Lords of Creation

[Hyperion]

Ok, so this game really has very little to do with the superpower list. It does not use erfworld's game mechanics, setting, or anything like that.

Now that I've got that cleared up let me explain Lords of Creation. LoC is essentially a world-building game, where the players are all immortal beings of significant power, divine beings some would say. These immortals are placed in the world to shape it to their desire. They take whatever form they wish and alter the lands, building a place to bring sentient beings into life. The game is broken down into 3 stages: World's Creation, Dawn of Civilization, End of Days.

World's Creation
This stage should only last for a week or two, where the immortals will mold the young world to their will. They draw on large amounts of power during this stage, raising mountains, digging oceans and growing forests. Plants and animals are brought into existance with ease, and an immortal could create an entire forest with all its creatures with little difficulty. All creatures made are of very basic intelligence, nothing smarter than a regular animal. More intelligent and remarkable creatures (dragons, fey, magical beasts, etc) require more energy as the immortal must bend the rules of the universe slightly to allow such a thing to exist. Once all the immortals are satisfied with the world and are ready to bring intelligent beings to life to worship the immortals will the second stage of the game begins.

Dawn of Civilizations
After the world is ready and the immortals have decided to make mortal beings to be worshipped by, the amount of divine power the immortals must spend to create the mortal races is much greater than making large forests or populating a valley with plants and beasts. Each immortal can decide to create their own race of mortals, or immortals can work together, even steal templates of a race from one another. This is by far the longest fo the three stages, lasting several months before the End of Days arrives. After each immortal has created a race, whether it is their own race or they made a race with another, they can do as they wish. The amount of divine energy they gain every week is decreased and most of this energy will be used to inspire their races with knowledge and power. An immortal can choose to leave his mortals alone, watching over them and intervening to save them from disaster but otherwise letting them develop on their own. Every week all races will grow in some way, an immortal can encourage spurts of growth if they wish. Immortals can also challenge the worth of another's race, using power to set challenges on a race. An immortal can move among their people, either as another form to simply observe and interact, possibly using motes of power to create great heroes, or appear before their race as they truely are, ruling their race and directly shaping them. An immortal can treat their race in any way they wish. After a few months the End of Days will come and all the races will battle for their creator, as the immortals battle eachother - either on the battlefield surrounded by their children, or in the divine realms.

End of Days
This is the last couple of weeks of the game, and a lot of what will happen during this time has been planned out ahead of time. The immortals will pick sides and battle, and their races will do the same. The world will be thrown to chaos as the immortals struggle causes war, disease, and natural disasters. The various civilizatiosn will battle and the immortals will each fall, one by one, either at the hand of a hero that had risen from another immortal (or even a hero who is the immortal's own bloodline) or at the hands of another immortal. Eventually the game climaxes with the Omni - a powerful over-diety who is supposedly responsible for creating all the immortals - cleansing the world, deciding he'll start over.

The End of Days CAN be avoided. Mainly it depends on how active everyoen is. If the majority of the races are relatively peaceful and plenty of immortals still have their presence felt, the End of Days will not come as war, but instead the Omni will decide to test the immortals and see if they will work together to save the world from a great threat, which can be anything. If they succeed the world is safe and the Omni chooses to move on and begin a new world. If they fail then the world is destroyed, the immortals defeated by the threat, and the Omni will start over.

[Hyperion]

Player's Stats
The game uses some statistics for the immortals, but it is all very broad in range. The Omni is essentialyl the GM, determining how much divine power an action costs, making rulings on what an immortal can and cannot do, and establishing what the basic features of the world are when it first is created. The Omni has no stats and does not create things like the other immortals do. He/she can make up random events, like natural disasters or a plague of monsters to test races and immortals, or give gifts should he choose. It's all up to the GM's decision on how this over-deity hopes this world will turn out.

The players, which its best to have at least 4 and could play with as many as 10 players, have total freedom with how their immortal looks, acts, etc. The profile for an immortal has only 5 numerical stats: Divine Rank (DR), Power, Presence, Potence, and Perception. Divine Rank is similar to what a level would be in most games. It increases by 1 every two weeks (So by the end of the World's Creation all immortals that started already should reach Rank 2). It can also be increased by spending a good portion of the divine power to gain a rank. This is really only possible early on as it requires more divine power later on. At DR 4 and every 4 DR's after all stats increase by 1. Every time an immortal gains a rank they also gain two growth points to spend on their stats.

The other 4 stats, Power, Potence, Presence, and Perception are mostly to gauge how powerful an immortal is in one stat compared to other immortals. All immortals with a DR of 1 start with 1 point in all four stats and have 4 growth points to place in any of the stats. The maximum of any stat is 99, which obviously is very unlikely any immortal will ever reach a 99 in any stat. There are no "average" stats, as its more about "how high is my stat compared to everyone else". If all the immortals try putting a lot of their growth points into Power, than all of them are greatly more powerful than any mortal being, but compared to each other they are of similar strength. If one immortal decides instead to place all his/her stats in Potence, then while he/she isn't as powerful as the other immortals, he/she is greatly more potent than any of them.

