Spend XP to cure cancer and be a good person - expensive fluff charms in EvWoD

Our group tends to play big games like Godbound or Exalted where the players get to shape the world to their whims and even when we're not doing that we enjoy games like Fellowship where you are having a large, positive impact on the world by saving it from an evil Overlord or an Empire. We enjoy being able to improve fictional worlds for the better by more direct actions than "slay some monsters". But then when we find cool powers in various systems that let us cure cancer or the like, they never feel as fun as they ought to. Let's figure out why...

Cure cancer or feed the hungry, decisions decisions...

Cure Cancer Powers

So what do I mean by "Cure Cancer Powers"? Basically, any power the character can have that would have a large impact on the world the game takes place in, but will rarely have any tangible effects on the session-to-session gameplay. Take Wholeness-Restoring Meditation from Exalted vs World of Darkness for example:

Cure anything!

Spend a few hours, cure anyone of any debilitating ailment. You would be hailed as a miracle worker and you could change the lives of hundreds of people each year. But how often this would come up in a game you're playing as something important? Maybe once or twice you save some key NPCs and get some good reputation for being such a good surgeon, but in a normal session of being a vampire hunting hero it probably wouldn't come up all that often in comparison to say, being able to punch holes in vampires on the regular.

You could also expand this category into "powers that are narratively cool but rarely useful". For example, Neighborhood Relocation Scheme lets you magically drag one part of the local geography somewhere else:

Drag one location somewhere else.

The power can be really useful in a very specific situation ("Let's break everyone out of Alcatraz by dragging the island onto the shore so they don't drown!"), isn't as universally, unequivocally good as curing cancer, but it still will only come up so often in a game in comparison to being able to punch holes in vampires.

Some other powers that for us fell into these categories:

• Tiger Warrior Training Technique / Legendary Scholar's Curriculum - supercharged teaching, letting you train people to be world leading experts in science or black belt martial artists in a week. Very useful for supercharging some key NPCs, would only be a background thing otherwise.
• You Can Be More - turn mortals into Mages after a very difficult roll - again, uplifts some key NPCs.
• Faultless Ceremony - bless a ceremony with good fortune - thematic, but very nebulous as to how it would impact a game.
• Ceasing to Exist Approach - turn yourself into someone completely different for a time - very useful, but at the same time it requires a lot of upkeep and you can't really just be someone completely removed from the group without hogging a bit too much spotlight.
• Smooth Transition - give people painless deaths - very thematic, but how often would you do this in a regular game?
• The King and the Kingdom: The Thousand and First Hell - create your own pocket realm of existence - very thematic and can serve as a neat mobile base of operation, but at the same time it's mostly creating a walled-garden for yourself really...

Have a look at them yourself if you'd like to get into more details, Exalted vs World of Darkness is available for free!

Cure Cancer Powers in practical games

These kind of powers came up a few times in our games. Most recently, in our upcoming EvWoD game, City of the Bull God, we had our veteran GM Devon play End of Sadness, an Infernal Exalted (hell-themed hero essentially). The core of his character was built around Latter-Day Devil Implants, a charm that lets him graft helltech implants onto people and turn them into Fomori (demon-possessed people). However, he built his character to be benevolent, so while normally Fomori would be monsters, while they work for him they are immune to all the bad effects of being a monster. Then to further refine them, he took Verdant Emptiness Endowment, which let him grant wishes to people once a year each. This would let him remove any and all inherent problems the Fomori would have (such as mental derangements caused by being possessed by an evil spirit, physical deformities, etc.).

The intended loop for the character was to find disenfranchised people that wanted to heal something they wouldn't be able to otherwise (not in an "exploit the weak" kind of way, nor "throw off the disability" way either, but finding people that would seek out this kind of treatment themselves), then working with them for a few years to stabilise them and then letting them go better than ever. It's probably one of the more benevolent ways an Infernal can interact with a person (who can very easily be cruel tyrants).

After one season of the game and investing about 27 XP into this one loop (about half of the generous XP our GM has given us), these Powers and the loop came up a total of about twice. First time in S01E02 when End of Sadness explicitly wanted to show off his character loop and cured one person of her sickness, and a second time in S01E04 when he brought some Fomori dogs to a fight. Beyond that everything else was fluff about how his followers look and operate.

The worst part was that the player noticed that they essentially built themselves a fancy walled garden out of XP and very situational powers that don't bring them joy. Sure, they and the GM could contrive a way for those powers to come into play but that would be pretty obvious to everyone and not make anyone feel better.

A much simpler example of similar Cure Cancer Power usage was in our Heaven for Everyone game, S01E12, where one player decided to buy Instant Treatment Methodology charm that let them do very fast medical treatments and decided to break into a children's hospital to cure everyone there overnight. Really cool thing to do once, not necessarily worth spending 2-3 session's worth of XP to say you've done it.

Another example from City of the Bull God - I played a superpowered university professor Rigel Star. My initial idea for the character was to take Legendary Scholar's Curriculum to be able to churn through dozens of students per week, condensing their entire university learning into days and even taking in underprivileged youths to give them all that education for free to help lift them into a higher position in society. Ultimately however, I decided not to take it because it would be all fluff and nothing actionable in a game where we explore strange supernatural occurrences in Boleskine House, stop evil vampires from preying on people and go to the hollow earth to go back in time to fight nazi mages and werewolves.

