Gods, Demi-Gods and Responsibility

I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts into words, but I'm going to try. A conversation I had last night about really strong, god-like characters in an RP setting that allows people to make such things has made me think more about people, or their characters, being swept into one group.

Specifically, the god-like characters in terms of strength or ability. In the less realistic of setting such characters may exist inevitably. In Star Wars Galaxies people used to RP as Jedi and Sith, Mandalorians, etc. Of the many who were pretty average in terms of skill and strength, we had many who were considered overpowered in terms of the universe and due to their prolific nature.

This resulted in those people taking the blame for any new characters of that type, any new characters who weren't below average were immediately placed in the OP group.

Is it justifiable to sweep those characters into the catergory of OP or problematic because of irresponsibility on the part of others? Can we blame the setting?

I've had experience playing god characters in a number of different scenarios. My first experience was in the forum-based roleplay called "I Will Go Against the Heavens" run by a user called Solunar. Within that roleplay, three types of characters were allowed: gods, demons and humans. Gods in that roleplay were acknowledged as what they were: essentially all-powerful over their domain and beyond the scope of any human and most (all but a very specific few) demons to challenge.

The second was a more recent roleplay named Apotheosis run by Omega Pancake, a similar scenario. Gods were all-powerful, etc.

The reason those two roleplays worked so well was because all players, upon signing up, acknowledged that this hierarchy of power existed. Nobody ever expected that their human or demon would be able to challenge a god directly and not be obliterated . However this was only possible because, equally, the people making god characters acknowledged that they were expected to act like that sort of god. Interfering with mortals by waving their power around was frowned upon and the other gods would intervene, and in extreme cases the GM would step in, obviously.

Gods in a setting like The Multiverse are another barrel of worms entirely.

There is no hard and fast line between mortal and god. There is no hard and fast line that says 'gods are this powerful and more powerful than all mortals'. Crucially, no player can categorically insist their character is more powerful than another player's character without IC content backing that up.

What exactly does that mean?

It can mean a freshly made god coming into conflict with a powerful mortal supernatural character, and the latter having a significant amount of IC content backing up them being incredibly strong. Meanwhile, the god only has their profile declaring them a god. What happens in this situation? On a technicality, the mortal character should take precedence if their player does not agree that they are weaker than this god.

Is this necessarily a problem? It varies. Some people hold gods as something quintessentially beyond anything mortal - i.e. the omnipotence/presence/science of most monotheistic gods. Others are more of the pantheon mindset - i.e. gods are just incredibly powerful beings, but can be tricked, bested, and the like as much as mortals can.

In the latter case, the lack of a line between man and god is fine, because even those gods have to play on the terms of mortals to some degree.

The other type of god is incredibly hard to deal with. They can be played well, really well - they can make great plots happen if they're not waved around like a status symbol and used as a deus-ex-machina to omnipotence all over people. They can also be made into a huge problem if played wrong.

The creation of the Grand Pantheon in the Multiverse aims to deal with that latter problem. Tiko has a few good ideas - such as the power of gods being relative to the amount of IC content they generate acknowledging their power/following them (even if indirectly). The Grand Pantheon is aimed to regulate gods by encouraging them to play largely via the manipulation of none-god characters and in interactions with other gods, comparable to making them chess players in the MV. To utilise champions and representatives rather than just stamping on the board and saying they won. It also provides an IC way to deal with them by the other gods coming together to work against the problem god, preferably, without turning it into a 'gods battle royale'.

Tiko herself probably has a lot more insight on playing gods in the MV because of the time she's been investing in that project, so I'll leave her to drop in if she wants to to expand on that.

Rounding up, and acknowledging that I have been skipping all over the place in this post without making many points... I am of the opinion that gods can work in any setting, but they have to be played RIGHT. Creating an atmosphere in which players can be guided towards playing gods effectively is crucial to enabling players who don't have as clear an understanding of how to do so to learn.

So tl;dr it's a two-way street between GM and player, where the GM has to work out a way to regulate and guide their players' gods, and the player has to be willing to cooperate.