The Big Day

Hey, there, everyone. We've been waiting for the right moment to make this announcement, and today is it.

Please come visit us at our new home: HerosJourneyRPG.com!

Books! Spring cleaning

It feels like we've lived here forever, but we finally got our mythology bookshelf set up!  And we have a bit of room on the shelf so we have many mythology gifts people have given us.  And a piece of Poseidon's temple we nabbed from the Mediterranean.   So glad to have it all organized and catalogued.  64 books in all!!    But now we need to fill these shelves!   We could fit at least 100 more books.  So the great used bookstore search begins.  

Included some awesome pictures.

Magic!

Hey, everybody! We apologize for the wait, but here's John's belated vlog for this week! He spent all night re-recording it while I was passed out from painkillers, and I'm prepared to say that what I heard through my drugged-out haze sounded great.

And now, back to the boons project... the fun never stops.

Puntastic

Thanks everyone for the awesome puns last night.   Got a lot more work done today, and you can see it more clearly because of the progress bars being way more specific now.  Yay!  

Also because of all the work(Anne's been home injured so I have to work on her stuff all) I have to record my book Vlog after game tonight.  So it'll be up, but very late.  

Working hard

Lots of work today on scion the past week.   Fatigue counters?   What's that?

#secretproject #speculate

Also having new video for reading project up soon.  Taking Anne to the hospital set me back a bit.  Check out her robot arm!

Story Swapping

Question: You've mentioned that you contact professors and other scholars as part of your writing process for pantheons. What kind of reactions do you get when asking for information for a game project? Positive, neutral, negative? Beer?

You know, I don't think we've ever run into anything truly negative. The worst that ever happens is that they just ignore us, and we sympathize. Professors get a whole lot of email, and I know some of them don't have time to even look at it if it didn't come from an email address provided by their university.

To be honest, most of them ignore us. And, if I were a busy-ass archaeologist or professor or scholar who gives a lot of conferences all over the world, I would probably ignore us, too. The sad truth is that a lot of professionals just don't have the time to shoot the shit over drinks with us, especially since there are people they've already promised to do that for - students, interns, colleagues, people who are paying them - that take precedence. Often, those who do respond do so extremely belatedly, shooting back an email months after we first contacted them. Considering the snail-like speed of our own email responses these days (sorry, guys!), though, I can't say I blame them for that, either.

(Side note - you guys, did you know I have 153 questions from you guys sitting in my inbox? No lie, that is the number that we haven't answered yet. If you sent in a question and are wondering why we never answered it, it's probably in that giant tornado of email possibilities somewhere. Sorry.)

But, once in a while, we do get to talk to people, and when we do it is a total blast. Professors and scholars in these areas are usually pretty passionate about them - I mean, that's what they do with their lives, right?! - so they love to talk about them. Most often, if they happen to live somewhere within a three-hour driving distance or so, we'll drag ourselves out there to see them in person, because when writing a detailed email feels like a chore, having an animated chat in an office or museum foyer can seem like a lot more fun. When we do communicate by email, people are usually happy to give us a few minutes now and then, although giant missives are usually out of the question.

But not much beer. That's mostly my fault - I don't drink. John would probably love to get professors drunk and sway down the street arguing about the relative level of gayness in the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus.

'Tis the Season!

This post is being pinned to the top of the blog until December 5th. If you're looking for new blog posts, scroll down!

Hey, folks! It's been a little while since we did something fun that all of you got to participate in, and with the holidays coming up (at least here in the U.S.), we thought now would be the perfect time to do something awesome. So, we present to you the first-ever JSR Secret Santa gift exchange!

The rules are simple (and familiar, if you've ever done one of these before!). We, the awesome Scionites who hang out on this site and blog, are going to give one another gifts, either in the holiday spirit if you celebrate solstice/Christmas or just because we know that all our friends here are awesome. You get to give a gift, you get to receive a gift, and then we all get to show off our gifts to one another. Hooray!

If you want to participate, here's how it works:

1) Send us an email at ampstorytellers@gmail.com by December 5th, letting us know you want in and giving us the following information:

• Your name and address. The only people who will see your address are us and the person who sends you a gift.
• Whether or not you're willing to send gifts internationally. If you're not in the U.S. or Canada, you'll probably want to say yes to this - we can't promise we'll get someone else in your home country.
• What your favorite mythology or pantheon is, so your gift-giver has an idea what you might like! If you have any other guidelines - no mature material, or anything like that - include those, too.

