Duels of Verbal and Cerebral Wit
Not all contests are physical ones, and just as the back of this game suggests, we use the same system of resolution for physical and non-physical contests. For example, let’s use the classic fantasy RPG verbal contest, better known as “seducing the barmaid.”
My character 3 Devotion for the Goddess of Love. The GM (playing the barmaid) decides this buxom wench has 2 Devotion for the same Goddess. We both roll dice and we keep rolling using the same method described in Combat, above: I keep all my evens, the barmaid keeps all of hers and we keep rolling until one of us doesn’t have any more dice. Whether my character gets a kiss or a slap depends on the outcome of the contest.
Optional Repartee Rules
Now, some players are very witty and some are not. Some can be funny on the fly while some get a good line in every once in a while, and there are a few you just have to pry out of their shells with a big, fat character reward crowbar. While this is a roleplaying game, which intimates good roleplaying should be rewarded with bonuses and bad roleplaying punished with penalties, I don’t see why a player who isn’t clever or crafty can’t get a reward for trying. So, here’s what I do to make sure everybody gets a chance to get a kiss from the barmaid.
Bonus Dice
First, if the player just rolls dice for the exchange with the barmaid without even trying to be clever, charming or witty, he gets no help from me. (If you don’t try, you don’t get the prize.) If he makes even a simple attempt at being witty, I give him one bonus die for the effort. If he lives up to his own abilities at being clever, I give him two dice (that way, both the clever and non-clever player both get the same reward for living up to their own potential). If the player goes above and beyond his usual level of performance, I give him three bonus dice to roll. But, that’s just me. You may like giving “roleplaying bonuses” or you may not. That’s why this here is what we call an “optional rule.”
The Repartee Reserve
This is a pool of dice the player adds to whenever he’s clever, witty or just plain funny. In other words, if the player roleplays well, actively contributes to conversations and otherwise makes his character seem “real,” I give him one Point to add to his Repartee Reserve at the end of each session. He keeps these Points between sessions and can trade them in for dice he uses during any verbal exchange. And, like Chance and Fate Points, once they’ve been spent, you can’t get them back unless you earn yourself more.
Quick Aside
I think I’ve intruded a bit much in this section, but I wanted to make a point. Seducing the barmaid is just as complicated as a sword fight, and it’s always made me a little grumpy that all the games I’ve played make sword fighting a complicated, moment-by-moment, high detail action, but getting a kiss from the girl a single die roll. From my own personal experience, I find seducing the barmaid far more complicated than a fight. Most fights last less than five seconds. Winning the barmaid’s favor can be an ordeal that lasts all night. Maybe multiple nights. Maybe months. Just seemed a little reversed to me, that’s all. Thanks for your patience, and now, we return you to your regularly scheduled game manual.
Other Stuff
Now we come to all the nitty gritty details. How much damage does fire do? How about poison? How about falling damage? Well, to be honest, I usually handle this stuff on the fly when I’m the GM, even in games that give me specific rules for it (I don’t like pausing the game to look up a rule). So, I’ll give you a few guidelines and encourage you to be creative and treat every circumstance as its own specific rule.
Falling
If you have to wonder if a hero can survive a fall, he probably can’t. My buddy the forensic specialist tells me if the human body takes a 20 to 30 foot fall, it generally doesn’t get back up on its own. Anything higher than that is risking internal hemorrhaging and a slow, painful death. If you want something a bit more “heroic,” roll one die per ten feet the character falls. Every even is a Wound.
Fire
Getting burned for real isn’t like getting burned in the movies. You can’t out-run an explosion: you have mass, fire has next to none. However, it is fun to watch the hero run down the corridor away from the tumbling pillar of flame, so lets work something out. Once fire hits you, it continues to burn. You’ve got to get any burning clothes or accoutrements off before they get to your skin (as opposed to real life where the fire just melts your clothes and skin together). I’d say roll dice equal to the size of the fire and every even does one Wound until the fire is put out. A small fire (campfire) is three dice. A large fire (like your classic fireball) is five dice. For every item of clothing, the GM gets to roll once for the fire. Thus, if your shirt and pants are on fire, the GM gets to roll twice.
