Oceania 2084 vs Playing God
Compare Oceania 2084 and Playing God side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Oceania 2084 | Playing God | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Scifi, Cyberpunk | Fantasy |
| Tags | GM-Less, Narrative, Collaborative, Drama, Roleplay-Heavy, Solo-Friendly, Crunchy, CC-Licensed Rules | Collaborative, Diceless, GM-Less, High-Power, One-Shot Friendly, Roleplay-Heavy, Sandbox, Solo-Friendly, Superpowers, Worldbuilding |
| Core Mechanic | Resistance characters' Acts normally succeed as narrated within a six-phase Day in Dystopia. When a Value is challenged, roll d6 against the linked Emotion: Good Values succeed on a roll above it and Bad Values on a roll below it. | Playing God uses no dice for its core resolution: players choose from the minor and major wonders allowed by their divine rank, and each wonder takes effect without a success roll. Devotion plus History determines divine rank, which expands the number and scale of wonders available each age. The optional Deck of Fate adds uncontrollable mortal events, while avatar battles use a separate card-hand procedure or another system chosen by the table. |
| Dice | d6 | Diceless |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Availability | Free core rules | Paid |
| Runnability | 4 of 5 book tools | 2 of 5 book tools |
| License | CC BY-SA 4.0 | ORC License |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — ORC License |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Jocher Symbolic Systems | Gnome Made Games |
| Year | 2024 | 2025 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Groups who want a politically explicit dystopian campaign about preserving private bonds under state surveillance. It suits tables comfortable sharing narrative authority with an adversarial Big Brother player, character turnover, and post-session debriefs. | Groups who want to create a shared mythology across ages, either as a standalone campaign or as a foundation for another RPG setting. It also suits solo players and GM-less tables that enjoy negotiating divine alliances and rivalries. |
| Highlights | Acts normally resolve through narration rather than task rolls, keeping attention on what resistance costs instead of whether a character can perform it. Value Tests turn public loyalty and private belief into emotional pressure: success shifts a shadow emotion, and failure causes an outburst or Stress. Physical Notes written by dead characters grant 2 Hope when another dissident finds them; a Note carried into interrogation can be confiscated as evidence. | Each of the 23 domains grants a distinct wonder and modifier, making a god's portfolio mechanically consequential. Wonders permanently alter the shared multiverse, producing a usable mythic setting as play advances. Lower-ranked deities can pool their allotments to perform major wonders they could not enact alone. |
| Considerations | The campaign assumes the regime eventually breaks or vaporizes its dissidents, so it does not support a conventional revolution or heroic victory arc. The Big Brother player tracks a concealed surveillance economy and interprets its Reaction tables, making that role more demanding than a neutral facilitator. The game requires a shared willingness to portray propaganda, betrayal, and emotional distress, even though it includes safety and debrief procedures. | Play centers on choosing and narrating godly wonders, with little direct support for character-scale action. Avatar battles use a brief card-hand procedure or another game chosen by the table, so the core book does not model positional combat. The optional Deck of Fate can impose Devotion losses or dictate a deity's next wonder, trading player control for unpredictable mortal events. |