The Wide, Wonderful World

It's vlog time! Today's subject is general cosmological goodness, including questions about Titans, god interactions and the general rules of the universe.

Question: Do Scions identify cross pantheon by role? Do all the creator gods hang out and compare notes (or one up each other or just try and make the best bear, whatever)? Do all the fire gods get together and talk about who has the best volcanoes? Do all the psychopomps get together and complain about all the ungrateful mortals? Do the prophetic deities get together at the foretold times and talk about the subjects that they foresaw themselves talking about?

Question: How does each pantheon view masculinity and femininity? If that's a bit too much ground to cover, I'm particularly interested in how the Aesir, the Tuatha De Dannan and the Bogovi view masculinity and femininity.

Question: What gods (or kinds of gods) do you think would be most proud (if at all) of their children breaking off for a new pantheon? What gods would be least ok with it?

Question: Why is Apep in the Titanrealm of darkness? Is it not more closely associated with Chaos?

Question: Does a Justice God have to believe in Character his own laws or can he just ignore it when it is convenient?

Question: How do you handle the gods no longer being worshiped? Fate? The Titans, not caring, something else? Or do you run with the idea that the world of Scion has major cults today with large and active temples/shrines?

Question: What does the process of binding a Titan look like? The corebook provided a specific example in the sample chronicle, but failed to give more general information.

Question: In your game, Do mortals know if a god died or did something new to their legend? Like somehow a myth about the death or event of the god suddenly is found or they retroactively just know it? I was asking because of the fiction where Athena dies and I wondered about that.

And that's the end of that four-installment vlog-filming marathon. We're internet athletes!

Ten Questions with Excited Waving Arms

On today's blog, project updates, future possibilities, a call to action for you guys, and a whole bunch of questions!

Question: How do you handle "secrets" in myth? Things that supposedly certain gods do not know (and would have extreme reactions if they found out) yet are an established part of the myths about them?

Question: How do you explain the story of King Midas? I mean, the guy's an ordinary mortal who gets the power to turn anything he touches into gold. What Scion powers can give such a power to a mortal?

Question: Can you kill a death god? Should you be able to kill a death god? Does killing a death god really accomplish anything?

Question: What do you think would happen if a Scion, who has not yet received a Visitation, were to simply stumble across a Birthright relic that doesn't belong to an active Scion? Could that result in a kind of "triggered activation" of the Scion's divine blood? Or would nothing happen since it isn't a true Visitation?

Question: How do you determine the damage from some of the more extreme attacks that Scion's power allows? If my Strength monster picks up the Empire State Building and hurls it at a Titan Avatar, or some other powerful foe, how do I determine how badly such an impact hurt the target? If I used Create Earth to conjure up a mess of diamonds, then threw the diamonds into a tornado conjured by Tornado Tamer and hurled the whole thing at a bad guy? How would I determine THAT damage?

Question: How far is too far for you guys at GothamByNight when it comes to PC morality? When do you take one of your Players to the side and ask them if their PC could still be considered "a good guy/aligned with the Gods" and not some Chaotic Evil Titan in waiting that is deserving of a Dark Virtue or two? For example, do you think that a God-level PC Band's active attempts to wipeout humanity or kill off their parents for their own ambitions justify them gaining Dark Virtues?

Question: Do you guys have anyway of setting apart gods and goddesses of hunting mechanically? I'm working on some homebrew and I feel like these hunt gods need some association to really drive the point home, but I don't know what. I almost find myself wanting to make a Hunt Purview, but that's a heck of a lot of work. But what else to use? Is War fitting? An attribute that most fits their hunting style? I'm really at a loss here.

Question: You said in an earlier vlog that the difference between Followers/Creatures and Guides were that Creatures and Followers were below you and Guides were beings above you. Now what if I have a character who's got contact to the Valkyries as a Guide from Hero - would it be possible at Demigod that they turned into more like an equal ally type of thing? That instead of them just giving you good advice, they help you out physically when you really need it.

Question: Nut is a Titan, Shu is a Titan, and Geb is probably going to be a Titan as well - but the most ancient of them, Ra, is not?

Question: So! If everyone on Earth, for whatever reason, suddenly got a point of Legend, and the Gods were then able to get up to their old tricks without having to worry about Fatebinding, would they? If they could without having to worry about Fatebinding, would the Gods return to Earth? Related question, is there anything you can think of from any mythology that would be capable of giving everyone on Earth a legend point? Some Uber Relic or ritual that, if done, would give everyone that kind of power?

To our sixth questioner, we now realize that while we talked about PC morality in answer to your question, we didn't really address Dark Virtues. Our rule of thumb is that Dark Virtues are something PCs gain by contact with Titans or otherwise through magical events, so for the most part we would not give them any Dark Virtues automatically just because they're being jerks. It is entirely possible for Scions (and gods, too!) to be sometimes or even often malicious without actually having Malice, just as it's possible to be interested in knowledge and learning without having Intellect or to bravely run into battle without having Courage. However, Scions who are consistently evil or often do things that are in line with the goals of the Titans are likely to attract their attention, in which case it is entirely possible they might end up corrupted by a Titan Virtue later on.

If you want to email us boons, do it here! Go nuts!

Quick Fix

It's time for another big-bang post full of quick answers! For those who want to keep track of the ever-expanding vortex of the Questionado, it's currently at 194. We're down 7! Success!

Question: Do Scions automatically know the language of their pantheon?

No, they do not. They know whatever language they actually know, and won't magically learn their pantheon's native tongue just from being activated as a Scion. If you're thinking of that weird thing that the Percy Jackson books do, we're sorry to disappoint you - nobody ever has a language "hard-coded into their DNA". (But you can get Language Mastery and that's basically about as good!)

Question: Just noticed that on the Annuna you have a profile up for Nanshe (with 6 associated) but she is not listed as a playable god. Is there any particular reason for this or are you just holding off for a major Annuna update?

Sometimes gods get kicked off our rosters for not being high enough Legend, but we keep their pages around in case other people still want to look at them. You'll also find "secret" god-pages for Sif, Geb, Kebauet, Dian Cecht, and a few others.

Question: What gods would you suggest for an expanded British pantheon? At the moment I’m thinking of adding Tommy Atkins, Merlin, Herne the Hunter and Tom Hickathrift (A.K.A. Jack the Giant-Killer) to Britannia, John Bull and Robin Hood. I don’t want it to resemble Arthurian legend too much, as that’s a little too Christianised for my tastes, but I want it to stand out from the Tuatha and the Welsh gods as well.

Sorry, we can't help you with this one. We are passionate haters of the World at War pantheons, including the Allied/British pantheon, and would never make them a "pantheon" of gods of an equal standing with people like Ra or Zeus. At best, we'd consider them former Scions, undercover personas of various established gods, or in a few cases Legendary Mortals. (But we do consider Herne the Hunter to be an alternate persona of Cernunnos, if that helps you with anything.)

Question: First off, I definitely love what you did with the Inue. In terms of Native American pantheons, most of the fan stuff has been to take some of the gods from each pantheon and bring them together as one like the Manitou. What is your opinion on something such as that and do you feel each of the individual pantheons can stand on their own like the Inue?

We're not fans. We think the pantheons of all different areas of the world should have an equal shot at being Scion parents, and that there's no reason to assume that the tons of Native American pantheons wouldn't be just as distinct from one another as all the pantheons of the other continents.

Question: If a paleontologist Scion wanted to, could they make their personal Santum a chain of islands modeled after Las Cinco Muertes from the Jurassic Park franchise?

You can put whatever you want to in your Sanctum - it's your house and you can decorate it as you please! (But that only goes for in your house, so you won't be able to use it to create a free dinosaur army that can leave to lay waste to New York with you.)

Question: Do you think Gods' Honest is broken knack?

No - if we thought that, we wouldn't be letting our Scions use it all the time. I'm not sure why you think it's broken, since you didn't say, but feel free to tell us why in the comments.