2) You will receive that information in return from one person. We'll choose the person you get a gift for at random from the submissions we receive, and they won't know it's you (unless you tell them!).

3) Get a small gift for the person you receive, and ship it to them. Please keep the price of your gift at $20USD or less; that way, everyone gets a basically equal gift and nobody has to feel like they can't participate because of expense. Please let us know via email once you have sent your gift, so we can make sure nobody gets left out. If it turns out you can't participate after signing up, let us know that, too - we won't have any hard feelings!

4) The fun part - receiving a gift! You will also receive a gift from a person chosen at random by us, from parts unknown! If you can, take a picture of it - or of you with it, if you want - and email it us.

And that's it! We're super excited and will also be participating ourselves, and we hope some of you guys want to as well. We promise that if you participate, you'll get a gift no matter what - even if your gift-giver has to drop out, we'll make sure you get one ourselves. The only guideline is to keep it in some way Scion, mythology or gaming-related, and to have as much fun as possible!

If you've got questions, hit us up here, and we hope to hear from some of you in email soon. We'll keep participation open for signup until December 5th!

I'm Not the Interesting Part of This Post

This evening, a plea for volunteers and a peace offering for everyone else!

As most of you know, I'm doing some graduate work right now, and with all graduate work comes the ever-looming spectre of research. If anybody out there has about ten minutes and would like to help me out, I've got two polls here asking about ethics issues in libraries and museums, and I figure since you fine folks have a vested, mythology-lovin' interest in libraries and museums, you'd be good people to ask.

Ethics in Libraries/Museums
Legal Issues in Libraries/Museums

It's totally anonymous, I will still love you if you don't feel like doing it, and there are only 20 total questions so if you do go for it, it should be pretty quick. There are comment boxes for each question, but feel free to skip them if you don't have anything in particular to say.

For those of you in the audience that didn't feel like being recruited for my academic exploits, here's something totally unrelated but incredibly awesome. The video below - which you should totally listen to until the end because it is so very, very worth it - is of a live performance of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf by professional modern-day skald Benjamin Bagby. Bagby tours the world performing the six-hour epic for sold-out audiences, and it's not hard to see why; he performs it with traditional harp and entirely in the original Old English, and he is fucking fantastic.

If this man ever comes even vaguely within range of our house, we will climb a mountain of corpses and fight the entire MMA lineup in single combat to get tickets. If you want to invite him to be intimidatingly Anglo-Saxon in your living room, you can get a copy of his DVD on his website. The medieval musical group he founded, Sequentia, also does a pretty killer musical reconstruction of what the Edda might have sounded like in the original Old Norse.

So if I offended you mortally by asking for research volunteers, please let me buy your love back with traditional Viking poetic performance. Back to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!

Prehistoric Preferences

Question: If you and Anne had to pick one dinosaur for the Animal purview for one of your characters, which would you pick?

Is this a hypothetical character? I don't know if dinosaurs are really compatible with most of our current kids!

I would probably choose a sauropod, something monolithic - a titanosaur to compete with the Titans, am I right? I would enjoy using Animal (Argentinosaurus) to turn into something too big to care about everyone else's little problems.

John says he would enjoy building a Scion with Animal (Velociraptor), the better to become the sneaky and terrifying scourge of the modern-day world. He will eat everyone.

You didn't ask about him, but Geoff's player Mat was here when this question came up, and he said he would buy Animal (Pterodactyl). Of course pterodactyls aren't actually dinosaurs, but we can probably forgive him his enthusiasm for flying lizard monsters.

The Penthouse Suite

Question: What're your favorite Overworlds? Personally, I think the giant treehouse that the Bogovi have is pretty cool.

Oh, jeez, favorites? It's hard to pick favorites.

