Question: Which Legend 12 Gods have you killed and how did they die? Minus Ragnarok, of course.
A lot of gods died in Ragnarok, and not all of them were Norse, either. And also at least one Norse god who was supposed to die didn't (oops). PCs have a way of blowing any situation sky-high, and it turns out Ragnarok is not immune to this phenomenon.
But anyway, non-Ragnarok casualties. You guys already know of some from the fiction - Quetzalcoatl, Raiden, Athena, Nuada, Tlazolteotl, Erzulie, Ra, a bunch of minor Egyptian gods including Serket, Khepri and Imsety - and we've mentioned a few more on the blog, including Freya's heroic demise in defense of her brother. Hachiman is also technically dead, but still active as a robot guardian of Japan.
The following gods have also gone mysteriously "missing" and have so far resisted all attempts to raise them, leading to most assuming they must have been killed in some kind of stealth strike from the Titans or other gods: Damballa, Ogma, Tsukiyomi and Thoth. The PCs are not sure exactly what happened to them, and so far haven't really bothered to check. (Hint: the Fifth Sun is thirsty.)
But beyond those... you know, I don't think there are any I can tell you without spoiling a bunch of stuff that's about to happen in the fiction. The Woody story I'm currently working on will have a god death in it, as will the next Geoff story, and they're both pretty significant events that drastically affect the PCs involved. I'd rather save them for a cruel, cruel reveal later on.
Once those are out, if you're not into reading the fiction, I'll be happy to just tell you. :)
Showing posts with label Ragnarok. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ragnarok. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Life After Death
Question: What happens when a god dies? Do they just get sent down to their native Underworld, or do they suffer the cessation of their existence altogether? What happens when the Aesir finally kick the bucket during Ragnorak - do they just not exist anymore?
Nobody ever just winks out of existence in Scion, so everyone can rest a little bit easy on that one. The idea of death simply being the end of existence with no continuation of the soul is a pretty modern one, mostly based on the scientific understanding that consciousness arises from brain function, and would have been confusing and terrifying for most ancient people. Where the idea does exist, it's always an exception and usually as a punishment - for example, souls eaten by Ammit are consigned to the abyss of non-existence, the ultimate punishment for failure to be a righteous person.
The whole point of the underworlds across various mythologies is to explain where people - even gods! - go when they die and what happens to them thereafter. You'll see gods that die and go to the Underworld all the time in ancient mythology; Izanami, who becomes queen of Yomi after her death, or Baldur, who goes immediately to Hel from whence the other Aesir can try to bargain him back home again, or Adonis, who at his death goes home to Hades and his foster-mother Persephone, and so on and so forth. From the prevalence of myths like these, we can probably pretty safely assume that gods who die go to their respective underworlds, where they're officially under the power of the local death god and subject to the usual rules of death unless said death god chooses to make an exception for them. Depending on what was going on when the god died, you could also rule that they might end up in a different underworld than their own; if Baal kills Susanoo in glorious thunder-combat on his home turf in Lebanon, there's a good chance Mot might rise up to claim the Japanese storm god and drag him down to Nepesh, rather than Izanami being able to exert her influence so quickly into foreign territory. Psychopomps make a big difference to where a god goes, as well, so if Hermes is on deck, most people will end up in Hades where they belong, but cultures that don't have a dedicated psychopomp might find that their afterlife disposition is less sure.
Past that point, it's a matter of what other people - death gods, Scions, the pantheons themselves - do that determines if anything else happens. If everybody accepts that that death happened and isn't getting reversed, then that's the way it'll stay, and like Gugalanna in Irkallu that god will probably never leave. If people are severely upset about the situation and manage to get enough of the other gods involved, forays into the underworld to bargain with its gods and try to get the dead deity resurrected might occur, with success varying from none (Baldur) to partial (Adonis) to almost total (Baal). Most gods are subject to the rules of death and probably can't resurrect themselves, though there are a few who do and Scion tends to model them as having Ultimate Stamina (or Circle of Life, for those Fertility gods in the home audience).
All of this is the general way we handle dead gods in Scion, but the Aesir, as usual, are a special case. They're not going to simply blip out of existence when they die at Ragnarok - nothing in the Ragnarok prophecies or the rest of Norse myth suggests that, and it would be a very foreign idea to the ancient Norse people who believed in them - but they're also definitely going to be permanently removed from play to make way for the rise of a new world with a new generation of gods ruling it (led by Baldur - hey, he got resurrected! - and Vidar). Some of this is easily explained away by pointing to Hel, who as the reigning death-goddess would have final say on everything that happened to these people and is unlikely to be favorably inclined toward letting her jailers go free again. Freya might technically also have a say, but since she goes totally unmentioned in the stories of Ragnarok, what she's doing at this time is a mystery and she may have gone home to Vanaheim with her father Njord, and furthermore she probably has no interest in rescuing the Aesir that have held her family hostage for centuries. But even if you decide that recalcitrant death goddesses are the major block preventing the Norse gods from hitting the streets again, what about people like Thor and Odin, who have Ultimate Stamina and should be able to just get right back up on their own?
We've talked about this a bit before, and it remains true: they can't do that, and the reason is because Fate wants them dead. This isn't a random death that they can shrug off; it's the prophesied doom that has been foretold to destroy them forever and ever, amen. Fate will simply ensure that they do not and cannot live again, which Storytellers can interpret any number of ways - their Ultimate Stamina just doesn't work, or Fate throws so much stuff at them that it ensures they spend too much Legend and can't afford it anyway, or their souls are immediately bound by the strands of Fate so that they can't live again, whatever floats your boat. Unlike gods who die on their own terms, the Aesir are fated to be destroyed, which is what makes them so desperate and terrified about the whole ordeal. Fate is the only thing more powerful than they are; they know they're not coming back from this.
That doesn't mean that there's no chance your PCs might be able to change some of that with their actions, of course. Scion's all about children of the gods fighting or aiding Fate and helping their parents in their greatest struggles, and in addition the Ragnarok prophecies are sometimes vague and could mean a lot of different things, not all of which include "death" in the strictest classical sense. But that's all up to an individual game's players and Storyteller to determine, and I doubt anyone's Ragnarok is ever going to be identical to anyone else's.
Incidentally, when we ran Ragnarok, those who were killed in the great battle actually did not go to any underworld and were instead directly absorbed by Muspelheim, which was at the time rampaging and consuming everything in its path. This made them pretty much permanently and irretrievably gone in most cases, not only beyond the reach of normal gods but that of death gods, too. A god dying within a Titanrealm might have nasty effects on his or her soul, and without a psychopomp to get them out of there they might find that they never make it to an underworld at all.
It is technically possible in Scion, by the way, for a death god or Death-aligned Scion to actually destroy a dead soul completely by means of tearing it apart with Mother's Touch, but the system fails to give exact mechanics for things like how much "damage" an incorporeal soul can take and what happens to it when it "dies", so Storytellers will need to wing that one when it comes up. We suggest using the W+I+L resistance roll the creature would have had in life to determine its hardiness as a spirit, since its physical stamina no longer has any bearing on things, and would like to remind everyone that those with Harmony (or, depending on the situation, Conviction, Order or Valor) are probably going to go batshit insane if you start doing something as counter to the natural order of the universe as permanently eradicating souls.
Nobody ever just winks out of existence in Scion, so everyone can rest a little bit easy on that one. The idea of death simply being the end of existence with no continuation of the soul is a pretty modern one, mostly based on the scientific understanding that consciousness arises from brain function, and would have been confusing and terrifying for most ancient people. Where the idea does exist, it's always an exception and usually as a punishment - for example, souls eaten by Ammit are consigned to the abyss of non-existence, the ultimate punishment for failure to be a righteous person.