Question: What do you do when a PSP boon requires a roll of a Virtue (like how Familial Sacrifice's pool is Conviction) and the Scion doesn't have that virtue? Do you just have them botch the roll, or do you have them use the next most appropriate virtue?

They can't make that roll; they have zero dice. They probably shouldn't have swapped it out, or should try to get it back if it was taken from them. However, they could still use a Virtue Channel or Legendary Deed to get some dice/autos if they still want to use the boon anyway.

Question: When purchasing dots of Epic Stamina, you get health levels. Are these -0, -1, -2 or -4?

Always -0. Dots of Epic Stamina also remove the wound penalty negatives from the health boxes you already have as you get more of them.

Question: When a Scion spends Legend, are Fatebonds only formed with those physically present? EX: if someone catches a film of them and uploads it onto YouTube.

Yes, you will only gain Fatebonds to people who are actually nearby when you spend the Legend. If someone recorded your deed and uploaded it to YouTube, no one who watched it would get Fatebound because you would not be spending any Legend when they saw it.

Question: I was looking through the graveyard, and Jesus Christ, what happened in Langley?

Vote for Strawberry Fields fiction, and find out. ;)

Question: So, weirdest question ever about Michael Chambers. How would any man or woman he sleeps with want to deal with a cold piece of metal on his penis? I can't imagine any woman wanting that inside them.

We... are not sure whether or not you're serious. But in case you are, you may want to do a careful and discreet Google of the term "Prince Albert piercing", and god go with you.

And we'll stick with those ten for today!

I Spy

Question: How does Tantra use interact with bonuses/penalties to Intelligence/Perception? If a Scion with negative Fatebonds to Perception uses Tantra, do the negatives still apply? On a similar note, if he has positives to Intelligence, do those make the roll easier? I know the answer will probably be the obvious one, but I wanted to make sure in any case.

That's okay, making sure is good!

Fatebonds apply to the roll your Scion is actually making; Tantra allows him to make a different roll, but it doesn't affect any Fatebonds one way or the other. That means that if he rolls Intelligence instead of Perception, he's subject to his Fatebonds to Intelligence instead of any he might have to Perception.

So if Padma has a bonus to Intelligence but a penalty to Perception and needs to see through an Illusion (likely, what with being married to Shadan and all), Tantra allows her to roll Intelligence + Awareness instead of the usual Perception + Awareness roll. She's not rolling Perception, so its negative Fatebond doesn't apply; she is rolling Intelligence, so its positive Fatebond applies.

Fumbling Toward Heaven

Question: You previously said that apotheosis requires quite a lot of Epic Attributes. How do you attain apotheosis if you have several negative Fatebonds to those Attributes which keep buying them off? Just stockpile XP and buy them all at once?

Man, when we get questions like these, I realize that it has actually been years since we had a character achieve apotheosis. Then I feel like a dinosaur.

We do indeed require certain minimum numbers of dots in Epic Attributes before Scions can achieve apotheosis and becomes gods, in addition to needing several abilities and purviews at maximum level (the exact specifics are in this very old but still accurate post). But Fatebonds seldom leave your stats alone just to be polite or make life easy, so what's a beleaguered Scion to do?

When you're in the home stretch to head toward godhood, it's relatively easy to max out stats like abilities so that Fatebonds can't buy them off, but Attributes are another story; they aren't truly "maxed" in that sense unless you have all possible dots and Epic Attribute dots as well as all knacks, and most people aren't going to make it to that marathon of a goal. Since maxing them out usually isn't practical, that means that you have to instead embark on the wonderful world of playing catch-the-Fatebond.

Fatebonds can be stopped from buying a stat off if, when they are about to do so, you buy a dot (or boon or knack) of that stat instead. When you do that, they are immediately prevented from buying it off, and move all XP they had banked toward doing so on to the next thing they were trying to buy off instead. That doesn't mean they'll never buy off your "protected" stat again, just that it's now at the end of the list and they'll have to cycle through everything else they want to take away from you before they get back to it again. If your Fatebonds happen to also be buying off something you don't really care about - a purview you decided wasn't worth saving because it wasn't one of your main concepts anyway, or an ability you don't use much - then you're pretty much golden if you just save enough XP to keep shifting the focus away from the Attribute you want to save and over to that unnecessary stat instead.

It's hard to explain how Fatebonds work in words here, but think of it like a list of things the Fatebonds are buying off. They always follow it in order, so if you move them off their current choice, they'll go to the next one and then all the way through the list before coming back to the one you kicked them off of.

If the Attribute you need to save is the only thing your Fatebonds are buying off (for those about to hit apotheosis, this is almost never true unless the Fatebonds have already bought everything else they hate down to 0), however, or they're buying off several things at once that you need to save, your problems are more complicated. In that case, you need to save enough XP to be able to move the Fatebonds down their list more than once, potentially buying several things to make sure you move the Fatebond buying machine down the line to the next thing that's "safe" for them to buy off. If nothing is safe to buy off, then you need to refer to this rule that isn't on our Fatebond page (damn, guys, I know, but we keep putting fixing the Fatebond stuff on our work poll and you guys keep not voting for it!): if you prevent your Fatebonds from buying something off twice in the same round of buying, they instantly lose all XP they had banked toward it and have to start over from scratch, thus giving you some breathing room.

That's hard to visualize, so let me give you an example. John needs to keep his Fatebonds from buying off any more Strength or Perception if he wants to hit apotheosis, and has negatives to only those two things. When his Fatebonds try to buy off Strength, he buys a knack to stop them, which makes them move all their XP over to trying to buy off Perception instead. So he buys a Perception knack, which makes them move the XP back to Strength again, since it's the only other thing on the list. Then he buys another Strength knack, and all the banked XP the Fatebonds had to ruin his day is trashed and they start over from zero, and he is safe from their depredations for at least a little while.

Now, obviously this involves managing your XP very closely, and it also involves working with your Storyteller to figure out what you may need to do in the near future. While we never tell players all the details of their Fatebonds unless they have used the appropriate Magic/Perception powers to find out on their own in character, we do give them forecasts of what the next Fatebond buy-offs will be and about when they will occur, so that they can plan accordingly. At the end of game, when we're all doing the "okay, you get this new boon, you lose this dot of an ability" Fatebond circus, we are also always up to tell a player who asks that their Fatebonds will be buying off Sky in about two weeks, and after that will start working on Wits, and are also happy to tell them where their XP will move if they protect a stat and about how long they have to save before things come back around again.

But, you say, okay, so there are all these ways to save my stats with XP, but what if a situation arises in which it's mathematically impossible?! And while that isn't always very likely, it is possible and it is something that Scions may need to face once in a while. Sometimes, you can't save everything. You can almost always save one stat, or maybe even two or three, if you dedicate your XP to them only, but you probably can't save any more than that. Sometimes your Fatebonds to something are so brutal (because large numbers of people think you shouldn't have it) that it's much more difficult to save than any other stat, and the math race is too difficult to keep up with. Sometimes there are other stats that aren't negative but that you need to buy anyway before apotheosis, and so you have no choice but to split your XP. Sometimes you have to let one stat be bought off so you can save another, and then come back later and rebuy the one you lost. Sometimes you just mishandle it, maybe because you don't have much ability to understand Fatebonds as a character, and then have to suffer the uncomfortable consequences.

But this is all on purpose. The entire point of Fatebonds is that, based on your previous exploits and actions in the World, you have influenced mortals who begin to shape your destiny to fit those actions. If your Fatebonds have come down on something so hardcore that you literally cannot overcome them, that's the game mechanically showing you that it is straight-up no longer your Fate to be or do that thing, most likely because you're consistently bad at or opposed to it. We give out enough XP for Scions to overcome some of their negative Fatebonds, but not enough for them to always be able to beat all of them, and that's on purpose, too, especially right before apotheosis; you're about to become a god, which means that now is the time that you may have to make some choices about letting go of things you will no longer embody as a deity and building up others that you have so far neglected. We want Scions to be able to sometimes overcome what Fate wants them to do if they try hard enough, but we do not want them to be able to do so always, because otherwise there is no point to the Fate system being there in the first place.

