Extreme Sportsmanship

Question: My game is just a parade of one Virtue Extremity to the next because four characters have Vengeance, two have Order, and two have Valor. They all trigger off each other and nobody can keep up with the loss of Willpower. How do I get my game back on track?

Good old Virtue conflicts. Our beginning advice is to sit down and talk to the players out of character.

You’re definitely feeling that everything’s a disaster all the time, but do the other players and/or Storyteller feel that way? Are they also frustrated by the constant Virtue Extremities or feeling like they can’t get anything done, or are they having a good time and loving the dramatic sparks flying as their personalities clash? If you’re the Storyteller and all your players are having a great time, it might not be broke and you may not have to fix it.

But it sounds like you’re having a lot of frustration and problems and it probably is broke, or it might be a little of column A and a little of column B, and it could use less column B. So, let’s look at how to fix it in-game, and how to fix it out-of-game.

The in-game fixes are easy – so easy, in fact, that you guys probably already know about and use them. Stunting can, of course, get you back Willpower, although it’s never 100% sure since different Storytellers give out two-die stunts on different criteria. Charisma knacks like Blessing of Importance and BFF are the star Willpower-returners, along with runners-up Believe Your Own Press and a few scattered knacks in other Attributes like Appearance’s Lasting Impression. Several boons also allow you to get some Willpower passed around, including Crescent Glow in Moon and several of the higher-level Sun boons. And, if you’re lucky enough to have a Moon-oriented Scion, Mirror of Lunacy is straight-up designed to prevent Extremities from running rampant. This doesn’t mean that your whole group has to invest in a bunch of powers they aren’t statted for, but if your characters inside the game itself are occasionally realizing, “Hey, Jimmy seems to go crazy a lot,” they might decide to prepare for that situation by boning up on their Charisma. It’s not a permanent solution, but other “crowd control” powers that can temporarily distract or incapacitate an Extremitying Scion can also help mitigate the problem, and at least give everyone else time to figure out how to contain the problem child or move him somewhere that he won’t hurt too many people.

Normally, though, when we’re having a higher percentage of unhandled Extremity craziness in our groups, we like to take a second to remind the players out of character about how these things work. Remind them that people are going to freak out when they do certain things, and that by now that should not be a surprise; if you know you have people with you who have Valor, then you know you run the risk of triggering them if you perform too many backstabs near them, and if you know you have people with you who have Order, you know better than to think you can break a bunch of laws and they’ll never have a shrieking fit over it. This absolutely doesn’t mean that you can’t do things that trigger one another; a Scion’s gotta do what a Scion’s gotta do, and often your own Virtues would get upset if you didn’t. But it does mean that since you know you may cause problems, you can actively try to avoid those things. You know you’ve got a Valor guy, so make sure you distract him when you do something underhanded, or sneak off to somewhere he won’t find out what you did. You know you’ve got a Vengeance guy, so throw up a smokescreen and keep him from seeing the object of his hatred if you don’t have time for him to go bananas right now. You know you’ve got an Order girl, so wait until she leaves the room before you start shoplifting.

Virtues are inconvenient and they often fight among themselves, but it’s key that you remember what Virtues your bandmates have and act accordingly. You may not know their exact spread or exact dots, but if you’ve been stuck in constantly-triggering Extremity hell for a while, you definitely know some things that will touch them off. Hide those things. Lie about those things. Do those things when they’re not around. Leave before you do those things. Use powers to cover up those things. You don’t need to necessarily buy a lot of sneakin’ stats for these things, either; a lot of the time, it’s just about the timing. If you know you’re going to stab a guy to death, for goodness sake, send the Valor people down the street for milk first or something.

This won’t work all the time; sometimes they won’t miss what you’re up to, or sometimes you’ll get away with it but they’ll find out later and still freak out. Sometimes your plan was flawless but they happen to innocently ask something about it at just the wrong moment and you’re a bad liar. But it certainly helps some, and that’s usually enough to take the pressure off so that the majority of the time your Willpower-producers can handle the rest.

You will still trigger one another sometimes. That’s just the breaks of being in a band. But if your character knows that can happen and takes steps to avoid it, you should be able to deal with it without resorting to frothing attack fits all the time, and trust us, those other players will probably often appreciate being kept in the dark rather than constantly pushed over the edge into murder territory.

Can't Live With Them...

Question: My character has Vengeance and Loyalty. Someone got on both lists, so is there a way to drop that person from one of them or am I doomed to be a walking, talking Virtue Extremity?

