Nomenclature Niceties

Housekeeping post!

This wasn't really an update so much as a quick edit, so we didn't include it in our normal project list, but thanks to the long weekend without John I'm a dynamo of productivity. Therefore, I finally managed to get around to something we've been meaning to do for quite a while: renaming some of the pantheons.

Some of the pantheon names in vanilla Scion are fine, but there are others that we've long been annoyed by, and now they're finally cleaned up so we don't have to cringe whenever we look at our pantheon page. The pantheons who have changed are as follows:

• The Amatsukami are now the Kami. "Amatsukami" actually means "heavenly gods", but we've always found it strangely limiting thanks to the fact that there are also "earthly gods" called the Kunitsukami, including Sarutahiko, as well as various other kami that aren't strictly defined as belonging to either group that are excluded by it. This way we have a blanket term that covers everyone, and we're also fond of the reinforcement of the connection between the great kami of Amaterasu's court and the lesser kami that invest natural objects and places.
• The Aztlanti are now the Teotl. This was the biggest one we've wanted to change, basically forever, because it was just such a puzzling misfire in the original book and really had no purpose that we could come up with. "Aztlanti" is a word made up by the writers of the original Scion; it means "those from Aztlan", referring to the ancestral homeland the Mexica believed they had traveled from with Huitzilopochtli. However, that's a human origin myth, and the gods (with the notable exception of Coatlicue) were believed to live in entirely different celestial and chthonic worlds, and at any rate it was deeply silly to use it as the name of the pantheon when there was already a perfectly good word for Aztec divinities that was used by the Aztecs themselves. That word is teotl, which means not only god but also refers to the entire concept of divinity and superhuman power. We are so glad to finally bid farewell to one of the last randomly-thrown-together Nahuatl portmanteau words from the original game.
• The Devas are now the Deva. This was just grammatical housekeeping, really. "Deva" is already plural; the "s" is only added by English-speakers.
• The Dodekatheon are now the Theoi. "Dodekatheon" means "the twelve gods", and refers specifically to the major inhabitants of Olympus: Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Artemis, Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes and either Hestia or Dionysus, depending on the time period. It would be a totally appropriate name if those were the only gods in play, but of course they're not; people like Hades, Persephone, Hecate and Poseidon aren't members of the Dodekatheon, and it seems a bit silly to use the name and ignore them. "Theoi", on the other hand, is the ancient Greek word for "gods", and includes all the mad tapestry of deities the ancient Greeks could come up with.
• The Pesedjet are now the Netjer. This is the same problem we had with the Dodekatheon; "Pesedjet" is the Egyptian term for the set of nine deities also called the Ennead by the Greeks, which is made up of Ra, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. But using that term excludes all the Egyptian gods that aren't members of the Pesedjet, including Anubis, Sobek, Hathor, Bastet and so on, so we swapped it out for "netjer", which is again the general Egyptian term for gods.
• The Celestial Bureaucracy are now the Shen. The original book used these terms interchangeably, which we're actually totally fine with since both are appropriate, but we aren't fans of the Chinese pantheon randomly being the only set of gods with their name in English for some reason. The Chinese phrase would be something akin to Tianguo Guanliao, but that might be a bit of a mouthful for most players, and since "shen" literally means "gods" - not to mention including some of China's more ancient gods that aren't strictly members of the bureaucracy - we decided to go ahead and jettison the long title.

This is one of those changes that we're making for our own games and peace of mind, but it doesn't actually change the way anything in the game works, so of course everybody should feel free to keep calling the gods whatever they want to. We've all gotten used to Dodekatheon and Pesedjet over years of playing, so we won't bite you if you go on using them.

Everything should be properly updated, but if you see one of the old terms still floating around on the site, it would be awesome if you dropped a comment here to warn us.

And now... exhausted slumber.

Edit for accuracy: Poseidon totally is a member of the Dodekatheon, guys... I must have been more tired than I thought when I wrote that. The others I listed are not.

Half an Hour of Questions

Hi, everybody! Today, John is not home so I go off the rails on a mad question-answering spree. As usual, trying to get caught up so you guys don't have to feel like you send in your questions to a massive black hole in the universe. Hooray!

Question soup, coming at you:

Question: I don't remember where I read this, but there was an article that said that the reason Zeus went on a raping frenzy was so that Hercules would be born to deal with the gaints that Gaia created, and that the battle of Troy was orchestrated so that Zeus could get rid of the demigods that were born as a result of this Batman gambit for Hercules to be born. Is this part of Greek myth?

Question: Mechanically, how do you deal with Thor's strength belt and how it works when it doubles his strength, especially when he pops Ultimate Strength while wearing it?

Question: How would you classify the Aztec land of Tlillan-Tlapallan? Terra Incognita? Part of the Overworld? Sanctum for Quetzalcoatl? Alternate name for some mundane place (some scholars think it might be a name for Chichen Itza)?

Question: Did any of your Visitations have a parent god show up in their true form, or were they all avatared down?

Question: Can you name some of the Titans that might have been responsible for the shattering of Tartarus?

Question: How do you deal with Negative Epic Appearance in a party? Every game I see forces that player to get My Eyes Are Up Here or Visage Great & Terrible, or get kicked out of the group. Nobody wants to be constantly terrified of you or throwing up.

Question: So Hera being the enforcer of fidelity in marriage seems to mean that she only enforces fidelity from wives to their husbands, not the other way around. She never comes down on Zeus, and never smites any mythological male hero who is married for not keeping it in his pants, but comes down on all the women who cheated with Zeus.

Question: In your Fatebinding system, are the expectations and rejections worked out as soon as the Legend is spent? If a Scion spends a bunch of Legend, and then quickly follows that up with some awesome heroic stuff that doesn't cost Legend, would Fate take that into account? Or is it just based on the "initial spend" kind of thing?

Question: Speaking of Celtic Underworlds! Any ideas on the Overworlds and Underworlds of the continental Celts and the Nemetondevos?

Question: Hey, on the progress bar I see there is a Secret Project. Is there anything you can tell us about what it may entail and how large it may be?

Man, sorry for the crazy lighting changes. Someday I'll learn how to video.

Loki Liesmith

Question: I love your new Loki picture.

Thanks! We love it, too. The original artist is the fantastic anndr, who created it as cover art for the release of the album "Bog Obmana" (in English, "Liar God" or "God of Deception") by the Russian metal band Magistr. There are a few other pieces of Loki from the same project in the gallery, as well as a lot of other art that will make your eyeballs cry with joy.

Incidentally, for those wondering, the old Loki picture was by talented fantasy artist Mauricio Herrera, and was also fabulous. We swapped out because we felt the new one captured the idea of a highly manipulative and mercurial god a little better, but the old one also deserves some love!

Trick or Treat

Question: Why do almost all the trickster gods have Manipulation and Wits?

Because those are the stats used for trickstering, my friend, and they demonstrate them on the daily!

We've had lots of discussions about how not everybody with Manipulation or Wits is a trickster, and that is still true. You can have one or the other - or both - and be a perfectly upright and unimpeachable example of law-abiding citizenship. I gotta tell you, Eztli has ten dots of Epic Wits, but nobody in her band is worried about her pranking them any time soon.

Basically, Manipulation is the measure of your ability to hide what you're doing or convince others of something, which means that anyone who is famously good at lying, disguise, political dealings or playing tricks on others probably has a lot of it. Without Manipulation, Loki wouldn't be able to convince Hod to throw mistletoe at Baldur and Tezcatlipoca wouldn't be able to make Quetzalcoatl think he had suddenly turned into a hideous ogre without noticing; Horus would never have been able to pull off tricking Set into losing all the contests between them, and Stribog would never have been able to fool Chors into thinking he was someone else. That doesn't mean that everybody who ever lies has Ultimate Manipulation - that would be kind of bananas, considering how many gods can't seem to tell the truth even when caught red-handed - but it does mean that gods who are famous for being able to smooth-talk their way out of things or confusticate their fellows into making hilarious mistakes are probably rocking that Ultimate.

Wits, on the other hand, is about reaction time, quick thinking and improvisation; it's the stat you need to pull a solution out of nowhere at the last possible second or to be able to jump at a new idea in time to keep from getting burnt by the old one. Without Wits, Loki wouldn't have been able to avoid punishment on several occasions by jumping in and offering to fix the problems he caused, Quetzalcoatl wouldn't have been able to pull off a desperate improvised gambit to steal from Mictlantecuhtli and Enki wouldn't have been able to quick-think his way around Enlil's rules and save humanity from the great flood. Tricksters tend to have Wits because they need them to survive; their stories usually feature them being able to think on their feet even in the worst situations, often narrowly saving their skins (usually from something they themselves did that is now backfiring on them). They also use the stat to make sure that they're quick enough to seize any opportunity for their own favored brand of mischief.

We don't just hand Manipulation and Wits to everyone who's a trickster, of course - like all other associations, it's based as much as possible on what they do in their stories rather than just saying, "Eh, he's a shenanigans guy, give him both." Some tricksters, including Eshu, Hermes, Horus, Loki, Manannan mac Lir and Odin do have both because they consistently exemplify both qualities; others, including Enki, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca have only one or the other, illustrating that they're very strong in one area but not necessarily the highest level of skilled in the other. And, of course, there are non-trickster gods like Ishtar, Isis or Parvati that have both without really fitting the archetype at all; like all stats, Manipulation and Wits can be used for different kinds of purposes and representations across different gods.

