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[Zantan]

I'm planning on GMing a god game (I'm not naming it in case prospective players start googling the game name) in which the players become gods of a replacement world which may or may not be the last piece of creation.  The 'real' gods are off in a final battle with forces outside of creation and created these new gods to watch over a new world in a safe place, in case the first world is destroyed in the battle.  Each player is asked to apply some kind of cosmic creative act to the world to stabilize it, then claim a domain, and watch over the world until victorious gods return from the Battle.  I'm intentionally not defining my expectations for the creative act because I need to be prepared for a wide range of player actions.

The players will exist alongside ten or so other gods in the same boat, and I am currently trying to flesh these gods out.  I would like suggestions for creative acts in particular and reactions to the situation - how would you remake the world if you were a god?  How should your power be used?  How would you react to this mission, and other gods' conflicting interpretations of it?

Any suggestions / reactions are welcome.  I intend to use suggestions for 3/4 of the NPC creative acts and 1/4 of their reactions to the scenario.

[wierd]

if I were placed in that very undesirable situation, one of the first things I would do would be to find a mindless method of employing the necessary parts of my power, while suppressing the spurious parts of it.

EG, if I were suddenly the god of death and of the dead, I would understand that people and things NEED to die, but they dont need to die RIGHT NOW. I would try to find some way limit accidental "Oop! You're dead, sorry about that mortal, you made me irritated and it slipped, sorry!" from happening, while still making sure "Yes. He jumped off the 20th story of the building onto a wrought iron fence. He died." still does.

Similarly if I became a fertility god, or a god of wealth, or luck.

Having been shoehorned into the position, and having lived a previous life where I dont need to be on guard 24/7 about my powers manifesting in a universe damaging fashion, I would not be prepared for that reality, and would need a way to limit my own conscious use of those powers, to keep them under control, and the world from being turned upside down just because I stubbed my toe and had a tantrum over it. (Or got called by a telemarketer offering timeshares.)

Not everyone would try to do that kind of thing though. Some may well revel in the chaos of such events happening.

As a GM trying to host a game, you need to contemplate what the results of somebody cocooning themselves, as I would do-- (Possibly even go to sleep to control those powers)-- and also of somebody letting loose and causing all kinds of bloody hell to happen. What consequences are there for a god? Do mortals even really NEED real gods?

Think those kinds of questions, and follow the answers you get.

[Zantan]

Very good point, and I do need to do more to make sure that players have a good reason to engage with their domains and the world.  I imagined some NPCs rejecting their role, or the morality of having such power, but didn't make any that tried to completely abandon their power.

What about your creative act?  The world is reforming, and you have unlimited power for one creative act - something that the world may or may not have created either way, which the world forms around rather than creates.  I played an incomplete game that used a similar scenario for several sessions a while back, and the creative act helped shape the themes of the world and gave each player something in this new world that they were connected to somehow.

[Flying Dice]

Players being players, and gods being gods, I think you'll see a lot more of the "let's fuck around with the mortals" category than the responsible ones.

That aside, you're looking at fairly standard systemic domains: death (creation of the entropic system), fertility/festivity (first life/permission of reproduction depending on the mythology), the sea/water (creation of water, flow of rivers and tides), the sky/weather (creation of the sky, management of weather), the sun, the moon(s) if any (the last two in a sort of competitive-cooperative cycle, focus on light/darkness dichotomy), knowledge/wisdom (seed of intelligence in the sentient species), artistry (seed of creativity to accompany intelligence), war (spurred first violent act), the underworld if you separate that from death (created to manage the dead), time (closely related to death, shared in the creation of the timestream). Just general suggestions, though, but that covers a good chunk of it.


I see three basic responses: players who take wierd's route and seclude themselves, players who form shaky coalitions around a collective vision of how to manage the world properly, and players who have fun messing with things. Certain domains are more dangerous than others (for example, a trollish god(dess) of time or death).

You've also got to be prepared for people who express things like "Lol I make booze" and extrapolate from that to a workable domain. The main trouble IMO would be steering people away from this sort of thing, and away from small-scale thinking (like "I make a really awesome volcano island!")

[wierd]

Seclusion is a very extreme end of the spectrum. Could just be willful and purposeful self-imposed limits, controlled by another mitigating factor that does not have a mind, and thus cannot have emotional outbursts.

