I'll answer your question with a question of my own:
Have I ever been not open to advice or discussions?
I don't know! Hence the asking. =P
In the card game version you drew a certain number of cards/turn from the deck. The cards were basically divided up into three types; Role Cards, Specials Cards and Interventions. This more or less replaced the Act system (which is better for a forum game but was less suited to the card format).
You started out confined to creating one world, but the playing field was just blank void. Creating anything required you to stack Specials Cards onto Role Cards. There were five Role Cards: Terrains, Features, Fauna, Races and Heroes.
Terrains and
Features were geographical locations that could also be the source of one of the six elements in the game (Fir, Air, Earth, Water, Light and Void) as well as of various materials. Terrains all started linked together, but Features you could define if they were linked. A Feature might be 'The Crystal Caverns', an Earth-based feature linked to a Terrain or other feature, or you could have the Sun be an unlinked Light-based feature.
You needed 3 Terrains/Features in the game before you could place any Fauna.
Fauna represented any major living population that wasn't a 'Race' in the Swords and Sorcery sense. Trees, mammals, birds, whatever. You could add Specials cards that would give them whatever bonus attributes, including a Flora card that made their food source an Element. If you wanted to place any Fauna, unless you gave a Feature the 'Sustenance' special card, they needed to have something to eat - Flora. Similarly, you could place an Elemental special in the stack that would turn them into Elementals (feeding off an Element like Flora, but not edible and not Living).
If you ever wiped out all the sources of the element being consumed by Flora/Elements (e.g. blowing up the Sun) those stacks would be removed from play as the species went extinct. If all food sources died out as a result, any dependent Fauna would go with them.
You needed 3 Fauna (of Elemental or Living persuasion) in the game before you could place Races.
Races were defined as Sapient or Servile by a specials card. Sapient races could worship and advance culturally, had free will and were not directly controlled by a god. Servile races could not worship, had no culture (and limited technological ability, but they could steal tech) and were under the direct control of a god (no/restricted free will).
Once you had any Race in game, you could make Heroes, who I'll admit haven't been fleshed out yet.
During the early part of the game, everyone gets 1 card/turn from the mysterious Source of Creation. After 12 stacks have been placed (or a number of rounds had expired) the Source dries up and if you haven't got another source of power you start dying. Gods had to choose whether to play Cthonic or Olympian deities - Cthonic gods could gain cards/turn from controlling Nodes of mystical power (Terrains/Features with the Node card, any Elemental fauna, any Servile or Elemental race). Olympian gods gained cards/turn from being worshipped by sapient races and building temples (or having the races build the temples for them, usually). Olympians got no power from controlling a node, Cthonics got no power from being worshipped. Nodes gave you more power (2 cards/turn) than just being worshipped (excluding temples) but only one god could control each node. Worship only gave you 1 card/turn, but multiple gods could be worshipped by a race (up to their Prosperity level) and you could build temples on top of that.
Because it was a card game, I set up win conditions; last man standing, raise a race to godhood through technological or divine means (apotheosis) or fulfil a special Destiny card you got at the start of play (e.g. The destiny of 'The Horror' was to wipe out all living and sapient life, but only after a sapient race had reached a certain level of prosperity).
If I were to try and adapt this back to the normal game, I would go a similar route with Acts/turn, particularly with defining Acts. That is to say, I would start out in the earlier part of the game with some sort of Source of Creation/Overgod giving all the gods one Act/turn to get them started. This continues for however-many turns or until a checkpoint is reached, after which point the Source dries up/Overgod becomes less giving. You need to control Nodes or be worshipped/have temples after that point.
God death: If a god reaches a point where he's not gaining any Acts in a turn, he has to spend at least one Act that turn or die.
It's up to you whether you think the Cthonic/Olympian split would be a terrible idea. I chose it because it necessarily forced players to take differing strategies and created two types of gods who had very differing goals; Cthonics could do fine by themselves, Olympians had benefits from working together up to a point. Either way, the idea of mystic Nodes and worship as a source of power appeals to me.
One particular thing I found useful with the stack system was that you needed a new card for each feature you gave whatever you were making, but that the feature was fairly well defined in terms of mechanics. I like the idea that it might take you only 1 Act to create something fairly generic, and then more Acts for each additional feature you give - and having the numbers defined.
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Topic: Godhood III OOC Thread (Read 112107 times)