Question: So I've been wondering after asking my ST why are there so few ways to recover Legend unless you are an Aztec. We were talking and I still don't completely get it. Moreover, if you accomplish a suitably hard task that your Legend is tied to, why wouldn't Legend be regained? My example was my character and his compulsive need to do dangerous stunts and fight incredibly powerful monsters.
Normally I try to answer questions in the order they come in, but this one just dropped into my box and I'm jumping out of line for it, because it's a common issue for a lot of players, especially when they're just starting to play Scion. In a lot of RPGs, resources come back slowly over time when you have spent them. Scion does not do this, which can be a surprising shift for someone used to playing other games (even other White Wolf games). The only time everything automatically comes back is at the end of a story, so when you're just starting out, it can feel confusingly like you never get any resources back at all.
The answer to your question is that doing difficult tasks and dangerous stunts does regain you Legend, all the time: it does it through stunting. When you do awesome things, the Storyteller awards you dice and Legend for stunting them; that's one of the core, awesome things about Scion and one of the reasons the game is so cool, because you can be regaining Legend literally almost every time you do something. Do those badass and impressive things! Live up to what your character wants to do! Stunt your heart out and you will see Legend as a result.
Now, this isn't free Legend just for showing up; you have to work for it. Just punching a monster repeatedly is not an exciting story; ho-hum, so you're good at punching, we get it. But if you describe your punches in an exciting way and make it a great story - I leap onto the monster's back, delivering a mighty blow to the base of its skull! I ball my fists together and smash them into the back of its knee, throwing its unwieldy bulk off-balance! I let out a piercing battle cry and box its motherfucking ears! - then that is a stunt, and that is worthy of some sweet extra dice and even sweeter Legend points. Being a Scion is about building legends, myths and stories about yourself; in every scene, write that story! Make it the kind of exciting story you'd want to read or hear someone tell! That's what stunting is, and it's the primary way all Scions get back their mojo.
Stunting is, of course, a two-way street; if you're stunting like the most badass mofo that ever lived and your Storyteller isn't paying attention, that can be very frustrating, as you give your all to be inventive and cool and he or she doesn't remember to reward you for it. If you feel like that's the case, don't be afraid to sit down with the ST (and the rest of the group, if you want) and ask what their standards are for stunting and what you can be doing to meet them. Every ST has a different idea of how cool something has to be to count as a stunt and what kinds of things get their notice, so finding out what your ST considers rewardable is the best first step to getting there. If you think they're being too stringent - we aren't all spontaneous beat-poets, after all - you or the other players can make suggestions or provide examples (though you don't want to make him or her feel like you're not respecting how they run the game, so don't be demanding). Sometimes all an ST needs is a reminder that the players need stunt dice and Legend and they remember to start doing it more regularly again; some STs get caught up in the story and forget to hand them out, so it doesn't hurt, if you feel like that's what's happening, to occasionally say, "Hey, could I have a die for doing X cool thing?" (Don't overdo it, though - if you start whining for dice every time you do anything, you're going to very quickly end up being That Player. Don't be That Player.)
If there are any STs out there struggling with this system, I'd also say that there's no rule that says you can't award a retroactive die or two for a stunt when you need to, though of course it's better to do it when the deed occurs. If you hear a player say, "Oh, man, I'd do X but I'm out of Legend," and they did something awesome earlier, it's perfectly acceptable to say, "You know what, I should have given you a stunt Legend for doing Y a second ago, go ahead and take that," so they can pull off the next cool thing they were planning. It can also be harder to remember to give out stunts for social and mental characters who don't get to describe things in terms of pulse-pounding high-octane beatdowns, so we often hand them a dollop of stunts at the end of the scene - "Great job with that tricky fairy negotiation, take three dice!" - so that they still get rewarded for being cool in non-physical ways and the scene isn't broken up by a lot of erasing and talking during their big moments.