And, as always, Fate is directly in the hands of the Scion. If they want to change it, they can go out, do that thing, blow a bunch of their Legend and try to rewrite their own stories. But they need to do that actively, as part of their budding myths and actions as a hero who is about to become a god; they can't just do it passively behind the scenes with their XP, because this isn't just about their capacity to choose things for themselves but also about the influence of Fate on their development and eventual role in the universe.

For some Scions, the road to godhood is relatively easy. They might have gotten lucky on their Fatebonds and only have one or two to fight in order to make it to apotheosis, or they might have been able to say, "You know what, I can let that purview go without losing too much sleep," so they can just let it drain away while they focus on more important things. For others, things are harder, when they have negatives to a larger spread of stats, or they want to save some stats they don't strictly need for godhood but are personally invested in. It is never mechanically impossible to become a god, but it can vary in difficulty depending on what state your Fatebonds are in and how much you do to try to work with or against them, and it may take some characters a little bit longer than others. When our god-level bands achieved apotheosis, I believe there were about three months (so 15 game sessions or so) between the first Scions to become gods (Sowiljr and Vala, respectively) and the last (Zwazo and Yoloxochitl).

Actually, the one way you can't go about this in our games is to stockpile XP and buy everything at once. For one thing, the would-be god needs to hold his stats for a few game sessions after achieving them, in essence to prove he's god material - he has to not only make sure Fatebonds don't get the better of him, but also make sure his mortal cults stay safe, his Virtues don't get screwed up and he doesn't lose his contacts in the pantheon, all things he will need to be doing when he graduates to the big leagues anyway. And for the other, it's a house rule for us that no Scion can save up more XP than it would cost to buy the most expensive thing available to him, so for most Legend 8 apotheosis hopefuls, 35 is the most XP they can have sitting around not doing anything at a time. We do that partly because we want people to actually, you know, do the Fate system that helps illustrate their relationship with their destiny and believers instead of just relying on math to let them ignore it, and also because a character who spends no XP for twenty games in a row because he wants to buy five dots and five Epics of something all at once is both super boring for both the player and the rest of the game, and probably not very effective compared to his companions since he hasn't gotten better at anything in forever and isn't keeping up.

By the way, for those who are looking at this and going, "But that sucks, I'm just going to lose all these negatively-bound stats at godhood anyway because I can't fight them forever!", there we have your back. Once you hit apotheosis, those minimum Epics you needed to get to godhood become "locked", and are the new minimum that Fatebonds can never buy down past. So you could have fifty negative Fatebonds to Perception, but they can never buy it below the three Epics you came into godhood with. That way all that work you did to be able to have basic skills for your new career as a god isn't lost, and you always have at least a small base to work from if you want to try to make a Fatebond-fighting sprint for glory with that stat later on.

Of course, for those who don't use our Fatebond system, or don't use our apotheosis rules, or don't use either, this is just a really long post that you don't care about. But, as Geoff would say, maybe you'll have better luck next time.

Fates Intertwined

Question: I use a lot of your rules, but not your Fatebonds. What numbers would you use for Akunleyan if it were just bonuses and penalties?

Question: In Akunyelan, can you pick purviews or abilities you don't have any dots in to get the negatives? If not, what if you only have 1-3 purviews?

Question: In Akunlegba, do you have to pick one item from each of the three columns? Can you pick the same choice more than once, as long as it is not for the same ability/purview/whatever?

I'm lumping these questions about Ori together today because they came in all together, and I'm pretty sure they're from the same person. If not, well, two or three people went in on an Ori conspiracy, so they're sitll getting answered together.

Your first question is hard to answer, because we don't know what Fatebond rules (if any) you do use or what other house mechanics might get involved. However, I can tell you that our maximum-level Fatebonds are 10 dice and 10 automatic successes to or from a given stat up through Legend 10, so that's what the boon was designed by us to provide to most Scions. Scions of Legend 11 have a maximum of 15 dice and 15 autos, and Scions of Legend 12 have a maximum of 20 each.

In fact, you can choose things you currently have no dots in for Akunleyan, either for positive or negative. However, we designed the boon to work with both our Fatebond system and the rest of the Ori purview; under our rules, those positive Fatebonds will begin buying new boons/attributes/dots for the Scion who has them, while the negative Fatebonds will begin subtracting powers the same way. This is intended as a balancing tool to prevent Scions from just choosing negative stats to things they don't have any of anyway free of consequences - the Fatebond will, when they swap to their alternate identity with Iwa Pele, buy them some of those things, meaning that they do get some (which may then be bought back off next time they switch) and at the very least involves their XP in a meaningful way to illustrate that they're actually a being with two distinct aspects, not just a guy with some penalties that don't really matter anyway. Similarly, the fact that switching to the alternate persona might cause the now-negative Fatebonds to buy off stats the Scion was using forces them to weigh how they want to be seen as a god, what situations merit a shift to a new personality and set of skills and what these different personas mean to them.

So if you're not going to use Fatebonds at all, you're going to pretty much need to completely rewrite this boon, along with the terms of Iwa Pele as well. As it stands now, if you remove Fatebonds, all the boon does is give you semi-permanent bonuses to stuff you want to do and dump all your negatives into stuff you don't do anyway, and Iwa Pele loses all of the mythic resonance of trying to balance your different personalities and how they interact with the divine world, not to mention removing the part of the boon that really relates to the core concept of Ori (your destiny, here represented by Fatebonds). You'll need to find a different mechanical way to make sure that Scions aren't just using it for mad bonuses without having to actually be particularly Yoruba about it.

You could just reduce the bonuses to make them less overpowered without the counterbalance of Fatebonds, but most players would probably find a level 4 boon that just gives them +5 dice or whatever pretty underwhelming. There are already a lot of powers in the game that do things like that. We'd suggest maybe exploring actual stat-swapping - maybe when they switch personas with Iwa Pele, they lose their previously positive Sun boons but suddenly gain a bucket of Moon boons, and vice versa when they switch back - or otherwise finding a way that the switching of personas actually seriously affects Scions and gives them the opportunity to become completely different creatures or aspects of themselves.

(Of course, most of this doesn't apply to Scions who never buy Iwa Pele, but we should probably design the purview for Scions of the Orisha who want to buy all their powers, not the ones who want to just buy up to level 4 for a quick bonus and then never touch it again.)

As for Akunlegba, that one's easier. As the boon says, you must choose one from each of the categories, which is intentional so that Scions get one power from each of the three "types" of abilities that Orisha gods and Scions usually manifest, affecting their bodies, spirits and divine powers rather than only one or two of the three. Ori is about the Scion's destiny, in fact her entire being, so especially at these early levels we want characters to see it affect all different facets of their lives. Of course, we do want players to be able to specialize later in the game, which is why the later powers added by Afowofa can come from any category the Scion wishes, allowing her to commit more fully to a particular aspect of her destiny now that she's high enough Legend to know who and what she is as a deity.

Hopefully that helps you on your way to becoming the best non-Fatebond user of Ori that you can be. (And by the way, you may also want to explore giving users of Gun another small benefit or two of some kind, since the protections from negative Fatebonds that boon provides don't matter in your game.)

What's in a Name?

Question: How does a god gain an Epithet in other cultures? Also, what does it really do? I mean, they get a name for that culture, but how does it affect the god?

Your capitalization of the word Epithet makes me think that you might be playing in a game that has specific rules about those attached to the Fatebond system. I know those games exist, but we aren't one of them, so unfortunately we can't help with those mechanics much. Refer to your Storyteller, if that's the case!

However, if you're just asking about divine epithets in a general sense, like Sowiljr being called Tlazohtlaloni in Mexico or Jioni being called Apostolia in Delphi, then we can talk about that a little bit. Epithets of this kind do not actually "affect" a god, at least not mechanically, but are important tools for Storytelling and character development, as well as being neat things that players get to come up with for themselves.

