I just recently started to look at Part-Time Gods 2e and I'm a lot surprised it's not more well known given how popular stuff like Scion and Godbound is.

The system seems pretty clearly inspired by WW d10 systems, although it's a little strange (all skills, no attributes, you just pick two skills instead. Some of the skills just seem like attributes to me, to be honest though).

The game gives you free reign to define your divine purview unlike other god games (stuff like God of Mailmen and God of Novels is supported) although I'm a little wary of the magic system as it's more Mage style freeform which I've seen people have trouble with before. Rolling and assigning successes to damage/number of targets/range/etc after seeing the successes (which is how the system handles your miracles, with different things you could do with your domain being their own specic skills) does look a little less overwhelming than something like Mage the Awakening 2e at least, where you had to figure out your spells completely to determine the dice pool in the first place.

Anyways does anyone have experience with this game?

I've been interested in Scion forever but Storypath really puts me off.

>>96026899 (OP)
looks kinda faggy

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>>96029636
Frustrating to see this kind of comment any time someone tries to discuss a less popular game on this site. I've literally expressed some criticism of the game in the OP. It's not an ad, I'm not even a paying customer, I just pirated it, I don't buy games unless I'm sure I'll try to run them. Hell, I encourage anyone curious to pirate it.

>>96027655
The art isn't as bad as some modern Onyx Path stuff (Scion 2e especially) but yeah it's pretty bad

>>96026899 (OP)
I'll bite....

Scion in either edition is dogshit. There's nuggets of good ideas in the dogshit, but not worth digging in said dogshit to find them.

PTG is better simply because Scion is such garbage. Having said that, I don't care for TEG's approach to game design (settings or mechanics), and PTG feels less like a godly game and more like a high-powered urban fantasy supers game. And if I want -that-, I can just go play a proper supers system where everyone has some sort of basis in mythology. At which point PTG and Scion both become useful for idea mining (assuming I can't come up with the idea of making centaurs into human/motorcycle cyborgs or Mjolnir into a huge honking revolver on my own).

"But I want to play a game about being a god!"

Nobilis exists, and shows you what it's like to play a god. Shame it has no real system to speak of and is basically one step removed from being a "story sharing game".

New Gods of Mankind might still be lurking in a trove somewhere. The author nuked it from DriveThru, and it's an incomplete mess, but it actually did try to make a game about being a freaking god (had a supplement for playing avatars or something that was also worth looking into).

Godbound is also out there, easy to find, and probably does the best job of balancing game and high powered divinity. It trades modern Earth urban fantasy for post-apocalyptic high fantasy world though (it's basically unlicensed Exalted, but easier to play).

Otherwise, yeah, just go grab the supers game of your choice and be done with it.

>>96031045
>Scion in either edition is dogshit. There's nuggets of good ideas in the dogshit, but not worth digging in said dogshit to find them.
Could you elaborate please?

>>96031349
Not that anon, but 1e straight up has bad math. In the early game Epic Dexterity is important and if you have a good amount and are fighting someone with none you're probably going to win.

Late game if someone has 9 dots and someone else has 10 the person with 10 dots (one more dot) wins 100% of the time.

Second edition doesn't do that but the abilities are all super vague. Almost everything hangs on a storm of "Complications" which are basically additional DCs required over the standard DC to not have a bad side effect when succeeding on a roll, but it doesn't define anywhere what the side effect should be and a ton of abilities imply that the side effect is "failing the roll" which is explicitly not what complications do. It's just badly designed.

>>96031765
>Second edition doesn't do that but the abilities are all super vague. Almost everything hangs on a storm of "Complications" which are basically additional DCs required over the standard DC to not have a bad side effect when succeeding on a roll, but it doesn't define anywhere what the side effect should be and a ton of abilities imply that the side effect is "failing the roll" which is explicitly not what complications do. It's just badly designed.
Does nobody at Onyx Path have a dedicated playtesting team? What the fuck do they spend all that Patreon money on?

>>96026899 (OP)
Looks like shit. Hard pass.

>>96026899 (OP)
What is that blood splatter in the middle?

>>96032109
I think they technically do playtesting but everyone involved is so bound up in their weird sycophantic discord server that questions come up and get answered there instead of clarified in the text or they just know what the intent of unclear rules was in a way that normal people reading the book don't.

Which is to say that they playtest but they set up the playtesting to be as ineffective as possible.

>>96026899 (OP)
Skills ARE attributes, there's no fundamental difference

>>96032531
That's the problem with a super tight fandom like that.

>>96030862
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>>96030862
>Frustrating to see this kind of comment any time someone tries to discuss a less popular game on this site. I've literally expressed some criticism of the game in the OP. It's not an ad, I'm not even a paying customer, I just pirated it, I don't buy games unless I'm sure I'll try to run them. Hell, I encourage anyone curious to pirate it.
Yeah, it definitely feels like some people on this board are actively opposed to any kind of discussion about traditional games going on here.

