I would like to talk about Godbound again. Specifically, I would like to talk about the gift Azure Oasis Spring.Godbound is a game I have played for nearly a decade by now. More so than any other RPG I have ever played, and I do not say this lightly, Godbound is the one game I have seen suffer from major rifts between the GM's expectations and the players' expectations (or at least, my expectations). I have made at least one thread about this before: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96334337/Godbound is a game wherein the PCs are demigods. In the default setting, this is a very new phenomenon. It is up to the GM to determine how many NPC Godbound there are (if any at all). In other words, whatever the PCs are doing has not been done before, because there have been no demigods like them in the past.The default setting is a fantasy world that is, all things considered, very awful for the average person to live in. There are no massive empires, although one militaristic nation has the pomp to call itself one. The tech level is "roughly equivalent to late medieval Europe," though one isolated nation has modern-day technology and computers that function nowhere else.The PCs have the power to change the world. They can accomplish such with a mix of lesser gifts and greater gifts for on-screen usage, and resources called Influence and Dominion for downtime purposes. The book dedicates several pages to a section called "Changing the World," outlining this.
Even lesser gifts can achieve spectacular effects, like these:>Terror of the Skies, Constant. You have wings, and can fly at twice your normal ground movement rate. When allowed uninterrupted flight over long distances, you can travel up to one hundred miles an hour. You are sufficiently maneuverable to hover or perform other intricate aerial maneuvers if needed.>Forced March, Constant. You and any companions or soldiers you are leading can march overland at twenty miles an hour, requiring neither sleep nor sustenance. You can easily cross any terrain that is not a human-created fortification, regardless of the hostility or environmental peril of the terrain. You cannot use this gift if you are alone and without companions.>Ender of Plagues, Action. Commit Effort for the scene. Cure all diseases and poisonings within sight. If the Effort is expended for the day, the range of the cure extends to a half-mile around the hero, penetrates walls and other barriers, and you become immediately aware of any disease-inducing curses or sources of pestilence within that area.>Sire of Stone and Street, Action. Commit Effort for the day. You can summon forth constructions and civil engineering in a style appropriate to any city you have known. A single use of this gift creates structures within a hundred-foot cube per level of the character, the buildings rising and forming over the course of an hour. Any construction appropriate to a city can be called forth, even if the local environment lacks the necessary materials. Buildings are equipped with mundane furnishings and objects appropriate to their function. This gift is not usable as a miracle.
And one of my favorite gifts in all the game, Azure Oasis Spring:>Azure Oasis Spring, Action. Summon a water source, causing a new spring to gush forth. Repeated use of this ability can provide sufficient water supplies for almost any number of people, or erode and destroy non-magical structures within an hour. At the Godbound's discretion, this summoned water is magically invigorating, supplying all food needs for those who drink it. These springs last until physically destroyed or dispelled by the Godbound. Optionally, the Godbound may instead instantly destroy all open water and kill all natural springs within two hundred feet per character level, transforming ordinary land into sandy wastes.I like Azure Oasis Spring because it costs no Effort at all. It can be spammed at will. Even if it is dispelled, which will take the intervention of a divine-level entity, it can simply be renewed. It is fully possible for some character with, say, Terror of the Skies to fly around the world, dropping down Azure Oasis Springs.Spending Influence and Dominion during downtime can generate unforeseen consequences:>Faction Problems and Changes>While Godbound heroes can create marvels with their gifts, mortal societies can have a hard time coping with the changes. If you're using the faction rules, every time the Godbound adds a new Feature to a faction with their Influence or Dominion, the faction gains a one-point Problem related to the undesirable consequences of the change. Local merchants might be put out of business by cornucopian blessings, gentry might be upset at newly-educated peasants and their insolence, or some other backlash that is inevitable when great and rapid changes are afoot.But this is for Influence and Dominion. On-screen gifts simply do what they do.
In the great, great bulk of Godbound games I have played in, it feels like the GM just wants to run what amounts to a generic D&D campaign, except with a higher power level and flashier abilities for everyone. Instead of PCs fighting bandits and dragons terrorizing villages, the PCs fight demigod-bandits and demigod-dragons terrorizing villages.I have found that these Godbound GMs are reasonably comfortable running such "save the status quo"-type adventures. The PCs defeat the demigod-bandits or demigod-dragon, nobody questions the PCs' motives at any step of the way whether in- or out-of-character, and NPCs happily throw feasts and celebrate the PCs as heroes. Simple and expected enough.However, the moment a player (i.e. me) tries to proactively change the world for purely altruistic reasons, then these Godbound GMs take pause and get uncomfortable. They question the PCs' motives both in- and out-of-character (I was once met with extreme suspicion both in- and out-of-character for trying to embark on a project to supernaturally cure and immunize everyone against all diseases), NPCs give disproportionate pushback, and the GM staples on arbitrary consequences.Nowhere has this been more true than with Azure Oasis Spring. In four separate games, it has been a source of friction. Could someone please help me understand why?