Gaining an epithet only requires one thing: the Scion has to become known to that culture as a deity or sacred figure in some way. That culture, once they've realized that the Scion is important and has some kind of important function, then naturally gives her a name in their own language, which is usually descriptive of what she does and how they view her. When Eztli's bloody Icelandic rites were established, the people began calling her Ristablodr (Blood Eagle) to link her to them, and when Folkwardr became famous in the Germanic forests for his exploits as a frightening forest-lurking monster, the people began calling him Ungeheuerlichgurtelschildkröte (Terrible Turtle Monster) as his proper name there. This is something that usually happens organically as a result of what the PCs have been doing in various areas, what kinds of effects they've had on the local people and how those local people can fit them into their pre-existing beliefs. It's also possible to get epithets that don't apply to one of Scion's religions, as one PC did when she accidentally became declared an angel in the Greek Orthodox Church, or when the three male PCs from the Better Next Time game became the Three Satans of a new church dedicated to opposing them.

These epithets are a lot of fun for players, who we encourage to explore what they might be when they're getting close to hitting godhood; taking a minute to look back over their Demigod careers and see where they've already made some new history and religion is a good time, and they get to have some input into how they hope they'll be seen by cultures outside of their own. They can also give the Storyteller some good idea sparks when it comes to plots that might affect the PC in those cultures, which is especially helpful when you have PCs from different pantheons and need to have a way to make a story set in one culture still relevant and interesting to PCs who aren't native to the area.

However, mechanically, epithets don't do anything. They're names and representations of your young god's religious importance in various places, but they don't actually affect her stats or abilities any. Remember that mortal worship does not directly affect any gods in Scion except for the Teotl, so having more people believe in you, regardless of what culture they're from, doesn't actually do anything to your character.

But, being believed in by various cultures is often a by-product of having a worshiping cult there, which can affect a young god by way of Fatebonds, so in that way how they think of you and what their image of you might be is enormously important! It's because of Sowiljr's Aztec cult that worships him as Tlazohtlaloni, for example, that he has Water Fatebound to himself as their god of ponds, and that Fatebond shapes him over the course of time.

Really, it's just one of the cool ways you get to explore being a god and what that means to various people you've interacted with and affected. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes they're really weird and buy you a bunch of Control (Landscaping Truck), but it's something that illustrates what you're already doing in the game, not the other way around.

Hubris

Question: In a lot of modern fiction, technology is the great equalizer between humanity and the supernatural forces of the world. Where do you stand on technology ever being able to allow humans to fight the gods? Can humans ever develop weapons capable of harming the a god with minimum Epic Stamina? What about maximum? Can future man ever muster an army great enough and well equipped enough to conquer a pantheon of gods? Now please answer again, but include Fatebinding into the equation!

Well, jeez, you don't want much, do you?

We've covered this in depth on a similar question a while ago, which you can check out here, but where we stand is that no, humans can't fight gods. Large numbers of peak-trained and equipped humans getting extraordinarily lucky and succeeding well above average makes it just possible to hurt a single god who is already bad at defending himself. Humanity trying to take on a pantheon is flat-out impossible.

You're right, modern fiction is currently very fond of that idea of technology providing the means for humanity to overcome the supernatural; it's part of a general trend in literature and media in the past century that portrays humanity as the scrappy underdogs who can still manage to win if they just work hard enough, and in a larger sense a cultural expression of the power of capitalism and other merit-based social systems at work in the modern world. Especially in the United States, where we're all told that if we follow the American Dream and just work really hard and have moxy we'll eventually succeed no matter how insanely the odds are stacked against us, it only makes sense for writers and creators to project that idea forward into their art. And when that collides with supernatural fiction, it's natural to say: okay, so if humanity can always win if they just try hard enough, how do they beat supernatural things that are more powerful? The answer takes a variety of forms - super science equipment that can detect or contain ghosts, genetic modifications to make humans faster or stronger to compete with zombies, invention of more efficient stake-o-matics to take the fight to vampires, or whatever - all geared toward suggesting that humanity can level the playing field against the supernatural if they put the force of their collective creativity and determination toward it.

And that's totally awesome, and there are many excellent stories and worlds built around it. But it doesn't work in Scion, and the most major reason is that Scion is not about the supernatural; Scion is about the divine.

Things like werewolves, ghosts, witches and other common supernatural nasties are fundamentally based at the human level. They're more powerful than humans, certainly, thanks to their suite of personalized supernatural abilities, but they're within the same general realm of power. They affect human society, prey on humans who are capable, even pre-technology, of fighting back against them, and in many cases are actually at least partially human themselves. The stories told about these kinds of supernatural things are all concerned with humans and human society, or at the furthest with the environment they inhabit that is near that of humans. These are things that are designed to compete with humans on a similar level, whether by being cast out of a possession by a mortal priest, being hunted down by vampire hunters bearing crosses and holy water or being warded off by travelers who know enough to carry a little bread, a shaker of salt and an iron bar when crossing the fairy moors at night.

Or to reduce it to quick and dirty Scion game terms, they're close in Legend rating. Mortals have no Legend, and creatures like this might have anywhere from 1 to 3 dots, making them definitely more powerful and dangerous but still within the realm where concerted human effort can and does overcome them. Traditionally, in both antiquated and modern literature, they are creatures meant to be capable of meaningfully antagonizing humans and vice versa.

But Scion is concerned with gods, and gods are not supernatural creatures. Gods are gods. They are deities believed to be the fundamental powers of the universe, the shapers and creators, owners and overseers, the foundations of religions and the sources of life. They come from ancient religions where there was absolutely no question whatsoever that humans could "compete" with them, and stories about those stupid enough to try almost invariably end in complete misery or death for the mortal who dared try to compare themselves to the divine. The people who believed in these beings understood that they were hopelessly insignificant next to them, that there was no possibility of ever even thinking about equalling them much less trying to overcome them, and that their world and very lives constantly depended on their goodwill. Gods can instantly deprive the whole planet of sustenance with the powers of Animal and Fertility, or suffocate the entire planet with the powers of Sky, or blanket it in Darkness and Chaos until humanity kills itself in panic, and those things would not be particularly hard for them, especially if several gods decided to do so at once. Ra or Shiva or Tezcatlipoca can literally blink and end the world - and everything humanity has built in it - in a second.

That's the difference here: gods are not and were never thought of as being anywhere near the level of humans. If they were, they wouldn't be gods, just powerful demons/spirits/whatevers that mortals could deal with enterprisingly instead of needing to pray to and appease. If gods are beings that humans have even the vaguest hope of conquering, they aren't gods, ancient religions make no sense, and Scion's entire setting collapses. Gods are by definition the powers of the universe. If you make them something else, you're no longer playing with gods; you're playing a game where demons or aliens or the spirits of ancestors pretend to be gods but can be defeated. Which is not what Scion is about.

This doesn't mean it's impossible to harm gods with mortal means, of course, just extraordinarily unlikely. It's technically possible for a god to have no Epic Stamina at all if that was their dump stat, although we have a hard time conceiving of a deity with only fourteen health boxes who could have survived this long anyway, and they'd be just as easy to hurt - provided you can bring yourself to attack them and actually hit them and they have no powers that could save them, which is a massively unlikely string of events - as any mortal would. Gods who don't have minimum Epic Stamina but who do have fairly low Stamina could also be hurt by mortal weapons even now; if you'd shot Vala with a nuke, she and her five Epic Stamina would have been in deep trouble. Except, of course, for the ten zillion powers from Guardian to Psychopomp to basic Stamina Knacks that she could have used - or that others around her could have used - to escape completely unscathed.