John, who is busy conquering the world in the name of Zeus right now in Civilization V, says his favorite is Olympus. It's not just that it's the home of the Theoi and he's their number-one fanboy, but also because he says it's one of the most clear and universally resonant Overworlds in Scion and strikes all the right chords. The idea of the sky god ruling from atop something so high up that it might as well be thought of as impossibly far away is a very old human belief, and he enjoys the blurring of lines between the top of Olympus itself, a mountain that actually exists in Greece, and the mythic Olympus where the gods dwell. To the ancient Greek, Olympus was too high and majestic and distant and awe-inspiring to ever climb to its summit; it might as well have been another world, one that mortal men could never hope to aspire to, where only the feet of gods could tread. And if some great hero did manage to scale its unfathomable heights, he would be rewarded by the sight of the home of those gods themselves, a fitting reward for his bravery and valor.

And he thinks that's cool, and it's hard to argue with that.

There's probably ar least a little bit of bias here because I wrote them, but I'm very fond of the lower middle eastern pantheons' Overworlds - Tagarit for the Elohim and Sharay for the Alihah. I love non-standard Overworlds, because in the grand sweep of cosmographies around the world, there are just as many religions that don't conform to Scion's usual setup as there are that do (maybe more, in fact), and they help reinforce the idea of different cultures and religions as their own distinct, marvelous entities. Tagarit's emphasis on the separate strongholds of the gods, who do not act in concert as a pantheon as much as they act as lords of their own domains, echoes the ancient Levant's emphasis on proudly independent city-states, and Sharay's concept of the gods eternally active and traveling, on as unending a journey as their nomadic people, moves outside Scion's usual concept of the gods just sitting around in their palaces vegetating and congratulaing themselves.

But then, you guys know I'm a sucker for middle eastern religions. I can't help myself.

Im awesome, cause practice.

Haha dude after reading your blog for a week or so I've come to realized just how...uninspired my gaming group (self included) really is. None of us could ever dream to match up to the level of creativity you, Anne, and your players have. I was already a bit disenchanted but seeing just how much more epic you guys and your characters are...I think I'm ready to hang up the dice and find a new hobby.

You sir, make me blush.
But you have to remember that Ive worked a very VERY long time on this. Ive been STing for 20 years, and I pour a LOT of time into it during each of those years.
I had years and years of bland stories, bland characters, etc(probably still have some of both even now) before I got any kind of good at it. Like anything in life that is worth doing, it takes time and practice. In olden days I had many games of "find monster, fight monster, find next monster, fight next monster." You grow out of that and as long as you realize there is growth to be had and dont stagnate you can keep learning and growing. If you are lucky to have a group of players that are interested enough, hopefully they can grow and learn with you.

And I have been blessed with excellent players, but that took a lot of work as well. Ive had to make some tough decisions and had difficult talks with good friends who "werent working out" in the group. Its not easy, but its an amazing amount of fun and incredibly fulfilling.

So you really have to ask yourself if it seems like something you would enjoy and really like to be better at. And if thats true, please keep pursuing it and you're lucky to have a great resource here to ask questions learn from other peoples questions. Ya keep trying, and when it gets too frustrating you take a short(or long) break, and if its really what you enjoy doing, itll pull you back in.

Hopefully that helped. If it didnt, I can try the gruff angry man version of that talk. Its shorter.

Off to grad school orientation

Vlog up when we get home.

Title

So, Johns the eternal GM, eh? Well, I'm curious. John what character would YOU make? What purviews and attributes would you emphasize? Do you have a specific character in mind ready to be put onto a sheet if you get the opportunity? What Pantheon would you like to play as? I'm curious?

I get to play very rarely. I have a ton of fun playing, but Im a very involved player. An ST needs to put in a lot of work for me and I can easily take over the game from the other players. I know this...and generally make characters that wont do that. Im also very much a team player and try to fit my character to group composition and see where he'd best fall. What things are we missing? Does someone else want to be in charge? Ill ratchet back my in chargeness. I also ALWAYS construct backstory with some of the other characters. This both helps the players think about their own backstory, but also winds us into our histories before we start. Our relationships dont have to start stale and dry the first game, we can enter already having a life.

O wait, you were asking more specifically though.
I love all mythology. But as a Mediterranean, I love the dodek. Every character Ive made for a game has been dodek. Love em all, love everything about em, love their psp. Thats not to say I dont have a lot of fondness for other gods and the other pantheons, but since I get to play so rarely, I always go for my favorite.