You are doomed. Virtues are not convenient things; it sucks for there to be someone who makes you so insanely angry you must act against them, but who is also your family member/bosom friend/wartime comrade/someone you owe, but that doesn't mean you get to weasel out of one of those things. It is a part of your divine personality to take care of those you're loyal to and back them up no matter what, and it's also a part of your personality to smite people who have done you wrong, and neither of those things will stop being true. You're about to ride a very sad train.

However, that doesn't mean you're unable to do anything ever again, or that you'll spend your life in shrieking Extremity all the time. As with all Virtues, if you want to act against them you're going to have to dedicate some Willpower, so find ways to make sure you're as juiced up on it as you can be if you're going to have to be around this person a lot (I assume they're in your band or something from the question, but if not, also avoid the shit out of them when you can!). If that other person is a player, they can also get Willpower-granting powers to help you not go bananas on them, and if they really want to be proactive (possibly because they fear your vengeful rage), they might be able to invest in powers to trick or misdirect you so that your Virtues never activate, such as only appearing in disguise as someone you don't hate.

Of course, the really balls-to-the-wall heroic Scion thing to do is to not fight those Virtues all the time. You're not really meant to; do it too long, and you'll eventually Extremity and they'll take over whether you want them to or not, right? You have two options here: you can try to satisfy both of them when you can, or you can commit fully to one and tell the other to go to hell. If you try to satisfy both Virtues, you'll play a constant dangerous game of deciding which is more dangerous, which you can afford to indulge right now and how much Willpower you have to cover it; generally speaking, following one will almost always trigger the other, so choose your battles wisely. If you commit to one completely, you'll be saying that either this person's transgression against you is so great that they have to pay no matter who they are, or that your loyalty to them can't be broken even by whatever they did and you'll have to swallow the anger down. You'll probably want to choose the one you have the most dots in to commit to, since it has both a stronger hold on your Scion's personality and will prevent you from having to roll the higher one and thus risk Extremity more, but it's a roleplaying decision that only you can make. Once you do that, do it to the hilt: go all out to murder or bring this person to ruin, or righteously defend this person from all ills and dangers and suffer in silence. Choosing one of the Virtues to follow is easier in that it doesn't involve all the balancing and considering of trying to play both of them, but it also means that there will be a lot of times you hate what's happening and simply have to ride that feeling out.

If you're still a pre-God-level Scion, you can also try to lose one of those Virtues completely, thus preventing you from having to follow its dictates. The Shape the Soul boon in Magic allows a high-level magician to rewrite your Virtues, potentially changing them to new ones; however, you might have a hard time finding a magician god who A) feels like doing that for you and won't feel any conflict with his Virtues, B) is accessible and willing to pay for it, and C) you can convince or give something he cares about to get him to do it. That's a pretty tall order, more so the lower in Legend you are, but technically possible. You could also try to find relics or artifacts that might affect your Virtues, such as Kebauet's waterfall in Duat, which are few and far between but definitely do exist. Figuring out what those things are and where to find them will be a task in and of itself, possibly one requiring Mystery or tracking down other people who have secret knowledge, and your Storyteller will be the final arbiter of where those things are and whether it's feasible for you to go after one. And if you want to play the most dangerous game, you can try hanging out with a Titan Avatar or its servants long enough to get one of your Virtues replaced with a Dark Virtue; you have a 50% chance of losing either Loyalty or Vengeance that way, but of course also the massive downside of fraternizing with a dangerous enemy and ending up with a Dark Virtue that is probably even more problematic than your original one.

Actually, having a single person who activates both your Loyalty and Vengeance is a pretty fantastic roleplaying tool, no matter how you try to handle it; you're a divine hero trying to do whatever you think is right or good or pragmatic in your fight to aid the gods, and here's this person who you both love and hate, who you have to deal with but who drives you to distraction. That's a perfect recipe for heroic saga and inner conflict, and your story sure as hell will be interesting and emotionally charged. Those Virtues are maneuvering you to become part of a classic tale, one that only you will choose your role in, and that's what Scion is all about.

Rolling in the Deep

Question: Are you required to spend Legend to resist social powers if you are in Virtue Extremity or Riastrad?

Well... I'm slightly confused about the spending Legend portion of your question, because normal resistance rolls don't involve spending anything; they use a power, you roll, you see who got higher. But maybe you're referring to the resistance knacks (Crazy Like a Fox, Disorienting Countenance, Parapet of the Mind), which do have a Legend cost associated?

