The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I love superhero gaming. I have ever since my first game of Villains and Vigilantes. I moved from there to Champions, Marvel Superheroes, and many others. I still make a point of checking out any new superhero game that enters the market. So, when I asked a friend of mine to start a new game and he said that he had an intriguing new game of supers in World War II that he would like to try out I jumped at the chance.

I will be frank right at the start of this essay: I did not like Godlike. It has been a very long time since I played a game where the actual system so completely ruined my enjoyment of a game. I understand that people were blown away by the play tests with Mr. Stolze at GenCon. He probably runs a hell of a game. It just didn't do it for me. I will try to be specific as to my points of dissatisfaction.

This is a totally a play test review. I do not own, nor have I read through more than a small amount of the book. I did not take notes of every event as it happened, this is all from memory. If I mention a game mechanic, it is how that mechanic was applied in the game and not necessarily how it is written. Since I don't own the book, I will not go into detailed explanations of how the character creation and game systems are supposed to work, just how they worked for me as a player. My group played four sessions of Godlike, plus a session to create characters, before we abandoned it for a different game.

After hearing a description of the game I checked out the web site, and read the rpg.net reviews. The web page looked great, lots of information and some very interesting characters and fan fiction. So far so good. The reviews on rpg.net were universally glowing. In fact, of the five capsule reviews there were three people that rated Godlike a 5 for Substance, and two that rated it a 4. The Style ratings were four 4's and one 5. In terms of Godlike mechanics a 3x5, 2x4, and 4x4 are pretty stellar results. What could go wrong?

As with many superhero games, you never know exactly how your concept for a particular hero will work out until you try it. So, we sat down to make characters. The default setting is supposed to be grim and dangerous, so I was willing to accept that beginning characters would have very low attributes and skills. I had heard over and over again how dangerous snipers were in Godlike. So, I created a scout with a power (or Talent) allowing him to detect people. I wanted a limitation to reduce the power's cost, and one of the examples was "doesn't work on holy ground." Ok, why would this limitation apply to my character? I decided to make him a vampire, with a damaging bite attack that required him to hit his opponent in hand to hand combat. Easy enough. Other friends made other characters; I don't know the specifics of how their character creation process went.

Just to see how the system would work, we played a couple of strictly tactical games. You know, you are wandering through the woods and come upon a German patrol, that type of thing. I had given my character a pretty high sneaking skill (a total dice pool of 5 dice). So, I roll to sneak up on a German. Hm, no matches, the German hears me. So, he turns and sees me. His rifle skill is 4 dice, and my hand to hand skill is 4 dice. I say I'm going to charge and bite him, the GM says the German will shoot me. We both roll. No matches. This went on for quite a while. Matching two numbers out of four dice does not give you a very good chance of success. Basically, it all came down to who rolled a match first winning the fight. I couldn't take a rifle hit and keep going; he couldn't take my vampiric bite. After several minutes, we all came to the conclusion that our experiment had pretty much sucked (no pun intended) and we needed to try something else. Still, we felt that we had a pretty good feel for how the game worked.

I made a different character for the actual game. I decided that rolling a seemingly endless succession of failures just didn't provide much entertainment, so I took Hyper Coordination as a Talent. I looked over the options, and decided to buy five "hard" dice, which used up all of my points for buying Talents. This meant that I retained my high stealth abilities, and had the added benefit of having much higher combat skills.

One of the other players had made a very similar character. He had given his character Hyper Coordination as well; I believe five regular dice and one "wiggle" die. He had a total dice pool in Pistol Skill of 9 dice. I may be remembering his dice allocation slightly wrong, I know he had also spent all of his character points on Coordination. I thought this was a good thing, as it allowed us to see the difference between normal, hard, and wiggle dice in play.

