A secret Santa gift from 2020 that I am shamefully late in writing up. The receiving can be heard on the Adventuring Party Secret Santa Christmas Stream for 2020. This is another book by Kevin Crawford who's Worlds Without Number I am a fan of (review here). WWN baselines at sword-and-sorcery grim and perilous adventuring while Godbound was pitched to me as the far end of the spectrum - as the subtitle says 'a game of divine heroes' - the PCs are potential divinities and the scale of issues they deal with match that. With that in mind I dove in. A kickstarter ran back in 2016.
Godbound, cover by Jeff Brown
As a fan of Kill Six Billion Demons, I was predisposed to like the high concept of this. Start as heroes, ascend to God-hood, shape the world on your way. Lots to like there.
So what do you get inside?
4 pages of New Gods Awaken introducing the setting concept and background
10 pages of Character Creation
8 pages of The Rules of the Game
44 pages of Divine Powers
28 pages of A Gazetteer of Arcem - the world and its nations
46 pages of Running the World - GM advice for high level and domain campaigns
30 pages with Foes of Heaven - the bestiary
14 pages of Treasures Beyond Price - magic items and artefacts
49 pages with Secrets of Arcem - alternate rules and tools
So what is in here chunk by chunk?
New Gods Awaken - "As a Godbound hero, your job is to dig into that world and start working your will on it." Nice tips on printing out and twiddling the layers for economy.
Character Creation - emphasis on sandbox requiring players to take initiative and drive the game with their ambitions. Another character creation workflow and accompanying marked up character sheet. The variation from standard D&D systems comes with picking your Facts and Words. Facts create aptitudes and potential bonii when they would justify it, tying to your origins, past profession and an organisation of choice. Words of Creation are the font of your divine powers. Six points can buy Divine Gifts appropriate to your Words (1pt for a minor one, 2pts for a major one). Other new stats are Effort, Dominion and Influence. Effort being the well of divine energy a Godbound can draw on to pass failed saves or use certain gifts. Dominion and Influence are divine and personal authority.
The Rules of the Game will be familiar to most folk who know D&D rules - with a couple of points that justify the red highlighted paragraph at the top of the section. Chief among these is a 'lower is better' armour class system. Importing rules from other games is explicitly encouraged in the first page of the section. An explicit 'rulings over rules' flag is also included. Saving Throws are reduced to just three - Hardiness, Evasion and Spirit. The super-natural prowess of Godbound is accentuated through mechanics like a Fray Dice which can be thrown no matter what else a hero is doing and can damage any lesser foes about. I like this thematic touch - even a Godbound who is not a warrior is going to make a mess of lowly peons that face them. There is a handy single page quick rule reference at the end of the section with all these mechanics laid out.
Divine Powers are a catalogue of incredible powers - immensely powerful feats. Low magic and Theurgy are also outlined - guidance for bringing in spells from other old-school games is provided which also helps to frame Theurgy.
A Gazetteer of Arcem - again at the end there is a one page reference to the Realm of Arcem, a handful of domains floating in the Uncreated Night - sail too far from the lands and you fall into the void.
Running the World is a section guiding how Godbound games are different - things happen faster, things change rapidly and the scale is larger. We get a guide to sandboxing and sandbox GM techniques. There is content gold in 'Sandbox GM techniques' such that I would say read and apply this whatever campaign you run. The clear acknowledgement that divinely powerful heroes will careen around a setting in unexpected ways and the provision of help for the DM is something I can greatly appreciate - again, read this even if you just run standard power levels, this is all great advice. This is a school of DM'ing built on "interesting situations and meaningful challenges" where situations have a draw to pull the players in and a threat to be overcome or avoided.
Parts of the world section include courts and ruin creation which look similar to those in Worlds Without Number but simpler. Together with the challenge creation tables you have good generators for rapidly crafting world segments ahead of heroes who could be moving very fast indeed.
Next we come to changing the world by changing its facts. Here we get a system for how to deal with high level heroes. Facts are exactly as labeled; they’re the basic truths about a place or situation in the game world. This necessary in this game which explicitly starts with the players on the road to god-hood. The way it is set up is that the scale of any fact changed can be judged by the breadth of its impact and what it is trying to change. Heroes can then use their gifts, Influence, and Dominion to change facts. Gifts are the rapid flashy application of powers - you can kill a monstrous beast but you cannot create a band of warriors this way. For a lasting effect you spend your influence - implying your hero is putting in downtime effort to keep the change in effect - or Dominion, some of your accrued divine might. Influence works while you are around to be hands on, Dominion is useful because it works when you are away.
Now that you see why you want Dominion, we get the rules to create your own cult - because worship is what gets you Dominion. This is part of the faction creation rules, which are complex but flexible. The worked example page was definitely necessary for me to figure out how it all fit together nicely. Factions, which can be villages, cults, guilds or a local band of bandits are called out as one of the useful engines for driving gameplay. Factions have Features (the things they can do) and Problems (which are as they sound). A faction has an action dice d6-d20 and whenever it attempts to do anything, it has to roll over its problems on its action die. Here we have a driver for adventure - PCs can turn up to knock out some Problems for a faction they like so that it has a better chance of being able to deploy its Features as they seek. As noted in the book, the gameable content generates itself.
Foes of Heaven - bestiary of big beasts but also mob rules - and has another great one-page guide (pp167) for creature creation. There is also guidance for running combats which is helpful.
Treasures Beyond Price - artefacts and magic items - but also a wealth management system that can work for realms or factions. The system is abstracted to wealth levels since some players can be divinities of wealth which puts the party operating on a different scale of cash-flow to normal dungeon-crawlers. There are Artefact creation tables and and Celestial Engines which underpin fundemental aspects of the world, sequestered away in shards of broken Heaven. Destruction of an Engine could be disastrous for a realm, finding and protecting it is more fodder for adventure.
Secrets of Arcem is 49 pages of bonus content over the free version - so everything beyond here is what you get by paying. Some nice elements in here, designed to be plug-and-play modular extras that you pick and choose from depending on the nature of your campaign and tailoring to the tastes of your table.
- rules for running mortals - harsh and warned against.
- vancian magic
- cybernetics and clockwork
- divine supremacy or how to ascend to arch-godhood
- godwalkers (mecha) particularly identified as something tables love or hate depending on the group
- strifes - techniques of supernatural combat
- paradises and how to create your own
- themed Godbound incl skill words and converting powers from other games
To wrap up - you get a game with a interesting high-concept, with good tools built into reflect the divine might of any player. It also includes a lot of help to the DM to address the increased pace of such a game. Things that could challenge a standard party will be breezed through by Godbound wielding their miraculous powers, so you need to crank up the scale of the challenges to avoid things becoming dull. Lots of the advice in bars and in the text explicitly addresses 'how to deal with the intentionally world-bending powers that every player will have from early on'. Lots of this is general good game-mastering but there is solid, targetted advice that shows lots of table testing and a focus on how does this book help me run a fun version of this game at my table. We come to expect this level of polish and user friendliness from Mr. Crawfords works but it is still worth mentioning, long may it last.
Godbound can also be taken as a handbook for 'how to run high level D&D' - even in other editions and other systems. The world-changing might of heroes beyond a certain level will cause the game-running challenges that are addressed with good advice and useful tools here.
Other reviews can be found on Day Star Chronicles, Sisyphean Tales, Magisters Corner, the Indie Game Reading Club or a video review on Questing Beast if you prefer.
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