Resistance rolls work exactly the same as they normally would when you're in Virtue Extremity; if someone tries to use their magical mojo on you, you automatically roll Willpower + Integrity + Legend and need to pay for your knacks if you want to try to apply them to the situation. The Virtue Extremity itself doesn't afford you any special extra resistances or anything, so it's totally possible for people to force you around in various ways while you're under its effects. That doesn't mean that they can shut off or circumvent the Extremity, however (only Mirror of Lunacy can do that), only that they can use the knacks while you're freaking out. That means that you will still be in Virtue Extremity if someone Overt Orders you to do something; you'll likely immediately go back to whatever you were doing as soon as its effects end or spaz out in an even more spectacular manner as soon as you can, but the power did work as normal.

Much to the deeply detrimental amusement of us Storytellers, that means that well-meaning bandmates can often trigger extra Virtue Extremities on top of you by trying to prevent you from acting on your current one. To use a real-world example, if Eztli and Sowiljr encounter a giant monster that he doesn't want to fight because they're in a hurry to go elsewhere, he might order her to leave it alone, forcing both of them to roll their Courage. Sowiljr fails the roll and is good to go - he has more important things to do than punch sea serpents all day! - but Eztli succeeds and hits the Berserker Fury Extremity, hurling herself at the monster in spite of his protests. If Sowiljr then tries to get in her way to stop her and gets a bone-shattering shot to the face, the fact that Eztli is already in one Virtue Extremity won't prevent her other Virtues from rioting over this misbehavior, so now she also has to roll her Conviction and Duty. If she succeeds on those rolls, too, she'll go into Morbid Self-Sacrifice Extremity as soon as her Berserker Fury is over, and then Fanatic Zeal immediately thereafter. We usually call this being stuck in "rolling Extremity", where the PC immediately rolls over from one kind of insanity into another as they process all the horrible shit they've dealt with lately. (The exception to this is the Extremity you're already in; if you went into Expression Extremity this scene because a painting was destroyed, and then someone also burns a bunch of priceless drawings in your immediate vicinity, you won't have to roll your Expression again. You're already busy freaking out about that.)

Rolling Extremity, as you might imagine, sucks a lot and is very dangerous to the continued survival and sanity of both the PC having the problem and everyone around them. It doesn't happen very often, and although a character can do it to himself, it's more often the result of his bandmates trying to pull off some damage control that misfires. That doesn't mean you can't try to perform damage control when you have an Extremitying friend on your hands, of course - just that, like all other times in the games, you should be aware of your bandmates' Virtues and the fact that you might cause a meltdown if you blatantly oppose them too much. And give them Willpower if you can.

By the way, since we're talking about social powers and Virtue Extremity, it's also worthwhile to point out that we make sure that no social knack gets to just shut down an Extremity and render it useless. For example, if in the above scenario Sowiljr responds to getting his face broken by using Compelling Presence to stop Eztli in her tracks, that'll work just fine, but he can't just sit around for the rest of the scene and expect her to be normal again when she snaps out of it. That's a pretty obvious bending of the knack's intent, and since Eztli is effectively in a sort of timestop, where she can't do or see or think anything but Sowiljr, she'll come out of the Compelling Presence with exactly as much Virtue Extremity left to get through as she had when she went in. Thanks to the memory-erasing effects of the knacks, she may not even remember why she's so upset, but she still will be. Virtue Extremities are a big deal and a serious moment of crisis for a character, and anyone who doesn't have direct control over insanity (i.e., people with Moon high enough) is helpless to stop it.

Riastrad has specific clauses involved in its writeup, so it's a special case that doesn't always follow the rules of other Virtue Extremities. Because it drops your positive Appearance to zero, your Bedazzling Image and Disorienting Countenance may be totally useless to you now, but on the other hand if you have negative Appearance you'll gain a dot, so you may be better than ever before. Where normal Virtue Extremities can't be talked down by unpowered use of plain old stats, Riastrad has a clause that allows others to make an extended Charisma + Presence roll to try to bring you out of it. Riastrad tends to hemorrhage Legend like nobody's business, but if you have some left over, there's no reason you can't spend it on resistance knacks if you want to. (Unless you put Army of One on your Riastrad, in which case knack usage is off-limits to you as it is to everyone with that boon active.)

Basically, there's no difference in the mechanics of resisting powers than there always is; the only difference is that you're batshit crazy at the moment, so you might respond to those powers differently or react after they've been triggered more strongly than at other times. That's up to individual players' roleplaying and the Storyteller's call, though, so, as with any time Scions have lost their minds, anything could happen.