Or, even a mix with the second option, where a coalition is formed-- such that no one god can make spurious use of their powers, without concensus, because they all have bound their powers together to create the new cosmos. (Cant kill someone without time, because time is needed for an action. Time cant make someone die of old age, without death's approval. Etc.)

How amusing would it be, if the force most maligned as the source of entropy (Death), is the one suggesting moderation when creating a universe? LOL

[Zantan]

I'm fine with relatively small scale creative acts.  As I said, the world will form around them, so they will end up being important no matter the scale.  In my first attempt at this a while ago one player who made a library called the Library of Alexandria that contained all the knowledge of the previous world.  The largest city in the world formed around it.  There was also a cult of librarians who studied in the library until they found wisdom worth sharing, and left to proselytize the unread masses with the book's ISBN branded to their arm.  The librarians were always getting into trouble and the player who made the library was constantly being blamed for their actions by the other players.

The results of a cosmic creation of booze could be taken in a lot of directions - maybe revelry and loosened inhibitions play an important role in society (eliminating legislative gridlock, for instance), maybe a limited supply / source of special booze is made and sought our by mortals for its miraculous properties.  Maybe the dead must drink from the Lethe river to forget their previous life and move on because the booze in the river is that strong.

Awesome volcano island?  You mean the portal to the unending rage of the earth?  The fearless can enter its depths and return unscathed with unbreakable weapons that allow them to enforce their will on the world.  Or when the earth finally tires of the tenants on its surface, it will be through this volcano that the world will end.

[weenog]

I played one character long ago who started off as a pacifistic warrior sage (he honed his martial arts only so that he could disarm and disable unavoidable enemies with the absolute minimum required force), and eventually became a nigh-omniscient psychic and reality warper.  He used his powers to bring peace to troubled lands, through a combination of diplomacy, subtle mental manipulation, and providing new inventions to solve old problems.

His first love was accumulating knowledge, and dispensing and applying it to best possible effect (in a utilitarian sense, he didn't care about traditional moral stances).  He loathed killing, and disliked unnecessary injury; as he grew more powerful he fought less and less, until eventually he no longer needed to fight at all, and then refused to do so.

As a true god, this fellow's domain would be innovation and peaceful progress.  His major act of creation would be a subtle one, instilling all sentient creatures with calm, curiosity, and gentle scepticism.  Even the most hot-headed, righteously indignant zealot would have a small, quiet internal voice urging them to reconsider, learn more, and possibly change their mind.  Day-to-day godly action would likewise be quiet and un-showy, inspiring new ideas with whispers in dreams, providing solutions to tricky problems in "found" books of uncertain provenance, and that kind of thing.  In his ideal vision for the world, nobody harms or destroys anyone else, and people (all thinking creatures, actually) continue to steadily improve themselves, their living conditions, and their environments.

He would consider this mission a sad responsibility.  It clearly needs to be taken care of, but it's disheartening that chaos and violence are such prevalent and destructive forces even at and above the level of gods.  He could only hope that his influence would help the mortals to grow to such capable and enlightened stature that they no longer need to rely on the gods, nor fear the aliens.  He would avoid rhetoric, and try to convince the other new gods to see things his way with reason and diplomacy.

---

I don't know if any of that will be useful to you, but I hope it is.

[Zantan]

It most certainly is, and I would like to encourage anyone to respond with what their favorite character would do as you did, if that's how you most easily frame your response.

I might use your idea for an NPC act - the truth that 'there is wisdom in the air' becomes cosmically compelling.  No creature on earth can truly be outside the influence of wisdom.  Language of stagnant or contaminated air is used to describe rage and impulsivity, and when the most unwise decision in the history of the universe is made, it will be made in the void of space.

[Armok]

1) Eliminate the possibility of death or extreme suffering for anyone.

2) Optemize the world acording to http://lesswrong.com/lw/xy/the_fun_theory_sequence/

[wierd]

Elimination of death will cause suffering, if time is present.

Observe:

There is a finite supply of matter and energy in the universe. Immortal beings living in it will eventually consume all the energy. This will cause shortages, and eventually, the beings will simply run out. Without death, they will be trapped in a helpless state where they lack to energy to do anything, but exist helplessly and hopelessly.

Likewise, the actions of one immortal being will eventually and inescapably inconvenience another immortal being, which in turn, induces suffering.

The only way to prevent suffering while eliminating death, is to eliminate time, and prevent any action from happening. The beings stop being able to experience anything, including suffering. They also do nothing, and can no longer be described as being alive.

