John tagged me in for today's vlog, where I will be way too excited and jump around waving my favorite things in front of the camera. Join me!
Question: Some myths say Nut is the granddaughter of Ra, while others say she was his wife. Some myths say he stopped her from having children because he didn't want his throne taken over, others say it was because Ra was jealous of her sleeping with Geb. What's up?
Question: I understand that in your games, all of the different mythological origin stories are true. That being said, how do you tie in the fact that fossils of animals from millions of years ago, and thus don't match up, have been found?
Question: I had someone ask me the other day if a nuclear winter would be anything like Fimbulwintr from Norse mythology. In your opinion, could a nuclear winter trigger Ragnarok?
Question: Do you guys use the Order of the Divine Glory in your games? If so, how prevalent are they?
Question: Do you think Aphrodite's lack of purview's can be accounted for by a butt load of Arete in abilities such as presence and empathy and command that gives her supernatural power over peoples emotions without a purview or misplaced epic attributes.
Question: At least under one interpretation, Christians, Jews and Muslims are (inadvertent) Titan-worshipers (somewhat similar to how C. S. Lewis depicts Muslims as inadvertent demon-worshippers). Would the gods care about this? Would it matter for the Titans in question that they're being worshipped?
Question: Just wondering - have you guys ever used Neith in your games, and how would you handle her if you did?
Question: Do the Aesir have a god of dawn? I'm asking this because I'm making a NPC for my games who represents not the dawn itself, but renovation and new life, and dawn just looks like the perfect role for me. Any ideas? What associations do you think I could use?
Question: How do powers like Control Water affect water-based liquids like most alcoholic beverages or sodas?
Question: You mentioned in a post earlier in the year that divine parents grant Birthrights for purviews that they are not associated with, but what about the Animal purview for animals that no god currently has (such as extinct ones)? Would the Scion simply have to purchase the boons without having a corresponding relic?
If you're interested in joining me on cloud nine, Lacambalam, the codex artist, has a website here where he shows comparisons of his art to the originals, and a Flickr gallery here with prices and much better images of the codices than my webcam could give you.
so where's the video?
ReplyDeleteOn the blog? Are you having trouble seeing it?
Deletesorry. it wasn't loading on my comp. must have been a server error interfering with my youtube connection.
DeleteNo worries, just wanted to make sure folks could see it. :)
Delete*shakes a fist* Stop giving away my super secret plots during your Vlogs! Now when my game drops some of my awesome plot points, everyone is going to think I got the idea from you! =P
ReplyDeleteDamn! Well, I won't ask which thing I said was one of your plots, so at least I can't give it away that way!
DeleteCODICES!
ReplyDelete*Opens wallet. Moths fly out* Ah well...
Seriously, that kicks all the ass. I personally love the jaguar print covers.
For fossil animals, something relevant to my interests, I'd say certain mythologies provide areas that allow you to account for them. The Aztec's first world was populated by uncivilized giants. There you go, opportunity to add dinosaurs.
To give an example, the main villain for my sole time as ST was a Titan-serving Scion whose goal was to bring Mother Gaia's first children back to the World. Rather than cyclopes or hekatonkheires, the children he was bringing back were dinosaurs. (In his particular case, zombie dinosaurs.) And yeah, giant children killed by the sky and sent into the earth? Sounds like dinosaurs.
I feel ya, man. He has Mixtec codices, too, but the budget couldn't handle any more awesomeness.
DeleteDinosaurs are such a fantastic place to mess around with ancient monsters! They can fill so many mythological niches if you really want to use them, and give players a fun dose of science/myth whiplash in the process.
Talking about Aphrodite and Arete and Associated Purviews and Attributes got me thinking...
ReplyDeleteHave you and John ever considered doing away with having six associated abilities per god and just giving them however many or few you feel should be associated with them?
We have talked about it, but to date haven't made any formal changes. It's a weird place anyway, since the XP discount for abilities is so much less than for everything else (but then again, they cost less than everything else, and the original game was assuming nobody was getting more than 5XP per game so it was more significant then). Something to think about in the future.
DeleteThose codices rock - I totally get your excitement, and I'm bookmarking the artist's webpage for when I win that lottery! :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for answering my Neith question [sort of, due to plot requirements]. It's really good to hear the correct pronunciation for the names of the Gods, btw. Hope you get over your cold soon, and keep on giving us good stuff!
I feel like I should make some kind of cold-related joke about my excitement being infectious... but it probably wouldn't be good.
DeleteSo Neith is a huntress, creator, guardian, and crocodile goddess? That's a pretty interesting combination. Would you put her at Legend 10-11?
DeleteI think she's probably Legend 11 - she's very old and powerful, but not quite at the notoriety or story level of the other gods. I know some Storytellers also prefer to treat her as a Titan, since she has some primordial creator myths and few stories of actually doing much else, and since she has a fairly scary personal style, but that's up to individual games.
DeleteThe Mesopotamians had an end-of-the-world scenario? Could you point us towards some sources where I might be able to find some more information on that?
ReplyDeleteI don't have the full story personally, but the gist of it is that in the mythology books I've read Marduk acts as the order that keeps the chaotic and destructive forces at bay. Remove Marduk from the godly equation and... well you can guess what happens next.
Deletethe other part is that Marduk needs to be king to maintain order. so every new year the gods make sure he returns to his post so the world doesn't get destroyed.
DeleteThey don't have a scenario as far as I know, really, just an expiration date. I believe it's Bottero that relates that the Mesopotamians believed that the world had a lifespan of "twelve times twelve sars". A sar, their unit of large time measurement of choice, was equivalent to thirty-six thousand years, so the lifespan of the world is 12 x 12 x 36,000 = 518,000 years. He goes on to explain that they believed that there were only twelve sars (43,000 years) of this time left to go at the time of their civilization, so by their clock, we currently have about 39,000 years left and then the world is done.
DeleteI think most of this comes from the king-lists - they're pretty heavy on timing, from how many sars went by between the world being created and the gods coming to mess around with it to how many sars elapsed between the reign of one legendary king and the next.
I don't know of any actual eschatology attached, though - no story of what will happen when the world ends or how it'll come about. That's just, you know, the date. Mark it on your calendar.