Forced Hand

Question: Someone just forced you to do something with a social power! Do you roll your Virtues to resist taking that action? Do you roll your Virtues to determine how much willpower you have to spend to take that action?

The second!

If someone forces you to take an action, you're taking that action. It sucks, but it's true. If you could have avoided doing it, you already would have with your resistance roll. Now that you're doing it, you have to deal with the consequences, and that includes the effects of that action on your Virtue.

When you're forced into an action by a social power, you'll roll your Virtues just as if you had taken that action on purpose. That means that you have to roll your Valor if someone Overt Orders you into stabbing a small child, and you have to roll your Loyalty if someone uses Filibuster to prevent you from going to rescue your friends, and so on and so forth. Your Virtue is just as outraged by what you're doing as it would be at any other time; it doesn't care if someone else made you contravene your Order, just that you are contravening it and that shit isn't okay. (Incidentally, this is true any time you go against one of your Virtues, no matter what forces you to do it - not just social powers but also being physically tied down, making a decision for the greater good that still feels super wrong to one of your Virtues, being blackmailed or anything else.)

After that, you deal with the Virtue as normal; you roll it, check to see if you Extremitied, and if you didn't spend the appropriate amount of Willpower to deal with your rampagingly angry personal ethics.

There are a few powers that explicitly state that you can attempt to resist acting against your Virtues under their influence, like Instant Hypnosis, but if a power doesn't say you get a shot at resisting on the basis of your Virtues, you don't. Most heroic people who are forced into nastiness by their enemies (or backstabbing friends) have to just deal with the matter and suffer the resulting emotional meltdown, and your Scion is no different.

The Virtuoso

Question: Could you explain Virtues? What do they do, and most importantly when you have to roll for Extremity?

We knew this question was coming because of comments on other posts, but damn, it is a big and meaty one. This is maybe something that should actually get a page in our House Rules section someday, the same as Natures, but for now we'll do a quick and moderately thorough run through it.

Virtues are the manifestation of the most strongly-held and important values of your pantheon (and, by extension, the ancient culture that worshiped them). When you become a Scion, you gain these Virtues as soon as your divine blood awakens in your veins, connecting you to the morals of your pantheon as well as their powers; if you come from a pantheon that cherishes courageous charging into the breach and refusal to back down in the face of overwhelming power, you'll have some Courage, or if you come from a pantheon that believes that the rule of law and government is all that keeps the world from plunging into chaotic despair, you'll have some Order. Some Scions have slightly different Virtues from their pantheon, but the more different their values, the more difficult it is to access that pantheon's secret powers (so their PSP costs more XP to buy).

There are twelve core Virtues: Conviction, Courage, Duty, Endurance, Expression, Harmony, Intellect, Loyalty, Order, Piety, Valor and Vengeance. Each Virtue a Scion (or god) possesses shapes what they do, how they react to events and what their divine personality will eventually become. It would take longer than we have today to talk about all the minutiae of what they do, but here's a quick bulleted list of what it means to have one of these Virtues and what happens when you try to act against them.

