Brothers in Battle

Question: You've discussed before that, in general, having disparate pantheons together in a campaign can be problematic. What generally are the guidelines you use for determining if pantheons play nice with each other, if only in terms of their Scions fitting well? If you could give specific examples (say, with the Teotl, not that I plan on running a game where they're prevalent wink wink) of what pantheons work with another one and why, that would also be awesome. Thanks!

There are two important guidelines that can help you plan for future band harmoniousness, and those are the Virtues of the Scions in question and the historical interaction between their pantheons/cultures.

Virtues are the easiest go-to place to compare; as a general rule, the more Virtues a pantheon has in common with another, the less likely their Scions (and gods) are to get upset with one another. Virtues in alignment means that those Scions will agree with one another a lot more about what needs to be done, understand where their bandmates are coming from a lot more of the time, and spend much less time and effort grappling with intra-band conflicts of morality and theology. For example, the Teotl and K'uh are likely to get along very well, since they have the shared morals of Conviction, Courage and Loyalty in common; they'll respect one anothers' bravery, be able to count on one anothers' loyalty, and even when they disagree they'll at least respect the integrity of the other person's refusal to compromise. Another good example would be the Bogovi and Netjer, who despite not having much in common in terms of culture or history can still be down with each others' religious dedication, determination to preserve the World's balance and adherence to the rule of law.

That doesn't mean that bands with different Virtues can't get along, but it does mean that it's much more difficult and will require a lot more compromise, conflict and personal growth on the parts of the characters, something that not every player wants, needs or enjoys doing in their games. We love our god-level PCs, but when their group started and it included one Scion (Sangria) with Conviction, Courage, Duty and Loyalty and two others (Goze and Sophia) with Expression, Intellect, Valor and Vengeance, can you guess how well they got along? The answer was not at all. They hated each other. Sangria didn't understand (or care about trying to understand) the Greeks' abstract ideas about the importance of art and culture, and they went stark bananas from not being able to handle her murdering innocent people for power and doing what she thought was her job no matter how evil or destructive they perceived it to be. Their Virtues were opposed about 75% of the time, with the result being that they had to learn to adapt or die (luckily, the former). They survived it and it added a lot to their characters and development arcs, but it also generated a lot of conflict and heartbreak along the way, probably more than the game strictly needed.

Opposed Virtues don't just not get each other - in many cases, they actively hate each other. If one Scion has Expression and a mighty need to create magical artwork all over the world and the other has Harmony and a stringent code that prohibits putting magical shit anywhere in human territory, those two Scions are going to end up throwing down (or worse, trying not to and then going into Virtue Extremity). If one Scion has Courage and leaps into action to destroy every enemy in his path no matter whether they're already injured and the other has Valor and can't stand to see the helpless be harmed, those two Scions are going to end up punching each other in the face on the battlefield instead of their enemies. The Scion with Vengeance fucking hates the Scion with Order, who refuses to let her visit sweet revenge on those who have wronged her, and the Scion with Order is just as upset in return with his bandmate who sees nothing wrong with committing every felony on the books as long as she gets to destroy someone she hates.

Now, there will always be opposed Virtues in your Scion band - always, always, always. You can't avoid them. Scions' own Virtues sometimes oppose one another (I hate this guy with a Vengeance, but he's a wuss and my Valor says I can't hit him! Argh!), and even if you get Scions of the closest possible Virtue sets together, they'll always have one or two Virtues that don't match and that get in the way once in a while (I'm a Netjer Scion and my Conviction makes me accept that sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, but my Bogovi buddy I normally agree with keeps saying he can't shirk his Duty even if it's clearly the best course of action! Argh!). And some Scions will come in as a normally closely-aligned pantheon but take a different Virtue at character creation, which you may not know ahead of time as the Storyteller (unless you ban them from doing that, I guess). This is normal and will make for good play; if nobody's Virtues ever clashed, they wouldn't be able to develop as characters nearly as much, so don't panic or give up if your carefully-crafted group of all normally-compatible Anunna and Elohim suddenly explodes into a screaming match of Conviction vs. Vengeance. Characters will disagree, sometimes heatedly and with gusto, from time to time over the course of the game. As long as it's not so much that the group can't function (which is what this question is trying to help you set up to avoid from the get-go!), that's perfectly all right.

Virtues are only half the equation, however. They're great measures of how much ideological common ground a pantheon might have with another, but they don't necessarily have a strong bearing on how those ideas are interpreted in the real world or what might have happened between them in the past. That's where historical interaction between the pantheons comes into play.

