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!

From the Heart of the Vortex!

Today, we're clearing out a bunch of quick and easy answers! Blog attack, go!

Question: Would you use Larceny or Art/Science: Computer/Hacking for hacking?

Art (Computer), or, if you happen to have the Polymath boon, it would fall under Art (Modern). It's too specialized a skill to be done with plain old Larceny.

Question: Do improvements to relics always have to come from a crafter god, or can certain relics gain power through mythical events like their Scion owners gaining legend? For example, if a Scion defeated a powerful monster and gained a Legend dot, would her magic axe gain new abilities?

Relic improvements always need to come from Artistry within the game itself; you won't spontaneously gain new relic points from things you do, because that would be overpowered and difficult for a Storyteller to adjudicate (not to mention making people with Artistry have a purview that was way less useful). However, you gain new Birthright points when you become a Demigod and when you become a God, so you could have relics spontaneously gain dots at those jumps if you wanted to.

Question: Why doesn't Ra have Animal (Scarab)?

Because it's really Khepri, the scarab god, who has that association. Ra was syncretized with Khepri sometimes, where the beetle god was seen as Ra's aspect as the rising sun, but if we gave Ra associations for everyone he was ever syncretized with, he'd be Voltron.

Question: According to your posts, Hecate is still a titan (or at least very, very titanic). Does this mean she can't sire scions, or is she goddess enough to do so? Do her hypothetical kids have any side effects (showing up when scenting the titanic, gaining dark virtues etc) or are they just normal scions who might have to put up with some prejudice due to their heritage?

Hecate is a goddess for purposes of our games, and creates Scions normally as part of the Theoi. She is of Titanic lineage and occasionally called such in Greek mythology, but she's the same generation as Zeus' children and had a strong cult worship that made her close enough to humanity to be considered a god.

Question: What do Pakiy, Emamu and Stvaranje mean?

Etymological roots for all the Titanrealms can be found in this old post.

Question: Aura of Dread doesn't specify that it's only for Scions with Negative Epic Appearance, yet it is clearly the starting point for the Negative Knacks. Since it doesn't say "Negative only" does that mean an attractive Scion can still take that Knack? If I wanted my good-looking warrior Scion to still project a terrifying image on the battlefield, would that work?

No. Aura of Dread, like all the other knacks in the terrorizing tree, us usable by negative Epic Appearance only. It should say that, so we'll fix it, but it should also be pretty obvious, y'all.

Question: Are the Avatars going to get worked over with the boon revamp? Or is that a separate project?

It's a separate project, but one that we hope to work on soon, and we're talking about basic ideas for it while we work on the APP project.

Question: I was looking for how Sanctums worked, and found that your post from April 1, 2012 that said you were working on definite rules. Is that something thats progressing without a bar? has the project been demolished? up for vote? finished but not released?

It isn't being worked on at this particular moment, but we could certainly add it to the voting block if it's something you guys would like to happen sooner rather than later!

Question: Creatures are always lower legend than the scion. Does this also apply to Nahualli? I mean, they're YOU?

No. Nahualli are not Creature Birthrights and are not bound by that rule. They are a unique kind of Birthright all their own.

Question: Hello! If a Scion has a child as a Hero or Demigod, I know that the ichor would still flow from the grandparent and the grandparent will be able to activate the child, but what happens if the Demigod becomes a god - could they THEN activate their own child?

Yep, sure can.

Question: I was looking at your Perceptive Capacity table. Does it mean that the furthest any mortal can see is 12 yards (5 on the table)? That seems a little harsh to me, am I misunderstanding the rules?

You are, but that's okay, we explain it in this old post back here.

Question: Do the Aztecs have a legendary smith like Vølund or Hephaestus?

They do not; most of their armor and weapons were made of non-metal materials like obsidian and stiffened paper or cloth. They had artisans that performed goldsmithing (mostly for jewelry and ritual objects) and occasionally traded with their neighbors for bronze, but it wasn't an important enough style of crafting to merit its own deity.

Question: Do Fatebonds get the XP discount if the player has the appropriate Me PSP associated with a purview?

Yes, both the player and their Fatebonds get to buy (or unbuy) that purview at the lower rate thanks to Me.

Question: Do Empath auto-successes apply to Manipulation + Empathy rolls for lying?

Yes, they apply to anything that you roll Empathy for.

And that'll be it for now! Don't worry, we won't be doing a lot of these (we prefer the big in-depth posts!), but since the questionado has grown to a current maelstrom of 203, we figured we'd get a few of the quick ones out of the way.

Back into the fray!

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!

The Moon and Beyond

Today, we answer questions about cosmology, setting and crazy goddamn alien lifeforms. Hooray!

Question: Can Avatars create Legendary creatures? Such as the Shaper creating a living golem, or the Glory creating light entities?

