Geesh! Part III already and we are only finishing the Divine Domains? How long can I fool you all into following this? Let’s find out!
Anyway, I continue sharing previews of the draft text of a future game of mine called Petty Gods & Playthings. It’s a game about small gods with great ambitions, and the mortals entangled in their machinations. It’s inspired by Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar, Terry Pretchet’s Discworld series (especially the Small Gods stories), Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Adult Swim, and a lot more stuff (now I guess I realized I need to make a post about my inspirations and aspirations for the game).
In terms of game design, it’s a RPG I am trying to experiment with a lot of interesting things that will play with the act of playing itself, with collaborative world building, with players as game designers, and a bunch of other cool things I’ve been learning about. But we will get to that. Today I share the rest of the Divine Domain tables as I finished writing the funny bits about them. Again, the idea is coming up with Divine Domains that are uncommon, and quirky. Which would be challenging to use easily to obtain advantage in a normal game but that can be explored creatively by players. And even though players are not necessarily bound by the tables, they should give a pretty good feeling of the kind of gods they normally are in the game.
If you have no idea what I am talking about, this post explains what Petty Gods & Playthings is in a little more detail (I am pretty proud of that post and how it kinda explains how the game works in a pretty fun way). I also begin sharing the Petty God creation process in this post, and Part II can be found here. This you are reading is part III.
Once more, I remind you this is a work in progress. So if you say there is something wrong with it I will pretend to care!
4 – Professional
| d8 | Professional’s Divine Domain |
| 1 | Rat Catchers: Not as popular as rats themselves, these unsung heroes of our days hunt, capture, and more usually kill rodents and other pests in exchange for coins. Well, coin. Rats aren’t worth that much. |
| 2 | Street Vendors: The mortal version of deities. With their own little altars, these mortal gods offer a variety of gifts, blessings and services in exchange for coins and other offerings. |
| 3 | Hoggards: Servers of hogs and pigs, these individuals make sure these noble beings grow healthy, strong, and with a glorious skin to be forged in bacon in the sacred fires of the gods. |
| 4 | Gong Farmers: The lowest of the low among their fellow mortals, godly in the eyes of the gods. They often go through the worst a person can produce every day and still smile. Ok, they don’t complain. Much… |
| 5 | Leech Collectors: Leeches are used for everything in the magnificent field of science and medicine! Leech collectors risk their lives to find them! And we only put these creatures out there as a prank! |
| 6 | Corpse Collectors: With violence, famine, disease, and good plain ol’ stabbing, corpses are piling up the streets and someone’s gotta get them somewhere else. For a coin, of course. |
| 7 | Ditchers: Remember the piles of corpses? Some people are polite enough to hide theirs on ditches, and ditchers are there for them. Serving for a better society! |
| 8 | Scullions: If there’s a dirty job in the kitchen you are the one doing it. Okay, let’s be honest here. All the jobs there are dirty. The dirtiest jobs in the kitchen are yours. Better? |
5 – Emotions
| d8 | Emotion’s Divine Domain |
| 1 | Annoyance: Do you know that feeling when mortals bother us with their silly little things they call prayers? That’s what annoyance is. Bothersome but potentially powerful. |
| 2 | Anxiety: The most human of all emotions. The capacity to live in an imaginary terrible future that may never exist while the gods’ gift of the presents slips by. |
| 3 | Boredom: The willingness to keep an empty mind while the world is full of possibilities around you. The wiser might call it tranquility, but most just call it boredom. |
| 4 | Hangryness: A newborn emotion. The result of the ungodly union of two of the worst humanity has to offer, anger and hunger. Better always carry some snacks for your flock. |
| 5 | Homesickness: A recently discovered feeling observed in delusional beings who believe they own a piece of land and having been away from it for a while. Wait, isn’t this addiction? |
| 6 | Melancholy: Have you ever been sad for being sad? Well, it’s kinda like that. It’s a sadness that comes from nowhere. Some claim it’s a design flaw? Down say that near the big bad goda though. |
| 7 | Confusion: Oh, that one we all know! That feeling you get everyday when you wake up and realize you are pure awareness in a universe of pure chaos? No? Maybe that’s just me! |
| 8 | Unpreparedness: Hey! That’s you! You have no idea what you are gonna do and how are you gonna do it, right? That’s the power of unpreparedness! No one will see you coming, not even you! |
6 – Concepts
| d8 | Concept’s Divine Domain |
| 1 | Atheism: The belief that we are all made believe. Pretty interesting and disconcerting idea at the same time. It might be untrue, but you can fool a lot of humans with its false promises! |
| 2 | Trickle Down Economics: Only ungodly creatures could come up with the concept of the more a few individuals have, the more they will end up sharing with others. Is that what fairy tales are? |
| 3 | Passive Resistance: It took mature humans a long time to remember they can just lie on the floor and say no, like bratty little kids. It works though. Unless you have abusive parents, of course. |
| 4 | Nostalgia: When you miss something you never really had in the first place but you’ve convinced yourself it was all you ever wanted. Oh, and it’s something you can never have again. Fun, isn’t it? |
| 5 | Politeness: Also known as fabricated kindness. Can look like real care and respect for the inattentive eye, but it’s clearly a ruse to the right observer. Can be quite useful to trick fools. |
| 6 | Humility: I am still trying to figure that one out and I am the wisest person I know to exist. I would ask somegod about it, but who would know more than me? You? Give me a break! |
| 7 | Self Actualization: Imperfect beings like mortals play a game to constantly improve themselves hoping, one day, to be like us. Little they know they can’t win that game. We never finished it, to be honest. |
| 8 | Laziness: The most godly of all emotions. For some reason mortals insist on ignoring it or seeing it as something bad. Well, we created all the universes already and they want us to work more? |
Awesome! We are done with Divine Domains, so next post we will be checking out Doctrine and Worshipers! It will be pretty fun. One will be one of the first forays of players into World Building and the second one begins establishing some connections to the setting of the game!