Question: How do you deal with gods who were clearly important in their mythologies, but whose records are scattered to this day. To give a specific example, a number of Maya "alphabet gods" are found scattered across stelae and pottery and clearly serve a large function in the religion, but their names have been lost to history. Is it even possible to acknowledge them in Scion?
I think it is possible to acknowledge them, and even important to, as they represent what happens to every culture that falls out of the record and could conceivably happen to the PCs if they stop doing awesome things and start being boring layabouts. Our assumption in Scion for any god who doesn't have enough evidence to really know much about him or her is that they simply weren't Legend 12; they would be minor gods of Legend 9 to 11, depending on what they have going on, who never quite made it to the celebrity status necessary for their legends to survive to the modern day. Because of the way Legend works, it's a perfect setup: if we don't know enough about them, it's because they weren't high enough Legend for their myths to endure long enough for us to know about them. QED.
But in Scion's landscape, that doesn't mean they aren't still around, doing whatever it is gods do when they aren't actively being part of your PCs' storyline. Each pantheon probably has at least as many "little gods" as Legend 12 superstars - the Romans and Greeks are famous for it, but the Maya gods you mention are another good example, as are the slews of minor Celtic deities or stacks of minor African nature personifications. They give you tons of ready-made allies, antagonists or points of contact for PCs in those pantheons, either as go-betweens for the very busy Legend 12 gods or peers once the Scions have become minor gods themselves. Humanity may not know their names, but that doesn't mean they don't have any.
Those kids of gods can be great plot points, actually; they may draw the PCs into their schemes to become as relevant as their more famous relatives, or their plans to jump ship to another pantheon with more upward mobility, or even reveal that they're a Scion's true parent and the Legend 12 god they've always thought was their blood is only an adopter. Since they have very few legends of their own, they're perfect places for players to write new ones, using characters that aren't so well-established and intimidating as the Legend 12 gods.
So save some love for poor old God N. Nobody may know who he is now, but that doesn't mean he can't change the world with your Scion later!
They could also once have been legend 12 gods that no longer have a pressing role or choose to take less involvement in the mortal world. They would drop down to legend 9-11 through the passage of time as the world forgets them.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that they probably were never Legend 12 - I don't like the idea of there ever being a mechanic in Scion where gods spontaneously lose Legend dots (outside of intentionally losing them to things like Deuogdonio). It's way too messy to try to keep track of and removes a lot of gods from the divine toybox because they shouldn't be gods anymore; it's also not a lot of fun for PCs to have to worry about whether or not they're doing "enough" to avoid spontaneously dropping back down to Demigod level (because, after all, there's a lot of stuff you can do without going up in Legend - how do you decide what's enough to keep from going down and what's not?).
DeleteI'm much more a fan of the idea that they were never Legend 12. They don't need to be to be the most important and widely worshiped, after all; every god we still remember was preserved because they were at least a little bit important and worshiped, or else no one would have bothered writing or creating art about them. Enough Legend to tell us they existed, but not enough for them to be one of the great names that echoed through the ages.
It just seems wrong to me that a god can become Legend 12, then he could intentionally destroy almost any record or memory of himself, lock himself away in a terra incognita for millenia and still be expected to be Legend 12.
DeleteBecause otherwise it just becomes a popularity contest, right? Any god could use commandment to make stories of himself persist for centuries, especially if he was telling stories about his exploits that were not true.
I think if a god has become Legend 12, they are such way huge bananas that they shouldn't be forgotten. Ever. That's the whole point of Legend; when you reach that pinnacle, you're a Zeus or a Thor. If you weren't important enough for that kind of perpetual memory, you wouldn't be Legend 12.
DeleteLegend is more than just people knowing stories about you; it's you doing things that are worthy of being Legendary. You could make people remember stories about you, but if you weren't actually doing anything worthy of going up in Legend, you wouldn't, simple as that. You'd be a pretty famous Legend 10 guy for eternity - and there are plenty of gods like that.
But it seems totally possible. One of your players could reach legend 12, then turn around and use his manipulation to rumormill or implant false memory and make all your old stories go away or be about someone else. He could even save himself the trouble and use the wyrd to do it with less footwork.
