A Campaign where the Players are Gods... [Archive] - Wizards Community

A Campaign where the Players are Gods... [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Reign_of_Ice
03-24-07, 04:04 AM A Campaign where the Players are the gods, is that even possible? I came up with a few ideas but not enough. I'm looking for feed back, I orginally posted my topic up on "What's a Player to Do" message board because it involves me directly as a player in a campaign I'm trying to get our DM to continue...

I need more ideas, suggestions, and your thoughts - I appreciate any help you can give me.

Here is the link to the other board, please check it out...
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=815252

Thankyou
Return of the Flumph
03-24-07, 12:45 PM http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=808032
Treymordin
03-25-07, 10:58 AM Wouldnt that be a really boring campaign?
Doom_Linnorm
03-25-07, 12:34 PM By that reasoning Epic is boring aswell.
There is always something bigger and badder out there.
Then there is god strength, I mean, maybe in that setting deities are just really really scary but not as godly scary as deities from say Deities and Demigods.
(Bad pun made for a reason other then comedy.)
Infinitum
03-25-07, 01:04 PM At least you don't have everyone using a Pun Pun build.

Now THAT would be boring.
Werral
03-25-07, 05:40 PM At least you don't have everyone using a Pun Pun build.

Now THAT would be boring.

There was a really old D&D boxed set (when D&D was still AD&D with training wheels) with Immortal rules. Deities and Demigods had rules too.
Khael
03-25-07, 05:58 PM By that reasoning Epic is boring as well.
There is always something bigger and badder out there.
Then there is god strength, I mean, maybe in that setting deities are just really really scary but not as godly scary as deities from say Deities and Demigods.
(Bad pun made for a reason other then comedy.)

But the thing is in epic you don't get the ability to kill the enemy of your choice at will (hand of death, life and death etc.). Against mortals, a deity is a definite win, unless the mortals are played with unbelievable ability (I.e. a small normally insignificant outpost should not be guarded by the archmage of X)

And yes, there is always something bigger and badder, but they're other dieties. Who will either be giving you orders, or your equal (The bigger dieties will only care about your superiors, unless you challenge them, or your superior is trying to get you killed, by making you interfere.)

One game possible is a sort of giant sim though... Black and white anyone?
Thangor
03-25-07, 06:20 PM I like the idea. Each player could choose a number of related domains that fit into their god/character concept and have access to those spells as supernatural abilities. Maybe give each character strong damage reduction that corresponds to their character concept, so they could be godly and powerful, but not entirely invulnerable. For Ideas check out greek and indian mythology, where gods fight and politic and occasionally kill one another. Also, American Gods by Neil Gaiman is a cool book that involves conflict between gods.
Singer_of_the_Song
03-25-07, 07:19 PM One game possible is a sort of giant sim though... Black and white anyone?

That could be really cool if translated properly into D&D. You could control and manage various mortal followers on the various worlds you are worshipped on, while scheming and fighting directly against deities and other powerful outsider lords.

I just got a really nifty campaign vision in my head.
Arivia
03-25-07, 07:23 PM I like the idea. Each player could choose a number of related domains that fit into their god/character concept and have access to those spells as supernatural abilities. Maybe give each character strong damage reduction that corresponds to their character concept, so they could be godly and powerful, but not entirely invulnerable. For Ideas check out greek and indian mythology, where gods fight and politic and occasionally kill one another. Also, American Gods by Neil Gaiman is a cool book that involves conflict between gods.

You mean like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobilis) or this (http://www.white-wolf.com/scion/index.php)?
DoveArrow
04-16-07, 03:33 PM I'm actually trying to work on this concept as well. My concept is that the players are creator gods, with the first few sessions devoted to the players creating a multiverse from scratch. The rest of the campaign will then be centered around the players trying to defend their newly minted multiverse from the dark gods that came from some previous age.

The thing I'm trying to work on now is bringing the power level of the game down to epic level gameplay. For example, I'm thinking about giving the players 20 character levels to start with (no outsider Hit Dice), and having them use either divine possession, avatars, or aspects (I haven't decided which) to travel anywhere other than the divine realm they inhabit. I'm also thinking about limiting certain salient divine abilities, such as Alter Reality, and Sunder & Disjoin, because they're just way too uber.

