Alright, let's do a thing. By which I mean, let me pitch an idea.

21st century. Highly modernised city-state that's definitely not the usual cardboard copy of New York or Tokyo. Some characters with boring lives board a bus together one day, each doing their own thing. And following on with the trendy Roman tradition of only deifying someone after they're no longer attached to this mortal coil: The bus crashes off-screen (or gets hit by a holy meteor, what do I know), and everyone dies. If you were looking for a nice backstory, I apologise, but not very sincerely.

After the death of the characters, for reasons convenient unknown, they all receive powers comparable to that of an unspecialised god- Details about the limitations of that later- But their psyche remains largely the same. They can now change the shape and nature of matter with their imagination, produce life, perform magic or grant it to mortals, change the landscape, and what have you. The city, and ultimately the world, becomes their plaything. However, each god-character has their own goals and ideas, and as such it also becomes subject to their differences. Some may want to be worshipped. Others will seek to serve the humanity that once fostered them. Yet more will care nothing for people, and ignore them as they create something new for themselves.

The only change common to the minds of all characters is that they now have a strong, semi-conscious attraction to the other gods, so while they may hate one another, they will still try to interact with each other on a personal and emotional level. Until the GM gets bored and decides to introduce a World Eater-type construct to scare the shit out of all of them, this rapidly developing network of relationships, and the enormous effect that they could have on the mortal population of the city, will drive the story.

This makes this one of the few roleplay concepts in which trashy, unsolicited, pretty much randomly selected romance and rivalry is not only supported but actively encouraged. You're a god! Do what you want! Half of the characters will probably be rampantly hormonal teenagers anyway, so stupid relationships are already practically a given. Be petty. Pick fights. Have a crush, or three. Disagree with everyone over the aesthetic style of their creations. No one is really around to keep an eye on you or judge you for your opinions anymore. Put life in your bong and smoke it, if you will.

And now for the only part of the idea that's really relevant: Power Mechanics. The gods are identical in both initial and potential power. For a baseline on what they'll be able to do easily and without any practice, provided they are in close proximity with a subject:



The limitation to most divine powers in such a roleplay will be based on proximity and knowledge. Your character might have enormous power, but their awareness of the world remains limited to themselves and any spies they might employ, though they are much more perceptive in their immediate vicinity than a human would be. Any organism with a soul retains free will that cannot be directly controlled. Gods cannot kill one another, because they cannot die without choosing to do so, but they can hurt, trap, and confuse, and upset one another. Remember, however, that gods are pretty much evenly matched, especially early on. This ties in to the idea of potential power and specialisation, which comes from the following source: Divine realms, or heavens.

Divine Realms are the gods way of specialising themselves and producing a domain all their own. Every god has one, and every realm starts off as an empty, lonely blank slate. Divine realms can only be reached through interdimensional travel- Any god can travel to any realm, though travelling to their own is faster, and exiting a realm is instant. Within their own realm, a god's power is considerably higher than usual. Here they can sculpt the landscape and wildlife much more easily, although souls must be imported from the mortal plane. Each god can open physical portals to their own realm, or, with time, others. The only limitations on each divine realm is space- They are sizeable, but not nearly as large as the human city, and only expand based on the number of souls that inhabit them. These realms can be fitted out to be whatever you want. A cyber palace with hundreds of robot servants? A garden of whimsical sculpture and life? A fiery hell where the souls of wrongdoers are punished? A realisation of the Internet in which memes roam free? Do what you want.

The major function of realms are that in addition to reflecting the gods that created them, the gods themselves will change based on what their realm is like. A god in possession of an afterlife littered with graveyards and decaying bones will find it much easier to kill mortals on command. An realm full of shining golden towers will make it easier for its god to reproduce the same architecture in the mortal plane. An oceanic heaven makes a god more capable of fancy water-bending and turning people into merfolk. Don't spend too many posts alone in your realm specifying the creation process- There will probably be time skips for that. Feel free to instead steal souls from each other's realms, establish alliances between them, set up cults in the mortal plane to supply your realm with souls, use your realm to breed dragons and then unleash them en masse upon the unwitting population of Earth.

Ultimately, what I want to do with you is create drama.

Any questions?

Shut up and take my money!

And my application!

Oh maaaaan I have the best idea. Fucking sign me up.

I'm interested.

Interesting...

I like it. I want in.

There are those that want to watch the world burn, and those that wish to burn it to the ground.

This will be very interesting once it takes off. I'll be watching... or playing. We'll have to see.

Sounds fun! I'll have to think of ideas...

This will be fun. Very fun.

(｡･ω･｡) Could my divine character be a bit insane? A small bit. Like maybe taking over a small area and creating a government based upon praising him and only him. *smiles hiding any signs of insanity*

That doesn't seem that insane, really. Sounds like exactly the sort of fun stuff the game would have.

My working plan is just to go with what I know: play a deified degenerate /k/ommando who takes cues from Old von Moltke and a fair amount of mah boy Churchill.

I'll keep them north of the Zambezi, till that river's running dry. And this mighty land will prosper for Rhodesians never die.

