The Secret Lives of Characters

We're on the road, so the vlog is off-schedule and no-frills, but it's still here. Hooray!

Question: What, if anything, do your Hero-level Scions tend to want to accomplish with their newfound powers?

Question: Why is Folkwardr carrying Goze's arm?

Question: Scion isn’t exactly helpful when a modern Scion with a modern upbringing and environment wants to be the God of a very modern concept. For example, what Attributes/Previews would a God of the Internet have? What about a God of Space Travel or Modern Finance? Artistry helps a little in solving this problem, but it goes so far. So basically I'm asking you what powers would Gods of the 3 examples I just gave you have? Oh, and also which Pantheons would be the most welcoming these strange new Gods?

Question: How much XP should I have when creating characters above Legend 2? In your character creation page there is the values for legend 3 and 4, but what about the other levels? I'm asking because I need to create NPCs of varying legend and I want to give them full stats but I don't know how much power they should have.

Question: In our games, we run Santa Muerte as a legend 12 goddess, and a former scion of Mictecacihuatl. How do you think the other Aztec gods would react to being so massively overshadowed (who's Mictlantecuhtli?) by their child?

Question: How do you deal with a player who checks out after something really bad happens to their character? One of my players got both of his legs blown off. When I sit down and talk with the player, he does not mean anything selfish but no longer feels excited to play his character. His disinterest has been going on for weeks.

Question: Is it possible for a Scion to become a Legendary Mortal before his Visitation?

Question: Since your write-ups for the Titans don't include stats, how do you run scene where your characters are interacting with them? Whether they're fighting them or negotiating with them, how do you run scenes with the Titans without involving dice and rolls?

Question: So, one of my players has a primarily mentals-based character who's a bit of a jerk (but an OOC enjoyable level of jerkiness). However, as things are getting higher in legend, he's been making enemies due to some very bad social rolls and decisions, and wants to use his artistry to make a relic to compensate for not being likeable. He doesn't want to buy socials (fate'll fight him on it, hard!), just act like he has some, sometimes. Would you allow this? What should it be made of? How many dots?

We'll be slow to respond due to being out of town, but we'll be back in the saddle soon. See you guys then!

Scion AMA: Mitchell Gozer

All right, folks, you asked some awesome AMA questions and the players delivered. We'll be doing posts like this over the next few weeks with various characters' answers, and some bonus playlists for their hilarious hijinks and soulful tragedies as well.

First up today is Mitchell Gozer, Scion of Hermes, now known as Terminus, the god of luck and last chances. Or, "that guy who dies all the time and swears at the Moirai a lot".

AMA: Last Chance!

Hey, everybody!

Today is the last day for the Scion AMA! If you have any questions you want to ask any of our characters (check out this post for the rules, if you missed them), now is the time! After tonight, we'll send the questions we have on to the players and start posting their answers.

I know there are a few people who told me they were working on it that I haven't heard from yet, so feel free to chime in. :) The players are excited and we'll soon have a window into these characters' minds!

The Scion AMA!

We're keeping this post pinned to the top of the blog for a week so folks can find it easily - if you're looking for new blog posts, scroll down!

Okay, everybody! After this post last week garnered a good amount of interest, we're going for it. We're going to do an in-character Scion AMA (Ask Me Anything), and you're all invited to participate!

While we considered several platforms to do this, in the end we decided that we would probably keep it on our blog for the safety and comfort of players and question-askers alike, and that while we do love the "here's three hours, go nuts" form of Reddit AMAs, we have too many folks around the globe in different time zones to make that as feasible. So here's what we'll do: starting today, please email us any questions you want to ask a character at ampstorytellers@gmail.com. We'll keep them in a running file for one week, and then send them on to the players. And finally, we'll post all the answers, and you guys can go nuts in the comments. :)

There are a few ground rules, as there always are with AMAs:

1) Be respectful. Most of you guys normally are so we don't anticipate any problems, but it still needs to be said. The players are real people, even if their characters aren't.
2) The players reserve the right to refuse to answer. Hopefully they won't - after all, answering questions is the whole point! - but if your question's answer would reveal something that is still a secret in-game or they just aren't comforable with it, they may have to say no. (They might be able to provide teasers, though!)
3) You can ask questions of any Scion that has been a PC in our games, living or dead, in any universe. In the very rare case that the player is not available to answer (there are only a few that would fit this criteria), John or I will do our best to answer instead. NPCs are out of bounds.
4) Remember that you're asking the character a question, and you will receive an in-character answer. Don't ask personal questions of the players themselves.
5) Questions are unlimited - you can send in as many as you want and email as many times as you want! That said, try to make questions unique and interesting. We probably won't follow through on any "Ask this exact same question to every single character!" requests.
6) If you can, please send questions in to our email rather than commenting with them here. It'll be easier for us to coordinate. If you can't email for some reason, you can drop it in a comment on this post instead, but please give email a shot if you can!

And that's all we've got. :) We've spoken to several players already who are totally excited about doing this, so now's your shot, everybody. If there's something you've always wondered about a character, a question you have about their thoughts and motivations or just some situation you'd like to hear them explain in their own words, they are at your disposal.

To the God-Phone!

Question: Could we someday do a Q/A bit with some of your players answering "in character" ? Either in text or video format would be really cool! Geoff, what is your favorite color?!

Hey, there, folks!

We got this question in a little while ago, and while we think it sounds pretty fun, we weren't sure exactly who the questioner had in mind or whether there were very many of you out there who would like to do this.

So, we're asking you! Would you have fun asking questions (and getting answers!) to some of our characters? If so, which characters or games did you want to talk to? What kinds of formats would you like to get answers in? Is there anybody out there going, "Ugh, that's the worst, I hate the very idea"?

Please note, this is not an invitation to start pouring in questions to the characters right now. We're just doing a quick barometer test to see if it's something that people would have fun doing. If there's enough interest, it'll be up to the players themselves if they want to participate.

But it sounds pretty awesome to us. Let us know how it sounds to you!

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!

Post About Sexual Assault Among the Gods: Continue At Own Risk

Question: Why are there so many more virgin goddesses than virgin gods, and what obstacles could a PC face when choosing to pursue either path?

This is actually a serious historical sociology question. Buckle down with me.

