Right, let's flex the comprehension skills taught to me in high school.
Firsly, I never read how Godspeed works. Anyone got a link for me so I can catch up there?
Ages
So, I'm going to lay out what I understand we're doing and I'll colour my suggestions in as we go:
- The start of each turn includes an allowance of special MP (We're call them Freepoints (FP) to replace the previous mechanic).
- FP may only be spent on acts relating to the theme of the current 'Age'.
- We'll be starting in the 'Age of Creation' or some-such, wherein FP can be used to jazz up the world of Galbar and/or their allocated personal planes with all manner of baseline creations; geography, geology, flora, fauna, natural wonders, weird phenomena, and so on.
- Other possible ages could be the 'Age of Monsters', 'Age of Cities', 'Age of Darkness', and so on.
- The number of FP allocated per player per turn is equal, but the amount is dictated my the GM and may fluctuate between ages according to the acts expected. For example, the 'Age of Creation' may require many mighty acts to lift continents from the seas and populate the earth. The Age of Darkness may defined by scarcity, and what little might is provided must be used to rebuild atop the ruins of previous civilisations.
- An age lasts until the GM decides that a new age shall start in the next turn. The change of ages represents a new way of life in the world and should be directed according to the overall story driven by the players.
- The theme of a new age is also directed by the overall story driven by the players. The exact theme of the next age may be discussed by the players leading up to the end of the current age, but the GM has the final say*.
- An age may influence the IC time window in turns, spanning many years in early ages and slowing down when mortal stories get more interesting. The 'Age of Creation' may even represent such a chaotic state of the universe that it has no time window, representing a fluctuating, pseudo-linear, time-before-time.
- FP do not carry over to new ages.
* Waiting for consensus by less active players may not be too good when the turn/age needs to change to unblock other players.
The World
Spheres:
- I like that each god will have their own personal plane from the beginning by default. I would propose that each may be lazily developed as needed rather than requiring a detailed pimp-out before even describing in passing. That way players can focus where they want to, either doing stuff elsewhere or detailing their plane as they wish.
- I would prefer the exact location of the planes to be extra-dimensional from Galbar (in a loosely or undefined way) with solid gates between them. In fact, I would go as far as to suggest mandating that each plane must be connected to at least one permanent portal to Galbar in a thematic way chosen by the owning player which a mortal could discover and pass through during a quest. The obvious examples of this would be a cave which leads to Tartarus, an archway on a mountain leading to a monastery plane, a ring of toadstools in a clearing leading to the fairy world, etc. These gates don't have to be anything closely defined, just something attainable.
-- This idea is along the lines of what BBeast was going for with the suns being a gate to a fire plane, etc. However, I would prefer them to be more attainable. And I would also want to make sure we aren't compelled to contrive unused planes for the sake of filling out the cosmology -- I think that would be a waste of time unless it provides groundwork for possible stories.
- I'll add more on godly abilities later, but I feel it's still worth considering allowing gods to create temporary portals to their personal plane in a thematic way as it was mentioned before, such as through whirlpools or ritual circles. We can perhaps circumvent this being used to make travel across Galbar quicker by dictating that you must travel a distance in one plane equal to the distance you wish to travel in another plane. If someone's personal plane has a fully functioning subway system to make this process quicker, setting something like that up should cost the appropriate amount of might for an ability to speed up travel.
- You'll notice I've been saying planes instead of spheres. I think it would get confusing if both planes and portfolios/domains are called spheres. I would prefer at least one of them not be called spheres.
Nuevo Galbar:
- I like the idea of starting Galbar off as a rock-strewn ocean with only ice caps as large landmasses. I would suggest mandating or at least encouraging people to make landmasses close to existing landmasses to discourage isolation. The scale should be large enough that faraway lands can still be a thing without them being strictly disconnected until long-distance navigation by sail is a thing.
- I wouldn't mind if a sun was premade if we don't start with a sun god. However, I don't think there's any reason to premake the moon in the absence of a moon god. Other gods can make satellites as required. Hell, a character might make a ton of moons like MkII. That was cool and ended up being the backdrop for a lot of awesome story events.
- I absolutely would love to do stories in other players' nations. However, with all the blank space on the MkII map, starting a nation story as in Yorum was a fun project in and of itself. I think perhaps it could be useful to give license for boiler-plate societies to be conceived without such huge foundations as Yorum and Mesathelassa. Just little templates with scant details for people to expand into and mess with as they wish. In fact, you could probably extend the idea and word it as "If you need a thing for a narrative that could reasonably already exist in the world, just have it there free of charge if it lets you tell a cool story. This can be a farm, a city, a society, a forest, a mountain, or anything else considerably usual in the setting." I kind of already did this with Yorum's city states, but early on there was the tacit assumption that no one had the technology unless it was locally spread, so it might be worth adding the quoted point above explicitly in the rules.