The GM explained to us that people with Hyper Skills and Attributes had powers that were always active, and therefore they would always be immediately identifiable as Talents (or superhumans). Shades of Highlander. No problem there. He also explained the concept of Willpower bidding wars to see if you could stop someone's talents from functioning. I thought this was pretty similar to Reality conflict in Torg (an old favorite), so I liked the concept. Then, we got thrown off by the examples in the book. One example states that you could not use Willpower to prevent a character with Hyper Strength from throwing a tank at you, as the power only affects the using character and the rest is just physics. It then says that you could use Willpower to prevent someone with Hyper Coordination from shooting you. This made no sense to me. There is no difference between the Strength and Coordination examples. Hyper Coordination only affects the character using the power; being shot is a function of the physics of the firearm and ammunition. It still makes no sense to me. We decided to try it both ways and see how we liked it.

SESSION 1 Our first scenario was a training exercise where the Talents faced off against each other and the other supers in the "Talent Operations Group". We moved off into the training facility (set in a ghost town in Arizona). I decided to sneak up on the NPC talent who had been bragging about how lethal he was. Okay, I have five hard dice, which is to say that I have five 10's (a 5x10 in Godlike terms). I rolled the three normal dice in my dice pool from my normal attribute and skill. No other 10's. Of course, there was no way in hell my victim was going to roll a Perception check higher than 5x10. He never knew I was coming. So, next round I shoot him. I roll my three normal dice, getting a single 10. I now have a 6x10. That is to say, I hit him in the head for 8 damage (width of 6 2 for the pistol). He was dead, dead, dead, and his little sonic blast power did nothing for him.

I decided that I would face off against the other super pistolero. So, I snuck up on him and yelled, "Draw, pardner!" The GM suggested that maybe one of us should dodge, and we discussed it. "The player with the "widest" role goes first, right?" "Yes, and remember he has nine dice including one wiggle die!" "So what, I shoot him." I rolled, getting an astounding three 10's, for an 8x10. My victim also didn't dodge, and rolled a mish-mash of different numbers. His wiggle die gave him a guaranteed match, but he can't touch a width of eight. For that matter, he couldn't have touched a width of five. So, down he goes. We looked at each other across the table. "Let's try that again," he said. We all agreed, now more intrigued by how the rules would handle this little situation than by any role-playing.

Replay 1: I shoot and he dodges. I don't get any extra 10's, so I have a 5x10. He dodges, this time getting a stellar 3x10. He reduces my width by three, still leaving me with a 2x10. So, I still hit him in the head for 4 damage and incapacitate him. Let's try that again.

Replay 2: I dodge and shoot at the same time. This is permitted because of my superhuman Coordination. I roll my extra three dice and get a single 10, so I end up with a 3x10 (dodge) and a 3x10 (shoot). He rolls and gets a 3x9 (normally a kick ass roll). Okay, my dodge totally eliminates his roll, and I still shoot him in the head and knock him unconscious.

Replay 3: We both shoot, but we engage in a Willpower war. Since we have equal Willpower, we either both run out of Willpower and are left powerless or we both loose some Willpower and have no effect. Less than totally satisfactory. End of first session.

SESSION 2

The scenario for the evening involves breaking a resistance member out of a German holding cell (really just a commandeered barn) in a provincial French town. We decide to hijack a German transport truck and pose as soldiers. After the usual rigmarole our characters are hidden under blankets of snow waiting for the truck to arrive. I shoot both men in the font seat (clearly visible through the windshield). I roll no successes, and so get a 3x10 and a 2x10 from my 5 hard dice. Both combatants are out of the picture. After the truck comes to a crashing halt, we decide that we should take a prisoner. I tell the GM that I want to shoot one enemy in the leg. He explains that with hard dice I will kill him no matter where I hit, it's just one of the disadvantages of taking hard dice instead of wiggle dice.

Okay, so the wiggle dice allows a player to make called shots with impunity? That would seem to help justify the astronomical price tag. Well, no. The called shot rules involve subtracting one dice from your dice pool, starting with wiggle and then hard dice. So, a wiggle dice means that you may take an automatic match with the hit location of your choice, but you still have to roll the hit location with your remaining dice. If you want an actual called shot to a specific location you are on your own, unless you have more than one wiggle die, which you won't have with a starting character.