Now you may be asking, why am I bringing down the power level of the campaign. There are two reasons for this: 1) I don't want to try and deal with combats where all the players and villains have 16 or more divine ranks, 40 character levels, and 20 outsider Hit Dice, 2) It gives me more options as far as encounters are concerned.

I'm curious to know what you have planned. Maybe we could bounce ideas off one another.
Khael
04-16-07, 04:16 PM Interesting idea, but I don't think you even need to use SDAs based on this: Nothing beyond the primal gods and their creations can be stronger than the PCs, least at the start, right?

So you really just need to remove a few restrictions on higher level spells - clone or mind seed made avatars, creations spells can now make life (Or form stone into beings, stone-to-flesh, raise the 'dead' to create life) Genesis can create planes, etc.
If no-one else besides the gods have high level spells, remove the odd restriction, and throw in XP for certain creations where XP would be burned, and what stops those being godly?
RealSorceror
04-17-07, 11:14 AM I'm currently playing a lvl 60 game in which the party members are going through a trial to become dieties. We are getting our butts handed to us. Its not boring, but it is occassionally frustrating.
A dieties game is indeed possible, but it would require a lot of work, especially for the DM. Once the monsters in the Epic Handbook become easy, the DM has to create epic monsters and challenges. These tend to be either too easy or too difficult.
Bluehero
04-17-07, 11:22 AM You can take a few routes with this one. You can go the high level characters who are gods and everyone else is weak in comparison route. Which works well, but can seem a bit weak if players have played at high levels a lot before, or the uber epic deities and demigods rules route which lets you use regular rules with a lot of custom contnet. Fun, but a lot of work and combats are almost always skewed one way or another. I'm doing this now, ajnd I'll tell you, I use the paragon template A LOT.
DoveArrow
04-17-07, 02:31 PM Interesting idea, but I don't think you even need to use SDAs based on this: Nothing beyond the primal gods and their creations can be stronger than the PCs, least at the start, right?

One of the things I've been thinking about doing is introducing a new Salient Divine Ability called Lesser Avatar (or maybe Create Aspect), which will allow players to create avatars with a divine rank of 0. I'm also thinking about disallowing Avatar, for the time being, until the players are used to playing epic levels. If all goes well, I may introduce villains who have the Avatar SDA later in the campaign, and have the players go on a quest to determine how to create their own avatars so that they can battle these new threats.

So you really just need to remove a few restrictions on higher level spells - clone or mind seed made avatars, creations spells can now make life (Or form stone into beings, stone-to-flesh, raise the 'dead' to create life) Genesis can create planes, etc.
If no-one else besides the gods have high level spells, remove the odd restriction, and throw in XP for certain creations where XP would be burned, and what stops those being godly?

