Sunday, May 27, 2012

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Question: I have two questions! How global do your games usually get? In the game I ST, it primarily takes place in Europe, but it will eventually expand to see all 7 continents (yes, even Antarctica!) Do you find it easier to have games be located centrally, or do you feel that the epic feel is better for a global game? Going with this, how would the band get around without a Psychopomp? In my game, two of the NPCs in the band are wealthy defense contractors, so they have access to private planes.

Our games almost always tend to be global by the time the PCs have reached Demigodhood; at that point, there's so much they can do and see and so many mythic parts of the world to visit that chaining them to a certain area usually only makes them cranky. It is generally easier to keep them in one place, because you can set up and plan for almost every eventuality there, and it's usually simplest to do that by giving them a specific goal or set of goals that have to be accomplished there, but that doesn't always mean they'll do it; Scions have their own goals and ideas, too, after all, and are prone to up and leaving to go find an out-of-the-box solution elsewhere, deal with another problem that they decide is more pressing to them personally, or even because they're just refusing whatever you had planned because they've decided they don't want to do it. You can really never rely on them to stay put and do what you want, and anyway, it's more fun to let them do as much globe-hopping as they want to; it helps them realize how much the world really is open to them (and, later, Terrae Incognita and other magical worlds as well).

Psychopomps are great and we usually feel that every group should have one, but sometimes a group doesn't, or that player's out that day, or they just all happen to be too low-Legend for psychopomping to be much help in getting around. Wealth is certainly a good fallback if you have a rich Scion among you (though our better-off Scions found that even large fortunes can be depleted pretty quickly when you use them to constantly requisition global travel and weapons), but in most cases, they tend to just get creative. We've had Loa Scions possess travel agents and ticket-takers to just get train tickets and passports handed to their bandmates, had physical Scions carjack unsuspecting mortals (hey, it sucks for them, but it's for the greater good in the end!), or had sneakier Scions use Darkness or Illusion boons to disappear and just stow away on planes that were going where they were, or just had folks with high Epic Charisma wander up to plane pilots and ask reeeeeally nicely if they'd drive this plane to South America instead of its current destination in Europe. It's not particularly difficult for Scions to get where they want to go if they really put their minds to it (at least, not when they're only dealing with mortals; if they happen to accidentally run into a travel agent who is a lesser immortal, they may have a much harder time of it!). There's also always the relic transportation option; a few of our Scions have taken relic trucks or helicopters at character creation, which gives them a built-in method of getting around at lower Legends.

And finally, some PCs just do it that hard way; if you've got Lightning Swimmer, you can just swim yourself all the way through the Atlantic to Africa, towing your bandmates behind you, or run across the ocean with Fast as Thought or fly with Lightning Flyer + Animal Feature/Wind's Freedom/relic wings. Of course, you're likely to encounter watery Titanspawn along the way, but hey, that's how Scions roll.

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