Our vlogging spree continues! This is only the second of the many vlogs we filmed at the same tinme, so we barely look fatigued at all yet! This week's theme is boons, knacks and powers, because you guys never run out of questions about those things. Never.
Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?
Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?
Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?
Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?
Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?
Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?
Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?
Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?
Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)
Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.
Speaking of Hephaestus' Golden Maidens, what Legend do you think they are? Also, do you think a lesser version of them could be Hero level Guides or Followers? The idea of having a terminator as your bodyguard sounds pretty radical to me!
ReplyDeleteHephaestus' golden servants are actually already statted in the Scion books - you can find them on paeg 229 of Demigod. It sets them as about Legend 5, which is a reasonable level for mechanical helpers who don't do the heavy creation lifting.
DeleteAbout channeling ''the raw essence of a purview''
ReplyDeletecan we have a rough sketch of your rules for it written down, so i can be certain i didnt misunderstand something from your vocal version?
would it work all the way from a legend 2 hero using his 1-boon fire purview on a being of pure ice to deal 1 unsoakable agg?
would dryads count as manifestations of fertility? or are they not ''in sync'' with the purview and therefore not counterable by another? (what is the line between something being a manifestation, and something using powers from it?)
Sure!
DeleteIt's always the Storyteller's call whether something can be affected by a purview's essential power that way. Generally speaking, lesser immortals, other Scions, gods and so on are immune; they're creatures of many facets, not necessarily bound to the essence of any one thing - alfar may have some fertility connotations, but they probably can't be shot with random frost-lasers because they're a discrete race of people rather than manifestations of Fertility itself. Titanspawn, though, are directly formed from a particular primordial concept, so they usually can be (including dryads, since we consider them Titanspawn of Ourea).
This does indeed work all the way up from Hero-level, but it's rolled, not automatic. If you're a Hero with one fire boon and you want to try to use it against an icy creature, you get to roll one die; if you get a success or two, they're unsoakable agg, but if you don't, it does nothing. You'll probably have better luck once you're a bit higher in Legend as a hero and have three or four Fire boons, which gives you more dice to roll in teh attempt.
Sweet, thanks. I will begin implementing that into my campaigns from now on.
DeleteCould you make a list of the most common oppositions for purviews?
some are obvious, as sun and dark.
but is stars hit by sun, since it blocks out the stars at day?
and what hits chaos?
I think it's up to the Storyteller a lot of the time, since some creatures may have different aspects going on, but you can use the table from the Ashavan. boon in Asha as a good starting point. :)
DeleteHi, in the ASHAVAN writeup is there a reason that Water is not included? Thanks.
DeleteHuh, nope, looks like an old version of the page. I just fixed it - Water is opposed by Earth and Fire in Asha.
DeleteFertility, Earth, Sky, Fire and Animal are also missing,
DeleteI am guessing it is because of the Amesha Spenta boon (the 9 dot boon) does the opposition of those previews plus water.
Oops, you're right, that's exactly why they aren't in Asha, since the purview already contains them earlier.
DeleteI'd suggest:
Animal: opposed by Death & Health
Earth: opposed by Sky & Water
Fertility: opposed by Fire & Frost
Fire: opposed by Frost & Water
Sky: opposed by Earth & maybe Darkness or Sun?
Water: opposed by Earth & Fire
But of course different STs may decide differently. If you look at the purviews that our Titanrealms inflict damage for, you'll also get some ideas of what should oppose them - for example, you can tell Ourea is opposed to Death, Fire and Frost because those are the purviews it says it punishes on entry on the realm's page,
And now i have finished the whole Vlog.
ReplyDeletewhich brings up one more question. Yay.
which pantheon created the world?
Is it as the weather-systems? did the nordic gods create scandinavia? the Tuatha the celtic empire? Bogovi the slavic lands?
Since all myths are true in Scion, it's really up to the Storyteller to figure out how that can be reconciled. Each mythology has a different story of who created the world, so it may be that each of them created the local lands known to their culture - "the world" as far as those people knew it. It may also mean something in a more metaphorical sense, or that many creator gods banded together with their Avatars to create everything at once. Each ST will have a different view of the cosmos' origins and the roles of the creator gods in that.
DeleteWe would consider that it probably works the same way as we were talking about up there with weather - so Viracocha probably created the Peruvian coast, Izanagi and Izamani created the Japanese islands, Odin and his brothers created Scandinavia, and so on and so forth.
I like it a lot, but that model just brings up the Huuge question ''what about the rest?'' did the gods mabye make their own places and then go together and had a nice house-warming earth ultimacies party where they made the rest of the Earth to fir their domains together?
DeleteThere's not a lot of "rest" to go around, honestly. Aside from Antarctica, humans have lived in pretty much every other region of the world, which means that the creator gods/Titans/phenomena of their religions would cover those places. It's human nature to come up with religions and explanations for the natural world, which makes it easy to assign who did what on a global scale if you really want to. (Of course, if you're not doing anything with the cosmology of Madagascar in your games, you probably don't need to go out and learn about the Malagasy creator-god Zanahary since he won't be appearing in your story, but he does exist.)
