So...Godlike?

[Talisman]

I got a copy of the Godlike game, and it looks great at first - a gritty, WW2 combat game with superpowers. The setting is awesome and well-thought out, and the super powers are cool while still leaving normals a threat - unless you've taken Skin Made Of Steel, a machine gun will frikking kill you.

The system is strange - one roll determines initiative, speed of success, and degree of success (and wounds, in the case of an attack) - but it appears to work. So we played an hour or so of "Hey, there's some Nazis - let's shoot 'em!"

Then the problems were noticed.

Godlike is a gritty, WW2 combat RPG with no wound penalties. You can get shot to shit with - as far as I could tell - no impact on your ability to juggle flaming batons while samba-ing across a frozen lake.

Due to the way the hit-location table works, your limbs sort of act as armor for your torso. Expect to get lame and crippled well before you die, unless someone gets some head shots. Not a major problem, but...odd.

Healing is cruelly slow, with a very real possibility of permanent injuries. This may make it "realistic," but it's a crappy-ass idea for an RPG with (presumably) reoccurring PCs going on multiple missions.

We were so unhappy with the above that we never actually got to try out the super powers, but from the numbers, it looks like Armored Man wins. Put all your points in armor and walk brazenly into machine gun nests, laugh at tanks, and sneer arrogantly at the poor blaster-super who's about to get sniped to death with your mundane (but deadly) rifle.

Anyway...anyone else have any experience with Godlike? I so wanted to like it, but it just seems like 2/3 of a great game.

[MaskedBrute]

It's been forever since I messed around with Godlike, but I do know two things:

1) The basic system has been refined a bit over time. My favorite implementation is in the game REIGN, a fantasy application with rules for running organizations and an interesting approach to magic-as-character-defining. In any case it does take a little getting used to. I believe that in REIGN the torso is the most likely part of the body to take a hit.

2) The most successful game of Godlike I've ever seen involved each player in control of a main character, but with two backup characters in the same unit, as a character can be taken out of play rather suddenly even if you are careful.

3) The example power sets really did change how I look at "super-powers" in terms of creativity, back when I first read the book. The French officer-hunter who could turn invisible when he closed his eyes; when asked how this could possibly have allowed him to kill the number of officers and talents he did he said, "My talent may be invisibility, but my real gift has always been with the knife." The guy who discovered quite by accident that all gunpowder turns to sand in a rather large radius around him. The kid with the "magic spear." The fellow who teleports in his sleep and figured out how to use that ability to wage a one-man campaign on Nazi morale/security. The guy who used the ability to connect one door to any other to single-handedly move an invasion force into a city, sacrificing himself in the process.

[Wordman]

[Talisman]

Thanks, Wordman. I'll check it out.

[Shoggoth]

I've run Godlike for several groups.  I really love the flavor of the game, but I refuse to run it anymore, for a number of reasons -

1)  The ORE system is clumsy and lame.  Because there are 3 resolution mechanics (initiative, damage, hit location) that rely on just 2 axes of the roll, you end up with the problem that the person with the most damage will always go first, with tie breakers going to headshots.  Which means that the best combat character will always go first.  Maybe that's OK with some people, but it bothers me, it's just not granular enough.

2)  For a game that is built around the idea of combat, the powers system is completely unbalanced.  Super perception + sniper rifle or "the tank" will survive indefinitely, whereas anything more creative is bound to be screwed over.  I'm not usually a stickler for this, but when the entire game is designed as a series of combats, there needs to be better balance.  I'm not sure how you'd do it while keeping the wonderful open feel of power design, but it's a problem.

3)  Because every person in the conflict has to roll at the beginning of any round, and initiative is based on the quality of your roll, every combat round with more than a small handful of NPCs becomes a real trial.  You have to roll a handful of dice, separate out the matches, put them aside with some tag for who it was for, roll another handful of dice, put them aside, etc. etc. until all NPCs are done, then sort them for initiative.  THEN you can begin the combat resolution.  Woe betide you if you don't have a case of d10s.


I feel like Godlike was moving towards a very cool thing, the mechanics are original and attempt to resolve some real issues in the gaming world at the time.  Unfortunately, they weren't able to resolve the new issues that came up with the new rule set.

[Cam_Banks]

The One Roll Engine has moved on to some very interesting places: REIGN, A Dirty World, NEMESIS, and Monsters and Other Childish Things. Wild Talents isn't bad but suffers from some of the shortfalls of GODLIKE. But the others, especially ADW and Monsters, are amazing.

Cheers,
Cam