[UA] [OT] Godlike

[Alex Lampros]

You make it sound a little like Unknown Armies.  (which is a good thing)

What was your impression of the world, though?  That's what I'm more 
interested in.

Alex

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004 14:07:57 +1100, Liam Routt <liam at routt.net> wrote:

> 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



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