A different take - Godbound's Miracles and Changes

Godbound had a different approach to this problem. While sure, some powers could be seen as Cure Cancer Powers (such as Birth Blessing that can cure infertility and give people really healthy children), most ways you would use to improve the world were universally accessible under Dominion Changes. Every player would gather Dominion over time and they could spend it to change the world for the better based on their divine portfolio. So if you were a Godbound of Health, you could cure cancer in a given kingdom, if you had the power of Knowledge you could make everyone in the world literate, while having the power of Sky you could give everyone angel wings.

The system also solved the problem of "powers that are only sometimes useful" by the use of Miracles. While you could buy some specific powers when levelling up, you had access to your entire divine portfolio in a limited fashion. You would have to pay a little bit extra and deal with some other minor constraints but you could, say, feed an entire town with Cornucopian Blessing to address an ongoing famine in the short term.

Of course these approaches might not be universally applicable, I understand that. You could also argue that spending XP on something makes it an important sacrifice - being generous means a lot more when you spend something you have in short supply than when it doesn't inconvenience you. But at the end of the day we're here to have fun together in an RPG, not play "my character shoots themselves in the foot to show what a selfless person they are".

Solutions attract problems

Of course, sometimes when a player picks a power they are signalling to the GM that they want to be using it regularly. In an ideal world, such solutions would attract problems - if you have the ability to sneak really well, you want to use that to solve problems, so the GM could give you more opportunities to sneak. So if you have invested in the power to cure any ailment suddenly a good deal of NPCs start having such problems the character can fix. It doesn't have to be a wave of magical cancer everywhere, but old scars, small persistent pains and aches, some family member struggling with a chronic condition, etc. Suddenly you have social leverage to use on people (even if you act selflessly, never turn anyone away and don't ask for payment not to be an asshole that prays on people, they can still feel in your debt). Of course sometimes it might be harder to figure out how to work such Cancer Curing Powers into a game - there are only so many situations being able to train black belt martial arts master by the dozen could realistically solve without turning into some kind of wuxia action flick about making a dojo city to fight against another evil dojo army...

Conclusions

While people do want to play good and selfless characters (of course not in every game), making them spend their limited character resources away from things that would be useful regularly and into niche powers that make their characters really good, helpless and selfless people can give players a buyer's remorse. Some of it could be addressed by tailoring what appears in a session to give the players a chance to highlight the cool and expensive powers their character has, but that could feel a bit pandering if done too much.

In general, it might be better for games to be consciously designed with this problem in mind.

Problems with character Cults in RPGs

In our group, we enjoy playing a good deal of demigod games with character Cults, ranging from Exalted (1, 2), through Godbound (1, 2), and to a smaller extent even Chronicles of Darkness could fall under this umbrella (in CRMB one of the PCs runs a masonic society which basically is a Cult to their supernatural self). While a demigod Cult is pretty much a staple of the genre and something that can be pretty interesting if done well, they often bring some issues whenever they appear.

Roles of cults in RPGs

As a baseline, Cults in RPGs generally come with some mechanical benefits to the player. In Exalted they give you some free Willpower, in Chronicles of Darkness they give you some free Merits, in the New Gods of Mankind they are key to getting faith to power your miracles, and in Godbound Cults give you more Dominion to change the world and come with some other benefits.

Beyond the mechanical, Cults are an expression of the demigod PC and their beliefs on how people should behave. Swallows of the South's Godwin was a musician, so his cults were his groupies. In Princes of the Universe, the Royal was all about being a merchant prince and trade, so his cult focused on heavy capitalism, paying taxes and accruing as much wealth as you could to get a high score when you die. In the same series the Majestic was a narcissistic scholar and his cult focused on people becoming educated. He was also heavily themed after mesoamerican themes of Exalted, which meant a lot of human sacrifices. But since only the best would do for him, the sacrifices had to be of the best examplars of his cult and willing because Majestic was against slavery.

Similarly, Cults are a way for the players to shape their world - to introduce a new religion into the world and possibly affect a large number of NPCs. Similarly, the Cults are often a resource the PC can tap into to engage the world more broadly - if you have a kingdom that worships you, you can rally troops from it and send that army to conquer other territories for you after all.

There are some problems that appear when you start dealing with the Cults in practice however...

Possession of NPCs

In demigod games we ran we often ran into this situation - a new mortal NPC is introduced, they join our society, and then comes the question of who will "own them" (so to say) by which Cult they will join. After that the PCs can get possessive over the NPCs that are their worshippers, and those NPCs rarely interact with PCs that are not their chosen deity.

For example, in Princes of the Universe a young girl named Conna is one of the last survivors from Wanderer's village. Early in the series the Majestic takes her under his wing to educate her properly and so on, later making her an important figure in his cult. Pretty much from that point she doesn't interact with anyone else anymore, and later Majestic basically refers to her as his adopted child. Similar patterns also appear in The Living Years where various mummified saints are raised from the dead and become worshippers of the Litch King and not interact much with other PCs, despite one of them being a devout of the faith they were the saints of, etc.

