Godstein Part 1: Concept, God Creation, and Game Setup

The idea for the Godstein campaign came from a tweet by

AlchemicRaker

. He imagined a game where the players would create a world using a Braunstein inspired method of collaborative worldbuilding and then play an RPG campaign in the world that was created. I decided to run with this concept when I started my campaign. I grabbed my normal group of 6 friends to join me and set up a discord server in 2024 for this new experimental game. Some had swingy schedules and were trepidatious about committing a new campaign that I said would be completely different from other campaigns we played. Here was my first post in that discord in February:

I had no idea where this was going to go and my best guess was that it would last maybe 3-6 months. I did not expect the world we created to be running nearly a year later with 15 total players spread across 4 weekly groups.

In session 0, I wrote out a document for the players. I’ve released the document a few times in my youtube comments, but it really was just written for my players and not a broader release, so it may be a bit disorganized as I wrote it when I had no idea what to expect and not much experience running this type of game. I’ll link that document in the comments. Basically it details the god creation process and the general campaign structure.

I was asking each player to create a god based on a random combination of domains. I made a list of 20 cleric domains, as follows:

As you can see, I added alignment restrictions, which was a mistake and I would recommend you don’t do this because I ended up ditching them anyway. I had a few players who had a concept that used their domains but didn’t fall under the alignment restrictions, so I went with it because I liked some of the ideas.

Each player was given 3 random domains. Despite making a d20 chart, I ended up using cards so that there were no duplicates. They were instructed to come up with a concept for a god that combined 2 of the domains and given a list of questions to answer about their gods. The original pantheon they created were:

• Kheper’Zall (Infernal/Light) - NE goddess of fire

  • Chosen race: Tieflings

• Kreek’Thie (Arcana/Chaos) - CE goddess of wild magic

  • Chosen race: Arachnae

• Kimaris (Time/War) - TN god of eternal conflict

  • Chosen race: Gnomes

• Mortir (Death/Commerce) - LG god of death and taxes (later became the god of civilization)

  • Chosen race: Humans

• Ognir (Forge/Spirit) - LN god of warforged and robotic entities

  • Chosen race: Dwarves

• Vita’Thios (Life/Darkness) - NE god of alchemy and undead creations

  • Chosen race: Undead

Worth note, upon conception, Mortir was LN and not LG, but his alignment changed based on the fact that no one else was playing a good aligned god, and actions he took during the Godstein and after fit more into LG than LN, so we ended up changing it.

Players then had to write out a bit of lore and answer a list of questions about their gods. The questions were as follows:

• Name of god:

• Domains (2 of the 3 drawn):

• Alignment:

• Types of followers: This could be racial, or it based on other characteristics. So for example: dwarves, elves, pregnant women, blacksmiths, sailors.

• Chosen People: This would be the player race that will be added to the game as your god’s chosen. You can use one in existing rules, or create something yourself.

• Artifact: A general description of some sort of artifact of great power that may represent your god.

• Terrain: We use Magic the Gathering terrain types, list 2 terrain types that your god is strongest in, and 1 your god is weak in. If you picked the death domain you make pick deserts and if you have the darkness domain you may pick underground

• Relationships: Does your god have any relationships to other gods, familial or otherwise?

• Goal: What does the world look like if it is molded to fit your god's image?

• Lore: this may be personality related, motivations, or whatever you think is most significant. Write as much or little as you want here.

Players spent most of the session 0 brainstorming god concepts. I randomly generated 3 general world maps on Inkarnate and the players voted on their favorite, which was this long, oddly shaped single continent with a few islands off to the east. From there, I looked for anyone who took natural domains (tempest, nature, light, darkness, and time) and asked them a few questions about how the terrain should start. The goddess of light wanted to turn much of it to hot, inhabitable desert. She was opposed by the others and I had them roll, which she overwhelmingly won, so the world started scorched and covered in desert. I asked the god of time then to place some mountain ranges and since there was no god of nature, I just treated the nature domain as a completely natural force and placed some forests at the north and south ends of the map.

When we had the starting terrain worked out, it looked like this:

We also had to decide on a scale for the map, I decided to make it roughly the size of the UK, about 770 miles diagonally (650 x 420 mile map dimensions). This would mean that once the campaign started, the map should be big enough to offer plenty of exploration for the PCs, while small enough to force gods and civilizations into conflict.

For those worried about realism, yeah it’s not realistic, but I don’t really care. It makes sense in this world because the gods made it that way, and when they had the opportunity the next week to mold it even more, the result was one that would drive a cartographer up the wall. But that’s for the next post.

I have a lot more to share about this game and I still plan to release a rules guide soon. I think this is probably the best platform to share on, and I probably should have started a blog about this earlier. I have near a years worth of notes on this game to get through for this, so there is plenty more coming. Also if anyone has any criticism for me on either the mechanics of this game or writing of this blog, please share. I’ve never blogged before so I can use advice!

Here is the player document I gave the players initially to explain what kind of game this was going to be. It was never intended for a broad release and really only made for 6 people, but people asked me to share it!