Incidentally, you don't need both as a PC to be an effective trickster, either, if that's what you're aiming for. They're both helpful, but you can also find ways to manage with just one; Manipulation-only tricksters usually have to lay their plans far in advance and watch them trigger like dominos falling, while Wits-only tricksters always fly by the seat of their pants and just have to keep moving so quickly that nobody will have the time or wherewithal to figure out what they're doing. Having neither is pretty challenging, especially since a famous career as a trickster will probably get you Fatebound to one or the other, but you still might be able to pull off your divine pranksterism in other ways. After all, there are gods with neither associated who have definitely pulled some shit in their time, so you can always decide to blaze your own trail the way they did.

Broken Homes

Question: So, what's the relationship between Xochiquetzal and Tezcatlipoca nowadays? I've heard some claims that she's the Smoking Mirror's wife now (one of four), but not all sources seem to agree.

Not good, in our opinion. There's room to go either way, though.

For those unaware of their sordid past, Xochiquetzal was once seduced by Tezcatlipoca, god of masculinity and seduction among his many other talents (and since she's also the goddess of love and sex, sparks were bound to fly). It depends on the teller of the tale whether this was a mutual affair, she was blandished into it or he even physically kidnapped her. Even if it was voluntary, the problem with this was that she was also married at the time, to Tlaloc, who happened to be serving as the third sun; her disloyalty so upset him that he caused the rain of fire that destroyed the Third World, and forced everyone to restart creation and elect a new sun again. It was a pretty big debacle, and Xochiquetzal summarily ceased being associated much with Tlaloc, who gained a new wife in the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue.

However, Xochiquetzal also ceases being associated with Tezcatlipoca in any meaningful way as well. The god is said to have wives, but those wives' identities are hard to pin down, given as various different names in different sources or not elaborated on at all, often left as identifiers of his association with wealth and masculinity rather than characters themselves. The idea of four wives comes from the ixiptla cult, in which a Tezcatlipoca impersonator was assigned four "wives" who were impersonators of four goddesses including Xochiquetzal, but it's hard to be certain whether they meant that Tezcatlipoca literally had four wives or whether that was just the convenient number for the ritual (after all, four is the magic number in Mesoamerican religion; if you asked them how many there were of anything sacred but undefined, they'd probably say four). It's also very possible that he wasn't necessarily believed to be married to those particular goddesses, but that they were there as representatives of concepts associated with the ixiptla's death and offering to Tezcatlipoca; under this theory, the women represent life-giving forces (sex, crafts, salt and fertility of the earth) and the ixiptla represents humanity making use of them, and the Xochiquetzal impersonator is there as a representative of sex propagating humanity rather than a wife in the human sense.

At any rate, Xochiquetzal certainly has an affair with Tezcatlipoca, but thereafter they split so thoroughly that they might as well not even be in the same pantheon anymore. Xochiquetzal's stories never mention even a whisper of Tezcatlipoca; she acts as a free agent, seducing mortals, producing flowers and generally acting like an unattached, swinging single lady. She's much more often associated with her brother Xochipilli when with anyone, since they share a lot of real estate as gods of fertility and fun. Tezcatlipoca, similarly, never has another myth in which the flower goddess is mentioned, and goes about his business being a solo giant pain in everyone's ass.

This doesn't necessarily mean they aren't married; after all, married couples in Aztec myth generally don't do a whole lot together, and their marriages were probably conceived of as partnerships between deities of related concepts (Tlaloc as rain and Chalchiuhtlicue as water, for example) rather than relationships that made much of a narrative difference to the exploits of the gods. But it also leaves us with seriously no way of knowing whether the Aztecs considered Xochiquetzal to have remained with her illicit lover or stayed single after her spectacular divorce, so either option is available.

In our games, we assume the flower goddess is unattached, the better to ply her trade as goddess of sexy lovefests without anything getting in the way too much, and that there's a lot of simmering uncomfortable sentiment still breweing between her, Tlaloc and Tezcatlipoca, none of whom are happy with one another (well, except Tezcatlipoca, he probably gives no fucks). Sowiljr is currently trying to get her betrothed to Tonatiuh in the hopes of settling the godrealm down and replacing some of the gods lost in the great Norse debacle of several years ago, although how successful he's going to be will depend on his resistance rolls, her willingness to settle for a god she didn't choose for herself and Eztli's hold on her temper.

Grey Hats

Question: Are there ANY gods that could be considered wholly 'good' by today's modern standards and definitions, or are they all just giant dicks?

Well, this is really an unanswerable question, because there's no such thing as "today's modern standards" as an umbrella term. Different cultures worldwide have very different ideas of what is and is not morally okay, and since we do not yet live in the Utopia of Earth (come on, Star Trek, hurry up and happen already!), there's no universal constant or definition for good and evil. Some countries consider killing in any form completely immoral and abhorrent; others, including the United States, still practice capital punishment. Some religions consider balance in all things to be necessary to life, and others strictly prohibit some behaviors and pleasures in pursuit of righteousness. Some parts of the world think of circumcision (for either sex) as a horrifying mutilation of children, and others merrily continue with it as an institutionalized and ubiquitous practice. Even within the same society, there are still vast differences and arguments on these and many more subjects, and without the distance and focus of being able to look back at history, we can't make too many generalizations about what "modern people" think is right and wrong. (Well, not without probably being inaccurate, anyway.)

I think you're mostly asking about the basics - are there any gods who don't indulge in things like murder, rape, theft, coercion, treason or assault? And the answer is sure, there are definitely a few, including Guanyin of China and most of the Yazata of Persia. But even they could be argued by some to be not wholly good; are the Yazata really good when their religious fanaticism leads them to label an entire other race as evil demons? Is Guanyin truly good when she offers enlightenment and compassion but doesn't use her divine powers to actually ease anyone's material suffering since she wants them to learn from and escape it? Different people are going to come up with different answers. Morality, in history as well as now, is always a continuum of grey that every person sees in different shades.

As a generality, the overwhelming majority of gods are, as you put it, giant dicks. That doesn't mean their people thought of them that way, but rather that they came from cultures with radically different values and morals than we may be familiar with or willing to accept. And even within those cultures, often they're giant dicks - see Odin and Loki, Yam and Baal, Set and Horus, or any other gods that intentionally do things they know are not okay for their own ends. These aren't the omnipotent, all-loving gods of the monotheistic religions; they are personalities, and like every personality, they don't always make the best choice they could.

Basically, ancient gods were generally conceived of by their worshipers as people - giant people, incredibly powerful people, awesome and beyond comprehension people, but people nonetheless. And, just like their own mortal worshipers for whom they functioned as giant mirrors, they made bad decisions, acted out of selfishness or greed or anger, turned to violence, refused to consider the feelings of others, and every other sin most of us commit at some point in our lives. Like humans, they are never "wholly good", because like humans they have emotions and desires and motivations that don't always lead to perfection. From an ancient perspective, they could be nothing else - how could they represent and control a whole society of people who acted that way, if they did not act that way themselves? Where else did humanity learn jealousy or covetousness or wrath, if not from the gods who shaped them and their society?

So no, none of them are "wholly good". But neither are any of us, nor the Scions we play, so that's perfectly okay.

Godly Killing Machines

Question: Bears. Bears are awesome, and they're all over the place in shamanistic belief systems, but which gods might have Animal (Bear) or be otherwise bear-related? (If you want a free headline suggestion, I volunteer "Godly Killing Machines".)

Your title request is my command. Bears!

Bears do get a lot more of the limelight in North America than anywhere else, which is not surprising since that's the home of the massive grizzly, polar and brown bears that threaten and terrify humanity just by existing. There are bears in other parts of the world, and even some deities associated with them, but North America will always be your go-to place for everything mythically ursine.

The most famous is probably Nanook or Torngarsuk, the polar bear god of the Inuit, who controls the fortunes of hunters and visits his wrath on those who disrespect the mighty bear by dooming them to poor hunts or killing them in the wilderness. Nanook has appeared in several of our games, first as a protective god of the north who had a protecting-icecaps powwow with Folkwardr, and most recently as a messenger to young Haji when he achieved demigodhood somewhere in the wilds of northern Canada. Muwin, the kindly but slow-witted bear-god of the Micmac, is famous for providing humanity with herbal medicines by ensuring that the land is fertile enough to grow them and that the local healers can recognize them on sight; similarly, the Hopi bear god Hon is also believed to heal the sick, although his powers to do so come from his incredible bodily strength and endurance, which he can impart to the suffering when called. On the much scarier side, the Iroquois Nyagwahe is a terrible human-eating bear monster, more likely a Titanic creature hunted by the gods than a god itself. There are many, many more bear spirits and characters in various North American mythologies, although in many of them the bear is a dangerous monster instead of a benevolent deity, depending on the relationship of a given culture with the local wildlife.

