In this realm, the gods are very much a part of this world. Grand guardian spirits, reigning over their dominion with powers of both creation and destruction. Yet on occasion, a special group of gods will be born, bound not to the land, but to a great beast. These are called...
Wandering Gods is a team based godgame which takes place upon the back of a giant creature, wandering across the ley-lines of this world. Each turn, the godbeast travels further down the ley-lines, changing the area around the dominion of the wandering gods. As the gods wander the earth, they will pass through the domains of sessile gods, encounter mortal cities and outposts, and discover ancient dungeons. Much of the game will consist of civilization building and management, while the other sections of the game relate to the exploration of sites scattered throughout the world.
ManaMana is the universal currency of the divine of this world and comes in ten forms. These ten forms contribute, in different amounts, to every object, person, and place in this world. The true power of the gods stems from their mastery over mana, which grants them the ability to create most anything, so long as they have sufficient mana in the proper quantities.
Strength, Beasts, Bloodshed
Death, Darkness, Ruin
Infernal, Demons, Subterfuge
Chaos, Transformation, Fluidity
Decay, Poison, Disease
Intelligence, Study, Magic
Spirits, Balance, Purity
Holy, Healing, Righteous
Order, Earth, Stability
Life, Nature, PlantsThis is a research oriented game. At the start of the game you will gain several starter technologies based on your character sheet and the decisions your team makes. From that point on, you are welcome to use mana to research new technologies, units, and other objects using mana. For researches beyond this, you can convert mana into Research Dice in order to research new technology. New potential researches have difficulty values which indicate how hard it is to master the technology. Research dice decrease this value, bringing you closer to unlocking the technology. You may unlock a tech early before you reduce the difficulty value to zero, but doing so will introduce bugs and drawbacks into your design. Similarly, you may research beyond the necessary threshhold before officially unlocking the technology, in order to gain additional bonuses such as increased efficiency, lower cost, or extra advantages.
The WorldWhile much of the game will take place in the city view, the world map is a critical component in understanding what resources are currently available, and will become available shortly. Each tile is a region and may explored and exploited for resources. Each excursion into the world has a chance to trigger random events, from discovery of extra resources, to combat encounters, to the discovery of side quests from local denizens. Excursions are often dangerous if ill prepared, but are often the easiest way to gain resources quickly. Of course, what resources are available to you is dependent on what is around your civilization at the time.
While most tiles are general tiles, some tiles have special Points of Interest (POIs). POIs are often resource dense and may contain special loot unavailable in generic regions, such as magical equipment, troves of mana, or additional technologies. Of course, these locations are often guarded by enemies, or require special skills to capitalize on.
Each turn, your godbeast will travel down the ley-line, revealing more of the world, and obscuring parts of the world as they fade into the distance behind you. Some points of interest will appear on the ley-lines and interact directly with your godbeast. These can be beneficial, such as a feeding or resting site for your godbeast, or they can be harmful, such as passing directly through a poisonous forest. Some areas will be charged with mana, empowering gods who specialize in mana of the same color.
The World
The City of the GodsAt the start of the game, players will be split into three teams, each team corresponding to the most popular mana selected during character creation. Teams are cohesive governing bodies who share an inventory and income by default. Each team is responsible for their own decision making processes, whether that is simple majority voting when it comes to decision making, or a different system, that is up to each team.
Your team will receive one mana corresponding to your team color each turn. This is your team's baseline income.
As of now, the City of the Gods doesn't exist. Depending on the choices made by the three teams, the starting layout of the city of the gods will change. However, in general, it is very similar to the world map in that it will be a gridbased map. Here you will build your fledgling civilization, using your starting technologies and, over time, additional researched buildings in order to populate your city.
Your city is atop a mighty, but ultimately mortal beast. Tending to it's needs will be just as important as tending to the needs of your citizens. The more your beast is fed, the larger it grows, and more space will become available to the inhabitants. However, a godbeast that is sickly, injured, or angered may spell disaster for your civilization.
Similarly, direct combat aboard the godbeast will not only upset the godbeast, but the citizens as well. While ambushes, combat, and all out war is perfectly fine outside of the City of the Gods, open bloodshed within the city itself will have very negative consequences.
During turn 0, each team will select 5 connected tiles. These will be your starting tiles, you gain them immediately and for free. To claim additional tiles, units can be ordered to claim them as an action. You can only claim tiles adjacent to a tile you already posses, or is connected to a tile you possess by a road.
