Question: In a game where the PC's are gods, and the titan war is over, the titans resealed, how would you keep the game going and make it still interesting if the players didn't yet want to abandon their characters? How would you enable them to continue to develop their characters when they've already hit avatar and ultimate attribute levels? How would you keep game play dynamic at that level?
I'm pretty excited to see that level of play, though it won't be for a good long while yet in our games (sorry, players, no free upgrade to Legend 12 today). With the Titans gone, the Great Menace is over, true... but there's no reason that means the game has to end or that new characters have to start over. There's plenty to vex and antagonize them right at home.
In the absence of Titans, Legend 12 gods are best opposed, challenged and engaged by other Legend 12 gods. Without the Titans to force them to cooperate, old feuds, bad blood and scheming machinations are not only likely to erupt among the various pantheons and gods, they're inevitable. Ancestral enemies like the Amatsukami and Celestial Bureaucracy or the Dodekatheon and Elohim are extremely likely to erupt into outright conflict again with nothing to stop them, fighting over territory, the meager human worshipers left in the World or relics, Scions or other booty acquired during the war. You could easily run several story arcs based on pantheons fighting in the newly-freed World, and Scions having to deal with friends and foes made among the gods of other lands during their rise to power.
I'd also add the inevitable second layer of internecine politicking, maneuvering and in-fighting; no pantheon has ever traditionally gotten along with its own members even if no foreign gods are involved. Old feuds between gods will probably crop up again; PCs might find themselves drawn into traditional squabbles between Horus and Set, the Dagda and the Morrigan or Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, becoming pawns, soldiers, or even players in the game in their own right. Most of the time, I'd assume this was happening along with issues coming in from foreign pantheons - the politics of the divine are labyrinthine and staggering, and dealing with them (whether verbally or with force) is quite enough action to keep a young god busy for quite some time.
A third option is to involve Fate in the form of a legend or myth from the PCs' home culture, with relevance and meaning that goes beyond the Titan war. The Ragnarok prophecy is a perfect example of this; it's a massive issue for the Aesir but actually has very little to do with the Titan war, other than the fact that Surtr is the main antagonist for both. Similarly, the prophecy of Zeus' overthrow by his son, the end of the Devas' world after the coming of Kalki or the fear of Ra's potential uncreation of the World might all be major plot issues without any Titans needing to become involved.
Progression in terms of points is more tricky. Once PCs have Ultimates and Avatars, it's hard to keep them feeling like they're "growing" over time; after all, they've reached the top. I'd suggest either slowing the XP to a much lower level, allowing them the theoretical possibility to pick up new purviews but requiring them to make a major time commitment toward doing so, or else entirely cutting XP off and instead offering other incentives, such as mortal cults, prize relics, or divine favors when they complete goals. You could also combine the two approaches; the PCs are the stars of the show, so you never have to feel bad about giving them advantages (like still gaining a little XP here and there) that the other NPC gods don't get, and gaining a cool new toy or a useful favor to put toward their own goals would help them feel that their efforts were being rewarded in the meantime.
Are the Kami and the Shen really ancestral enemies? I mean isn't that a modern thing? And Frankly it seems abit forced, I mean the Aesir and Elohim aren't at war over the Nazis. For all the Nazi use of Aesir symbolism they in the current day find them to be a horrific blight on their name. I would think the Kami would have a similar view on WW2, not something they are particularly proud of.
ReplyDeleteI definitely wouldn't use World War II as the basis for anyone's undying enmity without a really good reason; it's comparatively very recent for gods and not necessarily an event that ranks among their most earth-shaking conflicts.
DeleteBut the Chinese and Japanese have a long history of not getting along that far predates the wars of the twentieth century. They've had a pretty steady stream of armed conflict since the late 1800s, usually arguing over things like who's in charge of what islands or who has ownership of Korea that day. Taiwan alone has been a bone of contention for about five or six hundred years. Shintoism has also spent a great deal of its history trying to subsume, find a way around or disprove the invading Chinese belief of Buddhism, though in the modern day most Buddhist deities have become as ubiquitous for Japan as the indigenous ones and many worshipers no longer make a distinction between them.
You certainly don't have to play them as enemies if you don't want to, but there's quite a bit of antagonism possible even if they aren't out-and-out ready to jump one another at the drop of a hat.
As far as World War II's fallout among pantheon outlooks goes, that really has to be up to an individual game's needs and Storyteller's views. Some may play it as the books do, with the Aesir, Amatsukami and Dodekatheon attempting to pretend it never happened; some may choose to play them as unruffled, too divinely prideful to be affected by the kind of remorse that humans tend to feel about the situation. Those who don't like the World at War chapter at all may rule that which gods were doing what during the war is drastically different and act accordingly. It's very open to interpretation, should history come up in the course of game relations between pantheons.
The Elohim, who are indigenous Canaanite gods and not actually Jewish (unless of course you rule that El is Yahweh, but pissing off a Titan that way is an entirely different ballgame), probably aren't particularly upset by the Aesir even if you do consider them to be behind Nazi power in Germany. But then again, there was a Nazi presence in Palestine and Lebanon, and the Elohim are notoriously bad-tempered people; it's possible they could have gotten into a tiff, though historically the Elohim are probably much more likely to charge the Dodekatheon or Yazata.
I was pointing out the setting presumes a deep seated antagonism between the Shen and Kami because of WW2. I thought that was a silly assumption and was trying to compare it to something I thought was equally silly.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese have had a long history of incorporating foreign(generally Chinese) aspects into their culture followed by periods of strong isolation. The whole political structure of the Kami comes generally from following Chinese political structures, so the idea of them having a deep seated emnity just seems off unless they REALLY care about modern times vs a broad swath of history.
Now a New Jade Emperor who was using the rise of Chinese Fortunes to push the status of the Shen as the "Top" Asian Pantheon would cause issues(But with how globally things, they might equally make a push against anyone)
All of the WW2 setting is horribly, horribly silly.
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