Outside of the Americas, Artemis, surprisingly enough, is one of Europe's best contenders for title of bear goddess; while bears normally aren't involved in her iconography much, her shrine at the Acropolis (which we have seen, y'all!) was dedicated to Artemis Brauronia, lady of the bear, and featured statues of young hunters with bear cubs and held festivals in which young women were temporarily "transformed" into bears in order to enjoy their last festival of dancing and sporting before they were married. It's one of those weird little Greek cults that wasn't widespread across the whole religion, much like the wolf-cult of Zeus Lycaeus, but there's definitely room to experiment with her as a patron of bears. Another very similar figure is the Gaulish goddess Artio, who appears as a bear and is associated with bears and the hunting of them; she's part of a small suite of Gaulish hunt goddesses that may or may not be the same person along with Andarta, and we've been inclined to consider them different names for the same goddess. Geoff has met and attempted to bond with Andarta over bears, but unfortunately her inevitable desire to jump his bones has led to Sangria putting her down multiple times.

If you happen to be bear-inclined, Scion has room for plenty more bear gods to come to this global party. Geoff will cater.

Fact, Fiction and Fancy

Question: How can we tell if ancient mythological texts are not just fiction? As in, someone ancient wrote some fiction and we took it to be an accurate myth?

It's impossible to ever be 100% sure since we weren't there, but most of the time those judgments are based on corroborating evidence and the sociological evolution of the written word. (Which are words I know you guys just love to hear me say.)

It's a very weird concept for us nowadays, surrounded by popular fiction that spawns massive franchises at the drop of a hat, but in previous centuries across large swaths of the world, there was no such thing as a fiction book. People didn't write them.

That's not because awesome fiction stories weren't being made up; on the contrary, they were, but they were almost always preserved, disseminated and retold orally. Most people in any given ancient society could neither read nor write, making trying to launch a career as an author pretty pointless, and those that could were almost always specially trained as a result of their careers: scribes, accountants, priests and other people who had to work with information that needed to be recorded in some concrete way. The written word wasn't thought of as a vehicle for entertainment, but rather as a way of preserving important records and information that couldn't just be remembered easily, which is why the vast majority of our ancient documents are laws, histories, religious texts or accounting lists, with a few poems or letters to and from scholars or administrators to give us a slice of everyday life. Nobody was writing down made-up stories; not only was there no reader audience for them, but it would have been seen as a strange and frivolous use of the written word, and anyway most of the people who could write were too busy for such a weird hobby anyway.

Of course, people are people, so mythological texts, even when written for religious purposes, probably all bear the marks of some long-forgotten scribe's embellishments. Kings ordered the changing of myths occasionally for official or political reasons, and individual scribes almost certainly added their own flair, which was then magnified by cases where a scholar from one culture retold a myth he had heard in his homeland with new touches meant to make it more comprehensible to the home audience (Plutarch does this all the freaking time, for example). Just like you usually won't get to the end of a game of Telephone with exactly the same words, let alone the same inflection and tone, so the giant historical game of Myth Telephone has probably presented us with things that are at least slightly mutated from their "original" forms. Which isn't always bad; sometimes those mutations become part of the religion itself, in which case they stop being mistakes and start being religious evolution.

At any rate, that's the main reason scholars never really have to sit around worrying that their papyri and tablets are actually just chronicling someone's ancient fantasy epic.

Beyond that, there's contextual and corroborating evidence, which are things every historical scholar learns to love and despair over. If your tablets were found in the remains of an ancient temple, it's likely they were religious texts, not romance novels, and if your account of the geneaology of the gods was labeled "BY ORDER OF HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY", it's probably an official government religion, not something some scribe whipped up in his free time on the side. Many sources repeating or referring to the same story, especially in different areas of the same culture, also help to make it clear that it's something that was widespread and religiously pervasive.

To wade into the murky and dangerous waters of religion versus sociology here for a minute, though, at the bottom of this question is really the question of whether or not you personally have any beliefs centered around these ancient religions. If you do, then myths are reality for you; they have particular purposes and matter in a religious sense, and in some way they really happened and affected the world. If you don't, pure sociology says that of course mythology is fiction - every mythological story started somewhere with someone making up a story to explain why the rain falls or the night is dark or their grandson's father isn't coming back after the most recent buffalo hunt. Mythology is fiction and all fiction has the theoretical potential to become mythology, as long as a people embrace it and make it into a religious truth instead of a pastime. A silly but accurate example of this is the evolution of Star Trek into several religions on the television show Futurama; once someone begins to believe and worship in something as a religion, it leaves the realm of fiction and becomes myth.

By the way, despite all the things I just said, there are a few examples of ancient fiction out there, and the most famous are probably China's Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Compared to a lot of other religions' texts, these are very young and bear all the hallmarks of being written as popular fiction treatments of their subjects, intended to entertain as well as educate. They were the forerunners of the modern wuxia novel and kung fu film. We still use them as a mythological source, however, because various other parts of Chinese folk mythology also mention or allude to the same characters and events, and because official Chinese histories of the time agreed with them. It's a bit like reading historical fiction, where the events and characters may be the same as the ones in history but the author puts her own spin on them or tweaks things slightly to play up certain ideas.

You guys are really spoiling me with all the book questions lately.

Under the Lash

Question: Artistry question: If someone has Divine Fortitude (Sleep) and Tireless Worker, does Work Harder actually give any bonuses?

Yep, sure does. Work Harder applies to all kinds of exhaustion and need for bodily maintenance, so even if you already never need to sleep, it can provide you with the means to stave off other problems. While Work Harder is active, you also get no penalties for that sixty hours straight you spend up to the elbows in a computer processor without being able to go out and grab a sandwich, can't suffer from dehydration if you need to work under insanely hot desert conditions for a few days, and will be able to perform a gruelling, physically exhausting gymnastics routine for whatever nine-day marathon you are committed to performing, even though your Storyteller might normally have levied penalties for so much physical activity even if you don't normally sleep.

Having Divine Fortitude, not to mention lots of Epic Stamina, will of course make Work Harder less needful; if you're already very hardy, you'll have less trouble pushing through as a consequence of your fantastic constitution. If you plan to be a Stamina beast, you may want to pick up Polymath or Rival Reading instead as you go up the tree, since you don't need the boon as much as someone with a more delicate physicality. But even a god of Stamina might once in a while find that they need to do something beyond the pale in their quest for artistic perfection, and in those moments, Work Harder is there for you.

Im awesome, cause practice.

Haha dude after reading your blog for a week or so I've come to realized just how...uninspired my gaming group (self included) really is. None of us could ever dream to match up to the level of creativity you, Anne, and your players have. I was already a bit disenchanted but seeing just how much more epic you guys and your characters are...I think I'm ready to hang up the dice and find a new hobby.

You sir, make me blush.
But you have to remember that Ive worked a very VERY long time on this. Ive been STing for 20 years, and I pour a LOT of time into it during each of those years.
I had years and years of bland stories, bland characters, etc(probably still have some of both even now) before I got any kind of good at it. Like anything in life that is worth doing, it takes time and practice. In olden days I had many games of "find monster, fight monster, find next monster, fight next monster." You grow out of that and as long as you realize there is growth to be had and dont stagnate you can keep learning and growing. If you are lucky to have a group of players that are interested enough, hopefully they can grow and learn with you.

And I have been blessed with excellent players, but that took a lot of work as well. Ive had to make some tough decisions and had difficult talks with good friends who "werent working out" in the group. Its not easy, but its an amazing amount of fun and incredibly fulfilling.

So you really have to ask yourself if it seems like something you would enjoy and really like to be better at. And if thats true, please keep pursuing it and you're lucky to have a great resource here to ask questions learn from other peoples questions. Ya keep trying, and when it gets too frustrating you take a short(or long) break, and if its really what you enjoy doing, itll pull you back in.

Hopefully that helped. If it didnt, I can try the gruff angry man version of that talk. Its shorter.

Lovefest

Question: I see the Donate Button, and I read that it goes to hosting and bandwith, but is that it? I want to donate because I love this site and love your vlog. Is there a minimum ammount you need to maintain to keep the site up and running and to provide for your games or vlogs?

Dear, dear friend, you are adorable and wonderful and we love you. The fact that you really enjoy stuff we do warms us down to our toes, and the fact that you want to help is like a delicious whipped topping of awesomeness. You rock.

I'm not going to do lots of financial math here because nobody cares about specifics and I'm sure many people are already scrolling past, but website, bandwith and hosting costs generally run us about $60 or so a month. Awesome, awesome people out there in the community help us out with that, so it's usually no problem. If we're about to run the well dry and not be able to keep things going for a little while, we usually make a small post to warn people, but that's only happened a couple of times ever, and each time winged angels of mercy swooped in and saved the day.

Outside of that, our game costs are mostly fringe stuff; paper and ink for our face-to-face games, food and caffeine for twelve-hour work marathons, gas for when we have to haul ourselves to a library an hour away for source material. Our local players are also fantastic pillars of the community, so they tend to show up at our house now and then with reams of cardstock or twelve-packs of soda like the champions they are. Between your and their efforts and our own, we don't see any reason this ship can't keep on sailing just fine for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes folks send in donations because they really liked something we just released, or because they know we're working on something they're excited about and want to encourage us, or because they're worried we live in a cardboard box somewhere (it's okay, guys, it's a sturdy box), or just because they feel like being amazing. We love hearing from you guys about what we're up to all the time, and donations are always encouraging as well.

If you feel like using the donate button, we love you. If you gave us a chunk of change and encouraging thumbs up, we love you. If you gave us five bucks, we love you. If you never donate but you hang out and participate in discussions and enjoy our stuff, we love you, too. Frankly, we love doing this and we love getting to talk to all you fine people about it, so while donations make us able to do more or do it more quickly, even without any we would keep right on trucking.