Power is simple, it is the raw strength, not just physically, but mentally and "magical" (an immortal can call it magic, psionics, or whatever they feel like, that's not what's important) as well. It's the blunt force of their abilities. Forcing the land to rise up suddenly in a jagged mountain range is easy with power. Crafting a single natural formation of beauty and power is not.

Potence determines the "to-what-extent" an immortal can perform certain actions. A high potence allows for a larger possible amount of change. In other words, an immortal can "make more" of something for the same amount of divine motes that a less potent immortal used for making only some of something. Immortal A has Potence 2 and the Omniscent determine they can cover a region about the size of Nevada with forest for 2 motes of power. Immortal B has a Potence of 4 and the Omniscent decides that for two motes Immortal B could cover an are the size of Texas with forest.

Presence will make an immortal's simple existance allow them to do things without spending much divine power. Immortals with high presence can easilly affect mortals emotions and eventually physically change them simply by them being near the immortal. Presence will also determine how ackknowledged an immortal is by races outside their own. While all races will acknoledge the immortals another race worships, unless that immortal is part of their pantheon of worship they will not give much thought to them.

Perception has meaning beyond the 5 senses. Immortals with a Perception of 1 can hear, see, smell, tase, and feel better than any mortal, but that's it. Higher presence allows enhanced senses, using senses at a distance, and eventually alternate sense, like percieving alternate forms of energy and even seeing the past and future. Immortals DO NOT know everything that is going on everywhere all the time. Even among their creations they can miss things. The GM determines to what extent an immortal's perception would allow them to know things in game.

Turns and Points
Turns are measured by week. At the beginning of each week the Omni determines how many points of divine power each immortal gains. Through out the week the immortals can roleplay interacting with eachother and post actions they would like to perform. Just roleplaying can be done freely but when posting any actions that involve spending power, the GM must read the actions an immortal wishes to perform and determines how many points it will cost, which the immortal involved will then subtract. Changes to the world are not considered to have happened until the GM approves.

The amount of points that will be spent are based on what the immortal wants to accomplish and what their stats are. The GM should always take into account that high stats makes changing the world cheaper. Also when the second stage begins, the cost for creating a race increases the more powerful an immortal makes them. A generic race of humanoids that would one day become the base humans of the world will be very cheap, requiring only a few motes of power. Small advantages as well as balancing a race by giving it weaknesses to compensate for strengths can help keep the cost low.

Immortal Profile
Name: (Be creative please)
Concept: (What are your immortal's goals, hopes, fears? Is there a theme for your immortal? How will your immortal be worshipped?)
Personality: (Likes, dislikes; Emotions; How does your immortal act/think/speak?)
Appearance: (How does you immortal appear to other immortals? To mortal beings? Any disguises?)
Divine Rank: 1 (All immortals start with DR 1)
(all four stats start at 1, and at DR 1 have 4 growth points to place however you want)
Power:
Potence:
Presence:
Perception:
Symbolic: (Symbols for your immortal? Ideas: Favoured weapons, Iconic Image, Favoured animal/plant/element)

[Hyperion]

Sorry about how long the rules are. Post here if you're interested in playing. I'm hoping to have at least 4 players to start a game.

[Zaleramancer]

I'm interested,

I'll make a profile thing as soon as I think of something..

[Whd]

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[Hyperion]

Yep

[Celadon's Penultimate]

I could participate...I'd have to think up an immortal, though. Strangely enough, I have no powerful-immortal types already in my superhuman memory-rolodex...

[Zaleramancer]

Can you clarify some things for me?

I'd like a few reference points for the divine power things.

Like creating forest over say 3 square miles (5~ Kilometers) would cost how many points?

What about something small like, fixing a broke arm or making a flower bloom?



Its just that I want a sorta idea of how much, so I can tweak my idea for a character.


------------

@ Shadowulf,

Yup. I had trouble making a immortal thingy for some reason to.

[Hyperion]

Well, the cost of everything changes based on your power and potency, making question like that hard to answer except in specific cases. However, the forest wouldn't cost too much, as in the World's Creation stage we'll be working with enough energy to form entire continents. For the small things, they would cost so little energy that you could make it happen without having to register any use of motes.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

so who's keeping track of all this stuff? You?

[Zaleramancer]

Mostly him, but all of us would have to help..

I think I'll put the name and some of the stats (Rank, The P's, and the points left) in my sig..

