It Feels Good to Be a Gangster

Question: What do you think of the idea that mortal worship gives legend back to gods? I've seen plenty of home brewed Cult Birthrights and am wondering what your opinion is on the idea that, when mortals worship gods, those gods get Legend back in exchange for the threat and consequence of being Fatebound.

If you were going to redesign Scion from the ground up, rewriting everything that currently conflicts with that idea so that it works... we wouldn't hate it. I see the idea you're going for - that Fatebonds are serious business and suck and should get some kind of positive kickback, and also that gods being worshiped by mortals feels like it should have some kind of concrete result.

However, in Scion as it stands now, we're not fans of the idea, and we wouldn't put it in game as either a Birthright or a system. There are a few reasons for this, and since I love bulleting, I'll bullet away:

• The Aztlanti. Gods already do get Legend back simply for having cults that worship them - provided that they are Aztec gods. The entire Aztlanti PSP is built around the concept that their cults, through their unique form of worship (Aztec blood sacrifice), feed their gods Legend. At the moment, they're the only ones who can do this because it's what their special culture-specific power is about; the Aztecs believed that blood sacrifice literally filled the gods with the energy they needed to run the cosmos, and mechanically that's very elegantly represented by having blood sacrifice give Aztec gods Legend. If you made Legend something that every god of every pantheon got for free without even needing sacrifice, you'd need to completely gut Itztli and rewrite the Aztecs a new PSP from the bottom up, something that would be significantly difficult to do thanks to having closed the door on their most major mythic concept. (You'd also have to rebalance against the parts of Enech that grant Legend, though that's less of a gigantic and probably misguided project.)
• Fatebond Reciprocation. Fatebonds are serious business, no joke about it, so it's easy to look at them and think that it would be really nice if they gave some positive benefit to go with all their inconvenience and heartbreak. After all, they're levying penalties on your rolls and leeching away powers you used to have that they don't agree with - that sucks! It's a no-brainer to think that they should do something nice for gods to make up for all their potential disadvantages. But the thing is that Fatebonds are already double-edged swords - they don't need an additional bonus because they already contain even bonuses and penalties within themselves. No god gets negative Fatebonds without also getting positive ones; you don't lose powers without also gaining them, and you don't get dice penalties without also getting dice bonuses (actually, mathematically, you always gain new powers faster than you lose old ones). It is absolutely irritating for Scions to have to argue with Fatebonds to try to keep them from buying off an important stat, but it is also awesome for them to get their other important stats more quickly than they would without a Fatebond to help them; it sucks that they can't make a decent Perception + Investigation roll anymore, but it's awesome that they're getting +10 successes to all their Strength rolls. While the idea of adding a Legend bonus all the time to "make up" for Fatebond shenanigans is well-meaning, it's ignoring the fact that Fatebonds themselves already give plenty of bonuses to plenty of powers; they're their own built-in reward, just as they're their own built-in penalty.
• Mythological Dissonance. We've touched on this occasionally in previous posts, but it bears repeating: in general, the idea that mortal worship actually does anything for gods is a very modern one. Most ancient religions view worshiping gods as something that mortals do because A) they fear them, B) they respect them, C) they want them to give them blessings, or D) some combination of all of the above. Most ancient cultures and religions don't have a concept of worship as something that gods want or need; it's something that mortals do because that's the only thing you can do when confronted with gods. The gods themselves may expect it, or get angry if you're forgetting to do it or doing it wrong, but it's never something that they need or that gives them any extra power or influence. The fact that mortal worship doesn't actually give you any bonuses or benefits in Scion isn't a weird mistake; it's accurately representing how these ancient religions and mythologies paint the relationship between mortals and gods.
• Legendary Action. One of Scion's awesome core mechanical ideas is that Scions and gods regain Legend by doing awesome and Legendary things; they don't get it back for just sitting around. That's what the stunting system does; it rewards those who do awesome mythic things by giving them back Legend, and therefore there's no other system in place for it. If, on the other hand, Legend was something that gods could get back automatically just for existing, it'd be rewarding gods who sat around in their houses watching reality television just as much as those who were out doing awesome stuff, and that's not something we want to encourage. Legend is, after all, literally the measure of how Legendary and awesome you are and how much power you have as a result; while it's cool that mortals know stories about you and you therefore have a cult, if all you do from that point on is eat grapes and veg out in front of VH1, you shouldn't be getting Legend back. Of course most PC gods won't be doing that, because it's lame - but it shouldn't be possible in the setting at all for anyone, PC or NPC, and if cults just automatically give back Legend, it would be very easy.
• Too Awesome. Finally, if there was a Birthright that gave you back free Legend all the time, how could any Scion not take it? It'd be too crazy powerful to pass up; it wouldn't be one of many Birthright options, it'd be practically mandatory. We're all for giving Scions awesome toys, but we don't want any one toy to be so wildly awesome that everyone has to take it regardless of concept or inclination because otherwise they're crippled compared to everyone else. We want Scions to have many options of different kinds of awesome bonuses, not a mandatory bonus and then some other stuff that can't hope to compete with it.

We know there are Storytellers out there who give back free Legend to Scions, whether through a custom Birthright, by just granting some back every day or by giving "middle of story" bumps or similar; it seems to work for some games, especially those in which the players are new to the stunting system and not quite sure how to use it, or more accustomed to other games in which resources always regenerate over time. We don't do that, because we are huge fans of Scion's system of PCs getting their Legend back for stunting and being awesome, therefore putting all of that power in their own hands, and for that reason - and all the other ones above - we are not big fans of the idea of mortal cults granting free Legend to gods. It just doesn't make sense in the game, both for the setting and for the mechanics; it would require a from-the-ground rewrite that we're not prepared to make just to shoehorn it in.

However, we do love the idea that being Fatebound to a cult has specific concrete effects on a god besides just their usual Fatebonds, and that they can activate those things through their own actions, so we do have a system in place by which gods can benefit a little bit from their cults by performing certain actions. It's not a Birthright; it's just a system in which, whenever a goddess gains an official cult (that is, one that applies Fatebonds to her), she also gains one action that she can perform at that cult (usually once per day or once per week) in order to get a little bit of Legend back. It's usually something that has to do with what that particular cult knows her for or past deeds she's performed there. For example, when Vala performs Prophecy at her cult in Delphi, which believes her to be the new oracle there, she gains five points of Legend; and since Jioni also has a cult there that believes her to be the messenger and mouth of said oracle, she gains five points of Legend if she brings Vala there and then interprets her prophecy for the people. Sowiljr's well-known in Argentina for creating life-giving ponds, so he gains bonuses whenever he magically creates a small body of water, while Eztli, known in Iceland as her husband's protector and resurrector, gains Legend whenever she heals him within the confines of his cult city.

This reward doesn't always have to come in the form of Legend, and might also be a regaining of Willpower, a Virtue Channel, or some other kind of short-term bonus; it doesn't really matter, as long as it's cool and thematic for the cult and the god in question. It also doesn't always translate to a straight benefit; if a Scion uses a power to perform the necessary action, obviously that cost cuts into the rewards reaped from it, but at the very least it makes going to your cult and doing the awesome stuff you're known for there basically free. If you can manage to do it with low investment of resources, you actually gain some Legend back - and you do it, not by sitting around existing, but by going out and being Legendary and awesome, which is what being a god is all about.