The Kami and the Shen have very similar Virtues - with Duty, Harmony and Valor in common, the only place they differ is that the Kami prefer Endurance and the Shen prefer Intellect. (Yes, I know we talk about changing these a lot, just follow me for the explanation for now.) Does that make them automatically prone to being best friends? Not necessarily, because the history of interaction between Japan and China, both mythologically and in the World, has not always been a very cordial one. The Kami, as the deities of Shinto, might be nursing a grudge thanks to the invasion of the foreign gods of Chinese Buddhism onto their turf centuries ago, leading the fall of Shinto as the only state-approved religion and the introduction of all kinds of new practices and deities that didn't follow the old ways. The Shen may not have forgiven the Kami for their continual wars on the mainland over the past few centuries, both in mythology and among mortals, especially the very fresh tragedy of the massacres committed by Japanese attackers during the Sino-Japanese wars of the last two hundred years, which might or might not have involved divine interference. Scions, as modern people from either of those cultures, may bring their own baggage along with their parents' - a Scion of the Shen whose grandparents died during the Japanese war crimes of the 1930s might have no tolerance whatsoever for agents of the Japanese gods, regardless of how much they have in common philosophically, and a Scion of the Kami who sees herself as the representative of a religion dying out because of Chinese influence might hate her opposite number on principle thanks to his pantheon's campaign against hers. Gods on either side can also easily influence their childrens' perceptions; even if the Kami weren't necessarily involved in the Sino-Japanese wars, for example, it really only takes a single comment from one of the Shen that they were behind it/didn't bother to stop it/benefited from it, and their children will act accordingly.

This works in reverse as well. You might think that the Theoi and Netjer would absolutely hate one another, since they don't have even one measly Virtue in common between them, but while there have definitely been vicious conflicts between them in the past, there have also been long periods of historical cooperation and cultural trade. They're not in love or anything, but they often can and do get along much better than their Virtues would suggest, especially when they have a common goal. The Yazata and Bogovi only share Order and are otherwise wildly different in Virtue setup, which might suggest that they would have nowhere to begin getting along with one another, but their history suggests otherwise, with the two religions often influencing and borrowing from one another, to such an extent that there are even a few crossover deities between them.

It looks kind of like we're saying, "Who knows, apparently Virtues don't mean anything," but that's not what we're trying to do. Rather, we're saying that Virtues are almost always a great starting yardstick for whether or not Scions will get along within a band; but, other factors, such as history, religious affiliation and previous experience may affect that, so make sure you know the interactions of the pantheons you're thinking of combining instead of just their four Virtues and how those stack up to everyone else's. And - and this is probably the most important thing you can do as a Storyteller to make people suck it up and get along in a band even when they don't want to - make sure you always give the Scions who work together some common goals. Even if they're not getting along right now, even if they really think things the other people do are fundamentally wrong, even if they despise one anothers' guts, they'll still usually pull it together when they know they have to all work together to achieve something that's important to each of them. It might be because their parents told them to, it might be because the specific situation requires other people with skills they just don't have, or anything else, but common goals will always go a long way toward making sure people put in the effort to deal with one another instead of just stomping off home or taking a pike to their bandmates' faces.

Oh, by the way: Teotl Scions will probably get along best with Scions of the K'uh, with whom they share most of their Virtues and with whom they have a history of cultural interaction and exchange, several crossover deities, and an understanding of some religious concepts that other pantheons don't always get (blood sacrifice being the main one). There may be some bad blood between them from the K'uh side thanks to later Maya communities being conquered by the suddenly expansionist Aztecs near the end of Mesoamerican civilization and the general Aztec attitude that they are the best and everyone else in Mesoamerica had better recognize it, but nothing that would cause too much of a conflict between them. Runners-up (each with two Virtues in common) would be the Aesir (probably respectable as fellow warriors but also deeply irresponsible by Aztec standards), the Apu (with no cultural context but similar ideals of courageous battle and duty to the community giving them some common ground) or the Orisha (equally badass and passionate and with a close connection to their people, but maybe a little too hung up on things like their personal problems to be as effective as deities as they should be).

In closing, we'd just like to point out that while these things all help intra-band harmony, they don't guarantee it; and further that we don't know if you need to try that hard to make sure everything is as close to the same for everyone as possible. Often, we set up possible pantheons for a new game based on them all having only a single Virtue in common, or being in a particular cultural group in spite of their Virtue spreads, and those approaches can and have worked, too.