Stunting is the lifeblood of Scion. If you can do it, do it bigger and do it cooler. Legend will follow you like candy raining from the sky.
Monday, April 30, 2012
The Slavic Soul
Question: What do you think it is about the Slavic Gods that people seem to never come to a consensus about their PSP? The 'official' version is Duality (which isn't about Duality), but you guys went with Dvoeverie and there's also Prav, Bhag and Pravda. Seems like the Slavs have a lot of stuff going on.
It's not really so much something about the Slavic gods as it is the lack of good information in English on Slavic religion that gets people so topsy-turvy on the whole thing. The Slavs have precious little in the way of written record, and most of their information comes from folktales, scholar reconstructions and archaeological finds; trying to pull a coherent cultural idea suitable for a PSP out of that is a difficult task.
Duality, unfortunately, is a mess of an idea, which is why we discounted it out of hand. Not only do I suspect that the gravitation toward it is in part due to Neil Gaiman's treatment of Czernobog and Bielebog in American Gods (which is awesome, but also full of expected fictionalization), but it's such a widespread concept that it feels crazy to try to tie it to any one culture. The Slavs certainly aren't the owners of duality - they're not even the strongest practitioners of it, not with the Yazata standing, like, right there (and many scholars are of the strong opinion that much of the Slavic duality that is present in myth is borrowed from rubbing elbows with Persia anyway). It's an idea that really doesn't capture the spirit of the Slavic people or myths, and that wasn't very well executed, in my opinion, as a PSP anyway (though I respect later fan attempts to fix it).
Prav (and Pravda), unfortunately, doesn't do much better for me. I'm in total agreement that it's a concept that makes much more sense as a PSP than does Duality, but the problem is that it's a concept that was invented very, very recently by Slavic neopagans. Prav, as the concept of the righteous law of Svarog that binds the world together, was invented by the Book of Veles, a widely-discredited forgery from the 1950s that contains a lot of material that never appears anywhere else in Slavic myth. While the word prav does, indeed, mean law or rightness in various Slavic languages, we don't have any evidence of it as any kind of religious or cosmic concept that ties into the culture's myths. I don't feel a lot more of a focus on law and order among the Slavic gods and myths than any other - again, there are other pantheons that more embody that idea, like the law-obsessed Celestial Bureaucracy or the order-and-stability-focused Anunna. (For what it's worth, however, the Prav in the Fan-Written Resources thread over at the forums is a better attempt at coherently working with this idea than the Prav and Pravda on the Scion wiki, and its focus on Virtues is something we also did a lot with for Dvoeverie.)
Bhag is more of a weird mixed bag of a purview, because it's actually much closer to Indian than it is to Slavic. Bhag is a proto-Indo-European word, etymologically identical to the Sanskrit bhaj, meaning to portion out or allot. It, along with svarga, which the half-treatment on the Slavs in the Scion book suggests as a name for the Overworld, is borrowed directly from the Indian language and culture, where Svarga is indeed an Overworld, owned by Indra and a destination for pious Hindu souls. The words eventually found their way to the Slavs through the Persians, and are loanwords that don't really connect to their own ancient concepts; referring to heaven as "svarga" is actually a fairly recent development, as it's the word chosen to represent the Christian Heaven. What this all boils down to for Bhag (which is a weird little purview having to do with good luck that looks like it belongs in Ganesha's bag of tricks more than anywhere else) is that it comes from a lot of outside syncretic sources and is sort of floating around, unconnected to the Slavs in more than peripheral ways. A PSP needs to be the core essence of a pantheon, not an idea that linguistically might have been associated with them sometimes in the areas where they were influenced by someone else.
