After the Onyx Path AMA this week, we've gotten several questions from you guys about it, asking what we thought, what we liked and didn't like, and so forth. You probably weren't envisioning half an hour of videotaped rambling... but that's what you're getting.
The future of Scion is an exciting place. We'll just have to contain ourselves until 2014!
I'm so happy that Joe Carriker contacted you guys. Just the fact that he has spoken to you guys a bit has put my mind at ease about second edition, even if you guys are not involved as much as you could be.
ReplyDeleteBut, asides from that. The idea you guys mentioned at the end of the vlog sounds like a brilliant idea to me. Either putting them onto another Pantheon's page, or putting them into their own separate part of the site is a great idea just so the Gods like Anansi and Cernunnos can have some presence even when the rest of the Pantheon is a gaggle of Lesser Gods who have too little of any myths to stat.
Good to know - it seems like a lot of folks below agree with you that the dispossessed gods in their own section might be a good idea! We'll start thinking of what to do with that. :)
DeleteWe're pretty excited about possibly being involved, too, but only time and OP will tell us how much!
Thank you :)
DeleteWe'll have to see how it goes, but Im excited.
Congrats guys, and good luck!
ReplyDeleteRe: PSPs...
I like Anne's idea about having a separate section for the Anansis and Cernunnoses of the world. A solution to the lack of PSP might be to give them something else as a reward for being unaligned. Perhaps something to do with Fate - because the bonds that unify them with the rest of their (weak/nonexistent) pantheons are so thin, it could confer some kind of bonus upon those Gods and their ilk. Like...being a wild card in the big picture.
Whatever this bonus would be, I don't think it should be unified as powers amongst all of the wild card gods, because then it's its own kind of weird PSP and that's just awkward. But maybe scions of wild card gods get an extra attribute dot and some extra ability points to start with (and at the upgrades)? Or they could pick an Attribute/Ability at the start and something would happen with that to define their character. Just some ideas!
I think you could look to Caitiff from VtM for some inspiration, to a limited extent. A similar concept, but obviously we don't want scions handpicking a PSP from another culture.
DeleteHmm, I didn't think about it like Caitiff, but that would be kind of a similar model. My only worry there is that I don't want to give players the feeling that those cultures for some reason don't exist or aren't important; there may be only a handful of Ashanti gods that we know of, but that doesn't mean there aren't cool myths and cultural religious practices in that part of the world. I don't want to end up tacitly saying, "This religion doesn't have enough gods, therefore it doesn't exist," because that would close doors as well as being remarkably socially insensitive.
DeleteBut yeah, definitely something for a PC to work with instead of a PSP might be a good idea. Hmmm...
But caitiff were dirty dirty cheaters and the only balance for them was they got shit on hard core. ....would need a balancing mechanic.
DeleteI second Royce's idea for sure, lol.
ReplyDeleteAs for settings, I would like to throw my hat in for a Roaring '20's timeline. Cause I think it would be great, its right after WW1, before WW2 and it was an exciting time everywhere. lol.
But I would also for sure like to see Modern again and possible Age of Heroes with Greece. As for pantheons, I am glad the original 6 are coming back, but I hope more will come and have a good collection, even if its in supplements. My idea that I've told some people is have some pantheons in the original books and then have books like Ragnarok, but include like 2-3 pantheons and some stories from cultures nearby and similar to them. Like the Norse being shacked up with the Irish and Finnish. Just a suggestion, it does not have to be them exactly.
Also, I am having fun with the Draft. Blazrath on there, unfortunately only one of my picks was taken before I could get it. DAMN GOIBNHIOS! Went to a Finnish god that John is very speculative about if he is any good. lol, oh well. My draft picks that I got are good in my head. lol.
The 2-3 pantheons in a book kind of thing is an idea I've been musing on for a while as well. Though I've thought about it more as introducing a few new pantheons from a given region. If you have Norse in core, for example, maybe there's a supplement for Northern Europe that introduces the Slavic, Finnish, and Baltic Pantheons. Then maybe go a bit in depth about the historical interactions between the worshipers of the pantheons, common mythological/religious themes of the area, etc. It really seems like something that could potentially make corners of the world feel much more vibrant in the setting.
DeleteAnd if you're keeping the six core pantheons and trying to make the game more global, I can't help but think you're ultimately going to end up with more Pantheons than you can just fit in core.
Yeah, I actually tried to pitch that to White Wolf a while ago (I was all "The Middle East! It's awesome! Anunna/Elohim/Alihah, plx?", which in retrospect was of course way overambitious, especially for a line that was not publishing new material at the time), and I think it's a really great setup for new books. Since supplements for just one pantheon are often very slim - mine are around 40 pages at most, and Yazata was barely longer thanks to including an adventure - including several from the same area of the world and material on how they might interact or add to the setting could be a really neat model for new releases. Less of a "look, another new pantheon" approach, and more, "hey, here's an expansion to the divine world".
DeletePerhaps, as a solution to the PSP problem, you could allow them to buy the PSP (as they are still part of the pantheon) as if it were not associated?
ReplyDeleteWhy not give them Deogdonio? The Gauls will hardly need it, and the whole fighting Fate just to stay alive while the rest of my pantheon goes into obscurity fits the theme well.
DeleteI mean, it could be natural evolution. As these Gods get dissacociated from their pantheons in the eyes of mortals and become their own individual things, they lose access to their earlier PSPs and get this new power.
DeleteIt would also probably be a pretty good choice for Gods like Coyote and Raven, who were never properly part of a pantheon to begin with.