I agree with you about the Genesis spell. In fact, it was something I was thinking about allowing for the creation of the various planes. As far as the rest of your suggestions are concerned, I think it's a lot of over correction for something that's fairly easily managed based on what's already written for deities.
Reign_of_Ice
04-18-07, 07:53 PM UPDATE: Well our playing group under took the "Deities as Characters" idea and it went very well. First you have to consider their DR/20 Epic is overcome by about everything they fight, you play as an avatar who while greater in power than your average Epic character is not outlandishly more powerful. And we basicly dealt with the monsters from Epic Handbook and from The Expert Players Guide (Epic Monsters). I found we got trounced a good deal and the combat was very challenging. Avatar death in our game will loose a Deity that much divine ranks (that were invested into the avatar) forever, this is a terrible tax on their power in order to protect thier followers. And limits if a Deity can actually accomplish making another avatar at a later date (beyond the 1 year standard).
We did alot of saving people from the mistakes or evil experiments of other gods who they'd unleash on our followers on "accident" in order to wipe us out of existance. While the godly laws declaired gods cannot battle other gods any more (thus avoiding any further god-wars), by method of destroying a church on the Prime Material and getting rid of followers an evil god could kill another god. As the number of followers indicated how many divine ranks a god had in our game.
The powers were very rewarding to use in game and player satisfaction I can say was pretty high. Yet the game wasn't easy, and the choices we made impacted the entire game world. It was way cool.
RealSorceror
04-19-07, 11:09 AM Sounds pretty friggin' sweet!
I'm gonna have to get my DM to try this out once I'm done with my deitial challenge.
Would the game work just as well if the players where demigods instead of avatars?
DoveArrow
04-19-07, 03:24 PM UPDATE: Well our playing group under took the "Deities as Characters" idea and it went very well. First you have to consider their DR/20 Epic is overcome by about everything they fight, you play as an avatar who while greater in power than your average Epic character is not outlandishly more powerful. And we basicly dealt with the monsters from Epic Handbook and from The Expert Players Guide (Epic Monsters). I found we got trounced a good deal and the combat was very challenging. Avatar death in our game will loose a Deity that much divine ranks (that were invested into the avatar) forever, this is a terrible tax on their power in order to protect thier followers. And limits if a Deity can actually accomplish making another avatar at a later date (beyond the 1 year standard).
We did alot of saving people from the mistakes or evil experiments of other gods who they'd unleash on our followers on "accident" in order to wipe us out of existance. While the godly laws declaired gods cannot battle other gods any more (thus avoiding any further god-wars), by method of destroying a church on the Prime Material and getting rid of followers an evil god could kill another god. As the number of followers indicated how many divine ranks a god had in our game.
The powers were very rewarding to use in game and player satisfaction I can say was pretty high. Yet the game wasn't easy, and the choices we made impacted the entire game world. It was way cool.

I'm just curious, were enemy spellcasters able to punch the players' SRs? Was it a problem that the players had so many immunities to things like death effects and energy attacks? Let me know.
Reign_of_Ice
04-25-07, 09:32 PM Sorry it took me so long to reply DoveArrow...
Yeah our foes can almost all bypass our DR/20 Epic, some of us bought feats to either boost this or we go with a lower class DR from epic feats and so forth that sometimes works.
See if you have something like DR/10 Cold Iron than that's 10 you can ignore unless they used cold iron on you. Same iwth DR/20 Epic, if they are epic they just ignore your DR which about everything we fight (save for hordes of minions) are.
SECOND UPDATE: Seems the world was saved by our heroes as mortals when it was 'SUPPOSE' to end, due to this fact the world lives on, but the gods still must carry on, they are needed elsewhere. Which is why we found out we were able to ascend to the lower ranks of godhood. Only as gods we are pitifully weak, which is a problem, for if we don't get strong enough soon invading alien deities of great power will come in and kill us take our power and enslave/use-up our world - thus destroying it...
We went to an Epic world that exists somewhere beyond the Outter Planes of existence where only the biggest of the bad roam. Every monster is epic with templates, you don't even wanna look at a squirrel the wrong way here...
We are struggling to survive and grow stronger and find weapons and artifacts to enhance our powers. We are in this place as our God forms, while meanwhile back on the Prime Material Plane our Avatars are struggling to provide for our followers who are growing restless with the weakness of their "new gods" when it seemed like thier old gods were so much more powerful.
We are having a blast, basicly every game we do some heavy combat stuff that is on par with LotR only infused with the supernatural and wrapped in the strangeness of Kung-Fu movie. You have gods slugging it out, strange otherworldly mind-shattering demonic alien monsters, armies of undead, armies of monsters, and armies of ...well everything else. It reminds me of the God of War video games in a way only, anything is possible. It's like taking the training wheels off the typical D&D game. The challenges exist, and we have had players (as gods) nearly die, we sometimes 'port away from combat (a few of us at a time) to heal and 'port back to continue fighting. Cause if we all 'port away our villians can follow us!!!
It's intense I gotta say, we basicly get there and put on some music like Drowning Pool or some other Heavy Metal band and finish the last sessions combat out. When we aren't fighting we are doing recon, searching for treasures and trying to make pacts with new unknown gods to join our fledgeling pantheon. Which usually gets us sent on another quest! It's magnificent!

