And I need a project also. Are there any things that happen in myth that you dont feel there are ways to accomplish in scion? What thing that happens in myth do you think is missing a boon or a knack to accomplish? Im always looking to fill the holes that need filling.
Some good suggestions may just be ultimates or avatars.
Not looking to add entire purviews. Just additions to current purviews/knacks.
Please make sure you have a myth to base your suggestion on. No cartoon antics ;)
Every myth involving a body part being cut off and being diminished in power until it is restored. It would be a great way to limit powerful enemies, deal with rival Scions without killing them, create bargaining chips to blackmail with, or just trade to other people.
ReplyDeleteHrmm...the myths I know about those usually the loss in power is either political(the irish) or actually physical(silly osiris, no kids for you)do you have any examples of what you mean?
DeleteUranus has his scrotum cut off.
DeleteOsiris has his phallus ripped off.
Heru had his eyes ripped out.
Samson has his hair cut off.
Daksha had his head chopped off.
Ganesha had his head ripped off.
Mahadeva had his phallus ripped off.
Tyr had his hand bitten off.
Nuada had his arm chopped off.
Tezcatlipoca had his foot bitten off.
And there is often a theme suggesting they might regain their power/station if they could regain what was lost. It would be really neat to see a knack for maiming someone with the possibility of them gaining it back someday.
A lot of those don't really seem to work for the concept - Tezcatlipoca losing his foot doesn't make him lose any power, for example, nor Tyr losing his hand. Ganesha losing his head just made him dead, and the elephant head is more of a humorous accident than a power issue. Several others on your list follow in similar veins; they lose a body part, but it's not something that follows that "lose a part, lose power until it's restored" theme you mentioned. Sometimes a maiming is just a maiming. (Good clean fun.)
DeleteI can think of situations that do fit, though; the castration of Uranus is a good one (and of Kumarbi in nearby Hittite myth), and the similar loss of Teshub's eyes and heart to Illuyanka requiring him to get them back in order to be badass again (also Hittite, I was totally not kidding about Hittite myth, now was I?).
So is something like this worthy of the project? I mean, you don't ever have to give the body part back. You could always just toss it in a nearby wood chipper equivalent. At the very least we would have a knack with mechanical support for all the endless maiming that seems to happen.
DeleteFor things that aren't negative, the Maiming Birthright from Ragnarok seems to be covering the bases (lose a body part, gain some bonuses unless it's restored - actually the opposite of what you're suggesting). I don't think we need another power to cover it in the general pool.
DeleteBut the idea of negative effects to losing something symbolic like a penis or an arm might be worth messing around with some. I'm not sure where to draw the line between obvious issues (well, of course losing an arm makes you less powerful, you have only one arm now) and esoteric ones (but it also detracts from other things magically, sort of the opposite of a Maiming?). It'd be interesting to look at, at least.
I wonder what stops people from just going to a health god, regenerating, or growing a new arm with an appearance knack after they have been maimed? It probably shouldn't be a benefit when you chop off someone's hand for being a jerk (but you don't want to kill him for whatever reason).
DeleteActually, I'll just repost this as a question!
Usually, when someone loses a limb like that, it was sanctioned by fate. Fate wanted it to happen, and fate wanted to make sure it never grew back. We have to assume that they would obviously try as many routes to getting a limb back as they could find, and they all failed.
DeleteThe only conclusion is that fate wanted them to never have that limb. Maybe it was a curse, maybe they pissed off fate. They could probably get some people together and assault fate, but that has all the many many problems associated with it. Mostly, no other gods will want to follow you down that road, because fate will also fuck them forever.
I don't know if you knew, but I have this giant file marked POTENTIAL BOONS over here...
ReplyDeleteThose dont have myths associated specifically though, they're like cool stuff we want to add file
Delete/finds obscure Hittite myths justifying boons' existence
Delete/triumph
I'd be very interested to see your take on a way to systematically represent divergent aspects of dualistic or triplicate deities.
ReplyDeleteI think we did a post about this in the past. Mostly Id say its just gods showing "different sides" of themselves at different times. But I'll do some thinking and see if it needs any other work. It seems safest/most balanced not having a mechanical effect, but maybe its a twist of fate that keeps them seperate.
DeleteI think the most obvious thing missing from the game was that one time the Flash ran so fast that he outraced instantaneous teleportation.
ReplyDeleteWait, NO cartoon antics?
A Javascript ate my brain, so I'm probably fudging a few specific details (and I think these have been discussed elsewhere), but you did ask...
In a nutshell, these two ideas it seems are really best just encompassed by a character's actions rather than their power-set. So, it's easy for a character to say "I'm a God of Fire, I have Fire Powers!" than it is to say "I'm a God of Wealth, I have...stuff" or "I'm a God of Teaching Mortals Stuff, I have...a single Epic Intelligence Knack".
In the case of wealth, the only example of a god being associated with possessing great physical wealth that comes to mind is Hades, and mechanically that's probably more of a function of his Sanctum taking the form of a pimped out palace and a representation of the earth being the place precious metals come from.
I guess the idea that I'm more going for is a God of Wealth as in a bestower of fortunes, prosperity, and luck upon the, well, fortunate. The Dharmapala Kubera is an instance that comes to mind, as is Ganesha in his role as a remover of obstacles. Fortuna, the Roman Goddess, I suppose? Doesn't like half the Chinese pantheon fulfill this function? There are probably other, totally obvious ones that I'm forgetting. So, is this angle something already covered by Fate-bending Boons over in Magic? Or is associating Magic with fortune/prosperity gods too heavy-handed a solution, as not all fortune/prosperity gods are necessarily going to be Magic-wielding Fate-bending gods. Or, rather than being defined by a set of powers, are these prosperity-distrubuting figures simply defined by their actions and liberally distributing their blessings, whether they come from Guardian or Fertility or whatever, thus gaining Fatebonds that say they're righteously generous dudes?
Similarly, it seems that there are all kinds of culture-hero teacher-deities - Quetzalcoatl, Athena, The Dagda, Fuxi, Teutates, Coyote, and probably most of the Annunaki. All of Epic Intelligence seems too broad, but merely assigning the passing-down of the gifts of civilization itself to a few uses of the Teaching Prodigy and Instant Seminar Knacks seems too narrow. Sure, if a character's Whole Thing is being a teacher-deity, he can just go around and, you know, teach - however, it'd be nice for him and all his teacher-Fatebonds to have something to spend all of that XP on besides just Teaching Prodigy.
God, this is embarrassing, but I actually agree with your flash comment. I have been thinking about, and am pretty sure at this point, that "rainbow" bridge will take 5 seconds, so you can actually outrun someones teleport. We had a scene where odin ran with someone during their teleport, but we hand waived that as use of avatar of pyschopomp. I definitely think pyschopomp needs a better, intrinsic, metaphysical look to see if we can dig deeper and be more interesting with the "what" of this purview. Although I guess there are several we can do that with.
DeleteIm with you on wealth. The difficulty is that wealth means different things for different cultures and different time periods, and putting all of those together steps on a LOT of toes.
To a rural society, wealth might be farm animals. To a desert society it might be crops, or water. To a urban society its probably money. And all these things are handled by other purviews. But obviously its difficult(but not impossible) to have all these purviews at once. However, a purview that did all of these things would step horribly on the toes of the other purviews. So its a difficult place to tread.
And there are definitely a number of luck/wealth gods out there. I'll add it to the list and be thinking about it on the trip.
Teaching/culture is possibly even harder. Need to think.