The reason why there are way more virgin goddesses than gods is very simple: for most ancient cultures (and even most cultures today, sadly), sex was seen as a sign of masculinity and power in men, but as a sign of pollution and immorality in women. Conversely, virginity was seen as a sign of virtue and goodness in women, whereas it was seen as a sign of immaturity and timidity in men.

Entire Gender Studies textbooks can't cover all the reasons this has been going on, where it came from or what it still means today, but I'll give you the snapshot version. Deities are conglomerate creatures; they're made up of humanity's needs, stitched together from symbolism and drawn in broad strokes as representatives of mankind's best and worst qualities and the realities of the world and cosmos in which people live. Many gods are idealized versions of humans - they may still have occasional lapses or moments of bad judgment or behavior, but on the whole they are more admirable and perfect than humans, because they represent power and control over the universe that humans can never have. And the fact that they are idealized means that, for better or worse, they reflect the specific ideals of the cultures that created them, including (often especially) their attitudes toward sex.

The question of what "virginity" even is is something that's been around for millennia, and that has constantly changed, been regarded differently by various cultures, and meant more than one thing at one time. It's a social construct, meaning that "virginity" isn't really a thing that exists, but rather a concept that various people or cultures may choose to assign varying levels of importance to. In some cultures, to be a virgin implies that a person has had no sexual contact whatsoever in their lifetime; in others, it might mean that they could have had sex, but only with a certain gender of person; in others, it might mean that they might have had sex but have never been married; in yet others it might mean that they have sex but not in any formal relationships; and in others it might simply mean that they're not sexually mature yet (for most cultures, this means that a woman hasn't begun menstruating or a man's voice hasn't yet changed). In some cultures, the word is just a descriptor, a way of saying, "Oh, that person hasn't had sex yet." In others, it's a badge of honor, a curse of childhood, or a way of assigning worth to a person based on their sexual experience or lack thereof.

For the most part, virgin goddesses appear in cultures that value virginity in some way. The most common examples are the virgin goddesses of the Greeks - Artemis, Athena and Hestia - which should come as no surprise, because virginity was considered a laudable trait in a woman in ancient Greece. The people of that culture believed that a woman who was a virgin possessed fortitude of spirit and virtuous power, which is why it's used as a positive quality that those goddesses possess; and conversely, they believed that a woman who had sex with lots of people was of weak moral character and unadmirable selfishness, which is why figures like Aphrodite are often referred to pejoratively or in comic anecdotes despite the fact that she was also an important and widely worshiped deity. Like a lot of European cultures that strongly valued sons as heirs and carriers of the family line, the Greeks wanted to encourage virginity in women so that, if they ever married, there would never be any question of whose children they gave birth to, and likewise because they considered women in large part to be the property of their fathers and husbands, so if they'd had sex with other men they would be "giving away" something that belonged to their male caretaker without permission.

This is also why virginity is almost always only important in goddesses who aren't married. Goddesses who are married and who have sex within appropriate culture-allowed lines - Persephone, for example - are not stigmatized for being sexually active, because it's expected of them as wives and allowed as long as they follow the rules. But goddesses like Athena, who are unmarried, must therefore be virgins; if they aren't going to be wives, the thinking goes, then they can't have sex without being bad people. Ancient sexual politics are bullshit that way, sometimes.

But, on the flip side of all this, none of this stuff applies to male gods, which is why it's very rare to find one who is considered a virgin (and even rarer to find one in which that virginity is considered a positive thing). Most ancient cultures considered men having sex to be not only natural, but something to be admired, an indication that they were strong, manly and virile. The more sex men had in many of these cultures, the more strong and impressive they were considered, especially if a large percentage of that sex also produced children, who were physical proof of their virility. "Virginity", as a concept, barely applied to males at all, and it certainly wasn't something they were encouraged to aspire to or that anyone considered an example of them being more "virtuous" the way it was when applied to women. With the exception of chastity undertaken for religious purposes - some priests, for example, might abstain from sex or even castrate themselves for specific religious reasons - sex was something that most societies encouraged for men, and that marked their passage from childhood into adulthood. In fact, men who didn't have sex would be more likely to be ridiculed or pitied - after all, if sex makes you powerful and virile, then the guys who don't have any are clearly less those things than the ones who do, and there's an underlying question of whether or not they ever really become adults attached in many cases as well.

(Incidentally, this dichotomy is one of the major problems in sociology across time. If you tell women they can't have sex, and then tell men they should have sex all the time, who do they have sex with? Unfortunately, often the answer is rape, which has the further ugly consequence of leaving a woman who is now "tainted" through no fault of her own and a man who is praised for asserting his masculinity. This is one of the reasons Greek mythology is so rape-heavy, and why the women who are raped in it so often commit suicide immediately afterward.)

So, we are left with a lot of virgin goddesses because virginity is "good" for women, and almost no virgin gods becaues virginity is "bad" for men. And centuries upon centuries of really icky sociological context.

Not every culture does this, of course; some pantheons - the Anunna and Deva come to mind - don't bother with virginity as an idea that matters too much to anyone one way or the other and even often celebrate female sexuality. In those pantheons, there are no virgin deities of any kind, because the cultures and religions in the time period they came from didn't assign the same importance (or kind of importance) to the idea or else decided it was something that applied only to humans, never to gods. It's different for every culture - indeed, often even for different time periods within the same culture - which means that in some it is an ultimately important idea that affects all deities (especially female ones), and in others it's a total non-issue.

But the more important part of this question is what all this means for you, the new young Scion coming up through the ranks. If you choose to make virginity part of your divine image, why those in the pantheon before you did so isn't necessarily relevant; what matters is why you want to do it, and what it means to your character. Maybe she wants to be a virgin goddess because it prevents any of the male gods from being able to claim they "own" or have any control over her actions. Maybe he wants to be a virgin god because he wants to represent rising above the physical plane and being associated with pure unbodied spirit. Maybe she wants to be a virgin goddess because she doesn't like or enjoy sex, or because she wants to exist as a being that has transcended the idea of physical reproduction altogether. Maybe he wants to be a virgin god because he wants to be a representative of eternal childhood. All these reasons and more are perfectly valid, and what's more, you don't necessarily need to be a "virgin" by the standards of the mortal culture you come from to be a virgin deity, either. You can decide to be a god of virginity or a virgin goddess even if you used to have a lot of sex, or you were assaulted, or you have been married but now aren't, or anything else. The only people who are going to tell you you can't be a virgin god because you had sex one time when you were a sixteen-year-old mortal are haters, and you don't have to listen to haters. Remember that you're the one building your deity's Legend, so you're in charge of what their image and representation is as a god, not random other people who want to label you. "Virginity" has had a ton of meanings across history, so you can choose to use any of them or even invent your own new definition and try to make it stick.