[Celadon's Penultimate]

hmmm...okay, yeah, I'm in

[Zaleramancer]

That does help some. Thanks!


Name: Rusmana
Concept: Weather God.  Rasmana lacks long term goals, though he sometimes adopts short-term ones on the spur of the moment. Generally He's to impulsive to stick to one goal for long. He does  however enjoy zaping annoying animals/plants/buildings/land features/people with lighting..  He's also worshiped, Interestingly, not by people begging for rain or praising him, But by people screaming insults and demands into the sky.
 Things like "Give us rain you thunder-stricken stupid feathery bag of hot air!!"
Amazingly, He finds these so hilarious that He changes the weather for them out of sheer amusement.
Personality: Wild, Impulsive, Chaotic. He is tied to the weather and like it, He tends to shift from happy to angry to sad and back with shocking quickness.  He tends to wander as a cloud/wind or a large bird.
Appearance: His typical appearance among mortals is an extremely large hawk, Though sometimes he simply shows his approval/disapproval through changes in the local weather. ("Going Zeus" on people to show disapproval, or healing rains and gentle zephyrs to show approval.. Or non-lethal lighting.) In the divine realms he appears as a large thunderhead.
Divine Rank: 1
Power:3
Potence:2
Presence:1
Perception:2
Symbolic:  Hawks, Thunderbolts


What about this?

[Hyperion]

I like it, especially how he is worshiped though insults. Tell me, if there was a drought and people were yelling for him  to make it rain, how would he react? Would he oblige them, ignore them, or just for laughs make it rain only on them?

[Zaleramancer]

Depends on his mood, I suppose..

That annnd how how funny the insults were.

If He was in a mischievous mood,  then they'd probably get mini-clouds stalking them.

A Good mood would get enough rain to avert the drought..

A bad mood would get a flood. And Lightning.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Name: Uburra-Namal (pronounced Oo-Boo-Ra Na-Mall)
Concept: Goddess of sex, love, beauty, poetry, music and petty mischief. She's the reason chicks dig musicians (and poetry), why people base attractions mainly on appearance, and why sex feels so good...Uburra-Namal lacks long term goals, though when she gets an idea, she's really good at sticking to it. And unfortunately, she almost always seems to be up to something. She loves to stir up petty quarrels and gossip, in the mortal realm AND among the gods.  And she is praised by being addressed as "Uburra-Namal, fairest of all". Not to mention, she only grants prayers as she sees fit. Though she's not a total witch, she's exactly the most compassionate goddess you'll ever run across (she's known for her keen sense of schaadenfreude).
Personality: Witty, aloof and sharp-tongued. She loves knowing that others see her as the 'unattainable beauty', and delights in turning down the myriads of men that hope to be her suitor. When among the mortals, however, she has been known to consort with men she considers good looking; if they're in a relationship, engaged or married, all the better...She is also incredibly nosy, and loves to gossip and spread rumors.
Appearance: Her normal apearance among mortals is usually one of her sacred animals, though she has been known to take the form of a beautiful woman. However, you would never know it was her; the beautfiul-woman disguise looks different every time, unless she wants to meet you again.
Divine Rank: 1
Power:2
Potence:3
Presence:2
Perception:2
Symbolic:  Grasshoppers and Dragonflies (why do you think their larvae are called 'nymphs'?), Male Goats (satyrs), Cats (do the math), Dogs and Rabbits (again, do the math...)

[Hyperion]

Alright, looking good.

[667]

Name: Erasmus

Concept: God of wisdom, old age, agriculture, and drumming/the emotional fervor that comes from drumming.

Personality: Erasmus is intelligent and wise beyond measure. He knows himself to a superhuman--and almost superimmortal--degree. He can determine what situations will do what to his emotions, and can generally control himself from visiting destruction upon the foolish mortals that displease him. However, this means he tends to bottle up his emotions--Erasmus needs a small corner of the world to use as the punching bag for his frustrations. Erasmus was also the first drummer and is the 'patron saint' of all future percussionists. His preferred worship offering is an intense drumming circle populated by superior musicians. Erasmus has even been known to manifest at the crux of these events. Failing that, he also accepts burnt firstfruits or burnt scrolls of knowledge.

Appearance: Erasmus manifests himself as a buzzard or an old leathery man in a long coat. Frequently, he will appear anonymously and stay only long enough to help--he sees blatant shows of power as distasteful, and it's rather fun for him to 'dress up' for the mortals. In the immortal realms, he appears as a vulture in a stained trenchcoat and beat-up hat.

Divine Rank: 1  
Power: 1
Potence: 3
Presence: 2
Perception: 2
Symbolic: The vulture, the buzzard, the raven, any form of drum

[EverblaDE]

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[Celadon's Penultimate]

Another thread in here discusses numerous RPs that could be going on here...of various genres...