Edit: In case it might be helpful for some, here's a quick chart of who's got Virtues in common.

Pantheon	Three Virtues in Common	Two Virtues in Common	One Virtue in Common	No Virtues in Common
Aesir	Nemetondevos	Alihah, K'uh, Orisha, Teotl, Tuatha	Anunna, Apu, Atua, Deva, Elohim, Kami, Theoi, Yazata	Bogovi, Netjer, Shen
Alihah	None	Aesir, Atua, Elohim, Orisha, Theoi, Tuatha	Anunna, Apu, Bogovi, Deva, Kami, Nemetondevos, Netjer, Yazata	K'uh, Shen, Teotl
Anunna	Elohim, Netjer	Apu, Bogovi, K'uh, Orisha, Teotl, Tuatha, Yazata	Aesir, Alihah, Apu, Nemetondevos	Deva, Kami, Shen, Theoi
Apu	None	Bogovi, Deva, Kami, K'uh, Netjer, Shen, Teotl	Aesir, Alihah, Anunna, Atua, Nemetondevos, Orisha, Yazata	Elohim, Theoi, Tuatha
Atua	Elohim	Anunna, Bogovi, Orisha, Teotl, Tuatha	Aesir, Alihah, Apu, Kami, K'uh, Nemetondevos, Shen, Theoi	Deva, Yazata
Bogovi	Netjer	Apu, Atua, Deva, Elohim	Alihah, Anunna, Kami, K'uh, Shen, Teotl, Tuatha, Yazata	Aesir, Nemetondevos, Orisha, Theoi
Deva	None	Bogovi, Kami, Netjer, Shen	Aesir, Alihah, Anunna, Apu, Elohim, K'uh, Theoi, Tuatha, Yazata	Atua, Nemetondevos, Orisha, Teotl
Elohim	Anunna, Atua	Alihah, Netjer, Orisha, Tuatha	Aesir, Bogovi, Deva, K'uh, Nemetondevos, Teotl, Theoi	Apu, Kami, Shen, Yazata
Kami	Shen	Apu, Deva, Nemetondevos, Theoi	Aesir, Alihah, Atua, Bogovi, Teotl, Tuatha, Yazata	Anunna, Elohim, K'uh, Netjer, Orisha
K'uh	Teotl	Aesir, Anunna, Apu, Bogovi, Nemetondevos, Netjer, Orisha	Atua, Deva, Elohim, Shen, Tuatha, Yazata	Alihah, Kami, Theoi
Nemetondevos	Aesir	Kami, K'uh, Teotl	Alihah, Anunna, Apu, Atua, Orisha, Shen, Theoi, Tuatha, Yazata	Bogovi, Deva, Netjer
Netjer	Anunna, Bogovi	Apu, Deva, Elohim, Yazata	Alihah, Atua, Kami, K'uh, Orisha, Shen, Teotl, Tuatha	Aesir, Nemetondevos, Theoi
Orisha	None	Aesir, Alihah, Anunna, Atua, Elohim, K'uh, Teotl, Theoi, Tuatha, Yazata	Apu, Nemetondevos, Netjer	Bogovi, Deva, Kami, Shen
Shen	Kami	Apu, Bogovi, Deva, Theoi	Atua, K'uh, Nemetondevos, Netjer, Teotl, Tuatha, Yazata	Aesir, Alihah, Anunna, Orisha
Teotl	K'uh	Aesir, Anunna, Apu, Atua, Nemetondevos, Orisha	Bogovi, Elohim, Kami, Netjer, Shen, Tuatha, Yazata	Alihah, Deva, Theoi
Theoi	None	Alihah, Kami, Orisha, Shen, Tuatha, Yazata	Aesir, Atua, Deva, Elohim, Nemetondevos	Anunna, Apu, Bogovi, K'uh, Netjer, Teotl
Tuatha	None	Aesir, Alihah, Anunna, Atua, Orisha, Theoi	Bogovi, Deva, Elohim, Kami, K'uh, Nemetondevos, Netjer, Shen, Teotl, Yazata	Apu
Yazata	None	Anunna, Netjer, Orisha, Theoi	Aesir, Alihah, Apu, Bogovi, Deva, Elohim, Kami, K'uh, Nemetondevos, Shen, Teotl, Tuatha	Atua