A while ago I talked about the benefits and drawbacks of gods in my Alder King campaign. The gods are an eclectic mix of the following:
In my campaign, players encounter settlements and factions, and they can gain good or bad reputation by helping or hindering them. I saw DM Peter use this system in his Grenzmarken campaign and liked it. Obviously this kind of thing is less interesting if there are no moral ambiguities. It’s more fun if only some of the player characters are in good standing with the humans of Delan, the swamp hag, or goblins of Grezneck. Fortunately, things have been working out for me and adding reputation to the campaign wiki pages of settlements and factions have made this a bit more visible.
As I was pondering the question of alignment again, I thought of reusing this reputation mechanics for the gods in my game. On my campaign wiki, I’ve created pages for the gods that have come up in play and I started listing player reputations. Thus, if they keep animating the dead, I don’t have to get into a discussion of whether the player thinks this is evil or not. Orcus is going to take an interest in the player’s actions one way or another.
The benefits I’m hoping to see:
Follow-up: 2010-02-02 Reputation Mechanics.