Mortals and UnitsInhabiting the City of the Gods are your mortal charges. Mortals require food, water, shelter, and other goods in order to be happy and productive members of society. Each turn mortals will automatically interact with buildings in order operate them and produce the building's output. Each building requires a certain number of mortals to operate, subtracted from your total mortals. If you do not have enough mortals to fulfill the worker requirements of a building, it will produce no resources. Additional mortals beyond the worker requirement will be unemployed, and generally not contribute much until they find employment.
Units are specially trained mortals, who have specific roles assigned to them. These may be military soldiers, tasked with fighting off monsters, or exploring regions. They may also be specialists who have extra effects on certain buildings, or even required for proper operation of advanced buildings. Whatever the case, specialized units cannot be returned to peasants and cannot be used as general workers once transformed. There is no special requirements for specializing your mortals, but specalization does take a turn. So if there's a specialization command in your action for this turn, that action will be processed on that turn, and the specialized units available the following turn.
Heroes and ArtifactsHeros are especially powerful units infused with mana. Blessing a unit with mana grants them the ability to use mana-dice in combat and in skill checks. A hero's mana will drain as they use their mana dice, and can be slowly regenerated by resting in the City of the Gods, or immediately refreshed with mana of the corresponding color. When resting, one mana dice can be regenerated per turn.
Artifacts and equipment are items that can be equipped by heroes and squads to bolster and augment their abilities. Normal equipment is fairly straightforward, offering minor bonuses to damage or damage reduction. Artifacts are more powerful magical items, which are typically found throughout the world, or created with several mana. Similar to normal equipment, they normally provide flat and dependable bonuses, though it is not unheard of for them to provide niche utility effects instead.
Character SheetGod Name:
God Mana Type: (Choose one)
Prefered Team Mana Types: (Choose 3, the three with the most votes will each form the basis of the teams)
God Physical Description:
God Personality Description:
This is a Lazy Fair game. That means that I update the maps, and write up the results of actions and all that jazz, but teams manage their own decision making processes and inventory. I
highly suggest appointing a team bookkeeper to keep track of your various assets.
Lastly, please join the discord. Team discussion and such will occur there:
https://discord.gg/3Ajv6qbX
Mechanical GuidesThis section is a collection of short guides on various topics. Generally if you're thinking
"How would I do X?" or "What should I do on my turn?", then you've come to the right place.
Here are some rough pricing guidelines. This is in no way a list of all the actions you could take, (your gods could spend mana on picking flowers if you wanted, for example.) rather its a guideline of roughly how much mana an action takes. This table lists the average price of an action, so if you wanted an animal with some innate special ability, you'd likely be looking to tack on some extra power and put in 4 mana rather than 3. On the other hand, if you wanted a new race of mortals, but you didn't care if they had much going on in the brains department, you could consider cheaping out and trying to get away with only spending 4 mana.
God Powers
Creation of a type of plant (2 mana)
Creation of a type of animal (3 mana)
Creation of a race of mortals (5 mana)
Collect a resource (1 mana)
Spread Biome (3 mana)
Create special map feature (3-4)
Destroy an unclaimed tile (2 mana) +1 mana per distance from an owned tile.
Your civilization is composed of individuals who collectively compose the population. The max population of a civilization is determined by the housing units built by each civilization. When your current population exceeds your max population, your population devotion will begin to drop, and civil unrest will begin to rise. Crime will also increase. However, if your max population is higher than your current population, your population will begin to increase if you have excess food.
Each member of your population requires one food resource per turn (Vegetation, meat, fish, ect.). Population units can survive several turns without food, but grow increasingly upset per turn without food. Starving populations are known to riot.
Population devotion is the approximation of how happy your civilization is with your gods. When your civilization is healthy, well fed, housed and working, then your population devotion will be very high. But when homelessness, hunger, and other societal problems arise, your population devotion begins to decline. Low population devotion leads to societal problems, such as strikes, riots, emigration. Populations with low devotion are more easily influenced by other teams of gods, and populations with high devotion are more resistant/loyal.
Members of your population which do not have a specialization as a unit are called workers. Each turn workers will visit your buildings to work on them. If you have enough workers to fulfill a building's worker requirement, then the building operates and it's effect occurs. If you do not have enough workers for all your buildings, workers will try to prioritize the most important buildings first.
Members of your population which become units are not counted towards your total workers, as they can no longer work buildings, however, they still count towards your max population and food requirements.
Researching new technologies in the main method of advancing your civilization. It is wise to research often as it is the main method at the player's disposal for steering their civilizations.
Researching new technology is very simple. Anything you could want your civilization to do, to build, to understand, or to think can be researched. In that way, ideas like 'democracy' and 'mathematics' are equally viable research topics as more concrete technology such as 'plate armor' or 'chariots'. Methodologies such as "horseback riding" or "iron smelting" are also topics that can be researched. Finally, new buildings and units are also produced through the research process.