But the issue remains, after you clear all of those away, that it's still really difficult to come up with what, exactly, the defining power and cultural facet of the Slavic gods really is. In the end, we chose dvoeverie because it seemed to collect most of the things that the other PSPs were trying to do, and because it was a uniquely Slavic concept that has always been bound up in their religious practice and life. The Slavs live at the crossroads of the world and have been invaded, conquered, befriended and traded with more than anyone else, and somehow they have endured with their unique cultural flavor no matter whether the Celts, Germans, Persians, Greeks, or later the hordes of Catholicism were in charge. Their ability (documented historically) to worship more than one set of gods without any qualm, despite the apparent conflicts and overlaps between the two that sent other cultures into fits at the idea, represents an impressive ability to remain true to their core values no matter what's going on. And the gods of these people, already notoriously harmoniously associated with the natural world and its rhythms, could not help but be as flexible.
So Dvoeverie it is, for us. Nothing else struck us as simultaneously quintessentially Slavic, religiously significant and historically verifiable.
It's not really so much something about the Slavic gods as it is the lack of good information in English on Slavic religion that gets people so topsy-turvy on the whole thing. The Slavs have precious little in the way of written record, and most of their information comes from folktales, scholar reconstructions and archaeological finds; trying to pull a coherent cultural idea suitable for a PSP out of that is a difficult task.
Duality, unfortunately, is a mess of an idea, which is why we discounted it out of hand. Not only do I suspect that the gravitation toward it is in part due to Neil Gaiman's treatment of Czernobog and Bielebog in American Gods (which is awesome, but also full of expected fictionalization), but it's such a widespread concept that it feels crazy to try to tie it to any one culture. The Slavs certainly aren't the owners of duality - they're not even the strongest practitioners of it, not with the Yazata standing, like, right there (and many scholars are of the strong opinion that much of the Slavic duality that is present in myth is borrowed from rubbing elbows with Persia anyway). It's an idea that really doesn't capture the spirit of the Slavic people or myths, and that wasn't very well executed, in my opinion, as a PSP anyway (though I respect later fan attempts to fix it).
Prav (and Pravda), unfortunately, doesn't do much better for me. I'm in total agreement that it's a concept that makes much more sense as a PSP than does Duality, but the problem is that it's a concept that was invented very, very recently by Slavic neopagans. Prav, as the concept of the righteous law of Svarog that binds the world together, was invented by the Book of Veles, a widely-discredited forgery from the 1950s that contains a lot of material that never appears anywhere else in Slavic myth. While the word prav does, indeed, mean law or rightness in various Slavic languages, we don't have any evidence of it as any kind of religious or cosmic concept that ties into the culture's myths. I don't feel a lot more of a focus on law and order among the Slavic gods and myths than any other - again, there are other pantheons that more embody that idea, like the law-obsessed Celestial Bureaucracy or the order-and-stability-focused Anunna. (For what it's worth, however, the Prav in the Fan-Written Resources thread over at the forums is a better attempt at coherently working with this idea than the Prav and Pravda on the Scion wiki, and its focus on Virtues is something we also did a lot with for Dvoeverie.)
Bhag is more of a weird mixed bag of a purview, because it's actually much closer to Indian than it is to Slavic. Bhag is a proto-Indo-European word, etymologically identical to the Sanskrit bhaj, meaning to portion out or allot. It, along with svarga, which the half-treatment on the Slavs in the Scion book suggests as a name for the Overworld, is borrowed directly from the Indian language and culture, where Svarga is indeed an Overworld, owned by Indra and a destination for pious Hindu souls. The words eventually found their way to the Slavs through the Persians, and are loanwords that don't really connect to their own ancient concepts; referring to heaven as "svarga" is actually a fairly recent development, as it's the word chosen to represent the Christian Heaven. What this all boils down to for Bhag (which is a weird little purview having to do with good luck that looks like it belongs in Ganesha's bag of tricks more than anywhere else) is that it comes from a lot of outside syncretic sources and is sort of floating around, unconnected to the Slavs in more than peripheral ways. A PSP needs to be the core essence of a pantheon, not an idea that linguistically might have been associated with them sometimes in the areas where they were influenced by someone else.