Did we mention that we think you're great? Because we totally do. Thanks for being an awesome group of players, Storytellers and people.

Be Yourself

Question: When A PC creates a character from, for example, the Dodekatheon, and let's say he's the son of Poseidon but really doesnt use any of Poseidon's purviews, how do you feel about that character? If the character makes a good argument about why he is taking certain purviews, would they be accepted? For example, a son/daughter of Poseidon uses the Frost purview and perhaps War and very minimally uses Water, but wanted Arete, and explains that they want to personify the Wrath of Poseidon. What would you say?

We had another question like this recently, but I'm answering both because it seems like a fairly common place where new players and Storytellers get confused. We would feel just fine about that character, and we would accept whatever reasons he had for wanting particular power, and we would say go have a blast, do what you wanna do!

I recently had a conversation with someone who was turned off on even playing Scion because she was confused about this, so let me bold it and tell you the happy news: nobody ever has to do the same things their parents do. That means you don't have to be the same kind of character - not the same sex, the same profession, the same goals, the same personality, or the same powers - in any way if you don't want to. You could create any character you wanted completely in a vacuum, and then assign them to any divine parent in the entire game, and that would be completely fine.

That means that if you happen to be the daughter of Thor, you know what? You don't have to have any thunder powers. You also don't have to be strong, brave, or interested in fighting monsters. You can do those things if you want to, and you have an advantage to doing so because you're coming from the blood of Thor, but if you want to be a withdrawn bookworm who likes hairdressing as a hobby and put all her points into powers over art and fire, nobody can tell you no. You are free to take literally any powers from day one of creating a character.

So if your character wants to be a Scion of Poseidon with Frost and War instead of Earth and Water, my friend, you can do that! We don't even require you to come up with a reason you have those powers instead of the ones your dad has; "this is what I want to do with my character" is usually good enough for us. We like it if you come up with a backstory reason that this happened - for example, you could say that your War relic came from Ares, who was helping Poseidon gear you up - and this is something some Storytellers insist on, but in the end it's just window-dressing. If you don't tell us where those powers came from and we decide that it's important to the story for some reason, we'll figure it out as Storytellers and you may or may not discover it at a later date.

The only actual mechanical difference between wielding powers your parents use and wielding powers outside their wheelhouse is that you get an XP discount on your parent's powers, to represent that Fire or Charisma or Moon runs particularly strong in their veins and hence in yours. But, aside from the pantheon-specific powers of pantheons other than your own, there are no powers you aren't allowed to have, no areas of symbolism you aren't allowed to explore.

Nobody making new characters should ever feel like they have to be clones of their parents; in fact, we prefer it when Scions are their own individual personalities and don't necessarily conform to their parents' image or ideals. After all, until recently they were normal humans who had their own lives, thoughts and personalities, and it's totally up to you as the player how much they might have taken after their parents, from "all the way" to "not at all". You don't have to be just like your parent, and you don't have to use powers just like your parent; in fact, many children of gods in mythology don't. Heracles never shows the slightest inclination toward using Sky or Justice even though he's a son of Zeus, nor does Cu Chulainn turn up with any craftsmanship skills or bright lights despite being Lugh's spawn.

Of course, if you want to play a thundery archer-warrior son of Indra, that's totally awesome, too - you also should never feel like you're not allowed to do the same things as your parent! Scion is a game where you literally choose your path and powers almost completely freeform.

So play your Scion of Poseidon. He can be anything he wants, and if that's frostiness and fighting instead of dolphins and earthquakes, he should go forth and wrath all the way into the wintery sunset.

Lines in the Sand

Question: In the constant war for succession between Horus and Set, which Egyptian gods do you think are on Set's side in the conflict?

It's difficult to say, really! There are a lot of factors in play, plus political situations that might change at the drop of a hat, and on top of all that Isis and Horus are both in there with their Ultimate Manipulation chicanery. But we have a few suggestions.

The most obvious ones are Set's wife and sons; they're likely to be on his side simply through family loyalty, if nothing else. They have a vested interest in his triumph, which puts all of them in a better position, and of course they may be kind of pissed off at cousin Horus for taking the throne if they believe Set's claim is better. On the other hand, they're also all at least slightly on the fence; Sobek tends to help Horus out when asked and isn't particularly hostile to anyone (but then again, do you really expect the crocodile to be much of a politician?), Nephthys was in some variant traditions (which, depending on the interpretation you like, might be true facts or later retcons by priests attempting to make Osiris look better and Set and his family look worse) infatuated with Osiris, not to mention very close to her sister Isis, both of which might be factors that sway her more than Set might like. Certainly Nephthys aided Isis in her burial and mourning for Osiris after Set killed him, which might just be sisterly solidarity but might also indicate that she isn't taking a firm side in all this. Anubis is suspect for the same reasons, thanks to the fact that those same diverging myths disagree on whether he's actually Set's son or Osiris', and he doesn't involve himself in the doings of folks above ground very much anyway.

However, Set is the grand defender of the pantheon and indeed the whole world from the depredations of Apep, so those who are likewise involved in that endeavor with him might view him as a comrade in arms as well as knowing firsthand how much he cares about his people. Ra, who is personally guarded and rescued by Set every single night, is almost certainly firmly in his came, and it doesn't hurt that Isis screwed him over with her tricksy magic spells a while ago and probably ensured that he'll never like her again. Various warlike gods who ride the boat and fight with Set, which depending on the version might include Maahes, Monthu, Khonsu, Serket and others, may also be more inclined to support him as a powerful and capable leader, especially if they were there that day he didn't go on the boat in order to go attend Anubis' birth and the Horus-led defense team got their asses handed to them.

And where Ra goes, the Eye of Ra is likely to go, so those goddesses who are or have been the Eye - Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Tefnut and so on - may also rally behind Set as a result of Ra's influence. How much influence Ra still has after Isis' meddling is up to individual Storytellers to decide, though.

Oddly enough, those paragraphs look backwards: unrelated people Set hangs out with at work are the most likely to be gung-ho about getting him into power, while his own immediate family is kind of unsure and possibly working for the other side. It's a great example of a different set of Virtues at work: when you have Order, Piety, Harmony and Conviction, you're likely to believe in someone you respect with a whole and unflagging heart, but that's more important than pesky things like filial loyalty that other pantheons might hold in higher esteem.

And, of course, there are at least as many gods arrayed on Horus' side in this very, very old argument. Gods probably can and do change sides all the time, based on who they think is winning, new information they learn about one or the other being a douchebag or the manipulative meddling of the social powerhouses among them. It's a Game-of-Thrones-esque labyrinth of byzantine intrigue, where everything might change at a moment's notice and the only surety is that you don't want to end up on the losing side at the wrong moment.

See You Next Fall

Question: The autumn season seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes having gods representing it. Think you could come up with a list of a couple that do exclusively deal with that season?

Man, this question just begs for me to retell a Slavic myth that expressly explains why there is no deity for Autumn. The Slavic goddesses include Morena for winter, Vesna for spring and Zhiva for summer, but autumn is unrepresented.

As those of you who are interested in Stribog already know from this old post, that god once fell in love with Chors, the beautiful goddess of the moon. He was too clumsy and socially inept to court her, however, and in addition she was in turn in love with Radegast, the god of the stars and protector of the night skies. Radegast never noticed Chors' interest, but she in turn never noticed Stribog, and eventually the wind god decided to win her through trickery and sneaked into Radegast's palace by day in order to steal his star-spangled cloak. Swathed in the cloak, he waited until nightfall and stole into Chors' bedroom; believing that it was Radegast returning her love at last, she welcomed him with open arms.

Radegast, however, was severely displeased when his cloak detailing the proper positions of the stars was missing when he needed to make his nightly rounds, and after thrashing all his servants and scouring his palace, he eventually discovered what Stribog had done. He went to Svarozhich and Prove to demand that Stribog be punished for his crime, and they ruled that since the child Chors was now carrying was conceived by trickery and rape, it would be taken away from Stribog so that he would not reap the reward of offspring from his behavior. Chors, humiliated and horrified, tried to plead with the gods to save the baby's life, and when they said that they didn't know what they would need another goddess for anyway, passionately begged that the unborn girl be given the post of the goddess of autumn, the in-between time that none of the other seasonal goddesses oversaw. After deliberation, however, the gods decided that autumn wasn't important enough to need a totem goddess, being merely an uncomfortable transition zone between summer and winter rather than a real season, and that there was no reason to appoint anyone its guardian.

As a result of this ruling, the baby was taken from Chors by Svarozhich, who dissolved her into nothingness and decreed that she had only ever been a dream. The proto-Slavic word for dream is yesen, and thereafter the season of autumn was called sen in honor of the girl who would have been its goddess had she lived.

So there's one mythology that straight-up tells you that there's nobody in charge of autumn, and furthermore why it's so. Svarozhich is downright dismissive of the idea, in fact - he says basically that if he makes an exception and declares autumn a real thing, soon everybody is going to just decide to assign a name and totem to random period of time throughout the year and everything will be chaos.

But for the non-Slavs, there are two major reasons you don't see a lot of autumn gods. One is differences in climate across the world, and the other is the fact that that role is usually overseen by the harvest goddess.