The whole point of the underworlds across various mythologies is to explain where people - even gods! - go when they die and what happens to them thereafter. You'll see gods that die and go to the Underworld all the time in ancient mythology; Izanami, who becomes queen of Yomi after her death, or Baldur, who goes immediately to Hel from whence the other Aesir can try to bargain him back home again, or Adonis, who at his death goes home to Hades and his foster-mother Persephone, and so on and so forth. From the prevalence of myths like these, we can probably pretty safely assume that gods who die go to their respective underworlds, where they're officially under the power of the local death god and subject to the usual rules of death unless said death god chooses to make an exception for them. Depending on what was going on when the god died, you could also rule that they might end up in a different underworld than their own; if Baal kills Susanoo in glorious thunder-combat on his home turf in Lebanon, there's a good chance Mot might rise up to claim the Japanese storm god and drag him down to Nepesh, rather than Izanami being able to exert her influence so quickly into foreign territory. Psychopomps make a big difference to where a god goes, as well, so if Hermes is on deck, most people will end up in Hades where they belong, but cultures that don't have a dedicated psychopomp might find that their afterlife disposition is less sure.
Past that point, it's a matter of what other people - death gods, Scions, the pantheons themselves - do that determines if anything else happens. If everybody accepts that that death happened and isn't getting reversed, then that's the way it'll stay, and like Gugalanna in Irkallu that god will probably never leave. If people are severely upset about the situation and manage to get enough of the other gods involved, forays into the underworld to bargain with its gods and try to get the dead deity resurrected might occur, with success varying from none (Baldur) to partial (Adonis) to almost total (Baal). Most gods are subject to the rules of death and probably can't resurrect themselves, though there are a few who do and Scion tends to model them as having Ultimate Stamina (or Circle of Life, for those Fertility gods in the home audience).
All of this is the general way we handle dead gods in Scion, but the Aesir, as usual, are a special case. They're not going to simply blip out of existence when they die at Ragnarok - nothing in the Ragnarok prophecies or the rest of Norse myth suggests that, and it would be a very foreign idea to the ancient Norse people who believed in them - but they're also definitely going to be permanently removed from play to make way for the rise of a new world with a new generation of gods ruling it (led by Baldur - hey, he got resurrected! - and Vidar). Some of this is easily explained away by pointing to Hel, who as the reigning death-goddess would have final say on everything that happened to these people and is unlikely to be favorably inclined toward letting her jailers go free again. Freya might technically also have a say, but since she goes totally unmentioned in the stories of Ragnarok, what she's doing at this time is a mystery and she may have gone home to Vanaheim with her father Njord, and furthermore she probably has no interest in rescuing the Aesir that have held her family hostage for centuries. But even if you decide that recalcitrant death goddesses are the major block preventing the Norse gods from hitting the streets again, what about people like Thor and Odin, who have Ultimate Stamina and should be able to just get right back up on their own?
We've talked about this a bit before, and it remains true: they can't do that, and the reason is because Fate wants them dead. This isn't a random death that they can shrug off; it's the prophesied doom that has been foretold to destroy them forever and ever, amen. Fate will simply ensure that they do not and cannot live again, which Storytellers can interpret any number of ways - their Ultimate Stamina just doesn't work, or Fate throws so much stuff at them that it ensures they spend too much Legend and can't afford it anyway, or their souls are immediately bound by the strands of Fate so that they can't live again, whatever floats your boat. Unlike gods who die on their own terms, the Aesir are fated to be destroyed, which is what makes them so desperate and terrified about the whole ordeal. Fate is the only thing more powerful than they are; they know they're not coming back from this.
That doesn't mean that there's no chance your PCs might be able to change some of that with their actions, of course. Scion's all about children of the gods fighting or aiding Fate and helping their parents in their greatest struggles, and in addition the Ragnarok prophecies are sometimes vague and could mean a lot of different things, not all of which include "death" in the strictest classical sense. But that's all up to an individual game's players and Storyteller to determine, and I doubt anyone's Ragnarok is ever going to be identical to anyone else's.
Incidentally, when we ran Ragnarok, those who were killed in the great battle actually did not go to any underworld and were instead directly absorbed by Muspelheim, which was at the time rampaging and consuming everything in its path. This made them pretty much permanently and irretrievably gone in most cases, not only beyond the reach of normal gods but that of death gods, too. A god dying within a Titanrealm might have nasty effects on his or her soul, and without a psychopomp to get them out of there they might find that they never make it to an underworld at all.
It is technically possible in Scion, by the way, for a death god or Death-aligned Scion to actually destroy a dead soul completely by means of tearing it apart with Mother's Touch, but the system fails to give exact mechanics for things like how much "damage" an incorporeal soul can take and what happens to it when it "dies", so Storytellers will need to wing that one when it comes up. We suggest using the W+I+L resistance roll the creature would have had in life to determine its hardiness as a spirit, since its physical stamina no longer has any bearing on things, and would like to remind everyone that those with Harmony (or, depending on the situation, Conviction, Order or Valor) are probably going to go batshit insane if you start doing something as counter to the natural order of the universe as permanently eradicating souls.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Skiing to Glory
Question: Where did you find the story of Sinmora killing Ullr on Ragnarök displayed on your Pantheons subpage? The only mention of her I knew was guarding Laevateinn (Svipdagsmal). Are there any more stories on her?
Ooh, I'm sorry, our bad. There is no mythical story of Sinmore killing Uller and Skadi; rather, that's something that actually happened in our chronicle, kicking off Ragnarok with a prophesied doom, a rather dramatic fight scene and the meteoric destruction of most of the Californian coast. We included it in his god page because there's precious little out there about him, and because it was written a few years ago when we first set this site up and only our players were using it. It's "canon" for the Better Next Time and Skeins of Fate games, but not from any mythological source.
We totally didn't realize it was still there, or we would have removed it - sorry! Please don't get confused; there ain't no prophecy of Uller's death at Sinmore's hands, so nobody has to get all anxious over their favorite frosty god. Uller actually goes completely unmentioned in the Ragnarok prophecies, so Storytellers are free to do whatever they like with him when the ol' Goetterdaemerung hits.
We've removed the offending pseudo-myth and replaced it with Uller's only legitimate mythic story - that of his brief sojourn as king of the Aesir. Sinmore, alas, really does have no role in myth other than as the guardian of Laevateinn.
Ooh, I'm sorry, our bad. There is no mythical story of Sinmore killing Uller and Skadi; rather, that's something that actually happened in our chronicle, kicking off Ragnarok with a prophesied doom, a rather dramatic fight scene and the meteoric destruction of most of the Californian coast. We included it in his god page because there's precious little out there about him, and because it was written a few years ago when we first set this site up and only our players were using it. It's "canon" for the Better Next Time and Skeins of Fate games, but not from any mythological source.
We totally didn't realize it was still there, or we would have removed it - sorry! Please don't get confused; there ain't no prophecy of Uller's death at Sinmore's hands, so nobody has to get all anxious over their favorite frosty god. Uller actually goes completely unmentioned in the Ragnarok prophecies, so Storytellers are free to do whatever they like with him when the ol' Goetterdaemerung hits.
We've removed the offending pseudo-myth and replaced it with Uller's only legitimate mythic story - that of his brief sojourn as king of the Aesir. Sinmore, alas, really does have no role in myth other than as the guardian of Laevateinn.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Ragnarok Rumination Finale
As you all know, Im a confident about my own work. Some might say Im conceited or pompous. One reason for that is I'm my harshest critic. So although my players had a good time, and I had a good time, everything can be better and there is always more to learn. So after over a month of thinking and regretting. Here are my list of ragnarok semi-failures.