But the issue remains, after you clear all of those away, that it's still really difficult to come up with what, exactly, the defining power and cultural facet of the Slavic gods really is. In the end, we chose dvoeverie because it seemed to collect most of the things that the other PSPs were trying to do, and because it was a uniquely Slavic concept that has always been bound up in their religious practice and life. The Slavs live at the crossroads of the world and have been invaded, conquered, befriended and traded with more than anyone else, and somehow they have endured with their unique cultural flavor no matter whether the Celts, Germans, Persians, Greeks, or later the hordes of Catholicism were in charge. Their ability (documented historically) to worship more than one set of gods without any qualm, despite the apparent conflicts and overlaps between the two that sent other cultures into fits at the idea, represents an impressive ability to remain true to their core values no matter what's going on. And the gods of these people, already notoriously harmoniously associated with the natural world and its rhythms, could not help but be as flexible.
So Dvoeverie it is, for us. Nothing else struck us as simultaneously quintessentially Slavic, religiously significant and historically verifiable.
Celtic Soup
Question: As far as Celtic Pantheons go, we have the Tuatha de for Ireland and the Nemetondevos for Gaul. What about the Picts, Welsh, Scots, Belgicans, and Iberian Celts? Would they fall under one of the two existing Celtic Pantheons?
Oh, those wacky Celts and their many tribes! I'll hit them one at a time.
The Belgicans: The Belgicans are pretty much the same cultural origin as the Gauls; they just live a little further east in what is now Germany (but what was kind of Gaul anyway at the time). They might have a little more Slavic influence from rubbing elbows with the eastern tribes over there, but they'd be essentially mostly followers of the Nemetondevos, according to the meager information we have from the Romans.
The Iberians: These guys are more fun to unravel than a ball of twine with candy in the middle. They do in fact have their own gods, including the solar war-god Neto, the kingly Dovanicus and the water-god Bandua (there's a lot of overlap with the Gallaeci as well, though you didn't ask about them specifically - the two groups of Celts sharing the peninsula interbred and shared cultural ideas quite a bit). There's very little known about these deities - even the Romans didn't really figure out much about them, possibly due to the different and stranger (to them) ethnic groups in the Spanish peninsula, so it's a bit of a crapshoot to try to do anything with them. They do, however, also sport the ever-present Lugh, here usually called Lucubo, so if you'd like him to get involved, go for it.
Another interesting avenue to explore for the Iberians is a possible connection with the Elohim; southern Spain was settled by several important Phoenician seaports, and many of the Spanish Celts fought for Carthage in the war against Rome. They weren't the indigenous deities by any means, but the Elohim in their Carthaginian forms (particularly Anat and Baal) might have had quite a bit of influence in the area.
The Picts: Unfortunately, these guys are pre-written-record, meaning that they didn't leave much behind to tell us who they were worshiping before the advent of Christianity. From a few place-names and etymological similarities, most scholars assume that they were probably worshiping the same (or similar) figures as the later continental Celts, so for Scion's purposes I would put them under the umbrella of the Nemetondevos.
The Scots: While the Scots have a lot of very specific folklore to their credit, they appear to have imported most of their mythology directly from the Emerald Isle, probably because large numbers of Irish immigrants settled in Scotland in the long-ago. They're pretty much all Tuatha all the way, and don't have any indigenous figures you could really call "gods" of their own.
The Welsh: The Welsh totally do have gods, however, which is why they keep popping up on the pantheon poll over to the right. Figures like Arawn, Arianhrod and Beli Mawr are clearly divinities in their own right, and the presence of literature like the Mabinogion makes it quite possible to do something with them as a discrete set of people in Scion (especially since the book already sets them up as aiding the Tuatha by allowing them to use a little bit of Annwn now that their own Underworlds are mostly destroyed).