But there will be challenges, no matter who you are or how you choose to appear as a virgin deity, and unfortunately many of them are going to be pretty horrible ones. Virgin goddesses almost all, sooner or later, have to deal with rape attempts; especially in pantheons with an established culture that values masculine conquest or views women as challenges to be overcome rather than people who would rather you not touch them without permission, a virgin goddess may be viewed as a "temptation" too great for gods to resist trying to take advantage of. Some will do so because they think it reinforces their superiority or power over her, or because it gives them bragging rights, or just because she's there, as if she were Mount Everest or something. Even if you're not in a pantheon that's prone to that kind of behavior, you may encounter a few bad apples or just have to sometimes interact with other pantheons who are, so it's something you'll have to deal with. And while this is probably going to happen to female deities a lot more than male ones, there's no guarantee that male virgin gods will be safe from sexual assault, either; they are likely to suffer from their pantheon-mates trying to "fix" them or make them more "mature", foisting potential sex partners on them whether they want them or not, or even attacking them themselves, especially if they happen to be very attractive. And don't think this is limited to the Ishtars of the universe; plenty of male gods are happy to go in for a little guy-on-guy action sometimes, too, and may use the fact that you don't have sex with women as an excuse to claim that clearly that's what you're into and you're just protesting too much.

That doesn't necessarily mean you're doomed or that your character is unavoidably in for inescapable physical trauma, so don't feel like you need to immediately throw the idea away, but it is a perennial problem for virgin deities - if you look at the goddesses famous for being virgins, most of them have stories of men trying to get one over on them without permission, such as Hephaestus attempting to rape Athena or Orion attempting to rape Artemis, or else the looming danger of it is implied when they need to have protectors (such as Sraosha so carefully protecting his sister Ard, which is also a metaphor for justice protecting virtue). If you know you want virginity to be a major part of your story, you may want to consider how to safeguard yourself as you gain Legend; maybe you want to stack powers so you can get a mad DV, or buy a lot of Justice boons so you can smite the face off anyone who tries to lay a finger on you without permission, or keep your Appearance as low as possible so it's easier for you to go unnoticed, or whatever else you can think of. You might also want to start working toward trying to change those old, awful ideas about sex and sexuality and find ways to drag your pantheon into the modern day, which could mean building up Charisma for convincing speeches and lawmaking or working toward Justice and Guardian to help safeguard yourself and others during this culture shift.

If you're lucky or hardy or scrappy enough to escape attempts on your virginity, the other major issues you will have to deal with will be primarily social ones. Male virgin gods may have to handle a certain amount of disdain; other gods may think they're immature, or weak, or pathetic, and there will probably be a lot of mockery and shaming going on, although whether or not it happens to your face will depend on how much they like you and what your position is within the pantheon. Female virgin goddesses may have to field resentment or even anger thrown in their direction by male gods who characterize them as "ice queens" or take their refusal to have sex as a personal insult to their entire gender. Some gods may be on a neverending mission to play matchmaker for virgin gods of either sex whether they like it or not, forcing you to jump through political hoops just to avoid ending up attached to someone before you know it and subject to the sexual expectations of marriages among ancient gods.

And again, some of these issues may not happen to you at all. Maybe you'll get lucky, and you'll be in a pantheon that is totally cool with letting you be yourself and respecting that, or you just happen to hang out with deities who aren't raging assholes about it. Maybe you'll just be so awesome that you manage to shut all this kind of shit down before it really gets going. If you want to take on virginity as one of your divine qualities, you shouldn't back off just because it might have scary ramifications; but you should always be aware that there will probably be major challenges.

A lot depends on why you want to be a virgin deity; what does that mean to you? Is it something that represents another concept or idea you're god of, or just part of your personality? Do you want it known far and wide as part of your Legend, or is it a personal conviction you don't care to share? These are all concerns that will affect what you want to do as a virgin god or goddess and how things play out for you.

But whatever it is, if you want to go for it, go for it all the way. We salute you.

(As always, it goes without saying that if your game - either Storyteller or players - isn't comfortable dealing with issues of sex and sexuality, or with potential triggers like sexual assault, then don't bring those ideas in. They are certainly present in mythology, often as major themes, but the game is meant to be fun, and it's never going to be fun if people at the table are uncomfortable or unhappy. As with all potential problem themes in Scion, take your group's temperature on what they are and aren't okay dealing with before you launch a storyline or let in an NPC that might seriously upset someone. Know your Storyteller and fellow players.)

Hearts and Flowers

Hey, everyone! Here's a special Valentine's Day-themed vlog, because we are, as always, totally in love with love.

Question: Have you ever had a virgin goddess break her chastity in your games? If so, how did it happen and were there any consequences for the goddess and/or her lover?

Question: Which gods and goddesses do you "ship" as in having a likely romantic relationship that was not particularly seen in their texts?

Question: In honor of Valentine's Day, can you tell us about some of your favorite romantic relationships in the games that you've played/run?

For those who were watching this space eagerly hoping for site updates instead, don't despair - I believe we will have something ready for release next week (although if we fall off a cliff before then, please don't hate me). See you then!

Cosmic Scheduling Mastery

Question: My friends and I are about to start doing a Scion campaign. One of my players is wanting to set a goal for their character to become, "Goddess of Administrative Efficiency" or something similar. I trust her ability to pull this off and make it fun, but neither of us are quite sure which pantheon such a god would work in best. Furthermore, I'm very tempted to tell her to hold off on godhood plans while she's still basically mortal because so much can change through play. Should I have them wait? Lastly, would there be any load out of boons/epics you'd particularly suggest for such? We've got ideas but would love your input!