• Conviction. A pantheon with Conviction stands behind their beliefs, no matter what the cost or how compelling the argument against them. A Scion with Conviction knows certain truths about the world and himself and will always support them, regardless of the cost to himself. Conviction is the Virtue you see most often in action for people who believe zealously in a religion, support a political cause or are dedicated to a certain ideal above all others. To illustrate this mechanically, we ask Scions with Conviction to keep a list of the things that are their beliefs that Conviction applies to, which range anywhere from selfish (Shadan, who has "always get something out of every situation" as one of his convictions) to the antagonistic (Eztli, who has "Norsemen are evil and should be destroyed" as one of her convictions) to the noble and lofty (Faruza, who has "truth may never be hidden" as one of her convictions). Characters who attempt any action (or inaction - standing by can be just as bad, depending on the belief in question) against one of their Convictions must roll that Virtue; if they get too many successes or can't afford the Willpower to fight it, they enter Virtue Extremity and become insane zealots, mortified by their failure to uphold their beliefs and determined to do so at all costs. Note for STs: Some players aren't sure what their character's convictions are, especially at the beginning of the game, or try to game the system by having very few or very narrow ones. In those cases, keep your own list of their beliefs, based on what they do in roleplaying and what they claim happened in their backstories, and make them roll according to that. If they complain, help explain to them what Conviction is about again.
• Courage. A pantheon with Courage is utterly fearless and prizes individual bravery above all things, rewarding moxy and severely punishing or abhorring anything they perceive as cowardice. A Scion with Courage never shies away from danger, avoids problems or lets someone else take point in order to stay safer herself. Courage is the Virtue you most often see in action for berserker soldiers, protesters who refuse to move when they are punished for their actions or scientists throwing themselves into toxic environments to finish their experiments. Courage is pretty easy to run from a Storyteller's standpoint; if there are dangerous monsters, the lady with Courage needs to fight them, and if a player ever says "Let's not do that because it's dangerous/there's a safer way/I'm afraid X might happen", remind them that they're directly acting against their Courage to not dive in headfirst. Characters who attempt to avoid taking courageous actions or who display cowardice in any way may hit Virtue Extremity and become ravening, insane berserkers, hurling themselves at everything and anything in their paths, determined to make up for their failure by destroying any potential challenge near them. Note for STs: Courage is very straightforward; it doesn't care whether something is a good idea, only if it's a dangerous one. Players are prone to arguing that they shouldn't have to do things that might get them killed, but that's a good time to remind them that that's the exact opposite of Courage. If you're worrying about getting killed, you're doing Courage wrong.
• Duty. A pantheon with Duty is utterly dedicated to the idea that each individual has personal responsibilities that they must fulfill, no matter what the odds arrayed against them, for the greater good. A Scion with Duty has a job to do and does it until the bitter end, always follows through on things that are required of her and never tries to pass her duties off to someone else or do only the bare minimum to get by. Duty is the Virtue you most often see in action when a captain goes down with the ship, a bodyguard takes a bullet or a spy who knows she's about to be discovered manages to get a last desperate message home to her superiors. Characters with Duty can't disobey orders, be lazy or slapdash in their responsibilities, put their own desires before their duties or make decisions to follow a course other than the one they know they're supposed to be working toward. If they do any of those things and enter Virtue Extremity, they become self-destructive psychopaths who pursue completing their duties so stringently and exclusively that they can and will immolate themselves in the process, and if they succeed will turn to doing the same thing with their next responsibility. Note for STs: While we don't do a full list for Duty the way we do for Conviction and Vengeance, you'll still need to know what a character considers her duty to know when you should make her roll. Some are easy - instructions from divine parents or the Scion's pantheon, for example, or things that she's told to do by commanders or employers - but others may be more freeform, such as Eztli's belief that it is her Duty to defend her husband because her society would require it of her. If you're having trouble knowing what a character considers her Duty, a list can't hurt.
• Endurance. A pantheon with Endurance believes that stoicism, steadfastness and unmoving dedication are among the most important ideas in the universe. A Scion with Endurance eschews meaningless pleasures, refuses to rest and weathers even the most difficult situations with the stony indifference of a mountainside. Endurance is the Virtue you most often see in action for holy men who fast and meditate for decades at a time, exhausted travelers who forge on on their hands and knees if they have to until they reach their destination, or torture victims who remain tight-lipped and uncommunicative no matter what horrors are visited on them. From a mechanical perspective, we often make players roll against their Endurance if they're trying to rest (including sleeping to heal wounds), wait around or become idle for any reason at any time, or refuse to do something because they think it might take too long or be too difficult. Characters who attempt to rest or ease their ways too much may hit Virtue Extremity and become psychotically obsessed with their own ability to endure, dedicating themselves to finding the most painful and difficult ways to accomplish the task at hand and then performing them until they drop. Note for STs: Endurance is a big pain in the ass, especially for Heroes who sometimes really need to spend a night at a hotel to recover for the next day, but that's what the player's signing up for. Remind them that this isn't just weird insomnia; it's their need to be doing something, to be productive and active, like a genius scientist who only sleeps two hours a day to have more time to work on experiments or a supplier who knows he's ahead of schedule but still won't take a break in the name of getting those shipments there even one hour earlier.