So, my character watches for re-enforcements while the rest of the group takes a prisoner.

Safely hidden in enemy uniforms we invade the enemy "compound", really just a barn on the edge of town. Several of the characters speak German. Once we are through the fence, I easily eliminate the two guards at the barn. My character acquires the nickname "Death on a Cracker".

SESSION 3

Using information obtained from the Resistance man we freed, we need to rescue the family of a French Talent from a heavily armed base. It seems the nasty German SS are using the threat of harm to his family to coerce him into helping the Axis. Those evil bastards! Since there will be a lot more guards and security this time we make an elaborate plan. Basically, the others cause a diversion out front, while I sneak in from the back.

My "hushpuppy" pistol gets a workout, eliminating guard dogs. Chance of a guard dog beating my 5x10 so that he can act first and bark out a warning? Zero. I am now thoroughly bored, and decide to give the next dog a sporting chance, so I split my roll (still a 5x10) between the dog and his handler. The handler actually gets a 2x8, but I still go first and take them both out.

The battle out front is pitched, and dangerous. The other Hyper Coordination character is having a hard time of it. He hits every round, but rarely gets head hits. The Nazi soldiers take hits from his pistols to other locations and keep on coming. He's getting more and more frustrated as I easily kill any German that pops his head around a corner, and he is under heavy fire from wounded but not incapacitated enemies.

In the mean time I break in through the back of the chateau and engage the enemy inside. They never see me coming, so a grenade (Surprise!) quickly eliminates most of the opposition. Then, I come face to face with our first enemy talent, Der Wolfe. Wolfie comes to assault me with his claws, I shoot him. If you don't know whose action went first, you haven't been reading the rest of the review. Another funny game mechanic, my enemy has a damage reducing power, but since I go first it doesn't take effect in time to save him. Whatever.

We knew from the Resistance that there were two talents in the house. I knew that the other talent was holed up in a room on the upper floor. Der Blitzkrieger (I don't know if I'm spelling it right) has a powerful lightning attack. One hit and I am dead for sure. So what? Round one I burst into the room and spend the entire round dodging. My 5x10 dodge easily defeats his attack. Next round I go first, so he goes down.

We have a lengthy post-mortem on the game, and try to decide what exactly is up with the game system. We all come to the conclusion that there are basically only 3 things that will kill my character: 1) Surprise attacks 2) Indirect fire like grenades, bombs, and mortar rounds, 3) Enemy talents with more Willpower than my character has. The rest of the play group is feeling kind of out of the loop by this point. We all agree to give it one more shot, with the threat level ramped way up.

SESSION 4

We exfiltrate the family of the French Talent. We decide to do the "dress up like Germans to run the road block" thing. Well, this time the squad of enemy troopers has a couple of talents with them. Since two of our characters are "always on", they spot us as soon as we come into view. The show down takes place at a crossroads where the Germans have blocked the road with a couple of half-tracks. Of course, if they can see us then we can see them. We figure out pretty easily that the two people in plain clothes standing by the German soldiers must be Talents. So, round 1 begins.

I run off into the woods, dodging as I go. In the meantime, the enemy talents go to war with the other characters in the group. This time we go the whole nine yards: Willpower wars, incoming grenade fire, all the stops pulled out. The Axis knows that there is a powerful Talent Operation Group at work behind their lines. One of the players has a character with a Talent that allows him to absorb kinetic energy and return it in the form of explosions. He absorbs some machinegun fire, and blows up one of the half-tracks. In the meantime one of the enemy Talents hits the other Hyper Coordination guy with a stun blast and knocks him unconscious. However, next round I am within pistol range and bye bye Ms. Stun Blast (never did find out her name). The fourth character had spent the whole time keeping the final enemy Talent from assaulting us by engaging him in a Willpower war. Mr. "I can take machinegun fire and keep moving" is the obvious target, so the Germans target him with mortar rounds. He uses the energy to blow up the last talent. We mop up the soldiers.