Neat! Being an administrator myself during my dreary professional daylight hours, I definitely love the idea of an awesome goddess of efficiency and excellence. You go, girl.

So, I realize that this question came in a long time ago and got lost in the questionado, so you guys have probably already started and we totally missed the boat on helping you choose a pantheon. But, we'll still give you some suggestions, and maybe they'll help someone else in a similar situation.

As far as pantheons that value administrative efficiency go, you probably can't do better than the Shen. The Celestial Bureaucracy has a massive administrative machine supporting its myriad different courts, bureaus, departments and divisions, and there are many, many lesser gods who already perform basic administrative functions in order to support them. There are gods in charge of keeping track of mortal actions (the Kitchen God is the most famous, who reports up to heaven on the sins and good deeds of humans each year), gods in charge of watching the flow of humans between the Underworld and the World via death and reincarnation, gods in charge of communication between various divisions of unrelated deities and gods in charge of recording events among the divine in minute detail. Because the pantheon is set up as a kind of gigantic, byzantine governmental morass, based on the imperial governing bodies of ancient China's ruling dynasties, there's always room for an administrator among the gods. In fact, they're probably in desperate need of more of them.

But, if China's not your cup of tea, you may want to range a little farther afield. The Anunna also have a long history of records-keeping and complex political administration - they practically have several pantheons worth of gods to manage, and a lot of rules about how to avoid stepping on toes and who can do what when without breaching protocol. As the ancient creators of things like civilization, politics and records, they would probably respect and welcome a new young goddess who wanted to make that her bread and butter. And while they aren't famous for their paperwork or data connections necessarily, pantheons that have very large rosters like the Theoi, Kami or Netjer may also benefit from a deity who specializes in greasing wheels, scheduling important things and making sure information gets where it needs to go.

As for individual gods, there are a few with administrative bents scattered here and there throughout the pantheons. Sarasvati, as goddess of learning, knowledge and information and patron of students and scholars, might be a good parent for a Scion who wants to grow up and specialize in the efficient sharing of information, and Thoth is the lord of writing, knowledge and academics and might be a great parental resource and encouragement to a Scion who wanted to follow in his footsteps. And while Ogma isn't quite the same as the others, he did invent a language and is a patron of some more esoteric, occult styles of learning, so he might be an interesting parent choice for a kid who wanted to reach for the administrative stars.

Administrative-friendly powers abound, and you have plenty of options to choose from. You can't go wrong with Intelligence knacks - Applied Academics, Cipher, Math Genius and Speed Reader are great just to name a few, and Intelligence itself is the stat you'll probably find yourself rolling most often to solve academic problems or figure out the best way to put things in order. She'll also probably want some Epic Wits for making quick calls and responding to administrative emergencies in a decisive and efficient manner. I'm not sure if she wants to be all about being the patron of awesome administrative efficiency herself, or if she wants to try to enforce it on others as well, and if it's the second she'll probably want some socials (Manipulation strikes me as the best call for subtly encouraging and enforcing things like protocols and processes).

However, we think it's your other question that's most important, and while we wouldn't tell your players they can't have a plan for what they want to be gods of, we would caution them that the road from Hero to God brings massive changes. It's fine for players to come in with a vague idea of what they want to be god of; after all, getting to be a god someday is a big draw for the game, and most people have a cool image in their heads of what kinds of cosmic beings they want to be. But things change over the long journey from Legend 2 to Legend 9; your Scions will probably see their personalities evolve, their goals and desires change and shift, and their ambitions change wildly depending upon what happens to them and what parts of their own destinies they shape in ways they never expected. We've never seen a Scion still be - or even want to be - the same person or have the same set of powers as newly minted gods that they were when they first began.

So while we would never tell players they can't come in with goals for godhood or ideas for what they want to be, we would always tell them that it's very likely that those will change over time, and furthermore that that's okay. Changing what you do or who you are as your character grows doesn't mean that you've failed; on the contrary, it means you're opening to new possibilities and growing as a character, and that's usually a good thing for the game as a whole and your character's story arc in particular. So let them have ambitions, as long as they know that those might change. No god is what they were as a mortal.

We hope your player is rocking her new Scion and well on her way, and that anyone else who wants to do similar jumps on the bandwagon, too!

They Have Opinions

Okay, you guys, today we're doing a vlog treat (one day late, but we needed to ambush the star-studded cast). Today's vlog is being performed totally unplanned and unscripted by three of our fabulous players, who took time out from their busy schedule of being screwed over by other king gods to answer some player-centric questions. In fact, they were so awesome at it that it was over an hour long when it was done, so we split it into two parts and you'll get to see the second half next week.

In the meantime, here are some questions!

Question: Does high positive/negative Appearance usually affect internal band interactions? Or is it often forgotten/shrugged off by players and their PCs? For instance, does Woody often find himself getting lost in Geoff's eyes, or is he just used to it?

Question: Have you used Gods in your games as NPCs, actually involved alongside the PCs, not just as observers/catalysts, and if so, which ones?

Question: Has your PCs been in a Avatar vs. Avatar fight?

Question: Sowiljr has a keycard for the handsome gods club. What is that? A cult for him or a mens' club for gods? Or what?

Question: Okay since every pantheon seems to be big messed up families I gotta ask: who is your "unfavorite" in each pantheon?

Awesome shout-out props to Alex Preston-Bosch for the fancy new opening credits - he is awesome!

This Post is Full of Question Marks

Question: I got a player who wants to play a Scion with a split personality. How do you handle that?

Well, that's a whole ugly can of worms. We would need a lot more detail than that to give you really specific advice, but we've got a few pointers for you anyway. Also, I don't know what this proposed character's gender might be, but I'm going to pretend she's a lady because that's what I am.

First of all, and most importantly: a Scion with a split personality is a roleplaying decision, not a mechanical one. If a player wants to tackle that as part of her character and explore all the ways that might affect her behavior, adventures and life, that's totally groovy, but it does not bring with it any mechanical benefits. Her alternate personas do not get separate stats or powers, nor should they ever be used as excuses to cheat the system. If there are any places that you can see ahead of time might come up as problems - for example, the Scion trying to get out of the effects of a Justice boon because the "other guy" did it - sit down with her now and make sure she knows what will and won't work. You don't need the extra stress of trying to find polite ways to shut down a player's attempts to game the system while still making the game fun for everyone else at the same time, and they don't want to come in thinking they have a brilliant plan and get shot down with no idea what to do next, either.