It's perhaps a bit subtle at times, since in a lot of situations you will have certain PCs and NPCs gravitate closer together and you may have NPCs that don't interact with anyone but one PC in general, but an NPC becoming someone's worshipper is certainly a strong indication to other players to not mess with them because they "belong" to that player.

On a larger scale, the same principle applies whenever the players visit a new location. Since some systems like Godbound punish you for divvying up a population between characters (Cult scale is exponential, but breakdown is linear. A Scale 1 Cult is 1000 people, a Scale 2 town is 100k people, but you can either get one Scale 2 Cult out of it, or two Scale 1 Cults, and combining two Scale 1 Cults from two places doesn't give you a Scale 2 Cult), meaning you often have to pick who owns what new town you visit or save. It starts to feel very transactional, especially when players start expecting towns to convert to their religion after saving them.

On a similar note...

Transactional worship

Growing your Cult in games like Godbound is generally a reward for completing some major quest. You liberate a town from some evil monster that has been plaguing it, and now the people give you praise. Because having a bigger Cult means you get a mechanical benefit, you sort of expect that as a reward or at least an option when you enter a new location. This makes the whole process feel a bit transactional, since even if you try being selfless you might get worshippers regardless due to them being so grateful, etc. This can feel even worse if you realise your character can be essentially uprooting an existing culture and replacing it with their own in the process.

That was an important character arc for Atrus in The Living Years - he was an outsider to the kingdom of Ancalia and the world of Arcem as a whole and he was really conscious about starting a cult of his own and imposing his ideas on the people that were foreign to him. For similar reasons in Evicting Epistle (a setting where the world was destroyed in the future so people went back to the past to conquer it anew since they didn't have anything left in their time) I couldn't justify playing a character from the future to avoid these kind of themes, and the themes of colonialism. It would be really hard to avoid a hyper-tech future demigod interacting with prehistoric proto-humans without some form of "need to uplift these 'savages'".

Religion defining the NPCs

A character can appear in the story and later join one of the PC Cults, or they can be introduced as someone from the Cult outright. In the second case especially (although not exclusively) the NPC's involvement in the Cult tends to define their personality. Godwin's groupies exist only as his fans with a little bit of individual mannerisms sprinkled on top. In CRMB every member of the masonic Cult tends to act in a similar, scheming way. etc.

Sure, sometimes when you create disposable NPCs, they tend to be one note, but unfortunately it seems with NPCs that are a part of a PC Cult that note tends to gravitate on what religion they subscribe to. This can make them a bit less interesting than if one would build characters first and then figure out if they'd follow any of the Cults.

In a similar vein, it is also rather easy to portray these Cults as a homogeneous group of people, rather than a collection of individuals. They tend to be characterised as a collective, display uniform traits and generally just be that one-note character from the previous paragraph smeared across a larger group.

Of course, this can come down to how much time and effort one wants to devote to fleshing out the characters. There is nothing stopping you from adding more depth and nuance to Cults and its members, but it takes that little bit extra effort over going with the flow of the least resistance and using stereotypes when describing the NPCs.

Mechanics influence characters

As discussed before, the mechanics of a game inform the playstyle of the characters, and the same can be said for Cults. I've noticed this especially with Godbound - in this system the characters can either be a demigod with a cult, or a free divinity that doesn't have worshippers to suit your playstyle. However, mechanically, having a cult more often than not is a better choice - you get more Dominion out of it, you get a neat Faction you can use to do your large-scale bidding, and generally have more stuff to interact with. Mechanically, the game is rewarding you for having a Cult, which means almost every character in the game will end up having a Cult (in our multiple campaigns using the system, totalling to about 15 characters, only one PC didn't have a cult - Adina from The Living Years, and that was only because I ended up insisting she wouldn't get one if it couldn't be a part of the religion she followed herself). This in turn changes the sort of characters you play - you won't want to play someone who is selfless and doesn't accept people worshipping them because that would put you at an advantage, so you make a character that would want the worship.

One solution - make it all cosmetic

One possible solution to a number of the listed problems would be to make the Cults a cosmetic thing to a character, rather than something that has mechanical benefits. A narcissist demigod that demands adulation can still make a Cult because that suits the character, while someone that doesn't feel the need won't feel bad for missing out on the mechanical benefits. Now because Cults stop being such a dominant thing every player has to focus on, the NPCs are under less pressure to pick a side and they can remain their own people. Being praised as "the town's hero" for saving it feels a bit less of a commitment than having the town worship you as their deity of choice.

Conclusions

Character Cults can be a really interesting part of a demigod game. They can serve as an extension or a compliment of any character, a way for them to express themselves on a large scale. However, it is very easy to fall into traps of defining NPCs by the religion they follow, and to get territorial and transactional about individual and group NPCs and which bucket they will fall into. When the system promotes having Cults, you also tend to see characters more skewed in that direction, changing what kind of PCs you see in those games.