This was the closest we came to having an acceptable night of play.

Again, we sat down and had a lengthy discussion. Supers in WWII is a good campaign setting. I'm a big fan of Marvel's Invaders. The setting of Godlike seems very well done. They have a good alternate history, and a good description of how having supers in the war might have affected things. I even like the Willpower struggle rules. However, the "roll dice and count matches" game system blows chunks. In our experience, allowing hard and wiggle dice makes normal dice almost worthless. Taking hard dice makes the game far too "all or nothing". Wiggle dice just don't justify the horrendous point cost. This seems to be an example of a creative team coming up with a different system just for the sake of being different.

We all came to the conclusion that we would enjoy the game a lot more if we kept the setting and Willpower rules, and junked the rest of the game system in favor of Marvel Superheroes or DC Heroes. No, they aren't as deadly, but so what? The "plan well or perish" aspect of the game didn't really seem to work out that well anyway.

I have felt for a long time that there are too many capsule reviews, and not nearly enough playtest reviews on rpg.net. Not just any play test, but play tests over several sessions so that you get a good feel for a game. Things that look good on paper sometimes just don't work out. I would love to hear from the people that initially reviewed Godlike. Have you actually run the game for more than a session or two? If so, what were your experiences?

If we were interpreting certain rules wrong, I am open to pointers as well. I don't think we will ever go back to Godlike in any case. There are too many good products on the market to try to patch together a good game from a system that we didn't like.

To sum up: I love the style and setting of Godlike, but I hate the game system. I think it does a very poor job of modeling the type of play that it is supposed to support.

