Customer Reviews

Playing Gods, the Board Game of Divine Domination

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Playing Gods calls itself the first satirical board game of religious warfare. Basically, you have 2 to 5 players who each play a different god, and the object is to take over the world by killing off other gods' followers. This is done with the four elements (fire, air, earth, and water), so that includes floods, earthquakes, firestorms, tornadoes, etc.-- and some Old Testament-style death cards like Plagues, Locusts, Darkness, and Famine.

The other way to win is to not kill but instead convert other god's followers-- basically offering them things that other gods can't (such as prosperity, miracles, communion, afterlife, etc.).

The game comes with a set of five god pawns from the major religions (including a "Badass Buddha" with a chain gun), but the rules are not specific to those gods, and players can also be the God of Beer, the Cult of Oprah, Scientology (Tom Cruise with a UFO over his head), the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or any other god. Players can even use action figures ("Darth Vader just killed a bunch of Jews in Africa!") or anything else.

The Good: Setup is very quick, and the pace of the game moves quickly (no waiting ten minutes for your next turn). Many of the cards are really funny, and the idea is well executed. The game is not just a "gimmick" game that you will play once or twice, it has solid game playability and stands up to many repeat playing. The Expansion Deck (sold separately) includes blank cards so that creative players can write their own special attacks, which can be a lot of fun.

The Bad: Game play with five players (the maximum) can take a long time, especially if the players are new to the game and shaky on the rules. A few of the cards might be offensive to some people (such as "One of your preachers is found with a prostitute, lose one sect!"), and the Expansion Pack deck is especially edgy. Some hardcore German-style strategy gamers (those who like "Ticket to Ride" or "Settlers of Catan" for example) may find the game mechanics not complex enough for their tastes.

Overall, it's a game unlike any you have ever seen, and it has a very timely message of peace. It does not make fun of any specific religions or the faithful, it is just pointing out how stupid it is for people to kill each other because they believe different things. The game is 100% indie-- you won't find it at Wal-Mart or Toys R Us, but you can get it here, and should be able to special order it from your local toy, comic, or game store.

Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination is at once fun and thought-provoking.

The basics:

Each player selects a deity to act as for the game. Battle ready figurines representing the major world religions are included: Buddha with a chain gun, Christ wielding a cross, Moses hurling the ten commandments as weapons, Kali with a sword and severed head and a vaguely sheik-like character with a bomb. An additional blank piece is included that can be customized from the enclosed stickers, allowing the player to be the Almighty Dollar, Oprah or the Scientologist face of Tom Cruise. The pieces are well-sculpted, highly detailed and perfect for painting.

The play takes you around the globe as your deity of choice attempts to try and take over the world (cue voices of Pinky and the Brain...). Whomever kills or converts enough followers to control the majority of territories will be the baddest of them all. Killing occurs by playing "Elements" cards that bring on natural disasters, plagues and other "acts of gods." Launching attacks is risky because the prospective victim god may have a card to protect or provide immunity against the attack. Conversion happens through the offering of attributes to your rivals followers. Awesome things such as miracles, prosperity and scripture are very tempting to the lay people. Other shifts in power occur through "Providence" cards that highlight the various events that shift religious leanings.

The fun:

Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination is wryly humorous. Cards bring on hailstorms where only the "hatted are safe," preachers caught with prostitutes, and the swelling of church membership when polygamy is condoned. Certainly, many of the cards could be interpreted as blasphemous, but ultimately they seek to reveal some of the more idiosyncratic aspects of religious doctrine. It is not the gods that are the subject of satire per se, but rather the organizations built around them. All of the jokes and gaffaws that occur during game play (and they are numerous) are not from uncomfortable offense, but from the oddities of the followers that are highlighted through the text of the attack and conversion cards.

The Bottom Line:

Playing Gods is fun for gamers and non-gamers, religious and non-religious and young and not-so-young. I've played many times, with disparate levels of belief present in my opponents. I can honestly say that it has been fun, thought-provoking and enlightening each time. There is a certain amount of pleasure in slaughtering the world with plagues and natural disasters without remorse, but the more fulfilling aspect of PG is the level of introspection that is elicited amongst the players. We are all ultimately pawns upon the earth, and who we choose to control our fate is much more than just a roll of the dice.

As a non-gamer raised in a very religious family, I wholeheartedly recommend Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination to everyone in order to provoke conversations of faith and belief within the comforting environs of a well-designed board game.

As an atheist and lover of satire, I had really high hopes for this game. I'm not into complex role playing games, and from the description I expected a game that was pretty simple and easy to play, but still fun. On the positive side, I like the graphics, the game pieces, and the originality of the concept. The wrath cards are hilarious, and were just slightly offensive to my girlfriend's religious mother, which I loved!

However, the game turned out to be a little too complicated to really be that enjoyable. I read through the instructions before playing with three other people, but there were so many rules and exceptions to the rules that none of us could keep them straight. At least three times during the game, I had to go back to the manual and look things up. And usually it turned out that we had misunderstood something and were playing it the wrong way. It seemed like the game designers had played along, and whenever they encountered something that didn't quite work, they just added a new rule or an exception to an existing rule.

Now that I've played it once, I plan on trying it again with a new group of friends to see if it gets any easier to comprehend.

BOTTOM LINE FIRST: if you are comfortable adapting rules to fit your desired style of play, it can be fun.

====================

My friends and I played this a few times last weekend. We had high hopes for it but it failed to deliver.

The concept is hilarious (some of the wrath and conversion cards are lough out loud funny). And the craftsmanship is high: the board, cards, figures, etc. are all well made, durable, and attractive.

The first problem we ran into is that the rules are complicated and we had to go back to them several times during gameplay to figure out what should be done. (We're not simpletons; we've got 10 degrees between the four of us -- 5 of them advanced -- and we still had trouble with the instructions.)

Other problems we had to work through:

* When starting out, you have very limited resources and ability to do anything. This makes the first part of the game go very slowly and makes it boring as you realize you have to just go round and round the board collecting cards before it can get interesting. Once we realized this, we changed the rules to allow us to start with more cards-in-hand (3 wrath and 2 conversion rather than the specified 1 wrath and 0 conversion). This sped up gameplay and made it more enjoyable. Unfortunately, it was too much and the game went *too* quickly. Next time, we'll try 2 wrath and 1 conversion and see how that works out.

* Part of why it sped up too much is the second problem we had: the expansion cards which came with the game REALLY unbalanced things quickly. They allowed for the elimination of other players in a single turn, even fairly early in the game before they had a chance to gather any defenses. Talk about letting the air out of a "fun group activity". =(

We'll keep tweaking the rules and see what we come up with. If we find a variant which seems to work for us consistently, I'll revise this review and post it.

As is, this game has lots of potential but ultimately fails to deliver...so far.