As for maximums, that is impossible. A god who has Ultimate Stamina is the utter expression of durability and physical hardiness. There is nothing in the universe that is less hurtable than that god. You can't scratch him with a nuke. You probably can't scratch him with several nukes. A god with Ultimate Dexterity is so incredibly fast and fluid that it is quite literally abjectly impossible to hit him if he doesn't want to be hit, and you will just end up raining nukes down on random points where he's no longer hanging out. And, of course, you can't even want to shoot the guy with Ultimate Charisma, because he's so fucking incredible you could never, ever, ever in a million years bring yourself to do anything that might hurt him. Gods can and do hurt each other, but that's because they're on equal or semi-equal planes of power, where their unfathomable Strength can be a match for their opponent's immovable Stamina or their incredible powers of resistance can get past the insidiously powerful Manipulation their enemy turns on them. Humans are not on that plane of power. By definition, they can't be.

We could probably go on all day with different ways that gods basically have no concerns whatsoever about humans hurting them, but here's a simple way of looking at it: the game is not a fixed continuum, where the gods are exactly as "powerful" in megatons or miles per hour as they have always been. The gods were beyond fathoming when humanity was in the Bronze Age, and they're beyond fathoming now, and in two thousand years when mortals have built the Death Star, they'll be beyond fathoming then, too. Gods, in order to be gods, must always be unspeakably powerful in relation to humanity; in terms of the great universal cosmic scope of the game, humans can invent whatever they want, but they'll never actually get any closer to the gods. If someone were writing Scion in that time period, they'd change the stats and numbers so that the gods were just as far above mortals as they are now; if mortals have the technology to go at the speed of light, gods have the ability to go faster. Because otherwise, as we said, they're not gods.

I'm glad you mentioned Fatebonds, however, because that is an area where we totally cheat in favor of mortals sometimes! Humans who have been Fatebound into a particular Role for a given Legendary creature have the backing of Fate, which wants them to succeed, and that may occasionally mean that they have much more of a shot at hurting someone than they otherwise should. A mortal who is a Nemesis to a Legend 8 Scion shouldn't normally be able to touch her, but with Fate guiding her hand, we often represent that with penalties to the Scion, who has trouble trying to buck the whims of Fate, or bonuses to the Fatebound mortal who needs them to boost her to supernatural abilities for the brief time it takes to fulfill her destined part in the story. Or both. A Traitor will be way better at hiding her intentions from a Scion's Epic Perception than a normal mortal, because Fate will give her bonuses no other mortal could have; a Lover will be way more alluring to a Scion because Fate wants her to be loved and thus boosts her lovability to greater-than-human heights.

But even these things are not guarantees, just helpful nudging from Fate that might or might not make the difference. And in our Fatebond system they don't apply to gods anyway, since upon reaching Legend 9, gods no longer have individuals Fatebound to them in roles but instead are supported by Fatebound cults with collective beliefs about them. But we do think it's important for Storytellers to play up the importance of Fatebound mortals, and to remember that Fate wants them to succeed and sometimes that should mean that at the critical moment they're better than they have any right to be.

The Virtuous Player

What's up, guys! We said we would take Thanksgiving off from vlogging here in the U.S., but we have a vlog ready anyway, so here we are! Today we're talking about problems that plague players, and hopefully giving some good advice about how to handle them when they arise in your gaming group.

Question: The Scions in my group who have Order have been having a really hard time lately, as the group as a whole can't seem to not break the law in the course of their adventures. Which Virtue have your Scions found to be the most inconvenient or gotten them into the most trouble?

Question: Help! I'm a combat character and social characters in my party constantly tell me what to do. I can't even get angry at their characters or they pop Boys Will Be Boys, Blame James, or just outright lie with God's Honest. Please don't tell me that the answer is I always have to play someone smart, witty or attractive!

Question: Is it possible for a Scion who's achieved godhood to eventually lose all touch with their original humanity and embrace Titanhood?

Question: How does the Order Virtue handle vigilantism in areas where it is illegal? Does it make an exception for your divine right as a Scion to adminsiter justice, or will a Scion in this situation just be on the phone with 911 all day?

Question: What are the limits of boons like Fire Immunity or Safely Interred?

Question: I play a Fate character and I'm getting burned out. My ST ignores Fatebonds because they're too complex and my Prophecy boons are reduced to dice adders because the visions are irrelevant or never come to pass. When I tried Avoid a Fate, it still happened because it involved a PC and the ST said dictating what players could do messed with the narrative. Is this normal for Fate purviews, or am I getting shafted? Any advice on dealing with it?

Question: Two of my players have Malak. The problem is that the entire campaign can't focus around two cities. I try my best, but other characters can use their PSP every game, while Malak users sit on their thumbs half the time. Any ideas on how to get use out of Malak away from their cities?

Question: Can Epic Perception see ghosts? I know an ST who insists that only Death Senses can let you see ghosts, but that seems counter-intuitive to me - there's a Perception knack that lets me see Fate itself, but not the occasional wandering soul?

Socializing in the Sky

Are you guys ready for another session of marathon vlogs? Here they come! Today's is about politics and insanity among the gods, who never seem to have getting along near the top of their to-do lists.

Question: From a social perspective, what does it mean to the gods when one god has more associated purviews and/or Epics than another god?

Question: Would it be possible for a god, through either Fate-dickery or Magic or just sheer force of will, to change their modus operandi? I have a game idea that partially revolves around the idea of Odin abandoning his normal methods to try the novel approach of honesty and good faith in order to avert Ragnarok. Is this plausible?

Question: Can you elaborate on the relationship between the Yazata and the Deva? Why do they see each other as enemies?

Question: You always talk about gods leaving the World because of Fatebonds. Why did they stay in the first place? They would have known about Fatebonds during that time. Was the risk just worth the reward?

Question: Would it be accurate to say that pantheons that have more Virtues in common (such as the Aesir and Nemetondevos) would be on better terms with each other than those that have few in common (like the Anunna and Theoi)?

Question: Every god has a rivals and enemies listing on their page, but what does that MEAN to them? To be specific, Odin has enemies - does he hate them, or are they merely names on his "to kill list"? When you say a god has enemies, does that mean hatred and active attempts at murder and sabotage, or something less intense and more passive?

Question: I've got a Scion game coming up where all the PCs are either Kami or Teotl. I was wondering if you had any ideas for ways in which those two pantheons would interact, as I'm currently drawing a blank.

Just be nice, everyone. Is that so hard?!

Affairs of the Soul

Our marathon vlog series continues, this week with a two-for-one subject deal! Look at us go. We're not tired at all.

Question: I was just reading the Fatebinding rules on your site and something confused me. The way that the rules are written makes it seem like Scions have to be Legend 3 before they can get Fatebonds. Am I understanding that correctly?

Question: I remember John saying a while ago (in comments) that Fatebonds in general don't buy Attributes below 3 dots, but is there a theoretical maximum? Could one measly Fatebond and enough time buy a character up from zero Epic to ultimate attribute?

Question: What happens when the total amount of XP Siphoned by Fatebonds exceeds 100%? For example, if you pick up seven Level 10 Fatebonds - you'd end up with 105% of your XP being siphoned to meet your Fatebonds' expectations. Do you end up with more XP, but no discretionary spending?

Question: What would happen to the entire universe of Scion if Fate was either destroyed or could no longer influence the Gods?

Question: Neith is said to be a goddess that "made" Fate. how does that work in Scion?

Question: What's the difference between a Valor pantheon and a Courage pantheon? What makes you decide to give the Theoi Valor instead of Courage, or give the Tuatha Courage and not Valor?

Question: Have you ever considered having the Virtue Benevolence? Helping others, even sometimes at great cost to oneself?

Question: Is Malice going to be one of the core Virtues of the Inuit? It might be a little strange to have a Dark Virtue, but from your description the Inuit people were constantly scared shitless of their gods.

This is our fiftieth vlog - how the time flies. We should do something special, right?

Hey, guys. We're aware that our video is being a massive pain in the ass right now and refusing to load, and since we're stuck on a hotel connection this weekend, it's not being polite about our attempts to fix it. Please be patient - we promise it'll be up some time tonight.

We decided to celebrate our fiftieth vlog with technical difficulties.

Half an Hour of Questions

Hi, everybody! Today, John is not home so I go off the rails on a mad question-answering spree. As usual, trying to get caught up so you guys don't have to feel like you send in your questions to a massive black hole in the universe. Hooray!