>>96033356
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>>96033356
It's been that way since time immemorial

Buy an ad

>>96031045
>>96031765
>>96032109
>>96032531
I personally dislike the new edition of Scion because it's the origin of Storypath(not the OP) and going all in on narrativist bullshit. For all of the Storyteller's woes it still does try to simulate certain things and provide actual rules. They did the same shit with Trinity Continuum where the setting is actually kind of interesting but it's all wasted on fucking storypath. I'm frustrated that the first edition of PTG and Godbound are the closest things to autistic crunchy god games that exist so I've basically been making my own based on a /qst/. Challenge I've encountered is you legit cannot have ''any domain you want'' and ''defined mechanics'' in the same sentence while having every domain be truly unique, unless you're ready to write an absolutely bloated bible of a book. I waited for Playing God for months then bought it and got some good ideas but it's still not quite close enough. Good game for playing literal creator type gods though.

>>96034430
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>>96034430
PTG 2e stood out to me, prompting this thread, partially because it does seem to thread the needle of "specific powers" and "God of whatever you want" by basically just saying "you're a WoD style mate. You have one sphere, it's whatever your Domain is."

Unless you consider that to not be defined mechanics, which I disagree with but it's fair.

It does have some weird stuff going on though. The Skill+Skill thing for one. The Free Time/Wealth system that seems designed to constantly split the party. I'd probably just ignore that if I ran the system.

>>96035232
Mage not mate, I meant to say

>>96026899 (OP)
>stuff like God of Mailmen and God of Novels is supported
The latter sounds based, what would you be the God of?

>>96032505
Not OP, but I think that the guy standing next to it is a god of blood or something.

>>96043547
>>96043601
>>96043869
>>96044084
>>96044211
kill yourself bumpfag

>>96034430
If you want an "autistic crunchy game" go grab HERO, but we'll add ideas from Scion 1ed and New Gods of Mankind.

Start out with base character creation for supers but require everyone to have a "divine" origin. Since it's HERO, your powers are whatever you build them to be. Raise the dead to life (God of Healing), raise them as a zombie army (God of Death), raise them into angels (God of Valor), you decide and design.

Tie advancement to a log-scaling number of "believers" (hit 100 and get 15XP, hit 10000 get 60 XP, hit 1 million and get 240 XP, or something like that). Have a side system where -what- you do to gain believers shapes the character (help people out? It boosts your positive social interaction skills, making it easier to charm people to your side. Trash a city fighting demons? It's a wash. Smite enemy nations, scaring them into accepting your power? Gain a bonus to your intimidation, making it easier to terrorize others into believing in you). Have a final metric your character losing themself in their own Myth as they reach those advancements, taking on new hindrances either as Limitations on the character or their powers (something building on existing traits ideally, but taken to divine extremes).

You could do similar with M&M, but I don't think it'll work as well for a game scaling up to that level power as well as HERO would. Nor would it be that crunchy in comparison.

>>96026899 (OP)
>but Storypath really puts me off.
What’s wrong with Storypath?

>>96048887
Badly explained and implemented complications system (as I mentioned upthread, a ton of them are just extra difficulty, even though that's supposed to be totally separate and, for whatever reason, rarely used). Even the complications that are obviously not increased difficulty are super vague, putting the Devs workload onto the GM.

Reducing the granularity of damage even more from storyteller, with each hit causing one (1) damage, unless you blow the enemy's defense out of the water and crit which DOUBLES your damage to 2. Incidentally this means that the tag system they created for weapons is mostly superfluous, almost none of the tags functionally make you better at fighting. The best you can get is +1 successes, and after that it's a bit downhill with one that gives you one extra success only for crits, and one that lets you ignore a point of armor (which comes two flavors, soft (extra defense) and hard (extra health levels)). What does ignoring hard armor MEAN? Idk ask your ST.

Soft armor is also implemented incredibly badly. It's supposed to be a layer of defense that prevents damage but not non-damage stunts like knockdown, feinting to help the next attacker, disarming, etc. Except NPCs have a consolidated defense and armor score effectively making them all unarmored dodge monsters.

Oh, PC defenses are fucking rolled for some reason.

Oh, the versions of Storypath that have crafting have crafting rulesets that seem to be impossible to parse for literally everyone considering how common questions like "hey I can't figure out crafting here at all, and I played a Twilight blacksmith in Exalted 3e" seem to be. The few things that are clearish (sample crafted items) make the items that you acquire with wealth merits seem completely disconnected from the ones you can craft.

The systems have a rule for characters that completely outclass normal humans (Scale) which is used for EVERYTHING that outclasses human capabilities.

>>96048887
>>96050256

Skyscrapers have size Scale, cars and jets both have different amounts of speed Scale, a grizzly bear has might Scale, Superman has durability and damage Scale, etc.

The devs are PATHOLOGICALLY opposed to defining what constitutes various scale levels. Once again this is just putting all of their own work on STs.

This bullet train goes 500 mph, what kind of speed scale is needed to keep up with it realistically, because my Scion of Hermes can go up to 2 speed Scale for the scene for epic chases? The answer, apparently is "whatever the ST thinks makes a good story" which puts all the onus on the ST to keep things consistent and still results in defined parameters for different scales ("I think the Scion should be able to do this, but it should be hard. Bullet train is Scale 3") except now when a book is like "regular cars are Speed Scale 2, race cars are Speed Scale 3" the ST has to retcon that and say "actually a Kia soul and a stock car are roughly equal at racing on open roads" or maybe he makes the stock car as fast as a bullet train. Either way, this could have been avoided with the system defining the meaning of different levels of scale but the devs were too scared of getting gotcha'd so they made it an individual ST problem.

