[LFG] [LFGM] Looking to Join / Put Together a Godbound Group

So,  ever since I finished reading the free version of Godbound, I've been itching to play it, but like most games (especially new ones that aren't really hyped a lot) It's next to impossible to find a group. I'm a little too busy to GM one myself, but if there are any current Godbound Groups looking for another player, or if I can find a group and a willing GM I would love to play  (If there is a GM out there willing, or anyone who wants to get together and find a time that works, i know what days work best for me and we can arrange something, just shoot me a PM) 

Hi Cody, I hope you're doing well.  I picked up Godbound a few weeks ago, and I'm torn.  I liked a lot of it, enough to buy the full version and take the time to look through it.  But, the core setting and game concept left me a bit cold.  It felt like something of a missed opportunity to me at least.  The thing that got me initially interested in the game, and this may show my age, was someone's suggestion of using the game to play a version of the old Forgotten Realms Time of Troubles plotline, but from the divine perspective.  Something like that seems like a more interesting implementation of the system, though I'm sure there's a mess of other campaign concepts.   My schedule is sort of up in the air at the moment.  I'm very busy with work for the next few weeks.  Once the semester gets up and running, I can see if I've got time for another game.  If I do, I don't mind GMing a bit.  I tend not to have the time nowadays to run an entire campaign, but I can run arcs here or there or make some adventures with recurring villains, etc.  

I have the deluxe version, and have run one short arc of it for a table group (about 6 sessions) and I can certainly report back that it is an absolute blast for players but quite a doozy of a game to run. I just got a new schedule, however once I settle in and if things lined up for everyone for maybe a weekend game I'd be interested in playing or running. 

Hey, I'd be interested in playing, I made a thread and realized you already had one up! Anyhow, definite interest here. 

so when's good for everyone?

Matthew H. said: I have the deluxe version, and have run one short arc of it for a table group (about 6 sessions) and I can certainly report back that it is an absolute blast for players but quite a doozy of a game to run. Can you say more?   I'm in CST.  I'm not exactly sure what my schedule looks like; it usually takes me a little bit into the semester to figure out just what my time commitments look like.  But, I think Mondays, Wednesdays, and Sundays are generally out for me.  

Thursday is my ideal 

This game, giving players so much power from the get go, tends to invert the GM/player relationship a little. It is very difficult to plop an obstacle down in front of the players that give them anything more than momentary pause. Players blast through encounters and challenges at a ferocious pace and usually in ways so unique that you had no way to prepare or conceive of them. I was prepareing what would usually feel like to me 2 sessions worth of material, and sometime they'd get through that in about an hour. It's fun but an intense, intense roller coaster from the GM seat. Have your improv hat prepared, you will be needing it. All of my players immediately declared it their favorite game of all time though, none of them have ever felt that had as much agency as they did in this game. It give players so much creative room to spread their wings, it's the brass ring of sandbox games most definetly.

I can likely play thursday nights CST, but wouldn't be able to run that day

The above is probably a lot of what attracts me to the game.  Although I have a reputation of being a bloody-handed GM myself, so the opportunity to really go at the players is kind of desirable.  I also think there's a little something to the OSR nature of it that appeals to me:  so much of old school D&D is crouching carefully behind your 10 ft. pole or being essentially incompetent (e.g., Red Box 1st level magic-user).  This was a pleasing inversion.  I mentioned before that I thought the game was sort of a missed opportunity.  The thing that the baseline setting -- which I would really have to read up on to refamiliarize myself with -- was the chance to play characters with alien psychologies.  One imagines gods, demigods, et al. have potentially really different motivations.  More mythic ones.  But, the sense I got was that they were essentially D&D characters, just powerful ones.  

Ya, that's the base game nicholas, you're just a normal dude that gets bestowed with the might of gods one saturday afternoon. However the deluxe edition comes with rules to create other dietic archtypes such as primordial beings of the words or sentient mechanoids with materia based power slotting. There are options to play those strange characters certainly. My problem running the game was dialing in the threat level, first level dieties can dish out some crazy damage but the things they're fighting also kind of run the risk of overwhelming them or one shotting them right back if you don't get the challenge level dialed in just right. But even in the base game, you give that much oomph to some filthy peasants and shit got megalomaniacal and demented very quickly. Robot genocide was very quickly a thing. The first session on character one shot my first two monsters both times by rolling very well, both should have challenged the players for a few rounds. However I put a nasty boss as the end of a dungeon a few sessions later and it was almost one punching them down and had they not had a quite considerable slew or retainers and minions around them to act as various degrees of distractions wouldn't have came out so well. Two other dungeons/encounters I'd put together were just bypassed wholesale with some creative play, the game just isn't particularly obvious in how to design balanced encounters and it's not something you can easily guage without just playing a few sessions and seeing where the power curve falls.

Thursday nights after 4PM would be perfect :) 

Matthew H. said: My problem running the game was dialing in the threat level, first level dieties can dish out some crazy damage but the things they're fighting also kind of run the risk of overwhelming them or one shotting them right back if you don't get the challenge level dialed in just right. ... the game just isn't particularly obvious in how to design balanced encounters and it's not something you can easily guage without just playing a few sessions and seeing where the power curve falls. Yeah, that was very much my sense from looking at it.  Even semi-decent CR systems have spoiled us in a lot of ways.  Reminded me of just having to eyeball it back in the day (and still have to in many systems).  But, that's something that takes experience to do, like you said, and Godbound is hot off the presses.   And, just to be clear.  I'm not really knocking the game.  I totally dig it, which is why I picked it up and would be interested in playing it.

Thursdays would be wonderful for me, but I'm only available after 7ish EST (which would be 6PM CST).  The encounter design is definitely different -- with all the insta-hit stuff and defensive miracles, at some point it kinda turns into effort vs. effort.

Islee that time would be best for me as well. Nicholas: didn't think you were knocking it, just trying to share play experience

Matthew H. said: Nicholas: didn't think you were knocking it, just trying to share play experience I figured.  But, y'know, I'm a stranger on the internet, tone is hard to read, etc.   I could probably make Thursday evenings work.  7 pm EST is probably fine for me.  

So who wants to drive this bus? Thursday would not leave me with a lot of prep time, I could make it work but just wouldn't be ideal for me.

Matthew H. said: So who wants to drive this bus? Thursday would not leave me with a lot of prep time, I could make it work but just wouldn't be ideal for me. Is there a time that would? cause I'm really too busy to GM 

no, that time is fine, It's just a busy time at work which wouldn't leave me with a whole lot of prep time. I can run, just I would prefer not to be first choice of GM

Well if we can find somebody else, I can't do it for similar reasons to you, but if we find another GM, I know someone who might do it, I'll ask him 

I just encountered Godbound myself the other day; it pushes all the same buttons that Exalted did, but without the mechanical complexity that made Exalted so annoying to run. I tend to favour sandbox-style GMing anyways, which makes Godbound the kind of game I'd like to run... though since I only just got done reading the free version, I'd require a bit more time and study (and probably purchase of the full version) before I'd feel comfortable committing to run a game with it. That said, since it's a system that none of us have much experience with, perhaps a round-robin style of GMing would be appropriate? It's always easier to run a game after having played it, and it's less effort to plan a specific plot or threat than an entire campaign.