• Case #1: The GM says that the people are fine with this, but are not particularly happy about it ( https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/91252999/#91253022 ), because they want to eat some actual food. The lore of this particular nation mentions: "The xiaoren of Dulimbai live in grinding poverty by the standards of most other nations. Every day is a struggle to ensure that there is enough food to feed all the dependents of the house, and children as young as seven are put to work if they are not lucky enough to be allowed to study. Hunger is the constant companion of many." Okay, that sounds rather spoiled for the commoners of an impoverished, hungry nation, but whatever. Not the worst.• Case #2: The GM warns me that using Azure Oasis Spring will provoke war, as another nation is sure to invade. I point out that I can fly on over with Terror of the Skies and drop some Azure Oasis Springs along key points of the other nation. The GM bans Azure Oasis Spring on the spot.• Case #3: The NPCs, despite being hungry and starving, refuse to drink from the Azure Oasis Springs. This nation has never been established as particularly superstitious, and indeed, the GM has shown a sizable population of magicians among them. Nevertheless, the people are adamant that the springs' water is cursed. The GM says it would take overt mind control to force them to drink.• Case #4: I am warned that the true nature of Azure Oasis Spring is that it taps into the cosmic energies of the world, and therefore accelerates cosmic entropy. (Such entropy is particularly bad in Godbound.)All of these have been with separate GMs. In none of the above cases did I have my character ask for payment. I do not know. I can understand there being some pushback, but I do not know why this one gift has provoked visceral backlash from multiple GMs. Is it that disruptive? Would I have gotten the same reception if I had just created some generic "fighty fighter, except demigod-scale" character?
>>98905247>Edna threadI don't care about this topic in the slightest, but glad to see you're still around. Having good games lately?
>>98905451Yes: lots of 13th Age 2e and D&D 4e, with some Daggerheart and Magical Burst ReWrite/Project Rebirth on the side.But now, I am in another Godbound game, and I do not know why Azure Oasis Spring has once again managed to be a sticking point.
I imagine it does not help that while generic combat abilities have analogues in preexisting RPGs and fiction in general, Azure Oasis Spring is unlike virtually anything else in all other RPGs and fiction in general.Usually, there would be some cost or catch, but here, nope. Usable at-will, no strings attached.The great, great, great bulk of Godbound players I have played alongside wind up playing characters who are some mixture of:• Edgy in some way. • Not at all concerned with the idea of helping the world at large. They would instead prefer to rule through brute force and dominance.• Combat-oriented.• If not combat-oriented, then destructive in some way, in the vein of "I am taking the Madness Word and will use it in every way but its more protective, productive side."Which is a way to play a Godbound PC, certainly. I am not sure as to why this is so common.The GMs I have played with do not actually set down expectations encouraging this type of character, nor do they explicitly say, "I essentially want to run D&D except with a higher power level."
>>98905247>>98905264>>98905279Even if it's not strictly RAW, it'd make plenty of sense for dropping infinite-nutrition springwater to count as adding a Feature that would cause a Problem.The examples of how GMs have handled it don't seem great though. There are certainly more natural consequences and problems that could arise from newfound infinite food. And the book itself gives some of the examples. Some merchants and farmers are going to go out of business if their staple crops are no longer in demand. Everyone is suddenly going to be scrambling to produce more luxury foods instead. That's a lot of economic upheaval. That's also a problem for rulers. If they ordinarily collect taxes from peasants in grain, all of their currently stored grain has become worthless overnight. And if the peasants stop making more grain and just subsist on springwater, then there's basically nothing to tax. Around 90% of people in late medieval Europe would have been farmers, and therefore paying the taxes in grain. The ruler would rapidly need to change what's being taxed, but on top of that also has to deal with 90% of the country suddenly having a bunch of free time on their hands. As for more long term effects, the obvious result of a starving nation getting unlimited food would be a population surge. They don't need wells as an excuse to invade if suddenly the main thing holding them back compared to their neighbors has become a non-factor. Ultimately, part of "Changing the World" in Godbound should be that using those impressive abilities actively changes the world. If you make infinite food, everyone smiles and says thanks, and then doesn't otherwise change what they're doing, then the infinite food doesn't actually matter.For it to matter, the populace needs to act differently in the context of the new information.
>>98906341I've not played Godbound, but to me the solution seems really simple. While the PCs are around, sure, it's now infinite food through sacred water. But unless the player characters will be around forever, which I presume they won't and are more supposed to ascend to full deity status or just fade into legend with the world restored, that their miracles will persist but will fade into legend with them, as in people will mostly forget about them beyond important religious practices and thus losing importance, relatively speaking.
>>98905247Why would you run a game with such glaring problem for a DECADE?
The issue is that it's a zero-Effort (and therefore basically infinite and permanent) alteration to gameworld without using the system designed for permanent zero-Effort alterations to the gameworld.Not much else to say about it. Godbound's full of little annoyances like this. It's never getting a second edition, so you either live with it, houserule it or ignore it.
