You are one god among many. When somebody prays, any god may offer; they choose the god they hold dearest and who knows them best.
Your villages people · gods
What you are
A world of villages lives on its own: people work, marry, quarrel, fall ill, grieve, trade and go to war. They pray. You are one god among many. You cannot move them; you can only answer, and act.
Prayers and answers
A prayer waits about a minute. Offer your blessing; if other gods offer too, the one praying chooses - most likely the god they like best and who knows them best. Your odds are on the card.
You have 30 answers a day - the orange bar at the top. An offer is spent whether they choose you or not, and comes back a day later. Answer where you will be chosen.
Chosen, you earn thankfulness: easy prayers a little, hard more, perilous most - perilous ones can do harm. Harm turns the hurt and their kin against you, and they rarely choose you again.
Your hand
The round spells along the bottom: acts nobody prayed for, paid in thankfulness. An act wins good will only from those who want it now: mercy when fevers spread, a storm in a dry wind, warm hearths in winter, a feast for the hungry or the grieving, an omen for the troubled. The number on each is how many of the people you know want it now; a power that glows is wanted, a grey one is not. Point at one to see what it does. The wrong act at the wrong time is thankfulness thrown away.
Knowing and liking
Click a person to watch them. Knowing grows as you look in on them and answer them: at 20 you hear what is said of them, at 40 whom they love and hate. Knowing fades if you stop looking for two days.
Liking is how they feel about you: grants and good acts warm them, harm cools them. The People tab shows both for everybody in the village.
What a person carries
Age and work: children play, the old sit by the fire, the rest farm, build, fish, hunt, heal.
Family: parents, husband or wife, children - who grieve for them, and pray for them.
Traits: quick to anger accuses and marches; devout takes signs to heart and grieves less; greedy envies; loyal holds a village together; often sick takes fevers three times as often; hardy never takes one; a born leader leads and wants a place of their own; a coward hangs back; caught stealing before - an accusation is usually true; a troublemaker stirs splits and wars.
Now: sick, wounded, grieving, praying, hungry - each a reason they pray, and each a reason an act is wanted.
Cause and effect
Nothing is scripted: big things happen by odds drawn from the people's state.
A dry wind stops the fields, so they pray for rain; rain on a ripe field ruins it.
Hunger doubles fevers, sets households against each other, and makes war likelier.
A full store brings a feast - and word of plenty brings bands; a rich, big village draws an army by sea.
Quarrels and ambition split a village; the loyal and the devout hold it; a feast lets quarrels go.
Winter: nothing grows; the coast fishes, storms take boats, a draughty house breeds fevers.
Trade warms villages to each other; a raid or a war is remembered for years.
A death leaves kin grieving at the grave, and praying for comfort.
Controls
Drag or WASD to move, wheel to zoom, click a person to watch them, click a village at the bottom left to go there; a ! over somebody means they are praying, H to hide everything but the world. The world runs at its own pace: a day is an hour.