Question: How do you make a new Virtue from an IC perspective? Let's use a hypothetical "Liberty". What does a character have to do to make that a real Virtue he can buy and pass down to his own children?
This answer probably isn't going to be a lot of help to you, but: you don't, and nothing. It is not possible to create a new Virtue within the game.
Virtues are a basic core stat, intended in their spectrum to describe most of the major personality themes that occur across divine heroes and deities in various world mythologies. You don't create a new one as a character within the game any more than you would create a new Attribute. It's hard enough to even change your Virtues in the game - it requires a Magic god screwing with your personality before you're at god-level or the intereference of rare star-rated Relics, and even then is pretty damned uncommon - let alone try to somehow create a new one and replace your own with it and make it something attached to a bloodline which is totally unprecedented. In other words, this is bonkers and we would never allow it.
If you feel that something is really important enough to be a Virtue, we would always say that it should be a core Virtue within the game, attached to the pantheons that should espouse it and available to any Scion at character creation. If you think Liberty needs to be a Virtue that some pantheons support, it needs to be added to the base system right alongside Courage and Harmony and all the others. It should never be something only you or a few people you designate can get, because Virtues are supposed to be fundamentally possible for all.
There's no such thing as a Virtue that only one person, or even only one group of people, has; Virtues are universal and should be things that apply to more than one culture, not personalized super-stats. If you want to set up a particular thing that your people believe in that isn't a game-wide Virtue, Conviction's always a good place to start, as the Virtue that enforces your most important core beliefs; teach your followers and children that that idea is important and Conviction will always be there to make sure they care about it. It might also be a cultural or familial ideal that isn't Virtue-enforced but is still important to you and your children, like the Greek emphasis on beautiful physical form or the Arab respect for all religious figures, even if they don't worship them themselves.
But, alas, we would never allow in-game creation of a Virtue. If that's something your Storyteller is willing to let you go for, you'll have to work out the details with him or her.
This makes me wonder: How exactly does the Alihah's Piety react to their 'all religious figures are worthy of respect' ideal?
ReplyDeleteRespect them, just don't make the mistake of thinking they're more important than the Alihah themselves. :)
DeleteIt IS a weird idea. How would someone even conceptualize creating and then assuming a new core personality trait?
ReplyDeleteIt's almost sorta transhuman, I think? Programming your mind/soul to operate in new and novel ways seems like a transhuman idea.
Two of the players in my Scion game are going for a transhumanist theme while looking toward apotheosis. Different approaches too as one is Bogovi and the other is Teotl,
The Bogovi Scion is looking at the more mental/conceptual transhuman themes while the Teotl Scion is leaning more toward transformation of the body before the mind/soul.
Strange ideas occur when personality is also game mechanics.
I have seen something similar to what this question describes happen ONCE, but it was in an Exalted game (1e) and it was the creation of a new Ability, not an Attribute or Virtue (though either could have happened at the time).
It was a Social version of Brawl, that allowed you to hurt people with your force of personality and good looks. Strange days in that game let me tell you!
Every pretty boy, dancing girl and other attractive or interesting person suddenly became very combat effective.
It became such a pain in the ass that we (literally) killed the concept.
Holy bananas, that sounds off the chain.
DeleteWhich one? My player group is like a think tank full of killing machines, I think they'll make good modern gods if they don't end up getting killed chasing down yet more "forbidden knowledge".
DeleteThey actually had to physically restrain a PC from throwing herself into Mimir's Well and damn all consequences. (The other characters felt that the Well's price would handicap her in dealing with the Theoi, being she's the Scion of Zeus for the group and the Politics and Presence monster)
The other thing? Well, that's just Exalted for ya. :p
I meant the other thing. Creatin' stats, no thank you!
DeleteOh yeah. It was a trip. It's weird to rp in a setting that is basically aware of what most of the game mechanics are IC.
DeleteAll the stats can technically be killed or new ones created. It's just really hard to do.
Never again.
One game session dealing with the geisha berserker army was enough to cure us of fundamentally changing the rules of the universe. ;)