Apotheosis | bySwarm

Genre

Supers

Theme

“Hi my name is Bob, and I’m a god. I can make into you a demi-god, how’s that sound?” All that went through the teenagers’ mind as they underwent apotheosis was ‘oh my god, Sally is going to flip when she hears about this!’ Welcome to Apotheosis, the crazy weird game where teenagers have to learn to control their new powers while worrying about getting good grades (because that’s what teenagers think about right?), all while trying to keep the existence of their powers a secret!

Background

What is there to say about this? ‘Bob’ is the god of whims and chaos, and he does whatever he feels like, such as making new demi-gods to the constant frustration of his brothers and sisters. You see Bob is kind of a black sheep amongst his divine family. While his brothers and sisters are all extremely powerful and rarely sink to using their powers in the mortal realm, Bob does it all the time because it is fun! That and as a god of chaos, he needs to spread more chaos throughout the mortal realm. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Bob went on a spree where he thought it would be fun to turn a bunch of teenagers into demi-gods! That was the last straw and his brothers and sisters locked him away and proceed to start hunting these newly created demi-gods so they could destroy them, but not before Bob sent a warning to all of his ‘children’ that said, “hey kids, watch out, your mean uncles and aunts are coming to kill you in the most painful ways imaginable, but don’t forget to have lots of fun!” Needless to say this caused many of the new demi-gods to go into hiding and not use their powers at all, but that didn’t always save them as the elder gods continue to hunt for them. What’s worse is that they also have a huge Spanish exam this Friday! Now, if only they could figure out how to use their powers they might just stand a chance!

In short, this game is all about relaxing and having fun playing as teenage demi-gods, and while it could be used to run a serious game, the setting is more about being light and chaotic.

Antagonists & Conflict

Elder Gods: These guys are Bob’s siblings and the want to kill the player’s characters! All in all, they aren’t very friendly and boy are they strong! It is probably better to just hide from these guys than to try to take them on. All in all, there is not much known about these Elder Gods. In the past, their decedents, such as Zeus and Thor, were worshiped as gods, but of the Elder Gods themselves, there are no records. They might not even be gods, but something else entirely…

Old Gods: Over the millennia, the Elder Gods have had children among themselves and with humans. Their children are referred to as the Old Gods. Some notable Old Gods are Hades, Set, and Odin. As the Old Gods grew powerful from their myriad of worshipers they challenged the Elder Gods but were cast down and hunted. This rebellion is why the Elder Gods hunt for any new demi-gods the brother Bob made; they fear the next rebellion might succeed. Of all the Old Gods, only a few managed to survive. These beings are dangerous as they will gladly use the new demi-gods to further their own plans without regard to the demi-god’s survival.

Students: Hey, they are your classmates, and among them you will find both your best friend and your nemesis. Who knows, maybe Bob turned your hated rival into a demi-god too, there’s only one way to find out!

Teachers: That stupid teacher gave me an F on my paper and now my parents won’t let me go to the big party this Friday! Maybe after spending the night as a rabbit he might be willing to change my grade…

The Organization: Hey, what is with those suits who keep staring at me? They’re so weird; they’ve got all these gadgets that keep going off after they run them over my stuff. Oh my god! The just grabbed Jimmy and threw him in the van. Hey didn’t Jimmy also talk to Bob? The Organization is a government group that is hunting for any traces of the ‘supernatural’ creature they were tracking (Bob), and guess what, you’re ‘supernatural’ now. Be careful, or you might be the next one to be black bagged.

Family: I’ve saved the worst for last. Who is that even when you have the power to control the entire planet can still send you to bed without desert? That’s right, it’s your family, and you better be careful or they might start to notice your strange behavior.

Special Features

Magic: Magic plays a HUGE role in this setting. It’s what separates you from ‘those boring meat sacks’. That being said, magic power, application, and even the style of magic vary greatly between various individuals. Some may chant long spells in Latin to send fireballs racing towards their enemies while other might start dancing while singing ‘burn baby burn’ to accomplish the same end. What matters in the end is that it is the way the person connects to their inner-power and draws it forth. While players maybe demi-gods, they are still young demi-gods and as such have a limited amount of magic, can still be killed rather easily, and have yet to develop a particular area they are lord over. For now, they are still growing and learning how to control magic; growing to be incredibly strong; and trying to fly all while learning things like algebra and history.

Deities: You are one! But there are the Elder Gods and the Old Gods, they are bad, very bad, news.