Here is a template for pursuing a research topic:
Name:
Mana Type: (If this research pertains to particular type of mana)
Description what the technology is: (A general description of what the technology looks like. If it is a physical object, a description of what that looks like. If it is an idea or methodology of some kind, then just a blurb on what the idea is.)
Description of what the technology does: (A general description of the intended goal of a technology and how that goal is achieved. In other words, what does it do and how does it do that).
Underlying technology: (If you are progressing from one relevant technology to another, such as upgrading a building, or advancing a trade. Basically, if you can draw on one of your other technologies to help figure out this perspective one, list it here)
Mana Investment: (How much mana you want to spend on this research this turn)
Research Difficulty: (This is my measure of how difficult a research is. You only include this line if you've price checked with me already, otherwise you can skip it)
When you research a topic, you spend mana to uncover the technology and teach it to your citizens. Each mana you spend grants you a 1d10 research dice. If you use a mana of the same color as the mana type you're currently researching (using red mana to research red technology), then you get a +1 automatically. Having underlying technology as a basis for your research can also provide a bonus.
During the research process, I will roll your 1d10 (or multiple if you spend multiple mana), and compare that number to the research difficulty. If you roll equal to your research difficulty, you successfully complete your research and unlock that technology. If you roll over your difficulty level, your technology may gain additional minor features or effects.
However, if you roll under your research difficulty level, you will have a choice. You can choose to restart the research with a new manadice on a later turn and gain a +2 to that roll. However, you can also choose to call the project at it's current completeness level. This equates to you unlocking a version of whatever you were researching that's only semi-functional. If it was mostly complete, then it likely has a small design flaw or cosmetic issue. The more complete a research is, the closer it will function to your described technology, and the less complete the more likely it is that it's not at all functional.
Exploratory Research is for investigating elements of the world that already exist. This is your method for examining flora, fauna, and other assets of this world in order to better understand them. Exploratory research is aimed at the idea of "What do I do with this thing." Basically if there's something in the world that you suspect has an additional use or your think you can get more of it, it would be an exploratory research. Questions like "What kinds of properties does this mushroom have", "How can I get more of X resource out of X building/tile", "Is this plant/animal domesticatable."
Basically its a way to research something without having to have an answer on how to do it, or without knowing exactly what you're looking for.
Research Target: (What it is your researching)
Research Topics: (What kind of things do you want do know about your target.)
Research Basis: (What do you know about your current research target, and what you suspect about that target. "This plant grows in this region wildly, I believe there may be a way to grow it in out fields."
Units are distinct groups or individuals which you can give direct orders to each turn. Much of your turn may consist of unit orders, as they are your hands for effecting this world.
Units have several important qualities. Here is an example unit, the Spearman squad. Each unit has an HP and a damage. If your unit gets into combat, it will attempt to defeat the enemy. Most units will fight until they are low health, and then may attempt to flee if the battle is lost, however some units might always fight to the bitter end. In addition, not all units can explore both the local and the world map.
Some PoIs or events will have skill checks. For mundane skill checks, the damage dice is used to roll against the difficulty of the check. If you roll higher, you succeed, if you roll lower than the check difficulty, you fail.
Different units have different loot preferences. Specialists such as monster hunters will prioritize bringing back loot of their designated loot tendency and return more of it than other loot. However, more generalist units like the spearman squad have no preference towards any one kind of loot while exploring. Lastly, animals and other beings lacking intelligence or sentience will have low or no loot priority. This means that tend to bring back less loot overall, however, if they are part of a larger collection of units acting together, other units will find the loot these units miss.
Finally, displayed in brackets [ ], is the cost of the unit. Some units, like this spearman squad, simply require training some members of your civilization. This takes one turn. Once specialized into spearmen or another unit, they are no longer considered workers and cannot work buildings (even if otherwise idle). Specialized units still count towards your housing count and food requirements. Specialist units may require special buildings, or cost mana or other rare resources to produce.
Spearman Squad:
20 HP
1d6
A group of warriors trained in the spear. Capable of exploring both local and world tiles.
Loot Tendency: No preference
[15 population]
Once created, units can be given almost any orders, but there are a few basic orders to take note of.
Explore __ Tile.When you instruct a unit to explore a tile, they will visit a tile and check for any hidden points of interest. Exploring a tile is the equivalent of triggering a random event. Most events will be fairly mundane, things like "Gain 10 stone" or "Particularly good hunt, +12 meat". However some events may unlock hidden features of the tile being explored, such as bonus resource income, small deposits of rare materials, or new species of plants and animals. However, some events will be combat events, which will damage your units. Make sure your units are well prepared if they are investigating strange or unique areas.
