The Model Look

Question: If a Scion with no dots in Epic Appearance is horribly disfigured/scarred, can they buy positive Epic Appearance, or are they restricted to negative for being so ugly already? If they can get positive, does it reduce the ugliness of their scars/disfigurements until eventually the scars vanish, or would positive appearance simply make them extremely beautiful in spite of their scar/disfigurement without actually reducing the visual impact of the scars/disfigurements?

Any character can buy any kind of Epic Appearance they want! Go nuts! Do whatever you feel like, young heroes!

Appearance is a little bit of a tricky stat when it comes to the mortal realm; it really just measures how striking and noticeable you are, but whether people like that or don't is entirely dependent on the standards of beauty and physical averages of the culture you're hanging out with. As we know already from living in a world with a lot of different people with different tastes, wherever you go you'll encounter different standards; some cultures like large breasts while some like small, some cultures love ear- and lip-disks and others think they're disfiguring, some cultures prize certain colors in skin or hair or eyes that might be totally different from other cultures, and so on and so forth. There's no universal standard of beauty that everyone on earth recognizes, so it's likely that no matter what you look like, somebody out there thinks you're attractive, and likewise somebody is totally grossed out by you. Normal dots of Appearance make sure people visually (and aurally/scent-wise) notice you, but whether they think you look good or not is totally up to their personal preferences.

But Epic Appearance is a divine quality that transcends normal human preferences. People with positive Epic Appearance are attractive to everyone, not just people who would normally think they have a good look, and people with negative Epic Appearance freak everyone out, even if they would normally not have a problem with your specific physical attributes. If you have negative Epic Appearance and a bunch of traits that people around you would normally find very attractive - super clear skin, well-defined muscles, long eyelashes, whatever - they still don't want you anywhere near them, because you have a divine quality of scariness or ugliness that overrides their normal preferences. In essence, Epic Appearance takes the power to decide whether or not you're ugly or beautiful away from the viewer and gives it back to the Scion. You buy Epics, and you're whichever flavor of Epic Appearance you bought, end of story.

So yes, even if your character was horribly scarred as a mortal and most people considered her unsightly or disturbing or ugly, if she buys positive Epic Appearance, she is beautiful. How she is beautiful is up to you and your stunting prowess; the scars won't disappear unless you buy knacks that actually allow you to shapeshift and remove them, but maybe they now enhance the rest of her skin's flawlessness, or they form exotic and exciting patterns on her skin, or their texture makes people want to run their fingers across them, or they make her look mysterious and badass instead of injured or pitiful. Whatever way you think someone with scars might be attractive, that's what your character is now. And conversely, a Scion who looks like his culture's pinnacle of physical perfection who then purchases negative Epic Appearance is now horrifying regardless of his previous attractiveness, and his bulging muscles look grotesque or his full lips make onlookers think of scary things that want to eat them or the entire package of him now says violence and danger to people instead of power and sexiness.

You'll never lose any actual parts of your current anatomy or physical features when you buy Epic Appearance (unless you use a knack that actually changes those things); you still look like yourself and people who know you still recognize you. You're just now a divinely beautiful or horrible version of yourself, no matter who's interacting with you or what their normal standards might be.

Chiropteran Heart

Question: How does Eztli react to high Manipulation or Appearance? She doesn't seem the type to be swayed by a pretty face or a clever argument, but surely she doesn't just get to ignore those stats when faced with them?

Indeed she does not. Nobody gets to ignore the power of high-level social Epics, at least in terms of how they affect normal interactions with their owner.

Eztli is definitely not "normal" in terms of psychology or social interaction; she's psychopathic and completely lacks empathy for other living things, and operates based on moral strictures imposed on her by her Virtues and the orders of her superiors, which are the only things she recognizes as having any weight or importance. But the fact that she doesn't understand or spontaneously have much in the way of emotions herself doesn't mean that the powers of others can't engender them in her, and the fact that she has very definite ideas of what is and isn't important doesn't mean that others who are skilful liars or manipulators can't fool her into thinking something else.

Actually, the easiest way to get Eztli to believe anything is just to tell her it's true. She has no Empathy and catastrophically low Perception, with heavy negative Fatebonds to both; she auto-botches any attempt to ascertain whether or not someone is lying to her, which means that she tends to believe anything she is told at face value. This is a fun party game for enemies or even other gods who know they can drive her around like a sawblade-covered bus, but it's also hard to predict, since it means that her grasp on any situation is only as permanent as the timespan until someone else tells her contradicting information.

So high Epic Manipulation users tend to be able to just tell her whatever they want without having to even bother making it believable; she's a complete idiot at reading other people, so anything anyone says sounds pretty legit to her. The only time you have to really work at it is if you tell her something that contradicts one of her personally deeply-held beliefs - like, say, telling her Huitzilopochtli never existed or something - at which point you might have to actually come up with a good reason for her to believe that. And also batten down the hatches for the ensuing Virtue Extremity storm, because challenging Eztli's fundamental beliefs about the universe seldom ends well for anyone.

As for Appearance, Eztli is in fact affected by it, but she seldom acts on any response she might have. She's not immune to recognizing that someone is attractive, but she also lives in a world where any kind of romance or sex that isn't with her husband is completely prohibited and punishable by execution, so she'll never decide to have a fling with someone just because they're hot, even if their presence is doing weird things to her internal organs. Similarly, she's not immune to recognizing that supernaturally hideous things are horrifying, but she has Courage and has spent her entire life fighting and killing things that look like that, so she probably won't ever run for the hills or recoil from something just because it's hideous. Those reactions are there, but without power usage to force her into action, they don't get a lot of concrete motion out of her. She might choose in favor of the hot person if an arbitrary choice is given to her that doesn't conflict with her Virtues (for example, she voted for the person she thought was most beautiful in a reenactment of the apple incident that kicked off the Trojan war), or she might be more inclined to murder a particularly nasty-looking enemy before a less scary one if they seem at a similar level of threat, but that's about all there is to that.

Often, Eztli doesn't even really understand what the reaction she's having to someone's high-level Appearance even means; she has little frame of reference for things like desire or revulsion, since she almost never experiences them on her own. She's more likely to think that she feels weird when a particular person is around but not know why, and she's even been known to get confused and think that she must be sick or something when trying to figure out why she's responding in a way that doesn't make sense to her.

So they do affect her, but because she's a very undemonstrative and uncomprehending kind of being, her responses to being affected aren't always expected or easy to notice. Sowiljr still isn't always sure she even notices that he's attractive because she so often doesn't show it, and he's one of the hottest gods in existence and has been married to her for years.

That's not all just Eztli, though; there's only so much you can do to anyone of near-equal Legend with just your vanilla stats (something we've talked about at length before). While Eztli does respond to the high Epic socials of gods and Titans she meets, she's Legend 11 and not utterly bowled over or forced to drop everything she's doing and drool the way she might have been when she was just a wee slip of a demigod. If you really want to actually make her do anything, instead of being generally inclined to like or dislike you or your ideas, you have to actually use powers on her.

And using powers on Eztli is ridiculously difficult, and most people are not successful at it. Eztli's stone-like imperviousness to injury extends to her mind, where she is extremely difficult to influence with mental meddling and epically resistant to anyone's outside interference (which, as Folkwardr has been known to opine, makes her brain a lot like a nuclear-proof superbunker with nothing inside it). She has maximum Epics to add to her resist roll from Wits, a Birthright that also aids her, bonuses from various boons, positive Fatebonds to Integrity a mile long and a willingness to always Deed and channel rather than let anyone - even people who are trying to help her! - be in the driver's seat other than herself. She is literally one of the gods best at resisting things in the entire universe. For the most part, the only person who has any success mind-whammying Eztli is Sowiljr, mostly because she lets him once in a while, but even he sometimes just decides that it's not worth the intense effort and just gets out of her way until whatever crisis she's about to start blows over.

But she is affected by social stats, and even she can't resist everything all the time. Sometimes she doesn't understand what's going on and lets someone else's social stats tell her what to do, which is the case when she accepts Goze's word on something even though he's a notorious liar. Sometimes she botches (don't we all?), which is pretty much automatic for her any time Illusion is in play, and proceeds into bad decision territory like the blind bat she is. Sometimes someone is just so incredible that they actually defeat her resist, such as when Marduk decided he was going to Charisma her face off to make her do his bidding and has been able to tell her what to do with almost total impunity for the past year or so.

Eztli is a rock, for all intents and purposes, but even rocks get moved by a particularly powerful wave once in a while.

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!

A Time and Place for Everything

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Virtuous Player

What's up, guys! We said we would take Thanksgiving off from vlogging here in the U.S., but we have a vlog ready anyway, so here we are! Today we're talking about problems that plague players, and hopefully giving some good advice about how to handle them when they arise in your gaming group.

Question: The Scions in my group who have Order have been having a really hard time lately, as the group as a whole can't seem to not break the law in the course of their adventures. Which Virtue have your Scions found to be the most inconvenient or gotten them into the most trouble?

Question: Help! I'm a combat character and social characters in my party constantly tell me what to do. I can't even get angry at their characters or they pop Boys Will Be Boys, Blame James, or just outright lie with God's Honest. Please don't tell me that the answer is I always have to play someone smart, witty or attractive!

Question: Is it possible for a Scion who's achieved godhood to eventually lose all touch with their original humanity and embrace Titanhood?

Question: How does the Order Virtue handle vigilantism in areas where it is illegal? Does it make an exception for your divine right as a Scion to adminsiter justice, or will a Scion in this situation just be on the phone with 911 all day?

Question: What are the limits of boons like Fire Immunity or Safely Interred?

Question: I play a Fate character and I'm getting burned out. My ST ignores Fatebonds because they're too complex and my Prophecy boons are reduced to dice adders because the visions are irrelevant or never come to pass. When I tried Avoid a Fate, it still happened because it involved a PC and the ST said dictating what players could do messed with the narrative. Is this normal for Fate purviews, or am I getting shafted? Any advice on dealing with it?

Question: Two of my players have Malak. The problem is that the entire campaign can't focus around two cities. I try my best, but other characters can use their PSP every game, while Malak users sit on their thumbs half the time. Any ideas on how to get use out of Malak away from their cities?

Question: Can Epic Perception see ghosts? I know an ST who insists that only Death Senses can let you see ghosts, but that seems counter-intuitive to me - there's a Perception knack that lets me see Fate itself, but not the occasional wandering soul?

This Glorious Presence

Question: You've talked about the difference between Charisma and Manipulation before, but what about the difference between Charisma and Appearance? Aren't they both just the ability to make people notice you?

No, but that is a thing they can both do, so the confusion's understandable. Charisma and Appearance both can be used to make people notice you, but that's not the only thing they do, and they also generally don't do it the same way.

To begin with, while both Charisma and Appearance do depend on people paying attention to you, the stat that actually means "pay attention to me!" is Presence. That's the stat that actually measures how good you are at being noticed; without it, even with all the Epic socials in the world you're still at the same level as a really stunningly noticeable mortal at best. So it's really the interplay between Charisma - the force of your personality - or Appearance - the force of your physical self - and Presence that makes people notice you.

And they do that separately! Getting someone to notice you with Charisma involves impressing them in some way with your personality, which will take whatever form your personal brand of Charisma is most suited to. It might mean coming on so strong that you scare people with your intensity, being so hilarious that you brighten the whole room, or being so warm and comforting that people are naturally drawn to you no matter what you're doing. Charisma may also do any number of other things, including making people feel bad for you if you're in trouble, making people who know you want to be your friend, making people fall in love with you, intimidating people, or even making them feel better about themselves.

Getting someone to notice you with Appearance, on the other hand, involves you being incredibly physically impressive, which again depends on the specific kind of Appearance you're rocking. It might mean being so hot that you melt peoples' brains the second they catch sight of you, being so ugly that they can't take their eyes off you, being so terrifying that no matter where they go they feel like your eyes are on them, or you smell so intoxicating that when you walk too close their synapses all shut down. Appearance can also instigate lust, provoke revulsion, make it impossible to touch you or inspire people with the mere memory of how amazing you happen to physically be.

The difference lies not necessarily in the result but in the method; it's possible to be magnetically noticeable because of your Charisma but to look incredibly ordinary, which you might roleplay as being generally unnoticed until you say something or put yourself forward, and it's also possible to be completely uninteresting in every possible way but being so incredible-looking that people have to notice you even if you have the personality equivalent of a dirt stain. And, you should also keep in mind that the result can vary quite a lot - someone who notices you because you're a great conversationalist and they really like you will react extremely differently from someone who notices you because you look like the monster under their bed crawled out to say hello. Just getting noticed is really only the beginning of any interaction, and what happens next will depend heavily on exactly how that notice came about.

Social stats are weird because they're all about interaction with other people, which means that they aren't simple levers; they all could theoretically do all kinds of stuff, with lots of overlap between them. What really makes them pop is how you use them and how other people react to them, so when you're making a social character, think through what kinds of effects you want to have on people and what socials will serve you best in achieving that in your particular way.