Question: You statted up Tiamat and Apsu for your Anunna supplement, but what about their son Kingu? Would he be an Avatar of a greater Titan, or just a disenfranchised god?

Question: The books and PDFs have a lot of details about different ways that a living Scion can get INTO the Underworlds. I imagine if they had clearly-marked exist, the dead would just use them all the time - but how is a living Scion whose time has not yet come supposed to get back OUT? Do they have to ask the local death god for a way our? Can they just retrace their steps and spent a point of Legend to emerge into the World?

Question: How would you do a Chaos Titanrealm? Not asking for which Titans you'd pick, just asking what you think it would look like. (And batshit crazy isn't a real answer.)

Question: How would you kind folks at GBN do a Chaos Titanrealm? Hundun always seemed to be a cop-out, to be frank. I've already seen your awesome Inca Destruction realm, and wonder if that would basically be it.

Question: So, aliens! Where do aliens fit into Scion? Have you ever included them in your games? By "alien", I mean both the common perception of aliens (greys, reptilians, etc.) and mortal races not originating on earth or in an Overworld. Second, what are "Lyrans" and what connection do they have to the Anunna?

I don't think a vlog has been this saturated with pop culture since... ever.

Phenomenal

Question: If every natural phenomenon is created by a God or Titan via Avatar, does that mean there are no 'mundane' things and everything is technically magical?

Not at all! Just because something was created by magic doesn't mean it's magical itself. Dirt created by the Earth Creation boon is not magical. It's just dirt. Ditto things made by any other boon or power. Unless something specifically says it creates a magical item - some Artistry boons, for example - it doesn't, and whatever was just created is a perfectly normal, non-magical example of its kind.

So when it comes to solid objects, if it's not a relic, trophy or piece of a magical creature, it's mundane. The vast majority of things that exist in the Scion universe are mundane, which is pretty normal - after all, that's how you know the Legendary things are special. Similarly, living things are always mundane unless they're expressly acknowledged to be Titanspawn, lesser immortals, Scions or some other magical creature. Tigers created by the Paper Tiger boon are just normal tigers; you have to use Nemean Scroll, which specifically says it makes Nemeans, if you want to end up with magic tigers.

If you're thinking more along the lines of the elements, that's where things are a little more tricky. If you can use Fire or Sky boons to attack people with elements and those are magical attacks that are specially treated in Scion's system, aren't all fire and lightning in the entire world also magical? They're not, actually, but there is a little bit more to it. The basic idea is that at some point the god of that element used their Avatar to create a permanent phenomenon in the World, and that phenomenon now runs itself and obeys its own natural laws, becoming a natural and mundane thing rather than a direct use of a power.

We explain it in much more depth in this vlog, starting at about 33 minutes in, so check it out if you'd like to listen to us jibber-jabber about it for a little while.

Power Plays

Our vlogging spree continues! This is only the second of the many vlogs we filmed at the same tinme, so we barely look fatigued at all yet! This week's theme is boons, knacks and powers, because you guys never run out of questions about those things. Never.

Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?

Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?

Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?

Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?

Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?

Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?

Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?

Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?

Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)

Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.

Ten-Question Roulette

Here's something you guys haven't seen before - it's a magical extra bonus vlog! The question box has been blowing up lately, so in an effort to catch up a little bit, here's a ten-question smorgasbord of Scionness!

Question: What happens when someone with divine socials manages to insult the Virtues of another Scion? What takes precedence - the ichor boiling in response to the insult or the inability to hurt someone divinely likeable?

Question: For Haunted Mists, the more powerful you are, the more time you need to concentrate for the mists to gather. That doesn't make much sense to me... someone who hasn't branched out much in the Death purview can summon forth the mists much more quickly.

Question: It sounds like in many of your games, the Scions quickly become the bad guys, at least in the mortal world. Have any of your characters had the strength of will or luck to be a good guy? For instance, causing more good in the world than bad?

Question: What happens when you use two Avatars simultaneously with a multiple action? Do you combine the narrative awesome of both, or does one just fizzle?

Question: Kin-slaying is a big taboo among the Greeks, but how close does someone have to be to be considered "kin"? Could Hera contract a Scion of Hades to bump off some of Zeus' more offensive bastards without anyone receiving a visit from the Kindly Ones? Would she even go there, if she thought she could get away with it?

Question: Have you guys ever considered officially moving Goibnhiu from the Nemetondevos to the Tuatha? Or is he too minor a figure to bother moving?

Question: Are Norse dwarves immortal?

Question: How do you justify a number of boons metric when not all purviews have the same opportunity to get them? Prophecy and Stars come to mind - they both only have 1 boon per level, compared to, say, Magic, which has more boons than any other.

Question: You've mentioned a couple times that you believe that most of the Nemetondevos aren't Legend 12. Well, I just wanted to know which ones, in your opinion, are.