Question soup, coming at you:

Question: I don't remember where I read this, but there was an article that said that the reason Zeus went on a raping frenzy was so that Hercules would be born to deal with the gaints that Gaia created, and that the battle of Troy was orchestrated so that Zeus could get rid of the demigods that were born as a result of this Batman gambit for Hercules to be born. Is this part of Greek myth?

Question: Mechanically, how do you deal with Thor's strength belt and how it works when it doubles his strength, especially when he pops Ultimate Strength while wearing it?

Question: How would you classify the Aztec land of Tlillan-Tlapallan? Terra Incognita? Part of the Overworld? Sanctum for Quetzalcoatl? Alternate name for some mundane place (some scholars think it might be a name for Chichen Itza)?

Question: Did any of your Visitations have a parent god show up in their true form, or were they all avatared down?

Question: Can you name some of the Titans that might have been responsible for the shattering of Tartarus?

Question: How do you deal with Negative Epic Appearance in a party? Every game I see forces that player to get My Eyes Are Up Here or Visage Great & Terrible, or get kicked out of the group. Nobody wants to be constantly terrified of you or throwing up.

Question: So Hera being the enforcer of fidelity in marriage seems to mean that she only enforces fidelity from wives to their husbands, not the other way around. She never comes down on Zeus, and never smites any mythological male hero who is married for not keeping it in his pants, but comes down on all the women who cheated with Zeus.

Question: In your Fatebinding system, are the expectations and rejections worked out as soon as the Legend is spent? If a Scion spends a bunch of Legend, and then quickly follows that up with some awesome heroic stuff that doesn't cost Legend, would Fate take that into account? Or is it just based on the "initial spend" kind of thing?

Question: Speaking of Celtic Underworlds! Any ideas on the Overworlds and Underworlds of the continental Celts and the Nemetondevos?

Question: Hey, on the progress bar I see there is a Secret Project. Is there anything you can tell us about what it may entail and how large it may be?

Man, sorry for the crazy lighting changes. Someday I'll learn how to video.

Extracurricular Fate

Question: I know that players cannot get negative Fatebonds towards their PSPs, but can Dodekatheon Scions get negative fatebonds towards Abilities they have Arete in? Can Anunna Scions get negative fatebonds towards purviews they have Me in? What happens if the Abilities or purviews drop below the dots they have in the respective PSP? What happens if the Ability or purview hits 0?

Actually, yes, and this is a really great question!

Because Arete and Me are purviews that are attached to specific stats, they don't get negative Fatebonds themselves but they are affected by Fatebonds that affect the stats to which they're joined. No one will ever get a negative Fatebond to Arete, but unlike other PSPs, Arete dots can be bought off by negative Fatebonds.

If you have some dots of Arete (Athletics) and a negative Fatebond to Athletics, that Fatebond will buy the Arete dots off as well as the regular ones. This is largely because it simply doesn't make sense for you to have incredible mastery in something you actually don't have any of, and just like Epic Attributes can't exist without the attribute they depend on, so Arete dots can't exist without the ability they're supposed to be mastering. It's also a mechanical no-brainer, because otherwise people with Arete and Me would be cheating the entire Fatebond system by getting their stats bought to zero but still having a bunch of dice or powers surrounding them, effectively ignoring Fate's decrees through no effort on their part.

To use an example, let's say that Goze has seven dots of Fortitude and three dots of Arete (Fortitude), and he's just gotten a negative Fatebond to it (for purposes of this demonstration, we'll pretend he has no discounts and is rocking normal XP costs). Because the Fatebond buys off the highest-XP level, it buys off his seventh and sixth dots of Fortitude (14 and 12 XP, respectively) first. It then buys off his third dot of Arete (Fortitude) for 12 XP as well, as the next highest-cost Fortitude dot he has, and then moves on to buying off his fifth regular dot for 10 XP. It'll keep doing that until both Arete and the stat are reduced to zero, and due to the fact that Arete is more expensive than normal dots, Goze will run out of Arete before he runs out of normal dots.

(Actually, those costs are really 14 XP for the seventh dot, then 13 for the sixth dot, then 14 for the third Arete dot, then 13 for the fifth dot, and so on, because every time a dot of Fortitude is bought off the price of buying off the next goes up by one. But I figured you guys'd care more about the demonstration if it wasn't full of confusing math. The end result is the same.)

Now, this sucks, of course, and some players have staged theatrical fainting scenes at the realization that they happen to have one of the only two PSPs that Fatebonds can take away from them. Woe, cruel world! Even worse, where normally a Scion can max out an ability for his level to prevent Fatebonds from buying it off, those with Arete or Me have to also max those to cut off the Fatebond train. This is the worst PSP ever!

But actually, it's not, even if you ignore all the fabulous benefits of nine million dice/total purview domination. While you can't max out a stat to avoid Fatebonds as easily, it's also much more difficult for a Fatebond to buy a stat down to zero when you have Arete or Me; the Fatebond has to eat through alllll that extra XP to take those away, which gives the Scion in question way more time to fight back by spending XP on the stat or trying to find ways to change his Fatebonds so it's not an issue anymore. A god-level Pesedjet Scion suddenly afflicted with a negative Fatebond to Illusion, something she has eight levels in, would be looking at the daunting task of trying to buy two level nine boons before the Fatebond could take away one she already has, something that's almost certain to fail (at best, she'll end up getting some bought off, managing to rebuy them and maybe finally get the high-level ones while slowly seeing the XP cost increase, and that's only if she doesn't buy anything else). But the same Scion, if she were Anunna, could instead buy some lower-level Me for the purview; since it's cheaper, she'd stop the Fatebond for a while and give herself more time to deal with the problem, and she's only making herself better at the purview to boot.

So yes, Scions with Arete or Me are prey to Fatebonds more than Scions of other purviews, but they're also uniquely capable of fighting those Fatebonds more effectively than most others could.

Limits of Destiny

Question: You may have answered this somewhere already and I just missed it, but how do you prevent Fatebonds from spiraling out of control? If a character saves a few hundred people by holding up a collapsing building so they can escape, and they all become Fatebound, would he get a bonus to his Strength dice for each one? That would get pretty ridiculous pretty quickly. I know Scions are supposed to be powerful, but a hundred extra dice would just be annoying and insane. Did I miss something?

You did, but it's totally not your fault. We've talked about this on and off in blog posts now and then, but it's not well-explained in the Fatebond rules on the site and we wouldn't expect you to spelunk through the comments for every Fatebond-related post to try to find the crumbs of our conversations.

Whether or not you can ever prevent Fatebonds from getting "out of control" is debatable (most of our players would probably say they're always out of control), but in terms of bonuses and penalties, there's a hard cap to prevent an overwhelming amount of dice and successes from being thrown around. A single stat - whether an Attribute, Ability or Purview - can have a maximum bonus or penalty to it up to ten dice and ten automatic successes. That means that if your hypothetical Scion's roll is insane and he gets Fatebound to a hundred people at once who all want to give him a bonus to Strength, he'll only get +10/+10 as his total benefit. Conversely, if he also gets a penalty to Intelligence from the same people, it won't go any lower than -10/-10, even if all hundred of them agree on it. This prevents Scions from having hundreds upon hundreds of dice to mess with on their good rolls, and saves them from getting so Fatebound that there is literally no chance for them to ever try to make rolls involving the stats they're Fatebound away from.

This doesn't mean that Fatebonds past 10 don't exist, simply that they can't affect a Scion any more strongly with their bonuses or penalties. All hundred Fatebonds are still there, and it's important to know they are because other Fatebonds can still counteract them and affect the end result on the Scion, but there's no need for the player herself to keep track of an ever-escalating insanity of bonuses.