The Welsh have a lot of unique problems for Scion as well, however. Half their deities are pretty clearly Welsh versions of gods from the Tuatha or the Nemetondevos; Rhiannon, for example, is believed by many scholars to be the Welsh version of the Gaulish goddess Epona, Lleu is pretty clearly Lugh wearing yet another hat, and Manawydan fab Llyr is very recognizably a Welsh iteration of the Irish and Manx Manannan mac Lir. Trying to separate them into a solid pantheon of their own is difficult when dudes like Manawydan and Lleu are so centrally getting up in everyone's Cheerios. They also share the Irish habit of treating their gods more as dudes with impressive stories than as figures of worship, which can make it hard to separate the deities from the culture heroes and the gods from the Titans.
Still, they're a very interesting place to try to build something, and the fact that they trace their lineage back to the mother-goddess Don - another crossover, as most scholars consider her to be the Welsh name for the Irish Danu - might make for an interesting setup in Scion of two pantheons, descended from the same Titan but diverging into clear groups of their own over time. It would certainly explain why they get up in one anothers' business all the time, and why it was Danu's involvement that got the two working together so quickly in the Titan war.
Oh, those wacky Celts and their many tribes! I'll hit them one at a time.
The Belgicans: The Belgicans are pretty much the same cultural origin as the Gauls; they just live a little further east in what is now Germany (but what was kind of Gaul anyway at the time). They might have a little more Slavic influence from rubbing elbows with the eastern tribes over there, but they'd be essentially mostly followers of the Nemetondevos, according to the meager information we have from the Romans.
The Iberians: These guys are more fun to unravel than a ball of twine with candy in the middle. They do in fact have their own gods, including the solar war-god Neto, the kingly Dovanicus and the water-god Bandua (there's a lot of overlap with the Gallaeci as well, though you didn't ask about them specifically - the two groups of Celts sharing the peninsula interbred and shared cultural ideas quite a bit). There's very little known about these deities - even the Romans didn't really figure out much about them, possibly due to the different and stranger (to them) ethnic groups in the Spanish peninsula, so it's a bit of a crapshoot to try to do anything with them. They do, however, also sport the ever-present Lugh, here usually called Lucubo, so if you'd like him to get involved, go for it.
Another interesting avenue to explore for the Iberians is a possible connection with the Elohim; southern Spain was settled by several important Phoenician seaports, and many of the Spanish Celts fought for Carthage in the war against Rome. They weren't the indigenous deities by any means, but the Elohim in their Carthaginian forms (particularly Anat and Baal) might have had quite a bit of influence in the area.
The Picts: Unfortunately, these guys are pre-written-record, meaning that they didn't leave much behind to tell us who they were worshiping before the advent of Christianity. From a few place-names and etymological similarities, most scholars assume that they were probably worshiping the same (or similar) figures as the later continental Celts, so for Scion's purposes I would put them under the umbrella of the Nemetondevos.
The Scots: While the Scots have a lot of very specific folklore to their credit, they appear to have imported most of their mythology directly from the Emerald Isle, probably because large numbers of Irish immigrants settled in Scotland in the long-ago. They're pretty much all Tuatha all the way, and don't have any indigenous figures you could really call "gods" of their own.
The Welsh: The Welsh totally do have gods, however, which is why they keep popping up on the pantheon poll over to the right. Figures like Arawn, Arianhrod and Beli Mawr are clearly divinities in their own right, and the presence of literature like the Mabinogion makes it quite possible to do something with them as a discrete set of people in Scion (especially since the book already sets them up as aiding the Tuatha by allowing them to use a little bit of Annwn now that their own Underworlds are mostly destroyed).