DeleteThat does bring up some interesting setting questions, though; some areas of the world were inhabited long ago but aren't anymore, or were inhabited by people whose religion we no longer know anything about. That goes back to the question of prehistoric gods in Scion - beings that probably existed but that we have literally no evidence or information about whatsoever, which Storytellers might choose to handle (or not) in any number of ways.
As for Antarctica, how that happened sounds like a good place for a plot seed, hmm?
John also makes a good point from over my shoulder - if you want to simplify your worldbuilding, you can also only use the creator gods that are actually in your games, and divide the world up based on whatever territories are closest to them. That way, you don't have to bother with the Malagasy at all; you can just claim that all of Africa was created by either Obatala or Ptah, all of Asia was handled by Brahma, Izanagi/Izanami and Pangu, all of Mesoamerica was made by Ometeotl and Kulkulkan/Huracan, and so on.
DeleteBasically, as always: don't sweat details you won't use. If it really doesn't matter to your story at all whether you have notes on every single god of every single place and how they created the world and with what boons, then don't waste a lot of time on trying to figure it out. Storytelling is enough work when you only do the work you have to do, let alone everything else.
That it does. But my question was about nothing so fancyful and useful as that. Even though i enjoyed the answer very much.
DeleteI seem to have a knack for getting intriqued by things, which knowing would probably not help anyone.
I rather meant down underground. the miles upon miles upon miles of earth that makes the entire world be... well... not an empty shell?
Noone could have dug that far, so why did the gods choose to make so much extra earth?
did Ymir simply, by fate, have enough mass to fill out so that the world is connected within as well as without?
I must admit here, when i bother you with details liek these, it is not for my players benefit.
DeleteI really just am more curious than good is, and i find it very entertaining to think about things like that.
John makes a very good point though.
DeleteIf the other creator-gods become important, they could, in reality, have ''re-made'' their domains to fit their future people, rather than actually having made it from the get-go
That's also a great way to go about it - if you want to, you could always say that whatever local god did create the place, but if they're obscure they may have been "out of play" for one reason or another for a long time, leaving the more prominent creator gods to mess around and resculpt what was there to their liking.
DeleteThe Hephaestus question makes me think that this might be an interesting myth that a cult would create about the Scion after the fact.
ReplyDeleteOh, that's true! We've had a lot of weird after-the-fact creation myths pop up about our PCs and their relatives, like the one that says Sangria ate the souls of a thousand murdered children and then gave birth to Chicahua who is eternally a baby as a result. Actually, she was impregnated by accidentally touching a Fertility Titan idol and Chicahua is eternally a baby thanks to accidentally picking up Eternal Youth when he was two years old, but the mortals had other ideas.
DeleteJohn in this blog reminded me a little of Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the World.
ReplyDelete"I don't always play PCs, but when I do, I prefer to play a regular guy with a childhood and a job."
Can Titans and Titanspawn shoot purview lasers at one another?
For instance, judging by your Titanrealm write-ups, Fire and Fertility are opposed. Could Cronus and Sutr purview laser one another?
Does a Fertility purview laser gain the 20 dice bonus that boons do in Ourea?
Would a Scion (or Titan) trying to use a Fire or Frost or Death laser in Ourea have to roll their purview, the way they do for boons, to see if the power can activate at all?
Did you at any point consider a Me boon that might interact with the purview laser rule (even if it was only to have Me boons of that purview counting towards things like the purview laser or rolling against the titanrealms)?
Where is my like button for this comment!?
DeleteWell, John is the most interesting Storyteller in the world, or so he will tell you when he's had a few drinks.
Delete1) No, probably not. The Titans are forces that are by nature opposed to each other, so a Water titanspawn duking it out with a Fire one will probably just be injuring one another horribly anyway. All their powers come purely from the realm already, unlike those of Scions or gods.
2) No. "Lasers" are not boons, and do not get any bonuses that are given to boons. They also don't get bonuses from Fatebonds.
3) Yes. Ourea has a hammerlock on power within its borders and that extends to anyone trying to oppose it, regardless of whether they use a boon or just the raw essence of their purview.
4) Honestly, the "laser" is so powerful already that anything like that would be unbalanced, even within the context of Me's already bananas power set. Unsoakable agg is ridiculously powerful, and while we love the Anunna, we don't want them to be the automatic win forever pantheon. Everyone else deserves a shot, too!
It strikes me as kind of odd that a Scion or God can channel "the raw essence of a purview" for a laser and a Titan, a literal embodiment of the purview, can't.
DeleteThe other answers seem perfectly sensible, though. Thanks!
Oh, hey, guys. I know that at the end of this blog you mention that your going to have your 50th blog just be normal question answering as usually, but I remember waaaaayyyy back that you were going to do something special for your 50th blog anniversary, like you an actual play of one of your games. Is that still going to be a thing down the line, or should I just let that little dream die forever?
DeleteA thought: if gods created all the weather systems in the world with Avatars, would that make the Titans, rather than humans' emissions, responsible for global warming?
DeleteAnon: Still considering it, but we have to figure out how that would work exactly.
DeleteBelltrap: Maybe. :) Or maybe some god got rambunctious, or the weather gods are having some kind of weird cold (or warm) war.