This doesn't mean at all that a split-personality Scion can't have different things going on for her two different personas; it just means that you, as the Storyteller, need to know more about this character to begin with than you might for some others. By extension, that means that the player needs to know a lot about this character, which might involve some research on her part. Ask her: why is it she wants to play someone with a split personality? Is it because she wants to explore mental illness in a Scion? Because she has two character ideas and wants to play them both at once, or because she thinks those two personalities would have some good interplay in being contained by the same being? Is it because she wants to explore a mythic duality within herself, like Hindu deities with different manifestations or dual- or triple-gods that display different aspects? Or did she just think it sounded fun?

We don't want to rain on anyone's parade and say that they can't play a split-personality Scion off the cuff just because it's fun, but there's way too much going on with a character like that to try to just wing it. It won't be very good characterization and the player runs the risk of their character becoming flat and incapable of progressing, and it's not fair to the Storyteller who needs a basic handle on things to plan a good story. How exactly does this split personality work? Does this character actually have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and if so, is the player well-versed in how that disorder manifests and affects people and prepared to play it that way? Do you or the player need to do some research before you know how to handle it? Or, if this personality split is from some other source, what is that source, how did it cause this, and what happens as a result? Are there particular triggers that cause her to switch from one personality to the other? You'll need to know those triggers, as the Storyteller, so you know when to remind the player that they've happened or work them into your own plots. Does she switch seemingly at random? If so, as the Storyteller you'll need to be in charge of when that happens, and you might need to come up with a way of randomly determining it. Do these two personalities know about each other? Do they remember what the other one did, or do they have memory blackouts and no idea what they've done when they were in their alternate persona? Are both personalities sometimes active at the same time, or can they only be "awake" if the other one is "asleep", and if they're both up and having conversations with one another, is that going to lead to that player monopolizing too much game time with their internal drama? Is there some magical source or process behind this split, and if so do you need to figure out the details of how that works before you can set ground rules for it?

Another thing to be on the lookout for is to make sure that the handling of the situation doesn't cross a line into being offensive. Your player doesn't necessarily have to take this characterization super seriously or anything if she doesn't want to, but DID is a very real and serious condition that affects a lot of people, and if you play it for comedy or treat it like a minor personality quirk that doesn't really affect the person's life all that much, you run the risk of trivializing the experiences of those who do suffer from similar conditions, which may in turn upset or offend players. If you think that might be an issue, you may want to bring it up to the player ahead of time to make sure it isn't handled insensitively. You guys don't need advanced degrees in psychology to play a character like this, but a little research will go a long way toward making sure you don't stereotype too hard.

If your player isn't interested in approaching this from a psychological point of view and instead would like something more mythological, there are also a lot of really neat mythical precedents for the idea of more than one mind (or soul) occupying the same person or body. I don't know which pantheon your player's thinking of going with, but several of them have the potential to work dual personalities right into their PSPs. Orisha Scions will literally gain a second persona once they get access to Iwa Pele, with the ability to switch between them at will and a discrete set of powers and Fatebonds for each different personality; you have to wait until Demigod level to get it, but it's still a great way to tie a character's stats into the idea of two different personas. On a more abstract level, Bogovi Scions can get a lot of duality symbolism out of the borrowed Virtues and purviews they gain from Dvoeverie, which can change per story and reflect the two sides of the Scion's self (or selves). Anunna Scions might purchase Me for different purviews as a form of one or the other personality asserting themselves, and Deva Scions, who come from a pantheon with a long and glorious tradition of alternative personalities manifesting and splitting off from one another, can play out their separate personalities quite literally with Avatara.

And even normal powers, regular all-purpose purviews and Epic Attributes, can always be roleplayed as belonging to different personalities. The character's stats won't actually change when they switch personalities, but that doesn't mean that the Scion can't consciously roleplay that one personality only knows she had Darkness, Fire and Wits and the other only knows she has Sun, Water and Dexterity. If the player wants to roleplay that she only uses some of her powers in each personality, or that she believes she's bad at some things in each persona that she's really not, the fact that that's not technically mechanically true won't stop her from playing it like an RP pro.

It's tempting to disallow this kind of character, because it's very easy for it to turn into what we in the old, crochety Vampire: the Masquerade universe used to call a "fishmalk": a character who is psychologically abnormal just for the sake of the player getting to do ridiculous things, ignore normal social rules and issues, and never seriously roleplay, rather than a developed and complete character who also happens to have a mental condition. But some players can and do do wonderful things with mental illnesses and psychological conditions, so we suggest talking to the player about it first and feeling it out. If they're really playing a fishmalk, they'll probably either become quickly disenchanted with the idea when you tell them they have to figure out how their DID actually works and that it might sometimes actually inconvenience them, or maybe through working on it with you they'll move from their original flat concept into something more interesting. And if they did have a neat concept in mind from the beginning, you'll get to discover that.

So... good luck, friend.

Status Report: Still Flailing at the Unknown

Question: Can we get an update on what is happening in your three games?

We sure can - in fact, let's ring in the new year with one!

Things are rough in the god-level game, where our Legend 11 superstars are having serious trouble juggling their loyalties, their secret missions and their political obligations. They're still on a secret mission from their parents, who charged them with gathering the omphalus stones of each of the Titanrealms in order to use them in a ritual to reinforce Tartarus, which is in danger of breaking open again now that they've managed to get a bunch of Titans back into it but nobody really bothered to go and spackle up the cracks they got out of last time. Going to Titanrealms is dangerous and difficult and takes up a whole lot of time, and in the meantime Sowiljr's position as king of the Aesir is suffering because he's not around to do it. They recently also figured out that removing a realm's omphalus stone makes it more powerful, so they're just beginning to realize they may have royally screwed some of the other pantheons who were fighting those Titans and just got suddenly overwhelmed by extra power. And while they have a few friends among the gods, they know that their parents are still incognito after Ragnarok and they're not allowed to tell anyone they're alive, which means they can't ask for a lot of help with their mission without having to field uncomfortable questions. Already some of the Bogovi are angrily trying to stop them, because what they're doing is pretty much directly opposed to both Harmony and the usual Bogovi mindset of not touching things that aren't yours.