For plenty of cultures, and thus their mythologies and religions, the familiar European/North American Spring-Summer-Autumn-Winter cycle is not mirrored in their local environment. In places where autumn doesn't really exist, or at least doesn't exist in a way that differentiates it much from the climate at other times, there's no point to an autumn god existing. The Alihah, for example, are the gods of a region that not only doesn't really have autumn, it barely has seasons at all, with an average deviation of barely 20 degrees celsius between the coldest and hottest times of the year. Since the most marked climate difference in their environment is that between day and night - the latter usually significantly colder than the former - they instead have various gods in charge of the sunlit day hours and celestial night hours. India is another good example, with some regions of the subcontinent substituting monsoon season and its aftermath where more northwesterly peoples would expect to experience autumn (they don't really have spring, either, or at least not in the protracted couple-of-months way Europe does). Nigeria, homeland of the Yoruba, is basically 27 degrees celsius year-round, and its ancient peoples wouldn't know what autumn was if it wandered up and bit them (but let them tell you about the rainy season versus the dry season!).

So autumn doesn't get a lot of help in various parts of the world simply because, well, it doesn't exist there. It's the same reason that you don't get very many frost or snow gods near the equator, or see as many gods of fish in landlocked cultures. (Spring is occasionally in the same boat, but because the idea of "drought/flooding/winter's over, the world is returning to life again" is closer to universal, you'll see more gods of springtime.)

The other major reason you don't see very many autumn gods is that their role is usually totally taken up by the harvest gods. The major aspect of the autumn season, in those cultures that have one, is that it's the end of summer and the time that food is harvested and laid in for the coming winter. But since harvest - and by extension all kinds of ideas of fertility and support of humanity - is such a massively important idea for most mythologies, it naturally usually has its own totem gods already, and an autumn god wouldn't be doing or representing much that they weren't already. The Slavs not only think autumn is silly, but they also don't need an autumn goddess because Mokosh, Moist Mother Earth, is already fulfilling most of that role by being the most important deity of the season as her crops are reaped and her offerings given in thanks for her bounty. When people are already going to be spending most of autumn celebrating Cronus, Demeter, Mokosh and Osiris, do they really need another person who's there because of the time of year but not doing anything new?

So I can't give you much of a list of autumn-oriented gods, because they're frankly very rare beasts. The most major is probably Sarasvati of the Devas, who is sometimes referred to as the alternative name Sharada ("autumnal") and associated with the season thanks to many of her major festivals taking place before the onset of winter (or is it the other way around?). The Greek Anemoi, the four winds, are assigned to a season each as well as a direction, so you can look to Euros, the east wind, for a representative of the declining months of the year. The Roman god Vertumnus is usually considered a fertility god as well as a representative of all the changing seasons, which includes the autumnal months. Various other gods are often theorized to be in charge of autumn, including Veles among the Slavs, Cernunnos and the Matrones among the Celts and even Sif thanks to a possible connection between her golden hair and golden fields of wheat, but these are mostly guesses based on their associations with the harvest (and in the case of Veles, at least, pretty obviously contradictory to the rest of Slavic myth).

But, as always with things that there aren't many gods of - more room for new Scions to take those spots!

Progeny by Proxy

Question: Would the children of two Avataras (Rama and Sita) be considered Scions, or just mortals? (Lava and Kusha)

Ooh, neat question!

We would consider children of Hindu avatara to function just like the children of Scions who have not yet achieved apotheosis; their parents could never make them Scions since avatara can't get that high in Legend, but their "grandparents" - that is, the god who the avatar belongs to - could. Lava and Kusha could be called to become Scions by either Vishnu or Lakshmi, or left to live out their lives as mortals. As we can see from their city-founding exploits, the two probably were Hero-level Scions.

However, the Avatara boon depends on a goddess not interfering with her avatar, and that includes any children she might have borne. If she wants to involve herself in that child's life by admitting she's his real mother, she will likely lose the benefits of the Avatara boon and have to create a new avatar to spread her legend on earth.

Conversation is a Lost Art

Question: What happens when you make a mundane social roll and beat the enemy's resistance roll? How is that different from Benefit of the Doubt and God's Honest?

It's different because it doesn't actually do anything. And it's generally not something a player ever gets to declare, so it's usually not a viable alternative to actually doing things.

Obviously, you can't just wander around saying, "I roll Charisma + Presence against that guy. Now he likes me," because if that were the case, powers like Charmer wouldn't exist and the whole system of social knacks would make no sense (not to mention encouraging poor roleplaying). That's not to say that static social powers don't do anything, but rather that they're much more limited in their effects and controlled by the Storyteller, who determines how they influence NPCs based on what's happening in the story.

Basically, you'll roll your mundane socials when the Storyteller tells you it's appropriate; for example, maybe you give a speech at the mayor's fundraising ball and the Storyteller has you roll Charisma + Presence to see how well the room received it, or maybe you passionately explain your suspicions about who a murderer is to a police inspector and the Storyteller has you roll Manipulation + Presence to see how convincing she finds you. In both cases, the roll is there to determine whether or not your normal social acumen is getting the job done, in the first case whether you're a good public speaker with an arresting presence and the second whether you're any good at trying to make others see your point of view. You'll give your speech, or tell the Storyteller what you're doing, and that's when they'll say, "Cool, roll X," and you'll comply. This is normal, everyday stuff, the things that we all do in our regular lives without noticing it. It only comes up with you're doing something that tries to impact others and the Storyteller deems it's appropriate.

However, that doesn't mean that every time you talk to someone, you'll trigger a social roll. Sometimes one isn't necessary because you're not doing or saying anything that changes the other person's outlook; if the Storyteller doesn't think you said anything that would be meaningful to the NPC in question, or you're generally talking about nothing or without a specific goal, there's no reason to make the roll. If Leona goes to a dinner party and has a polite conversation with her tablemates about current hat fashions, she probably isn't going to actually roll any social stats, because she's not doing or saying anything particularly relevant. If she tries to talk about hat fashions with a milliner she's sitting next to as part of a campaign to get him to like her, then she might get to roll some Charisma + Politics or Empathy or whatever else is appropriate, so the Storyteller can gauge how successful she is at the general art of chattery. If she tries to convince him that he simply must drop everything else he's doing and make her new hat designs, that'll be a Manipulation + Empathy roll to see if he thinks that would be a good idea. If she just talks about how she likes the current trend of fruit on hats, however, no one is going to care enough for rolls to happen.

You may notice that I'm not mentioning anything about the NPC's resistance roll, and that's because, for non-power situations, they don't really have one so the question is moot. Or rather, the Storyteller determines an appropriate resistance based on what's happening - what the subject at hand is, how strongly this person feels about it, whether or not the Scion is pushing them in a direction they're strongly opposed to, how spiritually fortitudinous they normally are and so on. It's more like rolling against a static difficulty, the way you would for most other challenges, than rolling against a Willpower + Integrity + Legend roll. Why? Because you're not using any powers, so they're not resisting any powers, and because as noted at the beginning of this post that would make the whole system not make sense.

You may also notice that in the above example, Leona is not at any point saying, "Okay, I roll my Charisma + Presence to try to get him to like me." Instead, she'll tell the Storyteller what she's doing and what she hopes to achieve, and he'll take it from there. If she's doing fine on her own through roleplaying, no rolls may be needed at all. If the Storyteller isn't quite sure of the NPC's reaction one way or the other, he might ask her to roll to illustrate how well she's doing, particularly if she's light on the roleplay or the scene needs speeding up.

But she'll never walk in and say, "I want to roll my Manipulation + Empathy against him to get him to do this thing." Manipulation + Empathy is not a power she has; it's just a roll that illustrates an attempt to do something, just like she might roll Dexterity + Athletics when completing an obstacle course or Wits + Politics when trying to find her way around an unfamiliar city. Just like it's the ST's job to say, "Okay, roll Strength + Athletics to not get swept away in this flood," it's also his job to say, "Okay, roll Manipulation + Politics to navigate this conversation with the ambassador without putting your foot in your mouth."

Now, if Leona does all this normal conversating and hanging out and whatever rolls the Storyteller calls for just aren't great and the things she wants to happen aren't happening for whatever reason - the guy secretly loathes her because she ran over his dog, he wouldn't mind doing what she wants but isn't willing to fork over the money it would cost, or he just really hates fruit-hats - that's when she has to use a power if she wants to push the issue. That's the moment to use Charmer to force him to like her and want to please her, Rumor Mill to have the whole town buzzing about how fruit is totally in now, or Instant Hypnosis to plant the idea of going home and making an awesome hat covered in grapes. That's the whole point of social powers - they make things happen when normal, mundane conversation or requests don't.

Of course, there are exceptions, as there are to every rule. If you're Legend 8 and have 7 Epic Charisma and are talking to a mortal - or even someone of Legend 2 or 3 - you probably don't have to roll anything against them, and they just do whatever it was you wanted. This is mostly to speed the game up - technically you would roll, but if their difficulty is only going to be 10 and you're rolling in with 22 autos, there's no reason to bog the game down with a bunch of rolls that you're almost guaranteed to automatically succeed at. At other times, there might be behind-the-scenes powers in play that you don't know about that do necessitate resistance rolls on the part of your conversation partner, or that make your rolls fail no matter what you do; you won't know when this is happening, so you have to trust that your Storyteller is doing that because some other magical thing already happened, not just because he's stonewalling you. (One hopes you always trust that your Storyteller is being responsible about rolls, no matter whether they're social, physical or mental.)