Godlike
Godlike Playtest Review by Reed on 09/12/02 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money) A good concept that is let down by a system that looses playability in its attempt to be different. Product: Godlike Author: Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Pagan Publishing Line: Godlike Cost: Page count: Year published: ISBN: SKU: Comp copy?: no Playtest Review by Reed on 09/12/02 Genre tags: Historical Superhero	I love superhero gaming. I have ever since my first game of Villains and Vigilantes. I moved from there to Champions, Marvel Superheroes, and many others. I still make a point of checking out any new superhero game that enters the market. So, when I asked a friend of mine to start a new game and he said that he had an intriguing new game of supers in World War II that he would like to try out I jumped at the chance. I will be frank right at the start of this essay: I did not like Godlike. It has been a very long time since I played a game where the actual system so completely ruined my enjoyment of a game. I understand that people were blown away by the play tests with Mr. Stolze at GenCon. He probably runs a hell of a game. It just didn't do it for me. I will try to be specific as to my points of dissatisfaction. This is a totally a play test review. I do not own, nor have I read through more than a small amount of the book. I did not take notes of every event as it happened, this is all from memory. If I mention a game mechanic, it is how that mechanic was applied in the game and not necessarily how it is written. Since I don't own the book, I will not go into detailed explanations of how the character creation and game systems are supposed to work, just how they worked for me as a player. My group played four sessions of Godlike, plus a session to create characters, before we abandoned it for a different game. After hearing a description of the game I checked out the web site, and read the rpg.net reviews. The web page looked great, lots of information and some very interesting characters and fan fiction. So far so good. The reviews on rpg.net were universally glowing. In fact, of the five capsule reviews there were three people that rated Godlike a 5 for Substance, and two that rated it a 4. The Style ratings were four 4's and one 5. In terms of Godlike mechanics a 3x5, 2x4, and 4x4 are pretty stellar results. What could go wrong? As with many superhero games, you never know exactly how your concept for a particular hero will work out until you try it. So, we sat down to make characters. The default setting is supposed to be grim and dangerous, so I was willing to accept that beginning characters would have very low attributes and skills. I had heard over and over again how dangerous snipers were in Godlike. So, I created a scout with a power (or Talent) allowing him to detect people. I wanted a limitation to reduce the power's cost, and one of the examples was "doesn't work on holy ground." Ok, why would this limitation apply to my character? I decided to make him a vampire, with a damaging bite attack that required him to hit his opponent in hand to hand combat. Easy enough. Other friends made other characters; I don't know the specifics of how their character creation process went. Just to see how the system would work, we played a couple of strictly tactical games. You know, you are wandering through the woods and come upon a German patrol, that type of thing. I had given my character a pretty high sneaking skill (a total dice pool of 5 dice). So, I roll to sneak up on a German. Hm, no matches, the German hears me. So, he turns and sees me. His rifle skill is 4 dice, and my hand to hand skill is 4 dice. I say I'm going to charge and bite him, the GM says the German will shoot me. We both roll. No matches. This went on for quite a while. Matching two numbers out of four dice does not give you a very good chance of success. Basically, it all came down to who rolled a match first winning the fight. I couldn't take a rifle hit and keep going; he couldn't take my vampiric bite. After several minutes, we all came to the conclusion that our experiment had pretty much sucked (no pun intended) and we needed to try something else. Still, we felt that we had a pretty good feel for how the game worked. I made a different character for the actual game. I decided that rolling a seemingly endless succession of failures just didn't provide much entertainment, so I took Hyper Coordination as a Talent. I looked over the options, and decided to buy five "hard" dice, which used up all of my points for buying Talents. This meant that I retained my high stealth abilities, and had the added benefit of having much higher combat skills. One of the other players had made a very similar character. He had given his character Hyper Coordination as well; I believe five regular dice and one "wiggle" die. He had a total dice pool in Pistol Skill of 9 dice. I may be remembering his dice allocation slightly wrong, I know he had also spent all of his character points on Coordination. I thought this was a good thing, as it allowed us to see the difference between normal, hard, and wiggle dice in play. The GM explained to us that people with Hyper Skills and Attributes had powers that were always active, and therefore they would always be immediately identifiable as Talents (or superhumans). Shades of Highlander. No problem there. He also explained the concept of Willpower bidding wars to see if you could stop someone's talents from functioning. I thought this was pretty similar to Reality conflict in Torg (an old favorite), so I liked the concept. Then, we got thrown off by