[UA] [OT] Godlike

[Liam Routt]

I got Godlike on the strength of Greg's involvement, although I was soon 
won over by the concept as well. Unfortunately the friend of mine who 
was most likely to run a game of it chickened out, so I haven't actually 
played it.

My impression of the system (which Greg worked on, if I'm not mistaken) 
was extremely positive. Erik Lee mentioned it seemed a bit White Wolf-y, 
and while that is somewhat true, it fixes so much about that company's 
systems, at least for me.

For starters, there are two aspects of success (number of matching dice, 
and value of matching dice), which gives you a lot more to work with. 
Indeed, that alone is the basis of almost all the cool stuff that the 
system does. Because there are two axes of success Greg can pretty much 
do combat in a single roll per combatant, and he has a lot to work with 
for the super powers. There are dice that are fixed at a certain value, 
and dice that may be set to a value, for example, giving quite simple 
mechanics to create powerful skill interactions.

What freaked my friend (the potential GM) out was the odd placement of 
the genre and mechanics of the game. Most guns, for example, have 
roughly the same stats. And yet this is supposed to be a "realistic" 
world war two game (or at least ww2 with super powers). It can be hard 
for some people to reconcile the efficient beauty of the system with 
what it is trying to do.

The system also relies heavily on the GM to walk that line for the 
group, and define it. My friend ran a game for some other people and 
found the super powers (even simple ones) walked all over the normal 
people. My feeling, listening to his description, was that *he* was the 
one failing to deal with the super powers, and effectively letting the 
players fast talk him and bamboozle him. You have to be ready to deal 
with powers and face them with cold hard steel in an unforgiving manner, 
or else you will end up with a four-color superhero world (which could 
be what you want). My friend was willing to push blame for his failures 
on to the system, which I think was really unfair.

In summary, I was very impressed by Godlike. It is the only WW2 game I 
can envisage playing. I think the system was elegant and avoided a lot 
of complexity that gets drawn in when "reality" and "guns" are in the 
same room. For all that reason, though, I think it has the potential to 
confuse some potential players.

Take care,

Liam
-- 
Liam Routt                                               liam at routt.net
Darcsyde Productions                           http://www.darcsyde.org/

         -- still waiting for the Absolute Destiny Apocalypse --