I ....am not good at titles.
Today I wanna take a break from questions to talk about theme. As I get back to work on both games, I find myself stuck in a bit of a theme rut. Theme was always BY FAR the hardest thing for me to grasp in school. As a kid I was a BIG math and science guy, and theme seemed to elude me. The theme was always elusive, enigmatic, never definite. As a storyteller its INCREDIBLY easy to completely ignore it. Sometimes it'll pop up without you even noticing, but often it wont. And a story without a theme is a very 1 dimensional story indeed. As I've grown as an ST over these years Ive found more and more how important theme is. Rarely will it be something players even consciously notice(much like me in english class), but it'll work on a deeper level for them, and it will make the whole experience more enriching. Onward!
Eastern promises has been quasi without theme so far. Its been more of a setting piece. We explore the world, the time period, the "flavor" of it all, but dont "necessarily have overlying themes. That can only last so long though, and as they approach demigod its definitely time to make the story deeper and more engaging.
Also with Ragnarok story coming to a close, its time to think about where to go with that story. What themes apply to those characters and how we can tie those all together to give the new group some coherent themes for the next giant arch.
In eastern promises we have a young group of scions who are mostly lost. Their parents are distant and secretive and the world is not appreciative of them. They feel the oppressiveness of their pantheons virtues starting to take whole in their minds without explanation. They also suffer from constant societal oppression. They are the wrong color, they are the wrong gender, they are the wrong religion. They are not white, land owning men.
I want to gravitate towards themes we havnt used for a game before(or maybe used, but not focused on), and I want to weave these into the heroes' stories through at least the first arch.
Gender
We've already dealt with this as an obstacle throughout the game so far, but I'd like to change it from an obstacle into a theme. Instead of just effecting the women, how does it effect everyone. We have at least one character that straddles gender. Might there be more? When the PCs find out about people who dont fit gender molds how do they react? How does their harmony and order react? Will they be surprisingly 21st century for 19th century people or will they embrace their ancient heritage and be pretty much horrible to everyone?
Sexuality and Sexual Identity
This ties in with gender almost mandatorily. I think because gender is taking a front seat role sexuality will have to follow suit. We've definitely had a lot of sex in games before, but sexuality hasnt taken a front seat before. Mythology lets you run even more wild with this concept then humanity does. And I think this crop of PCs spans the options nicely, and it will be interesting to see how they grow. Some are already married. Others are happily bachelored or celibate. Also at this time sexual identity of any kind is being crushed by Victorian era ideas of sexuality. Its an interesting time period to be a scion.
The Distinction between Public and Private Faces
There seems to be a lot going on in the world of the gods that the PCs are not party to. They are forced to keep their parentage at least mildly secret. They are aware that certain gods are not supposed to be having children, but they seem to keep popping up. They are allies with enemies and enemies with allies. I wont give away anything here for my PCs sake, but there is obviously a lot happening. They will see more and more from their parents the importance, nay necessity of a public and private face. What does that mean when you arent a manipulative person? What does it mean when you're part of a pantheon of brutally honest gods. Most of the pcs have avoided or been sheltered from this necessary evil, but as stress compounds and more and more important things hang in the balance, how easy will it be to keep the two seperate.
Im also excited to see, as the pcs mature as a group, which is their public face and which is their private face. Are they public with the other pcs? Or are the other pcs the only ones who get their private face?
Thanks for going through that exercise with me. You didnt get to see the part where I weighed and considered about 20 themes that *might* work before deciding on those, but forcing myself to write the choices out helped me plow through it. Im pretty excited about setting the seeds for these and letting them bloom and grow over the next few months.
As players or STs are there any themes you found especially fun to explore in scion? Have you ever tried some that you found didnt work out, or didnt play out how you thought they would?
To be honest, the gender and sexuality I've set up as a real challenge for myself. I think there is a high chance it will fall on its face if not done in just the right way. And if its too obvious it'll definitely seem route and boring to PCs. But I enjoy challenges, so this should be a lot of fun.
Today I wanna take a break from questions to talk about theme. As I get back to work on both games, I find myself stuck in a bit of a theme rut. Theme was always BY FAR the hardest thing for me to grasp in school. As a kid I was a BIG math and science guy, and theme seemed to elude me. The theme was always elusive, enigmatic, never definite. As a storyteller its INCREDIBLY easy to completely ignore it. Sometimes it'll pop up without you even noticing, but often it wont. And a story without a theme is a very 1 dimensional story indeed. As I've grown as an ST over these years Ive found more and more how important theme is. Rarely will it be something players even consciously notice(much like me in english class), but it'll work on a deeper level for them, and it will make the whole experience more enriching. Onward!