Because Im running 3 games, Im kinda making characters constantly. Then I then get to play a little as NPCs. So i dont really have any character Id be ready to play. But many of my npcs are tons of fun and Id have a great time playing them in games as PCs.

Purviews and Epics. The most fun I have in game is doing interesting stuff in new and fun ways. So I truly dont know what purviews or epics Id pick because I see so much potential in all of them.


....i lied.

Stamina, manipulation, wits
Magic, mystery, animal

....Id just make colin.

But I woudlnt, cause I already made him!

Question answered!

Where Our Loyalties Lie

Question: Since starting doing Scion, I've become incredibly enamored of the Aztec pantheon. While I still enjoy the stories and mechanics of the others, I always want to go back to the Aztecs. I was wondering, do either of you or your players have a pantheon that just strikes the perfect chord?

Yay, player-participation questions! Have we mentioned that we love these? We totally do. I'm not sure if the players love them, but they answer them, at least, so we're going to go ahead and assume that's a yes.

Amy: Scion has really expanded my horizons and gotten me interested in non-Anglo-European mythology. I don't think I hold any pantheon above the rest, but the Loa/Orisha are infinitely fascinating to me.

Anne: You guys know me, I am also a sucker for the Aztecs. I love their unique worldview, their richly detailed and interesting ritual life, their community-oriented cosmic focus and the fact that their gods are supremely badass in basically every way. I never get bored with these guys; in fact, I never even think about getting bored with them. Behind them as a close second are probably the Canaanite gods, because god damn they are crazy and awesome and hilarious and monstrously huge and important in their part of the world, and there's no other pantheon I can think of that captures the idea of The Old Gods better than they do.

John: The Greeks resonate most with me. I've followed them since childhood and as an adult, although it's difficult to say that I worship them, I philosophically agree with them most of the time. Also, their Virtues line up with mine pretty well.

Thomas: I'll go with Norse, but it's probably only my answer because I've been playing an Aesir Scion for so long. I've done more reading and research about the Aesir than any other Pantheon, and Folkvardr's adventures have felt pretty Norse-centric.

Our bands have done a *lot,* but Ragnarok has always been a huge part of the stories (looming in the horizon, able to be postponed but never stopped outright, and then, ultimately, an epic weekend-long gaming experience that would shape everything to follow).

I don't know how different my answer would be if I'd been playing a character from another pantheon for so long. A lot of them are pretty awesome!

Except the Japanese. Seriously, guys? Tsukumo-gami?! No one cares!

Tom: I love the Greeks. They have such a vast pantheon and such interesting historical traditions of absorbing and associating their deities with those cultures they've encountered. Be it the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, or even the associations with the Egyptians (hell yeah Hermanubis!), they are creative and brilliant enough to know that absorbing these deities will only add to their ability to conquer those they encountered instead of just killing off the opposition. Seriously. How brilliant is that?

I also like my gameplay mechanics to stay simple. Arête really lends itself to that. As John, Anne, and everyone else in the games I was a part of knows, keeping mechanics in my head isn't a strong suite of mine. So I really appreciate the simplicity of their PSP. I also relate to their Virtues, which helps.

I also really enjoyed the Vanir. I'm the kind of person who does well to know who his antagonist is. I also enjoy sticking it to the Man (even though I'm not good at the subtle strategic ways that should be employed). You'll notice that in both Goze (Terminus) and Will (Sverrir) a lot. I do wish we knew more about the Vanir though. Having that air of the unknown does really lend itself to in-character discovery, which is great.

Through Will I discovered the Polynesian pantheon. I think they may be one of the coolest out there. With Polia'hu, Maui and Pele (that relic-destroying whore), it really influenced the direction Sverrir took. The vivid images of Fire and Water and the raw eruption of power they could be when they both met was very inspiring. I really can't wait for that pantheon to be released.

Well... good news, Tom, I've totally already gone to the library. Don't tell John, he told me I'm supposed to do less work, not more.

If He Were Roman, He'd Be Allowed to Get Married Now

Question: HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY JOHN!!!

It's officially our despotic lord and master's birthday! Dionysiac theatre cake for everyone!

Okay, just kidding, that's an awesome cake but it's not the real cake. THIS is the real cake!

Woohoo!