Ideally, you would focus on making NPCs defined people first and then putting them in a Cult if they fit, and you would have a system where choosing to have or not to have a Cult would be balanced to encourage making characters that fit what the players want to play, rather than rewarding one kind of characters.

Problem of Crafting solving every problem

Technology and the industrial revolution have been an unprecedented boon to the global standard of living. With them, we escaped the Malthusian trap and have achieved things that were inconceivable before. However, what would applying a similar scale of progress do in an RPG?

In our Princes of the Universe Exalted game we explored a high-scale, high-power game that involved a character that hyper-specialised in Crafting. By mid-Season 2, they were able to create basically a post-scarcity utopia city in the middle of the desert, complete with climate control, automatic food dispensers, crafting facilities, Big Brother-style AI, etc. Basically, everyone could live your entire life there in luxury and not have to lift a finger, everything was provided for them. Things only escalated from there.

After awhile a lot of problems could just be hand waved away with Crafting. Resource shortages? Throw automated mining at a mountain. Food problems? Automated farms. Money problems? Start selling perfectly crafted luxury items and dominate each and every market out there. Military problems? Create automated drones, power armour, a fleet of airships, etc.

While in Exalted if you wanted to focus on the minutia of Crafting it would boil down to a lot of rolling, in systems like Godbound (which Princes of Universe eventually adopted) such large-scale changes are ingrained into its Dominion system. Heck, in vanilla Godbound you can even make new worshippers to boost yourself even further...

Solving every problem

But back to the topic at hand. Just like technology has solved basically every problem that plagued our civilisations in the past, so too can high-end Crafting solve pretty much every problem a system might have. This is pretty similar to the Quadratic Wizards Problem (where in games like D&D warriors' powers grow linearly, while wizards' power grows quadratically and inevitably they dominate everything) - if there is no balancing factor, Crafting can make anyone else obsolete. A warrior might train a hundred elite monks, but a Crafter might bring a machine gun to a knife fight.

Moreover, if anything can be solved with Crafting, you can run into the Paradox of Plenty - if you don't need people to extract natural resources, till the fields, make things, etc., what good are they?

Sure, you can have them create art, engage in science and philosophy and do everything else that's not manual labour. That can work if you don't push automation too far, but I'm yet to see an RPG where the art output of a nation would be a factor (sounds like a pretty neat concept).

In the end the only thing that's the limit is the setting. In Exalted, pretty much the only thing you couldn't automate was prayers - you needed actual souls for those to work. This was ultimately the use for humans in our game - to generate worship for the demigod player characters.

It takes something from the man

While in real life having a post-scarcity fully automation powered society would be an undeniable good, in RPGs it can "take something from the man" (or the setting) so to say. It takes away a lot of the strife from the setting - you don't have to choose whether sending people to war would mean your civilisation would starve if they didn't return for the harvest, or whether to farm cash crops to pay for a civic project, or food crops to feed the populous. If a single character can solve any problem with Crafting / technology, characters that are not Crafting-focused feel inferior in comparison, and if Crafting can start making other player characters obsolete, the game can just feel bad to play.

This touches on the idea of hard magic systems, where while magic can be awesome, it also needs to have some limits, and it's those limits that make the magic system interesting.

For example, in Godbound, a lot of the high-end Artefact creation requires the use of Celestial Shards, parts of the Engines that run reality. Obtaining them is always an ordeal, and using them essentially always means you are letting the broken world stay broken rather than try fixing it. Similarly, every player character has access to the same ability to change the world with Dominion even if they are not a Crafter, so you don't feel like you're that lesser at fixing problems with your powers.

Technology as corruption

In most games, especially scifi ones, players will almost never not want to get their hands on some cool gadgets, shiny toys or useful gear. Whether that's through looting places or making their own if they can, they will want to get some tech. However, some settings have introduced a counterbalance to the wonders of technology.

The Fading Suns universe is built on the remains of a post scarcity corporate techno utopia. However, the current setting is a space feudal empire built around the Universal Church, whose central doctrine is that technology makes your soul impure and leads to the stars fading. While PCs will fall under the various factions that are given indulgences to use technology for the good of the people (an inquisitor using a spaceship will save more souls than it they couldn't use a spaceship for example), a lot of the setting will carry a stigma attached to the excessive use of technology. So while you could build be more machine than man and run robotic farms, you will be shunned by the peasants you displaced and the church might extradite you all the while keeping a close eye on what other heresy you might be committing.

This kind of thing would of course require some buy-in from the players and a balanced touch from the GM not to be a party pooper, but it can provide an excuse why you can't just rely on technology to solve all your problems in the setting.

Modern thinking

Another interesting topic relating to Crafting and technology solving a lot of problems is that it is a very modern way of thinking. We know where technological progress leads, so we may want our characters to start pushing the setting towards modernity by inventing / reinventing even such simple concepts as basic sanitation or an assembly line. However, we have to remember that sometimes it took forever for new technologies to be created. The first steam engine was first described in the 1st century AD, but it still took 17 centuries for the Industrial Revolution to start. It's fine to work within what the setting is and not having to push it to modernity.