Eastern promises has been quasi without theme so far. Its been more of a setting piece. We explore the world, the time period, the "flavor" of it all, but dont "necessarily have overlying themes. That can only last so long though, and as they approach demigod its definitely time to make the story deeper and more engaging.
Also with Ragnarok story coming to a close, its time to think about where to go with that story. What themes apply to those characters and how we can tie those all together to give the new group some coherent themes for the next giant arch.
In eastern promises we have a young group of scions who are mostly lost. Their parents are distant and secretive and the world is not appreciative of them. They feel the oppressiveness of their pantheons virtues starting to take whole in their minds without explanation. They also suffer from constant societal oppression. They are the wrong color, they are the wrong gender, they are the wrong religion. They are not white, land owning men.
I want to gravitate towards themes we havnt used for a game before(or maybe used, but not focused on), and I want to weave these into the heroes' stories through at least the first arch.
Gender
We've already dealt with this as an obstacle throughout the game so far, but I'd like to change it from an obstacle into a theme. Instead of just effecting the women, how does it effect everyone. We have at least one character that straddles gender. Might there be more? When the PCs find out about people who dont fit gender molds how do they react? How does their harmony and order react? Will they be surprisingly 21st century for 19th century people or will they embrace their ancient heritage and be pretty much horrible to everyone?
Sexuality and Sexual Identity
This ties in with gender almost mandatorily. I think because gender is taking a front seat role sexuality will have to follow suit. We've definitely had a lot of sex in games before, but sexuality hasnt taken a front seat before. Mythology lets you run even more wild with this concept then humanity does. And I think this crop of PCs spans the options nicely, and it will be interesting to see how they grow. Some are already married. Others are happily bachelored or celibate. Also at this time sexual identity of any kind is being crushed by Victorian era ideas of sexuality. Its an interesting time period to be a scion.
The Distinction between Public and Private Faces
There seems to be a lot going on in the world of the gods that the PCs are not party to. They are forced to keep their parentage at least mildly secret. They are aware that certain gods are not supposed to be having children, but they seem to keep popping up. They are allies with enemies and enemies with allies. I wont give away anything here for my PCs sake, but there is obviously a lot happening. They will see more and more from their parents the importance, nay necessity of a public and private face. What does that mean when you arent a manipulative person? What does it mean when you're part of a pantheon of brutally honest gods. Most of the pcs have avoided or been sheltered from this necessary evil, but as stress compounds and more and more important things hang in the balance, how easy will it be to keep the two seperate.
Im also excited to see, as the pcs mature as a group, which is their public face and which is their private face. Are they public with the other pcs? Or are the other pcs the only ones who get their private face?
Thanks for going through that exercise with me. You didnt get to see the part where I weighed and considered about 20 themes that *might* work before deciding on those, but forcing myself to write the choices out helped me plow through it. Im pretty excited about setting the seeds for these and letting them bloom and grow over the next few months.
As players or STs are there any themes you found especially fun to explore in scion? Have you ever tried some that you found didnt work out, or didnt play out how you thought they would?
To be honest, the gender and sexuality I've set up as a real challenge for myself. I think there is a high chance it will fall on its face if not done in just the right way. And if its too obvious it'll definitely seem route and boring to PCs. But I enjoy challenges, so this should be a lot of fun.
This one's a thinker. I've been running the Lost City of Atlanta for slightly over a year now. We've had cast changes, but no real long pauses.
ReplyDeleteIf there was a consistent them to the game, which I have my doubts about, I'd say that Atlanta focuses on modern morals vs ancient morals. Our three longest-running PCs all have issues with their Pantheons or Divine Parents over moral stances.
The anti-theistic Greek Scion hates that Gods intervene in human affairs and hates how helpless humans are to defend themselves against supernatural beings and especially against supernatural compulsion that violates their free will.
Russian Murder-Batman despises his father Chernobog for being Evil. He's set himself up as a dark defender of justice, murdering criminals and nasty monsters, but Chernobog just sees him as the most prolific serial killer in history and loves the crap out of him. Gives him ghost slaves and man-eating dragons as presents for his murder-sprees. Boris (the PC) struggles constantly to maintain his own morality and avoid becoming like his father.