Question: You once mentioned a possible bestiary, but it never shows up on the voting poll. Why is that?

John is such a grumper. Fantastic at it, though.

ULTIMATE POWER

Question: Taking your advice in the Army of the Lesser post, could you give us an outline of what you plan to do about the Avatars/Ultimates system?

I love the competitiveness. Voting wars are awesome!

Avatars and Ultimates have been something we've been jonesing to do for quite a while now, and not just because some of our PCs will probably be Legend 12 in the not-too-distant future (although I hope not today, guys, we are not ready for you yet). Their use in the books combines an awesometastic idea - ultimate power, expressed however the player wants, and the reins of the storytelling itself passed over to them for a few shining moments! - with abysmal mechanics, or lack of mechanics, that don't actually give any guidelines or aid to either player or Storyteller. We want Avatars and Ultimates to be the badasses they were always meant to be.

As usual, project outlines are vague things at this stage, but a few things we plan to mess around with include:

• Nomenclature. We know why Scion calls four different concepts "avatar"... but shit's ridiculous. We'll probably change what these are called to try to cause fewer conversational trainwrecks.
• Permanent Effects. While Ultimates and Avatars are the final powers purchased at the end of the boon/epic trees, they don't do anything in and of themselves most of the time. That's fine, actually, because they're giant superpowers that definitely do things when activated, but we'd like to see them granting something permanent to the Scions who fork over their 50 XP as well. A god who has these things literally embodies them, so we want that to be illustrated in some awesome concrete way. We don't know what that will be yet (and it'll probably vary from power to power), but it might be anything from constant visual effects to increased aptitude with related powers to special unique abilities tailored to individual gods, making every person's Avatar of Sky different. Whatever it is, it'll be awesome.
• Usage Guidelines. The unlimited power represented by Ultimates and Avatars is totally exciting, but what they actually do is pretty vague and confusing. We'd like to give some more useful guidelines for using them, as well as maybe some examples, so players aren't put on the spot trying to guess what they're supposed to do and Storytellers aren't dithering around wondering if what's happening is appropriate. The books also do a terrible job of explaining what happens when two Avatars or Ultimates clash and oppose one another, and since "nothing happens, they cancel each other" is the least epic idea ever conceived, we're also looking forward to coming up with some cool ways to represent the conflict between ultimate universal forces.
• Specialization. Right now, many of the Avatars and Ultimates are super narrow and specific, which gives us nice description of what some gods of that thing might do but leaves all the others out in the cold. It's great that we hear about how gods with The Storm can rampage across the landscape, decimating everything with uncontrollable lightning, but what about gods of Sky who are associated with the firmament itself and have nothing to do with lightning, or who are gods of breath and air, or who are gods of gentle spring rains or heavy fogs? Avatars need to be flexible enough that any god with that purview can use them in a way that fits their symbolic role as a deity. That might mean that each purview has a few different Avatars - perhaps users of Fertility can purchase The Green or The Season or The Feast or something? - or maybe it'll be an attempt to roll different ideas into something that's applicable to all.
• Weaponization. We don't want to lose the awesome storytelling mojo of Avatars and Ultimates, but right now it's entirely impossible how to figure out how to actually use them against an enemy or in pursuit of a specific goal; it's either, "They don't have an Avatar, they die," or "They do have an Avatar, everyone blows 30 Legend and nothing happens." Not exciting.
• Equal and Opposite Powers. Some Avatars and Ultimates, despite their best efforts, are at the moment obviously on different levels of power. Ultimate Appearance is clownshoes compared to Ultimate Stamina; The Sentinel is depressingly limited when compared to The Shaper. Everything will need to be able to compete with everything else, with the end goal that all gods, regardless of their kind of divinity, are able to face each other down and triumph with whatever awesome powers they have chosen to make their own.

It's going to be a big project. We can already tell, and we haven't done any more preliminary work on it than talking about it while waiting for movies to start or making dinner. But we're still pretty excited about it, and we will shed exactly zero tears if it wins the next round of voting.

(If you missed it, a little while ago we said that we've noticed that people asking about projects or characters on the polls almost always leads to them getting a voting surge, so if you have questions about the one you'd love to see happen, hit us!)

Mirror, Mirror

Question: This is a question that has been bugging me for some time: shouldn't there be a better Avatar expression of Moon than The Mirror? I understand the symbolism behind it, but shouldn't it have more to do with the madness/lunacy or the influence of the tides than that?