It's also good to remember that it's very unlikely for a Scion to get a few hundred Fatebonds in a single scene - the math on that is astronomically improbable. The Storyteller is rolling dice to determine whether or not each mortal becomes Fatebound, and it's vastly, vastly unlikely that they're all going to come up as successes. And even if they did, it's even more unlikely that they'd be Fatebound to a high degree, meaning that many of them would be only Fatebound at level one or two and have negligible effects that expire quickly. A Scion who blows 50 Legend on saving five hundred people probably will get, say, ten really strong Fatebonds, but it'd be almost impossible for him to get all five hundred, or even one hundred, at any important level.

By the way, it's probably clear by now that while all this is pretty simple for the player - how many dice to I have +/-? Great, I apply that to my roll! - it is a great deal more work for the Storyteller, who is in charge of making all those rolls to see if Fatebonds occur and then of keeping track of the results and the individual expectations of each Fatebound person. The major weakness of our Fatebond system right now is that, once you get to Legend 7 or 8 where Fatebonds become common and powerful, it is a bitch of a workload for a Storyteller. We're working on streamlining that (darn, forgot to add Fatebonds to the voting poll... next time!), but in the meantime, our rule of thumb for working with it is to avoid bogging the game down and doing as much (or little, to your taste) of the work as possible outside the game itself. When a Scion blows a ton of Legend around a bunch of mortals, we usually write down a quick note - what the Scion was doing, how much Legend/Deeds she spent, and how many mortals were around - and do all the rolling and math for the Fatebonds after the game, giving the resulting changes in bonuses and penalties to the player at the beginning of the next session. If you find yourself looking at five hundred mortals, meaning you'd have to roll five hundred times to see if they got Fatebound, our recommendation is to always boil it down to save yourself some work - roll some percentile dice first to just pull a number of those people who did get Fatebound, and then only roll for them. Ain't nobody got time to roll and record five hundred times, even between games.

By the way, our god-level Fatebond rules aren't up yet, but the cap changes once Scions get to god-level. They're the same at Legend 9 and 10, but at Legend 11, their cap rises to +15/+15, and at Legend 12 to +20/+20, reflecting how much more strongly mortal Reverence affects gods than heroes.

Standard of Living

Question: Why do gods need to live in alternate dimensions (Overworlds)? Can't those awesome places just be in the World, hidden from mortal eyes by some shenanigans?

As usual, it's Fate's fault.

Gods certainly can hang out in the World. They can do pretty much anything they want, up to and including creating fabulous castles and crazy wonderlands, and nobody's going to be able to stop them very much. The problem with this, and the reason they don't do it very much, is that the mere fact that they are gods makes this impractical and dangerous for them as well as for everyone and everything that lives in the World with them.

To begin with, gods have Fateful Auras, which means that no matter where they are or what's happening, great events are drawn toward them. Prophecies happen around them, wars spring up under their feet, monsters gravitate straight in their direction, and anything that is heroic, dangerous or impressive is likely to spring up in their general vicinity. This is the same thing that makes it so that Scions are on a pretty much constant adventure, dealing with antagonists who seem to come from nowhere and bizarre situations that would never come up for most people, but the effect is multiplied to a massive level for gods, whose Fateful Auras are that much more powerful. In essence, Fate ensures that crazy shit happens to and around them, because as Legendary beings that's what's supposed to happen.

Unfortunately for everyone and everything else, that means that just being near them is incredibly hazardous. Most people who have played Scion have seen the collateral damage possible when Scions are around humans or doing things in the normal World; now multiply that times a bajillion for the power level of the gods. Gods living on earth means their problems will also live on earth, and neither the fragile normal World nor mortal humanity can survive them having battles with Apep or Riastrading out in the middle of a city, or even in the middle of a desert. The consequences aren't confined to the bad guys, either; a god who busts out some god-level boons or even Avatars in order to shape his environment or defeat an enemy also irrevocably changes the face of the earth and probably kills or permanently changes the fates of a massive number of people.

This is not good for the long-term survival of humans, normal animals or the environment itself, so most gods who aren't insane chaos-mongers stay away from the World partly because they're too big and dangerous for it and they don't want to be a shark tossed into a kiddie pool. As a corollary to this, the dangerous effects of the divine or Titanic on the World is one of the major things that totally wigs out people whoh ave the Harmony Virtue, which is concerned with keeping the natural balance of the universe and normal state of all its worlds constant and undamaged, so no god with Harmony is ever okay with spending too much time in the World. And that doesn't just mean that the six pantheons with Harmony stay out of the World; it means they have a very strong vested interest in keeping other pantheons from blowing it up, too. Wars have started over less.

But all altruistic motivations aside, the World is also dangerous for gods to be in, because it's the central focus of Fate's biggest danger to them: Fatebonds. Being in the World means that any Legend they spend is likely to result in Fatebonds, which may irrevocably tie them to places and people they don't want to be stuck with or reshape the very fabrics of their beings into new and unplanned-for shapes. Gods spend Legend - it's in their natures, after all - and that Legend turns into the iron bars of Fate, trapping them in new roles and situations that they may not want anything to do with. This danger of Fatebonds is why gods have Scions in the first place, so that they can send lower-Legend shock troops into the World to deal with its problems without having to go themselves and get weighted down by Fate.

So, really, living in the World is an extraordinarily bad idea for both gods and the World itself, and it's not worth it for most to even consider. They may occasionally visit, especially for festivals in their honor or at the cities most sacred to them, but living there would be dangerous and uncontrollable, and few gods want to risk Fatebonds and endanger the people that worship them at the same time. However, don't despair that only the Overworlds can be awesome and that no Scions get to do neat stuff in other worlds until they're gods themselves; that's what Terrae Incognita, the pocket worlds that branch off from all the others, are for, and those are usually accessible to Scions or even lucky humans who happen to find their doors.

The Saga Continues

Question: Question about Undeniable Resemblance and Fatebonds, if one Scion willing to spend all the Legend needed to change his/her appearance to a perfect replica of another Scion without being seen by anyone, would any subsequent Fatebonding be attached to the copied Scion?

Man, is this that same person who keeps asking about getting out of Fatebonds by, like, mind-controlling other people or whatnot? You are persistent!

No. That doesn't work.

As we've mentioned in previous posts about trying to Fosse dance your way out of Fatebonds, this kind of thing simply doesn't work because fooling mortals doesn't fool Fate. It is totally possible for a Scion to use Appearance to turn himself into a perfect copy of another person or being, but he is still the one spending the Legend and getting the Fatebonds, which will be based on whatever he was doing or whatever image he was projecting at the time. If Loki goes out and turns himself into an exact copy of Baldur before spending a bunch of Legend, Baldur will be totally unaffected, since he's not the one actually affecting Fate by doing things. He will get no Fatebonds unless he spends some Legend himself. Loki, on the other hand, might be likely to suddenly pick up Fatebonds to Sun or Appearance as well as whatever else he was doing, since the people he's being Fatebound to are probably thoroughly confused into believing his disguise is real.

As always, remember: you can absolutely fool mortals into thinking white is black, and often that will affect what kinds of Fatebonds they generate, but Fate doesn't care what you look like. Fate always knows you're you, because it's freaking Fate and it knows and maps your entire destiny and couldn't care less what face you're wearing when you spend Legend and accrue Fatebonds. There is no kind of undercover shenanigan you can pull that will be able to confuse the all-powerful web of Fate unless you have powers that specifically do that - Magic spells, Shuck Fate in high-level Chaos, or the Nemetondevos PSP of Deuogdonio.

I think this is actually a common confusion, so here's the easy rule of thumb. Fatebonds are what happens when you spend Legend and therefore become part of the web of Fate. What those Fatebonds do depends on the beliefs of the mortals to whom you're Fatebound. Messing with those mortals' minds may change what the Fatebonds do, but you have to mess with Fate to change the fact that the Fatebonds are there in the first place.

Turning to the Dark Side

Question: If it came up in your games, how would you handle PCs attempting to fatebind someone/thing to serve as an Avatar of Hundun? Such as binding Chmarnik for example, so that he could become an Avatar of Hundun that could in turn be used to bind the Titan?

Well... first some semantics, then some suggestions.