If you successfully complete your event, your unit will then attempt to return loot from the tile they just explored. Units will always try to gather loot in accordance with their loot priority, sacrificing loot of other types to bring back more of their specific loot priority.
You can explore claimed tiles, and tiles adjacent to claimed tiles immediately, but tiles further away may take more than one turn to complete due to increased travel time. This effect is mostly negated by infrastructure like roads and bridges, as well as sea travel if transportation is available or ports are built.
Claim __ Tile.Claiming tiles is how you expand your nation on the local map. In order to claim a tile, it must be adjacent to a currently owned tile. In other words, you can only claim tiles adjacent to your starting tiles, and tiles you have branching off of your starting tiles. There is one exception to this rule however, roads. A unit can claim a tile that is connected to your currently owned tile by road. However, distant settlements are difficult to defend, and become unruly very quickly when their devotion is low. Viva la revolution and all that.
Claiming a tile now costs 10 max population.[/b] These are the people who go live off the land. They feed themselves (which is why they're removed from max population), and produce the resource income for that tile every turn.
Gather From __ Tile.Instructing a unit to gather resources from a tile allows them to gather a fair number of resources from the base resources available in that tile. This does included any additional tile resources discovered in previously conducted explorations.
Demolish __ BuildingInstructs your unit to destroy a building or map feature. If it is a naturally occuring structure, you'll get resources in line with the structure being destroyed. If its a mortal-made structure, you get back half the resources (rounded down).
Heros are specialty units that are empowered with mana and come in two varieties: Unique Heroes and Class Heroes.
Unique heroes are heroes who are hand-made by the gods. The home-made cookies of the divine realms. They are more difficult to make than class heroes, but can be made readily and easily. Please refer to this template for hero creation.
Hero Name:
Mana Type: (What mana and how many of each is being used to create this hero)
Physical Description: (A general description of what the technology looks like. If it is a physical object, a description of what that looks like. If it is an idea or methodology of some kind, then just a blurb on what the idea is.)
Lore and Additional Information: (A general description of the intended goal of a technology and how that goal is achieved. In other words, what does it do and how does it do that).
Ability and Effect: (Name of the ability and what that ability does. Low cost abilities should be straightforward, where as the more mana you invest, the more complex/ powerful it can be))
Ability Functionality: (How your ability causes the effect. This should also explain how your mana is involved. For fireball, you could say something like, "The red mana transforms the hero's rage into burning flames". )
Unique heroes gain a single d10 manadice for each mana invested, corresponding to colors used. They can use this mana dice on any one roll, combat or skill check.
This includes orders from the players. So if you order your hero to create life, or change the weather, or any other supernatural action, this will be treated just like any other skill check.
Some abilities you design into your hero may require the manadice as well, particularly more powerful abilities. Manadice are expended once used, but can be replenished by resting. Resting replenishes one spent manadice per turn. This process can be expediated by supplying mana of the same type as the spent mana dice, which instantly replenishes all spent mana dice of the same color. Resting also replenishes health at 1d(50% of max HP) per turn.
Unique hero's are at the same time, the swiss army knife and the sledge hammer of the divine toolbox. A hero in possession of several mana dice can perform miracles in line with their manadice, or wreak havoc with many mana dice simultaneously in large scale attacks. Because their mana comes from the gods, it is innately flexible and can be directed by the gods at will. As a result, they are good flexible options for carrying out the will of the gods.
Unique heroes are the only units that can carry out orders on the turn they're created.
While unique heroes are battery operated swiss army knives, class heroes are more standard tools for the gods. When you first research a class of hero, you are researching the methods mortals will use to create those heroes. If this is for a warrior type class, this might include martial training or great tests of endurance for example.
Once the method for the creation of the hero is known (as a result of the research), you will be able to create a building that employs those methods to create more of that kind of hero. For example, you might create a ninja-like character, and this would be a unique hero. But if you researched the ninja class, your society would then become familiar with the concept of ninjas and be able to train more ninjas. While some class heros might arise spontaneously, researching a class of hero often provides a building that can be built to create more of that hero.
In this way, class heroes are long term investments into having that kind of hero become present in your society. Not only will some appear naturally, but you'll gain a method for creating more of that type of hero. In general class heroes tend to have broader abilities that are more generalist in nature. Class heroes also get a +1 to all rolls.
When researching a class of hero, use the hero template and just specify that you're researching a hero class rather than creating a unique hero.
Class Name: (What are these heroes referred to as by the general population? Swordsman, wizard, cat herder, ect.)