• Expression. A pantheon with Expression values the creation, expression and presentation of the individual self, whether it's through passionate discussion or moving artwork. A Scion with Expression never holds back her true thoughts, appreciates the expressions of others no matter what they might contain and fights against censorship wherever she encounters it. Expression is the Virtue you most often see in action for street artists who make their mark in spite of the possible consequences, curators who collect and display art in all its forms or dissidents who stand up and speak out no matter how dangerous or inconvenient doing so might be. Scions have to roll their Expression any time they want to stifle someone else's form of expression, let someone else tell a story or explain something instead of themselves, destroy or damage any kind of artwork or fail to find a way around someone trying to silence them. If they do and hit Virtue Extremity, they become slaves to their insane need to create, finding ways to build and express as loudly and shockingly as possible, forcing everyone to pay attention to what they're doing and be shocked and affected by what they see. Note for STs: Expression's easy to forget about, but characters that have it need to be front and center, always expressing themselves, and they can never accept censorship or quiet retiring avoidance without upsetting their Virtue. Also keep in mind that any Scions doing large-scale property damage may have problems if any art, architecture or promising artists or speakers are damaged or in danger.
• Harmony. A pantheon with Harmony believes in the incredible importance of the balance of the universe, where everything must complement, oppose and support the rest of its environment or risk disastrous consequences. A Scion with Harmony preserves balance, fosters equality and never allows anything that threatens this delicate balancing act or might irrevocably change the natural order. Harmony is the Virtue you most often see in action for environmental conservationists, human rights activists and negotiating moderators who try to find a solution that helps both parties in need and society as a whole. We require Scions to roll their Harmony whenever anything seriously threatens or damages the natural balance, which includes when they don't work to prevent or alleviate environmental hazards such as pollution, extinction or deforestation, when they allow serious imbalances of human society such as slavery or cannibalism, or when they allow the divine to intrude too much into the world of the mortal or vice versa, most obviously by failing to remove Titanspawn who are loose in the World. If they hit Virtue Extremity, they become fanatically dedicated psychopaths who will do anything - including murdering, taking hostages or giving up their own lives - to make sure that whatever dangers to cosmic harmony are present are worked against and defeated. Note for STs: Worldly environmental concerns are easy, but the balance between mortal and divine is also a major issue for Scions. It's not good for the World to have divine or Titanic things in it too much, so Scions with Harmony need to prevent that from happening, and conversely mortals were never meant for the worlds of the divine and need to be kept away from them. When someone has the brilliant idea of just moving their entire mortal worshiper population to their Sanctum, it's always the person with Harmony who flips their shit and shuts that retirement plan down.
• Intellect. A pantheon with Intellect prizes intelligence, deep thinking, teaching and enlightenment, as well as making sure that all people have access to these things. A Scion with Intellect needs to learn and then share what she learns with others, and can't abide the destruction of knowledge or the willful continuance of ignorance. Intellect is the Virtue you most often see in action when teachers provide knowledge to others, preservationists prevent the loss of ancient knowledge and artifacts or enthusiastic students travel to faraway locations to find those elusive secrets. People with Intellect will run into problems if they fail to correct misinformation or stupidity in others around them, if they withhold information or enlightenment for any reason, if they allow knowledge to be destroyed or obscured or if they pass up opportunities to learn. If they do Virtue Extremity over one of those things, they become incapable of doing anything but analyzing and sorting through information and knowledge, unable to make any decisions or come up with any coherent ideas from the overload of internal thought. Note for STs: Intellect Extremity is the only one that is not active and does not involve a Scion doing something - rather, it prevents them from doing anything. If the asymmetry bothers you, consider instead having Extremity do something similar to the other Virtues, causing Scions to go batshit and start pursuing knowledge, forcing others to learn and trailing destruction as they do so.
• Loyalty. A pantheon with Loyalty believes in the importance of comradeship and brotherhood as some of the highest and most admirable ideals in the universe. A Scion with Loyalty always has his friends' backs, never leaves a man behind and will go to the ends of the earth to help someone she respects. Loyalty is the Virtue you most often see in action when someone lets himself be used as the fall guy to keep a friend out of trouble, leaves home and family to help a friend in need or shields a comrade with her own body. Having Loyalty means never letting a comrade be hurt on your watch, always coming to their aid no matter how bad the situation or how much it's their fault, and never turning your back on them if they need something, even if it's painful for you personally. If a Scion with Loyalty goes into Virtue Extremity, he immediately becomes slavishly and uncontestedly loyal to his comrades, doing anything and everything they tell him to without complaint, incapable of refusing or arguing so long as he can do what is asked of him. Note for STs: This is one of the Virtues that players most often try to fudge, usually with some variation on "I don't like that guy, so I don't have to apply my Loyalty to him." You can have them keep a list of people Loyalty applies to if you want to, but the easy rule of thumb is that Loyalty should be active for A) anyone in their pantheon, B) any family member, and C) their bandmates, as well as anyone else they choose. Unless they have a good reason not to include that person - i.e., they have Vengeance or Conviction against a specific person - those categories should usually activate Loyalty. Loyalty doesn't care if the person is being a little shit right now or even actively campaigning against you; their bad behavior doesn't ever excuse you trying to turn on them or ignore them when they're in need.
• Order. A pantheon with Order upholds law, reason and the rule of authority over society, believing that there is a divine order to the universe that must be followed to avoid the destructive influence of Chaos. A Scion with Order follows laws, upholds authority, prevents crime and respects the chain of command, believing that the system is ultimately good and works to better the world. Order is the Virtue you most often see in action when vigilantes go out of their way to bring criminals to justice, the innocently accused go to trial knowing that they will be acquitted or those who know they have done wrong willingly accept the punishment bestowed on them. When Scions have Order, they find it difficult to disobey instructions from authority figures, break any laws (including stealing things, killing people, jaywalking or freeing slaves in societies where they're legal) or refuse to support a society's customs and laws, whether or not they agree with them. If they do go into Virtue Extremity, they will seek out, turn in and punish lawbreakers (including themselves) at any cost, becoming unstoppable vigilantes with zero tolerance. Note for STs: Order doesn't distinguish between the severity of a crime; all crimes are equally bad and unacceptable, so Scions are going to need to roll against their Order to allow littering or noise pollution as well as murder or assault. Order also applies to the actual law in the place that you happen to be, so the fact that something that isn't illegal at home doesn't mean that your Order can ignore it if it's illegal where it's happening right now. Scions get a pass if they don't realize something is illegal when it happens, but they'll still have to roll if they later discover it was illegal and fail to bring the perpetrator to justice, or wilfully avoid learning local laws for the express purpose of not knowing the rules. Also keep in mind that Order cares about the letter of the law, not the spirit; if you let someone off because you think they have extenuating circumstances or were screwed by an unfair law, you'll still need to roll your Order.