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Reign_of_Ice 03-24-07, 04:04 AM	A Campaign where the Players are the gods, is that even possible? I came up with a few ideas but not enough. I'm looking for feed back, I orginally posted my topic up on "What's a Player to Do" message board because it involves me directly as a player in a campaign I'm trying to get our DM to continue... I need more ideas, suggestions, and your thoughts - I appreciate any help you can give me. Here is the link to the other board, please check it out... http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=815252 Thankyou
Return of the Flumph 03-24-07, 12:45 PM	http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=808032
Treymordin 03-25-07, 10:58 AM	Wouldnt that be a really boring campaign?
Doom_Linnorm 03-25-07, 12:34 PM	By that reasoning Epic is boring aswell. There is always something bigger and badder out there. Then there is god strength, I mean, maybe in that setting deities are just really really scary but not as godly scary as deities from say Deities and Demigods. (Bad pun made for a reason other then comedy.)
Infinitum 03-25-07, 01:04 PM	At least you don't have everyone using a Pun Pun build. Now THAT would be boring.
Werral 03-25-07, 05:40 PM	At least you don't have everyone using a Pun Pun build. Now THAT would be boring. There was a really old D&D boxed set (when D&D was still AD&D with training wheels) with Immortal rules. Deities and Demigods had rules too.
Khael 03-25-07, 05:58 PM	By that reasoning Epic is boring as well. There is always something bigger and badder out there. Then there is god strength, I mean, maybe in that setting deities are just really really scary but not as godly scary as deities from say Deities and Demigods. (Bad pun made for a reason other then comedy.) But the thing is in epic you don't get the ability to kill the enemy of your choice at will (hand of death, life and death etc.). Against mortals, a deity is a definite win, unless the mortals are played with unbelievable ability (I.e. a small normally insignificant outpost should not be guarded by the archmage of X) And yes, there is always something bigger and badder, but they're other dieties. Who will either be giving you orders, or your equal (The bigger dieties will only care about your superiors, unless you challenge them, or your superior is trying to get you killed, by making you interfere.) One game possible is a sort of giant sim though... Black and white anyone?
Thangor 03-25-07, 06:20 PM	I like the idea. Each player could choose a number of related domains that fit into their god/character concept and have access to those spells as supernatural abilities. Maybe give each character strong damage reduction that corresponds to their character concept, so they could be godly and powerful, but not entirely invulnerable. For Ideas check out greek and indian mythology, where gods fight and politic and occasionally kill one another. Also, American Gods by Neil Gaiman is a cool book that involves conflict between gods.
Singer_of_the_Song 03-25-07, 07:19 PM	One game possible is a sort of giant sim though... Black and white anyone? That could be really cool if translated properly into D&D. You could control and manage various mortal followers on the various worlds you are worshipped on, while scheming and fighting directly against deities and other powerful outsider lords. I just got a really nifty campaign vision in my head.
Arivia 03-25-07, 07:23 PM	I like the idea. Each player could choose a number of related domains that fit into their god/character concept and have access to those spells as supernatural abilities. Maybe give each character strong damage reduction that corresponds to their character concept, so they could be godly and powerful, but not entirely invulnerable. For Ideas check out greek and indian mythology, where gods fight and politic and occasionally kill one another. Also, American Gods by Neil Gaiman is a cool book that involves conflict between gods. You mean like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobilis) or this (http://www.white-wolf.com/scion/index.php)?
DoveArrow 04-16-07, 03:33 PM	I'm actually trying to work on this concept as well. My concept is that the players are creator gods, with the first few sessions devoted to the players creating a multiverse from scratch. The rest of the campaign will then be centered around the players trying to defend their newly minted multiverse from the dark gods that came from some previous age. The thing I'm trying to work on now is bringing the power level of the game down to epic level gameplay. For example, I'm thinking about giving the players 20 character levels to start with (no outsider Hit Dice), and having them use either divine possession, avatars, or aspects (I haven't decided which) to travel anywhere other than the divine realm they inhabit. I'm also thinking about limiting certain salient divine abilities, such as Alter Reality, and Sunder & Disjoin, because they're just way too uber. Now you may be asking, why am I bringing down the power level of the campaign. There are two reasons for this: 1) I don't want to try and deal with combats where all the players and villains have 16 or more divine ranks, 40 character levels, and 20 outsider Hit Dice, 2) It gives me more options as far as encounters are concerned. I'm curious to know what you have planned. Maybe we could bounce ideas off one another.
