Question: How do you run storylines for games where some characters have become Gods, while others are Demigods or even still Heroes?
Oh, this one's easy: we don't.
Scion's power curve is far too steep to ever try to run a game with functioning PCs more than a couple of Legend apart; it's just not possible to run a game that will give all of the PCs something to do and be challenged by when they're at such vastly different levels of power. Anything that could challenge a god-level PC can crush Heroes literally without expending any energy at all (or even noticing, in some cases), while anything that's a challenge for the Hero or Demigod characters can be curbstomped by the god without him really having to work very hard, leaving the lower-Legend people twiddling their thumbs. Players will always end up bored, with either the low-Legend players totally outclassed and unable to do anything or the high-Legend players sitting around with nothing to challenge or interest them.
This is one of several reasons we don't allow players to buy Legend with XP (there are other reasons, like it being generally a dumb mechanic for game balance and roleplaying); large Legend gulfs between players are nearly unmanageable, and it's not a lot of fun for half the players to feel useless and overshadowed and the other half to feel held back and handicapped. Instead, we award players new dots of Legend when they've done a lot of suitably awesome stuff or put a lot of work into becoming sufficiently amazing; they don't always go up all together and sometimes a few PCs are a Legend higher than others, but they're always in the same ballpark. We have had a difference between demigods and gods, but only by one Legend (i.e., some Legend 8 demigods with some Legend 9 gods), and the biggest separation we've ever had is in Hero games, where a few Legend 2s teamed up with some Legend 4s (though the Legend 2s went up in Legend pretty quickly and its now a comfortable Legend 3-4 for everybody).
I can see dealing with the idea of disparate Legend ratings if the story calls for it - young gods shepherding Hero-level NPC Scions around, trying to keep their squishy selves from getting killed by all the big bads the gods' Fateful Auras attract, or similar - but it's never a good idea for PCs, who need to all have equal parts of the limelight. And it's definitely never good for a Storyteller's sanity, which is precious enough as it is.
The only time I can see this becoming an issue in a game would be after a character has died, and the player develops a new character to add into the story line, or if you have a new player who wants to join the game.
ReplyDeleteWe've had this happen several times in our games, but instead of starting the new scion out at legend 2, they are started at a comparable legend rating as those already in the group so that the balance of the game is not thrown off. John came up with amounts of boons, epics, and XP that would bring them up to the others level. He may have those filed away somewhere if that's something you need to do (sorry, John, I'm volunteering you for things).
Although, starting these characters at higher levels called for more work on the part of the players. We were required to come up with back stories for how they had gotten to the group, how they had gotten to demigod; and in some cases, they had to come with fatebonds in place, as it is a large part of they way our game is run.
A good example of this is after the deaths of the Jolie-Pitt kids and Lapis. Lapis's player was able to to play Vivian, who was her PC in a previous scion game, by stating her to the appropriate legend. But for the rest of us, we had to create new characters (Kettila, Aurora and John Doe) and write their histories because they we're starting at the demigod level.
That's a good point - we start new characters at a comparable Legend to the ones already in the game, partially to avoid this kind of problem. We usually have them create the new character with the Demigod template and then give them an amount of XP that should get them up to roughly where the other PCs are.
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