It goes without saying that the "difficulty" of convincing someone with just normal conversation goes up as creatures go up in Legend; it's always harder to convince a rakshasa to do something for you than to convince a human, and harder still to convince a young god than it was to convince the rakshasa. This is normal; after all, you also benefit from that, as a Scion who doesn't have to automatically hop to whenever anyone of Epic Manipulation 3 or higher talks even though you might be five Legend higher than they are. Again, there are no powers in play so there are also no resistance rolls in play, and everything depends on the Storyteller's determined difficulties for the scene and the characters in it.

I talked about all of that because I think it was the main point of your question, but I also want to point out that your examples, Benefit of the Doubt and God's Honest, actually don't quite work the same way most social knacks do. Normally, lying to someone is a Manipulation + Empathy roll against their Perception + Empathy to see through it; that'll be what you're doing whenever you lie to someone without using a power to do so. The main benefit of the lying knacks is that they allow you to roll against your target's W+I+L resistance roll instead of their Perception + Empathy, so it's your go-to power if you need to fib to someone who would normally be way too perceptive to fall for your hijinks but is maybe a little less good at resisting magical trickery. If you're lying to some normal schmuck and you have great Manipulation, you may want to stick with your normal roll; if you're lying to someone with buckets of Perception or you're terrible at Manipulation and need a power that lets you use Charisma instead, that's when you want to go for the knacks.

Shall We Art?

Question: Now that you have replaced Craft, Art and Science with Art alone, will you be releasing some character sheets where this is apparent?

Yes, indeed, and we will be doing it right now!

The character sheets up on the downloads page have been updated; not only do they now no longer mention Craft or Science, but Artistry has also replaced Industry, and the editable PDF now features updated lists of boons and the inclusion of the K'uh, who hadn't been added to the site yet last time we put up a sheet.

Happy playing, you guys. Off to bed for me!

We Fear

Crawling in at the last minute with a quick and dirty vlog. This is the face of a woman who has been working on character sheets and layout all day and is tired. Oh, so tired. But not too tired for Inuit mythology.

Question: With the Inuit on the poll now, could you tell us a little bit about their mythologies, themes, and some of their gods?

Heaven and Hell

Question: Considering the monotheism doesn't really "jibe" with Scion, what could Christian/Jewish cosmology be used for in Scion? (i.e. ancient pantheon ruins, unoccupied real estate, vacation home for gods, etc.)

Alas, monotheism. It's just as much of a problem here as it is everywhere else in the game.

The basic problem is that Scion's premise is that All Myths Are True, and monotheistic religions' premises are always Only Our Myths Are True. This creates a paradox - if all myths are true, monotheistic ones must be, too, but if those myths say all myths aren't true, it's self-contradicting. This is why settings with only monotheistic religions (like Demon: The Fallen or In Nomine) or settings with only polytheistic religions (like Agon or Scion) work better apart than together; their fundamentals always fight with one another.

So that problem's still just as much of an issue cosmologically as it is for the gods, unfortunately. If all myths are true, then Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Sheol, the Seven Firmaments and so on must all exist, and be somewhere out there in the Scion universe, floating around to be used by Storytellers and discovered by players. But if monotheism is true, then ther other gods can't exist (or at least can't be gods), so there are no Scions to discover these places and everything becomes confusing and messy.

As we've talked about in many other monotheism posts I can't be bothered to look up right now, each game has to make a call on what monotheism actually means and does in the setting, and go from there. If the places and gods in the monotheistic religions are real but exaggerated, then you can run them as either gods or Titans with an over-inflated sense of their own importance, and the cosmology in which they live can be preserved and visited however you like. If monotheism isn't a real thing in your games, being purely invented by humanity or made up by some Titan with an eye toward cleansing the world of the polytheistic religions, then those places probably don't exist in Scion's cosmology, unless created by said antagonist (or well-meaning good guy?) in order to shore the idea up. If monotheistic religions exist in exactly the form they do in the world today and therefore trump all the other pantheons... I have no advice for you, because that's way outside the realm of Scion as we play it. But I assume their cosmology would be the same, in that case.

We tend to fudge around with the idea of the monotheistic religions; we usually imply that they're not what their good press sells them as and that there aren't any One Gods running around with omnipotent power to squash all the others, but that there is some religious foundation for them and humanity didn't just make it up as they went along. You can see us doing that a lot in our downloadable supplements, especially in the person of El in the Elohim supplement, who has very strong ties to the Jewish religion and may or may not pretend to be Yahweh sometimes, and in Allah, the Titan antagonist in the Alihah supplement, who is presented as being deeply affected by the invasion of Islam into the Arab territories and who is surrounded by quite a few concepts we borrowed from Islamic cosmology. As always, we recommend leaving it a little bit vague for the players, unless they're so awesome at Mystery they can figure it out for themselves or you have a plot that depends on them figuring out exactly how monotheism fits into everything else; if you don't pin it down, odds are they won't bother with it a lot, and you won't end up having to figure out how to manage all the contradictions inherent in the concept.

Case in point: the only time monotheism has really directly appeared in our games was when Geoff went to the middle of Egypt, set up a magic well there and tried to convert the local populace from Islam back to worship of the Pesedjet (as part of a thank-you project for some of the Egyptian gods). He was accosted by a disturbingly powerful old man who called himself Muhammad, and who told him to cut that shit out. They didn't like one another very much, but they parted ways civilly and Geoff never went back, so life returned generally to normal.

And then no PC asked about it or did anything with it, ever. So... yeah. Your guess is as good as theirs when it comes to what exactly was going on and whether they actually have the option to descend to Jahannam and fraternize with Iblis.

Our suggestion is to go with what's the most awesome and the most fun. If there's a place from a monotheistic cosmology that you think would be super fun and awesome to include in your games - send your Scions to get fruit from the Garden of Eden! Encourage them to spelunk in bleak Sheol for a chance to speak to mystics of ages gone by - then do it, and don't sweat the reasons why. Maybe monotheistic religions have some truth to them after all and these places really exist. Maybe they're versions of those famous places created by gods who found them interesting or useful. Maybe they came spontaneously into existence as Terrae Incognita thanks to the epic force of humanity's belief in them, or maybe this is all part of some plot by some unknown power to confuse and misdirect your band. It doesn't really matter how they got there or fit into the world unless your PCs have the ability and interest to find that out, so if they're not going for it, you may not even need to know yourself. Scions walk right past mysteries on their way to do other things every day, and never think twice about it.

And if you're the kind of ST who gets hives if you don't have the background and world completely mapped out, then make some calls and feel comfortable with the end result. The real goal is to use cool places in the Scion universe for awesome stories; as long as you figure out a way to do that that fits your game and is fun for your players, nobody can tell you you're doing it wrong.

(Except John, but he says that to everyone.)

Tlilli Tlapalli

Question: So I learned in school that the Aztecs didn't have writing and couldn't write down any of their stories until the Spanish came. But you mentioned something called the "codices" a few times with myths in them - are those some kind of books? Is my teacher just wrong?

People were endangered by the reckless speed with which I shot across the planet to answer this question. Sonic booms disordered friendly airspace; trails of flying debris ended up haphazardly beside roads; John and the cats are in hiding. I'm a mythology enthusiast and a librarian and a Mexican-flag-wavin' fan of the Aztecs in Scion, and you have basically just asked me a jackpot question.

The pre-conquest Mexicans did not have writing in the same sense that Europeans at the time did; that is, there was no widely-used alphabet that represented specific sounds, and their written records often didn't look very much like those of the Spanish. Instead, they wrote pictographically, which means all of their words were in fact symbols and pictures that represented concepts instead of noises. There were symbols for specific noises, but they would never use them to write unless they were trying to describe something totally foreign to their language - why use three symbols to write B-OO-K when they could just use one symbol that meant "book", right? Why use a couple of different symbols that made up the sounds of "rabbit", when they could just draw a picture of a rabbit and be done with it?

The Spanish - and other European nations, when they eventually paid attention to what was going on in the southern New World - looked at these weird symbols and drawings and believed that the Aztecs must not be capable of reading or writing, and were instead relying on crude artwork to communicate because of this deficiency. In fact, the idea that they were a sub-literate people was one of the chief arguments in claiming that the giant urban civilization was in fact composed of savages, and that the influence of the Europeans was a benevolent thing that helped drag them up to the level of civilized culture. The fact that those self-same Europeans also burned the vast majority of Aztec codices they found, in order to prevent the natives from clinging to any pesky culture or religion they hadn't approved, resulted in very few of them surviving, which only fueled the idea back in Europe that the Aztecs couldn't write at all, poor dears.

There's another layer of philological difficulty in play here as well, in that the surviving Aztec codices don't always have very much writing in them, either.

Well... shit. That looks bananas even to us, who are now used to different kinds of written communication, so imagine what it looked like to the conquistadors. There are clearly some symbols here, as well as some in medias res action scenes, but how the hell are you supposed to read that and come up with an actual story?