Khael 04-16-07, 04:16 PM	Interesting idea, but I don't think you even need to use SDAs based on this: Nothing beyond the primal gods and their creations can be stronger than the PCs, least at the start, right? So you really just need to remove a few restrictions on higher level spells - clone or mind seed made avatars, creations spells can now make life (Or form stone into beings, stone-to-flesh, raise the 'dead' to create life) Genesis can create planes, etc. If no-one else besides the gods have high level spells, remove the odd restriction, and throw in XP for certain creations where XP would be burned, and what stops those being godly?
RealSorceror 04-17-07, 11:14 AM	I'm currently playing a lvl 60 game in which the party members are going through a trial to become dieties. We are getting our butts handed to us. Its not boring, but it is occassionally frustrating. A dieties game is indeed possible, but it would require a lot of work, especially for the DM. Once the monsters in the Epic Handbook become easy, the DM has to create epic monsters and challenges. These tend to be either too easy or too difficult.
Bluehero 04-17-07, 11:22 AM	You can take a few routes with this one. You can go the high level characters who are gods and everyone else is weak in comparison route. Which works well, but can seem a bit weak if players have played at high levels a lot before, or the uber epic deities and demigods rules route which lets you use regular rules with a lot of custom contnet. Fun, but a lot of work and combats are almost always skewed one way or another. I'm doing this now, ajnd I'll tell you, I use the paragon template A LOT.
DoveArrow 04-17-07, 02:31 PM	Interesting idea, but I don't think you even need to use SDAs based on this: Nothing beyond the primal gods and their creations can be stronger than the PCs, least at the start, right? One of the things I've been thinking about doing is introducing a new Salient Divine Ability called Lesser Avatar (or maybe Create Aspect), which will allow players to create avatars with a divine rank of 0. I'm also thinking about disallowing Avatar, for the time being, until the players are used to playing epic levels. If all goes well, I may introduce villains who have the Avatar SDA later in the campaign, and have the players go on a quest to determine how to create their own avatars so that they can battle these new threats. So you really just need to remove a few restrictions on higher level spells - clone or mind seed made avatars, creations spells can now make life (Or form stone into beings, stone-to-flesh, raise the 'dead' to create life) Genesis can create planes, etc. If no-one else besides the gods have high level spells, remove the odd restriction, and throw in XP for certain creations where XP would be burned, and what stops those being godly? I agree with you about the Genesis spell. In fact, it was something I was thinking about allowing for the creation of the various planes. As far as the rest of your suggestions are concerned, I think it's a lot of over correction for something that's fairly easily managed based on what's already written for deities.
Reign_of_Ice 04-18-07, 07:53 PM	UPDATE: Well our playing group under took the "Deities as Characters" idea and it went very well. First you have to consider their DR/20 Epic is overcome by about everything they fight, you play as an avatar who while greater in power than your average Epic character is not outlandishly more powerful. And we basicly dealt with the monsters from Epic Handbook and from The Expert Players Guide (Epic Monsters). I found we got trounced a good deal and the combat was very challenging. Avatar death in our game will loose a Deity that much divine ranks (that were invested into the avatar) forever, this is a terrible tax on their power in order to protect thier followers. And limits if a Deity can actually accomplish making another avatar at a later date (beyond the 1 year standard). We did alot of saving people from the mistakes or evil experiments of other gods who they'd unleash on our followers on "accident" in order to wipe us out of existance. While the godly laws declaired gods cannot battle other gods any more (thus avoiding any further god-wars), by method of destroying a church on the Prime Material and getting rid of followers an evil god could kill another god. As the number of followers indicated how many divine ranks a god had in our game. The powers were very rewarding to use in game and player satisfaction I can say was pretty high. Yet the game wasn't easy, and the choices we made impacted the entire game world. It was way cool.
