Fumbling Toward Heaven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supermassive

Question: If I wanted to have a Scion to become a god of black holes, how would I go about doing that?

Geez, you shoot big!

Well, to start with, here's an important question: what does your god of black holes do? Does he just create black holes, and if so, why does humanity care, since those are far away from them and don't really affect their lives much? Is there some representative concept attached to the black holes that does affect people, and if so, what is it and how does it relate to the pantheon your Scion's part of? Why do people worship this god, how do they worship him, and what role does he fill in the grand scheme of the divine world?

You don't have to know all of this the second you think about becoming a god, of course, because you'll grow and change over time, but the more of it you know, the more you'll be able to figure out what kind of powers and actions you might want to attach to her. Gods don't exist in a vacuum, and your Scion will need to do something with her divinity other than just sitting out in space not being interesting to anyone.

I would suggest maybe starting with the Darkness purview; since not even light can escape a black hole, using Darkness to blot out everything would fit your theme nicely, not to mention going along well with the name of the phenomenon. You could also possibly invest in Stars; true, mythology has no idea that black holes are the remnants of collapsed stars, or even that black holes exist at all, but as a modern Scion you do know that and can blaze new trails. Past that point, it'll depend on your take on black holes. If you think of them as entropic universe-breakdown causers, Chaos might fit your bill, or if you believe that matter sucked into a black hole is transported to some mysterious location, maybe Psychopomp would be a better choice. On more metaphorical levels, you might want to consider Epic Strength to represent the awesome crushing force of a black hole, or Epic Charisma to represent its ability to relentlessly draw everything around it in.

Stats aren't the only important thing here, however: you have to fit your Scion into a pantheon, which means she needs to have a place and purpose among them. Has mankind begun to foray into space in your games, making gods of astral phenomena more necessary, and if not, what does your pantheon need a god of black holes for? Do you work with any other gods or beings, and how do you do that? Why do people pray to you? What do they want from you? What do you do with your free time in the Overworld when you're not fighting Titans? Do the other gods think you're necessary or respect what you do?

You can generally make any cool concept work for a new young god, even heavy science ones - after all, you're playing a Scion in the modern day and you have tons of science at your myth-making disposal that our ancient ancestors didn't. But you'll still need to figure out what that concept does aside from being neat.

So go for it!

And They Will Call Me...

Question: The players in my group are approaching Legend 9, and we were wondering, how did your Legend 9+ players decide on what their 'god names' would be (ex: Sowiljr, Eztli, etc.)?

Question: Hey guys. I had a question. How do you find or create names for your characters who reach godhood? I see these evocative names and would like to know so when my characters reach God one day, they too can have culturally relevant new names. :)

Hey, there! I'm not sure if this is the same person twice, but if it is, please accept our apologies for only now slogging through the question backlog to get to you.

We've actually talked about this one before, so check out ye olde post about our god-level characters and how they came by their names. The short answer is that there's no official process, but hopefully there will be some helpful pointers in there that you might be able to use.

Political Pantheon Party!

Aha! I bet you thought we forgot to vlog today, didn't you? Shows what you know! Not only did we remember, we actually did a whole pile of vlogs in one day, so that if we end up in a scheduling crunch in the weeks to come, you won't go without answered questions and our cheerful faces.

Question: What would you guys think of a game where Scions deal with a number of NPCs in the world bringing their pantheons back to prominance, all the while secretly guarding Zeus's "successor"?

Question: Why does Hades have Epic Stamina associated?

Question: I'm a little bit intrigued by the Orisha. It's crazy how everyone is married to everyone. How does that really work? Are they a big happy family or what?

Question: I'm STing a game and my scions (of Hel, Hades and Odin) are getting to God soon, and I need some ideas on how to make their rise to God memorable.

Question: My scion of Izanagi is finding himself being attracted to Amaterasu. He blames his attraction on being named the god of the moon (Tsuki-Yomi died), so is this argument valid? Also, should he be disgusted with himself since he is attracted to his sister? Would she be his full or half sister, since Izanagi created her and her brothers?

Question: Hey, I noticed that in your Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games you only allow your PCs to pick four pantheons that actually had some level of cultural interaction. Just wondering if any other major pantheons on your site that could have that kind of thing going on, like say the Celtic pantheons, for instance?

Question: In your games, when and how did the gods learn that the Titans had escaped? Was there some big explosion in the Underworld? Did they simply slip out unnoticed until someone actually checked and saw that they had flown the coop?

