Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Look for the Pan Necessities
When we got back from Greece, we said we learned a lot of things that you'd have to take our words on. This was because they wouldn't let us take pictures of a lot of stuff. So there are some things we have no proof of, but that we are certain of. One of those things is that in ancient greece, Pan was HUGE. 
This is one of him trying to court Aphrodite and she's hitting him with her shoe. There are MANY more. He is super popular, and super important. So, even though one of our many projects is picking associateds for all the gods so people can play sub-Legend 12 gods easier, you can expect a legend 12 Pan template sooner than that.
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my guess is Pan's associated purviews would be Chaos(panic), Fertility(fields & groves), and Animal(goats). Did I miss anything?
ReplyDeleteDefinitely those three, I'd say!
DeleteFor those who use it, he'd certainly have the Sound/Music Purview. Also possibly Epic Appearance or Charisma, since he's a sexy beast.
ReplyDeleteI think he might have Epic Appearance, but probably not Charisma. He has a pretty chronic problem with everyone hating/ridiculing him.
DeleteBut he very specifically lost the music duel...thus ...not having it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but he lost to Apollo, another dude who is a sure-fire pick for a Sound/Music Purview. So it coulda been any number of things that tipped the balance in Apollo's favor.
DeleteThats incredibly faulty logic.
DeleteThen Hathor should have strength because she was outwrestled by Set,and hes the strongest. So it was probably other factors, she still has ultimate strength.
or
all aesir are beautiful. Obviously baldur is most beautiful, but everyone also has appearance. They just arent as amazing as baldur. Baldur could be most beautiful cause of many other factors.
Hera and Aphrodite were in a beauty contest and only one of them was the winner, but both of them have Epic Appearance associated.
DeleteWhile Baldur IS the most beautiful of the Aesir, that doesn't mean none of the others are allowed to have Epic Appearance. Baldur might out-pretty Freya and Freyr, but they're still all about some hotness and they both have the Ultimate Expression of it.
Having an Ultimate or an Avatar doesn't mean you're better at that thing than every other God, it means that the Purview/Attribute is a fundamental component of your Legend.
So losing a musical duel to Apollo doesn't mean that Pan isn't equally a God of Music, it means Apollo won that contest. One of them HAD to lose.
This brings up a good question! If someone is legend 9 and has a single associated, do they lose that associated when they advance to legend 10+ if they do not buy the next level of a purview?
DeleteFor example, imagine Pan has Music 9 and Apollo has Music 11. Clearly Pan loses to Apollo but could it remain associated for Pan? (assuming John decides Pan even deserves music)
Great question for PC's, but probably not applicable to pre-existing Gods. It's not really feasible to try reverse-engineering the Gods and working out how they progressed from Hero to God, since they didn't do that. They started out as Gods, with a very few exceptions.
DeleteFor a player, I wouldn't have them lose the Associations they've already gained. However, if they never intend to get the Avatar of that Purview, it isn't very Associated with them, is it? They're not forced to buy the next level as soon as they have access to it, but they probably will anyway because obviously something Associated with them is very important to their concept and something they'll want to buy.
If Fred is all about some Fire and when he hits Legend 9, Fire is his highest-rated Purview and that's what he picks as his first Association, he'd probably continue to buy Fire. If he somehow reaches Legend 12 and hasn't bought a single rank 8, 9 or 10 Fire Boon, I'm gunna be questioning his Association and it might change to better reflect whatever he's doing that's taken priority over Fire. It'd involve a lot of talk with his player.
Re: Hera.
DeleteYes, we didnt have appearance for hera for a while because of that. But then we did more research and found at least(thats generally our minimum for associating things) places where she was referred to as most beautiful or where the poets waxxed about her beauty or where another god referred to her beauty.
That doesnt happen with pan. He is mentioned as musical once, and when he tries his music against a real god of music, he gets slapped down.
Thats the end of the story and he doesnt do music again.
Also sound purview is not at a place where we'd consider it for gods anyway, yet.
Re: James. In order for a god to have something associated for us(legend 9 and on) they also have to have a fatebond for it. The way we do fatebonds, I cant imagine someone having something as the main thing they do but not having a bonus to it.
