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Ordinary Gods
Ordinary Gods is a massively multi-player live-action continual role-playing game.
Online computer games where you play a character in an ongoing, unstructured world have been coined "massively multi-player online role-playing games" (or go by the worse-than-useless acronym MMORPG).
You already know what live-action RPGs are.
"Continual games" are what I use to describe games that aren't supposed to end, at least not within a normal structured time limit. You play them as part of your everyday life. They don't exist much - at least not yet. Have you ever seen a late 90's movie called "The Game"? There you go, like that, though the film obviously takes it to an extreme, in classic Hollywood-style. But you get the idea. Electronic Arts is supposed to be doing one that makes you feel like you're part of some secret conspiracy that you have to uncover. They'll call your cell phone and give you clues about what you're supposed to do, leave cryptic emails that you need to decipher, and generally harass you at any given time. And you pay like $9.95 a month for this. I forget what they're going to name it. I've already got this service; I call it "Having a jealous Girlfriend and a snoopy Mother." But anyway. Continual games. They'll be big some day, especially when cell-phone technology advances a few generations.
Ordinary Gods is a massively multi-player live-action continual role-playing game. I've left out the "online" part, but that could certainly become part of the equation as well. A MMLACRPG, for those who want an easy way to remember it.
Setting
It was decided in a dark, smoky room somewhere in a faceless building, in a faceless city, by equally faceless men. Or maybe by bouncy happy little laughing god-children in a colorful park during games of freeze tag. It doesn't matter.
What was decided is what's important, and what was decided was that the world was getting too complicated, too much for the current gods to handle. Things move too fast these days for the ages-old pantheons to react. Things were slipping away from their control.
Slowly, each of the gods realized that if they were going to maintain a hold on the world, they were going to have to find help in some unorthodox places. They've decided to hand out parts of their domains to worthy mortals - deity franchising, basically.
God of web design, archangel of department store cashiering, spirit of cinema advertising, lord of middle management. They're all up for grabs, and so are a lot more divine professions like these. They're not the most glamorous jobs (what, you expected Venus to up and give you her degree in "sexual desire" right off the bat?), but godhood is godhood and you gotta start somewhere, right? Think of them as entry-level positions in a career of divinity.
So, god auditions are today. You're up next.
How much do you want to be a god?
The Game
Ordinary Gods is a massively multi-player live-action continual role-playing game. It's also, as its core, a glorified scavenger hunt.
The goal of the game is to draw the attention of a god, who'll award you with a slice of their divinity, a small piece of their power for you to control because they just don't have the time.
To get the attention of the divine, players have to commit various acts, in real life, that represent the aspect of reality that they want to be given to rule. As they complete these tasks, they are competing with the other players to do them as quickly and as many as possible. The first player to achieve a certain level of success in the game wins and is crowned god of _______ (the "_______" being, of course, whatever they're playing for).
One or more of the participants in the game are bigger gods giving out the smaller positions (original gods, OGs, if you like). The OG's job is to evaluate, keep track of, and score the players on the objectives they achieve. Missions would earn different amounts of points, depending on their difficulty and creativity.
System
Ordinary Gods can be played on a small, gaming-group or game shop scale, with one person being the OG handling the game with a pen and paper. Scoring can worked out before the game starts by the group as a whole and administered by the OG.
But the game can only really be done justice with an expansive Internet presence. There would be a web site, run by a governing body of "OGs". They'd make up the various godhoods available, choose the different events that exemplify each one and the score to be given for completing that event.
Players would sign up, choose a godhood to compete for, and try to finish as many missions as possible. The players would have to send some sort of proof to the web site, which the OGs would approve and score for that competitor.
Once some sort of time limit or point goal is reached for that godhood, the web site awards the person with the highest score victory and proclaims them "god" of that aspect of life. Charge some money for this game, and the player gets sent a medal or certificate proclaiming their new celestial status.
Godhoods
There are all kinds of aspects of reality that the big gods are making available to rent, lease or buy for low low prices! The following are a few possible examples of godhoods that Ordinary Gods can be played with, and some possible actions and point values that would go with them. (Note: some actions have a "MAX" number listed after them; this is the most amount of times a player can complete this action in a game and still get points for it.)
God of Mini-Malls
The various gods of commerce are simply too busy these days, with online trading, Alan Greenspan, eBay, and the falling value of the Euro, among so much else, that they've decided to outsource the overlording of that most convenient of shopping malls - the mini-mall. Win, and you'll be the master of all you survey, as long as you only survey pre-teens being dropped off by their moms, wild bird food stores, and holier-than-thou attitudes of Radio Shack employees (I swear, if you're not in there to buy a Compaq PC or a satellite dish, to them you might as well be a cockroach. Sometimes I just need batteries, you snot-nosed punks).
- Parking your car in the mall lot overnight: 1 pt. (MAX 2)
And not getting a ticket: +1
And getting towed: -1 - Getting a receipt from every store in the mall: 2 pts. (MAX 1)
Either all or none of them are your receipts: +1 - Camping (in a tent) in the mall parking lot: 2 pts.
In the mall itself: +5
And Roasting marshmallows: +1
But don't put it out the fire when you're done: -5 - Stay in the mall until after closing: 2 pts.
Until it opens again: +3
Inside a store, not just the hallways: +3 - Hand out flyers outside the mall to customers: 1 pt. (MAX 1)
The flyer tells them of a discount that doesn't exist: +2
The flyer is about a store that doesn't exist: +1
And it's funny: +1
The flyer is about the destructive influence of mini-malls: +1
With specific examples about this mall and how it's hurt the community: +2 - Apply for a job at the mall: 1 pt. (MAX 5)
The information you wrote on the application is especially funny: +1
Using the name of someone else you know: +1
And they get the job, or at least an interview: +2
And they take the job: +5 - Get a job at the mall: 3 pts.