Worship: As a demi-god, a players power increase as more people believe in them and worship them. It is similar to the faith component in White Wolf’s Demon The Fallen. But while having followers can be useful, both as a source of power and as a source for minions, it also has a number of drawbacks. One drawback is that huge pockets of faith attract the Elder Gods, i.e., the more worshipers a character has the easier it is for the Elder Gods or Old Gods to find them. Also, people aren’t fond of cults, and cults also have a tendency to stick out. This can get a character in trouble with the law and might bring the Organization right to them. Finally, followers have the annoying habit of doing exactly what their deity doesn’t want them to do. Saw a character happens to get an F on a big exam, his followers may decide to get vengeance on his teacher by burning the teacher’s house time all the while claiming to do it in the character’s name. All in all worshipers, like all sources of power, have both risk and reward closely mixed.

Technology: It’s modern day, so what ever you see in real life is what you’d see in this setting as far as technology goes (unless a god made it otherwise). True, the Organization does have access to some pretty high-tech stuff, but if you are close enough to be noticing it, you are probably in way over your head already.

PC Role

As far as the players’ role goes in this setting, I’ve left it rather open. GM’s could try to have to players progress in their understanding of their powers in the hopes of freeing Bob and beating the Elder Gods, but it would probably work better for this system if they focus on the goals teenage kids would have if the suddenly became demi-gods with little control of their powers. The possibilities are endless, ranging from one of the players accidentally sending them all into a video game and having to find a way out, to trying to use their powers to get better grades, to having cosmos shattering battles! This setting is designed to let the player’s and GM’s imagination run free while keeping it connected throughout it all. After all, the players are regular teenagers who just became demi-gods, how else would they react? About the same way as the Olympians did!

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Comments

Explanation

Submitted by Zack Faust on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 20:42.

Since my web decided to die before I could make any revisions, I thought I'd explain some of the critiques on this system.

When I designed this setting I had a commedic anime style game in mind. Towards that end I wanted to make the core gods ones players and GMs could understand without reuqiring knowledge of various mythos. I was planning on adding info on other ancient gods, but more like a step pattern (Elder Gods (created) > Old Gods (existing mythos) > players) with some overlap between their groups (Greek Gods were one group born around the same time so stick together, but interact with other groups, such as the Egyptian gods), and amungst the groups their respective powers would vary.

I like this, I see Grand

Submitted by redeamed on Wed, 10/21/2009 - 11:30.

I like this, I see Grand Theft Auto with a lovely little God mode. I see a bar stat for as you use you powers increasing the likely hood of a god appearing and if they do show up in the area you can't use your powers all all or you'll have to escape them somehow...I see doing mission like in GTA but using powers at key points to start building a religious following, perhaps your level could increase as your number of followers does. I see a lot of fun potentials, can you elaberate anymore on your concepts of the gods? How many are there all together? What are the others like?

The Gods

Submitted by Zack Faust on Wed, 10/21/2009 - 14:13.

I like the idea you suggested about a bar that charges up when they use their powers that would attract the elder gods. The worshiping concept is good too, maybe do like White Wolf's Vampire and place a limit on how far a character's god powers can progress based on the number of followers they have. The more followers they have, the stronger they can get (of course, a character with no followers can become strong, but they have to branch out with their powers). But having followers would have to come with a draw-back. You have to keep your flock loyal, defend them, and keep them in line. You also never know what they might do. What would happen if a radical group of your followers decided to crucify your teacher who gave you a C and write praises to you all around the body? This would attract some unwanted attention, and if the cult grew big enough or vocal enough, it might even attract the attention of the elder gods. I like the idea of making the characters have to balance being bold to grow stronger with being cautious about having followers and using their powers, so your suggestions really helped, thanks! :)

As for the gods themselves, do you mean the teenage gods, or the Elder Gods? The number of teenage gods is undefined as only Bob knows how many he made, and odds are he doesn't care enough to remember anymore. That and the fact that the teenage gods tend to keep their identities secret from one or another or form small groups to protect themselves means that a list of the teenage gods has yet to be completed (players characters can come and go this way).

The Elder Gods though, there are a finite number of those. There are only 13 Elder Gods, or the Mad Gods as early man remembered them. Even the Elder Gods don't know where they came from, they just one day appeared. Since then, other lesser gods such as the Olympian Gods who are descendants of the Elder Gods have come and gone, but the Elder Gods have remained. (fun thought, maybe some of the Elder God's children are still secretly alive). Each of the Elder Gods have the generic god powers, but also have power and influence over a specific domain that is often reflected in their personality (i.e., Bob the god of whims can be uncaring and unrestrained, while a god of war would likely be filled with rage all the time). Now for a list of the Elder Gods.