Question: The Aztecs have a god of homosexuality despite their obvious dislike of the concept. How does the rest of the pantheon treat him?

Question: Norse vs. Borgovi? SWEET! But, say Loki tricked Thor and Perun into a room together - what would happen? A SPECTACULAR light show, or lots of drinking? OR something else?

Question: Power and responsibility go hand in hand. And with every great decision comes regret. Regret for what could have been, should have been, and what ultimately was. What do the gods regret?

Today's vlog is about gods, pantheons and related issues of their politics and powers. Happy viewing!

Divinity in the Abstract

Question: If one is looking to become the god of something more abstract - like Victory, or Personal Achievement, or Magnanimity, or Liberty - what (ruleswise) kind of set of powers would make sense? It's a lot less obvious than picking powers for a Sky-Father or even a god of computers. Or do these kinds of gods simply not make sense within the Scion framework?

Not at all! One of the great things about Scion is that you can become a god of anything, no matter how abstract or ridiculous or metaphorical, completely depending on what you want to do with your character. You can be a god of fire, or you can be a god of inspiration, or you can be a god of ennui, and all of those are equally workable.

You're right, it's very easy to just buy Sky if you know you want to be a Sky god, but more abstract or complicated concepts are still stattable with a little creativity. The major thing is to figure out what you think a god of that thing should be able to do, and then to purchase your powers accordingly. Each of the concepts you mentioned as examples could really be approached a number of ways; for example, do you want your god of Victory to be in charge of making armies win battles? Then he should probably invest in War, but if he's more concerned with Victory as the idea of succeeding at personal goals, then he may want Charisma to make people feel the glow of success or Prophecy to guide people toward the right tasks. A goddess of Liberty might take Justice to make sure that no one is oppressed by lawlessness and criminals, making them free to go about their lives in safety, but she also might take Chaos to free people from the constraints of their inhibitions or the strictures of society. A god of Magnanimity might take Animal or Fertility to provide food or clothing for people, Artistry to create things to make their lives easier, Appearance to make himself a gift to everyone who sees him, or anything else that his player decides is an expression of his patronage of the idea of generosity.

If you know what concept you want to be god of but aren't quite sure what you would do as the patron of that idea, we always suggest getting together with the Storyteller or even your fellow players to see if they have any suggestions. It might be helpful to read up (even if only on Wikipedia - people sneer, but it's a great source for connections and philosophical basics) on whatever idea you've chosen to see what kinds of other concepts are connected to it or the ways it might have been viewed by various different societies.

And hey, if you have an idea for what you want to be as a god but it's still a ways off, you know what? Don't sweat it. There's a lot of time and XP between Legend 3 and Legend 9, and even after you've crossed into god territory, you can still change your role if you really want to. Most of our PCs have become gods of concepts that they grew into after spending time figuring out what powers they liked and what things they enjoyed doing as Scions, which led pretty organically to creating divine roles that encompassed those things. They managed to turn up as the gods of last chances, of eternity, of blood in a symbolic sense and of marital fidelity, and they're doing fantastically at those jobs even though they don't have purviews specifically dedicated to those ideas.

Coming of Age Tale

Question: From an earlier conversation, what is divine apotheosis? Purely physical, mental, or both? Can you change how you look to appear more godly as a one time benefit of apotheosis?

Apotheosis is all things in all dimensions. It changes the very fundamental fabric of your being, shedding the last of your mortal ties and turning you into the true divine essence of godhood. It's mental, spiritual, physical and magical, and no craziness is too crazy for an apotheosis scene or story.

Lots of Storytellers run apotheosis in different ways, running the gamut from "nothing really changed, here's some new dots for your god template" to "everything is different and you're a crazy spirit being now rarrrr". It's also an area where players have (and should have!) a lot of input, since it's a very personal change that vastly affects the characters, and that causes a lot of shenanigans, too. We're going to assume you're asking about the way we run it, but know that it's one of those places in the game where pretty much every Storyteller does at least a few different things.

Apotheosis, in our games, is a major full change that affects all aspects of a Scion. While Demigods are more divine than human and have been for quite a while by the time they reach apotheosis, the change to full-on godhood is still a major, irrevocable change of your basic nature. Gone are the mortal blood of your childhood and the restrictions of humanity; and in their place are enormous divine powers and the violent influence of godly Virtues. It's a big goddamned deal.