- To solidify stories being Galbar-centric, I would suggest one more thing about it: Make it so Galbar is the only place where mortals can naturally conceive offspring. All attempts outside of Galbar result in stillbirths never given a soul or something similar. This will ensure that any mortal stories have to return to Galbar eventually. Mortal forays into other planes should be special. It might also be a prompt for mortals turning...strange if they stay in certain planes for too long.
How Dieties Do
Domains:
- I like the idea of having domain selection be largely unrestricted but benefiting from synergy ala clusters.
- I would very much like it if we inherited the MkII rule wherein a more specific domain trumps a more generalised domain when trying to do the same domain actions in a contest.
- I don't mind gods trading portfolios temporarily, but I don't think such a thing should be easy IC unless it's a very temporary arrangement.
- A suggestion to add: If players are inactive, the GM should reserve the right to declare their domains 'fair game' to be reclaimed by new or existing characters. This was soft-canon in MkII, the explanation being what Toun observed as "When essence is scattered, it eventually reforms, though not always in the same form." or something along those lines. This basically meant that godly essence was immortal in the true sense, but reincarnates after a god 'dies'. This is how Toun got the Oaths portfolio after the Pacts lady lost her divinity, or how numerous demigods were born after other deaths of similarly-Portfolio'd gods.
- I like the idea of keeping portfolio actions free or reduced while allowing any other action with a might cost to it. Toun did this a number of times and it allowed him to behave as powerfully as he was made out to be.
Levels and MP:
- I am open to the idea of removing the levels system. It's nice to have an indicator for progression of power, but that can be largely filled with holy sites, creations, and abilities if we decide to adopt them.
- I would say base MP allowance should remain constant per turn. This will stunt power escalation but it will also deal with another fundamental problem we were having in MkII; artefact power inflation. Seriously, we were looking at ancient artefacts built early in the game like discarded MMORPG gear. That's a tragedy I don't want to repeat.
- I think comparing raw power by levels is not really needed anyway when people can resolve clashes through the narrative and reasonable assumption. The players here are cool like that.
- Holy sites ought to have a 'cool thing it does for free' along with the might production, like some monument ability Capy alluded to.
- I would like to keep the turn cooldowns for building holy sites and have some kind of cap on the maximum profit they can produce. These measures ought discourage players from not spending any might except on holy sites. I mean, I doubt they would do it, but it's better to not have the holy site incentive too strong in the first place.
- An alternative chilling effect for holy sites would be to make them more vulnerable, such as allowing an adversary god to disable a holy site's production for a turn by spending a lesser proportion of the might it would produce.
Abilities:
- I'm open to Capy's idea of abilities so long as they do not become too dense and complex.
- I like the baseline abilities Capy put together for gods. I would be tempted to add in the travel mechanics I outlined earlier if they are agreed upon.
- I would like to suggest that the first 'form' ability chosen by a god can come for free on their CS. This was assumed in MkII and giving the first one a cost would be a gotcha for new players who didn't catch that part as they write their first post.
-- A wilder suggestion I have would be to make shapeshifting a baseline ability. A lot of the weird and unique looks for gods in MkII came from their ability to shift forms, even in a limited way. It would be a shame to lose that.
-- Perhaps as a compromise, the ability to disguise should be an acquired ability rather than a baseline ability. So any god that wants to do a Zeus gap year and conceive lots of children won't necessarily have an easy time convincing mortals to sleep with them with baseline shapeshifting.
- I suggest also allowing one or two free abilities thematic to a god on their CS. This will help us establish examples of how abilities should work so we can get settled into the idea.
- We should probably have a think about how baseline and/or acquired abilities should work with demigods and heroes, if at all. I imagine their choices would be much more restricted, perhaps restricted to domain for a demigod, perhaps restricted to a hard cap on number of abilities for heroes. Maybe we don't want them for heroes at all and leave that for artefacts they get or something.
- I don't mind gods losing the baseline ability to instantly travel, but I would still like them to travel fast without help. This could be done just by having them run tirelessly across the land. It doesn't have to be something that supersedes the benefit of a special mount or other form of transport.
Demigods
- Ascension to godhood was prohibitively difficult in MkII, I can agree. It should remain a difficult thing to do, but it should be possible at the end of a good story earning it. I don't exactly know how quests worked in Godspeed if they were a thing, but having a demigod ascend after an appropriate quest is a fantastic way to do it.
Right, so my next point is...
...er...
Hm, that's all I've got. Thoughts, guys?
EDIT: Cyclone is talking to me on Discord to clear up some things. His reply here will probably feature that, I think.
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