1. Bob: Youngest of the Elder Gods, Bob is the god of Whims. His powers therefore are both immense and weak. He can only use his powers on a whim, but they are the strongest type of powers used then. If any of the Elder Gods were to be considered kind toward humans, it would be Bob, but even he has been known to wreak havoc on human kind just for fun.

2. Simiole: Simiole is Bob's twin sister and the goddess of Constancy. In otherwords, Simiole has the power to revert things to their previous form and prevent something from changing. Of all her brothers and sister, Simiole is the only one who feels any pity for Bob's incarceration, though she has no love for the 'new gods'.

3. Priddel: Priddel is the eldest of the Elder Gods, and therefore their leader. Priddel is also known as the father of Uranus (grandfather of Zeus) and many other ancient dieties. Priddel's domain is Power. Needless to say, this makes him a force to be reckoned with. His domain allows him to manipulate and strengthen the power of himself or of others.

Hmmmm, I'm drawing a blank as to the other Elder Gods right now, so I'll get back to you with the rest. I'd also take any suggestion for the other 10 Elder Gods.

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Zack Faust

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Setting Concept Score

2.6

Read review by cptbeefalo

Posted 1 week 6 days ago

by cptbeefalo

Inspiring:

Originality:

Writing Quality:

The concept is about as open-ended as it gets, but I think it belongs better in an anime than a game setting, as you state.

An original and somewhat humorous concept, we've all wondered what we would or could do with god-like powers, now we'll all find out! I fear the answer most likely involves getting our adolescent selves laid as much as possible and getting free stuff. Not much that inspires me there however. Also, what system do we base this on? It somehow reminds me of the D&D games my little brother and his friends used to play, where everyone started with like 300,000 hps and had weapons that did swings into the millions of dmg for no reason other than it was kewl. *sigh*

I have a feeling that this game system could be tweaked into something greater than this description encapsulates, but I think we'd have to drop much of the teenager/Bob humor part of it. As it is, I'm not very inspired by it at all, because I can't see any campaign lasting more than creation and maybe one or two adventures.

The writing is fine and free of errors, and while I can certainly understand both the humor and conceptual intent of the author, I don't think this setting is all that great a choice.

Read review by Satyr

Posted 2 weeks 6 days ago

by Satyr

Inspiring:

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Why Bob?

I mean seriously, a superhero/ mythology game about the offspring of different gods would be fun, but you don't need an elaborate meta-mythology for it; you could just take the existing mythologies from around the world and create an all-star assembly.

Many mythologies include some form of elder gods anyway, so why not recycle those?

No I understand that this setting is basically a more comedy-oriented take on the matter, with which I have my problems, because I am not very interested in something like this and makes it harder for me to take the final game very seriously.

Using this as a more 'realistic' or desperate setting would be cool anyway.

Read review by Fenris

Posted 5 weeks 1 day ago

by Fenris

Inspiring:

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This sounds like fun, but I would probably not try to invent a new mythology for this. Instead why not take the different existing gods and myths - norse, old greek/roman, egyptian etc. and use those as a background?

And if you want some elder gods, I would probably borrow from Lovecraft. Just because the epic fight between Thor and Cthulhu would be awesome incarnate.

It sounds a lot like a crossover between Buffy and American Gods, so it's not that original.

Read review by robosnake

Posted 19 weeks 4 days ago

by robosnake

Inspiring:

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I'll probably note this for everyone's setting (including mine) but be sure to check spelling as you edit. I'm not sold o the concept of there being a god of whims who just makes other gods for no apparent reason. I'm also not sold on what part the other students will play, since if the player-characters are gods, wouldn't their needs drastically change? The idea of schoolkids suddenly having to deal with supernatural powers comes up a lot in anime without going so far as to make the protagonists gods. Maybe a demotion to make things more interesting?

Read review by mikeb

Posted 21 weeks 1 day ago

by mikeb

Inspiring:

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I would love to play in this setting, but I don't think I would want to write for it which is why I only gave it one star on Inspiring. That's purely subjective and personal preference though so don't take it as anything to do with your quality. As an aside, you have a typo in your title, no biggie.