Conclusions

If taken to extremes, Crafting, innovation and technology in RPGs can be setting-changing. On one hand that can be a pretty awesome feeling of bringing a world from the dark ages to a post-scarcity society as a result of one's character's actions, but on the other hand it can detract from the game if people wanted to engage in the sword and sandal fantasy rather than going into scifi territories. 

You can try addressing the problem by choosing a system that balanced Crafting vs other professions or sets some limits on what is possible. Alternatively, you can actively try avoiding the problem by choosing not to have a focused Crafter in your game (we did that with The Living Years, where it was the more challenging way to play, and our motto almost became "if we only took Artifice...").

Like with anything, it's good to talk about your game's vision before the game starts. If you want to turn the setting from fantasy to scifi and people are onboard, go for it. If a game starts getting exponential and snowballing because of Crafting or something similar and you don't want to do that, you can ask people not to do that, etc.

Winning the game in Session 0 with Learning and Teaching...

Changing the world - Dominion or XP?

My group and I have played a lot of Godbound since its Kickstarter. I've really enjoyed a lot of its mechanics, but my view on some of them has changed over time. Today I'd like to talk about one of those mechanics - Dominion and how the characters change the world with it.

Dominion Changes

Dominion is a sort of meta-currency in Godbound. It allows the characters to change the world on a large scale - affecting entire cities or nations. They can raise armies, build works of wonder, or shape the landscape at whim. It is also used to create great artifacts of power - something on the level of The One Ring, or Marvel's Mjolnir.

PCs earn Dominion at the end of each session, and every in-game month from their cults. They are required to spend a certain amount of Dominion in order to advance a level to make sure they are engaged with the world and don't just hoard Dominion to do some crazy expensive project down the line.

Initially, all of that sounds like a great concept - every PC can express themselves in a unique way and shape the world to their whim. However, in practice it seems players fall into two categories.

First, we have those that spend their Dominion diligently each session fixing up problems as they arise wherever they go. Those would essentially be Divine Janitors or Godly Handymen - if some Faction has a Problem, they'd patch it up instantly. The problem with this type of player is that they focus so much on the little things that when it comes time to making something big, they are broke - they have already spent all of their Dominion.

The second type of player hoard their Dominion and don't spend it until they are forced to to level up. You could call them Forgetful Divinities or Burst Spenders. It's not uncommon for them to accrue enough Dominion to make changes to the entire world at one go when they finally get around to spending those points. The problem with this type of player is that they make much grander and sweeping changes than the previous type - meaning these make the diligent work of the other players seem way less significant, even though they sank just as much Dominion.

In other words, when the Pantheon enters some new area, the Divine Janitors go and fix some small ailments the locals have - clear our some bandits, fix the food supply and so on. At the end, the Burst Spenders wake up and realize they need to spend some Dominion, so they make the sky rain gold and erect Minas Tirith around the village they were visiting.

Now which PC do you think the locals will remember and praise more?

Making investment meaningful with XP costs

An alternative approach to giving everyone Dominion to spend on changing the world would perhaps be to eliminate that currency altogether and just stick to spending XP. While not ideal for a game based on OSR like Godbound, where levels are very distinct and meaningful leaps in power, it might be more suited for a point-buy system like Chronicles of Darkness.

There is some precedent for such an approach in CoD. In Mage the Awakening the PCs can create lasting spells that affect the world in a meaningful way. That spell has to be "held" by the mage that cast it however, unless it is "released" by spending a permanent dot of Willpower - essentially spending XP on it. That cost was significant in the first edition of the book, but got much more affordable in the second edition.

Similarly, CoD allowed the players to spend XP on purchasing Merits for the characters - advantages the character can use that are not directly represented as the character itself. Resources, allies, status, retainers and so on could all be at the character's disposal for an affordable XP cost.

This approach sets a sort of precedent - the players are okay sacrificing direct power of the PC (being able to spend XP on increasing attributes, skills, or buying supernatural powers) in exchange for indirect power they can use.

Using XP in place of Dominion might be a bit more challenging - the players would be sacrificing their personal power to affect the world, but that wouldn't necessarily mean they would be getting a tangible benefit out of it. It would, however, be a very meaningful statement on the player's part - that this problem matters to them enough to make that sacrifice.

Player expectations

So all in all, there are a few player expectationswith one approach or the other that would need to be acknowledged.

In a Dominion economy, the GM should probably acknowledge the contribution of both types of players. If a player spends their Dominion, it shouldn't be an event that becomes mundane. The players that engage with the system and make frequent effort to make the game world better should not be overshadowed by the infrequent big spenders.

In an XP economy, each change is perhaps doubly important because the player sacrifices essentially a part of their character to make it happen. They will be weaker, therefore not having that many opportunities to shine during engagements or combat. They would probably expect to know that their contributions matter.

Conclusions

The Dominion system from Godbound is interesting, but not perfect. While Chronicles of Darkness give an interesting alternative to how the players can change the world, it also introduces some of its own problems.

It's probably useful to engage with the players, make sure their contributions to the game are acknowledged, and be mindful of what they expect out of the game for the resources that they spend.

