1) I did get a free copy of this game for my playtesting efforts. 2)I got the PDF rather than the hard copy. 3) There is a GM's guide for NGoM, which I am rolling into this review. Sadly, the GM's guide and the Player's Guide are two separate entities. This may not bother some people, but it rubs me the wrong way.

And since that's out of the way:

BASICS OF THE GAME

You are a new God, fresh from the wells of Heaven (so to speak), and you have latched onto a struggling human tribe in a fantasy world. You protect and nurture your worshipers (without overdoing it), and in return they provide you with sweet, sweet Belief which allows you to perform Miracles and keep yourself in existence. Because you are as of yet a tiny little deity in the big ocean of Reality, you might choose to band with other tiny deities and form a Pantheon for mutual protection, not to mention how much easier it makes finding a partner for Bridge.

Of course, life even for the Gods is not simple in this world. In this world, humans occupy the niche that kobolds or orcs get in other games. They are successful only because they breed fast, are willing to do whatever it takes, and they draw new Gods to them the way that dung draws flies. Yet because of this vitality, they have the largest number of gods (a few of whom are quite successful), and there's plenty of room to grow.

The obstacles a New God faces include: Elder Races (and their gods), Leviathans (a twisted subspecies of god that feeds on Terror rather than Belief, the Titans/bogeymen of this setting), and other gods of Humanity who are leery of new upstarts. Not to mention the classics of catastrophes, disease, and heretical factions in one's religion. But it's all good when the time for worship comes around, and the outpouring of sweet, sweet Belief comes in and refreshes an exhausted deity.

MECHANICS

Conflicts are inevitable, and the conflict system involves d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, and d12s. The higher you roll, the better. The highest roll technically wins either that round, or the entire conflict if the players and GM agree that it should be a once-and-done affair. Interesting side-note: this RPG is also designed to be a straightforward boardgame a la Risk, and can be switched back and forth between RPG and boardgame relatively easily if the GM and players desire. There is, of course, a scaling mechanic that differentiates between attacks between individuals, attacks between villages, attacks between nations, and lopsided attacks. (In the playtest, this seemed to work out about right: most lopsided conflicts were likely to crush the weaker side relatively quickly, unless divine assistance was at hand.) The type of dice you have available to you are usually d6s, although if you incarnate into a mortal form, you roll d10s for everything except those skills that fall under your domains, for which you roll a d12.

Character creation, once you decide on the type of god you want to play, is a breeze. You start out with a pool of Belief points (usually 50)and 100 followers. You pick an overarching Primary domain you are most known for (Birth, Death, Adventure, Magic, The Forest, and so on), and three Secondary Domains (Intrigue, Lightning, Cats, Children, Bad Luck, and so on). This is important, as those miracles that fall within you Primary or Secondary Domains get a cost break. Also important are your Inclinations: There are four different types of Miracle in this game (Creation, Destruction, Transformation, and Control). You are In Harmony with one (and get cost breaks to miracles that fall withing that broad purview), In Balance with two (no cost break), and In Opposition to one (which means it costs more to do a Miracle within that purview). A handy hint: figuring out your God's personality in advance makes these choices much easier. Then you fill in the details: What does your God's mortal form look like? What does your God's deific form look like? Where in the Heavens does your God dwell, and what does His/Her/Its Realm look like? What Commandments must your God's Followers obey? And, of course, what handy signature Miracles does your God like to use?

Example God: Cabalobac of the Shining, Shifting Sands

I want to make a god of magic, as I like wizards and sorcerers. I want to make him a god not of pale bookworms, but a trickster god of daring and cunning, a flashy and magnificent bastard. He sees himself as humanity's liberator, changing unfortunate events into fortunate ones, raising the humble and cunning and lowering the mighty but clueless.

So I give him his standard 50 Belief and his 100 followers, stuck out in the desert somewhere. His Primary Domain is Magic, the miraculous changing of one thing to another. His Secondary Domains are Accidents, Gambling, and Overcoming Obstacles. He is In Harmony with Transmutation (changing something into something else, or changing the location of something), In Balance with Creation and Destruction, and In Opposition to Control. This last may seem an odd choice, as Control covers illusions and communication as well as outright mental control, but Cabalobac wishes to be seen as a liberator, not a sinister controller. If something is in your way, make something better, destroy it, or best of all change it into something useful, but don't enslave it! That's just wrong!

His symbol is a pair of glass dice, he is at home in Perpetual Spring (the season of renewal), his paradise is a lavish den of vices for his faithful, and his Commandments are 1)Let not unbelievers know the business of my temples, 2)Act always as if you had an audience present, and live life as a great play, and 3) Use not the gift of magic for enslavement, but liberation. He generally gets a lot of thieves and people desperate to change their lot in life.

Miracles are, as you may have inferred, paid for by Belief points. As a new deity, you only get Belief equal to 20% of your total Followers per year, so you need to do three things to get ahead:

1) Get those Followers fruitful and multiplying! 2) Grab converts whenever you can. 3) Be frugal and build your Miracles cost-effectively.

This is a nice, creativity-stimulating sub-game in NGoM, and hardly math-intensive. They even include a table on the bottom of the character sheets to speed of cost calculation. And miracle-creation is truly only limited to what you can imagine (and what's in your Celestial bank account). The only thing you can't do in this game is create more worshipers; some things you simply have to do the old-fashioned way. In short, it really makes you feel like a God. They even include basic rules on how to make your Heroes (divinely amplified servants of yours) and artifacts (special things you create and sustain by spending a certain amount of Belief in a year.) This section could use more meat on those bones, but there is rumored to be a supplement coming out soon, and the examples are enough to make extrapolations.