Mechanically, the physical aspect of your apotheosis appears in the loss of any human blood and its replacement entirely with divine ichor. Among other side effects are the doubling of your normal health levels (so if you had six dots of Epic Stamina and therefore 23 health boxes, once you become a god you'll have 46), the newfound immunity to several boons that only affect the partly mortal bodies of Demigods and lower (such as Strike Dead, for example) and, of course, the possibility for higher physical possibilities as they increase in Legend. The mental changes involve the greater and more vibrant passions of the divine and include the stronger hold of your Virtues (which now grant successes to rolls instead of dice when channeled, but also roll twice as many dice as your rating when attempting to avoid Extremity), the resilience of said Virtues (which can no longer be permanently changed by things like Shape the Soul) and the same possibility for greater mental capabilities in the future. And spiritually, the role of the new god in the great weave of Fate becomes much more pronounced and important, most notably thanks to the influence of entire cults of mortals instead of singular humans.

There's no part of a god's identity and powers that don't change at apotheosis; it's the moment when the things that are aspects of a demigod become the divine roles of a god, and when a divine being who is a servant of her pantheon becomes a member of its powers with the rights and prestige of true divinity. It is awesome.

To answer your last, smaller question, usually we say no. It's not because we don't want people to look awesome as gods or anything, but when Appearance is a stat in the game with its own attendant powers and levels, it's unfair to give new gods the benefit of powers that other characters might have had to spend XP to get. However, apotheosis is often the moment that players choose to use those powers they do have to effect major changes to their appearance (Aurora used Detail Variation to cause her hair to become snow-white when she became Vala, for example, and Kettila used Undeniable Resemblance to become a permanent seven-year-old when she became Yoloxochitl); many players love to make a visual statement about their new self at that dramatic moment, and it's always awesome when they do. It's also possible for major image changes to occur as a result of either events that happen during a god's apotheosis story, such as Woody losing his turtleshell during the harrowing fight he endured to get through Niflheim and become Folkwardr, or because of changes or upgrades to Birthrights, such as when Sangria's tummy-tattoo gained the fanged visage of a bat after her acquisition of her nahualli and transformation into Eztli.

Individual characters' appearance changes at apotheosis should be handled on a case by case basis, but our recommendation is always to make changes related to the current story or Birthrights but not to allow any free ones that by rights should be handled by Epic Appearance or its powers.

Get Thee to the Gym

Question: In your previous blog post “The Apotheosis Rumba” you mentioned that Scions must have their physical Epic Attributes at at least five dots and the rest of their stats at at least three dots (save for a so-called "dump stat"). Why is such primacy given to physical attributes? Wouldn’t this leave social or mental characters with a harder road to godhood?

A good question, and one that our mental and social characters' players also asked us when it came time to start planning ahead for godhood. The reasoning here is twofold: one a metaphysical, fluff reason, and the other a solid mechanical one.

Metaphysically, this partially comes from an idea that we actually kept from Scion: God (I know, once in a while we do actually use the original books' material!). The general idea there is that the conversion from demigod to god is a physically rigorous one; it is a very literal destruction of your mortal body and reformation into a divine being composed of ichor. This is a big deal and a difficult thing to survive, and the need for five levels of physical Attributes helps illustrate that this is something that not every demigod or mortal is capable of even surviving, let along doing to move on to divine greatness. It's not an idea you have to hammer hard, and other games may prefer to look at apotheosis differently; but we liked the idea that it's a process that completely unmakes and remakes a Scion, moving them from the realm of mortal demigods and heroes, who are awesome but never allowed to really be on the same plane as the gods, to the realm of the great deities and powers of the universe, who are not made of the same stuff as mortals.

The mechanical reason, which I suspect is the more important one for most people, is that we don't want social and mental PCs to get murdered as soon as they hit God, and if they don't have somewhere around at least five in their physicals, it's almost inevitable that they will. God-level dangers and antagonists are hardcore; things are going to happen to them that they have no prayer of surviving with lower stats, and we don't want to set them up to fail as soon as they've finally reached their goal of divinity. Hostile Terrae Incognita, Titanrealms and area of effect powers from enemies will kill those with low Stamina instantly, with no recourse; enemies are calibrated to be godly themselves, and no social or mental character is ever going to be lucky enough not to need to have at least a vaguely decent DV once in a while; things in the realms of the gods and Titans are almost without exception immovable and unaffectable by those whose strength never progressed past a couple of dots. We want all the PCs, mental, social and physical alike, to have an equal chance of surviving and shaping the world, and that means that they need to have the physical stats just to live long enough to do so.

