Creating New Gods of Mankind

From the Owner’s Desk,

For those of you who play or interested in playing New Gods of Mankind I want to share with you what it took to make New Gods of Mankind. Let me tell you it was not easy. It is like creating a feast for 1000 people or making a building from scratch as a novice architect. Nothing is truly easy as it seems. Yet we succeeded.

First off this project started in late 2005 while I was talking to an online buddy of mine from Denmark. I will not give out his name but I will call him “Hund” for now which means dog. He is a great guy, really sharp. We stayed up at all hours for several years talking about gaming with our favorite table-top RPG Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. We both met on the forums for strike-to-stun a niche website. I wrote a couple of articles for the website and did a couple more for Warpstone Magazine. I was not sure which way I wanted to go with my writing. Then I started working overseas. So I talked to Hund and said “Man, I want to make my own RPG, I feel like I can contribute to the RPG community with a unique twist on a role-playing concept. Eventually this led to the idea of New Gods of Mankind. At first it was called something else. I forget but it was not very catchy. Anyways Hund suggested I use the old Greek elemental races for the Elder Races instead of the cliché Dwarves and Elves of Tolkien fame. It was a good idea so the story developed. I wrote notes and even did a wiki. Then the project got bigger so I started looking for help.

After some time developing background ideas I hired an artist and brought on a few designers. These guys from different parts of the table-top RPG industry were really top notch. A combined 30 years’ experience in gaming with big names such as White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, West End Games and Fantasy Flight were with these guys. The ideas started to form. So did the group of people. I recruited others as well with up to six writers involved including myself. We started to meet on yahoo messenger in a chat room to discuss what I wanted as far as mechanics, background, and history. I gave them my ideas; make a game about gods but one where the player has to have some responsibilities as well. I wanted a system you can play with other systems or you could LARP, board game it or even make it to where you can solely focus on followers. I personally wrote 2 chapters in the main book (Chapters 2 and 3 over 40k words) and I was the editor in charge for the other chapters. I guided everyone and read every page, commenting and giving feedback. It was like being in charge of a huge orchestra. So the concepts of belief and followers and the relationship of god and followers were born. Leviathans came into being there as well with the additional mechanic of Terror inserted. I also stated the need to make this game flexible, for the player and the GM. It was a tall order but I must say we got it.

New Gods took all of 2006 and 2007 to create the first 3 books. The first two were created together and put out separate. This way, players only need to purchase 1 book if they want to play. GMs could get the other books for more but still the value was there. My goal was to put out a solid product not to rip people off.

Overall I would say the product is a success as far as RPGs go. It has some good reviews and has sold a lot of PDFs. The major obstacle with such a niche game in a niche market is marketing which hurts the bottom line, sales. Plus PDFs killed the printed books that are sitting in the warehouse gathering dust. This game still has many years to go before it is obsolete. It can be played over and over with vastly different results. With the addition of more adventures coming soon plus a campaign to market on the web, all of the mechanics for the game on a web browser and the play value of doing a game on a virtual table-top, the sky is the limit. It is a good game system and something I would personally love to do even when I get older because I am a kid at heart and my inner child still can go play in the rain.

Enjoy the game and live the legend, become the myth, be a god!

Richard Leon,

Owner Dark Skull Studios, Creator of New Gods of Mankind