1. Too fucking long. Now I dont mind a long game at all. And I dont think my players did either. But there are hidden difficulties with a long game. When people are tired they are more likely to make poor decisions, or worse, stop caring about their decisions. We were lucky and I dont think we ran into this, but we risked it by staying up SO late each night. The other trap is that your climax will happen when people are most exhausted. Its not working as intended when you get to the big climax and the players have to kinda go "wait, huh what?" then they realize its the climax and they get all pumped and into it, but you dont want them to have to feel that way. They should still have their energy when they get to it, so the boost from realizing their there drives them past normal levels of excitement and fun, not gets them back to normal levels.
My players were fucking champs and rock stars and dealt with everything in awesome stride. But we did get to the finale of it all and the general consensus(myself included) was "ok, yes, falling action, narration type stuff...ok, little character talk...ok jesus fuck we need shower we have work in an hour."
I think some scenes, emotions, interactions were definitely lost in the wee hours of the night. I know I kinda botched the ending cause I was so tired(but we'll get to that later).
Also because everyone was tired, their memories of the events will be a little sloppier.
My plan was a medium length night friday, and a day long game saturday. This plan was horribly ill conceived.
First we had our normal wednesday game, it wrapped up those characters last 6 hours or so before ragnarok. 6 hours(yes, playing 6 hours lasted 6 actual hours)
Then the players wanted a night to wrap up sunday games preragnarok. 6 hours
Friday game I ended early at 1am so we could have energy for saturday. 7 hours
Saturday was LONG. 4pm til 3am...and still had so much left. 11 hours
Sunday....sunday we had to finish. There were zero days left that were options. We had rehearsal at 10am til 1pm. Then at 2pm started gaming. We ended game the next morning at 7am. 19 hours.
Bringing our total ragnarok play time to: 49 hours in 5 days.
So, although a ton of fun, i cannot imagine those are optimal hours for creating a good story and for having all the players on their A game. I certainly wasnt A game at times.
2. Too many characters. I really enjoyed my weaving of many characters from many pantheons into the story of ragnarok. It fit well with my early plans(all explained in first ragnarok post) and finished up 3 years of gaming nicely. But as the dust settled and I thought about it. There were just too many npcs. That many NPCS certainly gave the feeling I wanted of a giant battle that so many gods and titans are involved in. But the other side to that is that eventually, the characters become faceless and nameless. It became so hard for the pcs to keep track of ALL the people involved and what was happening to them that at some points it became blurry.
This ended up making some deaths less meaningful. It properly set the scene of a brutal war where people are dying left and right. When there is so much going on, and time is so precious and intensive that it is barely a footnote when demeter dies....there is a problem. So I think I could make the giant scenes happen with fewer(but not few) characters. I think maybe half would have achieved my goals but kept the gods that died front and center for their moment in the sun.
Some of this also might tie in with 1. Perhaps we were so tired that we wanted to slough through. But I think at the very least, too many. Instead of the big battlegrounds having 10 characters(after npcs) they could have been successful with 6. Also, spreading the scenes out just a tad would have led to less spillover between the different battles ending, and SO many characters from those battles going on to the next one.
3. Olympus. Because 2 of our characters were greek, and all the others had a lot of interaction with the dodek, and because the two pcs who were greek happened to be the two pcs who were leaving. I tried to shoehorn the end of a very long term plot into ragnarok. With so many dodeks not on olympus, it did make sense for it to happen, but there was so much else going on that it really just ended up not being doable. By the time it got started the world was in flames and the battle was over. So Olympus just became a sort of waste of time that had no resolution. It ended up doing some neat things for the two greeks because of the no resolution, but I think for the quality of Ragnarok in general, it would have been more successful if we cut the olympus bit.
4. And my final and probably most important quibble with myself. I think it was generally all wrong. I think I kinda threw the baby out with the bathwater. It was a truly epic thing with so many characters and places and stories culminating. It was so much....that we almost miss actual ragnarok. Ragnarok became more like a place where all the stories have to end, instead of dealing with the actual ragnarok. Now obviously there was a ton of ragnaroking going on, and some characters made excellent use and were very in the thick of things. But there were also so many other things happening that characters were able to leave ragnarok for a bit to deal with other pressing matters. And that probably ended up being more of a distraction then a success.
I could have had a lot of extra time to focus on each of the ICONIC battles of ragnarok and let the pcs participate more directly in each of those, making it much more ragnarok! The more I thought about it, the more that would have been a better final ragnarok story.
But Im not sure it could have been done with 10 pcs and 7 players. And I dont know if it would have been as good a send off for the players that left.
So bah, I was pretty sure about that last one for a month now. But now Im not sure. Im certain it should have been more focused on the events(not that it wasnt, it was super focused, but in hindsight I wanted more). But typing it out and thinking about it, Im not sure if it would have been possible the way I had re-envisioned it.
Also a more norse focus would have given the other stories(aztec, greek, etc) that happened during ragnarok more pacing and time to be their own thing. But then there was something about decisions made during the crucible of the entire world falling apart that make those decisions special. So Im not actually sure about that either. The side stories also turned out some great wonderful stories for the PCs to expand on, so I definitely wouldnt say I regret them.
But, that ends my talks about ragnarok. I hope you enjoyed them. It was a difficult amount of information to process postmortem so sorry it took so long. One day, in the distant future, the fiction will catch up to ragnarok, and Im sure you can have a 100,000,000 word story to read from anne about it. I know her pages and pages of notes are immensely detailed.
Thanks again for the catharsis.
1. Too fucking long. Now I dont mind a long game at all. And I dont think my players did either. But there are hidden difficulties with a long game. When people are tired they are more likely to make poor decisions, or worse, stop caring about their decisions. We were lucky and I dont think we ran into this, but we risked it by staying up SO late each night. The other trap is that your climax will happen when people are most exhausted. Its not working as intended when you get to the big climax and the players have to kinda go "wait, huh what?" then they realize its the climax and they get all pumped and into it, but you dont want them to have to feel that way. They should still have their energy when they get to it, so the boost from realizing their there drives them past normal levels of excitement and fun, not gets them back to normal levels.
My players were fucking champs and rock stars and dealt with everything in awesome stride. But we did get to the finale of it all and the general consensus(myself included) was "ok, yes, falling action, narration type stuff...ok, little character talk...ok jesus fuck we need shower we have work in an hour."
I think some scenes, emotions, interactions were definitely lost in the wee hours of the night. I know I kinda botched the ending cause I was so tired(but we'll get to that later).
Also because everyone was tired, their memories of the events will be a little sloppier.
My plan was a medium length night friday, and a day long game saturday. This plan was horribly ill conceived.
First we had our normal wednesday game, it wrapped up those characters last 6 hours or so before ragnarok. 6 hours(yes, playing 6 hours lasted 6 actual hours)
Then the players wanted a night to wrap up sunday games preragnarok. 6 hours
Friday game I ended early at 1am so we could have energy for saturday. 7 hours
Saturday was LONG. 4pm til 3am...and still had so much left. 11 hours
Sunday....sunday we had to finish. There were zero days left that were options. We had rehearsal at 10am til 1pm. Then at 2pm started gaming. We ended game the next morning at 7am. 19 hours.
Bringing our total ragnarok play time to: 49 hours in 5 days.
So, although a ton of fun, i cannot imagine those are optimal hours for creating a good story and for having all the players on their A game. I certainly wasnt A game at times.