The Welsh have a lot of unique problems for Scion as well, however. Half their deities are pretty clearly Welsh versions of gods from the Tuatha or the Nemetondevos; Rhiannon, for example, is believed by many scholars to be the Welsh version of the Gaulish goddess Epona, Lleu is pretty clearly Lugh wearing yet another hat, and Manawydan fab Llyr is very recognizably a Welsh iteration of the Irish and Manx Manannan mac Lir. Trying to separate them into a solid pantheon of their own is difficult when dudes like Manawydan and Lleu are so centrally getting up in everyone's Cheerios. They also share the Irish habit of treating their gods more as dudes with impressive stories than as figures of worship, which can make it hard to separate the deities from the culture heroes and the gods from the Titans.
Still, they're a very interesting place to try to build something, and the fact that they trace their lineage back to the mother-goddess Don - another crossover, as most scholars consider her to be the Welsh name for the Irish Danu - might make for an interesting setup in Scion of two pantheons, descended from the same Titan but diverging into clear groups of their own over time. It would certainly explain why they get up in one anothers' business all the time, and why it was Danu's involvement that got the two working together so quickly in the Titan war.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Step One: Have Complete Surviving Poem. Step Two: Superstardom!
Question: Is there any mythological reasoning behind Beowulf's divinity? I know the book says he's the son of Freya, but is that true or just something White Wolf made up?
Naw, it's just something White Wolf made up. Beowulf's super cool and all, but he's not a god; he was never worshiped as one, nor did he ever do anything that really qualifies him as more badass than a Hero or low-level Demigod (depending on how powerful you consider the dragon he slew at the end of his life). Beowulf has an established lineage in poetry, but they're all mortal kings and warriors, probably Swedish in origin. No divine blood to be seen anywhere, though his probable Swedishness is probably why Freya was chosen as his divine mother (since the Vanir are traditionally closely linked to Sweden).
Most likely it's just a case of a well-meaning Scion writer noting that Beowulf could well have been a Scion and carrying that on to what he might have looked like as a god. While I think Beowulf is a great candidate to consider a Scion - he was out killing trolls and dragons, after all, Scionish pursuits if there ever were some - he definitely doesn't belong on the roster of the gods. He'd be an excellent character to encounter in Valhalla, however, or to swap mead and tales with; even if he was never a god, countless years of English Literature classes have made him something of a small celebrity anyway.
Naw, it's just something White Wolf made up. Beowulf's super cool and all, but he's not a god; he was never worshiped as one, nor did he ever do anything that really qualifies him as more badass than a Hero or low-level Demigod (depending on how powerful you consider the dragon he slew at the end of his life). Beowulf has an established lineage in poetry, but they're all mortal kings and warriors, probably Swedish in origin. No divine blood to be seen anywhere, though his probable Swedishness is probably why Freya was chosen as his divine mother (since the Vanir are traditionally closely linked to Sweden).
Most likely it's just a case of a well-meaning Scion writer noting that Beowulf could well have been a Scion and carrying that on to what he might have looked like as a god. While I think Beowulf is a great candidate to consider a Scion - he was out killing trolls and dragons, after all, Scionish pursuits if there ever were some - he definitely doesn't belong on the roster of the gods. He'd be an excellent character to encounter in Valhalla, however, or to swap mead and tales with; even if he was never a god, countless years of English Literature classes have made him something of a small celebrity anyway.
Triple Threat
Question: The idea of Duality as the Slavic PSP didn't ever work for me, but it IS a very common element in mythology for gods and goddesses to have multiple aspects. How would y'all handle a PC developing into a dualistic or triadic figure, with each aspect having different proclivities?
I'd say a lot of that needs to be on the player who wants to do it (which is probably fine - I've found that players love doing crazy ridiculous stuff to further their own Legends!). There's no mechanic for actually being different people at the same time, but that doesn't mean an enterprising PC can't find a way to invent one!
