Here's something you guys haven't seen before - it's a magical extra bonus vlog! The question box has been blowing up lately, so in an effort to catch up a little bit, here's a ten-question smorgasbord of Scionness!
Question: What happens when someone with divine socials manages to insult the Virtues of another Scion? What takes precedence - the ichor boiling in response to the insult or the inability to hurt someone divinely likeable?
Question: For Haunted Mists, the more powerful you are, the more time you need to concentrate for the mists to gather. That doesn't make much sense to me... someone who hasn't branched out much in the Death purview can summon forth the mists much more quickly.
Question: It sounds like in many of your games, the Scions quickly become the bad guys, at least in the mortal world. Have any of your characters had the strength of will or luck to be a good guy? For instance, causing more good in the world than bad?
Question: What happens when you use two Avatars simultaneously with a multiple action? Do you combine the narrative awesome of both, or does one just fizzle?
Question: Kin-slaying is a big taboo among the Greeks, but how close does someone have to be to be considered "kin"? Could Hera contract a Scion of Hades to bump off some of Zeus' more offensive bastards without anyone receiving a visit from the Kindly Ones? Would she even go there, if she thought she could get away with it?
Question: Have you guys ever considered officially moving Goibnhiu from the Nemetondevos to the Tuatha? Or is he too minor a figure to bother moving?
Question: Are Norse dwarves immortal?
Question: How do you justify a number of boons metric when not all purviews have the same opportunity to get them? Prophecy and Stars come to mind - they both only have 1 boon per level, compared to, say, Magic, which has more boons than any other.
Question: You've mentioned a couple times that you believe that most of the Nemetondevos aren't Legend 12. Well, I just wanted to know which ones, in your opinion, are.
Question: You once mentioned a possible bestiary, but it never shows up on the voting poll. Why is that?
John is such a grumper. Fantastic at it, though.
I was the one who asked about whether Dwarves were immortal. My reasoning for asking was that I didn't know if, when the Dwarves DO appear, whether they should still be ruled by Durin or Dvalin, or whether that should have been a thousand years ago during the Viking Age and the Dwarves from back then have grown old and died and there's a 'line of Durin' or 'house of Dvalin' that rules over Nidavellir instead.
ReplyDeleteYes, you guys are great. But now I feel bad about John's grumpiness because TWO of those questions were mine (the one about Virtues and epic socials and the one about number of boons).
ReplyDeleteBoth are questions that my players have been asking for some time, they'll probably be super excited that they got a video response. Sorry about the question barrage, though!
Pffftttt....John can suck it. Never feel bad about sending in questions, we love questions. We were just having an argument before we filmed about how instead of showing it now, we could film it and have it in case we were too tired on a normal saturday to vlog....like a back up system. And anne shot me down :)
DeleteYeah, don't apologize. Besides, we have enough questions for TWO vlogs this week!
DeleteFour blog posts on Wednesday, and now an extra vlog on Thursday (albeit one I only saw on Friday). This week just keeps getting better and better!
DeleteJohn yelled at me for the four-post day. :(
DeleteYelled at you for what, being too awesome?
DeleteHe yells at me for that all the time!
DeleteThanks a lot! (that was me above, I always forget to set a name... maybe I should make an account somewhere). I kinda understand John a bit, he sternly wants us to grow up being our own men/women! Not spoiled rotten by two-blog weeks.
DeleteBut Anne is like... np kids, I'm the cool aunt and I'm here to help.
A little question relating to the Legend rating of the Nemetondevos, have you read the comic 'Asterix and Obelix' by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo? In that comic, the two gods most used as a warcry are Teutates and Belenos.
ReplyDeleteDo you suppose that it's an exception (like they're patron gods to the village like Athens and Athena) or difference in interpretation between yours and them?
Sorry if this sounded cheeky.
Thats just the cartoonist picking two god names at random. The thor comics also use all the listed Gauls. That doesnt really change anything, thats just modern people doing modern things.
DeleteIt's not cheeky - I read Asterix myself when I was a kid. Pour Toutatis!
DeleteBut yeah, while both are legitimate Gaulish god-names, they still don't have much in the way of mythology to elevate them to Legend 12. Teutates is probably a totem god of particular tribes (thus his name connotations, "of the people"), but he has no surviving stories. Belenos is the most widely-attested of the Gaulish gods in art and inscription, but similarly has no surviving myths to tell us about anything he actually did.
What of players who aren't automatically inclined to "like" you because of your epic Charisma and just always go along with their virtues? Does the storyteller need to force them to "like" me (in-character), or can they still choose to resist virtues in favor of charisma?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, liking you doesn't mean they get to ignore their Virtues. Virtues are a core part of who they are and dangerous to try to ignore too often, so they could be straight up in love with you and still need to decide in favor of their Virtues sometimes (or try not to, freak out, and then act against you in Extremity anyway).
DeleteAs a Storyteller, it's always a good idea to remind players of folks with high socials once in a while if it seems like it's being forgotten, but the ST can't and shouldn't force people to roll against their Virtues to do what you want (unless you use a power on them that makes them have to act in your favor, which is usually an option). Deciding when to resist a Virtue and when to obey it is always a roleplaying decision for the player.
It's also worth remembering that liking or caring about someone manifests in different ways for different people or situations, and may not always translate to just doing what you want. Some may try to make you align with their Virtues because they want to help you be a good person, continue to think of you as their idol or genuinely believe you might be in trouble if you don't, things they wouldn't necessarily do if they didn't care about you.