This is all top of my head, the point is the system feels like a huge step back from previous WW derived games.

>>96026899 (OP)
OP mentioned Scion, besides it, and Godbound and Exalted, what are some similar games worth checking out, and what are their strengths and weaknesses? The Storypath system's weaknesses were mentioned in >>96050321 and >>96050256, and I know Godbound needs better balance for instance.

>>96055157
There's Nobilis but the power level there is dialed up super high even for a "god game." Also diceless.

>>96059027
Wow, it’s really that high up the power scale? How else does it compare to Part-Time Gods and the other systems mechanically?

>>96055157
I feel like there's something that can be done with Fireborn, especially because the devs already went out of their way to bend mythological dragons into a variety of archetypes like healer and mentor they don't really fit. You can reset your historical/modern forms as the true god and their avatar on Earth.
The combat system is very autistic, though.

>>96071482
>Fireborn
I’m not familiar with that, I’d love to hear more. Also, how would you have handled dragons if you had had a say on things?

>>96026899 (OP)
What are the key aspects of a good god-level game in your opinion?

>>96026899 (OP)
Does this art vaguely remind you of Scion’s art? Like the girl with the gun and lightning powers here paralleling a certain Scion of Thor. Or am I just seeing things?

>>96078929
You mean Eric Donner? Yeah, I see it too.

>electronigga center stage

Beyond parody at this point

>>96076619
Depends on the style of god really, there are so many from urban fantasy (American Gods) to classic myth to Exalted style wuxia nonsense. What type are you planning on playing?

>>96063466
Nobilis is great at capturing a sense of truly divine power. Mechanically though, it makes Scion look good.

I'm not morally opposed to Diceless games, but the grand-daddy, Amber, kind of showcased how at some point the system is really so paper thin that it all becomes an exercise in GM arbitration. Nobilis has more parts, but it still relies on said arbitration (and that's only when explicitly telling the GM to say "yes" won't work). It's a setting in search of system, and it's had three editions to do so.

2ed is a blast to read though.

>>96075301
Not that OP and it's been literal decades at this point, but basically Fireborn has this rich and vibrant system that falls apart when you realize you can shift your stats around as needed. Once you gut that little rule out, you then discover the system favors uber-stats for different scenarios (i.e. the guy with the best X stat will win combat). It's a very early 90s mechanical design packaged in mid-00's graphics. Neat setting ideas though, just needed more work and expansion both.

>>96086061
I wonder if it was even intentional or just subconscious on their parts?

>>96032221
Not OP, but what precisely makes it look so bad?

>>96030862
You should go in understanding that most anons have ZERO experience with this shit, and therefore are going to make a snap judgment based on the pic. And I agree, it looks kind of faggy.

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>>96101241
Not Anon, but it's "talented high school kid" art quality is depicting a scene that looks like it could've been taken out of half-a-dozen other games. "Are we playing Mage the Ascension/Awakening, or Dresden Files, or a supes game, or Armageddon, or..."

Compare it with linked art. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece either, but it looks better, looks suitably epic (angels and demons and creatures and giants, all drowning around this woman in the center), and doesn't scream "supes disguised as gods disguised as another generic urban fantasy game".

>>96090141
You can only pull twice, iirc. It's designed so that you can do a change if you end up in a situation you were not prepared for, but doesn't go indefintely so base stats do matter, as does reading the room and ending things hard and fast instead of dragging them out.
It's one of the more interesting ways I've seen to give the PCs a quick boost to suit their superior nature, better than spending bennies and even Godbound's basic room-clearing miracle.

>>96026899 (OP)
Does it have any pre-generated characters or advice for players going in like Scion does?

>>96095603
Subconscious racism

>>96110356
How were they being racist?

>>96114469

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElectricBlackGuy

Considering the owner of Third Eye Games is Black, it's either an homage or a subconscious thing.

>>96114469
It isn't. It's lazy and cliche, but the electric black guy thing came from bypassing copyright issues and loose adaptation to the point people accidentally created 20 of them

>>96109868
Serious question, have you ever actually played an rpg

>>96116988
>but the electric black guy thing came from bypassing copyright issues and loose adaptation to the point people accidentally created 20 of them
Okay, I'd like to hear more about this, but thanks for clearing things up.

>>96063466
It tries to make up for how absolute you can be having tiers of effect, kinda similar to Mage dialed to 11 so instead of tier 1 being sensing it's creating your personal pocket space club house; and a macro plot about good and evil ocassionally joining forces to stop intruding chaos super bad baddies. The specifics kind of get in the way of playing something different, but if you drop them you lose any chance of balancing anything (which some people like).

There's a System Mastery episode about it if you like podcasts, I can't really recall what they said about it but they surely made fun of it

>>96117367
Jesus he's not even trying anymore