Not necessarily, but I can see where you're going. The thing about the moon, in mythology, is that it's the heavenly body with he most different and unrelated associations and symbols, and it therefore isn't as easy to reduce down to One Idea the way others are. You know where you stand with Sun - the sun is all about light and brightness and warmth, so The Glory embodies those things and you're good to go - but Moon is more complex. In various myths and cultures, it might represent madness, comfort in the night, the action of the tides, guidance for the traveler, the mirror of the heavens, light, menstruation and other affairs that belong solely to women, death and rebirth and even more. Some cultures assign the moon to only one or two of those things, while others seem to have taken the orb out of the sky and rolled it in symbols until it looks like a feathered pinata.

Tides and lunacy are certainly important parts of the moon's imagery, but so too are all the other things listed above, including the idea of it as the shining silver mirror of the gods/universe/earth. Using just lunacy, for example, as the ultimate expression of Moon's Avatar would be very limited, and wouldn't make very much sense for all the moon gods who don't have anything to do with insanity (and they do exist - Sin, for example). The mirror's one of those concepts that is generally applicable to most moon gods in a way some of the others aren't, and you can see that we nodded to lunacy in the description as well. But it's also hard to have a showstopping representative concept when you're really trying to cover nine concepts at once, so we're not kidding when we say Moon's a difficult one.

However, take heart: the Avatars and Ultimates on the site right now are just the old holdovers from the books, and we're hoping to make overhauling them a major project in the very near future. It's our hope that we can rework the Avatars into powers that not only have more concrete and useful effects and explanations while retaining their awesome scope of power, but also make them more all-inclusive, so that everyone with The Beast doesn't have to be a ravening predator and everyone with The Mirror isn't necessarily just a reflective surface.

Wyrd Gone Wild

Question: Why is The Wyrd in both Prophecy and Magic? If one of my players wanted to finish each purview, would they have to buy the same boon twice? And would Prophecy Wyrd look the same as Magic Wyrd, or would you be able to tell which one is being used in a given situation?

We hate to tell you this, but all the answers here are stupid. This is one of those legacy spots from the original books that we're intending to fix but haven't yet, and it's a very obvious sore thumb, even among the already messy soup of purview Avatars.

The Wyrd is in both Prophecy and Magic - and Mystery, in fact - because, in the original Scion books, all three purviews are considered expressions of Fate and therefore they all have the same ultimate power. The books handle what they refer to as the "Special Purviews" as sort of specialty tracks instead of true differentiated purviews, making all of them generalized powers over Fate that lead to the same eventual end. This works generally okay at low Legend levels, provided you ignore the other stupid things the original trinity's writeups are doing, but as you've noticed, it doesn't work very well as soon as you have to deal with Scions who have become gods.

So yes; in the original rules, if you want to have the Avatar of both Prophecy and Magic (and thus the ability to pass them on as associated powers to your childrend), you must purchase The Wyrd twice. And no; in the original rules, there is no differentiation whatsoever between The Wyrd of Magic, The Wyrd of Prophecy or The Wyrd of Mystery.

Obviously, that sucks. Nobody wants to have to buy the exact same power two or three times just to give their imaginary kids some XP breaks (a power that costs a whopping 44-55 XP to buy, yet, which in the original books' back-breakingly slow XP gain scale means nine to eleven games of doing nothing but saving your measly XP gains), and to further insult the Fate-oriented among the gods, The Wyrd is actually the only purview Avatar that doesn't allow you to do anything - instead of letting you run the show like every other Avatar, it runs the show completely without you in exchange for a promise that "something nice'll happen for you later". Again, we know why the writers did that, in this case because they wanted to illustrate that the powers of Fate are still the ultimate authority over even gods, but in mechanical practice it blows big-time.

So, yeah, the original books are offering you the delightful option to spend all of your XP on buying the same power over and over again, and all said power actually lets you do involves spending a giant bucket of resources in order to have no idea what's going to happen and hope that your Storyteller remembers to reward you for it later. There were better ideas in those books.

While we're still working on Industry (oh my god Industry never ENDS), overhauling the Purview Avatars and Ultimate Attributes is a project we want to embark on soon, and trust us, fixing The Wyrd is one of our top goals. If you're running a god-level game that needs to use it in the meantime, we suggest going with your gut and allowing Scions to do whatever makes the most sense - that is, someone popping Prophecy Wyrd should have access to all future events, someone popping Magic Wyrd should be able to effect massive changes to various beings' Fates if he's so inclined, and someone popping Mystery Wyrd should have all the knowledge of the universe at her fingertips. Give them similar privileges to those you'd give anyone else with an Avatar, and go from there. Obviously there are limits - if Odin could just pop Avatar of Magic and fix this Ragnarok problem, he'd have done it a long time ago - but you should be able to feel those out as they come up.

But seriously, The Wyrd in the books is just a punishment for Fate-aligned players. And aren't their lives hard enough already?

Great and Terrible

Question: I was wondering, in regards to the purview avatars, how would a god look when using one of them? Do they suffer any physical changes?

Hell, yes, they suffer physical changes!

