Dealing with Deities
a GMless card based game about Dysfunctional Demigods.
In this game, the gods are dead, and their children feel they don’t get the respect they deserve. Despite their infinite lives, demigods tend to be self-absorbed, petty, dramatic, and impulsive. This is ultimately a game about dramatic and selfish people who happen to have powers. These people both love and hate each other, and generally live to manipulate one another and the mortals they run into.
How to Play
When you want to do something with uncertainty, or when you want to use your powers draw cards. You draw two by default and can expend your power tokens to draw more. Compare the highest and lowest card you draw against two (or more) cards drawn in opposition, creating a yes/and, no/but system. If cards are the same face, they are ordered by suit. Hearts are the lowest, followed by diamonds, clubs, and spades being the highest.
If your highest card is higher than the oppositions you get what you want, if it’s lower you do not. If your lowest card is higher than the oppositions you get something good that wasn’t what you wanted. If your lowest card is lower something goes wrong.
Expend your power to increase the number of cards drawn. When going against an NPC or other minor obstacles, only draw two cards. When opposing another demigod, you can both expend power to draw more cards.
Before play, it should be decided when and where your game will take place
Time Period:
- ♡: Ancient Times
- ♢: Industrial Times
- ♧ : Modern Times
- ♤: The Future
Location:
- A: A small fishing town
- 2: A sprawling metropolis
- 3: A modest trading hub on a river
- 4: A small community deep in the forest
- 5: A village in a swamp
- 6: A castle on a cliff
- 7: An academy of scholars and inventors
- 8: A mining town in the mountains
- 9: A small farming community
- 10: A center for the arts
- J: A large sporting event
- Q: A shady marketplace
- K: A decaying place of worship
Create your demigods
To create your demigods, deal out 5 cards to each player, and assign them to the different character aspects. You should have one card leftover.
God options
- A: Love
- Gain power when people are intimate
- 2: Community
- Gain power when people spend time with loved ones
- 3: War
- Gain power when people fight
- 4: Nature
- Gain power when people appreciate the natural world
- 5: Celebration
- Gain power when people drink and party
- 6: Trade
- Gain power when people exchange goods or services
- 7: Deception
- Gain power when people lie
- 8: Industry
- Gain power when new technology is used in new ways
- 9: Competition
- Gain power when people compete in games, sports, or simply through status.
- 10: Beauty
- Gain power through vanity
- J: Arts
- Gain power from the creation and appreciation of art.
- Q: Death
- Gain power when people die or remember the dead
- K: Chaos
- Gain power through disrupting order
Spend Power (tokens/poker chips) to increase the number of cards drawn. Each character starts with 3 tokens. After each scene, gain a token if the scene met your requirements for gaining power.
You feel that mortals are
- ♡: Useful
- ♢: annoying
- ♧ : necessary
- ♤: disgusting
Mortals
- ♡: adore you
- ♢: fear you
- ♧ : despise you
- ♤: neglect you
Situation
- A: There is a festival coming up for one of the gods or demigods. Who is it and what does the festival entail?
- 2: One of the demigods is tired of how they are being treated. Who is it, how are they being treated, and what are you doing about it?
- 3: A demigod has an idea on how to gain more followers. What is that idea and what do you think of it?
- 4: A demigod needs help from another demigod for an issue they are facing. What issue are they facing and what do they need help with?
- 5: A demigod is trying to rebrand. How were they seen before and how would they like to be seen now?
- 6: A demigod is trying to find a successor. Who is retiring and what is their plan to find a successor?
- 7: A demigod wants to play a prank on another demigod. Who is being pranked, who is doing the pranking, and how do you respond to this information?
- 8: A demigod wants to get revenge on another demigod. Who is getting revenge on who, and what are they getting revenge for?
- 9: A demigod wants to expand their domain. What or where is their current domain, and how are they looking to expand it?
- 10: A demigod is trying to prove a point to another demigod. Who are the demigods involved and what are they arguing about?
- J: A god is rumored to be returning. Which god is returning and how do the demigods relate to them?
- Q: There is a vacant cosmic domain. Which domain is vacant and what is the result of this power vacuum?
- K: A demigod is losing their powers. Who is losing their powers and how do they feel about it?
Creating the situation and scenes
After characters are created, answer the situation questions as a group to create a situation. You may wish to employ a white board, large piece of paper, or digital flowchart to track what is happening and how everyone feels about it. Not all of the situation prompt questions need to be used. If a question feels like it is throwing off what is already established, or if the group decides that they simply don’t think it sounds fun, feel free to throw that prompt out.
Once a situation has been established, play takes place in the form of a number of scenes. The number of scenes will be the number of players plus one. Each player will get to establish their own scene within the situation that centers their character. At the end, there will also be a scene with all of the characters together. This can be an epilogue scene or a climactic scene depening on how the previous scenes played out. Any number of demigods can be in any scene so long as it makes sense with what has happened in previous scenes. Scenes do not need to happen chronologically, some scenes can be flashbacks or occur simultaneously with other scenes. If a demigod is not in a scene, the player of that demigod plays the mortals in the scene. Mortals always draw two cards when initiating or reacting to an action.