Godbound - "grow into your problems" Cult

When it comes to roleplaying games, I enjoy engaging with the various systems presented in the book and seeing how they can be broken or what is the optimal way to play something. After playing Godbound for awhile I stumbled upon some weird approach to engaging with a core mechanic of the system - how to build a divine Cult that will consistently provide players with a large amount of Dominion AND be a viable Faction in the late game. I call this strategy "grow into your problems".

Godbound Cult mechanics

(Check out the Godbound free edition if you want to follow along)

In Godbound, the players play a demigod. As a demigod, you have access to some divine energy called Dominion with which the PCs can shape the world. Dominion is accrued in two (main) ways - going on adventures (each session nets you some Dominion) and having a Cult. The first income is rather fixed - the whole party will roughly get the same amount of Dominion per person per session. The second can be influenced a bit.

A Cult in Godbound is a Faction - a group of people that has various Features and Problems. However, Cults also have Taboos - divine mandates that hamper their effectiveness, but give their deities more Dominion to spend. They are analogues to real-world Five Moral Precepts of Buddhism, observing Ramadan, or wearing temple garments in Mormonism.

The amount of Dominion the Godbound receives per month is proportional to the Cult's Size (from a village of Size 1 to an empire of Size 5), and to the amount of taboos it has. A Cult generates +1, +2 or +3 Dominion if it has 25%, 50%, or 75% of its "action die" (rounded up) in Trouble. An action die corresponds to the Size of the Cult - D6, D8, D10, D12 or D20 for Sizes 1 through 5.

So a Size 1 Cult with 3 points of Trouble generates 1+2=3 Dominion. A Size 5 Cult with 5 points of Trouble generates 5+1=6 Dominion and so on.

As the Cult grows in Size, you need to take on new Taboos to maintain the percentage needed to gain extra Dominion. Most players tend to keep at 25% Taboos, since it's a good place to have an effective Faction and not go crazy trying to eliminate that last bit of Trouble.

Now, let's talk about how to break this system.

Growing into one's problems

Typically, you'd start the Cult at Size 1 with 2 points of Taboos to get that extra bit of Dominion. You'd be getting 1+1=2 Dominion at a start, not too bad. As it grows, you would add some more Taboos to keep at 25% and you'd get 3, 4, 5 and finally 6 Dominion at Size 5 and 5 points of Taboos. Your final Faction will always have that little bit of Taboo left, but it can still succeed 75% of the times, not bad.

The thing is, early game Cults are weak. The amount they can accomplish in comparison to what the PCs can do is negligible. They won't have that many useful Features, and their dice rolls will be weak in comparison to anything bigger. So let's take the exact opposite approach.

We start the game with 5 points of Trouble (6*0.75=4.5, rounded up turns to 5). Our Cult can't do anything without tripping over its own legs. However, we are getting 1+3=4 Dominion - we're twice as effective as the other Cult, and 4 times as effective as a Size 1 Cult without any Taboos. Early game we only undertake actions that don't require a roll (Extend Interest mostly). Instead, we let our PC Enact Change with all that extra Dominion.

Now, late-game, we don't want the Cult to be hampered this much. We want it to be a strong, viable Faction. If we choose to remove a Taboo though, we create a schism and have more problems to deal with.

So here is the trick - each time the Cult increases in Size, we keep the Taboos fixed. Normally at Size 2 we would need to have 6 points of Taboos in order to get the +3 Dominion, but that's not what we're aiming for. Instead, we go for +2 Dominion, while still having 5 points of Taboos, instead of the 4 required. We're still generating 4 Dominion, but this time it's 2+2.

At Size 3, we need 5 Taboos to be at 50%, so we're now earning 3+2=5 Dominion. At Size 4, we would need 6 Taboos to get to 50%, so we drop into the lower bracket, again paying more than needed. We get 4+1=5 Dominion. At Size 5, we have 5 Taboos, so we get 5+1=6 Dominion.

So by sticking to 5 Taboos, we are earning 4, 4, 5, 5 and 6 Dominion for each Size our Cult is at. In comparison, the Cult that stayed at +1 Dominion was earning 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 and still ended up at the same amount of Trouble in the end.

Conclusions

The approach of "growing into your problems" for a Godbound Cult gives the players both early access to higher Dominion income as well as a late-game Faction that is very competent in its actions.

At the same time, trying to optimise a game that's all about just doing cool things and focusing more about an enjoyable narrative might be missing the point a bit ;).

Godbound's Dominion economy part 2 - how the players break Factions

Continued from Godbound's Dominion economy part 1 - Factions and Artefacts

Last time we gave an overview of how the Godbound game uses the Dominion system to allow players to enact large-scale changes in the world. Today, I would like to talk about how those changes will often break another core component of the game - the Faction system.

If you'd like to read the sourcebook for yourself, there is a free edition of Godbound available that contains about 95% of the full release's content in it.

The Faction System

The Faction System is a way for the players and the GM to simulate how various cities, nations and organisations would interact with one another and with the Godbounds as a whole.