Don't think of it as getting old. Think of it as apotheosizing from your twenties to your thirties.

Interview Questions

Question: We all have weaknesses. What is John's biggest weakness as a Storyteller? What is Anne's biggest weakness as a player?

Well... when we're in games together, the answer is usually "each other". John and I have been together a long time and know each other well, which means that we sometimes forget the usual rules about interacting at a gaming table. I tend to question John a lot more than I would most Storytellers, since I work with him a lot behind the scenes and am used to a cooperative idea-bouncing model instead of the iron control an ST needs to have during the game itself, which can frustrate him a lot. Conversely, he's harder on me than he would be on most players, which sometimes irritates me when he assumes I know something from background work that I might not or snaps at me for not paying enough attention when he'd have let the same behavior go in another player. We've pretty much given up on both being players in the same game unless we're allied; we're not good at convincingly lying to or manipulating each other and neither of us will stop shy of murdering the other person in the pursuit of in-character goals, so it's usually better to avoid the heartbreak and play people who at least vaguely get along with one another. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least patterns and expectations that aren't always quite in line with good RPG practice, so we sometimes ping off each other but try our best not to let things get weird for everyone else.

When not talking about the two of us bothering each other, though, we do still have our weaknesses. John has an infallible memory when it comes to game stuff and makes leaps of intuition very easily, so he occasionally forgets that players may not remember that plot point from six months ago or be surprised that they haven't yet unraveled a puzzle that he didn't provide any clues to. He also tells me he sometimes has trouble reining in a player that has gone off the rails for too long; he doesn't mind letting players do their own thing or drive the story somewhere surprising, but when one player dives off to do something insane and eats up four other peoples' time for too many hours, he sometimes finds it challenging to get everyone back on track. As for me as a player, I spectate too much sometimes, getting so caught up in what others are doing that when it comes around to my turn to take an action I haven't prepared as well as I could have. I also sometimes let character motivations overrun game sense when they're especially strong, and have been known to refuse to do things that my character wouldn't do even when I know it would speed the scene up or help other characters that are struggling.

I'm sure our players will jump in and find other things to complain about us, but those are the ones that stick out as the biggest ones to us. We like to think we don't overdo any of them, but like everyone else, we could always be better.

Who's the Fool?

Question: What did y'all think of the Scion April Fools Supplement? Anything salvageable?

Question: So have you guys seen the new Scion Extras (tedious sub-titlename here) expansion, and what are your thoughts on it?

Question: I realise that I have been April Fooled by Onyx Path Publishing with their new Scion 'expansion' - I'll blame not seeing it till the 5th, but did anyone else see this?

Question: I don't know if you guys have been asked this and just not got around to answering it, but have you guys checked out Scion: Extras yet, and if so, which, if any, of the gods in it should be playable?

Jeez, you guys - yes, we saw it. :)

We were actually all on our toes back when Onyx Path announced a Scion bonus product, ready to bring you our pithy pronouncements and thoughtful reviews, but as soon as we saw that it came out on the first, we realized our error. Nothing in-depth to talk about here; it's an April Fool's joke release, which pretty much says it all. It's utterly silly, so we don't have anything wise to say about it, and we figure you can enjoy the silliness without any help from us.

Also, it's quite clear that the supplement is absolutely making fun at those of us who take The All-Holy Mythological Accuracy seriously in our games, and we definitely fall under that umbrella. There are many different kinds of Scion players out there, and the supplement takes shots at all of them - those who are more concerned with tiny nitty gritty combat details than with everything else in the game, those who turn purple whenever someone puts an accent mark on a god's name wrong, those who don't understand why this game doesn't include rules for playing a space cowboy bride of Cthulhu, and everybody in between. They're teasing us - all of us, you, me, the whole kit and kaboodle - so shoot, what do you say about that?

To the fourth questioner, we've already statted Xochiquetzal as playable for our games, and we're considering Tenjin for when we do our Amatsukami rewrite, while Cocamama is currently set up by us as a Titan Avatar in the Apu supplement. The rest of the provided gods we probably wouldn't consider Legend 12.