It's actually the exact same reasoning behind everyone needing three dots in the socials and mentals; it's only that being too stupid to grasp godly politics or being unable to lie well enough to avoid pissing people off, while definitely dangerous and inconvenient, are not necessarily instant death sentences all the time, and having only seven to fourteen health boxes or a DV that a mortal could hit definitely is. Three in the socials and mentals is the bare minimum we think a god needs to not only be decent enough at enough things to not be a laughingstock, but also to be able to function in divine society well enough to survive; physicals, which carry a much more immediate and concretely harsh penalty for those who fails, need to be at five, not because we want to encourage all characters to be physical or because we want to give physical characters an advantage, but because five dots is what we've observed as the minimum for having a decent chance to not die.

Social and mental characters do, therefore, have a slightly harder time of it if they need to buy a stat up to 5 dots, compared to a physical character who only needs to buy it up to 3, but it's an unfortunate necessity of survival, not an underhanded ploy to disenfranchise them. They can, of course, choose one of the physicals as their dump stat in order to ignore buying it, which helps, but not all of our social and mental gods have actually even chosen to do that; Vala did, letting Strength sit at rock bottom, but Sowiljr chose to buy physicals and let his Manipulation be the stat that took the hit, while Yoloxochitl decided she'd let her Wits take the fall and shore up her physicals instead. (Some of this relates to Fatebonds again; for some characters, buying extra dots of physicals is actually cheaper and easier than trying to fight against Fate to pick up dots of things it doesn't want them to have.)

We don't ever want characters to feel like they're being forced to be generalists instead of specializing in the things they like to do; that would run counter to the spirit of the game and be a dick move to boot. But they need to have at least basic tools to be able to function around divine allies and antagonists, and it just happens that their physical tools need to be a little higher to prevent their grisly demise. This is a consequence of the scaling Epic successes system, and while we absolutely love the off-the-charts awesomeness of the Epics scale and would never want to nerf it down to an even, ungodly progression, it does cause those with low physicals to be severely endangered when faced with antagonists their own level.

What's in a Name?

Question: Having never reached God-level play, I am curious as to how your characters that became gods chose their divine names and titles. Is there a process to it?

Officially, no, there's no required process for choosing a godly name; the players chose their own monikers based on what they felt they embodied as deities or how they wanted humanity to see and know them. Some simply gave themselves descriptive names in their native tongues based on what they do and are - "Folkwardr" in Norse simply means "people-protector", while "Jioni" means "night" and "Sowiljr" means "sun god". Others chose names that were more like titles that described them, including Yoloxochitl, whose name translates roughly to "flower-heart", and Zwazo Fou Fou, whose appellation literally means "crazy, crazy bird". Still others chose to take on names already extant in mythology and make them their own; Terminus took his name from the Roman god of boundaries in order to reenvision it as the name of a god of final extremities and chances, which involved him actually subsuming that god's identity and pissing off most of the Roman pantheon, while Vala's name is just a name-form of the Norse title voelva, meaning "wand-carrier" or witch.

Basically, once they were Legend 8 and getting close to godhood, we told the players to start thinking about what they wanted to be referred to and how they wanted to appear as gods, and they spent as much or little time on it as they wanted to. Some came up with their names on their own, perusing dictionaries or online name lists, occasionally coming to us for etymological help. Some presented it as a plot point, like Terminus, while others had in-game impetus to get moving on it (Sowiljr was already being regarded as a god by several populations of mortals by the time he was Legend 8, and narrowly avoided spending eternity as "Geffr" because his well-meaning pantheon-mates just started Norse-icizing his name to make talking about him easier). Some went through several revisions and changes to the name they wanted, while others knew what they were going for from the beginning and never wavered.

Basically, it's one of those places that players can really go wild with creativity, and we didn't feel there was a need to put a system on it (though, as Geoff discovered and hastily rectified, if you don't choose an appropriate godly name quickly enough, your pantheon may choose one for you). The extra titles are an additional layer of fun, because they let Scions refer to their actual exploits - Eztli being referred to as "Miactli" recalls her status as "mother" to the many ghost children that populate her death-realm, while "Ungeheuerlichgurtelschildkroete", a German mouthful meaning "terrible turtle-monster-protector", refers to Folkwardr's somewhat terrifying exploits in the Germanic forests.

