Welcome
Hello Champions! Thank you for checking out God Marked, a passion project from myself and my partner, Laine Skinner. This idea started in 2016 when I made my first homebrew D&D campaign, heavily inspired by How To Train Your Dragon. Best of luck trying to decode how that became this, but trust me, it did.
I’ve always been a huge fan of fantasy and created the God Marked world as a love letter to this genre. This TTRPG is a companion piece to the first episode of Frozen Star and follows the lore established in that series, but don’t feel compelled to do the same: use this system anyway you wish. I hope you play it and are inspired to make it into your own thing.
This system focuses on making the players feel strong. My friends say it makes you feel like an anime protagonist, and that was my intention. A lot of the rules are based around Combat, Chases, Investigation, Stealth and other activities. I wanted the players to feel comfortable bringing their role playing and the story they want to tell the table, so the rules of God Marked are looser than in other TTRPGs.
In God Marked, creativity is a major focus. We hope you love it as much as we do.
Donovan Johnson and Laine Skinner
What is God Marked?
God Marked, first and foremost, is a story about Champions, the chosen ones. In this story mortals like you and I can be chosen by gods go on massive quests and learn something about ourselves.
God Marked is a Fantasy TTRPG, filled with just about any setting you can think of, Cowboys, Vikings, Knights, whatever you can think of exists somewhere within the world of God Marked as it’s split between its many realms.
When you play God Marked you feel like a hero, out of everyone in the world you are the ones to save it. You are the ones to change it.
Collaborative storytelling is at the key of God Marked, the story you tell together with you and your friends.
Styles of Play
God Marked is an open system open to many different styles of play and many different people.
The core style of God Marked is a chosen one hero fantasy, this style encourages people to make larger then life characters having huge battles and making the players feel like they are the protagonists of the world.
Interpersonal Drama, this style of play is to lean into the politics of God Marked. How does a world work when their is about 35 people who can only truly save it. With this style roleplay is key, it humanizes the Champions and shows not all conflicts can be won with a battle.
Survival, you always have the option to play as non champions, or even put your Champions in a scenario they can’t just win through combat alone.
Game Vs Story
I made God Marked first as a story a world for people to get lost in, making the game came years after as I feel in loved with TTRPGs and wanted to explore the different ways one could tell a story. So how much of a Game is the TTRPG and how much of a story is it?
Balance is one thing people talk a lot when it comes to games, balance of abilities and powers wasn’t something that was going to hold us back in the creation of God Marked. It’s very easy and encouraged to make strong characters, but it is also encouraged more so to not. While you can make strong characters and ‘win’ fights that isn’t the design behind the system the design is to tell stories make characters who struggle have goals and can change throughout the Epic. If you have fun making strong characters go at it, have your fun with this system but we truly believe the best experience you will get out of this system is leaning into the way it allows you to tell stories and truly go on a journey with these characters. At the end of the day, that is what makes a great story.