Poison
Most poisons kill you right on the spot rather than just make you sick or kill you over time. But in fantasy literature, there’s a rich tradition of the slow poison, giving the hero ample opportunity to find an exotic cure for his impending doom. Thus, I’d suggest giving each poison a deadline and divide the amount of time between contact and that deadline into even segments. Thus, if a poison has a twenty-four hour deadline (you get poisoned on Saturday at noon, you die on Sunday at noon), divide those twenty-four hours into 4 segments. Each segment gives the character a –1 to all actions. So, every 6 hours he gets another penalty. If the deadline is one month (now that’s a slow poison), divide into days. If the deadline is minutes, divide the penalties into seconds. That’s how I’d do poisons.
Knock Outs
I don’t know about you, but if someone walked up behind me and hit me over the head with something heavy, I wouldn’t be checking for hit points, I’d be on the floor, bleeding from the head, suffering from a concussion, throwing up all over myself and the guy who hit me. Of course, we want a system that simulates the literature that inspired it, so let’s handle it a bit easier. If you successfully sneak up on someone (your Sneak vs. their Perception) and hit them over the head with a heavy object, they’re knocked out and won’t wake up… until it’s absolutely the most inopportune time for them to do so.
Buying Things
While most roleplaying games include vast lists of just about anything your well-heeled adventurer would ever want to buy, ENEMY GODS does not. I mean, the whole philosophy here is to cut out everything you’ve already got, right? What good is another equipment list going to do? Go use the twelve you’ve already got!
Divinity Dice
Every once in a while, your Hero will need your help, and what’s a God for if it isn’t answering petitions of prayer? Your Divinity Dice are sitting right in front of you, and they are your key to helping your Hero out in his times of need.
Starting Divinity Dice
Gods start each session with a number of Divinity Dice equal to the total Devotion the Heroes have for your God. Go around the table and have each Hero tell you how much Devotion he has for you. The total Devotion is the number of Divinity Dice you have at the beginning of the game.
You can use your Divinity Dice in three ways: Divine Inspiration, Divine Intervention and Divine Retribution.
Divine Inspiration
Every one in a while, the Gods reach down (or up) into the world and touch their Heroes, giving their own abilities a little umph. This moment of Divine Inspiration augments the existing strengths of the Hero, making him a little stronger, a little faster or a little smarter than he already is. We call this Divine Inspiration and it allows you to give your Hero additional dice to roll for any action. Divine Inspiration costs differently depending on the circumstances.
If you help your Hero in a field that falls under your influence, every die you spend gives that Hero a number of dice equal to his Devotion to you. That is, if my God of Love wants to help my Hero seduce the barmaid (there she is again), every Divinity Die I spend gives my Hero a number of dice to roll equal to his Devotion to me.
Helping out your Hero outside your sphere of influence, however, costs a bit more. Inspiring your Hero outside your sphere of influence costs one Divinity Die per extra die rolled. Thus, if my God of Love wants to help her Hero out in a sword fight, she has to spend one Divinity Dice to give him one bonus die.
Divine Intervention
Every once in a while, a God has to really pull off some serious mojo to help his Hero out. Whether this is parting the
Any God can push his Hero a little here and there, but it takes some serious power to change the world, even for just a moment. Divine Intervention is a little trickier than simply inspiring a single person, and it requires a lot of Divinity Dice.
Step One: Devotion Rank
Determine the Devotion Rank of the Hero who is the target of the miracle. For every Devotion Die you spend, you can roll a number of dice equal to the Devotion of the Hero. Thus, if the Hero you want to target has 3 Devotion to you, every Devotion Die you spend gives you 3 dice to roll for your miracle.
If the miracle does not affect a specific Hero (or NPC), you must spend 1 Devotion for every die to roll for your miracle.
Step Two: Influence
If the miracle you want to pull off falls within your sphere of influence, there is no penalty. If it does not, you must spend 2 Devotion instead of 1.
Step Three: Help and Hindrances
Finally, other Gods can either help or hinder your miracle.
Gods with more Divinity Dice than you (before you started spending them for your miracle) can spend one Divinity Die to subtract or add one die from your current total. A God can only do this once per Divine Intervention.
Gods with less dice than you can spend two dice to subtract from your current dice or spend one die to add to it.
Step Four: Making the Roll
Roll your dice and consult the Target Numbers below.
· TN 5: Small Interventions such as healing wounds, stopping a fatal blow, or letting a Hero walk on water.
· TN 7: Major Interventions such as moving a Hero across the world overnight, making a marching army get lost in the woods, or parting a sea.