And being referred to by many names is fun, especially for players getting to see their impact on the world as gods for the first time. So we encourage as many reasonable titles as a player wants their god to have, and we let them have full free rein to decide what those titles should be. We occasionally provided help finding things or tracing linguistic origins, but for the most part they did all that on their own, usually in the downtime between games.

If you guys are around, players, do you have any god-naming tips, now that you've been through the process once or twice?

Gods of Ice and Fire

Question: In terms of having a Scion reach godhood or creating a god for a brand-new pantheon... what are you thoughts if their purviews that they cover involve two areas that are not related to one another? (IE: To be the god of Love and Death for example, or the Goddess of Plants and the Sun.)

One of the lovely things about Scion is that its Scions and gods can do and be whatever they want to be. There's no rule that says your purviews have to be related to one another in any way unless you want them to. There's no reason any Scion can't have whatever powers they want, and manifest them however they please; in fact, that's such a core concept of the game that I'm a bit confused by the question.

Keep in mind, also, that there are always ways to connect purviews symbolically or metaphorically for the Scion's image if they really want to. A goddess with both Fertility and Sun is easy; the sun is one of the most important sources of nourishment for plants, after all, so she's merely a fertility goddess who controls the entire cycle of plant life (this goes for Fertility goddesses who pick up Earth or Water, too). A Scion who wanted to be god of Love and Death could view them philosophically as the great motivating powers of the universe - most things humans do are in pursuit of love or avoidance of death, after all - or play up the connections between love often causing tragic death, or love enduring beyond the grave. We have plenty of young PC gods with theoretically unrelated purviews, but they always have those purviews for a reason that is meaningful to them, and that shapes how they use them and in turn how humanity sees and relates to them.

There's also plenty of precedent in established myths for those kinds of combinations of powers anyway. You need look no further than Freya for a goddess of love and death, nor her brother Freyr or the venerable Dagda for gods of both fertility and the sun. Different cultures have so many different gods and ways of looking at divinity that there's really no such thing as a purview mismatch; choose what your Scion wants to be god of and go for it. And if no one else is already doing it, so much the better; you'll be a unique god in your pantheon and set a new mythological trend.

Sunscreen All Around

Question: This is somewhat related to your previous posts on new powers/planning ahead for godhood - I have a Scion of Sekhmet that will eventually become a goddess of (ionizing) radiation. Trouble is, there's no real rules for things like radiation poisoning in the books, much less any boons for it. There ARE some in Sun and Health that could be altered, but since there's no precedent for how the damage would work outside of that, my ST and I are at a bit of a loss. Maybe you guys could help?

Okay, five days of Ragnarok, five hours of sleep, back on the horse. Let's do this thing.

The easiest thing to do for your nascent deity of radiative death is probably just to keep the existing Health and Sun boons you're thinking of and rewrite their flavor text to reflect that they cause their damage and effects through radiation instead of other afflictions. In particular, Infect, Wither, Epidemic and Plague can easily be tweaked to always cause their illness through radiation (in fact, I wouldn't even call that a tweak, just a stunt of an existing boon), and all the more potent if you want to go the full no-healing route and invest in a little Vow of Pestilence. Heatstroke can easily be rewritten to cause the effects of radiation instead of heat without having to touch the mechanics, as can Burn, Solar Prominence and Bleach. You don't really need to change the mechanics of most of these things at all; simply stunt or rewrite them so that your Scion is irradiating the living shit out of the landscape instead of giving it cancer or heatstroke, and presto.

If you feel like dipping into any other purviews outside Sekhmet's usual haunts, the Stars boons Red Star and Starfire could also be reworded to have a distinctly heat-radiation feel to them, and you might consider taking some Death boons, like Delay Rot or Destroy Dead, and reversing or tweaking them to fit the concept (an Accelerate Rot boon certainly wouldn't amiss... eww). Some Fire boons, particularly those that cause low-grade damage from close contact, might be appropriate as well. I think there's a lot of fun room to mess with stunting existing powers as effects of your powers over radiation; many Perception knacks (Broad-Spectrum Reception, for example) might be accomplished through your irradiative might instead of mere affinity for noticing stuff.

The main reason irradiation and radiation poisoning aren't addressed directly in Scion is that they're probably assumed to fall under the environmental damage rules, but unfortunately the environmental damage rules in the original book are pretty terrible and have no hope of damaging anyone who buys, say, at least one dot of Epic Stamina. I would suggest quantifying how you want irradiation or poisoning to function in every power you use that involves it, so there's no confusion and no need for a separate system that the Storyteller has to keep track of on the side.