Mana Type: (What mana(s) are being invested into this class. )
Class Description: (A brief overview of the class. What the class is. What the class does. Where the class is from.)
Mana Relationship: (Where does the power of this class come from in relation to their mana? Are they druids who are in-tune with Green mana? Bloodthirsty warriors who kill with red mana? Wrinkled wizards who study the secrets of blue mana).
Class Lore: (Where does your class come from in the world? Is there a monastery where these heroes are trained? Or do they appear naturally under certain conditions, and if so, under what conditions?)
Class Abilities: (Class refers to the special abilities, practices, or other factors that separate your class from other heroes. For mages this may be spellcasting of a certain type, for warriors it might be a style of fighting. What is the essence of your class.)
Class Appearance: (In general classes are easily distinguished at first glance. What does your class look like? What do they wear? How do they behave?)
Additional Information:
TLDR: If you want [insert X archetype] to appear naturally in your civilization, make it a class of hero.
Equipment are items that can be given to specific units or heros to provide various bonuses or enable extra abilities.
Mundane equipment simply needs to be researched like any other technology. In cases of simple equipment, you'll be able to simply pay a resource fee to improve your units. For more complex equipment, such as metal weapons and armor, you will likely need to research blacksmithing or another technology to gain the facilities required to create those items.
Artifacts are unique pieces of equipment that can impart small abilities to their wielder. Almost any kind of magical object can be classified as an artifact, so it is best to pricecheck your artifact before trying to create it.
Effect Artifacts:
These are artifacts that produce a specific effect or effects. For each mana you invest in an artifact, you can empower it with a minor effect of the corresponding mana type (death mana -> staff of necromancy).
Artifacts composed of a single mana are very straightforward. A single mana can cause an effect in a small area or effect a few nearby targets.
Effect Artifacts with multiple effects require multiple mana. So if you want your sword to smite the unjust
and terrify the undead, you would need to invest one mana for each effect.
AmplificationIf you want to have a single more powerful effect, you can choose to amplify an effect artifact. Amplifying an effect increases either the Intensity, Scope, or Range.
Amplifying the intensity significantly increases the potency of an effect, roughly doubling the strength of whatever effect your artifact has.
Amplifying the scope significantly increases the size/area of an effect, roughly increasing the size by a factor of 5. So if a 1 mana artifact effects 5 individuals or a 5x5 ft. area, if you amplify it once, you'd effect roughly 25 individuals effected or a 25x25 ft. area.
Amplifying the range significantly increases the distance away from the caster that an effect can reasonably occur in. By default, artifacts are melee or line of sight. Amplifying range once allows it to effect the tile it is currently in, an additional amplification beyond that allows it to effect +1 adjacent tiles.
Amplifying an artifact costs 1 mana if done at creation, and 2 mana if used on an existing artifact.
Empowerment ArtifactsEmpowerment artifacts are artifacts that directly increase the stats of the wielder. While effect artifacts are very flexible, these are very straight forward mechanical bonuses.
On average, an empowerment artifact will add +3 to a particular kind of roll per mana. If this is a sword or other weapon, that will be a +3 to combat rolls per mana spent.
However, more niche activation criteria justify higher stat boosts. So for that same magic sword, you could get a +6 to combat rolls against undead, rather than a +3 to everything.
Cosmetic EffectsThe infusion of mana into an object always results in the manifestation of that mana in some way. These minor manifestations change the appearance of the object to be more similar to the mana invested into artifact's creation. For red mana, this might make a blade appear more wicked or dangerous. For yellow mana, this might make an object shine with an innate holy light. For grey mana, it may cover the object in repeating geometric patterns which quietly buzz when the object is held.
These are meant to be small interesting elements to make the object more interesting, and do not reach the level of usefulness as the main effect of the artifact.
Effect Artifact
Name:
Mana Count: (The total of each color mana, ie. 2 blue, 7 orange, 4 white, so on, invested.)
Mana X:
Effect X:
Intensity Amplification: (How many amplifications of this type you are adding during initial item creation)
Scope Amplification:
Range Amplification:
Cosmetic effect: (What physical effect is caused by the item's mana, see the section on cosmetic effects)
[[Use this section for each of the effects you infuse into the object]]
Physical description: (What the object looks like, including your cosmetic effects)
Artifact Backstory:
Empowerment Artifact
Name:
Mana Count: (The total of each color mana, ie. 2 blue, 7 orange, 4 white, so on, invested.)
Action Modified: (What action you want a bonus on, more specific criteria give higher bonuses)
Total Bonus: (GM tells you this bit)
Cosmetic Effects: (One per mana invested)
Physical Description:
Artifact Backstory:
