Question: What role does the food of the gods (Ambrosia, Amrita, Peaches of Immortality, etc.) play in your game? Does it confer immortality or godhood upon mortals who manage to consume it?
While divine food has not yet been one of the biggest themes in our games, it has made appearances; both Aiona and Terminus have of course tasted ambrosia upon their arrival on Olympus, and Sowiljr, Vala, Folkwardr and Sverrir have to return to Asgard at least once per year to have one of Idun's apples lest they start feeling the physical effects of going without for too long. (Several of our Norse PCs strongly suspect that these aren't Idun's apples at all but some kind of brainwashing replacement from Odin, but they can't prove it and they're no match for his powers of persuasion.)
Such highly magical items are always a questionable point in Scion; do mortals really become immortals if they taste ambrosia? Will Norse gods really age and die if they don't get a steady diet of Idun's fruit? Generally, if there are myths to support it, I'd say yes, because part of the charm of Scion is its determination to make all myths true. Ambrosia probably would make a mortal into an immortal if some was somehow stolen from Olypmus and given to one, though what form that might take could vary from game to game - the simplest and least likely to cause headaches would be to rule that it makes them into a Legendary Mortal (Legend 1, permanently, with no option to increase) and gives them the Eternal Youth knack (or an innate power that functions exactly the same).
Ambrosia's actually the only one I'd worry about for that, though. Amrita is actually said to be granted to dedicated followers by gods fairly frequently, and while it's heavenly and delicious, it doesn't automatically grant immortality. The Peaches of Immortality do, but Xiwangmu is so notoriously tight-fisted with them that you'd need some Sun Wukong-level shenanigans to have a chance of stealing one. I imagine that Idun's apples and Goibniu's cauldron of mead probably confer longevity but not true immortality, as even the gods are said to need to keep eating them lest they begin to age mortally. Soma and haoma are certainly sacred and mysterious mythic substances, but they have a long history of being eaten by mortals (who usually go on to hallucinate religiously), so they likely confer other benefits (level 1 Prophecy, perhaps, or else they're just drugs that make mortals think they're seeing visions). And there are plenty of legendary, divine foods, like the golden apples of the Hesperides, that don't seem to actually have a mechanical effect other than being very rare and cool (and probably getting you into trouble with someone).
Divine food can be a fun filip to add to any game, but in terms of looking for ways to make mortals immortal, it's really kind of not worth it. There are already easy ways for PCs to do that - Control Aging in the Health purview and Confer Knack in the Guardian purview are both quick and much more painless ways of making sure a mortal stays fresh-faced as long as you want them to. I'm all for using heavenly food as a fun element in games, but when you're looking for ways to make humans immortal, it's one of the more roundabout and unnecessarily difficult ways of doing so.
Huh. This is one of the few things y'all've said that I really, strongly disagree with.
ReplyDeleteSure, there's Control Aging and Confer Eternal Youth, but those just feel so... cheap. You're taking a mortal and making them an Immortal. Upgrading them to a creature of Legend! That should be pretty awesome and it feels like it deserves more than just a dice-roll and a point or five of Legend.
Ambrosia, the Apples of Idunn, the Peaches of Immortality and all that are so Mythic and Epic that they feel so much more appropriate as a way to grant unending youth to your mortal friend. Or your mortal enemy, before you drop them into a mine-shaft or something.
The difference comes down to handing someone a Peach of Immortality and saying "Here, I snuck into the Gardens of Heaven and stole this Peach for you, risking my life in a feat of derring-do and swashbuckling sneakery so that you can now live for centuries!" or "Here, I hit you with my magic fan so that you can now live for centuries!"
Oh, using magical fruits (or any kind of relic or big badass crazy thing, for that matter) is way cooler than using a boon. I'm just saying it's not way more practical - in fact, it's way less practical. If you want to really impress your friend with how hard you tried to make them immortal, then sure, go grab a peach, but if you just want them to not die, there's no reason not to take care of that the easy way.
DeleteHowever! That doesn't meant foods of the divine aren't awesome and shouldn't be used in play. It just means they probably need to be used for something other than just making mortals immortal. That's a great effect, but since lots of gods can already do that, find other reasons to involve the golden apples or the sweet draughts of ambrosia. Maybe they're the only thing that can cure a divine disease created with the Plague boon. Maybe someone is cursed so they can't get immortality the easy way and they need these fruits. Maybe you want to just prove you can do it, like Sun Wukong, or have one in reserve for any number of just-in-case scenarios. There's no reason not to come up with a dozen quests and fun reasons to go after apples. It's just that making mortals immortals isn't one of the best ones without mitigating circumstances, unless you decide to take other ways of doing that out of the system so that there isn't an easier way.
Im confused with what exactly you disagree with. Your statement seems to agree with basically what we said. Maybe you could be more specific?
DeleteI was disagreeing with: "in terms of looking for ways to make mortals immortal, it's really kind of not worth it."
DeleteCause it's totally worth it. It's silly and inefficient compared to using a Boon, but.. I might actually do what Anne said and remove the Boon-methods from the game. They just feel like cheating to me. They feel Not Legendary.
And there I disagree with you! :) It's totally legendary for a Scion to have such control over a human's body that she forbids it from aging as nature demands (or causes it to suddenly waste away into nothing, which happens in several myths). It's totally legendary for a Scion to decree that because you are under his badass divine protection now, you no longer age like other, less-blessed mortals. Just because they don't have to go on a quest to do it doesn't make it not legendary and mythic - after all, Scions are (and should be!) legendary and mythic all on their own.
DeleteI would suggest that fruit-related immortality quests are maybe a better thing to work with at Hero or low Demigod levels - that way, it's something they can't just do themselves yet, and with a little judicious help from higher-Legend beings or just a lucky setup in the game, they might be able to pull it off.
It's not that players don't want to be legendary - they do (they're playing Scion, after all). But if they can make a mortal ageproof as a five-tick action and then go do whatever legendary things they want to be spending their time on more, I don't see why they should be discouraged from doing so. It's not like they're going to use the time they got back from not going after Idun's apples sitting around in a bus station; they're going to use it to go do some other badass thing.
And like I said, if you can come up with some reason above that it needs to be [insert divine food] instead of a boon, that works great for an individual plot. There's no need to give up on either fruits or boons entirely.
Thats odd since it seems to fly in the face of the relic thread where you say you gave a pc a tree of immortality fruits.
DeleteIm not sure that I completely disagree with getting rid of them. But health doesnt have a whole lot in it already(and thematically shouldnt). Zeus does do it at one point without a fruit(and Im sure there are other examples).