My current seed of an idea is somewhere between unbridled hedonism and a patron of the arts - Let there be entertainment!

(｡･ω･｡) Could my divine character be a bit insane? A small bit. Like maybe taking over a small area and creating a government based upon praising him and only him. *smiles hiding any signs of insanity*

I'm expecting fully sane characters to do worse out of sheer petulance, once the fact that no one (except the other gods) can hold them accountable starts to sink in. So go ahead~

Two general backstory notes for everyone, though.

-Most of the roleplay will, ideally, be occurring within one massive city and its outskirts, which generally grow slowly less and less expensive as you move away from the center until you end up amongst the slums. There are millions of people living here, so you can certainly start a cult, gang, organised crime ring, or some kind of mix between them, but your power is too localised (and your attraction to the other gods within the city too strong) to try and comandeer or take over from much of the national government unless you can out-compete the other deities (and human opposition) on a really grand scale. Feel free to try if you're still confident.

-The characters are ordinary 21st century people. If some of them have deep seated emotional problems, a narcissistic personality, or struggle with a mental illness, then good- It adds realistic diversity, and I look forward to seeing how that influences their behaviour as a god. But classically crazy villains with no easily discerned emotional motive and a stylised or unspecified mental illness ('insane', 'crazy', 'lunatic') probably don't exist.

My current seed of an idea is somewhere between unbridled hedonism and a patron of the arts - Let there be entertainment!

Go for it!

a deified degenerate /k/ommando

you have my every blessing

I've thought of a couple of questions.

Following the pre-game godhood, are we aware of all our powers and how to use them, or is there a period of development and experimentation?

And secondly, are there other gods in other cities? Does the supernatural already exist in the world?

/me tentatively drops in some interest but has a lot to do irl over the coming month and so might not have time ;.; Will lurk at least

Following the pre-game godhood, are we aware of all our powers and how to use them, or is there a period of development and experimentation?

WHOOOOOPSIDAISIES I probably glossed over that bit too quickly. The roleplay's setting will commence shortly after the explosive accident that killed the characters. They'll wake up, so to speak, scattered but unharmed in various locations somewhat close to the wreckage, not really knowing what happened but very aware that a major change has occurred. They'll still think like they always did, but they'll feel their bodies differently, and perceive their surroundings much more deeply and abstractly, like they just realised that the world's been a projection or puppet their whole lives and now they finally have the strings. Actually using their power depends on how they choose to visualise their connection to the world around them (remember all the stories from mythology about gods creating life by moulding clay?), but is no more difficult than moving one's muscles.

Are there other gods in other cities?

Nope. You could probably put yourself on the world media stage if you tried.

Does the supernatural already exist in the world?

Nope, not until you create it.

Interested. This should be a blast.

As a god, will it be possible to die, or are the characters immortal after the event?

I'm thinking about a young character who knows the consequences of that sort of power-hungry, corrupting iniquity and dedicates himself to preserving whatever traits within him are good, to edify himself and do with his powers the great things he always wished to do.

Just a thought - you mentioned smiting as one of the powers, with larger explosions taking longer. But what about magicking up an explosive and setting it off? If you could make a skyscraper in a couple of hours what about a barrel of TNT or a small nuke?

As a god, will it be possible to die, or are the characters immortal after the event?

Your character is immortal until the following conditions are met:

1- They choose to die
2- They have something on hand that is capable of destroying their current body
3- Their chosen method of self-destruction is sudden or painless enough to overcome any instinctive responses that may cause them to involuntarily protect themselves, or they are determined enough to feel no such instinct.

However, they can go dormant. They can simply sit between planes and sleep their time away with no ill effect, or their body can be involuntarily destroyed. This is not easy, especially as they will rapidly create for themselves a new one, but puts them under considerable strain to recover. If the god you're trying to destroy is not outnumbered by other gods at least three to one, good luck trying.

Gods can feel pain.

I'm thinking about a young character who knows the consequences of that sort of power-hungry, corrupting iniquity and dedicates himself to preserving whatever traits within him are good, to edify himself and do with his powers the great things he always wished to do.

Just a thought - you mentioned smiting as one of the powers, with larger explosions taking longer. But what about magicking up an explosive and setting it off? If you could make a skyscraper in a couple of hours what about a barrel of TNT or a small nuke?

I noticed this while I was writing things up, and there's really no logical reason why it shouldn't work. The problem is strictly from a gameplay perspective. Being able to destroy things more easily than they're made, as is the natural trend, sort of collapses the sport of creating and counter-creating armies and robots and monsters and what have you in order to thwart another god's plans. The same problem affects disease- If there wasn't some kind of rule in place, someone could pretty easily create a deadly and fast-acting virus, then create a hardy mobile carrier for it, then watch the city's population collapse. Yeah, other gods could collaborate to eradicate or immunise people from the epidemic, but that would centre attention pretty closely to that singular issue. Obviously gods need to have some capacity to destroy things at will, but the moral of the story is that having realistic rules about destruction just tips things too heavily in favour of destroying things instead of making new things and then defending them from other new things.