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 ;).