For the first questioner up there - no, not really. The supplement's obviously not intended to be serious (and you can see the writer talking about how she presented it as deadpan to play up the humor over here!) and, unsurprisingly, that means most of it is pretty much bogus for our usual hack-it-up, make-it-accurate purposes. Shit is insane - nobody's associations make sense, Scions are obviously statted for shits and giggles (and by the way, anybody recognize that suspiciously familiar game designer?), and the whole thing hangs on the ridiculous premise that Scions of gods who aren't Legend 12 or of front-and-center importance are some kind of second-string beings who are vaguely effective at best and sad jokes at worst. Even the title's a joke, referring to that concept of Extras in Scion: Hero that we hated and jettisoned back in the dark ages.

These are all things that we would abhor in a regular supplement, but since this ain't one, just enjoy the satire and move on. We ought to have known, really - we all know Scion's second edition is in the works and that it's never been one of their top sellers, so it wouldn't make sense to put out a serious supplement for the old, ending game line at this juncture. But you know us Scion fans - we're all so starved for content that we tend to get excited whenever a dev puts a whisker out of his or her cave.

And hey, of course, if you love the offbeat humor and it's the sort of flavor and style you already enjoy in your Scion games, you can use whatever, whomever and whichever out of the Extras that you want to! Go nuts. Ain't nobody the boss of your games, and especially if you're looking for something a little more goofy, over-the-top or all-inclusive, there's no reason not to. Sing "Scion Style" to your heart's content.

To be honest, John and I disagree about the supplement to a certain extent. I think it was probably meant to be all in good fun; it looks like it was intended for a quick laugh, that its pokes at the Scion community were meant to be gentle teasing and that the writer, who was briefly active on the forums after it came out, had no intention but to bring us some wacky joy. In light of all that, I'm in favor of letting it float on by as the piece of whimsy it is and not worry about it further. John, on the other hand, was a little more upset; he pointed out that, when you have a loyal community of players who wait literally years between releases and have kept the game alive for a long time on the strength of their love for it, telling them they're getting new content and then giving them an April Fool's release instead is a bit like promising a hungry child some food and then handing him a wax apple. There's no denying that we were disappointed, and the needling of the fans on top of that, lighthearted though it might have been intended to be, seemed more like taunting to him as a result. His exact phrasing was something along the lines of "like jocks making fun of D&D players in the cafeteria", by which I think he meant that the teasing tone didn't come through and it instead came off feeling like mean-spirited mockery of players who feel strongly about elements in their games.

But, whatever your feelings on it, it's out there and you can love it or leave it however you want to! As of this writing, it's still free on DTRPG, although I believe I saw someone mention that it might not be forever so you should grab it while it's hot.

All we ask is that you guys not come to us yelling about how it's canon that Xochiquetzal has Fire and is married to Mictlantecuhtli. Because we will laugh at you.

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!

So Hard for the Money

Question: Do you guys have day jobs?

John's sarcastic ranting started with "No! The princely sums of money we make from this website allow us to spend all our time writing with breaks for yachting on the weekends!" and "No! We're government subsidized to eat pizza and talk about dead religions!" It then went on for a good long while, punctuated by the need to stop for air and then eventually lie down and grumble about Yoruba destinies and Russian peasant politics in the nineteenth century and the kids on his lawn these days. Now he's groused himself to sleep.

Yes, we have day jobs. We love working on Scion - we loooove it, if you can't tell - but we do not actually get paid to do it, so everything you see here we do on our own time when we're not working for The Man. I'm out doing corporate worky things every weekday from about 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., depending on the day, and John works freelance in talent management and performance and has long periods of dry spell before entire weeks of frenzied activity. We work on Scion for the love of the game, but most of the rest of the time we work on other stuff for the love of a roof over our heads and enough food to keep our cats from chewing on us in the night.

But hey, most of us celebrate our hobbies in our off time and keep our noses to the grindstone the rest of the day, right? So we're not complaining. We still have a lot of fun, and maybe someday our pet projects will turn into pet employment. Until then, thanks to each and every one of you for hanging out with us, and if we don't answer your comments or questions quickly enough, give us a little slack. We might be somewhere writing about database migration and gig scheduling instead, but we'll be back soon.

John and Anne Fight to the Death

We occasionally get questions about how to write a PSP and whether or not it's hard. Today, you will get to witness exactly how glamorous and exciting the process really is.

Thrilling!