At this exact moment, Sowiljr and Jioni are in Gimli (the renamed Asgard, post-Ragnarok), trying to get it ready for the Kingsmoot, a meeting of all the pantheon heads that Sowiljr has called in an effort to get everyone to make some policies, alliances and plans that help the overall war, not to mention solidify his own tenuous position as king of like two people. Folkwardr has likewise called, or is trying to call, a Magemoot to deal with the problem of the Titanrealm of Fate having been severely screwed up by Theoi shenanigans, making the Fate purviews not work properly, but he's unable to get much going on that since he's currently trapped in the Titanrealm of Illusions with Eztli, who he's desperately trying to get out since he knows she's ill-equipped to do so herself. Eztli, in turn, almost got out once but refused to go when she realized that Tonatiuh, the sun god of her struggling pantheon, was trapped there, too; she refused to leave him, and all three are now fighting to survive and remember who they are before the Titan eats them whole. Sowiljr is miserable over Folkwardr and Eztli being stuck in there, but knows that he both can't really help them and that he doesn't dare not show up to this major political event he's throwing, so he's just doing the best he can and trying not to Loyalty extremity every day. Jioni's just tired. Of everyone.

In Eastern Promises, the current band consists of Alvin, James, Leona, Mrs. Young and Haji, the same misfits from the last adventure, who have just begun a new saga in order to fulfill requirements asked of them by Fate after James used Deus Ex Machina to save their lives in the last story. They've been sent to go to the Garden of the Hesperides and retrieve a box for Ishtar; they have no idea what's in the box, nor are they feeling great about going to the Garden of Hera Kicks Your Ass, but Fate wants what Fate wants. They've just begun to get some clues that not all of the gods may be around, although where they are and what happened to them is anybody's guess, and that they're largely on their own when it comes to dealing with their supernatural problems. Most recently, James attempted to get permission from Queen Victoria to marry Leona, only to be told in the politest terms possible that he wasn't about to get permission to marry anyone who's half brown and he has a duty to the Crown to marry someone more suitable in case his children come up to inherit the throne one day, which he's trying to combat by finding a way to prove that Leona is descended from the pharaohs and therefore appropriate marriage material; and Alvin, in order to save his drowning comrades from an angry Proteus, agreed to spend a night with the god as his eromenos and is exploring a strange but interesting new world of sexuality. Mrs. Young hates everyone and wants to go home. Haji's good, though.

Finally, the Gangs of New York game just brought their story, starring Zoe, Skylar, Russel, Isaac and Anton, to a thrilling conclusion where somehow most people survived. Isaac accidentally got himself dragged into a world where he exists as pure computer code, and there met the mistress of the giant technological web, who turned out to be Arachne; she offered him the chance to stay with her and influence the web (and thus the world) from within, which he accepted, bowing out before the final game session. Back on earth, where all the Scions of the current story are duly appointed superheroes (codenamed Containment Prime) in the employ of the United States government in charge of defending New York City from supernatural threats, Skylar fled a monster attack that destroyed an Army base and was subsequently sentenced to death for abandoning his duty; Zoe and Anton made a desperate helicopter trip from New York to Washington, D.C. in an hour and half in a stolen military jet, being attacked by monsters all the way, to barely make it in time to stop Congress from voting in his execution. Zoe made an incredible patriotic speech about Skylar's value to the country and the need for superheroes, successfully saving him from death and the group from disbandment, and Anton made sure it went viral so that the United States as a whole is now on the superhero bandwagon. Meanwhile, Russel and Skylar, defending New York on their own, teamed up with a surprisingly skilled human cop they ran into to take on the last of the fire demons that have been plaguing the city recently, in a fierce battle that nearly killed all of them but finally managed to take her down and save the day.

At the end of the story, Zoe was recalled to Washington to coordinate political concerns for the new group (and deal with the fact that Isaac has gone AWOL and, since he's a former terrorist, that's super not good), Anton went with her as bodyguard and chauffeur, Russel missed his opportunity to try to tell Zoe he has feelings for her because of Skylar's bionic interference, and all was well in the Big Apple. The next story will rotate characters again, so Zoe, Isaac and Anton will go out and Russel and Skylar will stay in, and we'll pick up with a new crisis and set of heroes next week.

So, you know, they're keeping busy.

It just occurred to me that this post is queued, so there might have been a game or two between when I wrote it and when it goes live, but that just adds to the mystery, I think.

A Time and Place for Everything

Question: Social/mental characters can do awesome things in the middle of a combat, but I don't get to attack people during social/mental scenes. Social/mental characters can get boons that use social/mental attributes to blow people up in combat, but there are no boons that let me use physical attributes in social/mental scenes. What's up?

I think you may be a little confused about the difference between what you can do and what you should do, and the difference between restrictions the system places on you and restrictions your own roleplaying places on you.

Actually, you totally do get to attack people during non-combat scenes. That is a power that you, as a combat-heavy character, always have. At any moment, if you decide to, you could start throwing mountain-crumbling punches, busting bananas-ass aggravated damage, leaping over people at the diplomacy table and generally wrecking the place up, possibly before anyone else even has a prayer of reacting to stop you if you have a good Join Battle roll. At any time, you literally have the power to damage or even kill someone, and that is an incredible and dangerous power. That's why social gods, for all their bluster and swagger, are still afraid of unpredictable combat gods, and make it a point to keep them happy, confined, and away from them whenever possible.

Does that mean you should attack people during non-combat scenes? No, probably not most of the time, but that's a choice that you are making as a character. You're saying, "Hey, I don't know how to manage this social scene, I'd better let Johnny Isisbaby take the lead so I don't get confused," or "These people know something or can do something I can't beat out of them, so punching them would be counterproductive," or "I really like these people so I don't want to kill them, so we'll have to find another way to get them to do what we want," or a thousand other reasons you might have to not start suddenly roundhousing people in the face in the middle of a bar. That's what's generally referred to in human society as the "social contract", a concept that means that most people mutually agree to certain basic rules (like "don't stab others without provocation") in order for society to function, even though they technically could do whatever they want at any moment.

