I was surprised to see so much interest in a #Godville post 🙂 Godville is indeed a game like ProgressQuest, a parody of MMOs where it seemed all you would do is just grind gear… forever.
Godville, like, say, Kingdom of Loathing, goes beyond being a simple parody of a video game into actually being a real game.
You don't play Godville directly. You are a god (or goddess), and your hero (or heroine) will happily go adventuring on their own with no input from you. You can, in fact, create a character, set the game to true ZPG (zero player game) mode, and come back in five years and find your character has joined a guild, or several, raised a pet, built a temple, gained levels, upgraded gear and so on.
But your character will progress a lot faster if you can shed some divine wisdom or gifts occasionally.
Once your character has built you a temple, he or she will begin construction of an ark, which requires a special sort of wood found only in dungeons. Like everything else in Godville, you can just send your character into a dungeon. He or she will form a group from other characters and go into the dungeon, where they will bounce around randomly until something kills them, or they stumble accidentally into the exit.
That rarely ends well. What most people hope, when they send their characters into a dungeon (randomly generated) is that someone will remain at the keyboard and lead the group to victory.
And sometimes, if they're really unlucky, the person driving will be me. Because it's MY goal, if I'm the only "at keyboard" player, to let everyone else die so that I get all the loot.
This was the eventual fate of my poor groupmates in the dungeon run below.
I'll run through the display counterclockwise from the Allies block. Those allies are the heroes who followed me into this pit of doom. After pressing the "Enter Dungeon" link, all of their deities apparently tossed their computers out the window and went on a long, perilous trek across the Sahara, because I never heard a peep out of them.
Below that is part of my character sheet. I'm the goddess, and the two Chinese characters near my name indicate that I have trained a pet to max level and that I have a temple constructed in my honor. Below that is my heroine's name, age — how long I've been "playing" — Talesia's motto, personality — Harvest Moon is an evil guild, I should be making her do evil things but when I send a heal down, it makes her nicer. The guild, level, etc.
On the far right is the dungeon map. I usually let the party move randomly until they come across a clue to the location of the main treasure hoard. You can see the arrow pointing southwest near the top of the map.
I drove us down there — you can see my commands in blue, as well as my pleas to the rest of the group to at least toss some heals in during any boss fights (unanswered). Anyway, we hit a boss monster, and it killed everyone but me. I didn't even have to try. It wasn't the main baddy, but after all but me died, the game decided we no longer had a viable group and kicked us out of the dungeon.
No ark wood for me.
But there ya go, a Godville dungeon run.
I have PLENTY of Godville invites (not that you need one!).