the examples in the book. One example states that you could not use Willpower to prevent a character with Hyper Strength from throwing a tank at you, as the power only affects the using character and the rest is just physics. It then says that you could use Willpower to prevent someone with Hyper Coordination from shooting you. This made no sense to me. There is no difference between the Strength and Coordination examples. Hyper Coordination only affects the character using the power; being shot is a function of the physics of the firearm and ammunition. It still makes no sense to me. We decided to try it both ways and see how we liked it. SESSION 1 Our first scenario was a training exercise where the Talents faced off against each other and the other supers in the "Talent Operations Group". We moved off into the training facility (set in a ghost town in Arizona). I decided to sneak up on the NPC talent who had been bragging about how lethal he was. Okay, I have five hard dice, which is to say that I have five 10's (a 5x10 in Godlike terms). I rolled the three normal dice in my dice pool from my normal attribute and skill. No other 10's. Of course, there was no way in hell my victim was going to roll a Perception check higher than 5x10. He never knew I was coming. So, next round I shoot him. I roll my three normal dice, getting a single 10. I now have a 6x10. That is to say, I hit him in the head for 8 damage (width of 6 2 for the pistol). He was dead, dead, dead, and his little sonic blast power did nothing for him. I decided that I would face off against the other super pistolero. So, I snuck up on him and yelled, "Draw, pardner!" The GM suggested that maybe one of us should dodge, and we discussed it. "The player with the "widest" role goes first, right?" "Yes, and remember he has nine dice including one wiggle die!" "So what, I shoot him." I rolled, getting an astounding three 10's, for an 8x10. My victim also didn't dodge, and rolled a mish-mash of different numbers. His wiggle die gave him a guaranteed match, but he can't touch a width of eight. For that matter, he couldn't have touched a width of five. So, down he goes. We looked at each other across the table. "Let's try that again," he said. We all agreed, now more intrigued by how the rules would handle this little situation than by any role-playing. Replay 1: I shoot and he dodges. I don't get any extra 10's, so I have a 5x10. He dodges, this time getting a stellar 3x10. He reduces my width by three, still leaving me with a 2x10. So, I still hit him in the head for 4 damage and incapacitate him. Let's try that again. Replay 2: I dodge and shoot at the same time. This is permitted because of my superhuman Coordination. I roll my extra three dice and get a single 10, so I end up with a 3x10 (dodge) and a 3x10 (shoot). He rolls and gets a 3x9 (normally a kick ass roll). Okay, my dodge totally eliminates his roll, and I still shoot him in the head and knock him unconscious. Replay 3: We both shoot, but we engage in a Willpower war. Since we have equal Willpower, we either both run out of Willpower and are left powerless or we both loose some Willpower and have no effect. Less than totally satisfactory. End of first session. SESSION 2 The scenario for the evening involves breaking a resistance member out of a German holding cell (really just a commandeered barn) in a provincial French town. We decide to hijack a German transport truck and pose as soldiers. After the usual rigmarole our characters are hidden under blankets of snow waiting for the truck to arrive. I shoot both men in the font seat (clearly visible through the windshield). I roll no successes, and so get a 3x10 and a 2x10 from my 5 hard dice. Both combatants are out of the picture. After the truck comes to a crashing halt, we decide that we should take a prisoner. I tell the GM that I want to shoot one enemy in the leg. He explains that with hard dice I will kill him no matter where I hit, it's just one of the disadvantages of taking hard dice instead of wiggle dice. Okay, so the wiggle dice allows a player to make called shots with impunity? That would seem to help justify the astronomical price tag. Well, no. The called shot rules involve subtracting one dice from your dice pool, starting with wiggle and then hard dice. So, a wiggle dice means that you may take an automatic match with the hit location of your choice, but you still have to roll the hit location with your remaining dice. If you want an actual called shot to a specific location you are on your own, unless you have more than one wiggle die, which you won't have with a starting character. So, my character watches for re-enforcements while the rest of the group takes a prisoner. Safely hidden in enemy uniforms we invade the enemy "compound", really just a barn on the edge of town. Several of the characters speak German. Once we are through the fence, I easily eliminate the two guards at the barn. My character acquires the nickname "Death on a Cracker". SESSION 3 Using information obtained from the Resistance man we freed, we need to rescue the family of a French Talent from a heavily armed base. It seems the nasty German SS are using the threat of harm to his family to coerce him into helping the Axis. Those evil bastards! Since there will be a lot more guards and security this time we make an elaborate plan. Basically, the others cause a diversion out front, while I sneak in from the back. My "hushpuppy" pistol gets a workout, eliminating guard dogs. Chance of a guard dog beating my 5x10 so that he can act first and bark out a warning? Zero. I am now thoroughly bored, and decide to give the next dog a sporting