2. Too many characters. I really enjoyed my weaving of many characters from many pantheons into the story of ragnarok. It fit well with my early plans(all explained in first ragnarok post) and finished up 3 years of gaming nicely. But as the dust settled and I thought about it. There were just too many npcs. That many NPCS certainly gave the feeling I wanted of a giant battle that so many gods and titans are involved in. But the other side to that is that eventually, the characters become faceless and nameless. It became so hard for the pcs to keep track of ALL the people involved and what was happening to them that at some points it became blurry.
This ended up making some deaths less meaningful. It properly set the scene of a brutal war where people are dying left and right. When there is so much going on, and time is so precious and intensive that it is barely a footnote when demeter dies....there is a problem. So I think I could make the giant scenes happen with fewer(but not few) characters. I think maybe half would have achieved my goals but kept the gods that died front and center for their moment in the sun.
Some of this also might tie in with 1. Perhaps we were so tired that we wanted to slough through. But I think at the very least, too many. Instead of the big battlegrounds having 10 characters(after npcs) they could have been successful with 6. Also, spreading the scenes out just a tad would have led to less spillover between the different battles ending, and SO many characters from those battles going on to the next one.
3. Olympus. Because 2 of our characters were greek, and all the others had a lot of interaction with the dodek, and because the two pcs who were greek happened to be the two pcs who were leaving. I tried to shoehorn the end of a very long term plot into ragnarok. With so many dodeks not on olympus, it did make sense for it to happen, but there was so much else going on that it really just ended up not being doable. By the time it got started the world was in flames and the battle was over. So Olympus just became a sort of waste of time that had no resolution. It ended up doing some neat things for the two greeks because of the no resolution, but I think for the quality of Ragnarok in general, it would have been more successful if we cut the olympus bit.
4. And my final and probably most important quibble with myself. I think it was generally all wrong. I think I kinda threw the baby out with the bathwater. It was a truly epic thing with so many characters and places and stories culminating. It was so much....that we almost miss actual ragnarok. Ragnarok became more like a place where all the stories have to end, instead of dealing with the actual ragnarok. Now obviously there was a ton of ragnaroking going on, and some characters made excellent use and were very in the thick of things. But there were also so many other things happening that characters were able to leave ragnarok for a bit to deal with other pressing matters. And that probably ended up being more of a distraction then a success.
I could have had a lot of extra time to focus on each of the ICONIC battles of ragnarok and let the pcs participate more directly in each of those, making it much more ragnarok! The more I thought about it, the more that would have been a better final ragnarok story.
But Im not sure it could have been done with 10 pcs and 7 players. And I dont know if it would have been as good a send off for the players that left.
So bah, I was pretty sure about that last one for a month now. But now Im not sure. Im certain it should have been more focused on the events(not that it wasnt, it was super focused, but in hindsight I wanted more). But typing it out and thinking about it, Im not sure if it would have been possible the way I had re-envisioned it.
Also a more norse focus would have given the other stories(aztec, greek, etc) that happened during ragnarok more pacing and time to be their own thing. But then there was something about decisions made during the crucible of the entire world falling apart that make those decisions special. So Im not actually sure about that either. The side stories also turned out some great wonderful stories for the PCs to expand on, so I definitely wouldnt say I regret them.
But, that ends my talks about ragnarok. I hope you enjoyed them. It was a difficult amount of information to process postmortem so sorry it took so long. One day, in the distant future, the fiction will catch up to ragnarok, and Im sure you can have a 100,000,000 word story to read from anne about it. I know her pages and pages of notes are immensely detailed.
Thanks again for the catharsis.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Ragnarok ruminations part 3
What went well? What did I think was successful?
I think it succeeded at its main goal. It was epic. The insane amount of food, treats and alcohol helped. The excitement and commitment of the players contributed a ton. But it certainly succeeded at being epic.
I'm generally more of a critic then a praiser, especially of my own work, so this chapter will be much shorter then the following one.
On reflection, I realize that sometimes what worked and what didn't work depended on the tiredness level of the players and myself when we were on that part of the game. So I'll try to keep that in my mind.
There was almost always something to do. A lot of that was based on emotional response to stimuli, but for the most part people had their hands full but not too full. Part of not overwhelming the pcs was forcing them to make choices. It was impossible to be everywhere at once. Clear choices of "I'll save this but not that" had to be made.
My favorite success was that the choices mattered. Pcs weren't always successful, but every choice they made changed the outcome of things. Because ragnarok lasted so long, these choices kept compounding til they were making choices based on other choices they made the day before. They got to experience small changes they created in an inevitable event.
Pcs reactions were also excellent. I don't have much to do with that but it was perfect. Amongst the two new groups of pcs that came to the battle new alliances were formed and new groups were working together. There was also new strife and problems. Cool new stories and relationships happened.
Combats were smoothish. Sometimes things took a long time and the entire thing definitely took too long, but each individual part let the pc be part of a giant combat while kinda having a spotlight in them without wrecking the giant feeling of the fight or making it feel like they were too much the center of attention. And it all happened with a smoothness that the base system certainly doesnt allow. It didnt really fit a Tick system and wasnt perfect, but it worked well for that massive massiveness :)
The whole set up worked. The different places blending into each other, and the many enemies and allies were awesome and constantly hit the PCs with awe and terror, but there were some flaws in it so I'll talk about it more next time.
Most importantly we had fun. It was the longest most epic gaming experience I've had and I think everyone involved probably agrees ...so...mission accomplished!
I think it succeeded at its main goal. It was epic. The insane amount of food, treats and alcohol helped. The excitement and commitment of the players contributed a ton. But it certainly succeeded at being epic.
I'm generally more of a critic then a praiser, especially of my own work, so this chapter will be much shorter then the following one.
On reflection, I realize that sometimes what worked and what didn't work depended on the tiredness level of the players and myself when we were on that part of the game. So I'll try to keep that in my mind.
There was almost always something to do. A lot of that was based on emotional response to stimuli, but for the most part people had their hands full but not too full. Part of not overwhelming the pcs was forcing them to make choices. It was impossible to be everywhere at once. Clear choices of "I'll save this but not that" had to be made.
My favorite success was that the choices mattered. Pcs weren't always successful, but every choice they made changed the outcome of things. Because ragnarok lasted so long, these choices kept compounding til they were making choices based on other choices they made the day before. They got to experience small changes they created in an inevitable event.
Pcs reactions were also excellent. I don't have much to do with that but it was perfect. Amongst the two new groups of pcs that came to the battle new alliances were formed and new groups were working together. There was also new strife and problems. Cool new stories and relationships happened.
Combats were smoothish. Sometimes things took a long time and the entire thing definitely took too long, but each individual part let the pc be part of a giant combat while kinda having a spotlight in them without wrecking the giant feeling of the fight or making it feel like they were too much the center of attention. And it all happened with a smoothness that the base system certainly doesnt allow. It didnt really fit a Tick system and wasnt perfect, but it worked well for that massive massiveness :)
The whole set up worked. The different places blending into each other, and the many enemies and allies were awesome and constantly hit the PCs with awe and terror, but there were some flaws in it so I'll talk about it more next time.
Most importantly we had fun. It was the longest most epic gaming experience I've had and I think everyone involved probably agrees ...so...mission accomplished!
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Players Are Too Awesome for Ragnarok
Question: Could you tell us how it all (Ragnarok) ended?
Ah, no, not today. Ragnarok was the culmination of three years of interwoven stories, not just from the PCs but from the hundreds of NPCs they interacted with; without the background of all the rest of their story, lots of what happened at Ragnarok wouldn't make much sense, or wouldn't be as important and gripping. All stories must begin at the beginning before they can get to the end; skipping ahead wouldn't be fair.