Incidentally, while I think the content of the supplement is pretty hit-or-miss, White Wolf's French imprint Biblioteque Interdite put out a free supplement a while back that detailed a Titan of Death that was primarily focused on nuclear radiation and deterioration. You might find some of the ideas interesting; if you care to take a look, there's an English-translated PDF here.

Mokomokomate

Question: When your PCs were becoming gods, how did their players go about deciding what their character would be the god of? For instance: I have a scion of Tongaroa with the Animal (Lizard), Death, Mana (the psp), Psychopomp and Sky. I was thinking that he would be the Maori god of bad omens, but I'm not sure and I'm looking for something to give me an idea on how to decide. Any help you could give me would be awesome. Thanks!

For most PCs in our games, there are two different routes they go when approaching their role as a god: either the player had a definite idea what they wanted to be and intentionally strove toward that, or they didn't and their behavior and Fatebonds made the choice for them. Vala is a good example of the first; her player knew she wanted to be a goddess of prophecy and hope from very early on, so she invested in powers that supported that. Zwazo Fou Fou is a good example of the second path; his player really had no idea what his character was going to be as a god, so his mortal cults believe in him as the god of abandon and madness, thanks to his heavy Moon powers and tendency to go batshit insane and blow things up at a moment's notice.

As for your awesome Polynesian Scion here, my only thought is that it might be difficult to be a god of omens if you aren't kind of prophecy-heavy - after all, omens are portents of the future, and if you don't know the future you're going to have trouble warning people about it. However, there's a definite hole in the Maori pantheon when it comes to psychopomping; nobody is really conducting the dead to the Underworld, so that might be a great role for your Scion to take over. Alternatively, since he has Death as well as Psychopomp, he might try to set up an alternative afterlife for the Maori dead - Hine's not exactly pleasant times to hang out with, so he might set up a new Underworld (in the sky, perhaps? I am just tying all the purviews together today!) that he conducts particularly worthy souls to so that they don't end up with her. (Of course, this might start a turf war with Hine, but nothing worth doing doesn't come with angrily rampaging deities.)

I got nothing on the lizards, but that's probably okay. Animal totems don't necessarily have to be attached to a god's role. Maybe you could come up with something where you relate psychopomping off with someone's soul, leaving Hine stuck with a broken-off tail in spite of her attempts to stop you or something. Or perhaps you can use lizards as your little messenger or psychopomp emissaries (though again, too much lizarding will probably start arguments with Punga... but hey, arguments are part of the divine landscape).

Really, if none of these ideas are floating your boat and you're still not sure what to do, go with tried-and-true: what is it your character does most of the time? What does he like to do and what does he do most often? What does he do that affects humanity in some way - that is, what would he be likely to be worshiped or remembered for? Those are the questions that usually lead players to figuring out their divine roles, so pursue them and see if they take you anywhere awesome.

The Other Side

Question: Do your characters have to go to the underworld (I.E. death and back) to reach apotheosis, or have some other near-death experience?

Strictly speaking, no, they don't have to. We judge when a character's ready for apotheosis on a lot of factors - how many legends have sprung up about them, whether or not they have cults worshiping them, what purviews and concepts they represent and so forth - but Underworld participation is not one of them. You could theoretically go from Legend 1 to 9 and never set foot in an Underworld in one of our games, provided you were doing a lot of other awesome things along the way.

But Underworlds are a great way for characters to confront new and mythic creatures and situations and to make a name for themselves in the world's legends. Traveling to the Underworld for any reason is always a heroic and exciting event; you can also do heroic and exciting things outside of it, of course, but why wouldn't you include an adventure in Hades or Duat if you have the chance? Underworld myths are some of the ones that grab our attention most in mythology, because the crossover into death is such a major event and the escape back to the living so rare and special.

We tend to send characters to the great belows on missions around mid- to high-Demigod level because it's such a fantastic place for exploration and beginning to really get into the meat of divine worlds and politics. It's also a good way to let players get a taste of the big leagues; nothing makes a player feel badass like going to the Underworld and coming back out again alive, and it's a good gateway to the eventual visits to the Overworlds that they'll experience once they're gods.

No PC of ours has, to date, reached apotheosis without going to an Underworld; various characters have been to Hel, Duat, Hades, and a slew of other short jaunts in and out of the deathrealms before reaching Legend 9. I don't know that we'd make it a requirement, but when there's something as cool as spelunking in the Underworld available for PCs to do before they become gods, I don't know why an ST would avoid it.