The answer is that you aren't, because the Aztecs didn't conceive of their codices the same way we do the printed word today. Books weren't something that you created and then anyone could just pick up and immediately get all the information out of (in fact, for most of the history of the written word across most of the world, books were considered something only the very wealthy or the priesthood was going to be able to read anyway); rather, many of them - especially those created for the clergy or religious rites - were actually intended to be performed instead of simply read. Instead of writing down as many words as possible to get the idea across to a reader, codices of this sort were filled with triggering symbols and relevant images, which were meant to be seen by a specially trained person (usually a priest) who had memorized the story that they were retelling. In essence, the codex was a compendium of mnemonic devices, designed to trigger a particular history, religious tale or edict in the mind of a person who had already memorized it, and then he would go ahead and verbally tell the story while referring to the codex for reminders and pictorial illustration.

This is one of my favorite incredibly neat things about the Aztec codices - that they're not just books, but actually performances, and that you need both the codex and the person who was trained to read it in order to get the full, beautiful impact of the story. It was both an artform and a complex way of storing important information - a synthesis of the more common methods in other cultures of either writing things down or passing them down orally with no written component.

Unfortunately, that system was almost totally destroyed with the coming of the Spanish. Not only did they have no interest in Aztec religious or historical book-performance (in fact, they severely discouraged it, since they wanted everyone to convert to European religion and law as quickly as possible), but they destroyed most of the codices, which in turn removed those all-important compendiums of story-triggers from play. Add in the fact that many Aztecs perished in the struggle over the empire, and you ended up with some ex-scribes or ex-priests who could have read the codices but never would again since they were now destroyed, trying to remember what they could without the compendiums they'd been taught to work with, or a few remaining codices that nobody could read, having lost whomever was trained to do so. Some histories written by Europeans who tried to ask Aztec people about reading them record that they actually refused to do so after a while - which was not surprising, considering that reciting forgotten lore about their native gods or sacred histories could get a native Mexican a one-way ticket to the Inquisition with blistering speed.

So the Spanish shrugged, said that the Aztecs obviously couldn't read or write, and sent a few of their pretty picture-books back to Europe as curiosities, and there the matter laid until a few centuries later, when scholars realized that there was actually a whole lot going on in the codices and that the idea that the Aztecs weren't literate because they used symbols instead of letters was about as ridiculous as saying that people from China couldn't read for the same reason.

Of course, just like we have in our society, the Aztecs had a lot of different forms of written communication, and the codices were only one of them. They also kept royal records and tax accounts, created elaborate maps and banners to mark places and people, and generally went about labeling things where useful about the way you'd expect. They just did so with colorful pictures instead of representative letters, leading to a sort of renaissance for modern archaeologists when they realized that they were actually looking at words and sentences, not just interesting artwork. Some codices do have phonetic writing in them, in both Spanish and Nahuatl, because they were written after the coming of the Europeans by Aztecs who had been partially assimilated into the new culture, while others are entirely composed of the combined-symbol glyphs of the pre-conquest artistic writing system.

By the way, the Mexica/Aztecs weren't the only ones to use codices this way; it was common in ancient Mesoamerica and the Mixtec and Zapotec also used the same style, which probably influenced the Aztecs into following suit. The Maya do have their own writing system, which is also glyph-based but a lot more elaborate and complicated (often compared to Mandarin Chinese), but it's an entirely different kettle of fish, one that has parts that are still being translated and puzzled out by scholars and archaeologists even today.

If you view writing as only words on a page, then it's possible you could say that the Aztecs didn't have it, but to do so would be to ignore their unique cultural advancements and methods of preserving their histories and beliefs, which were exciting and interactive in their own way. As a person who deals professionally in different ways of recording and sharing information, I never cease to be fascinated by the codices, or how much they can still tell us even centuries later and without their human half.

Dogpile

Question: I’m running a game that, rather than dealing with the Titans, involves a cold war between the Dodekatheon and everyone who hates them, and suddenly becomes violent due to the recent discovery of Metis’s son outside of the Dodekatheon’s sphere of influence. My problem is that I can only think of two pantheons that would be angry enough to go to war with them: the Nemetondevos and the Elohim. Are there any other pantheons that would be angry with them? Would they have any allies?

Oh, man, a Dodekatheon hate-fest? Invite us!

The biggest pantheon I can think of that should be involved here is the Pesedjet. The Egyptian gods are millennia-long frenemies with the Dodekatheon; sometimes they have positive commerce and even share myths, and sometimes they fight over territory and call each other racial slurs across the Mediterranean. There was a long history of argumentative interaction between the two even before Rome sailed across the water and imposed their own rulers in the Ptolemaic dynasties, and there're almost limitless possibilities for who wants to do what in this situation. Is Isis cool with the Greeks, who had temples to her in some of their own territories? What about Horus, who saw his rightful line of pharaohs replaced by invaders from the north? How does Bastet feel about Greco-Roman influence basically transforming her from a sun goddess into a lunar deity, and do the highly regimented death gods blame foreign burial practices for causing the erosion of their own process for the afterlife? Do Thoth and Hermes get together and laugh about the idea of Hermes Trismegistus, or is one or the other or both of them pissed off about the situation?

It's a total powderkeg of a pantheon when it comes to the Dodekatheon, and you can never tell if they'll be on their side as ancestral allies, undermining them as long-time enemies or split, with some of the gods going one way and others another (what a surprise, the Egyptian pantheon has disagreement among the ranks!). Any dogpile on the Dodekatheon has to include them in some way, and since they're also longtime allies of the Elohim, it's inevitable that they're going to get involved.

You might also want to investigate what the native Roman gods are doing and what side they come down on in this conflict. On the one hand, the Dodekatheon in their guise as the Dii Consentes brought massive glory to the empire and are some of the most recognizable members of Roman religion, but on the other hand, they seized control of the pantheon from the native Italian gods who might not have wanted their "generous" help in making their own way. Purely Roman gods like Janus might have an axe to grind, whether by openly siding against them or trying to sabotage them from within, but then again some might support Zeus and his rule and remain staunch defenders of their conglomerate pantheon. There's plenty of opportunity for internecine struggle, back-door dealings and zany avoidance comedy just within the Dodekatheon itself.

As for possible allies for the beleaguered Greeks, don't despair, they have a few. The Yazata might be a surprising source of help; the pantheons have traditionally cooperated fairly well, with Mithra even enjoying a robust Roman cult as Mithras, but they're also tricky thanks to some lingering bad feelings about invasion forces on both sides and the fact that the Dodekatheon have to be on their best behavior around their eastern allies or risk offending them into leaving (or worse, punishing them for their transgressions). They might also be able to call on the Bogovi for aid, who also had quite a bit of friendly overlap and fairly peaceful coexistence with them back in the day.

Most Masculine of Birds

Question: You've listed Tepeyollotl as the nahualli of Tezcatlipoca, and while that makes sense I have one question. I read about a god named Chalchihuihtotolin who was also listed as Tezcatlipoca's nahualli. Is this a case of bad info or multiple nahualli?

Hard to say, actually!

"Chalchiuhtotolin" is really just a very fancy way of saying "jade poultry", which is referring to that most venerable creature: the turkey. Don't laugh. Aztec turkeys are serious business.

See? He is not to be trifled with.

Turkeys do in fact appear associated with Tezcatlipoca more than a few times in Aztec art and iconography; sometimes they even have the smoking mirror replacing one of their feet, a clear sign that we're actually looking at Tezcatlipoca in the form of a turkey. Turkeys were heavily associated with nobility thanks to their impressive size and coloring, and since Tezcatlipoca is the god of nobility himself, it makes natural sense for turkeys to be attached to him, and he also sometimes shows up wearing their feathers. Turkeys were also symbols of youth and masculine virility (which makes sense if you have ever seen a male turkey freak out over mating season), another of Tezcatlipoca's traditional domains. And finally, turkeys are delicious, which made them a perfect symbol for sacrificial victims, leading them to be linked to the cult of the ixiptla, a mortal who "became" Tezcatlipoca before being sacrificed to him.

It's really up to individual Storyteller decision whether or not Chalchiuhtotolin is actually a nahualli, or just a shape Tezcatlipoca takes sometimes, or even a minor god of his own who works closely with him (a former Scion, perhaps?). Old Tezcat is famous for turning into all kinds of things, not just random animals but also inanimate objects and various humans, and so it's sometimes a little sketchy to try to guess whether the turkey is genuinely a nahualli or just one of his many shenanigans. Certainly, the turkey isn't nearly as commonly or strongly associated with him as the jaguar, so some scholars have placed it at a lower level of importance than a full-on nahualli would have. At the same time, though, the turkey (especially with mirror-foot) definitely appears to be an aspect of Tezcatlipoca in some way, and there's certainly a precedent in Aztec mythology for gods with more than one nahualli in both Huitzilopochtli (the hummingbird and the eagle) and Itzpapalotl (the butterfly/bat and the deer).

So it's your call, really. Tepeyollotl is pretty solid as the Smoking Mirror's better half, but that doesn't mean you can't use Chalchiuhtotolin as another nahualli belonging to him if you want to. And even if you decide against going with a true nahualli, for a god as full of shapeshifting and illusiory misbehavior as Tezcatlipoca, turning into a turkey on a whim whenever it suits your plot is as easy as snapping his fingers or inducing Quetzalcoatl to commit suicide.