But I promise, I'm working double-time these days on the fiction in a pitiful attempt to catch up, so I hope Ragnarok won't be too far in the distant future. There's a brief break in games while we reorganize and recover, so I'm taking advantage of that time to get some extra writing done.
It would be easier if there weren't fifteen or so characters with important threads to contribute to Ragnarok burning fifteen different holes in my writer's notebook, but since it's an embarrassment of riches instead of a bag of mothballs, I won't complain about it.
Ah, no, not today. Ragnarok was the culmination of three years of interwoven stories, not just from the PCs but from the hundreds of NPCs they interacted with; without the background of all the rest of their story, lots of what happened at Ragnarok wouldn't make much sense, or wouldn't be as important and gripping. All stories must begin at the beginning before they can get to the end; skipping ahead wouldn't be fair.
But I promise, I'm working double-time these days on the fiction in a pitiful attempt to catch up, so I hope Ragnarok won't be too far in the distant future. There's a brief break in games while we reorganize and recover, so I'm taking advantage of that time to get some extra writing done.
It would be easier if there weren't fifteen or so characters with important threads to contribute to Ragnarok burning fifteen different holes in my writer's notebook, but since it's an embarrassment of riches instead of a bag of mothballs, I won't complain about it.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Ragnarok Ruminations Part 2 Nuts and Bolts
Warning to players: Looking behind the curtain always reveals Oz to be less then he appears. Read on at your own peril...? Whatever word I mean to use there. Use that word instead.
When last we left, it was 38 months ago, and I was starting a campaign. If you read the fiction that zooms you up to about 24 months into the campaign. You'll notice that the PCs are entangling many many people into their story(more often from their plots and not mine). You go ahead another 14 months and their doing this on an even greater scale, but their doing it with more gods, and introducing and making different pantheons interact with each other more and more.
But as you probably know, the running of ragnarok was a surprise because two players had to move, so I had to rush a few things(I had planned on having another 6 months or so). One of the things I rushed was who to have involved. As I talked about in the last blog, I wanted to have the pcs choices and actions effect who was involved, but I didnt want to just automatically drag everyone they've been involved with. into it. I wanted a bit of fate and a bit of randomness. After a lot of thought I came up with a system. I dont think it was the best system. Im not sure it was good, but it functioned for what I needed. I'll get more in depth on its faults in a later post, but for now here it is.
I start with the people I know have to be at ragnarok. The PCs, the fire titans, the norse gods, and their enemies.
Then I do a roll for anyone who is in the same pantheon with, has had a meaningful interaction with, or has fought in a combat with or against.
For each of one of the above you added one dice to the pool.
So, If 3 people from my pantheon were already fated to be involved in Ragnarok, and 3 people I had a meaningful interaction with at some point were as well. I would roll 6 dice on this "roll"
The number to get was 10 on this roll. If you got a 10 you became destined to have a mandatory part in Ragnarok. The intertwining of the strands of fate between you and the Aesir destined your finale to be with theirs. Or not necessarily a finale, but instead a life altering event. Ragnarok was to be a big chapter in your story in some way.
I added a couple caveats. If you had a very close relationship to someone involved(parent, sibling, wife, hated enemy) you added two dice for that person instead of 1.
If you were a war god you added 4 dice off the top(cant miss the greatest battle of all time)
And if you were maxed in the magic purview your number to get was 20 instead of 10(being able to manipulate yourself out of that fate).
And So I started rolling. Starting pantheon by pantheon and then titan realm by titan realm, and then human fatebond by human fatebond. Anyone who ever interacted with the PCs and was currently alive went into a massive chart that I rolled from. All the nondead non "essential" Aesir quickly fell in line. Parents of the PCs came pretty quickly and then their pantheons would get some in because most of the PCs had dealt with most of them. Having at least 2 PCs from each of the pantheons in play meant most of their pantheon got involved.
The adding 4 dice for war gods hit its stride when I did ares and his children. They pretty much doomed the entire dodekatheon to joining. And with an entire pantheon their titan and avatars would also come along. So eventually Ragnarok also was filled with stars and fertility and darkness. Many of the titans using this calamity where the gods would be the weakest as the perfect time to strike. There would be injured, weakened gods everywhere.
Now remember, every time someone new got sucked in to ragnarok. I had to go through my entire list of people I already rolled and see if they had a relationship to the newly fated and if so, roll an extra dice and add it to their total.
This created a giant constant vortex that ended in addition to the pcs, 126 distinct separate characters involved in ragnarok. I made them each a note card(I fucking love note cards). I put their Effective HP(will explain later) their normal attacks, any special attacks, their aura(will explain below) and what happened when/if they died(usually bad stuff).
Aura: Most gods/titans had an aura of some kind. It gave people that fought in battle with them a bonus. It was often either a bonus to purviews or a bonus extra strong blessing of bravery. Some gods had generic ones, some had very cool specific ones. Titans sometimes had a WIP rolls to get near them, or made a purview more difficult to use, or drained willpower. Although sometimes they did helpful things as well with their auras.
Effective Health(effective HP): When dealing with massive battles(or really even when dealing with small ones), it is a huge pain in the ass to constantly calculate how much legend a creature has, how much it wants to spend on converting. Should it convert? Roll with it? Does it have unbreakable? How much does it want to spend on it. Is the creature stunting its actions? Thats all good for hero and early demigod, but when the PCs start getting more powerful, and the numbers start getting crazy, I invented(although I stole the word from MMO games, and Im sure someone came up with the idea first) my effective HP system. Instead of worrying about all of that. You decide when creating the creature, how powerful it should be. Factor in all its defensive abilities, and ball park a HP value that represents that number.
Then you get to write down DV, soaks, and Effective HP, and instead of worrying about legend just subtract from this larger number. Assuming that the character will be doing whatever possible with its legend to stay alive. I can explain more about this some day if people want, but I dont wanna spend anymore time on it atm. Its very mathy.
Back to Ragnarok!
So next I had to decide what places I wanted Ragnarok to take place in. We needed asgarde, bifrost and the plain Vigrid(I feel like it had a different name but thats what google is telling me atm). I wanted to give the PCs places where they could save bits of the world if they wanted(could) so things also had to take place at Vanaheim(for will) and Yggdrissl(for kettilla). Then several of their sanctums would be at risk because of fated battles(thor and jormongondr probably fight in iceland) or because they pissed people off(a water titan had been waiting to betray vivian for a bit, and a son of Poseidon had been waiting to get back at Marcus for years). Eventually I ended up with 24 locations where battles would take place of some kind.
There were three levels of "importance" to the battles. With 12 places at the first level and 6 places at levels 2 and 3.
1. Non important stuff. The Pcs could save their sanctum, or their children or their cult, but nothing major. Basically things the PCs care about, but on a grand scale dont matter much. Except Asgarde is also in this list cause it gets attacked first automatically.
2. Semi-Important. Big things happening that if they arent stopped can have catastrophic effects in other parts of the world. Also Bifrost cause it gets attacked 2nd and it crashing leads to Vigrid. Fate titan realm is one of these places.
3. The big ones. These six are the 5 places on the field(which is enormous) that each god prophesied to die fights his enemy(plus olympous cause there was a side plot where tons of shit was going on leading up to that including fate realm).
Each of the 1s lead into a 2, and each 2 led into a 3. Then all the 3s lead eventually to Vigrid. With fate and pyscopomp super activated, space almost didnt have a meaning, and whenever a battle finished at a location, the denizens were moved to the next location that was on the list until the battle at Vigrid ended.