Fatebonds don't really work that way, so it isn't actually possible to Fatebond someone into becoming something. For one thing, Fatebonds happen as a result of what a given being is spending Legend on, so you can't make someone get Fatebound to anything, and for another, they affect capabilities, not free will. You might be able to Fatebond Chmarnik into getting all the Chaos Fatebonds by encouraging him to use Chaos powers with wild abandon all across the landscape, but that'll just mean that mortals really believe in his ability to do Chaos and give him bonuses to it. Becoming an Avatar of a Titan is something that a being has to go out and intentionally do - or, at the least, it's not something that's going to accidentally happen to him because of mortal belief, just as mortal belief can't force a Scion to suddenly turn into a Titan. A god could be a totally immoral and evil bastard without becoming a Titan, while a Titan could do good deeds and not become a god; there's no spontaneous point of transformation.

As an aside, we're really not big fans of the idea of Hundun having no Avatars. We know why the writers of Companion did it; they wanted to illustrate that as the embodiment of Chaos Hundun can't have orderly, organized things like a consistent representative or a normal way of doing things, but in practice it just doesn't work very well. It certainly makes the Titanrealm more inchoate, but in game terms that makes it harder to run, not easier, and it closes a lot of doors to mythological figures who are obviously embodiments of chaos and distraction but aren't allowed to be Titans of it because of this arbitrary rule. Yes, the writeup says that maybe those are just brief manifestations of Hundun before it goes back to its ever-churning riot of randomness, but that just means that interesting characters get removed, never to return, because of a quirk of the system. Randomly-churning chaotic mess is cosmic, but it isn't very interesting; we think Hundun needs faces like all the other Titanrealms, and when we get around to the Chaos realm's rewrite will probably give it some. Even the original line's books don't really commit to the idea, anyway, and sort of waffle around giving us Chi You who is basically a Titan Avatar who just doesn't have the title because that would contradict what they just said.

But anyway, back to Fatebonds. While you can't Fatebond someone into turning into a different creature or changing their minds about something, you could try to do so with crazy high-level magical shenanigans. Purview Avatars - especially The Wyrd and The Void - might be able to trap and transform a creature in this way, turning Chmarnik (and possibly whomever else was unfortunate enough to be standing too close) into a Titan Avatar by twisting his Virtues, blending him with the Titanrealm and directly tying the strands of his Fate to the primordial source of discord. It would probably take several gods blowing their Avatars in concert and a flawlessly-executed plan, but we think it could work.

I'd suggest, though, if you're not married to the idea of Hundun having no Avatars, to just assume that he does and that Chmarnik is one of them. Had we not been writing the Bogovi supplement to play nice with the original books, that's what he'd have been.

Man in the Woods

Today, John goes out into the woods and vlogs alone, like the man of nature he obviously is, to answer a bunch of questions like some kind of crochety forest troll. I hope you're ready for his manly beard and masculine robe and hat combo.

Question: In Follower Upgrade, you mention having a list of adjusted templates for Creatures and Followers. Would you please post it? It doesn't need to be a beautiful PDF, I would gladly take a Google Doc or .txt!

Question: Just how is marriage structured in the Orisha pantheon, and by extension the Yoruba? It seems that everyone is married to everyone else, both male and female, and that the women are pretty much equal to the men unless Shango is wailing on them.

Question: Did you ever see the History Channel's "Clash of the Gods"? And if so, what did you think?

Question: Do all dogs go to heaven? Do animals have souls? And most of all, how do I get spectral wolves to do my bidding?

Question: Have you ever considered scaling the Legend point gains from Raise Your Glass, making it usable more than once per day or in the presence of people who have seen you use it already? I understand why the limits are what they are, but I think the knack would still be balanced (maybe even a little fairer, since one Legend doesn't seem like much of a reward at late Demigod or God) if any of those were removed.

Question: Mictlantecuhtli is presented in the Scion RAW as a completely evil misanthrope, that apparently only exists to torture his own Scions and everyone else for that matter. Since you guys deal with a lot of Aztec politics in games, I just wanted to ask how you characterize him?

Question: Any players thinking of creating a new Orisha PC for your next game?

Question: We know a lot about your god game, but what can you tell us about your other two games? Still hush-hush?

Question: Is stunting pretty much limited by your own imagination (in conjunction with the rules)?

Question: In your game, what did Odin do to make Amaterasu his enemy? Was it because of the Aesir assault on Japan, and what's up with that?

Question: Does your PSP count as a Birthright that takes up one of your five Birthright points?

Question: In a game that's all about smashing monsters, what good way is there to play a character with the Pacifist Nature?

Question: Could a character use high levels of Epic Manipulation to convince mortals that he is really great at a purview and gain Fatebonds from those mortals (assuming he spent Legend around them)? Like, if he tells great tales (lies) of destroying entire cities and civilizations with Fire when he has actually never used the Fire purview? If this does not work, how is it different from mortals misconstruing an event they see a PC perform from one purview to another and Fatebinding based on that?

Question: What kind of asks do you reject or refuse to answer?

That was delightful. I don't have much extra to add except that if you're the question-asker who wanted to know about Epic Manipulation and Fatebonds, there are also a couple of old posts here and here that might also help.

Imagine There's No People

To make up for our lack of vlogging the past two weeks (and to celebrate the awesome marriage of two of our players - you go, Thomas and Amy!), here's a giant monster vlog full of random questions! We're like the Godzillas of vlogging, mowing down the Tokyo of YouTube!

Question: So when a Titan Avatar dies, things get bad fast, with whatever they were linked to going out of control. What about when a Titan Avatar steps down and becomes a god? Does everything still go nuts?

Question: Have you considered making Skadi a playable goddess? It's not like the Aesir don't have a history of allowing giants into their ranks. If not, what role do you think she could play in Scion?

Question: Which of your characters started out with all three Epics in one category?

Question: I know you won't tell us any plot points involving Alison Margaritas and how she affects the stories, but could you at least tell us what she is the god of and what her powers currently are? The same for Colin.

Question: Can you tell us what happens if someone gets so powerfully negatively Fatebound against Intelligence that his rolls automatically fail and his stat is effectively 0? I know the floor for actual stats is 1, but with modifiers, that can drop lower. Is he now incapable of speech, getting dressed, preparing human food? Does he basically have animal intelligence, or is there a hard floor for how bad an Attribute can get, even with Fatebinding modifiers?

Question: Can you explain the circumstances in your games that led to your enemy lists? I would like to know how Forseti and Nezha became enemies, among others.

Question: Do you think the Mongolian gods have any chance of being incorporated into scion someday?

Question: What do you dislike about the Celestial Bureaucracy? Is it the RAW or something else? Are there any quick fixes you have in mind? Why is a Water Titanrealm a good pick for them?

Question: Hey, John! This question is about Cernunnos. Why is he so powerful? He has like NINE PURVIEWS.

Question: Imagine a GBN without John. Imagine a GBN without Anne. What would either of them look like (besides nonexistent)?

In other news: sorry, eighth caller, we forgot to address your question about Water opposing the Shen. That possibility is mostly based on the fact that one of their biggest Titans, Gonggong, is a water dragon with a history of causing flooding across the countryside. We talk about him a bunch over here, so you can check that out if you'd like and make your own determinations.

Okay, let's clear some more of these posts out - we've got a blog to run here, god damn it!

Little Things from Yorubaland

Another solo vlog! Sorry, folks. You'll have to put up with me for just a week longer, but to make up for it, here's a bunch of questions about the Orisha!

Question: How should a group that doesn't use your Fatebond system use the Akunleyan boon?

Question: Is there any correlation between Erinle and Ganesha?

Question: How much of a freaking badass is Eshu?

Question: What are some cool Orisha relics for a Scion of Oko?

Question: Hello. I'm a little curious about something in your Orisha writeup. You mention that Oya is a warlike goddess, yet she doesn't have the War purview. Why not?

I'm imagining elephant parties now and they are totally ponderously awesome. (But the posturing and gang signs between the African and Indian elephants are getting dangerous. Elephants are serious business.)