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BASICS
This incarnation of 3EG uses a lighter system than its predecessors. System-wise, you roll a d20, then add your Attribute, Skill, and any Modifiers to the total. If you get higher than a Difficulty set by the GM, you succeed. If not, damn. This game also has Critical Failures (roll a 1 and weep openly) and Critical Successes (roll a 20 and do a victory dance). Players and GMs who've run either 4th Edition D&D and/or White Wolf games will pick it up easily enough.
For the setting, you're a brand-new baby God. In modern day. How did this happen? Well, a long time ago, when humanity was just getting to walking upright on permanent basis, a woman stumbled upon SOMETHING. This SOMETHING was feeling chatty, and It talked to her. It was the SOURCE of All Things, and it had set the whole creation process in motion. Then, having decided It liked these new "human" things (and apparently being a bit of a nimrod), It decided to give the woman and a few other humans Dominion over certain things, like Healing, Fertility, Love, Fear, War, Justice, and various other Nouns and Verbs.
These old-school Gods were big and powerful, not like you wimpy little Gods today. They could really Do Stuff. But...they were still human, and petty, and fearful, and greedy. So they listen to this young upstart Zeus, and they come to the SOURCE and cleverly trap it with something made of Itself, called the Gilded Cage. (Remember that "nimrod" thing I mentioned?) Now the SOURCE couldn't take off and/or dominate the Gods. Which was good, because now the Gods could do what humans have done since time immemorial: fight each other.
This is when problems develop, because Coyote finds out much to his surprise that yes, you can actually kill a God, which wasn't supposed to be possible. But it now is, so they start killing each other in earnest. Then they notice their powers declining, to the point where regular humans start to be able to kill them. Then they start dying of old age. Soon, they start realizing that they need to continue to be among humans and being human, or they go mad and start wrecking stuff.
So the Gods, being now just people who could do cool stuff, hid. They passed their Dominions along via bloodline or through misadventure, and soon enough the Rennaisance happened and then the Enlightenment. And then modern day.
Now, the SOURCE is breaking through its Gilded Cage. Outsiders, plants and animals mutated by the SOURCE's energies, are coming back and are after the Gods for revenge. (Remember the Minotaur? Giants? Harpies? Vampires? Werewolves? Yep, all Outsiders.) And the new Gods (who include the PCs among their numbers, of course) have to decide when to break their millenia-long silence and come out to the ones they love, the ones they hate, and to a society that doesn't have much of a place anymore for Gods or Monsters. You are a God, with a Dominion over a Noun or Verb. (Like Nobilis, except a bit more defined and lower in power.) That's awesome and all, but it doesn't pay the rent. You can't go out and advertise what you can do, because the other Gods will likely kill you. So you bartend, work the call centers, play the stock market, and hope for a winning lottery ticket. You try to stay as human as possible, because the Gods of old lost touch with who they were, and they went nuts. But the Outsiders are starting to get brazen, and the power of the Gods is a tempting thing. What do you do?
CHARACTER CREATION
Okay, so you sit down and decide to mine that hoary old c liche: the Bad Seed/Devil Child. (Maybe you watch too many movies about Evil Kids.) So, you look at the Character Creation charts. Obvious Occupation choice for this one is: KId. You get bonuses to being agile and a little boost to reading people, but you get curfews and homework and school. And joy of joys, you get a whole lot of bonus (Build) points to round out your character. This is the clever part of PTG's character creation: the typical min/max characters get less Bonus Points, but the less glamorous ones that come with built-in problems get more.
Okay, now you pick Bonds, which gives you six points to detail who your character focuses on, and how much. You pick 2 points into Adoptive Parents—Devotion, which means you love them quite a bit. You pick Devotion 1 for your pet dog, Max. Let's stop there for now.