Johnny the ex-Scion of Lugh was initially all onboard with ancient Irish morality, until he got a big heaping dose of it landed on his head when Lugh nearly murdered him for being a disgrace to his name. When his wife's head was taken by a Celtic Scion, he flipped his shit. When Kernunnos decided that the next move in his conflict with the Theoi should be to lure Athena into a trap and rape her (thanks Anne!), he used Johnny as a catspaw to set it up. Johnny is still burying child-abusers alive as a sacrifice to Kernunnos, but he's put that on hiatus while he figures out how to deal with the fact that his beloved foster-father is a rapist and sees literally NO PROBLEM with it. He's still working that out, and will have more problems later on as he starts to get to know some of the other Irish Gods better.
A former PC was continually terrified that Tlazlteotl was going to find out she wasn't living a perfect Aztec life and murder her horrifically. Because of that fear, she wasn't able to engage in any kind of romance or form much in the way of personal bonds. She couldn't figure out how to be a "proper" Aztec, and it pretty much ruined her life.
A secondary theme might be moral greyness. I try to make most of the choices my players are confronted with morally ambiguous. Sure, they could turn a new Avatar of Light over to Aten for destruction or over to the Gods for imprisonment, but he's the Avatar of Enlightenment. Wouldn't he be helpful to have free? They could simply wipe out the secret MIB-type organization that's turning mortals against them and destroying lesser Legendary beings, but those mortals are being controlled by the Titan of Unity. It isn't their fault they're being hateful and cruel.
It probably comes from my Vampire background, but I enjoy games where there isn't always (if ever) a clear right and wrong answer. Everything's a compromise.
I don't know how much of these things get across to my players, but now I'm gunna have to talk with them about it. Good blog! Happy brain time!
Modern vs. ancient morality is one of the best Scion themes - it's almost unavoidable, I think, and full of great places to mine for the story. Moral ambiguity is a pretty key part of any roleplaying, but Scion has insane levels of it everywhere.
DeleteI'm not sure I want to be thanked for that, but you're welcome.
As an ST, I tend to be very disappointed by men playing women and the other way around. How do you handle this ?
ReplyDeleteFor Victorian Age, do you actively play sexism and how is it restraining for female PCs of your campaign.
Yeah....Im gonna agree with you. I think playing across gender requires a GREAT deal of work that most players arent going to want to do, be capable of doing, or actually follow through it. Im very VERY wary of anyone doing ever. I think most people do it horribly and end up just being accidentally(or purposely) offensive to the other gender.
DeleteHowever, that said, We had a woman make a male character for the victorian game(it was one of her options and she didnt get to play it) and one of our new players is a man playing a woman. I dont like to cut peoples options out too much, and I'm willing to give anything a try once for people I trust. We had our first game today and it went well.
Victorian era women get shat on. Its super sexist, super restraining and they deal with an extra level of difficulty above the males. So far I've think they've had a good time with it(albeit a frustrating one at times.
We ladies have had to deal with horrible price gouging, unwanted advances, and condescending remarks, among other things. I've only played young white women so far (Padma can pass for white, anyhow) so I can still get a few things done, at least. I'm the most charismatic person of our current Eastern Promises band, but it is still sometimes difficult to get information from male sources simply because I'm a woman. I am often asked where my husband is and why he sent me instead of speaking for himself.
DeleteThat said, it is much more challenging to contribute to the band in social situations as a non-white woman!
Ooh, I love this discussion! Threads of Fate is all about theme, so much so that the story often revolves around the character's personal themes.
DeleteLOSS/ACCEPTANCE: These are the two big ones for Aednet Dougherty, Daughter of Brigid, and Peter Dorian, Son of Poseidon. Everyone in the bad has lost a person (or persons) close to them to death, but both Aednet and Peter have lost those closest to them while they're still alive. Peter lost his wife because Poseidon, in some twisted way of helping his son, caused them to divorce, and now Peter knows he can't talk to her because his enemies might go after her. Aednet has lost her connection to her entire family, something she held on to before her Visitation. (Interestingly, she had lost them long before that.) Brigid and Dinoysus both told her that she can't ever talk to them, and by not doing so, she can save them. So, she's struggling with that.
Aednet and Peter both deal with feeling like they have never been truly accepted. Aednet feels like an outsider because she isn't connected to the rest of the Band in the same way and because she doesn't always understand what is going on all the time, and everyone else seems to have their understandings. Peter, as the resident genius and Epic Intelligence hound, feels like an outsider because he is so much smarter than everyone else and his mind is working overtime, even amongst the band of Demigods. He knows things before he even realizes he knows them, so he's often put into awkward situations where he knows what's going on but can't really explain it.
