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.
Honestly, the only part of World at War I found palatable was the little suggestion that it was the Gods themselves who managed to free the Titans during the War.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm surprised it took someone this long to take the bait and ask what the Secret Project was. I always thought it was your Fatebond System, since that's the only project that people wanted that isn't back on the poll this time, though after hearing what you had to say about it today, I'm starting to suspect it might be Under and Overworlds. (And I know you won't confirm it one way or another, but I just wanted this post to stay so if its is one of these two, I can say I totally called it! :D
Also, I don't think anyone is complaining about the length of the Vlog! :D
Oh, true, that's a really great point. It's probably way wasier to open Tartarus from the outside than the inside, either accidentally or on purpose, and despite the overall terribleness of Titans being on the loose, there are probably gods who would either make poor decisions that led to their release or even decide to spring them for their own reasons.
DeleteYou and your guesses!
im calling a split-up of sky and thunder purviews and 19 being the number of new Boons that they get.
DeleteGlad you liked it!
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you know your players are only going to be able to have Thor's belt for a short time, you can absolutely make it a star relic that doubles successes. The player gets to enjoy a short period of incredible awesomeness before surrendering the relic.
ReplyDeleteCould all those 'mystical' cities in Aztec mythology have actually been Incan cities?
The length of the Vlog was not a problem! It's always makes Saturdays fun to learn about mythology.
I'd be pretty shocked if Aztec myth had anything to do with the Incas, since they had no idea they existed. The Inca empire was way, way down there in South America, nowhere near the Aztecs, and they never had any contact that we know of. Might as well ask if legendary locations in Greek mythology were actually in Hawaii.
DeleteHowever, they could very well have been Maya cities, or even older locations from cultures we still don't know much about (like the Teotihuacano)! Those people were in the same general area as the Aztecs and we know that there was extensive borrowing by the Aztecs from several preceding cultures that they admired, so it's entirely possible that they appropriated those "lost" cities and made them mythical locations in their own legends. Actually, that's probably what the question-asker was referring to with Chichen Itza, which was a major Maya city that was well outside the usual Aztec haunts but could have been known to them as a faraway land.
Good points about Thor's belt - if this is one of those shining glory moments, there's nothing wrong with going whole hog. Just be ready with some backup plans in case they do something drastically different than you expected!
I did a lot of manuscript studies at university, and the idea of the Trojan War genocide project comes from the 'Venetus A' manuscript, which contains the earliest full copy of the Iliad as well as commentaries that probably trace back to 3rd century BC Alexandria. Like you said, the idea doesn't appear anywhere else in Greek literature, so it may well just be some ancient egghead's crazy theory
ReplyDeleteNeat, I'll have to check that out!
DeleteAnother option if the Nemetondevos post-apotheosis is that they don't have an Underworld/Overworld, but, much like a group of PCs splitting off from their native pantheons to form a new one from whole cloth, PCs could always make a big push to establish an Underworld and/or Overworld for the Gauls if they're willing to bust out Avatars.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the lack of cosmology is really an opportunity for stories for games that want to do a lot with these guys.
DeleteAnother fun option for the Nemetondevos that comes to mind is that, absent their own Overworld and Underworld, they bide their time until a moment of weakness for the Theoi before invading to usurp one, the other, or both, in vengeance for the Theoi's people conquering the Gauls.
DeleteHa! Or even a smaller world, to work their way up. I can just see them all cramming into Hephaestus' workshop or something and then erecting the barricades and throwing things at any Greeks who dare to get too close.
DeleteYou could definitely also say that maybe they had their own Overworld and Underworld, but the Theoi destroyed them in their quest to make sure they couldn't oppose them in the World. Would explain why they don't have any real estate, and why they're mostly forgotten, since they'd have nowhere to go to escape Fatebonds and probably couldn't do a lot as a result.
I wrote a whole bunch of questions all at once, so I'm sorry for the increased workload. Ah well, at least they weren't eaten this time around.
ReplyDeleteThe Tlillan-Tlapallan question was mine (serendipity that it occured shortly after the other question!), and making it a Terra Incognita is the best way to go, IMO. I just wasn't sure if you had different ideas.
I especially like the idea of a class of Mesoamerican magic-city Terra Incognita. It fits extremely well and provides a whole ton of cool places for a Scion to go.
I suspected it might be you. Whenever the Chimalpopoca comes up, I look around suspiciously to see if you're in the bushes. Don't apologize - lots of questions is way better than having nothing to do!
DeleteI am a really big fan of the Mesoamerican city-Terrae, too. It's one of the cultures in Scion that benefits from the Terra Incognita model really well; there are just so many of them!
Malinalco isn't just some magical city! It was a real-life rival of the Aztecs, with the myth explaining the reasons for their rivalry. Look at it in Google Maps if you like to, it still exist today: 18° 57′ 0″ N, 99° 30′ 0″ W
ReplyDeleteOh, I know! I thought I said that - if I didn't, I definitely meant to. :) There are several places in Aztec myth that are mythic locales but coincide with real places, so I love the idea of Terrae Incognita that overlay or hide behind them. Malinalco is a city in Mexico now, but there might also be a Malinalco that is the fabled city of sorcerers, unreachable by humans but visitable by intrepid Scions.
DeleteTotally was mentioned in-vlog!
DeleteOh, good, I feel less like I was going crazy all day yesterday.
DeletePoor Hera, not being able to come down on those who really deserve it, being forced to punish those who are often victims to begin with. It's like some places where rape victims are beaten.
ReplyDeleteAncient law can be like that sometimes.
DeleteNote to self, find a place where the laws state that unfaithful husbands get the harsher punishment, find a scion of Zeus from there, go Justice on Zeus's ass
DeleteOoooh Winona, everybody's favorite bridge troll medic.
ReplyDeleteWho doesn't love Winona? Everybody, that's who.
DeleteHere was my story on how the Titans escaped:
ReplyDeleteThere were these powerful beings who were not gods, but existed throughout the World in one form or another throughout the years wishing to be gods. I won't bore you with details (unless you ask) but it involved an atom bomb, and Hades', then, stolen Cap of Invisibility to break the prison open.
Their plan was to create a war so the beings could eventually recruit Scions (before they become gods) and after the war is won, the scions would rebel against the other gods and create a new pantheon that is controlled by these beings thanks to a fatebound oath taken before the scions ascended to gods.
It's not a perfect plan on their end because to work it relies on the gods winning so they're taking a gamble.
I'm pretty sure I first read the "Zeus Boink Fest As Part of Master Plan" idea in Roger Lancelyn Green's "Tales of The Greek Heroes". The idea being that Prometheus made a prophecy saying that Gaia's giants could only be defeated by a being who was half-god, half-mortal.
ReplyDeleteDon't know if RLG just made it up or if he got it from somewhere else but I do know Rick Riordan is using the idea for his new "Hero's of Olympus" series.