DeleteI do not know why a player or NPC would want to do that, but it seems mechanically possible.
And then you have commandment that can mess up history. Some things or everything you think you know about a god could be false. In theory, Ares could be a really nice guy but somewhere along the line he pissed off another god who spun rumors about him being a brute and a coward. Those rumors were written down by a bunch of mortals, and suddenly we are sitting here describing Ares as a brute and a coward.
My problem with that, Anne, is that there are whole Pantheons we don't know much of anything about. There are civilizations we have written records for, but we can't read their language, and then ones we know existed and have archaeological data for, but they didn't write anything down.
DeleteIt's not so bad to say the Picts (who we know had a Celtic-style religion, probably) didn't have any Legend 12 Gods, but what about the Minoans and other groups who were distinct religions, not closely related to other Pantheons? How could they have been a Pantheon without ANY Legend 12 Gods?
I don't really know what might have happened to them, maybe they just died and their Legend died with them, but I think they had to have existed at one point and been Legend 12.
And alternatively, that's no problem at all for me. I don't think a pantheon needs to be all Legend 12, or even mostly Legend 12, or even any Legend 12 to still be a pantheon (that is, a group of gods worshiped together by some people). A pantheon is a group of related gods worshiped by a religion, but there are religions of differing size and staying power, and I don't think they all need to be Legend 12. If seven Legend 10 gods want to get together and found a religion, they certainly could, and there'd be no reason to tell them they weren't a legitimate pantheon because they weren't Legend 12 yet. A way less powerful pantheon, certainly, and more prone to being forgotten or conquered - but isn't that exactly what probably happened to the missing pantheons of antiquity?
DeleteLegend is awesomely simple: it's a measure of how legendary you are. If there are no stories remaining about you, if no one remembers who you are or what you did, then you aren't as legendary as someone that people do still remember and enjoy. I think that pantheons like the Minoans or the Picts or the Albanians or whomever absolutely were (and for Scion's purposes, are) gods, but they clearly aren't as legendary as a Thor or a Quetzalcoatl. They are failing the most basic requirement of high Legend: being legendary enough to be remembered.
So I'm firmly of the opinion that they're probably Legend 9-11, depending on the god and pantheon and area in question. Which doesn't make them less awesome, less cool, or less relevant to Scion; it just makes them slightly less powerful than the heavy hitters, but just like everything else in the game, that can always change if the PCs cause it to.
Yeah, been in a Maya mood ever since Belize... I was thinking of God L in particular when I submitted this. He's everywhere, but we don't know who he is (Aside from clearly being a wealthy, wealthy man, smoking a gigantic cigar on a jaguar throne while wearing an owl headdress)
ReplyDeleteRelevant, since ever since reading your prior response on the Maya gods earlier, I've been working on a VERY rough document of various thoughts on the Maya. Check out the Google Doc here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z7A7MLiFjKGpusVN8EVYFa1y5dJTH0wGa_d2U-u5R6M/edit?pli=1
Not very relevant, but I'm assuming John's too busy to help with the nahualli birthright aid I requested in the comments of that thread (Since I didn't know if a building-a-nahualli help thread warranted a full post). If so, fine, you guys is busy as hell, and I appreciate the hard work you fine folks do.
Its something ill work on on the plane. So, around end of first week of july I should have something for you.
DeleteYou kick a serious amount of ass, dude. Enjoy the trip, both of you!
DeleteOoo. I read the document and find it very interesting.
DeleteGriffin. Quick question from greece. Are you looking for a specific birthright for a specific scion or rather just a small set of rules for a hero with a nahualli(greek computer does not have my spell check).
DeleteI'm specifically looking to update my signature character's nahualli, since I usually just peg her as a Creature. Reading how you guys deal with nahualli, however, makes me want to try your approach.
DeleteBut yeah, jaguar nahualli, either 3 or 4 dots. Dude's a zoologist Scion of Quetzalcoatl for background.
Again, thanks a bundle, and enjoy Greece!
Just to throw in my two cents: Legend rating isn't based on what throngs of worshipful people remember you did - Legend rating is based on what FATE remembers you did. However, it's difficult to practically and accurately stat a pantheon if WE don't know what they did.
ReplyDelete