Hmm...Raven, Coyote, Anansi. Is it just me are are most of the 'Gods without borders' tricksters?
Well many of the native American culture heroes were tricksters sent by whatever grand being created the world and were charged with teaching humanity. But there is a running theme of not just telling humanity the answers to their problem but having them come up with it themselves usually through tricking them into getting the answer.
DeletePerhaps you could make a section in your pantheon named 'Other'? Put any singular gods that are very popular on there, even if someday you might write actual pantheons for them.
DeletePoking through the list of draft names: Cernunnous, Anansi, Viracocha, Vainamoinen, Raven, Nanook, Oya, and Coyote are all big names without a researched pantheon yet.
If you ever do write pantheons for some of them, graduate them from 'Other' to the correct pantheon.
I'm not sure we'd want to allow access to other PSPs, period. It's not a matter of a little more XP, but rather that no other pantheon's Scions in the game can choose to buy someone else's PSP at extra cost, so why do these guys get to? Also, simply making it unassociated cost would be equivalent to what a native Scion is paying if they've swapped out a Virtue, so it's definitely not that much of a tradeoff.
DeleteDeuogdonio... is an interesting idea. I'm not sure if that would fit, either, simply because Fate in the European sense that Deuogdonio paints it just isn't universally viewed that way (I doubt the purview would make a lot of sense to Anansi, for example, since the Ashanti don't share that idea of destiny), but then again it might be repurposed as a general mechanic rather than strictly a "PSP" proper.
Yeah, that draft is fun to watch just as someone who likes to write new material for Scion, since it's full of examples of what gods people think are cool that aren't in the Scion line yet. I'd love to get Finnish and Inuit pantheons off the ground someday, and Coyote and Anansi are of course perennial favorites. I'll go ahead and spoiler a little bit and say that Oya, at least, will probably make it to the playable roster of our Loa/Orisha rewrite (though she is also written up as a Titan Avatar in the Inca supplement, so you can use her either way).
Lol, TheDarkServant was having some issues picking storm gods, mostly cause the popular ones were taken. So to be a kind and just player, I sent him Gods and Goddesses of Sky and Storms to help him out. It was Haokah, a Lakota Trickster, Cocijo, a Lightning God from Zapotec civilization, Oya and Amadioha, a Lightning God of the Igbo from Nigeria.
DeleteIts cool we have a couple Finnish gods in the draft, then even more Inuit gods. Lol. Should be interesting how John will stat them.
Actually, Raven and Coyote were properly parts of pantheons. There just happened to be multiple pantheons that had a trickster raven god, or a trickster coyote god, that had similar myths about them. But Haida mythology did specifically include a raven trickster called Nañkîlslas. And as best as I've been able to tell the Lakota pantheon includes their own coyote trickster Mica (though admittedly my knowledge of the Lakota comes from poking around online as opposed to reading books about them so I'm not quite as sure about them). It's not so much that they're gods without borders so much as that they share a widespread theme and have all kinda been lumped together over time to the point where a lot of people nowadays consider them all the same figure. But that's not really any more accurate than saying that Marduk, Zeus, and Baal-Hadad were actually all the same person because they're all thunder gods that ruled their pantheon and defeated giant serpents/dragons.
ReplyDeleteBut now that I'm done going off on my tangent I'd agree wholeheartedly that it'd be nice to include gods like Anansi in such a manner so that they'd be playable. And that it'd be nice if we could come up with something to soften the blow of one of their Scions not having a PSP, though I have no idea what we could use for that. Deuogdonio's a possibility I suppose...but I've never really liked it all that much. Never been a fan of a PSP that allows a player to mess around with one of the core limitations built into a game.
And Viracocha does have a researched pantheon, John and Anne released their Incan supplement, The Apu, back in...June, I think? You should go check it out, because it's awesome.
True facts, Viracocha is the creator god for the badassness that is the Apu, the Inca pantheon. One of my favorite pantheons to dream will be in the official lineup someday, so South America stops being so darn neglected!
DeleteEven if they already have a pantheon, Raven and Coyote should probably go into the other section for now. They are too cool to not be playable and it might be a very long time before their 'pantheons' get researched.
DeleteI will definitely go check out the Inca supplement! I just didn't see the Inca on the list in the Pantheons section. Sorry for the confusion there.
Nah, no worries. Like the Elohim and Alihah, they haven't made it to the website proper yet so they're easy to miss. Someday, I hope. :)
DeleteTotally agree about Raven and Coyote.
yeah, they all generally have pantheons. We are just at a point where we wont be giving their entire pantheon a run anytime soon, but think they should be included before then. So what do we do?
DeleteOh, I wasn't saying they shouldn't go into the other section. Because the whole promote them if/when their pantheon gets written is always out there. Just pointing out that they do firmly have pantheons they're a part of...because sometimes I just get a little too nitpicky.
DeleteOh, and Whope (or however you want to spell her name), she should definitely be included to.
considering the Herculian task John and Anne had to do to rework the PSP's of the pantheons they were playing to make them usable for them, and how much grief the orginals garner, is not having a PSP for these unafilliates really that much of a loss?
ReplyDeleteNo, its really not. IMO
DeleteCongrats guys on getting involved in the 2nd Edition. That is incredibly awesome.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite bouncing with excitement at the thought for you (I'm at work, they look at you a bit funny when you do that) but this is the most promising thing I have heard yet about the second edition.
Excellent stuff
Ok I'll stop gushing now before I embarress my self