Purview Avatars are the big ones: they are the final end of the road, the Ultimate Cosmic Powers of the gods over their chosen areas of influence, the things that set apart a god who dabbles in rain and wind occasionally from the Storm as personified by Zeus or Thor. When a goddess uses an Avatar, she's not just using a power that lets her win at whatever she's doing, but rather taking on the mantle of ultimate divine power and utter personification of the part of the universe to which she now belongs.

When you use a purview Avatar, you are the one in charge of the scene - not the Storyteller, who as Fate normally runs the show, but you, who has turned yourself into such a colossal and nigh-uncontrollable force that your powers within that sphere are limitless and can be used in any way you see fit. That includes what you look like; you can appear as literally anything you want to while you are using your purview Avatar, and nobody's going to say boo about it. Blow The Green and appear as a massive tree in motion, as a being whose every hair is a plant that roots into the world, as a god who pours sweet nectar and honey and wine from every pore. Pop The Sentinel and appear as a towering armored defender, as an invisible forcefield that prevents all attacks, as an impenetrable mountainside that surrounds the people you protect. Pop The Trickster and appear as literally anything in the universe you want, with no penalties and no mechanics. You are becoming the living embodiment of the idea that your purview represents. You get to look the part.

Obviously, you can't take on your Avatar by appearing as something totally inappropriate; if you try to become The Devourer and turn yourself into a cascading waterfall, we're going to tell you no because that's stupid, and you're supposed to be embodying the exact opposite element right now, you jerk (also, why? there are way cheaper ways to shapeshift, my friend!). But if you turn into a cascading waterfall of molten fiery lava, hell yes, do whatever you want. Avatars are not meant to be used as easy shapeshifting powers, and for the cost in Legend, Fatebonds and exhaustion they're definitely not worth it to be used that way. But they do show you literally becoming your purview, and whatever you think that should look like is the way to go.

As usual, just a friendly reminder that we haven't yet rewritten the Avatars and Ultimates system, so there may be more codified rules for this in the future (or not. I don't have Prophecy). But for now, the limit is almost literally your imagination.

Is This Thing On?

Solo vlog flight! Today, clearing out a bunch of older questions that have just been waiting for their turn in the sun! Talkin' 'bout associated powers, Appearance knacks, character concepts and the checkered history of African civilization.

Question: What do you think about people using Unusual Alteration to turn themselves into trees or animals? How would that function differently from Animal Form or other shapeshifting boons?

Question: Brahma seems so powerful, yet he has so few associated purviews and Epics. What's up with that? How do you reconcile what the gods can do and how important they are with how they are mechanically represented in Scion?

Question: What would you think of a character - a Japanese Scion or other - trying to model themselves off an anime character?

Question: What does The Sentinel going rampant look like? If a god with the Avatar of the Guardian purview gets killed, I somehow can't imagine the consequences.

Question: Code of Heaven says the Orisha are against slavery, and yet Shango has slaves. Can you explain?

Question: Do the social sciences belong in the Science ability?

Question: May I use the name Ian Jupiter (not the character, just the name) for my story? He's going to be the name of a reincarnated Zeus.

Back into the Industry/boons/Atua/Seamus mines with me!

Titans, Love, Mystery

It's vlog time! Today, questions from the dwindling stock of backlog we're working through. We'll catch up yet!

Question: Do you think that Scion can be used as a fantasy romantic comedy, but still stay true to the myths? Would a setting like that resemble an episode of Bewitched, or would it look more like a fish-out-of-water romantic comedy?

Question: What stops someone who has The Way from using it outside a Titanrealm to create a path directly to an Avatar?

Question: So Adrasteia is Alison Margaritas' god name, but who was the goddess torturing her into apotheosis? I'm guessing Nemesis, and if so, who sent her?

Question: Do Titan Avatars have PSPs?

Stories are webs, interconnected strand to strand, and you follow each story to the center, because the center is the end. Each person is a strand of story. --Neil Gaiman

Doing It Big

Question: What happens in your games if a God (or Titan Avatar) should ever channel a Purview Avatar within a Titanrealm? Is it different from the core books' treatment? And would the reactions of the Titanrealms differ based on which purview is channelled? Would Tamoanchan, for example, react differently to The Glory, The Crown and The Reaper, Avatars for an opposed, a favoured and a neutral purview respectively?

Aww, man, I hate to do this to you, question-asker, but we don't know the answers to most of this yet. We're in the midst of working on reimagining the purview Avatars, what they do and how they function at the moment, and how they interact with Titanrealms will be part of that.

While I'm not sure we'll keep the core books' idea of gods instantly dying if they use Avatars within a Titanrealm, I also know why it's there (to prevent gods from being able to just go wreak I'm-narrating-the-scene-now havoc on the realms of the Titans with impunity), so something will certainly need to restrict how they work there. I'm definitely with you on the idea that popping The Glory in the middle of Keku probably provokes a very different response from popping The Abyss, but we'll need some time to work on what, exactly, those responses might be.