Each Location also has an Effective HP(just a general number for the bad things there to do to completely destroy the place if no pcs or npcs are stopping them. IE, if the bad guys are just left alone to run batshit and destroy). An aura(fated buff for being there, often a way to get legend back), a bad thing that happens if the location is destroyed(when asgarde finally fell no one could use loyalty channels anymore), and an order in which the npcs arrived there. It started with two, one trying to destroy and one trying to defend it and from there could stay even or spiral in either direction. First level places had 2-4 characters. 2nd level had 5-8, and 3rd had many/all the rest. It was based on story lines tied to those each location, and the npcs that fit best there, mixed with a little randomness.
All over the room I spread out 4 tables(2 big 2 small) and started with the asgarde card in the middle, and all the pcs at asgarde as the jotun attack after sailing over in the boat. Then I put down the Mimirs well location. Some stuff happens and the two groups get split up. The prophets plus goze go to the well, everyone heads to defend ragnarok.
(We had several people playing 2 characters, the deal was once they split up their characters, which was mandatory as soon as possible, they couldnt have them at the same location again til Vigrid.)
At each location the first two npcs "happened" and the battles began. PCs got to take 4 "actions" per segment. Actions were big things that didnt necessarily have time constraints on them, but had to fit into a 4 hour window. So, they could fight giants for 4 actions, this would consist of 4 hours of them taking out a section of the massive army. But only involved them rolling 4 times and taking that to a scale of 4 hours.
Or they could summon a tornado, that would be one action worth even though it took less time. Or they could pop all their fighting powers, and attack one of the bigger enemies 4 times. I wouldnt count the popping their powers as actions, cause they werent "meaningful actions" but I would have them take the time to do them, so they probably got beat up during it.
After the PCs at each location took their actions I would have the npcs at each location take their actions(often I did this while they were deciding what they were doing or rollling and would write the effects down to tell them when they were done), two people would draw randomly from the deck of level 1 locations. Those locations would hit a table, and the first 2 npcs in those locations would arrive there. Then each of the current locations(at this point just asgarde and mimirs well) would have their next npc added(he would arrive on scene) and the pcs would have to decide which area they wanted to be in for the next segment. They would talk about it, pyscopomps would port people around, and wherever they landed they were stuck for the entirety of the next segment. They'd get all the new applied auras of the place and npcs of whatever area they landed in, and they'd start a new.
When we got to the level 2 location they started coming 1 area at a time, and finally the level 3s also came one location at a time. But they were always random, and chosen by the players. Some locations lasted for many segments(asgarde) some were dealt with in 1 or 2(geoffs sanctum). It was very exciting. After each segment which location was next was even a surprise to me, and the pcs kept having different reactions, and weighing which was more important to save or where they'd be most effective. The groups split and reformed in all possible different ways, and they rotated what titans they fought, and what gods they fought with. It was the epitome of awesome.
And I would tell you more, but anne has sworn me to secrecy on the specifics until she writes the fiction.
But when she does that we do have a recording of the game that we could upload(but jesus its 40 hours long, even after an edit why the hell would you wanna listen to that.
I think thats everything I wanted to talk about regarding the nuts and bolts.
Next time: Things I think succeeded and possibly things I wanted to put in this post but forgot.
When last we left, it was 38 months ago, and I was starting a campaign. If you read the fiction that zooms you up to about 24 months into the campaign. You'll notice that the PCs are entangling many many people into their story(more often from their plots and not mine). You go ahead another 14 months and their doing this on an even greater scale, but their doing it with more gods, and introducing and making different pantheons interact with each other more and more.
But as you probably know, the running of ragnarok was a surprise because two players had to move, so I had to rush a few things(I had planned on having another 6 months or so). One of the things I rushed was who to have involved. As I talked about in the last blog, I wanted to have the pcs choices and actions effect who was involved, but I didnt want to just automatically drag everyone they've been involved with. into it. I wanted a bit of fate and a bit of randomness. After a lot of thought I came up with a system. I dont think it was the best system. Im not sure it was good, but it functioned for what I needed. I'll get more in depth on its faults in a later post, but for now here it is.
I start with the people I know have to be at ragnarok. The PCs, the fire titans, the norse gods, and their enemies.
Then I do a roll for anyone who is in the same pantheon with, has had a meaningful interaction with, or has fought in a combat with or against.
For each of one of the above you added one dice to the pool.
So, If 3 people from my pantheon were already fated to be involved in Ragnarok, and 3 people I had a meaningful interaction with at some point were as well. I would roll 6 dice on this "roll"
The number to get was 10 on this roll. If you got a 10 you became destined to have a mandatory part in Ragnarok. The intertwining of the strands of fate between you and the Aesir destined your finale to be with theirs. Or not necessarily a finale, but instead a life altering event. Ragnarok was to be a big chapter in your story in some way.
I added a couple caveats. If you had a very close relationship to someone involved(parent, sibling, wife, hated enemy) you added two dice for that person instead of 1.
If you were a war god you added 4 dice off the top(cant miss the greatest battle of all time)
And if you were maxed in the magic purview your number to get was 20 instead of 10(being able to manipulate yourself out of that fate).
And So I started rolling. Starting pantheon by pantheon and then titan realm by titan realm, and then human fatebond by human fatebond. Anyone who ever interacted with the PCs and was currently alive went into a massive chart that I rolled from. All the nondead non "essential" Aesir quickly fell in line. Parents of the PCs came pretty quickly and then their pantheons would get some in because most of the PCs had dealt with most of them. Having at least 2 PCs from each of the pantheons in play meant most of their pantheon got involved.
The adding 4 dice for war gods hit its stride when I did ares and his children. They pretty much doomed the entire dodekatheon to joining. And with an entire pantheon their titan and avatars would also come along. So eventually Ragnarok also was filled with stars and fertility and darkness. Many of the titans using this calamity where the gods would be the weakest as the perfect time to strike. There would be injured, weakened gods everywhere.
Now remember, every time someone new got sucked in to ragnarok. I had to go through my entire list of people I already rolled and see if they had a relationship to the newly fated and if so, roll an extra dice and add it to their total.
This created a giant constant vortex that ended in addition to the pcs, 126 distinct separate characters involved in ragnarok. I made them each a note card(I fucking love note cards). I put their Effective HP(will explain later) their normal attacks, any special attacks, their aura(will explain below) and what happened when/if they died(usually bad stuff).
Aura: Most gods/titans had an aura of some kind. It gave people that fought in battle with them a bonus. It was often either a bonus to purviews or a bonus extra strong blessing of bravery. Some gods had generic ones, some had very cool specific ones. Titans sometimes had a WIP rolls to get near them, or made a purview more difficult to use, or drained willpower. Although sometimes they did helpful things as well with their auras.
Effective Health(effective HP): When dealing with massive battles(or really even when dealing with small ones), it is a huge pain in the ass to constantly calculate how much legend a creature has, how much it wants to spend on converting. Should it convert? Roll with it? Does it have unbreakable? How much does it want to spend on it. Is the creature stunting its actions? Thats all good for hero and early demigod, but when the PCs start getting more powerful, and the numbers start getting crazy, I invented(although I stole the word from MMO games, and Im sure someone came up with the idea first) my effective HP system. Instead of worrying about all of that. You decide when creating the creature, how powerful it should be. Factor in all its defensive abilities, and ball park a HP value that represents that number.
Then you get to write down DV, soaks, and Effective HP, and instead of worrying about legend just subtract from this larger number. Assuming that the character will be doing whatever possible with its legend to stay alive. I can explain more about this some day if people want, but I dont wanna spend anymore time on it atm. Its very mathy.