Each Faction is defined by their Size (from a village to an empire), Cohesion (essentially, health points), Trouble (a gaige of how bad things are), Features (what the Faction can offer - "an abundant farmland", or "The Witch-Queens have mighty magics") and Trouble (various problems the Faction has - "Their lord taxes them cruelly", or "Neighbours fear and hate them").

Each month every Faction can undertake various actions as a part of their Faction Turn - building up resources, try to fix some problems, attacking someone, etc. Overall, it can take a few Turns before a major change takes place, and wars can drag on for even longer.

Overall, the system is very simplified. There are no elements of a grand strategy here - you don't move units on a hex map, you don't have to balance an economy or the like. The system is more about giving players an overall sense of the place and some clear goals for them to work towards - "let's cure this plague that is haunting the city", or "I want to build a mighty citadel to protect the civilians" and so on.

How PCs break the Factions

As the demigods they are, PCs in Godbound will hold sway on a number of factions and be able to influence many more. From their cults, to the villages they come by, up to the nations that they will conquer sooner or later, they have the power to mould them as they see fit. However, this comes at a cost.

When a Godbound of weapons will start arming the populace, those freshly minted warriors might get a bit cocky and start strong arming other villagers. Or maybe the local lord will become less than pleased with the peasant revolt waiting to happen. Or perhaps there will be a food shortage as there weren't enough farmhands to tend to the fields. When large-scale change is happening really fast, something will have to give.

As mentioned in the previous article, Godbound can spend Dominion to "Enact Change" - Change Facts, Solve Problems, or Create Features.

The first one is more aesthetic than anything, so it doesn't have an impact on the game mechanically.

The second is beneficial to a faction - the Godbound uses their divine powers to cure a disease, or stop famine, or bring peace and so on. This Change removes a Problem from a Faction, thus decreasing Trouble.

The third one is the crux of the problem. The Godbound creates something new to impose onto the Faction - they add a new, beneficial Feature, like creating a garrison of warrior monks, or a perpetual forge, or a fountain of gold. However, each time a new Feature is created this way, it also generates a Problem and increases Trouble.

The same also happens when a Godbound uses Influence in lieu of Dominion. Rallying a small army up just in time for battle will cause internal strife, but unlike a Dominion expenditure, once the PCs leave the area, the new Feature they pumped up will fizzle away, while the Problem and Trouble will remain!

Trouble as a general concept measures how dysfunctional a Faction is. The higher it is, the more often the Faction will fail at some important tasks. A Faction might try to collect money, but fail because raiders would steal the payment, or people would be too sick to pay, or the broken economy would make that money worthless. Or it might try raising an army with those funds but fail because someone would pocket too much for themselves, or the population is too afraid to volunteer.

All in all, you don't want this to raise too much. So the players would learn to balance Creating Features with Solving Problems. However, this usually means some of the following - either you focus mainly on Solving Problems and try leaving once you put everything in order, or you spend Dominion to both Create a Feature and Solve a Problem, basically paying double, or you Create a Feature and do a quest to Solve a Problem, making you spend more game time babysitting a faction essentially.

Moreover, the players are often driven to Create Features rather than Solve Problem since it's frankly more fun and cool. You want to build something new and exciting - raise armies, do great works and so on. It's much more fun to be the god that created an academy of wizards, than the god that made sure people weren't embezzling the taxes.

Finally, the players are every now and then forced to dump their Dominion into something in order to level up. This usually isn't an issue for diligent players that engage with the Factions on a regular basis, but if you have a few PCs that have done nothing in the last few sessions suddenly having to dump enough Dominion to jumpstart a medieval society into the modern age, you can be in for a lot of trouble.

How does this work in a real game?

I've played in two somewhat long games that used the Faction / Dominion system - Princes of the Universe and The Living Years. The first one only switched to Godbound midway through, meaning a lot of the mechanics were glossed over, but the second one used the system from the beginning.

In my experience, you will run into a few problems with the Faction / Dominion system.

First, you will be playing a game of wack-a-mole with the Problems. You will come into a town, fix a few key issues up, then proceed to make it better, creating more Problems than you originally started with. You will then have to solve them again and so on. A session's worth of Dominion will often be able to create more Problems than you'll be able to solve in a session by questing, especially if the problems get diverse in scope and causes.

Secondly, you will either have to create random Problems, or risk running into the same issue over and over. We had an order of knights that got buffed to be veterans. They got bossy and started strong arming the local population. After dealing with that, we decided to give them superhuman strength, and make them charismatic and commanding. It would be very easy to just make the initial Problem come back since it's a natural fit for what was going on... In the end, when we couldn't think of smart Problem ideas we resorted to using news headlines and tweaking them a bit.

Thirdly, you will run into some players that will tend to dump their Dominion in large chunks right as they need to level and that will be a wave of new Problems to deal with. You often are starved for Shards, so you won't be able to just dump that Dominion into Artefacts, and Solving Problems usually is more creatively demanding than just Creating Features.

Fourthly, it's often hard to increase Faction's Scope (making it bigger), which will often be a limiting factor as to what you can do with it. You can't just toss Dominion at a small town to make it bloom into a densely populated megacity so you can have more worshippers. Creating projects larger than the Factions you have at your disposal will be tempting, but it will also be tricky at the same time.