RealSorceror 04-19-07, 11:09 AM	Sounds pretty friggin' sweet! I'm gonna have to get my DM to try this out once I'm done with my deitial challenge. Would the game work just as well if the players where demigods instead of avatars?
DoveArrow 04-19-07, 03:24 PM	UPDATE: Well our playing group under took the "Deities as Characters" idea and it went very well. First you have to consider their DR/20 Epic is overcome by about everything they fight, you play as an avatar who while greater in power than your average Epic character is not outlandishly more powerful. And we basicly dealt with the monsters from Epic Handbook and from The Expert Players Guide (Epic Monsters). I found we got trounced a good deal and the combat was very challenging. Avatar death in our game will loose a Deity that much divine ranks (that were invested into the avatar) forever, this is a terrible tax on their power in order to protect thier followers. And limits if a Deity can actually accomplish making another avatar at a later date (beyond the 1 year standard). We did alot of saving people from the mistakes or evil experiments of other gods who they'd unleash on our followers on "accident" in order to wipe us out of existance. While the godly laws declaired gods cannot battle other gods any more (thus avoiding any further god-wars), by method of destroying a church on the Prime Material and getting rid of followers an evil god could kill another god. As the number of followers indicated how many divine ranks a god had in our game. The powers were very rewarding to use in game and player satisfaction I can say was pretty high. Yet the game wasn't easy, and the choices we made impacted the entire game world. It was way cool. I'm just curious, were enemy spellcasters able to punch the players' SRs? Was it a problem that the players had so many immunities to things like death effects and energy attacks? Let me know.
Reign_of_Ice 04-25-07, 09:32 PM	Sorry it took me so long to reply DoveArrow... Yeah our foes can almost all bypass our DR/20 Epic, some of us bought feats to either boost this or we go with a lower class DR from epic feats and so forth that sometimes works. See if you have something like DR/10 Cold Iron than that's 10 you can ignore unless they used cold iron on you. Same iwth DR/20 Epic, if they are epic they just ignore your DR which about everything we fight (save for hordes of minions) are. SECOND UPDATE: Seems the world was saved by our heroes as mortals when it was 'SUPPOSE' to end, due to this fact the world lives on, but the gods still must carry on, they are needed elsewhere. Which is why we found out we were able to ascend to the lower ranks of godhood. Only as gods we are pitifully weak, which is a problem, for if we don't get strong enough soon invading alien deities of great power will come in and kill us take our power and enslave/use-up our world - thus destroying it... We went to an Epic world that exists somewhere beyond the Outter Planes of existence where only the biggest of the bad roam. Every monster is epic with templates, you don't even wanna look at a squirrel the wrong way here... We are struggling to survive and grow stronger and find weapons and artifacts to enhance our powers. We are in this place as our God forms, while meanwhile back on the Prime Material Plane our Avatars are struggling to provide for our followers who are growing restless with the weakness of their "new gods" when it seemed like thier old gods were so much more powerful. We are having a blast, basicly every game we do some heavy combat stuff that is on par with LotR only infused with the supernatural and wrapped in the strangeness of Kung-Fu movie. You have gods slugging it out, strange otherworldly mind-shattering demonic alien monsters, armies of undead, armies of monsters, and armies of ...well everything else. It reminds me of the God of War video games in a way only, anything is possible. It's like taking the training wheels off the typical D&D game. The challenges exist, and we have had players (as gods) nearly die, we sometimes 'port away from combat (a few of us at a time) to heal and 'port back to continue fighting. Cause if we all 'port away our villians can follow us!!! It's intense I gotta say, we basicly get there and put on some music like Drowning Pool or some other Heavy Metal band and finish the last sessions combat out. When we aren't fighting we are doing recon, searching for treasures and trying to make pacts with new unknown gods to join our fledgeling pantheon. Which usually gets us sent on another quest! It's magnificent!