· TN 10: Vast Interventions such as raining fire and ash down an entire city, levelling a mountain range, or making every first-born child in a city die.
If you succeed, your miracle works. If not, your miracle fails.
What Can a Miracle Do?
Exactly what kind of miracle are we talking about here? Just about anything your mind can imagine. Gods are powerful beings, capable of ripping up mountains, draining oceans, creating rivers, and making lead into gold. At the beginning of this game, we talked about defining the nature of your pantheon, and what your Gods were capable of doing. Can they directly manipulate nature? Can they turn the sky black and make the clouds rain blood? Can they send manna down to feed their hungry people? It’s all up to you and the GM. Talk about it.
There is one rule about Divine Intervention that really should not be broken, and that’s killing another God’s Hero. This is strictly forbidden. You can smite down an army of ten thousand with thunderbolts from the sky if you like, but you cannot kill another God’s Hero.
If you are Poseidon and you want to keep Athena’s Hero away from home for twenty years (thus drawing Athena’s wrath), that’s all right. Just remember: never make an enemy who you can’t kill.
A Quick Aside
Odysseus is actually a good example to bring up right about now, because being lost at sea for twenty years is exactly what he deserved. After the Trojan War, Odysseus looted the temples of
At the end of the Odyssey, he asks Athena – his patron – why she didn’t help him (a common question for Heroes; they never notice when you’re around). Athena just shook her head and said, “I couldn’t help you.”
This implies rules mortals are not aware of, rules that bind even the Gods. Come up with a set of rules for your pantheon. What happens to a mortal who offends them? Do the Gods have the right to meddle with them, even if they are Heroes of a rival God? And can the patron of that Hero aid their beloved mortal, or must they watch from the sidelines and hope? Athena did. And at the end of it all, she got the greatest Greek Hero of them all.
Defining Moments
When you Divinely Intervene in your Hero’s affairs, it creates a spectacular effect. Everyone in the area sees a God intervening on a mortal’s behalf, thus creating the chance to create more followers. The more followers your God has, the more your influence in the mortal plane spreads and… the more Divinity Dice you get.
Whenever your Hero does something spectacular in the eyes of other mortals, you get the chance to pick up followers. The GM determines when that moment comes, when your action gains the attention of those watching, possibly converting them to your cause. Usually, this comes at a dramatic moment in the story, where everything good and holy (or evil and unholy) hinges on your Hero’s one roll. When that moment comes, follow these steps:
Step One: Defining the Moment
First, add up the total on your evens on your Hero’s roll. Count the total number of pips on the dice that rolled evens. This is the value of the Defining Moment. Record it on your character sheet under “Defining Moments.” You may want to add a little note to remind you of the circumstances.
Step Two: The Benefit of the Moment
At the end of a story, roll a number of dice equal to the score of that Defining Moment. Keep the evens as usual. The number of evens is the number of Divinity Dice your God adds to his pool.
Divine Retribution (Smiting)
Sometimes, Heroes get out of line and need to be reminded of their place in the world (which is worshiping the Gods, of course). When its obvious a Hero has become too big for his britches, you may decide to give him some Divine Retribution – also known as Smiting the Hero.
Mythology is full of Gods who take offense at the littlest things and punish mortals mercilessly for it. (There’s even a story about one God who did it for nothing more than a bet.) You may choose to smite a Hero at any time; you’re a God, there’s nothing stopping you from being jealous, wrathful, and beligerent if you feel a mortal has offended you.
When you choose to smite a Hero, use the same formula for performing a miracle: for every point of Divinity you spend, you get a number of dice equal to that Hero’s Devotion to you. Roll your dice, and if you roll higher than the Hero’s Hubris, your curse is successful. If not, it doesn’t affect him. Tell the hapless Hero what Doom has befallen him, and tell him the number of successes you got on your roll.
The Hero writes down the Smite and your number of successes. This is the number of successes another God must roll in order to remove the curse.
Or, if the Hero feels like it, he can drop a number of Hubris Ranks equal to half the successes you rolled to prove his humility to you. If he does so, you are obliged to get rid of the curse. If he can’t get rid of that much Hubris (because he doesn’t have that much Hubris to spend), he’s stuck with the curse until he earns enough Hubris to drop.
Shrines and Temples
Here’s another way of earning Divinity Dice: permanent structures built in your name.