• Piety. A pantheon with Piety believes in their own importance as paramount - they are the most powerful, worthy and pivotal beings in the universe and they expect the respect due to them as a result. A Scion with Piety believes utterly in her pantheon and obeys its dictates and those of its individual gods without question, as well as spreading the respect and worship of them as far as he can. Piety is the Virtue you most often see in action when missionaries go into dangerous territory to preach their religion to new peoples, heroes commit atrocities they would normally abhor in order to make sure their pantheon is victorious or true believers allow themselves to be destroyed rather than recanting their beliefs. If a Scion doesn't do what he knows his pantheon wants, fails to tell others who don't know about them about all their glorious awesomeness, allows others to be misinformed or disrespectful of the gods of his pantheon or gives any other pantheon or religion more props, he's likely to trigger a Piety roll on himself. And if that Piety roll causes him to go into Virtue Extremity, he becomes so dedicated to his pantheon that he refuses to use his obviously superior talents for anyone else, leaving mortals, unbelievers and members of other pantheons to fend for themselves, even if they die. Note for STs: Piety is a directed Virtue, which means that it applies to a specific group of people, in this case your pantheon. If a Scion gains Piety during play from some source other than their pantheon - the Bogovi are critical offenders here - then that Piety is likely to be pointed toward the source they got it from, not their pantheon. Having Piety for a pantheon other than your own often leads to complicated and messy situations, but it can happen. For those having trouble differentiating Piety from Loyalty, think of Loyalty as supporting individuals to whom you are loyal, while Piety is supporting a group and religion to which you are faithful; they can overlap but don't always have to.
• Valor. A pantheon with Valor believes in fair play, even odds, protection of the weak and the glory that can only come from surmounting a true and equal challenge. A Scion with Valor never allows the weak to be overpowered by the strong, fights only under fair and equal circumstances and refuses to compromise her honor even when overwhelming odds are stacked against her. Valor is the Virtue you most often see in action when a fighter challenges an opponent to single combat, a policeman draws a criminal's fire to redirect him away from innocents or a referee enforces a handicap on an opponent with an unfair advantage. Valor rolls are triggered whenever a Scion cheats in a fight or backstabs someone from concealment, tries to walk away from a glorious combat, allows the abuse of the weak at the hands of the strong or kicks someone when they're down. If she goes into Virtue Extremity, she is so overcome by her dishonorable actions that she determines to wipe them away by fighting the first opponent of equal or greater strength she sees, and either defeating them in honorable combat or dying in the attempt. Note for STs: Valor not only governs the actions of the Scions that have it, it also causes them to try to force others in their band to follow its dictates. This means that a lot of strategies - killing an unconscious or paralyzed opponent, sneak attacking or attacking with greater numbers - will offend a Valorous Scion's sensibilities and consequently not work most of the time since they'll need to either sabotage them or risk going crazy. It doesn't matter how pragmatic or effective a strategy is; if it's not honorable straight-up combat, Valor's not okay with it. In mechanical terms, a higher-Legend person fighting a lower-Legend one is not a fair match even if it's single combat, nor are equal-Legend opponents evenly matched if one is a combat powerhouse and the other fragile, ill-equipped or already heavily injured. Several lower-Legend opponents on a single higher-Legend one can be a fair fight; use your judgment about what constitutes a fair matchup.
• Vengeance. A pantheon with Vengeance is dedicated to avenging any slight or injury done to them, exacting furious and instant justice against those who anger them. A Scion with Vengeance never forgets and never forgives, never lets a wrong against him go unredressed and refuses to lay a feud to rest until the bitter end. Vengeance is the Virtue you most often see in action when a dictator throws caution to the winds to keep attacking a hated enemy he's losing against, a scorned lover absconds with all his paramours worldly goods or a victim of assault hunts down his attacker and sells him out to a mob boss. Like people with Conviction, we require people with Vengeance to keep a list of those they most despise, and they can't pass up an opportunity to strike against them in some way whenever they have the chance, never showing mercy and always making sure they pay many times over for whatever they once did to anger them. If they fail to do this and go into Virtue Extremity, they immediately stop doing anything but trying to absolutely ruin the people they've sworn vengeance against, going to any lengths and refusing to focus on anything else to make sure that person gets what's coming to them. Note for STs: Like Conviction, Vengeance is a Virtue players try to cheat by putting as few people or groups of people on their list as possible, so make sure to call them out and make them include people who have committed serious sins against them (assaulted them, stolen their relics, utterly humiliated them in front of gods and so on), although they can occasionally let lesser sins slide by, particularly if they do something at the time to make sure their displeasure is known. Anyone a Scion channels their Vengeance against (whether in an attack, damage, attempt to use a power on, whatever) is automatically added to the Vengeance list. Also note that groups of people - for example, "fire giants" or "police officers" - are also fair game for Vengeance, and Scions should have some of these involved after a while, too. The best rule of thumb is that if an individual person is important, they can go on the Vengeance list singly; if they're not or they only represent some larger power, the group they belong to should go on the list instead.

