hey can fly faster than the speed of sound. Jump across the English Channel. Lift—and throw—a tank. Protect themselves with impenetrable spheres of force. Turn enemies into pillars of salt with a touch. Teleport with a thought. They are Talents, and as World War II opens in the European and Pacific theaters, it seems that there is nothing that they cannot do.
Their adventures are chronicled in Godlike, a new superhero role-playing game that takes decades of superhero traditions, builds a coherent rule base for their manifestations and then turns the clock back to just before the Atomic Age. Superhero powers in Godlike aren't the result of mutant powers, extraterrestrial origins or accidental exposure to radioactive insects. Instead, they are the direct result of a character's strength of will. Most are triggered by an incredible desire for something to be—and suddenly it just is.
In one example, a member of the British Expeditionary Force is trapped in Dunkirk, France, by the rapidly approaching German army. The only way for him to escape is to jump the 27 miles from Dunkirk to Dover, England—and that's exactly what he does.
Every character is defined by two sets of attributes: Stats and Skills. Stats are unlearned, innate characteristics and consist of Body, Coordination, Sense, Brains, Command and Cool. They are ranked on a scale of 1 to 5, with 2 representing the average person and 5 representing the pinnacle of human capability. Skills are learned abilities like driving a car or shooting a gun, and like Stats they
range in value from 1 to 5.
Talents represent abilities above and beyond Skills and Stats. They can represent enhancements to these core characteristics—allowing individuals to exceed their human limitations—or they can represent access to superhuman abilities like flight or sonic blasts.
Talent manifestation—as well as every other action in Godlike—is governed through results culled from dice pools. When trying to accomplish a typical action, individuals add together values for the appropriate Stat and Skill. That tells them how many 10-sided dice they can roll to try and succeed. The goal is to get matches, with the matches themselves defined by two characteristics: height and width. Height—how high the number is on the die—reflects how well someone does something. Higher numbers are better. Width—how many matches were rolled—tells how long the action took (with more matches paradoxically meaning that the action took less time). The end result is that someone who rolls two 10s does very well at an action—but someone who rolls four 10s does very well and does it quicker.
The core rulebook is divided into nine parts, with the first four detailing the rules and character creation, and the last five providing background material. The game also provides an extensive appendix
offering "Open Source Superhero Rules," based on Wizards of the Coast's d20 ruleset, the same rules used for the popular Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition game.
Gritty, realistic superhero action
Godlike's approach to superhero role-playing throws characters into the role of relatively low-powered Talents, the sort of heroes that might appear as throwaway characters in the pages of Superman or The Avengers. It takes a grittier, more realistic approach to super-powers: yes, "Strong Arm" might be able to throw a tank a mile—but one shot to the head from a P38 Walther will still put him down. The end result is a game more like the movie Unbreakable than X-Men.
Godlike's ruleset gracefully reinforces its realism, limiting each character to one action a round—like diving into a ditch or shooting a charging Nazi—while still providing the potential for superhumans (or very lucky normal humans) to perform multiple actions. The game features body-specific damage rather than a generic pool of "hit points," which in turn means that it's possible for characters to lose limbs while charging machine gun nests. The only drawback to this level of realism is that combat can take longer than in games that are less dynamic, but that's simply the price that must be paid for this sort of combat.
Those who prefer their superheroes on the scale of the Justice League or Fantastic Four need not worry: the game is easily scalable, allowing for characters like Batman while remaining balanced. The authors go out of their way to explain how to play these higher-caliber games, and carefully explain the advantages and pitfalls of the various optional rules.
In an RPG, good rules are nothing without good background material. Godlike provides plenty of it, from notes on how the Allied and Axis powers found and exploited Talents to a detailed history explaining how Talents factored into the war effort into the RPG's timeline. There's also a thin but effective chapter detailing equipment and weaponry.
Criticisms of the game are largely a matter of personal taste. For example, there are two abilities that all Talents have: the ability to instantly detect another Talent when his or her powers are being
manifested, and the ability to interfere with those powers. At first glance this may seem to run counter to normal comic-book logic—why should a character whose Talent involves the ability to eat anything be able to shut down a character who can turn himself into living diamond? But in practice, most comic books seem to do exactly this, with villains and heroes constantly finding new ways around each other's powers: Godlike's just a lot more direct about it.
The optional d20 rules at the back of the book are a nice touch, providing GMs whose players are recalcitrant about playing games other than D&D with a way to get them into a new game without having to introduce a new ruleset. Also nice is the quantity of free materials available on the Godlike Web site: the free, fast-play rules cover all the major concepts of the game, while the "Glazier" scenario gives players an excellent taste of what they can expect from the game.
World War II was horrific on a scale that would be called unimaginable if it hadn't been witnessed by so many millions. It also heralded technological revolutions that shattered old conceptions of the word
"impossible," from genocidal atrocities to the splitting of the atom. Godlike ultimately succeeds because it successfully and believably integrates superheroes into the war, making them part of these earth-shattering changes without dramatically altering the nature of that particular hell.
— Ken
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