Illusion, of course, can take care of appearing as two or three people with facile ease; it's available as early as level three with Doppelganger, and higher levels of Illusion can pull off ever more complex and artistic representations of a double or triple aspect. More solid representations of other aspects could easily be created with any of the elemental purviews (there's no reason I wouldn't let a Scion stunt an Earthborn Spirit, for example, so that it looked just like her) or built with plants for those skilled in the Fertility purview. Then there's also the Appearance option - high-level Appearance knacks can do totally wacky things, and you might be able to run with this idea a number of ways, from just appearing as a different one of your "aspects" all the time to actually creating a body with several torsos or heads. I'd definitely also allow things like creative use of the Intoxicate boon to cause viewers to see double or triple, or even for enterprising science-minded Scions to create a drug (perhaps dispersed through mist or some other convenient way?) that has the same effect without needing to use powers at all. Moon boons might also cause peculiarly specific temporary madness that encourages such a view of the Scion. And, of course, Scions are so shockingly better at everything than mortals that it's not even necessary to use powers to pull this sort of thing off; you might be able to use good old fashioned smoke and mirrors without anyone ever being able to see anything but the awe-inspiring front you put up. And don't underestimate the power of social knacks, either - a little Rumor Mill can go a long way toward convincing even people who have never seen you of your multifaceted amazingness. Show me an awesome stunt, and I will show you a mortal that probably totally bought it. As far as separate personalities and proclivities go, that's something that an individual god can play up at their leisure as well - want one aspect to be known as a carefree lover and sun-goddess? Great! Do that while in that aspect, and do other things in the others. Most players who are really dedicated or excited about the idea of being a multi-personality god will police themselves on that better than an ST would.
There's also always the option, especially at the Demigod or God jumps, of giving them some kind of Birthright that furthers the image, whether it's a couple of Guides that embody their other aspects or even an invented Birthright that is another aspect, requiring X resources to swap to and providing X bonuses that are different from normal. There's plenty of room to work with that, especially if it's something the PC really wants to be a defining factor of their Legend.
I'd say that if a player is putting effort into being seen as a duplicate or triplicate god, and they're trying some of the above or coming up with their own ways of pulling it off, let them. Humanity will totally run with it. And if you want to get even crazier, perhaps by doing some kind of insane stunt once they're gods wherein they bind other low-Legend deities to themselves in some kind of insane Wyrd-ritual... hey, if they're that dedicated to the idea, I'd help them along as long as they were working toward it in some semi-reasonable way.
I'd say a lot of that needs to be on the player who wants to do it (which is probably fine - I've found that players love doing crazy ridiculous stuff to further their own Legends!). There's no mechanic for actually being different people at the same time, but that doesn't mean an enterprising PC can't find a way to invent one!
Illusion, of course, can take care of appearing as two or three people with facile ease; it's available as early as level three with Doppelganger, and higher levels of Illusion can pull off ever more complex and artistic representations of a double or triple aspect. More solid representations of other aspects could easily be created with any of the elemental purviews (there's no reason I wouldn't let a Scion stunt an Earthborn Spirit, for example, so that it looked just like her) or built with plants for those skilled in the Fertility purview. Then there's also the Appearance option - high-level Appearance knacks can do totally wacky things, and you might be able to run with this idea a number of ways, from just appearing as a different one of your "aspects" all the time to actually creating a body with several torsos or heads. I'd definitely also allow things like creative use of the Intoxicate boon to cause viewers to see double or triple, or even for enterprising science-minded Scions to create a drug (perhaps dispersed through mist or some other convenient way?) that has the same effect without needing to use powers at all. Moon boons might also cause peculiarly specific temporary madness that encourages such a view of the Scion. And, of course, Scions are so shockingly better at everything than mortals that it's not even necessary to use powers to pull this sort of thing off; you might be able to use good old fashioned smoke and mirrors without anyone ever being able to see anything but the awe-inspiring front you put up. And don't underestimate the power of social knacks, either - a little Rumor Mill can go a long way toward convincing even people who have never seen you of your multifaceted amazingness. Show me an awesome stunt, and I will show you a mortal that probably totally bought it. As far as separate personalities and proclivities go, that's something that an individual god can play up at their leisure as well - want one aspect to be known as a carefree lover and sun-goddess? Great! Do that while in that aspect, and do other things in the others. Most players who are really dedicated or excited about the idea of being a multi-personality god will police themselves on that better than an ST would.
