On the RP Side

 In D&D, we finally took down the dragon we were fighting. As with my previous experience in 5E, it took about three full sessions, which feels like a slog. The game keeps dragons from feeling like chumps by giving them a bunch of extra "legendary/lair" actions, plus flying alone is a huge advantage in D&D that can completely negate melee builds, and they typically sport some big AOE effects.

How anyone keeps that exciting is beyond me. Merely the mechanical pace of keeping up with all of that seems like a huge burden to overcome.

But hey, dragon dead. We lost a handful of NPCs and took quite the beating, but rawr us!

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In Godbound, perhaps I'm being overly critical. I mean, brains often latch onto the negative.

When you get down to it, I enjoy my Godbound character. She fits in a good, non-spotlight role where she can get some good lines in, but isn't really required for plot motion. The argument that she doesn't have enough in the way of personal goals is potentially valid, but it feels uneccessary. I mean, she's at least a level behind "par" for the game due to not spending enough dominion to keep up and I almost never feel that because she's not the one fronting the group and making rolls. There's been very little combat in the game and when there is, involvement is basically optional because there are so many people to jump to it that mobs don't last long (even the fight against a "god" only lasted about 2 rounds).

All of that works perfectly with a character designed to be support/commentary/perspective and more of a voice-behind-the-scenes than an in-your-face demigod.

But there are factors about the game that pull things down and make it hard to get into.

For one, there are a lot of characters in the currently-active group. Some are "NPCs" and some are multiples played by other players, but... hmm... I can think of around nine regular PCs, most of whom have attracted one or two NPC companions, several characters associated with the ship that has recently been used, plus half a dozen Larendre characters that recently joined in - and I suspect I'm forgetting a few characters just because they don't do anything very often (where did that death bear spirit go?). In my mind, that's frickin' huge for an adventuring party, making it hard to track who's who and what's going on with them. I shudder to think of combat breaking out purely from an initiative tracking standpoint, much less what these people could actually do considering most, if not all, of them appear to have full godbound Word powers. It's dizzying and seems to lead to cliques of a sort.

My other gripe, I suppose, has to do with timing and I'm a bit torn on it. The game was pitched, to my understanding, as play would be contained to a once-a-week window. Several times, however, people have done stuff outside that framework, most recently leading to a fairly substantial makeover and development for one character. To be frank, this makes me feel jealous/left-out and my gut reaction to that is to withdraw. On deeper consideration, it means some people are putting more into the game and enjoying that - it doesn't make a lot of sense to stifle greater involvement. So should the answer be to try to do that more myself? Maybe, but I also have this principle-based line of thinking that says "we agreed that game would be X, it's unfair for anyone (myself included) to wrench the game away from that." Also, I know I certainly have less time and attention to devote than some people - I only put my eyes on Discord for a few hours a day and can have other things going on than that game - so if it's some sort of competition, I could never "win."

In what may be a fortunate coincidence, these things have been bugging me to a distracting amount at a time when my character is deliberately being quiet (knowing full well that her typical sarcasm could lead to diplomatic incidents and troublesome combat with the locals). So if I'm a bit withdrawn as a player, it works that my character isn't chirping up either in this case. Still, it feels less-than-good to worry about this stuff.