Shrines (3 Divinity Dice)
By spending 3 Divinity Dice, you can inspire mortals to build a Shrine to your name. You may only build a shrine where your Hero performed a Defining Moment. If a God does not have a shrine in a city or town where another God has a shrine, he cannot perform miracles there. Also, each Shrine counts as a Divinity Die the God can use (once per session) if a Hero is in that city or town.
Temples
Running Out of Divinity Dice
It happens to the best of us. When it happens to you, you’re out of luck until your Hero can win some more. Unfortunately, your Hero can be killed when you don’t have any Divinity Dice to protect him (it’s the only time a Hero can be killed). It costs 5 Divinity Dice to kill a Hero. They must be spent on top of any other Divinity Dice spent. If the roll succeeds, your Hero dies and you must get another one. If the roll fails, you get all the Divinity Dice spent on the roll.
The Hero’s Flaw
At some time during the game, your Hero’s Flaw will come into play, either by chance or fate. There’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it. You can’t spend Divinity Dice to protect him. You can’t perform a miracle to wash her away from danger. At some time in every myth, the Hero must face his worst fears alone, without the help of his God. This is that time.
In order for your Hero’s Flaw to come into play, someone – either the GM or another God – must Call the Flaw. A God must spend 5 Divinity Dice to call a Hero’s Flaw. It can be from a rival God the GM controls or from one of your fellow PC Gods. Either way, by spending five Divinity Dice at the beginning of a game session, before anything else happens, your Hero encounters his Flaw. When it happens is up to the player (or GM) who spent the Divinity Dice.
When your Hero’s Flaw is invoked, you may not spend any Divinity Dice to help him in any way. The Hero must overcome the situation without your help. Also, during this time, you are considered to be without Divinity Dice. Thus, when the Hero encounters his Flaw, he can be killed.
There is an upside to all this, by the way. If your Hero survives the situation, it is considered a Defining Moment.
If your Hero doesn’t survive encountering his Flaw… well, its time to get a new Hero.
Making Your Hero Better
No experience points here, but your Hero can get better.
Devotion
At the end of each game session, a Hero gets 2 Devotion points to allocate. He chooses which Gods get the Devotion.
Apotheosis
When a Hero gains 30 Defining Moments, she is transformed into a God and lifted into the Heavens (or descends down into the Abyss). Your God gets ten Divinity Dice.
Magic Items
One big element of myth is your classic magical item. Whether it is a weapon or tool (or both), magic items are gifts the Gods give their faithful in return for devotion – and to help spread the Good News about that God’s grace. A magic item is an Advantage. It gives a specific bonus (or multiple bonuses) and creates an effect. If you want a magic runeblade that burns blood, for example, the sword gives its weilder +3 Advantage Dice. Whenever he uses the sword in combat, he adds 3 dice to his roll. The “burning blood” effect is just that: an effect. It gives the player a starting point when he describes Wounds delivered by the blade, rather than relying on the boring old “cut over the eye” routine we’ve been using in all the examples. Instead of just a mundane bloody forehead gash, the character on the receiving end of our runeblade now “feels his own blood burning inside his veins!” The effect is the same – a Wound Penalty – but the description is more vivid, more magical. It adds to the atmosphere of the game and gives the player a creative springboard to come up with new and colorful Wounds for others to write down on their character sheets.
Conclusion
That’s about it: everything you need to play your first game of Enemy Gods. If you have any questions or run into any problems, feel free to drop by our on-line Forum at www.wicked-dead.com. We’re always there asking questions, clarifying rules, etc.
But remember this: a roleplaying game is a game of imagination and make-believe. It is one of the only types of games in the world where the players are encouraged to make up things as they go. This not only includes the world but the rules as well. No RPG can suit every group’s needs. I encourage you to change rules, make up your own, and modify this game to suit your group’s tastes. Believe it or not, I love hearing how people have changed my games – hearing about house rules shows that gamers are still thinking people who don’t just follow rules, but make up their own. So, if you do come up with your own set of house rules, be sure to drop by the Brewery and let me know what you came up with.
Finally, you can also download The Enemy Gods Companion at our website. It contains more infromation on the culture implied in this book, including new races and new Gods! Check it out.
And thanks for picking up Enemy Gods. I hope you enjoyed the read, but more importantly, I hope you enjoy playing it.
Take care,
John W.
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