Now you put 25 points into POW (strength), AGY (agility and coordination), VIG (health and endurance), IQ (brains), INS (insight and willpower), and CHM (charm, leadership, etc.) Evil Kid should probably have 2 POW, 3 AGY, 4 VIG, 5 IQ, 6 INS, and 5 CHM. He's an Evil Kid, so you need him to be quick and savvy, but not so strong as full-on combat would be suicide. And always, they should be near mind-readers and little manipulators. Now you take 25 points (+ IQ score) and give your little Antichrist the appropriate skills. High points should be Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion, Stealth, a boost to Athletics and Acrobatics, but maybe not so much Marksmanship. This li'l devil does not get his hands dirty.
Now on to the fun part: his God stuff. Let's give him the Dominion of Evil. Along with this, let's give him two Entitlements, which are cool perks he gets for being a God. Let's pick Telepathy and Lucky, two things every growing Lord of Darkness needs to get rid of pesky victims and get away with it. Oh, but wait? What about his Theology, that important step that tells you how your God handles the whole being-a-divine-being issue? One that leaps out at you is the Order of Meskenhet, the “blue bloods” of the God community who try to regulate who gets what Dominion and keep the conspiracy “in the family.” They get 6 bonus BP to spend on things like Wealth and Worshippers, which is exactly what a Force of Evil needs to build his foundation. But they also come with a 3-point Mentor, someone who guides and trains the new God in how to be a proper God of (X).
Suddenly, the idea of a kid born and bred to be the next God of Evil pops into your mind, which makes an interesting twist. And now, instead of your cliche Evil Brat, you get the idea for a kid who's basically a good kid at heart, just as mischevious as any, but when mischief becomes homework, it loses its appeal. Maybe he's not looking forward to fulfilling his role in God society. Now you've got character conflict, which is a good thing! Now we do Manifestations, which is how he uses his Dominion of Evil. Let's say we put 2 in Minion (which has a +2 bonus because he's in the Order), a 1 in Puppetry (which has a +1 because of his Order membership), and put 3 in Shaping. What does this mean? Well, he can conjure up spirits of evil, talk people into doing evil, take control of evil people, make evil puppets or objects, give people bonuses to do evil, make evil manipulate a person's fate, and give himself extra power to accomplish evil deeds. Not too shabby! Now we do Gifts and Drawbacks, which are the typical bonuses and bad stuff. This comes out of the 13 Build Points for playing a Kid, plus the 6 bennies for being part of the Order. You can take stuff to give him wealth, get him a few worshipers, a Sanctuary (safe place for him to get his Spark back), a Flexible Schedule (he's home-schooled and bright), and so on. Also, boost his Social abilities. Maybe give him Gentle Soul, which makes him a natural confidant and friendly. There's a twist! Maybe buy him Strong Bonds, so he can throw some Order 2-Rebellion in there. Definitely consider buying some Improved abilities, buying up his INS and his CHM to make him wicked scary to play mind games with. As for Drawbacks, well, he's already got all the drawbacks of being a Kid. What about Enemy at 2, which gives him a nemesis roughly at his power? What about some whacky cult that's trying to kidnap and kill him? What about a Phobia of churches and sacred places?
Tally up his Health (how much damage he can take) his Stamina (how hard he can push himself), and give him Spark at 1, which is where most Gods start at.
SPARK AND BONDS
The meat of Part-Time Gods play is the tension between Bonds and Spark. Spark gives you the power to use your Dominion and Entitlements, while Bonds give you bonuses when dealing with or for the people who matter the most to you. If you get too much Spark, you lose your bonds, which give you Failings, which make you go slowly inhuman and slightly crazy to boot. But without Spark, you may not be able to defend those Bonds against the Outsiders and rival Gods who will inevitably show up and make your life hell. Power versus Human connection. Luckily, you start out with 6 Bonds and 1 Spark, but as your power grows, so does your chance of having to make a very hard decision for your character.
And the game plays to this tension quite well. In some ways it's a typical medium crunch RPG, but it's modified enough to get some real meaty, high-drama roleplaying out of it, not letting those opportunities get lost in the cool powers. This sets it apart from a lot of “god games” out of there, and to its benefit. The game is also good for mining the comedy out of being a God who is also a Wal-Mart greeter, and can't afford to quit even after becoming a God. So I give it a heart thumbs-up and I hope it catches on. This game deserves a spotlight.
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