The social contract is in effect for gods as well as mortals, although it may take different forms and be broken or circumvented more liberally than in human societies, and that's what you're feeling is restrictive. You have all these amazing physical powers to damage, destroy, maim or maul, but you know that people will be upset if you do, or you might get punished, or you might feel bad about it later. That's just the weight of social responsibility on your shoulders, and it's something every Scion, no matter what their build, has to deal with on a regular basis. There will always be times you could do things, or even want to do things, and still don't because it's a bad idea or you know it won't be worth it in the long run. That's life.

The point here is that you have every bit as much ability to interfere in the social characters' spotlight scenes as they do to interfere in yours. You may decide not to, but that's your decision, not one the system forces on you. If you need to get someone to agree to something instead of stealing from them or physically beating it out of them, then you're making a reasonable decision not to use your powers right now. Nobody stood over you with a bat and made you do that.

In fact, for the most part, physical characters tend to always have more "power" in a scene than social ones, no matter what's going on. It's true that there are various powers in the game that allow social- and mental-heavy characters to participate in and contribute to combat, but when they're not specifically built to do that, they're always going to be worse at it than the guy who is combat-maxed, and they'll always be bleeding themselves of resources that they then don't have available to help them later in their social scenes. They can help out and have something to do during a fight, but they usually can't win it alone and are in much greater danger of dying, and in some cases there's literally nothing they can do at all. On the other hand, while the physical character with few to no social or mental stats can't do very much to participate in a chess game or tea with the queen, she always has the option to just haul off and make it a physical scene by starting some shit. Social characters can try to convert a fight to a social situation through use of powers, but they have shaky odds of doing so, have to spend resources, may not roll high enough or may have the attempt ruined by someone else's interference. All the physical character has to do is walk up to somebody and throw a punch, and presto, instant combat.

Honestly, as the combat character, you're not the most powerless person in your band. A lot of the time, you're so powerful that you literally have to restrain yourself in order to not get everyone in horrible trouble. You are a nuclear warhead they carry around with them, and while they hope they can point you in the right direction at the right time, they all know you could just detonate without warning and screw them over. It's easy to start feeling marginalized about how the social characters have all these skills that you don't, but the flip side of that is that you could literally kill them. You don't, because you have shit to do and you need them. But you could. And they know that, too. (And if they don't, reminding them is delicious.)

We often talk about the difference between "physical", "social" and "mental" characters, and it's true that you can invest so heavily in one of those archetypes that you have few to no powers in the others, especially early on. But the game intentionally balances those three so that they are all powerful, in equally game-changing and world-affecting ways but with a totally different kind of power. The physical characters wield the powers of destruction, speed and direct action, making them physically capable of performing incredible feats and actually being the movers who shift the world. The mental characters are the keepers of the potent powers of knowledge, making them the ones who decide who knows the truth and who continues to believe a lie, giving them the ability to see and learn things no one else possibly could and then dispense that knowledge (or not) where they think it will be best used, radically altering the ideas and plans of others. And the social characters can't do either of those things, but they are the masters of interpersonal communication and interplay, allowing them to defend themselves from the depredations of the other two archetypes and magically seek help from others to do what they can't.

Almost all Scions eventually become hybrids; seldom does anyone become a god without being good at at least a few auxiliary skills outside their archetypal area. But they can and do sometimes start out as only one thing, which they'll be for a long time as they grow into their divine heritage and explore what they really want to be as a deity, and there's nothing wrong with that. Just remember that they are all powerful, but have different kinds of power; and that sometimes some of them will be more suited to a given task than others, but that that does not make those others less important or worthwhile. You're going to encounter social situations, as a combat character, that you can't navigate and that you need other people to take care of for you, but that's no different from the fact that the mental characters would have no prayer of surviving combat if you weren't there, or the fact that the social characters can run the most incredible political takeover gambit of all time and still fail if the mental characters withhold a single, crucial piece of information from them.

So don't get down that you don't always have something with a PUNCH ME sign on it to do in every scene, and don't start feeling like the social characters matter more to the story than you do. It's their job to dominate scenes and try to make everything about them, but in the overall gameworld, you're every bit as powerful and important as they are. They have power over the secrets of the universe or the hearts of mankind, but you have power over life and death, and that's something everyone can respect.

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.

Son of Wolves, Daughter of Ravens

Question: Are we ever gonna see the sad Aurora/Wolf mix tape you mentioned in the "Scion Symphony" blog?

Sure.

We made this a while ago, and it's a continuum that covers all of the relationship between Aurora and Wolf, from their roots at Legend 5 through the final events of Ragnarok. It's not too much of a spoiler to say that they will be seeing each other again, even though they're currently separated in the fiction.

As you guys know, we commit when we do ridiculous things for Scion games, so there are album covers and relevant excerpts involved. I'm hiding them behind a cut so we don't spam the whole blog with song lyrics.

Time Flies

Question: How many in-game years did your Skeins group need to reach godhood? And roughly how many sessions?

It depends on when you start counting from! Vivian, the oldest member of the band in terms of actually being played, started her career as a Scion in the in-game year 2008 with the Land of the Red Sun group; she hit god in 2014, making her Hero and Demigod run about six years long. The first time the whole group (Aurora, Vivian, Kettila, Woody and John) was together, they started in the in-game year 2010, making it about four years to god-level, although they started at Legend 5 then so their run was probably about the same as hers. Woody is of course the exception... because he's older than the dirt on Jord's heel, he spent about 252 years being a pre-god Scion before hitting apotheosis. Now that's dedication.

As for the real-time out-of-game number of game sessions, our players rolled those dice for approximately 110-120 sessions from Legend 5 to Legend 9 (Vivian played about 8 more in Land of the Red Sun, and Woody maybe 6 more in Strawberry Fields). That translated to about three years of real time, playing once per week.

Man, it seems like only yesterday. Now they're arranging god marriages and irritating tricksters and talking old warhorse stories about Ragnarok and what happened after.

The Long Road to Heaven

Question: How close are your god PCs to legend 12?

Not close, thank god. (Not that we don't want them to be Legend 12. We do. Just not right now.)