Oh, and buy Presence. Life's a pain in the butt for social characters without any.

A Great Personality

Question: What is the interplay between high Epic Charisma and high Negative Appearance?

An uncomfortable one, sad to say for those on the receiving end. Those two social stats can and do coexist, but they do so in an uneasy and distressing way.

First of all, everything that you would normally have with either of those Epic Attributes is still in play. Your high Epic Charisma makes you a focus of attention and makes your actions and speech relevant and noticeable, whatever form you choose for your Charisma to take; you're noticeable, important, magnetic, and difficult not to pay attention to. Your high Epic Appearance makes people instinctively dislike you, again in whatever form you manifest that; you're hideous, terrifying, disgusting, and you inspire revulsion and fear in those who see you.

Not a fun cocktail for the viewer, right? You're horrifying, but they want to be near you anyway. They're revolted, but they can't take their eyes off you.

The exact specifics of that interaction really depend on a given character's manifestation of their stats, though. The most common combination of those is probably Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being commanding and fearsome, inspiring obedience rather than encouraging friendship, which is then magnified by the Epic Appearance also making anyone who sees her gut-wrenchingly terrified of being around her in the first place. Such characters are powerhouse dictators or generals - people jump when they say jump, not just out of respect but also out of fear. Another way of combining the two would be Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being sympathetic and endearing along with Epic Appearance that makes them physically disgusting or pitiful - the Beauty and the Beast approach, where the physicality is undeniably ugly and unsettling but there's clearly a good heart within that might be able to win people over in spite of the exposed organs or gross gravelly skin. You might also go with a respected old warhorse concept, with your Epic Charisma affecting others as your noble spirit and admirability but your Epic Appearance going along with it as the harsh scars of whatever heroic life you've led. There are tons of ways to combine the two; just decide how Charisma and Appearance happen to appear for your character, and the rest will follow.

Keep in mind, too, that a lot of how social stats affect someone depends upon their roleplaying decisions, so your stats will not always give you a perfect predictor of what others around you will do. Sure, you might be an uggo-monster with an irresistible heart of gold for most people, but it's still possible that a given character has a particular personal issue with your appearance that makes him too grossed out to give your sparkling personality a chance, or that another character notices your hideousness less thanks to having been exposed to worse in her time. There's always a little room for interpretation from the side of the person being affected as well, so don't get hung up on the idea that everyone always has to respond the same way.

If you're a Storyteller and you're wondering how an NPC ought to respond to a PC's Charisma/Appearance happy/ugliness combo, we recommend edging them toward whichever stat is higher; if someone's charismatic but they're more hideous, NPCs are apt to be more freaked out than drawn in, whereas if someone's ugly but they're more charismatic, they're more likely to be forgiving of her physical eccentricities. If both stats are equal, check to see if the NPC has anything in their background or personality that would sway him or her one way or the other, and if not, play it by ear and try to give both stats equal importance based on what the PC is doing. If it's just a conversation, Charisma might make everything fine and dandy, but if the rotting slime monster comes in for a hug, all bets may be off.

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.

Star Power

Question: What does Presence do? It's incredibly nebulous and confusing; I only tell people to roll Presence when it is obviously not Empathy, Politics, or Command. AKA, when I can't think of anything else that fits better.

Presence can be confusing, but it's also an important core stat. We include it in the group of "innate" abilities - that is, things that are not so much skills as innate qualities of the Scion, a group that also includes Empathy, Fortitude and Integrity. Scion's system counts these as abilities for purposes of dice pools, but they're not really things you learn as much as things you are, so they also share a little conceptual ground with the Attributes.

Presence is exactly what it sounds like; it's the quality of being present, noticeable, important or arresting. It's Presence that makes people notice you and hear what you have to say, or that gives you the ability to command a stage or be the center of attention. It's nebulous in that some of these things are also affected strongly by your Attributes, particularly Charisma, but it works hand in hand with them the same way Perception works with Awareness or Dexterity works with Athletics. Having a lot of Charisma doesn't necessarily give you a lot of Presence; if you have maximum Charisma but no Presence, you'll be a great time to talk to or super interesting or friendly in person, but you won't necessarily be noticed in a crowd and people won't always think to come talk to you without prodding. If you have a ton of Appearance but no Presence, people won't quite realize how lovely you are until they've spent some time around you or you've directly used a power on them; you're no less beautiful, but that je ne sais quoi that makes it pop isn't there. That's illustrated by your Epic Attributes not coming into play if you lack Presence, just like it would be with any other ability.

We have players roll Presence most often when we're measuring how much of a splash the simple fact of them being there makes on the world around them. When the band enters somewhere with people, they roll Appearance + Presence to see which of them gets noticed first or by the most people; if they try to work a crowd in a general way, they roll Charisma + Presence to see how much people notice and are interested in them. Manipulation + Presence would apply to situations where they're trying to give off a particular impression without specifically targeting or talking to anyone (acting a role, for example). We also use Presence when the person's aura or presentness is a major issue, such as when we're testing whether or not they can shout loud enough to be heard or perform a distraction big enough to get someone's attention.

Actually, "when Command, Empathy or Politics isn't appropriate" isn't a bad yardstick for deciding when to use Presence. Those three are more specialized forms of social interaction, and Presence usually makes a great ability not only for moments when it's the best choice on its own but also when the other three don't fit.

Rolling in the Deep

Question: Are you required to spend Legend to resist social powers if you are in Virtue Extremity or Riastrad?

Well... I'm slightly confused about the spending Legend portion of your question, because normal resistance rolls don't involve spending anything; they use a power, you roll, you see who got higher. But maybe you're referring to the resistance knacks (Crazy Like a Fox, Disorienting Countenance, Parapet of the Mind), which do have a Legend cost associated?

Resistance rolls work exactly the same as they normally would when you're in Virtue Extremity; if someone tries to use their magical mojo on you, you automatically roll Willpower + Integrity + Legend and need to pay for your knacks if you want to try to apply them to the situation. The Virtue Extremity itself doesn't afford you any special extra resistances or anything, so it's totally possible for people to force you around in various ways while you're under its effects. That doesn't mean that they can shut off or circumvent the Extremity, however (only Mirror of Lunacy can do that), only that they can use the knacks while you're freaking out. That means that you will still be in Virtue Extremity if someone Overt Orders you to do something; you'll likely immediately go back to whatever you were doing as soon as its effects end or spaz out in an even more spectacular manner as soon as you can, but the power did work as normal.

Much to the deeply detrimental amusement of us Storytellers, that means that well-meaning bandmates can often trigger extra Virtue Extremities on top of you by trying to prevent you from acting on your current one. To use a real-world example, if Eztli and Sowiljr encounter a giant monster that he doesn't want to fight because they're in a hurry to go elsewhere, he might order her to leave it alone, forcing both of them to roll their Courage. Sowiljr fails the roll and is good to go - he has more important things to do than punch sea serpents all day! - but Eztli succeeds and hits the Berserker Fury Extremity, hurling herself at the monster in spite of his protests. If Sowiljr then tries to get in her way to stop her and gets a bone-shattering shot to the face, the fact that Eztli is already in one Virtue Extremity won't prevent her other Virtues from rioting over this misbehavior, so now she also has to roll her Conviction and Duty. If she succeeds on those rolls, too, she'll go into Morbid Self-Sacrifice Extremity as soon as her Berserker Fury is over, and then Fanatic Zeal immediately thereafter. We usually call this being stuck in "rolling Extremity", where the PC immediately rolls over from one kind of insanity into another as they process all the horrible shit they've dealt with lately. (The exception to this is the Extremity you're already in; if you went into Expression Extremity this scene because a painting was destroyed, and then someone also burns a bunch of priceless drawings in your immediate vicinity, you won't have to roll your Expression again. You're already busy freaking out about that.)

Rolling Extremity, as you might imagine, sucks a lot and is very dangerous to the continued survival and sanity of both the PC having the problem and everyone around them. It doesn't happen very often, and although a character can do it to himself, it's more often the result of his bandmates trying to pull off some damage control that misfires. That doesn't mean you can't try to perform damage control when you have an Extremitying friend on your hands, of course - just that, like all other times in the games, you should be aware of your bandmates' Virtues and the fact that you might cause a meltdown if you blatantly oppose them too much. And give them Willpower if you can.

By the way, since we're talking about social powers and Virtue Extremity, it's also worthwhile to point out that we make sure that no social knack gets to just shut down an Extremity and render it useless. For example, if in the above scenario Sowiljr responds to getting his face broken by using Compelling Presence to stop Eztli in her tracks, that'll work just fine, but he can't just sit around for the rest of the scene and expect her to be normal again when she snaps out of it. That's a pretty obvious bending of the knack's intent, and since Eztli is effectively in a sort of timestop, where she can't do or see or think anything but Sowiljr, she'll come out of the Compelling Presence with exactly as much Virtue Extremity left to get through as she had when she went in. Thanks to the memory-erasing effects of the knacks, she may not even remember why she's so upset, but she still will be. Virtue Extremities are a big deal and a serious moment of crisis for a character, and anyone who doesn't have direct control over insanity (i.e., people with Moon high enough) is helpless to stop it.

Riastrad has specific clauses involved in its writeup, so it's a special case that doesn't always follow the rules of other Virtue Extremities. Because it drops your positive Appearance to zero, your Bedazzling Image and Disorienting Countenance may be totally useless to you now, but on the other hand if you have negative Appearance you'll gain a dot, so you may be better than ever before. Where normal Virtue Extremities can't be talked down by unpowered use of plain old stats, Riastrad has a clause that allows others to make an extended Charisma + Presence roll to try to bring you out of it. Riastrad tends to hemorrhage Legend like nobody's business, but if you have some left over, there's no reason you can't spend it on resistance knacks if you want to. (Unless you put Army of One on your Riastrad, in which case knack usage is off-limits to you as it is to everyone with that boon active.)

Basically, there's no difference in the mechanics of resisting powers than there always is; the only difference is that you're batshit crazy at the moment, so you might respond to those powers differently or react after they've been triggered more strongly than at other times. That's up to individual players' roleplaying and the Storyteller's call, though, so, as with any time Scions have lost their minds, anything could happen.

Forced Hand

Question: Someone just forced you to do something with a social power! Do you roll your Virtues to resist taking that action? Do you roll your Virtues to determine how much willpower you have to spend to take that action?

The second!

If someone forces you to take an action, you're taking that action. It sucks, but it's true. If you could have avoided doing it, you already would have with your resistance roll. Now that you're doing it, you have to deal with the consequences, and that includes the effects of that action on your Virtue.

When you're forced into an action by a social power, you'll roll your Virtues just as if you had taken that action on purpose. That means that you have to roll your Valor if someone Overt Orders you into stabbing a small child, and you have to roll your Loyalty if someone uses Filibuster to prevent you from going to rescue your friends, and so on and so forth. Your Virtue is just as outraged by what you're doing as it would be at any other time; it doesn't care if someone else made you contravene your Order, just that you are contravening it and that shit isn't okay. (Incidentally, this is true any time you go against one of your Virtues, no matter what forces you to do it - not just social powers but also being physically tied down, making a decision for the greater good that still feels super wrong to one of your Virtues, being blackmailed or anything else.)

After that, you deal with the Virtue as normal; you roll it, check to see if you Extremitied, and if you didn't spend the appropriate amount of Willpower to deal with your rampagingly angry personal ethics.

There are a few powers that explicitly state that you can attempt to resist acting against your Virtues under their influence, like Instant Hypnosis, but if a power doesn't say you get a shot at resisting on the basis of your Virtues, you don't. Most heroic people who are forced into nastiness by their enemies (or backstabbing friends) have to just deal with the matter and suffer the resulting emotional meltdown, and your Scion is no different.

Conversation is a Lost Art

Question: What happens when you make a mundane social roll and beat the enemy's resistance roll? How is that different from Benefit of the Doubt and God's Honest?

It's different because it doesn't actually do anything. And it's generally not something a player ever gets to declare, so it's usually not a viable alternative to actually doing things.

Obviously, you can't just wander around saying, "I roll Charisma + Presence against that guy. Now he likes me," because if that were the case, powers like Charmer wouldn't exist and the whole system of social knacks would make no sense (not to mention encouraging poor roleplaying). That's not to say that static social powers don't do anything, but rather that they're much more limited in their effects and controlled by the Storyteller, who determines how they influence NPCs based on what's happening in the story.

Basically, you'll roll your mundane socials when the Storyteller tells you it's appropriate; for example, maybe you give a speech at the mayor's fundraising ball and the Storyteller has you roll Charisma + Presence to see how well the room received it, or maybe you passionately explain your suspicions about who a murderer is to a police inspector and the Storyteller has you roll Manipulation + Presence to see how convincing she finds you. In both cases, the roll is there to determine whether or not your normal social acumen is getting the job done, in the first case whether you're a good public speaker with an arresting presence and the second whether you're any good at trying to make others see your point of view. You'll give your speech, or tell the Storyteller what you're doing, and that's when they'll say, "Cool, roll X," and you'll comply. This is normal, everyday stuff, the things that we all do in our regular lives without noticing it. It only comes up with you're doing something that tries to impact others and the Storyteller deems it's appropriate.

However, that doesn't mean that every time you talk to someone, you'll trigger a social roll. Sometimes one isn't necessary because you're not doing or saying anything that changes the other person's outlook; if the Storyteller doesn't think you said anything that would be meaningful to the NPC in question, or you're generally talking about nothing or without a specific goal, there's no reason to make the roll. If Leona goes to a dinner party and has a polite conversation with her tablemates about current hat fashions, she probably isn't going to actually roll any social stats, because she's not doing or saying anything particularly relevant. If she tries to talk about hat fashions with a milliner she's sitting next to as part of a campaign to get him to like her, then she might get to roll some Charisma + Politics or Empathy or whatever else is appropriate, so the Storyteller can gauge how successful she is at the general art of chattery. If she tries to convince him that he simply must drop everything else he's doing and make her new hat designs, that'll be a Manipulation + Empathy roll to see if he thinks that would be a good idea. If she just talks about how she likes the current trend of fruit on hats, however, no one is going to care enough for rolls to happen.

You may notice that I'm not mentioning anything about the NPC's resistance roll, and that's because, for non-power situations, they don't really have one so the question is moot. Or rather, the Storyteller determines an appropriate resistance based on what's happening - what the subject at hand is, how strongly this person feels about it, whether or not the Scion is pushing them in a direction they're strongly opposed to, how spiritually fortitudinous they normally are and so on. It's more like rolling against a static difficulty, the way you would for most other challenges, than rolling against a Willpower + Integrity + Legend roll. Why? Because you're not using any powers, so they're not resisting any powers, and because as noted at the beginning of this post that would make the whole system not make sense.

You may also notice that in the above example, Leona is not at any point saying, "Okay, I roll my Charisma + Presence to try to get him to like me." Instead, she'll tell the Storyteller what she's doing and what she hopes to achieve, and he'll take it from there. If she's doing fine on her own through roleplaying, no rolls may be needed at all. If the Storyteller isn't quite sure of the NPC's reaction one way or the other, he might ask her to roll to illustrate how well she's doing, particularly if she's light on the roleplay or the scene needs speeding up.

But she'll never walk in and say, "I want to roll my Manipulation + Empathy against him to get him to do this thing." Manipulation + Empathy is not a power she has; it's just a roll that illustrates an attempt to do something, just like she might roll Dexterity + Athletics when completing an obstacle course or Wits + Politics when trying to find her way around an unfamiliar city. Just like it's the ST's job to say, "Okay, roll Strength + Athletics to not get swept away in this flood," it's also his job to say, "Okay, roll Manipulation + Politics to navigate this conversation with the ambassador without putting your foot in your mouth."

Now, if Leona does all this normal conversating and hanging out and whatever rolls the Storyteller calls for just aren't great and the things she wants to happen aren't happening for whatever reason - the guy secretly loathes her because she ran over his dog, he wouldn't mind doing what she wants but isn't willing to fork over the money it would cost, or he just really hates fruit-hats - that's when she has to use a power if she wants to push the issue. That's the moment to use Charmer to force him to like her and want to please her, Rumor Mill to have the whole town buzzing about how fruit is totally in now, or Instant Hypnosis to plant the idea of going home and making an awesome hat covered in grapes. That's the whole point of social powers - they make things happen when normal, mundane conversation or requests don't.

Of course, there are exceptions, as there are to every rule. If you're Legend 8 and have 7 Epic Charisma and are talking to a mortal - or even someone of Legend 2 or 3 - you probably don't have to roll anything against them, and they just do whatever it was you wanted. This is mostly to speed the game up - technically you would roll, but if their difficulty is only going to be 10 and you're rolling in with 22 autos, there's no reason to bog the game down with a bunch of rolls that you're almost guaranteed to automatically succeed at. At other times, there might be behind-the-scenes powers in play that you don't know about that do necessitate resistance rolls on the part of your conversation partner, or that make your rolls fail no matter what you do; you won't know when this is happening, so you have to trust that your Storyteller is doing that because some other magical thing already happened, not just because he's stonewalling you. (One hopes you always trust that your Storyteller is being responsible about rolls, no matter whether they're social, physical or mental.)

It goes without saying that the "difficulty" of convincing someone with just normal conversation goes up as creatures go up in Legend; it's always harder to convince a rakshasa to do something for you than to convince a human, and harder still to convince a young god than it was to convince the rakshasa. This is normal; after all, you also benefit from that, as a Scion who doesn't have to automatically hop to whenever anyone of Epic Manipulation 3 or higher talks even though you might be five Legend higher than they are. Again, there are no powers in play so there are also no resistance rolls in play, and everything depends on the Storyteller's determined difficulties for the scene and the characters in it.

I talked about all of that because I think it was the main point of your question, but I also want to point out that your examples, Benefit of the Doubt and God's Honest, actually don't quite work the same way most social knacks do. Normally, lying to someone is a Manipulation + Empathy roll against their Perception + Empathy to see through it; that'll be what you're doing whenever you lie to someone without using a power to do so. The main benefit of the lying knacks is that they allow you to roll against your target's W+I+L resistance roll instead of their Perception + Empathy, so it's your go-to power if you need to fib to someone who would normally be way too perceptive to fall for your hijinks but is maybe a little less good at resisting magical trickery. If you're lying to some normal schmuck and you have great Manipulation, you may want to stick with your normal roll; if you're lying to someone with buckets of Perception or you're terrible at Manipulation and need a power that lets you use Charisma instead, that's when you want to go for the knacks.

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.

Love, Lies and Looks

Question: How do you stop players from getting everything they want when they can throw around 100-200 successes on their social rolls?

Easy. Their enemies can also throw around 100-200 successes on their resistance rolls.

Once Scions get to their crazy godly levels of madness, they can pull off some insane feats of social mojo, turning the tides of the world's politics and the emotions of the divine just as their more physically- or mentally-minded compatriots can heft mountains, predict the end of the world or circle the universe in an hour. With positive Fatebonds and average rolls, Scions who aren't even trying can get an average of 56-66 on their social powers' rolls as gods; if they want to also Legendary Deed, channel Virtues, use Animal Aspect, apply relic bonuses or do one of a zillion other things Scions can opt for to buff themselves, they can easily head into the 100+ stratosphere. This makes them fucking crazy, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. When Sowiljr flips a jaunty grin and the finger guns, entire nations get up and dance.

When it comes to creatures of lesser power and hapless mortals, that's okay. If a god rolls 100 successes on a social roll, everybody who isn't close to as powerful as he is should probably do whatever he wants. That's what his powers do and that's certainly what happens when socially badass gods turn up around less-important figures in mythology.

But people not being able to resist a social character doesn't always mean that character gets exactly what she wants, so don't be afraid as a Storyteller to make sure you roleplay an NPC's reaction to various social stats and powers. Not every character's response to social powers is the same and they're certainly not all positive; something like Engender Love might get you lovey-dovey and complete devotion, but it also might get you psychotic obsession and violent consequences, depending on the personality of the creature who now blindly loves you. Lies that an NPC totally believes may still lead to them taking actions you might not have anticipated, and characters who are bowled over by your beauty (or terrorized by your hideousness) might react with uncontrollable lust or dangerous violence depending on what's going on.

Which is not to say that your PCs' awesome social badassery shouldn't often result in sweet prizes and effortless cooperation; those are their powers, and they should work a decent amount of the time or you're not being fair to them. But even though they can provoke strong emotional responses, they can't always control exactly how those manifest unless they micromanage their targets, which makes a major difference when it comes to how a scene plays out.

As for gods who are of similar power level, the good news for them is that those who are good at resisting have just as great a chance of saying no as the social Scions have of making them say yes. Resistance knacks - Crazy Like a Fox, Disorienting Countenance and Parapet of the Mind - allow divine figures to resist with their Epic Attributes just as much as their enemies are trying to finagle with them, putting everyone on an equal playing field. A Scion may be able to roll in with 100+ successes on their Overt Order, but if their target can pay Legend and potentially have just as many successes on their resistance roll, that's far from an easy instant win.

Now, how your game runs resistances makes a very big difference here. If you're playing with a system of static resistances, the defender is always going to end up at a disadvantage thanks to their inability to add a lot of the boosters that the social characters can use; most static mental resistance systems wouldn't allow you to buff yourself with Animal Feature or Bona Fortuna or Become the Herald or all that other stuff that affects rolls instead of derived values. This is one of the reasons we vastly prefer a system where resistances are actually rolled, because it gives defenders the ability to make their defenses juiced up and epic as much as attackers, and because where a static DV for physical attacks makes sense because you take varying levels of damage, a static resist is not as helpful for social powers where there are no varying levels of "I do the thing". If, by some insane chance, you are playing at the god level and still using the terrifyingly bad resistance system in the Scion books - Willpower + Integrity + Legend with no other bonuses or Epic possibilities, and the ability to just spend a Willpower to ignore social powers - nothing is going to work right and we can't help you. It is an awful system and we can't quite imagine making it all the way through Demigod with it.

And, of course, remember that these rules are all in effect for NPCs, too. If your PCs can steamroll enemies with their social knacks, odds are they can be in turn steamrolled, so make sure your resistance system and powers aren't too punishing in either direction (Overt Ordering Titans into volcanoes is totally fun, but the same thing happening in reverse is total balls). It's fine for PCs and NPCs who don't invest in any resistance ability to be pushovers - they spent their XP on being good at things other than resisting, so they're going to have to take their lumps - but if people who are really awesome at resistance are still getting destroyed on a more than regular basis, you may want to examine your system balance.

Now, all that above pretty much applies to actually using social powers, which means knacks or boons that roll your social stats and have specific effects. If you're asking about the passive effects of just having a lot of socials, that one's less mechanics-bound but also easier; don't make it complicated but do make it reasonable. The same guidelines are in place, just sans rolls; if your Scion has badass socials, things that are not close to his power level will fall all over themselves to love/believe/desire/fear him, while things closer to his power level will require actual work to take down.

For the most part, our rule of thumb for creatures near the same level is that if it's something that strongly influences or forces another being to do something they wouldn't have done of their own volition or would be opposed to, you can't do it without actually using a power, meaning that your badass Charisma will make that fellow young god really like you and want to make you happy, but it won't make him stab his brother for you unless you push the issue. He'll be unhappy that you asked, he'll feel sad and conflicted because he can't do both things he wants to do (safeguard his brother and make you happy), but you're not going to be able to order him around like you could a much less powerful creature. He's a god, too, and a Legendary power in his own right; social characters in mythology are very powerful, but even they have to actually put effort into making people do things. There're no opposing rolls and no specific mechanics because these are all passive effects, so your job as a Storyteller is not to make social rolls insanely overpowered instant-win buttons. It's fine for social characters to be able to get Thor to automatically like them and want to feast with them and take them with him into glorious battle; it's not fine for them to be able to get Thor to divorce his wife or turn on Odin or give them Mjolnir unless they can actually use appropriate powers and overcome his resists.

It's a fine balancing act - Storytelling for gods is hard, yo, and we feel you on the difficulty of making sure things are both power-level balanced and fun and epic. It takes practice to be able to find the sweet spot that works for your games, and you'll need to make some decisions about what's too overpowered for automatic passive social powers and what restrictions will make sure your game stays fun for all your players. Just don't panic, be as fair as you can be, and hopefully over time and with input from your players you'll be able to make it to the balancing point.

Social Powers

Do you know when social powers are used against you?  What about when they fail against you?  Should there be a required roll? 

Hey, you're not gonna like my answer...  no, you cant notice when people  use social powers.  Knacks are an extension of natural power.  They arent some flashy power that you notice(well some are, will explain those later), but rather the obvious natural powers of someone who possesses those traits.  Just because a legend expenditure and a roll is required doesnt mean that there is any reason for you to "notice."
I know that goes a little contrary to our natural gaming instincts, but someone with overt order is commanding, like super crazy commanding.  If they're able to beat your resist you probably should be doing what they say anyway.  The legend expenditure and use of the power is that extra umph that makes their will be done.

You wouldnt notice that any more then you would notice that someone using uplifting might wasnt just super strong.  Just like you wouldnt notice someone with math genius was "using" it.

You could definitely notice that you acted differently around someone with high socials.  Or that in their presence you seemed more inclined to do what they asked of you, but that shouldnt seem odd in any way, thats what high socials do.  Thats why we follow celebrities and vote for certain politicians or follow certain bosses at work more then others.

A few caveats:
After a while, as long as you have empathy and intelligence, you're gonna figure things out.  You arent gonna figure out that when you're around the charisma guy(although you love being around him) you tend to do what he asks you.   And when you're around the manipulation guy....you tend to do what he says, even if you wouldnt normally do it.  And around the appearance guy....you sometimes find yourself drooling and forgetting where you are.  Then once you know that...you can make decisions about whether you want to hang out with those people regularly  and you know that if you do....things will happen.