Lastly, the players will want to create their little walled gardens of a Faction. They will want to make their Cult great, or they will have a favourite Faction to build up. This might make it a little bit more hard how to give then Problems that wouldn't ruin things on one hand or be too blase on the other hand.

Conclusions

The Godbound Dominion and Faction systems create an interesting intertwined mechanic. It is, however, not without its own problems. The system might feel too shallow for people that want to have a system with strategic depth. It also falls too easily into a wack-a-mole cycle of PCs creating Features that generate Problems only to spend time and resources dealing with the Problems before being able to "get to the real game" and subsequently dumping more Dominion into the problem afterwards. At the same time it's a very thematic mechanic that allows the PCs to do large-scale changes to the world in a very approachable way.

Godbound's Dominion economy part 1 - Factions and Artefacts

Godbound is a game about playing demigods created by Kevin Crawford. It has a number of attractive features - high-power game setting, simplified game mechanics, robust power sets, compatibility with other OSR books, etc. However, today I would like to talk about a few interesting, intertwined mechanics that I first came across while reading the book - the Dominion system, its economy, Influence, Factions and Artefacts.

If you'd like to read the sourcebook for yourself, there is a free edition of Godbound available that contains about 95% of the full release's content in it.

Dominion, Influence and Shards

In Godbound, the players take on the role of the titular Godbound, mortals that ascended into a proto-divinity status. Think Gandalf, or Marvel's Thor or Vision. The PCs are gifted with a variety of superhuman powers for handling their day-to-day problems, but they also possess the power to affect the game setting on the larger scale through Dominion.

Dominion is an expression of Godbound powers to alter the world. The characters accrue the Dominion Points over time with worship and adventuring. They can spend those Points to make large changes to the world - Changing Facts, Solving Problems, Creating Features and building Artefacts.

Changing Facts relates to altering the setting in general manner. Erecting a mountain, shrouding a valley with eternal night, creating a race of flying humans, etc.

Solving Problems and Creating Features relate to the Faction System. Basically, every major group, town, nation is represented as a Faction that has beneficial Features ("The city has a prosperous mine", "Nation ruled by a great philosopher-king"), and negative Problems ("The city is plagued with disease", "Nobles are waging a secret war with one another"). The characters, basically through sheer force of their will, can change those. They can Solve a Problem, eliminating it entirely (for example, Gandalf removing Saruman's influence over Théoden), and they can also Create new, beneficial Feature (Tony Stark building the Ultron Program to help with global peacekeeping would've been a new Feature, save for Ultron himself...).

Lastly, the same Dominion can be spent to Create powerful Artefacts. We're not talking about +1 swords, but something more akin to The One Ring, Mjölnir or Yaka Arrow. Each of the Artefacts would be a significant boon to the already powerful Godbound, rather than being "just a piece of gear".

Godbound also features Influence, a more temporary form of Dominion the characters can invest into temporary changes. It allows the players to quickly train up an army, fortify defences, create stopgap solutions for some problems and so on, as long as their characters keep maintaining those measures. When the PCs leave, the changes revert back to the original state.

The game also features Celestial Shards, basically glorified scrap that is required for creating Artefacts and making really impossible changes happen (for example, creating a floating city, starting an entirely new species of humans, or building a network of teleporters). This generally means that the players have a limit to how outlandishly they can affect the setting at any given time - you get only so many Shards at a time and there are always multiple projects that could use them.

The Dominion Economy

Godbound creates an interesting dynamic with its Dominion Economy. It's a shared currency the players can spend on many disparate things. In the same game you could basically have a swordsmith forging a blade Artefact that will cut down an entire army with one swing, a tinkerer creating a mechanical angel that will be their herald, a warlord making his winged hussars actually fly, a merchant prince that would bring new riches to his old mines, a king quelling a rebellion with the power of his will and a fire god erecting a volcano as his new seat of power, all using Dominion in different ways.

Moreover, because Dominion is a universal resource, it will never go to waste - a character will always have something to spend it on. They are even required to spend it in order to progress - a Godbound character can only level if they get enough experience AND they had spend a certain amount of Dominion.

Lastly, Dominion costs can vary depending on the power portfolio of a given Godbound and the Points are non-transferable. This encourages the players to work together and trade favours. A mighty warrior might make his army very strong, but he would have problems giving them power armour. It would be trivial for an artificer however. So now the characters need to figure out what would be an equitable trade for such services...

In the actual play however, you can expect varied level of engagement from players. In the two campaigns my group ran, we had some players that were diligently spending their Dominion on regular basis, and we also had some that would let theirs pile on until they had to spend it to level up. It really depends on the party you have.

Conclusion

All in all, Godbound's Dominion system is an interesting take on creating a robust system for godly powers acting on a macro level. It is so universally applicable as to be useful for most styles of gaming, while still remaining simple and easy to use.

That is not to say it's without fault. But for that, a separate blog entry will be required to delve deeper into how the Dominion system and the Faction system don't gel all that great in the long run...

Continued in "Godbound's Dominion economy part 2 - how the players break Factions".