They're currently all Legend 10, and probably will be Legend 10 for quite some time, at least until the end of the current story (which involves visiting a lot of Titanrealms, so it looks like it'll take a while). Our games don't tend to see groups go up in Legend all that quickly - there were many months of real time, playing each week, before the PCs made it from Legend 7 to 8 and from 8 to 9. We prefer to let that happen as stories are completed and PCs have done truly epic deeds, so it varies based on what's going on.

But generally, it requires a lot more awesomeness to go from Legend 9 to 10 than from Legend 2 to 3, so it takes longer and longer to "Legend up" the higher up the ladder you get. It'll probably be a good long while - maybe a few months, maybe longer? I dunno - before the current god-level PCs make Legend 11, and even longer after that before they finally hit 12. And when they hit 12, it'll be a while before they're truly as powerful as other Legend 12 gods who have had a lot longer to build up their power and consolidate their positions.

So they're in no danger of running out of places to grow at the moment. Their biggest concerns are generally surviving the divine politics of all the other pantheons and making disappointed faces at us every week we don't have our shit together regarding Industry or new Frost boons.

The Way We Were

Question: Do any of your characters have or do anything that reminds them of their time before they became Scions?

Oh, definitely. Scions were all human once, after all, and often remain much more human than their peers even after they become gods. It comes with the territory; a god like Zeus can never really "get" mortals and their fragile, tiny lives, but a god who came up from that ground floor has intimate knowledge of what mortal life was like and who he or she was back then. It's part of what makes them able to connect more fully with the modern world and fight for the rights and needs of humanity that much more passionately.

Of our characters, some are more "human" than others and always have been, but most of them have things that remind them of their long-ago status as members of the human race.

For Eztli, her own face reminds her of her origins; while she recently used Health to cleanse all of the remaining mortal Aztecs of their European bloodlines and return them to pure Mexica stock, she was born mestizo and will always be mestizo, as will her children, an irony when she and the other Scions of her generation are now the only ones. Her mortal military training also continues to color her world, which is just as much about following the orders of her generals (Geoff, or the Tezcatlipocas) for the safety and betterment of her people now as it was when she carried an assault rifle to do it. She also still lives in Mexico City, where she lived as a human, now as its patron protector and goddess; her memory isn't always reliable enough to remember her days in the shantytowns on its outskirts, but their echo is always there.

Sowiljr may be de facto king of the Aesir now, but he still spent a lot of a recent game in the kitchen helping prepare for a wedding feast, traces of the five-star Vegas chef he was before Visitation lingering on. His entire status as god of marital fidelity and family has its roots in his mortal life, in which the absence of his father and the struggles he watched his mother endure made him swear that he would never let his own family be treated the same way; that long-ago memory of his own wish that his father had been there for him is behind a lot of his careful shepherding of his own sons and his determination to foster happy families.

Jioni's come a long way from mortal life to Queen of Erebus, but some things have never changed; her skills as a doctor and way with corpses were things she was good at long before her visitation, when she was a star med student and a county coroner. Her mortician's jacket stayed with her for many of those years, transformed into a relic that she didn't lose until godhood, and her relic flask of rum is just as much her friend now as it was when she was sneaking alcohol in Catholic school.

Terminus, oddly enough, might be the closest of all the Scions-become-gods to humanity; he's still carrying and using an iPhone (albeit a magic one), frequently uses Avatar to shrink himself down to become human in capabilities and powers, and actually went to his hometown to get his mortal mother and transplant her to his cult where he could be sure she would be taken better care of. Of all of our characters, he's probably the most fond of humanity and their hijinks, and most misses being one of their carefree number. Also, whenever he goes to his cult now, his mom nags him.

Not all of our characters are closely tied to their mortal roots; Vala's father nuked most of her mortal life to keep her from having anything to do but his errands, Aiona never liked humanity in the first place and never looks back on her humble origins, Marcus went mad around mid-Demigod and can barely remember who he is now much less who he was then, and Folkwardr hasn't been human in centuries and has little left of his mortal life. But they were all still human once, and even if they no longer carry much of it with them or don't think about where they came from, it had an inescapable effect on who they are now and what they grew into as deities.

Playing Barry White in the Overworld

Question: Which god-level Scion currently has the most active libido? I know Sowiljr and Jioni played the field a lot as mortal heroes but have pruded up as gods, hence the question.

I cleaned up your question a bit, anonymous, because it was worded in a way that came off as less than respectful. No hard feelings, though.

I suspect this question is more for the players than for us; I mean, I know who tends to have the most active sex life (Jioni - sexytimes with Erebus are always on deck), but I wouldn't know if Folkwardr secretly struggles with unbridled passion or anything like that. There are only the four gods running currently, and all of them are faithfully married; Jioni and Erebus see each other fairly regularly, but Folkwardr hardly ever sees Ahouva, and Sowiljr tends to hold Eztli at arm's length (whether it's because he's afraid of having another giant basket of babies or hesitant because she's a bat-monster is unclear). Of the god-level PCs who only recently departed, Yoloxochitl had firmly regressed to childhood and entirely sworn off icky adult things like sex and romance, Terminus was married to Circe and reasonably afraid of suggesting much boudoir time considering their history (but even more afraid of even thinking about cheating on her), Aiona only remembered that sex existed when someone else having it was inconveniencing her, and Vala had never had a romantic relationship as far as anyone knows. The only other person you could really call libidinous was Zwazo, who definitely did try to woo the ladies when the opportunity presented itself and has a lot of little mini-Zwazos wandering around the world in various places, but was often too distracted by things like monsters and confusing African politics.

Just like most mythic figures, they run the spectrum from virginal and uninterested to passionate and excitable. It all depends on their personality and image as deities.

Incidentally, while Jioni quite enjoyed choosing her lovers as she went as a Hero and Demigod, Sowiljr's tomcatting days came to an abrupt end as soon as he married Eztli at around Legend 5 or so, so he really can't compete in that arena. (Not that that is having any effect on the seemingly endless parade of divinely attractive ladies bent on making him give it another try.)

The Vlog of Their Discontent

Today, on a very special Scion vlog... guest stars!

Question: We constantly hear wonderful things about your game, but there is a dark side to everything! What are a few things that your players really groan about?

This was a total blast. Thanks to our players for being so game!