Also, there are tables that show you how your Belief pool rises and falls after every victory or defeat. There's also a random table of odd things that could befall your religion every year, and mechanics for what happens when your worshipers become too dependent on you. (Hint: they get spoiled and lazy.)

SETTING

The game is set in a fantasy world that's familiar enough to adjust to, but has bits that peer out over the lip of novel. It's a respectable setting to play in, but the game is simple enough to shift the setting to modern day, or a different fantasy world, or whatever you wish.

There are two main known Continents of the Known World. Humans multiply rapidly, but suffer at the hands of Salamanders (lizard people, warlike social Darwinists) and Jurelian Giants (rampage-happy four-armed immense brutes) and their gods. They coexist somewhat peacefully with Gnomes (taciturn semi-stone people) Undines (distant water-people who remember that humanity was a mistaken creation of one of their now-disgraced gods), and Sylphs (bird-people with a talent for lore and gossip), and their gods are standoffish, but not malign. Humanity is cheerfully ignored by the Wood Nymphs both Light and Dark, a race that is easily analogous to Tolkien-esque Eldar. They are elitist pricks in this setting also, but in this world there's a valid reason for it: instead of worshiping gods, they worship themselves and each other, and thus live almost forever and can perform minor miracles (major ones if the community as a whole is threatened). The Light Wood Nymphs make use of tools, and tithe some portion of their Belief to their elders, and treat humanity with amused scorn laced with pity. The Dark Wood Nymphs are racist, xenophobic cannibals who disdain tools and revere only their ability to make Miracles, and they are strictly egalitarian with belief. They make no deals and accept no quarter. Both branches live in the forests and guard them jealously.

There are a few human cities, but most humans farm and live in villages. It's a Bronze Age life for most. If you don't die of disease or catastrophe, you might get killed by a Giant rampage, enslaved and/or eaten by the Salamanders, or killed at war with another human tribe. Were it not for human gods, they would have been wiped out a long time ago. So not only do you play a God, you also play a Hero to a tribe of your Followers. Belief is your reward, and what a reward it is. And if there's any trouble, and your Followers pray to you, you can scry the area, find out what's wrong, and hopefully fix it.

Watch out for Leviathans. If Belief is a balanced, healthy diet, then Terror is crack cocaine for gods. Too much, and you risk becoming a Leviathan, a godlike creature of misery and horror that torments then destroys to gain its fuel. Each Leviathan has its signature way of gaining Terror, so that its victims know who is harrying them to death, and a weakness that clever gods can exploit to neutralize it. No matter the god, the one thing that unites them is their hatred for Leviathans. Surprising allies can be made when Leviathan hunting. Many examples are given, and for me, Leviathans are one of the high points of this setting.

(Here I'll interject a small complaint. If you as a God do awful things in the presence of your worshipers, you can gain Terror points that operate similarly to belief points, except you can only use them to do Miracles that create more Terror. If you get Terror equal to more than half your rating in Belief, you become an NPC Leviathan, with no hope of coming back.

This bothers me. In our own history, humans have worshiped gods that routinely did Terror-inspiring things. In this games rules, they'd all be Leviathans by now. This strikes me as an attempt to inject modern morals into a game of old-school deities. Back in darker times, the sight of your God doing nasty things to your tribal enemies would probably be seen as something wonderful rather than horrible, and what human being in this setting will have any empathy for Salamanders, Jurelian Giants, or Dark Wood Nymphs getting theirs, not to mention Leviathans? Besides, humans in this settings are somewhat calloused to bad things happening. It's largely an accepted fact of life for most people.

The good news is that, unlike Belief, you have to escalate your atrocities to get more Terror. So if you wind up with some, you can bleed it out in minor atrocities. You can also get your priests to convince the people of how wonderful and kind you are, canceling out some of the Terror. And it's easy enough to houserule that gaining Terror only applies to Gods who do bad things to their Followers, or their Followers' allies.)

At this point, there's one other thing I should note. Gods don't fight Gods directly in the Heavens. There's no point: anything destroyed in the Heavens just reforms. The only way to kill off a God is to choke off the supply of Belief. Luckily, Belief lasts until it's spent, but that's cold comfort when the only way to get stuff done is to spend Belief. Thus, most gods interact through a comedy of manners, about which there are no hard and fast rules. I regard that as unfortunate, and hope we get a supplement about it soon.

There's also an elaborate cosmology about how baby Gods are made, and the introduction of the shadowy being called Fate. In the GM's guide, there is an elaborate backstory of the creation of this world and a sample adventure that looks like a glorified dungeon crawl, but actually does touch on many facts of life for new Gods. There's also, in the Player's Guide, a sample Pantheon to give you ideas, and sample miracles.

IN SUMMATION

I like this game. It's a solid piece of work, and what it skips over can be extrapolated easily enough until supplements come out. It sets a decent bar for god games, with only a few things that bothered me. As a plus, its mechanics are simple enough that it could be easily ported over to any setting you like.

Be warned: It's system is granular. Some players may not like the idea of their gods potentially ending up as Leviathans. There could be more information about artifacts and heroes. And splitting it into a Player's Guide and GM's Guide seems unnecessary to me. Also, I believe players should start with more Belief points, in order to get more familiar with the system early on. There are typos, but nothing that gets in the way.

But on the positive side, Leviathans are awesome, the setting has some clever spots, the Miracle system is simple yet expansive enough to cover almost all miracles, and the system is easy and intuitive. It's a boardgame and an RPG.

It's not ground-breaking, but it gets the job done. This is a woefully underappreciated game, and it deserves a lot more attention than it has gotten.

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