We're hoping to wrap up adding the Slavs to the website much more quickly than our last project (thank goodness, we already wrote most of this material!), and when we do, we're planning to add work on purview Avatars/Ultimate Attributes to the list of things you can vote for us to do next.

On Top of the World

Question: Do you think there's something wrong with how purview avatars are treated in the original Scion setting? Are you planning to change them? And if so, how?

Man, it's like you guys are psychic sometimes - we mention something in the vlog and then we open up our question file for the week and there you are asking about it. Purview Avatars (and Ultimate Attributes, too!) are definitely an area that we're excited about working on and shoring up.

On the one hand, we love the idea of purview Avatars as presented in the Scion books; the idea of fully taking on the mantle of one of your powers and becoming its most awesome and ultimate expression, of transcending even other gods for a few shining moments, and of being a player who gets to reverse the power structure and take on the storytelling role normally occupied by the ST, is totally amazing. In concept, it's a great way of illustrating how awesomely powerful the PCs can be at the pinnacle of their powers and of very directly placing the cooperative storytelling power in the hands of the players. Those are both awesomely worthy goals.

But, unfortunately, the Avatars and Ultimates in the books fall short of actually succeeding at these things as much as we would like them to, and their excellent concept is undercut by their slapdash implementation.

For one thing, they give players next to no guidance, which will be liberating for some but too daunting for others, and the whole point of letting the players take over the helm of the story is lost if they don't want to do it because they're afraid of it or if they do it but can't articulate what they want to do well enough to enjoy it the way it's meant to. Players have very different levels of creativity and ability to think on their feet, and since the current Avatars and Ultimates are incredibly vaguely defined, those powers will always be more fun and useful for some players than others. We don't want to see that, and we also don't want to see players just use them as one-use hammers - i.e., "I don't know what to do in this situation, so I'll just pop my Avatar and smite that person/thing," rather than really making it the story event it deserves to be.

Another issue is the fact that, even with their ill-defined and vague explanations, some of the Avatars and Ultimates in the books are clearly far less powerful than the others, which creates an unfortunate and inaccurate inequality between what universal and cosmic powers are more powerful than others. Some Ultimates and Avatars, like Guardian's The Sentinel or Ultimate Wits, are incredibly and almost limitlessly powerful; others, like Ultimate Appearance or the Fate purviews' The Wyrd, are by comparison extremely lackluster and have far less utility, even though there's no reason that any one cosmic universal force should be weaker than another. Then, too, some of them have very carefully defined mechanics - Ultimate Strength, for example - while others, like The Crown, in Stars, are almost impossible to figure out. Still other Avatars, like Animal's The Beast, are written to apply only to some deities' expressions of that power, seemingly having forgotten or ignored others and making the Avatar something that actually runs counter to some of the very gods who should possess it.

We're talking a lot here about mechanics and definitions, and I want to be clear: we don't want to bog these things down with massive amounts of nitty gritty details. The original writers didn't want that, and we don't want it for the same reason: we want these powers to be all about granting options, not taking them away, and we want there to be room for as much creativity as players can muster. But right now they're so amorphous and so unsynchronous that they're failing to perform their intended purpose; they need to be defined at least a little more than they are, because at the moment they simply don't work.

And speaking of not working, there's also the issue of how to manage Avatars and Ultimates against one another; the Scion books detail how these interactions work in some cases (Ultimate Strength versus Ultimate Stamina, for example), but totally fail to address how many, many others might interact other than saying that they can counter one another. If Scion A pops The Storm and Scion B pops The Void, we have no idea what happens or how they can interact or work around each other; at best, you're looking at a stalemate of "Welp, my Avatar cancels your Avatar, guess we both spent 30 Legend and this scene doing nothing," and at worst you're looking at one Scion's Avatar unfairly trashing the other because that player/Storyteller is better at thinking on their feet and coming up with things for it to do to counter their foe. These massive cosmic powers need to be balanced against one another, and clearly the Scion books want them to be when they state that they can counter one another - but at the moment we have no idea how to do that in a meaningful, fun and epic way in a game, because the powers as written don't tell us.