Movin' Right Along

Question: Hello, everyone. I would like to know how you update the characters in your games, from Hero to Demigod and then to God. You use the book rules, or is it some cool stuff you invent in your home rules?

Hey, there, friend! We do indeed do a lot of house-ruling when it comes to upgrading out PCs, so much so that we talked about it at length in this old vlog here. Informative, plus John has a pro-wrestler moustache in it.

There's also an old post specifically on the god upgrade back here.

Not My Jurisdiction

Question: SO! I'm in America, obeying the laws and stuff (totally legal stuff). THEN I teleport to Egypt, 'cause I can. Anubis is there, and he says "Oh, you were just doing something in America that is illegal here." How does that play out? Where and how does jurisdiction get defined when it comes to Justice?

Jurisdiction, for purposes of the Justice purview, is always defined as "the laws of the place I am in right now". That means that as long as the laws permit your behavior where you are actually doing it, you are fine.

Here's how it plays out:

Scenario One. You are in Boston and you do something that is illegal in Boston. You have broken a law and anyone, no matter where or who they are, can use Justice on you if they find out about it. It doesn't matter if you leave Boston and go somewhere that that action is legal; it was illegal when you did it and you therefore committed a crime. Welcome to the Star Chamber.

Scenario Two. You are in Boston and you do something that is legal in Boston. Then you go somewhere else, where the same thing is not legal. Because you took that action somewhere that it was legally permitted, no one can use Justice on you for it. You are innocent of wrongdoing, no matter how much some people might dislike it.

So, in your example, Anubis wouldn't be able to smite you with any Justice for your previous actions; they were entirely legal and Justice will not support him punishing you when you didn't break any laws. If you repeat those actions in Egypt, where they're not legal, he can punish you then, but not before. (Of course, he may still hate you, which could take all kinds of unpleasant non-Justice forms depending on what you did and how annoyed he is about it.)

On the flip side, if you happen to do something in Egypt that is illegal there but that you do all the time at home where it's perfectly okay, Anubis can and probably will reduce you to quivering, justly-punished jelly, because Justice doesn't care if it's legal somewhere, just that it's illegal where you are right here and now. Justice also doesn't care whether or not you were aware that something you did was illegal, so it's prudent to find out what the local laws are lest you accidentally break them and end up with a face full of Guilt Apparitions. And, if you do something illegal in Egypt and then flee back to the U.S., where it's no longer a problem, Anubis can still come after you and whammy you in the face while standing on American soil, because you committed a crime and the fact that you ran to someplace where no one would have cared doesn't make Justice forget about your transgression.

Honestly, Justice is a lot simpler than mortal international law, jurisdiction and extradition rules. If you break the law, you're guilty, no matter where you go or what you do next. If you do something that's legal, you're innocent, no matter where you go or what you do next. The law of the land is always the final arbiter.

The exception to this rule is, of course, the Code of Heaven boon, which is the only way Scions or gods can lay down some divine correctional smackage without the local laws backing them up. So your Scion could do almost anything legal in the U.S. and Anubis wouldn't be able to punish him with Justice... unless he happened to be talking some smack about how lame the Egyptian gods are, in which case Anubis can happily greet him with a nice juicy Banish as soon as he tries to bring that foul mouth past Egypt's borders.

Mad World

Question: So my character's mother has been been horribly cursed (short form: with insanity) by Hera for the last two decades for having the temerity to get raped and impregnated by Zeus. How would one go about to unravel such a curse? The Greek gods seem very limited in their capacity to undo each others' curses (case in point, Tiresias). Merely compensating for it (again, as in the case of Tiresias) isn't really an option, and even if Hera could withdraw it, she hates my character's guts. Please advise.

Well, that really depends on what exactly Hera did to curse your Scion. Did she use Moon? Magic? A relic? A favor from some other god with that power? Something else entirely? All of those will be different in how they work, what can counter them and how you would go about trying to undo their effects, so without more information there's no way to give you advice about what exactly to do.

But that's a good place to start! If all your character knows is that Hera has cursed him, the first step to trying to fix the problem is to find out what exactly happened. Talk to other people who might know; call on divine allies who might have seen this kind of thing before; bust some Mystery, whatever it takes. Once you've found out what or who actually did a number on you and how, you have the tools to start looking for ways to reverse it.

We can give you a few general suggestions; to start with, the Moon purview has the ability to cure some forms of insanity with boons like Mirror of Lunacy or Tranquility, and if those can't do it, it's almost certain that The Mirror can. Of course, you'd have to come up with some totally baller reasons why a moon god should spend resources on your sorry ass, especially if they have to go all the way up to spending the Avatar, especially if they might have to deal with Hera's displeasure as a possible consequence. Depending on the form of insanity and whether or not it has a physical component, a god with The Savior might also be able to help, although magical madnesses are often totally independent of the body and there may not be much they can do. It's also possible that magical potions, remedies or relics might be able to cure or at least help your Scion keep his condition under control; if you can find out what and where they are, you may be able to go on a quest to find them or work with a crafting Scion or god to try to build something to give you some relief.

Dodekatheon Vengeance-binges are no joke, so our hearts go out to you. Good luck, and remember: even Dionysus managed to get (mostly) back to sanity eventually!

A wild podcast appears

Following up on the art post from yesterday:

This is now a link instead of John just posting a text URL.

A Dungeons and Dragons Podcast did an episode on scion and about 3/4 of the way through talk about our site and use the word awesome a few thousand times :)

I Can't Pronounce These, Either

Question: Is Chi You best used as a member of the Han pantheon, a non-Han pantheon, or a Greater Titan? On one hand, he did fight the Yellow Emperor, but on the other hand, he seems to have had a Han cult in ancient times and some Chinese minorities still claim him as an ancestor.

Poor China. So problematic, and nobody ever wants to help.

This is where I wrote a giant paragraph about all the problems inherent in trying to separate layers of Chinese religion by dynasties and how the historical rulership periods don't necessarily match up to cultural and religious movements...

...but then I realized that you probably meant a Han pantheon as in the gods of the Han-speaking Chinese who recorded most of China's mythology for posterity, as opposed to gods worshiped or borrowed from nearby ethnic groups like the Mongolians, Tibetans, Manchu or others that are technically geographically Chinese but ethnically and culturally different. In which case I am totally with you. China contains a really vast amount of territory and a lot of different peoples, and the fact that the Han are currently the overwhelming majority doesn't mean that it was always so or that the other ethnic groups should be considered the "same", any more than all the Australian groups across the whole continent should be considered the same.

But anyway, Chi You. The insanely monstery descriptions of his appearance certainly sound like a Titan, as do the accounts of him as a tyrannical and cruel ruler who abused the people and landscape alike, not to mention doing obviously supernatural crazy things in his battles against Huang Di. If it weren't for Scion: Companion's insistence on Hundun not having Avatars, he would undoubtedly already be one, and he'd slot in neatly in either a Chaos realm (representing the destabilization of fighting against rightful authority), a War realm (as one of the great war-wagers against the gods) or even a Justice realm (as a representative of tyranny and abuse of power).

Chi You does have connections as the ancestor of several Chinese ethnic groups, most notably the Li/Hlai and the Miao/Hmong. It's hard to tell (because it's largely the Han that wrote everything down so we're mostly stuck with their bias) whether this is a myth that those groups came up with themselves, or one that was placed onto them by the Han and later so traditionally entrenched that they adopted it themselves. It's almost solely in those ethnic groups - which are way, way minorities in China - that Chi You has even vaguely positive connotations, mostly to do with imparting prestige or reputation to his descendents and helping shape ancient China, both of which are possibly good but also possibly referring to his shenanigans in the war against Huang Di. To those small groups, Chi You probably would be more likely to be a tutelary deity instead of a Titan.

The question that it always comes down to, with overlapping groups that have different takes on a given figure, is this: are you going to use both a Han and a Hmong pantheon? If you are, then Chi You is probably best used as one of the presiding deities of the latter. But if you're not - and I would assume most people are probably not, because that's a shit-ton of intensive research for a comparatively small culture that most players aren't even aware exists - then Chi You should probably be run as a Titan, because that's how he appears in the mainstream Chinese pantheon and it would be a shame to kick him out of the game based on a mythology that's not actively in use. A third option, if you really love him as a bad-attitude god instead of a Titan, would be to use him as one of those "pantheon-less gods" we always talk about maybe adding, although I'm not sure if it's worth it unless your game (players or Storyteller) are really Sinophile enough to care.

But hey, we're all about some Scionly use of obscure but awesome pantheons by anyone who is interested in them, so if you want to investigate a Hmong pantheon, please tell us about it when you're done! Other major gods (more major than Chi You, more properly written Txiv Yawg in Hmong) would include Saub, the benevolent creator god, Nplooj Lwg, the frog-god who both created mankind and cursed them with human misfortunes when they betrayed him, and Ntxwj Nyug, the terrifying lord of the Underworld who eats some of the dead once they have been turned into his cattle after shuffling off their mortal coils. It's a smallish pantheon with only a handful of gods, but that doesn't mean you can't do rocking stuff with it if you put your mind to it.

We would probably use Chi You as a Titan; he's a clearly monstrous opponent of the Shen with a serious grudge against the gods, and he probably can't wait to wreak a little havoc. But it's not the only option, so use your judgment and go nuts!