Fighting Gods

[Purple Snit]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Are they? Ares was bested in battle at one point by Athena, and on another occasion imprisoned by giants until Hermes rescued him. Athena lost a weaving contest to Arachne. OTOH, as I recall the Olympians explicitly couldn't be killed. Imprisoned or defeated, but not destroyed. Compare to the Aesir, who as Baldur demonstrates most certainly *can* be killed, and just cos we don't see a mortal do so doesn't mean it's impossible.

Which was the Greek way of saying, "strategy and wisdom (Athena) beats savagery and chaos (Ares) in war." The tales are lessons, based on concepts that the tellers valued.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Purple Snit

Which was the Greek way of saying, "strategy and wisdom (Athena) beats savagery and chaos (Ares) in war." The tales are lessons, based on concepts that the tellers valued.

Yes.

Little-known fact about me: I took courses in "classics" in university; I just couldn't call that (or French) my minor subject because I was a science major. Anyway, we studied this sort of thing extensively. Unless the scholarship has changed more in the past 30 years than in the millennia before that, it's widely agreed that these sorts of battles were strictly allegory, and that even people of the time and culture understood them that way.

There's a case to be made that the literal interpretation where these myths describe actual, physical battles between discrete, material entities was invented either by RPGs that gave gods HP and AC, or by the fantasy literature that directly inspired it.

Conveying values, morals, and life lessons through divine battles with fighting and blood and heroics makes learning them more interesting to people whose natural leaning is toward action, not introspection. (Some cultures have some pretty risqué mythology, too, which sells complicated philosophical concepts to people who prefer salacious stories and dirty pictures.) That's not very different from gamers who can't stand history class but who will happily learn about the Dark Ages or medieval Japan or whatever by playing an RPG set there. ;)

[Dalillama]

Modeling gods from that literature falls under the GURPS brief, though. Not to mention thay the Olympians aren't the be-all end-all of real life conceptions of gods, including apme where human apotheosis is possible. Some are ineffable.and cosmic, some are limited and extremely human-acting, some are killable, some not, etc.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Modeling gods from that literature falls under the GURPS brief, though. Not to mention thay the Olympians aren't the be-all end-all of real life conceptions of gods, including apme where human apotheosis is possible. Some are ineffable.and cosmic, some are limited and extremely human-acting, some are killable, some not, etc.

The system I outlined above covers pretty much all of that ground. I really do think modeling the divine using just character points isn't going to end well when describing deities in cultures where even one god among thousands is cosmic. Distinguishing between divinities and avatars, and possibly portraying some gods as just avatars, allows for more scope.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The system I outlined above covers pretty much all of that ground. I really do think modeling the divine using just character points isn't going to end well when describing deities in cultures where even one god among thousands is cosmic. Distinguishing between divinities and avatars, and possibly portraying some gods as just avatars, allows for more scope.

Cosmic power levels can be modeled with character points though. For example, a high enough level of skill in addition to a high enough level of Super Luck to use on every roll, would allow a good to beat any mortal in a contest of skill with perfect reliability.

What do such divine points allow you to do which character points doesn't? Even if it does allow you to do new things, why not instead just add new advantages bought with character points which only gods are usually allowed to get?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Andreas

What do such divine points allow you to do which character points doesn't? Even if it does allow you to do new things, why not instead just add new advantages bought with character points which only gods are usually allowed to get?

My guess would be things GURPS doesn't allow, like being able to create matter without needing to burn character points to stabilize it, curse someone with a 100% permanent and unbreakable Affliction, grant character points to other characters, or be outright immune to a given source/type of damage. Things of that nature.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The system I outlined above covers pretty much all of that ground. I really do think modeling the divine using just character points isn't going to end well when describing deities in cultures where even one god among thousands is cosmic.

Modeling gods with character points isn't clearly worse than modeling heroes; in both cases examples that actually appear in multiple stories are likely to have 'whatever abilities make the story work' rather than an entirely consistent set. It's one of the reasons superhero RPGs never seem to emulate the genre terribly well.

[Purple Snit]

It really depends on what you are trying to portray; nigh-omnipotent beings that create the world and humanity, then gift us with fire, language and society, or just really powerful beings that can be fought and killed for x.p. and good storytelling. The former doesn't work well with point values. The latter can be done, but then what's the difference between "Evil Goddess who creates undead minions and wants to rule" and "evil sorceror who creates Uruk-hai minions and wants to rule?"

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Varyon

My guess would be things GURPS doesn't allow, like being able to create matter without needing to burn character points to stabilize it, curse someone with a 100% permanent and unbreakable Affliction, grant character points to other characters, or be outright immune to a given source/type of damage. Things of that nature.

Snatcher can permanently "create" matter, you can grant character points to other characters with Afflictions, you can be effectively immune to a type of damage by making your defenses better than any attack in the setting and you can make an affliction effectively unbreakable and permanent by winning the contest by a sufficiently large margin. The Cosmic modifier would arguably allow you to remove the CP cost for Create and the need for there to be a way to remove permanenet Afflictions.

Some of those aren't an entirely perfect fit, but they get very close and if even that isn't enough, why not just create new advantages/enhancements which can be bougth with character points rather than create new ones which can be bought with divine points?

[Purple Snit]

Because when you are trying to represent things beyond the realm of "regular" characters, you need new systems to represent scope, like D-scale for combat, or Cosmic. "This God creates an island" is far beyond "this wizard casts Create Earth", and needs a way to represent that. If you don't need that scale, use cp. Again, it comes back to what you are trying to simulate in the game, and whether or not you want PCs to be able to do it.