The Fate purviews are another major issue; in the original Scion rules, all three of them share the exact same Avatar, the Wyrd. While we totally understand where this decision came from and respect it - the idea being that since all three purviews represent in some way meddling with or utilizing Fate, they all have the same ultimate expression because Fate is universal - it doesn't work at all in its current form and desperately needs some love. For one thing, while the Fate theory is nice in its simplicity, it doesn't really ring true for those powers' different styles of use, impact on stories and gods that use them; gods who are prophets are not doing remotely the same things as gods who are magicians, and their Avatars should be representing and doing different things as well. It's unfair and confusing for people with very different purviews to all get the same ultimate power at the end because of out-of-game justifications that don't really have any bearing on the mythology the game itself is based on, and furthermore, it definitely disenfranchises anyone who happens to have invested in more than one of those purviews, requiring them to buy the exact same expensive ultimate power two or even three times in order to be officially associated with it for their children. Then there's also the problem that the Wyrd is currently literally useless - unlike every other ultimate power in the game, instead of allowing the player to do something amazing and change the course of events, it completely removes her control over the character and hands it over to the Storyteller, who, as Fate, is in charge of her for the rest of the scene in exchange for a nebulous possible increase in good fortune at some future date (which is, again, incredibly poorly-defined and entirely on the Storyteller's shoulders to accomplish, cutting the player out completely). Again, it comes from a good root idea, that Fate is the ultimate power in Scion's universe and therefore can't be overcome even by gods, but when you've spent your entire career as a Scion learning how to temporarily manipulate and bend Fate to your whim, being told at the top level that you can't actually do that while all your friends are masters of their areas of influence sucks pretty hardcore. It's an idea that's good in theory but totally does not work in play, and as a consequence the Wyrd is one of the saddest ultimate powers in the entire game.

So the grand question after all that is one of how to fix all these concerns. It's a project that will require a lot of in-depth thought and time, but that both of us have been working on in a sort of backburner way for a while now (oh god players stop getting so close to buying these things!). Our goals will be:

A) Provide meaningful examples, guidelines or mechanics for what these things do
B) Balance these powers against one another so that all are at a level of equivalent awesomeness
C) Establish how use of these powers affects others in game and what using them against one another means
D) Create different Fate purview avatars for the three different ways of working with Fate
E) Do all this without crushing opportunities for player creativity or losing the flavor of Ultimate Mythic Power

It's a tall order, but a lot of the basic ideas and premises are already there, and we're more than ready to go for it. Scion's purview Avatars and Ultimate Attributes are problematic only in that they are great ideas with poor design behind them; something that players are absolutely excited about but will probably be clueless about how to actually use in a game. If we can define them and make them the awesome powers they were meant to be while still being understandable and usable by every player, then we'll have done our job well.

Defining the Ultimate

Question: I know y'all here on JSR are only up to Legend 9 or 10, but have you given any thought to Ultimate Attributes? Are y'all just going to stick with how they are in "God" or do you have a homebrew planned?

Oh, question-asker, you silly goose. When do we ever stick with how something appears in Scion: God?

We're already treating Ultimate Attributes a bit differently in that gods need to have them in order to have Epic Attributes associated; just as a god needs a purview Avatar to be associated with that purview, he needs the Ultimate to be associated with that Attribute. The old system of associating Epic Attributes at level 8 was more than a bit silly - why make it so incredibly much easier than purviews, especially since gods much more frequently have purviews associated in myth than Attributes? - and seemed to us to primarily exist in order to let PCs grant things to Scions, but since we're already doing that with our PC god-promotion system, it's an idiosyncracy that doesn't need to exist anymore. All of the game's ultimate powers are on an equal playing field for us.

Past that, we will indeed be tinkering with what they do; some of them are perfectly fine (Ultimate Stamina: doing what Ultimate Stamina should!), others are great but kind of nonsensical (Ultimate Wits, what are you doing being Prophecy?) and still others are desperately unexciting compared to their fellows (Ultimate Appearance... what). It's not one of our first priorities at the moment because, as you noted, our PCs are far away from getting these powers, but they definitely need an overhaul and we're pretty excited about giving them one.

In a similar vein, we'll also be tinkering with purview Avatars at the same time; they're more story guideline powers at that point (what the old World of Darkness called Plot Device Powers) than things that need very strong rules attached, but we still want to make sure they're ship-shape before people start buying them. In particular, we want to differentiate the Wyrd; while the idea that Magic, Mystery and Prophecy all come from the same source (Fate) is totally legitimate in Scion, we're pretty sure that a prophet's expression of divine power is not going to look the same as a mage's, so we'll be exploring how to make them different without losing their unique Fate flavor.

We're thinking we may include Ultimates and Avatars in the next round of new knacks and boons we get to fiddle with.

Nature vs. Nurture

Question: Pantheon-specific purviews don’t have Avatar-level boons. Why do you think this is and do you think it would be a bad idea if Avatar level boons were made up?

Pantheon-specific purviews fulfill a completely different role from all-purpose purviews, which is why their ultimate levels differ.

