Defy the Gods Quick Start

reposting as a comment because I didn't realize reviews weren't actually visible lol

I highly recommend this game, especially to anyone who's already interested in games like Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Agon or Runequest. Some highlights of what I enjoyed - gorgeous and evocative artwork, really cool character abilities, building a city together that our characters loved and cared about, playing our own enemies in cutscenes, flavorful worldbuilding options to decide what the gods are or what is magic, and opportunities for dramatic reveals or vulnerable moments.

When I had the opportunity to play this game, we saw some really fun larger-than-life character abilities ("Miracles", "Spells", "Moves", etc.) like - 

     changing the timeline

    summoning a posse of shades who are super helpful until they get hungry

    making an illusion of people so real that you single-handedly change your city's demographics 

    communing with a mythical beast and convincing them to become a guardian spirit of the nearby river instead of eating people

       disguising yourself completely as a high priestess and taking over the temple without any question from the acolytes

     emanating the power of the goddess of hopeless wishes so powerfully that an enemy just decides to leap back in the Underworld

     literally flying  with the power of friendship

Learning the rules was pretty easy, rolls are 2d6 with a modifier if applicable. Epithets work both as sort of stats/abilities and conditions/health/durability. You write a unique phrase that talks about your character's behavior or values. You rewrite one of these epithets when your character experiences Crisis (from taking too many Wounds - which usually comes from low rolls) or Doom (from gaining too much Fire - which comes usually from high rolls). You gain XP when you roll low, or when you do certain things that match the theme of your specific character archetype (for example, communicating with otherworldly forces for one playbook, endangering yourself to seek knowledge for another.) There's definitely some fun toys on each character sheet to keep track of and challenge everyone to dive into the drama. 

There's an example adventure in the back of the full book, however it seems easy to set up a simple adventure by just looking at the playbooks that people are interested in and the World Forces (the authorities in the world that hate your characters for their subversive lifestyles and adventuring ways). In fact, each player makes a character who is a World Force, which also helps with fleshing out the opposition.

We encountered a god of revenge who was angry that our Revenant didn't want to serve them, city officials who sent guards to tear down our neighborhood to make way for a "fire break", a river god spreading curses to our neighborhood who also hated the Vessel's deity for not being a traditional goddess, and Atlantean sorcerers who wanted to plant their city in the Wild and our neighborhood alike without regard for either the wild creatures or city-dwellers. The players fleshed out some ideas at the beginning of the game of what creatures served the Underworld, what were characteristics of Atlantis, and what the city government was like. 

For a one session game, I would definitely recommend doing as we did and starting each player character off with 2 XP and 2 Fire, and truncating some of the world building. I could definitely see this system being compatible with a bunch of sword n sorcery adventures as long as the group made sure to create dramatic relationships with each other and the opposition (World Forces). 

Anyway, 10/10, would defy the gods again! :) 

This game looks awesome so far! Will definitely back it when I get the funds to. If I may ask, though, how does Sorcery work exactly? I understand the mechanic from how it was described (roll a bunch of dice and look for patterns) but from what I can see I don't think the Sorcerer sheet actually explains that anywhere, or describes how the dice pool works.

Played this at BigBadCon a couple of days ago, it was great fun.   The setting is quite imaginative and the Epithet system adds it's own flavor.  I played the Sorcerer which had a mechanic I've not seen before where you cast a spell by rolling dice and looking for patterns, if you don't get any matches then Chaos reigns.   Which is glorious.

I am playtesting this and it is glorious!! The world we built and the mechanics mesh so well and I’m so excited everytime I get to play in the chaos we have created!

This was the most exciting game I playtested at METATOPIA. Really looking forward to seeing how it's progressed since then.