!

[Muttonhawk]

As a caveat to the previous paragraph, some Spheres might not adhere to Euclidean geometry. They could overlap with others; in this way there might be a Sphere that acts as a fairy world, existing in the same place as Galbar but only becoming visible under certain conditions and only being accessible through the use of certain rituals or gateways.

The WIP sphere rules in the doc

Is there a reason why a more earthly sphere cannot take the above caveat and just pick whether it's more celestial or cthonic?

[Crispy Octopus]

So the earthly spheres would be spheres that intersect with the physical world and maybe even each other @Muttonhawk?

[Cyclone]

<Snipped quote by The WIP sphere rules in the doc>

Is there a reason why a more earthly sphere cannot take the above caveat and just pick whether it's more celestial or cthonic?

@Muttonhawk

Nope. I don't really see this as an issue of classification so much as accessibility, though. Option C simply changes the classification around so that we can give some in-universe justifcation for easily accessible Spheres, like the dirt god living just under a hill where you could dig. Or the forest god's Sphere being forest.

This issue is really distilled down to the previously posed question of whether we'll tolerate gods essentially picking Galbar as their Sphere and dwelling down there, because the dirt and forest are effectively the same thing as Galbar. My leaning is no; I support option B and I find myself more inclined to agree with Octopus on most of what he's said about this.

For some it might be a challenge to think of some sort of Celestial or Chthonian Sphere (or some weird parallel realm, as you suggest) that makes sense for their character, but with a little bit of creativity I think it's possible to come up with something that's fitting, interesting, and not in conflict with the stated rules concerning Spheres.

[Muttonhawk]

So the earthly spheres would be spheres that intersect with the physical world and maybe even each other @Muttonhawk?

@Crispy Octopus

Yes, much like any other spheres, except without adherence to the physical "Up or Down" dichotomy that seems to be the limiting factor here.

[Muttonhawk]

<Snipped quote by Muttonhawk>

Nope. I don't really see this as an issue of classification so much as accessibility, though. Option C simply changes the classification around so that we can give some in-universe justifcation for easily accessible Spheres, like the dirt god living just under a hill where you could dig. Or the forest god's Sphere being forest.

This issue is really distilled down to the previously posed question of whether we'll tolerate gods essentially picking Galbar as their Sphere and dwelling down there, because the dirt and forest are effectively the same thing as Galbar. My leaning is no; I support option B and I find myself more inclined to agree with Octopus on most of what he's said about this.

For some it might be a challenge to think of some sort of Celestial or Chthonian Sphere (or some weird parallel realm, as you suggest) that makes sense for their character, but with a little bit of creativity I think it's possible to come up with something that's fitting, interesting, and not in conflict with the stated rules concerning Spheres.

@Cyclone

Ninja'd!

In that case, I'm going to throw my hat into option B. I don't see why a god should be linked strictly to Galbar as a sphere when their sphere could still be linked closely to a physical aspect of Galbar, such as forests or wildlands.

And just because a sphere like that isn't so accessible, it doesn't restrict you from finding ways for inter-sphere travel to happen thematically. If a little girl gets lost in the woods, you can easily fudge together her unnoticed stumbling into the sphere of forest god by mere chance and then having a hell of a time finding her way home, all the while the rangers of the previous woods having no idea where she disappeared to. Any other contrivance can be made to facilitate stories.