APPs are the representation of serious, great and primordial forces. They are powers pertaining to the principles and puzzle pieces that make up the universe, whether in very concrete forms (as the Earth, the Sky, the Animals that populate them) or in more abstract but still fundamentally important ways (as the Order and Chaos that govern those things, or the Magic of Fate that rules their actions). Gods who wield the powers of APPs are tapping into a tiny bit of that huge and awesome force and bending it to serve them, and purview Avatars are the greatest expression of that, allowing a god to briefly become one with that cosmic force, a face of its awe-inspiring power. It's not really a coincidence that Titan Avatars and purview Avatars are referred to by the same name; just as Titan Avatars are expressions of the great primordial forces of the universe, so gods who use purview Avatars are, just for a moment, taking on the same mantle, retaining their personal morals and agenda at the expense of only being able to tap into that great power once in a while instead of always. A god who becomes The Glory isn't just activating a great power that lets him succeed; he's becoming a thinking part, for a brief moment, of the vast and universal power of the sun.

But PSPs, on the other hand, are not concerned with the fundamental forces of the universe; rather, they are expressions of the power, origin and beliefs of a specific culture and set of people. They are at their core human purviews - more human even than the more "human" APPs like Illusion or Guardian - and instead of calling upon the massive powers that run the universe, they draw from the unique wellspring of strength that is their own people. PSPs give gods power through the customs, beliefs and strengths of their own culture, through the religion that their people have built around them, and as a result it's a very different kind of power: more specialized, more personal, less understandable to others but undeniably potent. There's no purview Avatar to tap into because each and every god of that pantheon is themselves an Avatar of its ideas and meaning; they are already the ultimate expression of that culture and its religion simply by existing, just as Titan Avatars are already the expression of a Titanrealm. There's no need for a power that makes them the ultimate in their culture, because they are naturally the very definition of the pinnacle of their culture's godhood. They don't need an extra power to let them finally become themselves.

So while I don't think it's a bad idea to try to craft purview Avatars for PSPs in general - that is, I don't think you'd ruin the game if you tried or anything - I do think it'd be both frustratingly difficult to come up with anything really meaningful and, ultimately, pointless. An Aztec god doesn't need a purview Avatar to make him the pinnacle of sacrificial dedication; that's what he already is if he's bought up his Itztli. An Egyptian goddess doesn't need a purview avatar to make her finally perfectly Egyptian.

It's one of the wonderful things about Scion; even the strongest gods may be able to access parts of the huge fundamental purviews for only a short while, but it is almost effortless to become a true god of your pantheon. It is inborn in each and every Scion in their very ichor.

Avatar Up

Question: How do you keep the challenge level in your game up, when the players obtain the purview avatars?

Well, our game specifically hasn't yet had to cross that bridge; we have no PCs above Legend 10, so nobody has purview Avatars yet and isn't likely to for a while. Luckily, we have plenty of time before end-game cosmic power is in the hands of the players and we can go get coffee while they narrate the scene instead of us.

However, keeping up the challenge level is easy as pie (well, whatever pie Scion is normally comparable to); you just keep doing what you were already doing. Having purview Avatars unfortunately doesn't exempt gods from the cutthroat world of divine politics, from having to deal with alliances between different pantheons and deities and vengeful vendettas from those who have been wronged. Gods that have families, own property or have cults dedicated to them will have to deal with threats to those people and places and figure out how to best set them up to succeed (or fail, I suppose, if they happen to hate them). There are still mysteries and magical items in the universe, some of which are not particularly easy to solve or gain, and those Scions who have reached the pinnacle along with them who are not their bandmates may be forces to be reckoned with as well.

Also, just because people have purview Avatars does not, sadly, mean that there's nothing left for them to fight and they have to retire from combat forever. If that were the case, there'd be no such thing as the war with the Titans, because the gods would already have won it; Titans are such monolithic beings that it requires many gods with Avatars working in concert and getting everything just right to try to take them down, and there are a lot of them out there, ruining everything constantly. Avatars aren't always a good solution to the problems at hand, either - using them in the World invites massive Fatebond attraction, using them in a Titanrealm invites the Scion to be swallowed whole by the place, and using them at all is very exhausting, expensive and not something to be taken lightly. Legend 12 gods don't get to go around constantly busting off their Avatars; they're special-occasion powers only, most of the time, which means that while they certainly add a new level to the game, they don't invalidate everything that came before them.

Keep in mind, also, that it's totally possible that Legend 12 Scions with Avatars now have Scions of their own, allowing them to wield, influence and order them around just as their own parents did to them long ago. That's a mighty chess game all on its own, not to mention the fact that having a purview Avatar doesn't necessarily impress other gods, who not only have Avatars of their own but who also probably have more and certainly have had them for much, much longer. Avatars are a last resort when it comes to bickering, fights or negotiations with other gods, so in that arena you're usually operating the same as you were before you got access to the Avatar.

Purview Avatars are awesome, but they're not the end of the game. The days of being sufficiently challenged by killing trolls in the woods might be over, but believe me, there's still plenty to do.