And quit immediately after getting it: +4
And quit after one week: +2
Get fired within your training period: +3
Steal stuff from the job: -2
Ask for a promotion within a week: +1
And act serious while doing it: +1 - Impersonate an employee of a store for at least 10 minutes: 2 pts.
And do a good job while doing it: +3
For at least 1 hour: +1 - Bribe mall security (for any reason): 2 pts. (MAX 1)
For something illegal: -2
But then turn them in: +6
To let you do something non-sensical: +2 - Waste a store employee's time for at least 1 minute: 1 pt.
5 minutes: +1
10 minutes: +3 - Return something to a store you didn't buy it from: 1 pt.
But then donate the money you got back to charity: +2
And buy the same thing back from them: +1 - Get "caught" for stealing, even though you didn't take anything: 2 pts.
You can see employees watching you: +1
You get stopped and questioned before you leave: +2
God of Newspapers
The gods of Information are having less and less interest in this part of their domain, as less and less people can read newspapers and even fewer care to. So they're it spinning off to an enterprising young 'un with a love of journalism, a sense of nostalgia, or just an obsession with Judge Parker and Garfield.
NOTE: The actions with two scores listed are for doing the action with a free alternatively weekly paper or a major metro newspaper, respectively.
- Taking all of the papers out of a street corner dispenser after only putting 50 cents: 1 pt. (MAX 1)
- Getting a letter to the editor in the paper: 3 pts. / 5 pts.
- Giving information to a reporter, which ends up in a story: 4 pts. / 6 pts.
Getting quoted in that story: +2 / +3
The information is false, but doesn't hurt anyone: +5 pts. / +10
The reporter gets in trouble because of the false info: -20 pts. - Writing an entertainment story that's in a paper (movie review, etc.): 7 pts. / 12 pts. (MAX 1)
Another type of story: 10 pts. / 20 pts.
On the front page: +5 - Being the focus of a story: 8 pts.
- Becoming a paperboy: 5 pts.
For more than a week: -2 - Take out a classified in the paper: 1 pt. (MAX 2)
It's a pretty funny one: +1 - Take out an ad in the paper: 2 pts. (MAX)
It's for something funny / bizarre: +2
REALLY funny / bizarre: +5
It's a full-page ad: +1
It's for an RPG: +5
It proclaims you future overlord of newspapers: +7 - Record a two-minute phone conversation you have with a reporter: 1 pt. (MAX 1 for each reporter)
Five minutes long: +1
And they clearly want to stop talking: +1
Ten minutes long: +2
And they clearly want to stop talking: +2
And it's all about your recent foot surgery: +3
And they clearly want to hear more: +2 - Get a trinket from a newspaper office: 1 pts. (MAX 1 for each paper)
It's worth more than five dollars: +1
It's especially cool: +1 to +3 (OG discretion)
You stole it: -5
God of Suburban School Boards
Well, the lords of evil decided even they can't handle the demon-spawned parents that dominate the politics of educating America's upper-middle class children. They've thrown up their hands in despair, and the torch can pass to you. If you want it.
- Attend a school board meeting: 1 pt.
And don't fall asleep: +1 (MAX 1) - Get your name on the school board minutes: 2 pts. (MAX 2)
- Get thrown out of a school board meeting: 2 pts. (MAX 1)
For what you say, not what you do: +2
What you said did not include profanities: +2 - Get the school board to seriously consider a proposal of yours, if only for a moment: 1 pt.
It's something absurd, like ending women's suffrage or adding water polo as a school sport: +3
It gets passed: +5 - Waste the school board's time with a speech for 5 minutes: 2 pts.
10 minutes: +1
They have to make you stop giving your speech: +1 - Get the school to ban something: 4 pts.
It's something already banned, but they didn't know it or something: -1
It's a quality piece of literature from the library: +1
And it couldn't be considered objectionable by anyone's standards: +2
It's a normal part of school life, like crayons, gym uniforms, or sniffing glue: +1 - Have a parent-teacher conference: 1 pt. (MAX 1)
But you're not a parent at that school: +1
But you're not a parent at all: +2 - Get elected to a school board position: 9 pts.
And resign immediately, citing the "suckiness" of everyone else on the board: +10
President or other leadership position: +10
And resign immediately, citing the "negativity" of everyone else on the board: +20 - Plead a case to the board using chalk, a chalkboard, and condescending tones: 4 pts.
And write a member's name on the board with a check mark next to it, as a punishment: +3 - Accompany a student in trouble with the school board as his or her "defense attorney": 5 pts.
- Get any or all teachers in the school a raise: 5 pts.
That's in line with the service they provide: +25
Typically, lists are much longer and more detailed than these. OGs can also allow for spontaneous "sacrifices," which they have the discretion to judge and score on their own.
The gods are waiting. Get their attention.
DISCLAIMER: Don't do any of ethically suspect or just plain vandalistic (is that a word? Should be...) actions that are given as examples if you're going to play a game like this. Just because I'm either a petty criminal or just want to be one doesn't mean you can't think of better ideas for this game that aren't illegal. It's actually can be a fun game, even when you play it "legal". As long as you don't end up running through neighborhood backyards away from a police car in the suburbs at 3:00 AM after pulling up street signs in the name of the god of Traffic, you'll be fine.