Having trouble coming up with a setting for your RtD? Agonize no more, because it's time for:
Roll to Creation Myth!
The players in this RtD are GODS, and get to choose one or several aspects that they strive to further. They can work together or fight amongst themselves, but the point is that they're creating a planet and imbuing it with life. It would have a set amount of turns, like say... 20, and the results of the players' actions slowly create a setting. Once the turns are over, you start the actual RtD in the setting that was created. So it's less of a full RtD, and more of a prologue that creates the setting that the real RtD takes place in.
You could even treat it as a competition, giving players points for furthering their aspect, and giving the top five Gods the player spots. Everyone else goes on the waitlist.
I toyed with this sort of idea for a bit, but ultimately decided that getting a world well-suited to what I had planned for it was unlikely. Also/perhaps related, furthering an "aspect" as their "job" doesn't sound very good to me, since it's less a god game and more a Make Everything As Turnips As You Can game.
One other problem- the sudden scale shift of anything major happening could result in either the world feeling very strange or the game being very stringent about what can and can't happen. As an example, consider if someone founded a city early in the god game, which then survived all the way to the game start. Now, in a normal RTD the players
probably aren't going to be annihilating very many cities, but it's still a situation where you can't really do much to the city without mucking about with something that's existed in more or less its current state since the dawn of time.
You could throw it in someone's lap after you were done with the "prologue". Not my lap, because it is already full enough.
Creating a world is usually going to be more fun and interesting than doing anything with it. I could see some sort of Roll To Create The World cycling into Roll To Destroy The World and back, though.
Hm, hows about letting this world be given a chance for future, multiple RTDs? For reasons such as: "Alternate Universes."
Edit: Might give it a try in running it, actually, seeing as Inspiration struck me. Would anyone mind a beginner RTD'er to make it?
I doubt there'd be much demand for a given world, seeing as you can always make one up or do the process yourself, but I don't see any harm in it.
As for running it yourself, no objections. I'd probably join if I caught it in time.
And yes, happy birthday thread!