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Divinity is a roleplaying game in which players take on the role of a god or similar divine being. Game play focuses on the interaction between the gods, their mortal followers, and other divine entities. Characters interact with their world in a number of predefined ways, depending on their personality and focus. A stealthy or tricky character, for example, might be good at using subterfuge, while a particularly benevolent divinity would likely have skill in empathy and etiquette. Task resolution is diceless, with players succeeding or failing at a given attempt based mainly on their power level. Players also have the option to bid "will points" to achieve more difficult tasks or overcome rival characters.

Divinity is a "rules light" game that stresses story over hard mechanics. In most cases, the rules exist primarily to encourage the players to stay in character and behave within the confines of the genre. Characters who use power beyond their normal abilities, or act in violation of their portfolios, run the risk of diminishing in worship and, eventually fading completely into obscurity. On the other hand, characters can grow in power by working within the confines of their defined roles, granting succor to their followers, and interacting with their divine peers.

By design, divinity is very abstract. It's a largely story-driven game, in which the rules take a back seat to character actions. I consider this design style a strength, but in some ways the rulebook suffers for it. The author seems to be writing somewhat stream of conscious, with thoughts and ideas presented in a disorganized fashion. For example, the first chapter gives a very brief listing and description of skills. Chapter two then gives a slightly more detailed skill list. Unfortunately, there's no clear design or layout reason for this division. There are a few other places where the author mentions a rule in brief, only to refer the reader to another, slightly more detailed section of the book where that rule is explained again. In another example, a section in chapter 3 actually refers the same chapter for more detail. I'm sure it was just a typo, but that sort of thing is potentially very confusing when you're trying to use this reference in actual game play.

LIKED: I really like the idea behind this book. Playing a deity in a roleplaying game like this interests me, and I think that making it a largely abstract and story-driven game was a wise move. The rules, though light, support the intended style of play.

I should also point out that Divinity contains notes on using it for live action roleplaying. I have no experience or interest in LARPing, but it seems that these rules would lend themselves well to that sort of gaming.

DISLIKED: Divinity lacks polish. The book needs stronger examples to help players understand how the game is meant to be played. The rules should be cleaned up and compiled, with all the mechanics kept in one location for ease of use. With stronger organization and the removal of a number of typos, Divinity could be turned into a nice little game.

I'm calling this book 2 and a half stars. I think Divinity would play fairly well at the table, as long as the GM has a good idea what he's doing. The typos and lack of clarity, however, drag the book below a 3 star rating.

QUALITY: Acceptable

VALUE: Disappointed

Rating: [2 of 5 Stars!]

Reviews of Divinity and other AGES products

This review is also posted at http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12752.phtml

Introduction: Divinity: a PDF guide for role-playing gods and goddesses.

Before this goes any further, this is a review written by the author of Divinity. Please keep this in mind as you read this.

Layout:

Divinity is a 62 page guide 8.5” by 11” PDF with one inch margins all around. The main text is a Garamond font while the titles were done in Verdana. Divinity uses a two column format throughout the book, except for the index (which uses three columns). The book is divided into four chapters of varying lengths.

Chapter one is the Introduction chapter. It was 11 pages long and deals with the terminology of the game and attempts to address the concept of role-playing.

Chapter 2, Skills and Powers, is about 19 pages long. As the title suggests, this chapter lays out the skills and powers of a Divinity. It also talks about the rules for using them. This will be addressed later on in the review.

Chapter 3, Character Building, is six pages long. This is a very short chapter but it is packed with information for creating a Divinity. The chargen is based on handing out a number of character points. In fact, they are handed out in groups of ten: ten points for powers, ten points for skills, and ten points for knowledge. Along with this, they have a list of questions to answer and they have to pick what level of mortal influence they possess. The higher the number, the more access to resources they possess but they have less and less importance to their followers.

Chapter 4, World Building, is twelve pages long. It has advice for creating settings (ten 1 page summaries) and points to relationship-building and the nature of Divinities. In addition, there is a section on writing creation myths, worship pattern for mortal followers and more.

To round out the PDF, it has a table of contents, page numbers, and a two page index. In addition, there is a four page adventure called “Infectious Consequences” and a list of tables and charts to help the reader find the chart they want quickly.

Style:

Divinity has a mixture of original artwork and stock art. The interior artwork (original) was done by Jennifer Reynolds and Casteen Oneill. Jennifer did two full b/w pages used to divide chapter one and chapter two. The other page divides the end of chapter 4 from the appendices. Casteen Oneill made a few ¼ to ½ b/w pages. His works consisted goddesses and temples. The rest of the artwork was obtained from clipart.com. As a result, the style is not completed unified. There is a theme carried out through Divinity. The chosen theme (an easy guess here) was gods and goddesses. There are other scenes, such as temples and paintings used to highlight a theme. For instance, there is a picture of a city being destroyed by meteors and heavenly fire placed before the section on destruction powers in chapter 2.

The other addition to Divinity is the short stories used to illustrate certain aspects of Divinity. The in-game fiction is short but as an introduction to Divinity and to give examples for using the Battle power, among other things. I have heard positive things about the stories (reminder: I am the author of Divinity.) The book was edited by three different people but that is not a guarantee that typos do not exist.

The layout is simple and clean but is not perfect. Annoying, I could not get the numbers in the ToC to line up cleanly (the numbers are off by half-spaces.) In addition, it is laid out in a reader’s format and currently, it is missing a printing format.

Substance:

The rules are fairly simple. For “opposition” contests, a karma system is used to determine who the winner is. The skill rating is added to the number of will-points that the player or NPC is willing to spend. The higher total wins. For unopposed contests, the rating is simply used. Each rating has an adjective and a number listed next to it. If the Overseer believes the player has a high enough rating, then it is a success. The vice versa is true as well. There is an option listed where if the player wants to succeed, then they can spend a number of will-points equal to the difference. I.e. The overseer believes a rating of seven is necessary to succeed but the player only has five points. The player could spend two points to win the challenge.

The powers are done a bit differently. The power rating lists what the player can and cannot do. The only time karma comes into player is if someone is trying to stop the player from succeeding. There are ten different power groups: Avatar, Battle, Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, Pathos, Sensory, Spatial, Temporal, and Transformation. The skills are centered about social ones. Divinity does not assume that its skill list is complete and encourages the player to come up with new skills. Knowledge is broken down into academic (facts about natural mortal world), lore, (facts about worlds outside scope of mortals) and vocation (skills where physical action is used as well as mental ones.)

Divinity does use an experience chart but is not based on killing things. The player can set aside a number of will-points to gain experience points. Winning challenges also gain experience. Violating the portfolio, committing Hubris, and losing contests gain stagnation points, which weaken the Divinity over time. To further complicate matters, their powers are noisy and create clamor. It is possible for other beings to detect what a Divinity is doing if they use their powers too much and too quickly.

The definition of Divinity expands beyond the anthromorphic view of gods and goddesses. There are five broad classes of gods/goddesses: Anthromorphic (human appearing), animalistic/totem (gods who take on animal forms), Archetypes (represents ideas, emotions, etc), evolved (somehow mortal has become divine or has powers on that level), mechanicistic (powers are based on advanced tech or god is actually a machine).

Overall:

Divinity is designed to be a settingless stand-alone RPG where players are gods/goddesses. It is also suited to help add a layer of the “divine” to other games. Of course, not everything would be useful but there is enough general advice to serve anyone using this system.

Future Review