DeleteAnd then since they have a fatebond to it, they'll automatically get the purview bought up for them as they gain legend even if they arent spending xp on it.
If someone did manage to lose their Fatebonds to their chosen association AND for some reason decided not to buy it anymore, then yeah, we'd probably have them lose it in favor of whatever they did go ahead and max (which would possibly leave them an association behind others their Legend, but them's the breaks sometimes). If it's not something they're going to actually try to be God Of, it shouldn't be associated for their kids.
DeleteA couple of questions from the ignorant, because I am genuinely curious about the answers!
ReplyDeleteDoes Pan fill a different niche than Dionysus?
Does Pan have sufficiently different stats from Dionysus?
Is the widespread appeal of Pan from syncretization with Dionysus?
Is the widespread appeal of Pan because he deserves to be Legend 12, or because he used Rumor Mill-Trendsetter-Commandment a couple of times?
Actually, yes, they do fill different roles! Pan and Dionysus are often associated because in later antiquity Pan came to be viewed as a satyr, but they really don't actually have a lot to do with one another other than casual friendship and hijinks, and they definitely weren't syncretized much at all (though Pan occasionally got confused with Silenus, Dionysus' satyr mentor). Pan is actually a much older god in the Greco-Roman landscape than Dionysus, though being pastoral and rustic he never quite made it to Olympian-level importance. They probably will have similar associations, but I doubt they'd come out exactly the same - Dionysus doesn't have a strong enough Animal association to compete there, for example, and Pan's definitely not what I'd call a popular Mystery god.
DeleteAs far as things like Rumor Mill go, it's best to confine those to PCs or NPCs that use them in game, not try to reverse-engineer them; otherwise you could argue that every god must just have used Rumor Mill to stay famous, because who can prove they didn't, right? Gods that are still famous from their thousands-of-years-ago religions are simply highly Legendary, not using Manipulation shenanigans; that mechanic is not a helpful one for that kind of determination. (Also, I'm not sure yet if Pan's very good at Manipulation. Certainly he's terrible at convincing the ladies to sleep with him.)
Dionysus has Epic Charisma, Epic Stamina, Arete, Chaos, Fertility, Mystery.
DeletePan would have something like Epic Appearance, Animal (Goat), Arete, Chaos, Fertility, Sound.
With only 2/5 overlapping Associations (not counting Arete), they're fairly distinct dudes.
Thank you! I really appreciate the answers because I do not know much about Pan.
DeleteExcept that he would not have sound.
DeleteWouldn't Music just be under Epic Charisma anyways? Why does it need a purview? While it was big in many cultures, it wasn't actually something I'd see as a primordial subject.
DeleteI'm still of two minds on a Music purview (because if I ever entertained it, that's what it would be, not a Sound purview, which is dumb because Sound as an umbrella is a distinctly non-mythic idea). While I agree that it's not a primordial subject, that doesn't necessarily have to disqualify it - things like Illusion and Justice aren't either, really, but I think they're necessary and useful contributions to Scion. I think it might be possible to come up with a decent Music purview, but it's something that's way on the back-burner of Things I Should Spend Time Working On, and I don't think the game really suffers from its absence at all.
DeleteSuffer from its absence? No. But I do think the game is improved by having it, just as it's improved by having Forge, Illusion, Stars, Wealth and Frost. Still, there was already a big blog about that and most of this territory was covered then.
DeleteFrom day to day, though, I can't decide what to call Sound. It's more than just Music, but Moon is more than just Moon, ya know? Ugh.
Guess you canned the notion of pan as Satan pretty quik?
ReplyDeleteYes, because it's basically pretty silly. It's a comparatively modern association from the Middle Ages that doesn't really have anything to do with Pan other than a vague physical resemblance, and anyway, he's far from the only god Christianity's heavily identified with Satan. Huitzilopochtli, Set, Cernunnos, Tezcatlipoca and many others all share this distinction, and while Pan was definitely the most popular in medieval Europe, there's no real reason to run with the Satan conflation for him and not for anyone else.
Delete