And of course there are some knacks that are super flashy and noticeable.  Those should be fairly well stated in the description.  Self healing, Agg part of divine wrath, speed reader, divine splendor.

And as a final note, ultimate perception sees all things.

Double final note.  Its my birthday!!!

Social Climbing

Question: You had Eshu vs Loki the other day, how about Isis vs Tezcat? How would you handle conflicts between those kind of social powerhouses who always get what they want? How could PCs handle them when they reach godhood? I know Geoff's already told Isis where to get off, but surely she hasn't just left it at that?

Social powers have so many options and layers that this question is basically unanswerable (which is also why it's sat in the queue for so long - sorry, asker!). If you think about all the different things social characters can do to perpetrate shenanigans, encourage behavior and influence one another even as Heroes and Demigods, you already have an idea of how insane the scale must become when they get to the level of actual deities.

As we've talked about before, it's mostly fruitless to talk about "which god would win", because that's not only something that is nearly impossible to forecast thanks to all the variables and kinds of powers in play, it's also unlikely to come up because there are entire pantheons and relatives associated with them that know better than to let things get to that level. Actual outright conflict between gods is probably pretty rare, because it makes life miserable for everyone, not just the main members of the feud. As we said before, when Eshu and Loki get into a tiff, the world loses.

But social conflicts don't necessarily have to erupt into armed beatings - in fact, most of the time they probably don't, except in the rare cases of socially manipulative people who are not smart enough to realize what a bad idea that is. Instead, they look a lot more like terrible, terrible cold wars, where both sides play a game of vicious wizard's chess with all the people they know and can get their hands on as pieces. Social characters with Charisma will play Who's Your Daddy with everyone they know, always winning friends and allies away from others with sheer force of their awesomeness; whomever's actually in the room is probably winning, because Charisma requires that kind of up close and personal attention most of the time, but your friends can prevail on their friends and soon it's a chain of a bunch of people doing crazy things out of love for you just to stick it to the other guy. Characters with Manipulation, on the other hand, can weave their influence even more subtly, spreading evil rumors about you, convincing others that you want things you don't want, turning your friends and even relatives against you and laying curses and traps just waiting to trip you up.

One of the things about being Isis or Tezcatlipoca is that, yeah, you always get what you want - inside your own little pool, that is. Unless you're going up against someone with a truly heinous resistance score, your home pantheon-mates are probably mostly susceptible to your charms - you're the resident manipulator or major presence, after all. But when you branch out into the larger world of Scion and come up against other puppetmasters and leaders, it becomes an increasingly complex and insane web of possibilities, and there's no way to predict what would happen. Every new person, situation, alliance or enmity introduces new variables that could completely change what happens, and a feud between the same two gods could go off infinite different ways, like a multitude of parallel universes.

So the answer is really whatever your Storyteller can come up with. If Isis and Tezcatlipoca want to get into it, they're going to be in an insane, subtle, ongoing prank and influence war that might stretch anywhere from corrupting one anothers' cults to misdirecting one anothers' Scions to interfering in one anothers' family lives and everything else they think they can get away with. PCs trying to deal with it are going to find themselves embroiled, possibly even before they know it, and more often than not targeted. Hopefully they can play the game right back (or if not, survive its consequences).

As for Isis in our games... well, she and Geoff are not getting along. There's been kidnapping, violence, influencing other gods to attack one another, pantheon schisms and probably a whole lot more behind the scenes that the PCs aren't even aware she's up to. Recently, Jioni tried to pray at a temple to Isis to regain some Legend and everyone got attacked by members of the Centzonmimixcoa that Isis shanghai'd into striking against them, which led to a lot of heartbreak and screaming Aztec fury. That problem's probably not going to get fixed any time soon, but feuds between gods that last forever are one of the staples of mythology, so it only stands to reason that Scions pick some up as they go.

Anne Explains It All

This week, I'm doing a solo blog while John is out of town! If you only tune in to watch his gruff yet endearing rants against life the universe and everything, don't worry. He'll be back next week.

In the meantime, here are some questions and some answers!

Question: I'm curious: how do you handle "working the crowd" rules in your games? In general, the rules for it are lacking in comparison to the social combat rules from Exalted. I like the idea of Exalted's intimacies and D20's attitudes, but I don't have a clue about how to use them in Scion. Any ideas?

Question: In your Scion games, do you tell your players to do out-of-game research projects or write stories for the game? Like having a player who plays an Aztec have to read up on a lot of their myths, or when the group has some downtime to deal with stuff, do you have them write extensive stories? If so, do you reward the ones that do or punish the ones that don't?

Question: If a player chooses to take a disadvantage - say, blindness - while creating their character and keeps it as part of his or her Legend, what, if anything, would you give them in return for doing this?

Since I'm now posting this after the fact, you guys now definitely know I wasn't attacked by murderous ghosts living in my house. Unless I'm writing to you from beyond the grave.

Cacophonic Conversation

Question: Multitasking can be used for social actions? So I can actually open my mouth and 11 things can come out simultaneously with no alternation to my vocal cords?

No, smartass. Multi-Tasking allows you to take multiple mental actions (including the use of social powers) at once, but talking is not an action in Scion. It has no tick value and takes exactly as much time as your Storyteller decides it does. Using a boon or a knack is an action; making an attack is an action; making a roll to do something, such as unlocking a door, is an action. Talking is not.

Multi-Tasking pretty clearly allows you to multi-task the powers you already have; it does not give you magical new polyphonic powers. You could take multiple actions while you're talking - that is, you could be saying something and using God's Honest to make your listeners believe it and using Instant Seminar to teach them something with it and Perfect Actor to make them feel your emotions while you do it, all at the same time. If you stunted, you could also perhaps say two things as part of a single action - James might point at one enemy and say, "Stop that snickering, and you, sit down!" to another and use both Freeze Out on the first guy and Overt Order on the second guy at the same time. But you could not speak seven different sentences to seven different people at the same time with your normal, unaugmented mouth, because this power is about multi-tasking, not extra voices.