chance, so I split my roll (still a 5x10) between the dog and his handler. The handler actually gets a 2x8, but I still go first and take them both out. The battle out front is pitched, and dangerous. The other Hyper Coordination character is having a hard time of it. He hits every round, but rarely gets head hits. The Nazi soldiers take hits from his pistols to other locations and keep on coming. He's getting more and more frustrated as I easily kill any German that pops his head around a corner, and he is under heavy fire from wounded but not incapacitated enemies. In the mean time I break in through the back of the chateau and engage the enemy inside. They never see me coming, so a grenade (Surprise!) quickly eliminates most of the opposition. Then, I come face to face with our first enemy talent, Der Wolfe. Wolfie comes to assault me with his claws, I shoot him. If you don't know whose action went first, you haven't been reading the rest of the review. Another funny game mechanic, my enemy has a damage reducing power, but since I go first it doesn't take effect in time to save him. Whatever. We knew from the Resistance that there were two talents in the house. I knew that the other talent was holed up in a room on the upper floor. Der Blitzkrieger (I don't know if I'm spelling it right) has a powerful lightning attack. One hit and I am dead for sure. So what? Round one I burst into the room and spend the entire round dodging. My 5x10 dodge easily defeats his attack. Next round I go first, so he goes down. We have a lengthy post-mortem on the game, and try to decide what exactly is up with the game system. We all come to the conclusion that there are basically only 3 things that will kill my character: 1) Surprise attacks 2) Indirect fire like grenades, bombs, and mortar rounds, 3) Enemy talents with more Willpower than my character has. The rest of the play group is feeling kind of out of the loop by this point. We all agree to give it one more shot, with the threat level ramped way up. SESSION 4 We exfiltrate the family of the French Talent. We decide to do the "dress up like Germans to run the road block" thing. Well, this time the squad of enemy troopers has a couple of talents with them. Since two of our characters are "always on", they spot us as soon as we come into view. The show down takes place at a crossroads where the Germans have blocked the road with a couple of half-tracks. Of course, if they can see us then we can see them. We figure out pretty easily that the two people in plain clothes standing by the German soldiers must be Talents. So, round 1 begins. I run off into the woods, dodging as I go. In the meantime, the enemy talents go to war with the other characters in the group. This time we go the whole nine yards: Willpower wars, incoming grenade fire, all the stops pulled out. The Axis knows that there is a powerful Talent Operation Group at work behind their lines. One of the players has a character with a Talent that allows him to absorb kinetic energy and return it in the form of explosions. He absorbs some machinegun fire, and blows up one of the half-tracks. In the meantime one of the enemy Talents hits the other Hyper Coordination guy with a stun blast and knocks him unconscious. However, next round I am within pistol range and bye bye Ms. Stun Blast (never did find out her name). The fourth character had spent the whole time keeping the final enemy Talent from assaulting us by engaging him in a Willpower war. Mr. "I can take machinegun fire and keep moving" is the obvious target, so the Germans target him with mortar rounds. He uses the energy to blow up the last talent. We mop up the soldiers. This was the closest we came to having an acceptable night of play. Again, we sat down and had a lengthy discussion. Supers in WWII is a good campaign setting. I'm a big fan of Marvel's Invaders. The setting of Godlike seems very well done. They have a good alternate history, and a good description of how having supers in the war might have affected things. I even like the Willpower struggle rules. However, the "roll dice and count matches" game system blows chunks. In our experience, allowing hard and wiggle dice makes normal dice almost worthless. Taking hard dice makes the game far too "all or nothing". Wiggle dice just don't justify the horrendous point cost. This seems to be an example of a creative team coming up with a different system just for the sake of being different. We all came to the conclusion that we would enjoy the game a lot more if we kept the setting and Willpower rules, and junked the rest of the game system in favor of Marvel Superheroes or DC Heroes. No, they aren't as deadly, but so what? The "plan well or perish" aspect of the game didn't really seem to work out that well anyway. I have felt for a long time that there are too many capsule reviews, and not nearly enough playtest reviews on rpg.net. Not just any play test, but play tests over several sessions so that you get a good feel for a game. Things that look good on paper sometimes just don't work out. I would love to hear from the people that initially reviewed Godlike. Have you actually run the game for more than a session or two? If so, what were your experiences? If we were interpreting certain rules wrong, I am open to pointers as well. I don't think we will ever go back to Godlike in any case. There are too many good products on the market to try to patch together a good game from a system that we didn't like. To sum up: I love the style and setting of Godlike, but I hate the game system. I think it does a very poor job of modeling the type of play that it is supposed to support.