HUMILITY/SELF-CONTROL: For Baysan bint Faizah, Daughter of Sekhmet, and Isamu Murakami, Son of Hachiman, these are the two concepts that hover over them. Both struggle with being humble (because of their upbringings) in spite of their awesome powers and, to a certain extent, their parents. Sekhmet obviously has a different 'parenting' style than Hachiman, but both demand a certain ideal that it's hard for Baysan and Isamu to really grasp onto, because it conflicts with so much of how they were brought up.
To make matters worse, they both have impulses that they don't act on, but they've buried so much of them that it's starting to become unhealthy. As they've grown in Legend, they've become closer to their parents and their divine side, so it's harder to keep the impulses under control. Unfortunately, their both so absorbed in their personal codes of honor and justice that they haven't been able to come to a discussion as of yet. It's really tough for both of them.
PROPHECY VERSUS REALITY/SORROW: For Ericka Fredriksen, Daughter of Frigg, these are the constant themes that plague her. She's the kindest of souls you will ever meet, but perhaps the most tortured. No one in the Band (with the exception of one) really knows what happened to her that caused her so much eternal sorrow, and I won't explain it, since my players may be reading. As the most gifted Prophet in the Band, she has seen much of what may come, but she can't always accept that as reality, so she clings to whatever she can to prove that not all Prophecies come true, despite having been true time and time again in her brief, albeit eventual time as a Scion. She is constantly haunted by a chronic sorrow, and as an Empath, she can't always be around someone like Aednet (because she's got a positive Charisma and overall cheery feeling she gives off, despite being a cynic) because it's almost painful to remember happiness and being free of sorrow.
(CONT'D)
ANGER/PAIN/APATHY: These are the most prevalent themes for Ciaran O'Kane, Son of The Morrigan. He had the most troubled childhood (abusive, alcoholic father) and he grew up hating people and developed into a Loner. Sort of like the Hulk, he's always angry, and it's his secret. But, he's always afraid of what would happen if he were to lose control of his anger, his rage. Of course, he'd never admit this, but it's there. On top of that, he's also a Prophet and an Empath, only he is apathetic and doesn't care for hardly anyone, so it's painful for him to feel these things because he knows he should want to care, but he can't bring himself to. Like Ericka, it's painful, but for different reasons. On top of that, he has a great devotion to his family and to the Tuatha (Piety is one of his highest Virtues), and he's filled with great courage and doesn't understand why he would die for his Band despite not always caring about them. He's constantly angry, and in a great pain because of it. The only one who can ever calm him - or at least dull the pain for a time - is Ericka, but it's doubly painful for her because she has to navigate to the core of his emotional spectrum, which is pure, unbridled rage.
ReplyDeleteTRUST/REALITY VERSUS ILLUSION: The last member of the band, Amarante Delours, Daughter of Andarta, deals with these themes. As a former spy, she already has ingrained trust issues, but becoming a Scion has only increased that. What paranoia she may have had in the past, it's now doubled because now she has to worry about Titanspawn, Fate, and the antagonist Band. She doesn't fully trust everyone in the Band (with the possible exception of Isamu), but she's so good at hiding it that no one can really tell. This, of course, leads into her second theme of Reality versus Illusion. She's become so adept at living illusion-filled lives that she can convince someone is real without even wanting to. Other people see her as one thing, when in fact she is something entirely different - the Band included. Though, it's not always what she wants. Going along with this, she feels that the world itself is an illusion and everyone (re: mortals) living in it are just being played by the illusions of the Gods and Titans. She also wonders if she's just being faced with illusions and this Band isn't even what it's supposed to be. The sad part is that she feels she's right about that last part.
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Wow, so yeah, that was a long post! (Two posts, actually!) But! Those are the overarching themes that prevalent in Threads of Fate. These are all deeply troubled characters, but the story has benefited from it and there's been lots of interesting and intricate development because of it. I'd love to hear what you think about this particular set of themes.
I also realize I did not mean to post the first part of this as a reply to a comment! Damn!
DeleteReally excellent ones. I think humility/self control goes along with anger/pain/apathy very well. Seems very often those are the different responses out of control characters have to being forced to have self control.
DeleteVery nice and thank you for sharing.
My campaign revolves heavily on prophecies and how much the PCs want to avoid them. Against Fate, you can't really win, you can only lose more or less. Since there has been major changes to Ragnarok, one of my PCs believes he must make sure the Twilight of the Gods does happen if the golden renewal afterwards is to be assured. He's been wise enough to keep this to himself for now. He's invested heavily in Prophecy, which allows him to work with the flow of Fate.
ReplyDeleteSounds very much like Aurora in our games. Very classic prophet style. Does he also have magic? Its gonna help a lot to counter others trying to use magic to manipulate fate.
Delete