If you want to talk to a bunch of different people at the same time about different things, the easiest way to accomplish that is to just use Multi-Tasking with Telepathy, beaming seven different thoughts into seven different peoples' heads simultaneously. If you want to get freaky, you could also give yourself extra mouths, tongues, vocal cords or whatever other equipment was necessary with Unusual Alteration, though doing so is going to look mighty weird and you may still have problems with talking over yourself unless you use other sound-cheating powers like Subvocalization or Divine Threnody. Some of our players have resorted to sign language to have two simultaneous conversations at once (bonus: if you both have Cipher, it's impossible for anyone who doesn't to follow what you're saying). If your Storyteller is amenable to a Music or Sound purview, I know of a few out there that have boons that let you polyphonically make several noises or hold several conversations at once.

But just Multi-Tasking will not let you do that, because it is only the ability to use powers you already have all at once, not adding a power you don't normally have.

This Party is So Dead

Question: If you have Death Senses active, are you able to use social knacks against ghosts since you’re now able to interact with them socially? Or is it only possible to use Death boons on them, such as Corpse Oracle?

Ooh, a tricky question. Most of the time, interaction with the dead needs to be handled by the Death purview; that's what it's all about, after all. But at the same time, those with Death Senses can talk to and interact with ghosts just as if they were living people, and it doesn't make too much sense to claim that you can't be charming or manipulative when talking to a ghost just because she's dead. After all, she can still listen to your persuasive patter, right?

In most cases, we'd say that yes, you can use your social knacks on ghosts. They're beings you can interact with socially, so there's little reason you shouldn't be able to try to Charmer them into giving you your way. But it's important to distinguish between the powers you can achieve with social knacks and the ones possible with the Death purview; Death should never come up short when compared to normal social stats. Boons like Corpse Oracle and Ghost Control should be more powerful than knacks like Blurt It Out or Overt Order; they have to do with your ironclad control over the spirits of the departed as a god of death, so make sure their effects are distinct. A Scion with Blurt It Out might be able to get a ghost to spit out a single answer, but he can't question it thoroughly, without resistance and in a way that makes it think answering is its own idea the way a Scion with Corpse Oracle can. A Scion with Overt Order can give a ghost a single command, but a Scion with Ghost Control can literally puppetmaster the spirit effortlessly and as often as she wishes. A Scion with Come Hither can try to call a ghost to come see him, but he can't instantly force it to come in spite of being trapped in an Underworld the way a Scion with Summon Ghost can. The powers of death-aligned gods and Scions over the bodies and spirits of the departed are near-absolute; the social powers of any Scion can still have an effect, but it will never match up to what a true god of death can do.

At Storyteller discretion, we'd suggest also sometimes altering the roll for social knacks when using them on ghosts. We often substitute Occult for Presence, Empathy or Command in those rolls to illustrate that the Scion is working with magical, otherworldly forces instead of just using his silver tongue as normal. And, of course, some knacks should probably be considered not to work much on ghosts; Seductive Mien probably just isn't as useful when used on something that doesn't have a body and can only physically manifest for brief moments now and then.

Social Graces

Question: As a general rule, do people know when you are using social knacks on them?

A general rule is hard in this case because there are so many different kinds of social knacks, but it usually depends on their intelligence and experience with social knacks, combined with whether the knack in question is a showy or obvious one.

For example, many social knacks are completely under the radar - they have effects, but in most cases the person they're being used on won't notice. Blessing of Importance probably goes totally unnoticed most of the time, as it really just seems like the person who used it said something nice that made you feel better about life; just like there are some people you love hanging out with in real life because they always make everything seem good, so Scions with these kinds of knacks always make people around them feel good or energized or motivated. Some of those affected who have high Intelligence or Occult and notice the pattern of the Scion's words causing happy effects may realize that it's a power, but it's just as likely that most people will think they just really like (or respect, or fear) the Scion.

In fact, more social knacks are "invisible" in this way than are noticeable, and that's the way it should be; knacks are, after all, just ways of showing how amazing you are at the Attribute they're attached to, so Charisma knacks tend to just make you seem that much more appealing, Appearance knacks just make you that much more physically alluring or terrible, and Manipulation knacks just make you that much more convincing. They're extensions and specific ways your innate social powers shine, so for the most part those you use on them will just feel like you're really convincing or likeable, rather than pegging you as using magical powers on them. Highly intelligent people, or those whose emotions are being turned completely upside down (i.e., they normally hate you but still have to feel like you're pretty nice when you use BFF on them) may suspect you're up to something, but in most cases there's no reason for that.

It's actually easier to list the exceptions to the rule; there are some social knacks that are very noticeable, though they're in the minority. Overt Order, Hard Sell and Sub Rosa in Manipulation are very blatant; they force your targets to do what you say, but don't cause them to think they wanted to do so, so they'll almost always be aware that something's forcing their hand. Appearance has the most obviously noticeable knacks, including Blinding Visage, Come Hither, Divine Splendor, Inescapable Vision and Serpent's Gaze, all of which happen right in a target's face and are hard to miss (Compelling Presence might also belong on this list, but it really depends on whether or not the victim notices the hole in their memory afterward and can figure out what might have caused it). When your corneas are being burned out, you probably realize that something active is happening to you.

But beyond these few examples, in most cases social knacks go unremarked and undetected. Folks who use Peak Performance are simply intimidatingly awesome, not using a power on you, because that's what Epic Charisma is about. Those using Not the Face are just so piteous that even the most hardened warrior pauses before striking them down, assailed by doubt and pity; those with Lasting Impression are just so striking to look at that others find themselves daydreaming (or nightmaring, as the case may be) about them long after they've moved on to do other things. For the most part, social knacks are just ways of expressing the social power of those characters; those affected aren't likely to notice anything but how impressive, convincing or terrifying those people really are.

In some cases, of course, people will notice, either because they've done that sort of thing themselves before, because they've got a wide occult understanding of how Epic Attributes work, or because they realize after the effect's worn off that something must have been amiss. But these are things that come up only sometimes, and Storytellers and players should rule on them on a case-by-case basis. For most players, my advice is to try not to assume you noticed anything was happening unless you have a concrete reason why that would be; it makes for better roleplaying when you treat social characters' powers as simply expressions of how socially awesome they are, just as you would look at someone lifting a battleship and think, "Wow, that person is insanely strong," rather than trying to figure out what combination of powers he might be using. There's nothing wrong with wanting to figure out crunch, but in the heat of the game, you don't want to let it get in the way of being able to roleplay your character in social situations.

And remember, the door swings both ways. Sure, it sucks when you're forced to kind of love that dude with all the Epic Charisma and you don't really know why... but he'll be just as confused about why he always listens to what you say with Epic Manipulation when he ought to know it'll just end badly for him. (And that example pretty much sums up Baldur's and Loki's relationship, I think, and the relationships of many other trickster gods the world over.)