@Cyclone

I disagree that gods need to be broadly weaker. One of the things I like about Divinus is the sheer power you wield. The reason we want Gods to be weaker, if I'm not mistaken, is to avoid abuses where we nuke planets and the like. If we lessened their creative powers to do this, I feel like it would be detracting from Divinus. However, limiting their destructive power without altering their creative power allows players to retain the feeling of god-like power without risking wanton destruction.

(P.S. In Kho's words: "Gods need to be powerful, semi-transcendent beings with tremendous power." I feel this is a core part of Divinus.)

The initial planet, I think, should have basic continents and oceans and a good atmosphere and stuff like that, but no life (or only mundane life. Nothing sentient or magical or monstrous)

What is gained by discarding Fate and Amul? Lore-wise, they provide coherency within the Divinus multiverse. They can also be used to give direction to the gods, even as simple as a quick speech at the opening. And it gives the gods something greater than themselves to potentially interact with, and call upon for help if need be. Mechanically, they give the GMs a ready-to-use tool for intervening with IC affairs if necessary without having to contrive something ex nihilio or bend their own characters to do it.

If you have a God of Water, can you also have a God of Rain? Rain would normally be a subset of Water, but here we have an interesting clash of specialisations; the Water God is equally good at all water things, but the Rain God is very good at rain but no good at any other water things...Portfolios are acquired on a first-come first-served basis during the course of the game, so dropping all restrictions (including Domains) turns the game into a free-for-all Portfolio land grab.

I'll explain what role Domains do have: they provide a description of what your god is broadly good at, without laying exclusive claim to it. It maintains the division between being broadly good at something (Domain) and being highly specialised in something (Portfolio). Discarding Domains removes this division. You could get away with it. Doing so would allow for gods with more diverse skill sets. But you'd very much change the dynamic of how Divinus Gods work.

For instance, having the Crafting Domain means I am broadly good at crafting, and I then claim Portfolios which indicate areas in which I am extremely skilled. Without Domains, I would have had to choose the Crafting Portfolio, then picked what are essentially sub-Portfolios, or else I would have lacked the breadth of skill I had otherwise.

As a compromise: new Domains should be easier to acquire. Kho's current version of Divinus Lite says you can get your second Domain at Level 10, third at Level 15, and so on. I propose that instead you should be able to get your second Domain at Level 5, third at Level 10, and so on. The wait to acquire new Domains even here is too long.

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Just because something forces bending, breaking and working around it does not mean it is bad, especially in something where there is more fun in the journey than in the destination. The use of Domain + Portfolio is one of the key factors that differentiates Divinus from other Divine RPs, I also particularly think its one of the things that helped us to have such a unique pantheon vs the overall genericness you can see in similar systems.

It allows enough mutability so the characters are not stuck with their initial concepts, but it places enough limits to encourage creative thinking and close the easy path to commonplace concepts that other RPs are filled with.

Also, I'd like to posit that Holy Sites give some kind of sanctuary to mortals. That makes them important in both the maintaining and the capturing.

ed: Sanctuary specifically from gods. Again, creative destructive gods would be better off creating a mortal army or something similar (giant beast, hero, plague) to capture a mortal stronghold than just deitying their way in.

Though there should still be room for god duels.

A more sandboxy and free feel as well as freedom from a vague backstory that I'm not all that fond of. GM intervention would be a last resort in my idealized vision; for the most part, if one god is being overly destructive and a dick, I think that it should fall to the other players to stop him. If nobody does, then he rampages and run loose. Only if the story is utterly stagnating or something extreme happens (ie alliance of chaos gods threatening to scour all of creation) should some ex nihilo event need to happen with GM intervention. Because we'd plan on trying to avoid the need for such things, I dislike having the Primordial Beings primed and loomed over us like a bucket of water rigged to the top of a door.

Firstly I dispute your notion that forcing more specialization in the form of taking just portfolios instead of hugely broad domains like 'change' or 'chaos' would somehow make the characters more generic. I think you've got it backwards.

Secondly, this goes back to me not seeing the need to make this Divinus-lite stay very faithful to this Divinus. It's in a very different section, appealing to a different crowd. Let it be different and stand on its own as a sister RP and not some simplified replica.

We already have this RP operating under such mechanics, anyways. I like the idea of making some radical changes and seeing how they turn out. If it does turn out to be less to your liking and somehow more 'generic' (even though I think god RPs are hardly common) then you'd still have this Divinus to turn back to.

RIGHT. I've updated the WIP OP with everything (I think). The only matters left to agree on are those of the Primordials and Domain(Portfolio)s.

Then we can get this show on the road!

Demigods whose level is 15-20 can ascend to Level 1 gods, those whose level is 25-30 can ascend to Level 3 gods and those whose level is higher will ascend to a higher level, decided by the GM.

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I have said this before, but I think I really need to give it its own post. Demigod rules seem disconnected from how the game is actually played, its an absurdly big gap, hell, even if they started as a level 1 god at the current turn it would be a big gap (but a manageable one)

This already doesn't exactly work on the srs bsns Divinus, but it will really show on Free, where people come and go at a quicker pace.

In line with BBeast's suggestion that 'the threshold for ascending to godhood can be reduced to, say, Level 6 or 7', I've edited it in the proposed OP to level 6.

In line with BBeast's suggestion that 'the threshold for ascending to godhood can be reduced to, say, Level 6 or 7', I've edited it in the proposed OP to level 6.

• I quite like the idea of all unspent Might being lost at each Turn change. This encourages people to spend, which is what we want in Divinus Lite.
• However, if we have such a mechanic, then requiring that people spend all their Might the previous Turn to be allowed to Level up might be redundant and onerous. Also, Might spent on Levelling Up would count for Might spent, so it doesn't fix too much except for finding a way to get rid of the loose change. (But if you want to keep it, that's fine too. It does ensure that only active players get to level up.)

If we allow drop-in-drop-out play, then we would need to encode some mechanism to remove inactive gods from the pool and free up their Portfolios for other players. Perhaps not doing anything IC for, say, 2 consecutive Turns without leave of absence results in that god's power fading away, such that their Portfolios can be taken, and they lose influence over worshippers.

<Snipped quote by BBeast>

Haven't read the draft OP yet, but I'd like to raise that some gods will play cautiously with their Might simply because they don't know when they next need it, even if they're active, in which case we shouldn't punish them for actively choosing to stay quiet. Also, losing excess Might at the end of the turn is also incentive to try and level up with your spare Might if you have it, and it's enough.

I think the Might cap / Might expiry should be merged into a simple cap = 2 x Might per turn rule. That way you can still save a little, if you feel like playing that way.

I also would still like to keep the level-up-available-if-Might-is-spent rule, amended somehow, maybe so that Might spent on levelling doesn't count.

@BBeast@Kho y'all keep saying Free Section like it's a zoo, guys.

WELCOME TO THE FREEEEEE SECTION!!