Death is a fundamentally necessary feature, in a universe that features limited resources, and any kind of social interactions over time.

Death also has the useful side effect of eliminating old, boring things-- and releasing useful energy and resources for newer, more interesting things to consume and use.

Death is not necessarily a malevolent or malign force.  It is simply a necessary force. It can be a beneficial, and benevolent force; an END to suffering.

[Zantan]

Time and death and everything normal will exist whether or not they are created, the difference is in whether the culture/nature/mythical nature of the world will revolve around what is created.

I have NPCs with a wide variety of opinions on what to do with humanity - some want to make it incrementally better, and some want to preserve humanity, flaws and all, because improving humanity in a fundamental way might end up changing the nature of humanity, and they aren't too comfortable about that.  I hadn't made someone who wants to 'fix' humanity, or its environment at least, so give more specifics on what your one creative act would be - if you wanted to incorporate one thing into the word in order to eliminate suffering, what would it be?  Eternal life to eliminate death?  Super butlers to care for every need?  Mystical life coaches?  A magic source of happiness?  Contentment?  What is the one thing we need to fix the world?

[wierd]

I would advocate against fixing something that isn't broken.

"Adversity is the spice of life."  A universe where conflict simply never happens, where all needs are immediately and infalliably met, and where there are no faults of any kind; that is a universe filled with robots. A symphony of perfect order where nothing untoward ever happens, and where every action is perfectly predictable, and nobody ever suffers, ever. Free will would not exist in such a universe.

The universe is an avant garde work of art, reveling in the ambiguous nature that is existence. As pr above, the effort to drive toward a state without suffering, ultimately leads to a very undesirable dystopia. Only by mixing beneficial with equal parts of detrimental forces, in all levels and aspects of the universe, does a true dynamic system with truly novel emergent properties appear.

If no other gods were willing to introduce chaos, I would, just for that purpose. Not malevolent at all, but because the unwaverng devotion to order denies individual will.

As for what I personally would want to add/change... I would design a mechanism to prevent entropy from destroying the universe, and thus make the second law of thermodynamics just a by-rule, and not a real law. I would do that by making entropic energy decay into naked spacetime, and for that naked spacetime to spontaneously break into high energy states, in a mechanism that is exploitable.  This would simultaneously create the force of magic at the same time. It would prevent the universe from ever winding down.

[Zantan]

Two inspiring thoughts, thank you! 

Adversity being the spice of life has great applicability and imagery, but I'd ask a PC to give more specific in how that was achieved.  Maybe a NPC would take some of their own adversities and sprinkle them on the world, or she presses her hand against the world so that it would break, forcing it to learn how to come to its own defense.  Or maybe there are literal spices that he plants, and eating them raw declares to the world 'I accept your challenge.'

Turning the second law of thermodynamics into a cycle of entropy is a great idea.  The first image that came to my mind was entropic decay adding tension to a spring, and the second was the instability of nothingness due to quantum handwaving.  But what is raw spacetime?  It is what fills the void of space in this world.  That's why space is so vast, and why it takes so long to get anywhere out there.  Raw spacetime is attracted to itself and repulsed by creation, so when entropy creates raw spacetime, it quickly rises into space, adding to a tension which demands creation when released.  Combine this with the creation I mentioned before that 'there is wisdom in the air,' and therefore unwise things tend to happen in space, you get the sense that the things space creates are not always good for the world...

[sackhead]

as a god i would probably go down a bit of a trickster route weather of a more Loki route of taking the ability to lie from men.
i would probably go down a Prometheus route and make it impossible  for gods to interfere in anyway directly with the minds and hearts of mortals i.e you wouldn't be able to change how they think or feal and the only way to communicate with them would be via messengers or direcktly talk rather than just popping information in their heads. they would still be able  to preform divine acts on them. i'd just make the mind and soul untouchable even to myself

[Zantan]

Good point.  A protection of the free will of humanity is important, but prohibiting all miracles affecting the mind / will of people would not fit very well with the system.  A creation that would be in the spirit of what you said would mandate that "Free will is sacred," so a miracle could never change the nature of humanity for more than a small group of people, and any miracle that does change human nature or override free will has to be respectful to the individuals in some way.  Cosmic forces work against miracles breaking these rules.  This could be brought about with a mystical stag defending the metaphysical manifestation of free will, or adding genetic trait to people which created a mental immune system, or a mark on all people which protected them, and became faded when free will was compromised.