Back to Ragnarok!
So next I had to decide what places I wanted Ragnarok to take place in. We needed asgarde, bifrost and the plain Vigrid(I feel like it had a different name but thats what google is telling me atm). I wanted to give the PCs places where they could save bits of the world if they wanted(could) so things also had to take place at Vanaheim(for will) and Yggdrissl(for kettilla). Then several of their sanctums would be at risk because of fated battles(thor and jormongondr probably fight in iceland) or because they pissed people off(a water titan had been waiting to betray vivian for a bit, and a son of Poseidon had been waiting to get back at Marcus for years). Eventually I ended up with 24 locations where battles would take place of some kind.
There were three levels of "importance" to the battles. With 12 places at the first level and 6 places at levels 2 and 3.
1. Non important stuff. The Pcs could save their sanctum, or their children or their cult, but nothing major. Basically things the PCs care about, but on a grand scale dont matter much. Except Asgarde is also in this list cause it gets attacked first automatically.
2. Semi-Important. Big things happening that if they arent stopped can have catastrophic effects in other parts of the world. Also Bifrost cause it gets attacked 2nd and it crashing leads to Vigrid. Fate titan realm is one of these places.
3. The big ones. These six are the 5 places on the field(which is enormous) that each god prophesied to die fights his enemy(plus olympous cause there was a side plot where tons of shit was going on leading up to that including fate realm).
Each of the 1s lead into a 2, and each 2 led into a 3. Then all the 3s lead eventually to Vigrid. With fate and pyscopomp super activated, space almost didnt have a meaning, and whenever a battle finished at a location, the denizens were moved to the next location that was on the list until the battle at Vigrid ended.
Each Location also has an Effective HP(just a general number for the bad things there to do to completely destroy the place if no pcs or npcs are stopping them. IE, if the bad guys are just left alone to run batshit and destroy). An aura(fated buff for being there, often a way to get legend back), a bad thing that happens if the location is destroyed(when asgarde finally fell no one could use loyalty channels anymore), and an order in which the npcs arrived there. It started with two, one trying to destroy and one trying to defend it and from there could stay even or spiral in either direction. First level places had 2-4 characters. 2nd level had 5-8, and 3rd had many/all the rest. It was based on story lines tied to those each location, and the npcs that fit best there, mixed with a little randomness.
All over the room I spread out 4 tables(2 big 2 small) and started with the asgarde card in the middle, and all the pcs at asgarde as the jotun attack after sailing over in the boat. Then I put down the Mimirs well location. Some stuff happens and the two groups get split up. The prophets plus goze go to the well, everyone heads to defend ragnarok.
(We had several people playing 2 characters, the deal was once they split up their characters, which was mandatory as soon as possible, they couldnt have them at the same location again til Vigrid.)
At each location the first two npcs "happened" and the battles began. PCs got to take 4 "actions" per segment. Actions were big things that didnt necessarily have time constraints on them, but had to fit into a 4 hour window. So, they could fight giants for 4 actions, this would consist of 4 hours of them taking out a section of the massive army. But only involved them rolling 4 times and taking that to a scale of 4 hours.
Or they could summon a tornado, that would be one action worth even though it took less time. Or they could pop all their fighting powers, and attack one of the bigger enemies 4 times. I wouldnt count the popping their powers as actions, cause they werent "meaningful actions" but I would have them take the time to do them, so they probably got beat up during it.
After the PCs at each location took their actions I would have the npcs at each location take their actions(often I did this while they were deciding what they were doing or rollling and would write the effects down to tell them when they were done), two people would draw randomly from the deck of level 1 locations. Those locations would hit a table, and the first 2 npcs in those locations would arrive there. Then each of the current locations(at this point just asgarde and mimirs well) would have their next npc added(he would arrive on scene) and the pcs would have to decide which area they wanted to be in for the next segment. They would talk about it, pyscopomps would port people around, and wherever they landed they were stuck for the entirety of the next segment. They'd get all the new applied auras of the place and npcs of whatever area they landed in, and they'd start a new.
When we got to the level 2 location they started coming 1 area at a time, and finally the level 3s also came one location at a time. But they were always random, and chosen by the players. Some locations lasted for many segments(asgarde) some were dealt with in 1 or 2(geoffs sanctum). It was very exciting. After each segment which location was next was even a surprise to me, and the pcs kept having different reactions, and weighing which was more important to save or where they'd be most effective. The groups split and reformed in all possible different ways, and they rotated what titans they fought, and what gods they fought with. It was the epitome of awesome.
And I would tell you more, but anne has sworn me to secrecy on the specifics until she writes the fiction.
But when she does that we do have a recording of the game that we could upload(but jesus its 40 hours long, even after an edit why the hell would you wanna listen to that.
I think thats everything I wanted to talk about regarding the nuts and bolts.
Next time: Things I think succeeded and possibly things I wanted to put in this post but forgot.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Ragnarok Ruminations Part 1
First post will be a little background and history:
All stories must start at a beginning(but not THE beginning). This story starts over three years ago when I started to plan the first scion game as an ST. I let players make pcs and then sat down with the five characters in front of me and thought "how the hell do I get these guys together in anyway.". This was my first table top game in a long time(I was running a vampire LARP at the time) and I had a deep seated dislike of "you all meet in a bar" or "you're all together cause some people you know found it convenient." Those ideas last well for a little while, but for a long term game with massive character development, they arent going to pan out. Eventually the characters are gonna disagree, want to be apart from each other, want to murder each other, and it was gonna be messy. They needed a glue that kept that together, a reason that time after time they were drawn into the same events. They needed to be familyesque.
Scion uses "fate" as the "we meet in a bar." I definitely think that pans out better then meeting in a bar in the short term. And its a great fall back plan if you missed something, or you messed up some where and need to dig yourself out of a hole. But its not artistically fulfilling, and I think its nearly impossible to make satisfying for the players. Once fatebonds get slung about and every one is connected it makes sense, but at the beginning seems forced.
Hermes, Athena, Huitzilopitchli, Loki, and Baldr were the gods I had. No pantheons in common, no attitudes in common...hell...they had very little in common, but they had a few common threads.
Loki and Hermes share 1 purview and 2 attributes.
Baldr Huitz and Athena all share war.
Athena and Huitz also share gaurdian and animal.
Baldr and Huitz share sun and charisma.
There were some options, but I wanted more. I decided to explore theme. What did I want this game to be about? There were some "issues" with the setting that bothered me initially and I thought theyd be fun to explore. Why did the gods mostly stay separate? They all had their troubles with titans at different times. Why not help each other? Or as stronger cultures, why not dominate the world? The humans ended up doing it a little, but wouldnt everything for your humans be much easier if you went over and crushed the opposing pantheon before they got their legs under them?
I didnt have certainty in my answers to these questions, but I started to have ideas. Perhaps the web of fate was too powerful and dangerous to risk. To deal with someone from another culture, another pantheon on too regular a basis was to constantly risk the loom binding you together. The tapestry of fate would slowly bring your stories together. This wouldnt be too bad if gods lived like us, simple lives with simple consequences. However gods lived large and the consequences of their actions are larger. If you and I are friends, and our fates are woven together, maybe I get in a car crash, and because of our friendship you end up footing some of the bills. It makes your life hard, but you deal with it. Or perhaps I was fated to get mugged today, and we are walking together, so you also get mugged.