That was the short version, you guys.

Hopefully that gives a pretty good, if not totally complete, vision of how Virtues work and what they do within a game. The flip side of Virtues is of course Virtue channeling - using your limited number of times per story you can call on the power of your Virtue to bolster a roll you make to perform an action. In those cases, you have to be able to justify to the Storyteller why you're using that Virtue right now; for example, if you're trying to build a robot and need to add to your roll, you might channel Expression because you're creating something new and amazing, Endurance because you're continuing to labor over a long and exhausting project or Duty if it's something you know your people need, but Harmony probably wouldn't be a good fit if the machine doesn't have anything in particular to do with aiding the natural balance of the universe. If you can overcome a Virtue for a scene - either by not rolling any successes on it or by paying Willpower to steel yourself against it temporarily - you can do things you normally wouldn't be able to, but you also still can't channel it against things that are inappropriate for it.

Virtues and their Extremities are a brilliant addition to the original Scion line because they are constantly evident in the stories of the gods and heroes of Legend; they charge into battle with roaring Courage, demand fair fights with honorable Valor, enforce divine justice with uncompromising Order or absolutely wreck their opponents' lives with destructive Vengeance. Scions are those same heroes and will become those same gods, and they have within them the potential to occasionally resist those values when they must, follow them when they can and go berserk about them if they're pushed too far. It's an awesome system and definitely one of our favorite things Scion does to tie modern heroes to the ancient epics.

I'm tired of typing now, but if you have questions about Virtues, hit us in the comments. Because whether or not a Virtue is rolled against for Extremity or appropriate for a channel is up to the final decision of the Storyteller, there will be variation in how different Virtues appear across different games, but we're happy to talk about generalizations anyway.

Too Many Feels

On today's vlog, John and Anne talk about how they love ruining (imaginary) peoples' lives in the service of mythic storytelling.

Question: Why do you keep Virtue Extremities? Every time I have ever seen a Virtue Extremity in a game, it completely wrecks everything and makes us just knock that character out.

Having just enjoyed a double-whammy Duty and Intellect Extremity Combo in last night's game, we thought now was an excellent time to talk about the subject.