However for gods the stakes are so much higher. If our fates are entwined, and Im fated to fall in love with someone that I shouldn't, perhaps that someone ends up being your wife(yeah, I guess this could happen with humans too, but its easy to see how the stakes are so much higher in a Hades/Hermes situation or a Zeus/Ixion situation). Or worse, what happens when we're friends, and fate decrees everything I know and love must die. What happens with friends from other pantheons? How about loves from other pantheons? Children of mixed pantheonatage?
Even if the gods didnt have exact answers to these questions, they had to fear the possibilities. You were stuck being intertwined in the fate of your family and pantheon, but could it ever be worth risking embroilment with another pantheon? It seems that at least until now, it wasnt worth the risk.
However, the titans have escaped now, and with combined efforts are proving far more powerful then the last time they were encountered(and having to deal with them all at once instead of in a nice orderly "as time evolves" fashion). Gods are taking some risks, and letting their children be guinea pigs in the tempting of fates loom. But they are doing so from a distance, with a long stick, behind thick lead reinforced walls. ....for the most part.
This brings us to the parents of our initial band. I start writing in the motivations for their characters and their want to escape their fates. Huitz wants to escape the prophecy that forces his nation to end and his need to return to his mothers lands. Loki wants to escape his persecution by the Aesir for crimes he has yet to commit. Baldr wants to save his family from the anguish of his death and the terrible cataclysm it brings. Hermes(as three times super hermes) foresaw his hand in the end of the Greek and Egyptian people and the restarting of the world. Athena wanted to end her role as another woman her pantheon uses. They dont use her physically, they dont(successfully) rape her. But she is forced to be there when men need wisdom, bravery, inspiration. And shes tired of it. And with another long drawn out titan war ahead of them, she can expect to be doing th is for a long time Maybe she wants some sexing too...I dont know, Im not a scientist.
I really wish athena had a cool prophecy she wanted to avoid(I ended up making one for her later), but I thought 4/5 isnt bad and I ran with it, knowing that athenas Schick in this was a little "eh" but that I'd fix it later. She ends up getting in a whole fight with Heph over Sophia that leads to him going titan and murdering her(but thats far off in the future).
The basic backstory(and this is severely skeletoned for space) was that thousands of years ago these five took the risk to work together across pantheons for mutual gain and to see the effect it might have on their fates. Hopefully to break themselves from their necessary roles in the future. A bunch of stuff happened, and they learned that they alone were not good enough. In addition they'd need to each have scions that worked together and interwove the webs of fate around all ten of them.
And it wouldnt work to just make scions willy nilly in times of peace. They had to wait for a time when their scions could be tested in the crucible of a war. They had to wait til the 2nd coming of the titans. They had time to plan and choose their favorite mates(or forget about it and pick whichever kid was the right age at the time), and have their children ready to head off together.
The kids mostly had no idea why they were together. Just that stuff in the world was happening, and it their newly found parents, who seemed really fucking convincing wanted them to work together and protect each other. And as they worked together and spawned relationships(and marriages) their fates kept weaving even tighter, securing their parents wants. And in time, their parents would see if their plans were successful, or if their love for their children and hope for their future would get the better of them, and theyd end up risking/losing their lives for their children.
Or possibly find out that there is no escaping fate, and that all their plans were for naught, because the sisters always find a way to take their price.
So I set the in game date when I wanted ragnarok to happen(may 1st 2015), and went about crafting small stories. Having the characters work and fight and plan together while having no idea about the part the had to play, or the plan their parents had for them. And because of this they had no qualms about weaving others into their story. And slowly cast of characters that had been woven into the fates of these young children(soon gods) spanned many pantheons and encompassed large swathes of the world. As ragnarok approached it slowly became not just a war of the aesir, but instead a war of all the interactions these young ones had experienced in their lives. Because of their own good-natured naivete they had doomed many.
In closing, a short list of themes for the 3 year chronicle that ended with ragnarok
Actions ALWAYS have consequences
Fate ALWAYS remembers
False freedom(you have infinite freedom but your freedom is a cage)
Sidam Touch(apparently opposite of Midas touch)
Sins of the father
So thats what I started with. Next post will be about the actual nuts and bolts of ragnarok and possibly some info about the lead up.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
The end is just a little harder when
Well it's finally over. Over the course of five days we played 40 hours of scion. It was tons of fun, but insanely exhausting. I couldnt have done it without the incredible spirit, dedication, and love from all my players. I definitely made some mistakes(having the most emotional scenes take place on the fifth(sixth actually) day at 5 am was definitely one of them. But I learned much from it and over the next month will keep revisiting and keep learning more. I'm certain that I made ragnarok too big. Seems impossible but it was true. I'll revisit that more on a later post though.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Chocolate Doom
Jioni's player brought us something to kick off the festivities, because the end of the world always goes down better with baked goodies.
Indeed, we are all sorry. Let's do this thing.
Indeed, we are all sorry. Let's do this thing.
Monday, February 20, 2012
The Day After Tomorrow
Question: How fucked up has your PC characters' world become? With Ragnarok in full swing and Marcus killing Ouranos, it sounds like the world is one step away from complete annihilation.
The World has certainly had better days. At the moment, large swaths of a couple continents are missing, either moved by gods or destroyed by cataclysmic events (North America's been hit the hardest, but Australia, Asia and Africa aren't in great shape, either). The population of mortals is drastically down, most of them succumbing to Fimbulwinter even if they don't get killed by the fallout from the war, and things like the Internet and reliable fossil fuels are things of the past. The weather's terrible. Everyone's morale is at an all-time low.
It's not all bad news, though. The landscape may be changing drastically, but sometimes it's for the better when the PCs take strides to try to help. Sowiljr's turned Iceland into a haven of culture and civilization, Zwazo Fou Fou is helping in a massive Loa project to revitalize Africa, Folkwardr regularly contributes to the Inuit tribes of the north to make sure they have the food and shelter to survive the harsh winter, and Eztli's little Aztec stronghold is holding out quite defiantly in spite of all odds against it, helped along by her tendency to show up occasionally to do things like build houses, feed the hungry and heal the sick. Even Terminus and Vala, normally not very active humanitarians, have been contributing by doing things like helping preserve museums and ancient ruins.
It's no secret that things are never going to be the same; a divine war and the cataclysmic events that are occurring around it can't help but change the world drastically, but the PCs and a few gods they've recruited to their cause are trying to help poor humanity, and the World at large, at least survive to tell the tale when it's all over.
The World has certainly had better days. At the moment, large swaths of a couple continents are missing, either moved by gods or destroyed by cataclysmic events (North America's been hit the hardest, but Australia, Asia and Africa aren't in great shape, either). The population of mortals is drastically down, most of them succumbing to Fimbulwinter even if they don't get killed by the fallout from the war, and things like the Internet and reliable fossil fuels are things of the past. The weather's terrible. Everyone's morale is at an all-time low.
It's not all bad news, though. The landscape may be changing drastically, but sometimes it's for the better when the PCs take strides to try to help. Sowiljr's turned Iceland into a haven of culture and civilization, Zwazo Fou Fou is helping in a massive Loa project to revitalize Africa, Folkwardr regularly contributes to the Inuit tribes of the north to make sure they have the food and shelter to survive the harsh winter, and Eztli's little Aztec stronghold is holding out quite defiantly in spite of all odds against it, helped along by her tendency to show up occasionally to do things like build houses, feed the hungry and heal the sick. Even Terminus and Vala, normally not very active humanitarians, have been contributing by doing things like helping preserve museums and ancient ruins.
It's no secret that things are never going to be the same; a divine war and the cataclysmic events that are occurring around it can't help but change the world drastically, but the PCs and a few gods they've recruited to their cause are trying to help poor humanity, and the World at large, at least survive to tell the tale when it's all over.
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