There's also always the option, especially at the Demigod or God jumps, of giving them some kind of Birthright that furthers the image, whether it's a couple of Guides that embody their other aspects or even an invented Birthright that is another aspect, requiring X resources to swap to and providing X bonuses that are different from normal. There's plenty of room to work with that, especially if it's something the PC really wants to be a defining factor of their Legend.
I'd say that if a player is putting effort into being seen as a duplicate or triplicate god, and they're trying some of the above or coming up with their own ways of pulling it off, let them. Humanity will totally run with it. And if you want to get even crazier, perhaps by doing some kind of insane stunt once they're gods wherein they bind other low-Legend deities to themselves in some kind of insane Wyrd-ritual... hey, if they're that dedicated to the idea, I'd help them along as long as they were working toward it in some semi-reasonable way.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Princes of the Universe
Question: How does Worship translate to power in Scion? Companion mentions that they are pretty powerful because they are still being worshiped.
I assume the "they" you're referring to are the Devas, and I suppose that's true, to a point; they have an extensive base of worshipers in the World and as a result are very well-known and venerated to a degree that most other pantheons aren't. But, in Scion's world, being fancy and beloved is pretty much as far as that goes.
Because worship, in Scion, doesn't translate to power. There is actually no mechanical benefit whatsoever to having humans worship you; they don't give you power in any way other than to stroke your ego and make you feel like the awesome deity you are. It doesn't matter if you have ten kazillion mortals fervently praying to you every day, or if no one remembers you even exist; the only different is in how much static is coming in through your Hear Prayers knack.
There are exceptions, of course. The Aztlanti do gain power from worship (specifically sacrificial worship), but that's because that's what their PSP does, not because it's a feature of the system itself. And, of course, mortals who are Fatebound to you can provide bonuses with the power of their belief, but just believing in you isn't enough to get someone Fatebound to you; you have to be there, in person, blowing Legend around them for that to happen, so the likelihood of more than a tiny fraction of the Devas' worshipers actually being Fatebound to them is slim to none. People who are Fatebound to a god do often form or found cults or religions in their name, but not all (or even most) of the members of those religions are Fatebound. Even if a mortal devoutly believes in you and all your divine exploits, his daily prayers and sacrifices have no effect whatsoever on you if he isn't Fatebound. And even Fatebound mortals aren't always part of your religion; it's entirely possible for a mortal to be Fatebound to you without believing you're a god at all, or without being a member of the religion in which you are worshiped.
This often seems weirdly counter-intuitive to players and Storytellers, especially if they're new to Scion, but it actually makes a great deal of sense. Fatebonds are what make the World go 'round; gods don't like getting saddled with too many Fatebonds, so they stay out of the World, which in turn has caused many of their religions to die out or be mostly replaced by others, which is why the still-thriving Asian religions are an exception. Trying to keep track of worship as a quantifiable mechanic would be a messy, unbalancing endeavor; how would you decide who was getting worshiped "enough" and who wasn't? Where would you draw lines, and based on what criteria? What about people that everyone believes in, but nobody worships? What's the difference between belief and worship? It's a realm of misty, unexplainable questions that don't really add anything to the game, so it's not hard to see why the game's writers left the idea out. The idea of gods requiring worship is a fairly recent one anyway, with a few notable exceptions; most ancient cultures worshiped gods because they wanted their blessings, wanted to avoid their wrath, or recognized them as awesome figures who deserved respect and obeisance. They didn't do it because they thought the gods needed it or got some kind of benefit from it; they did it because they were gods, and when you're confronted with a god, there's not much else to do besides worship or run away. (The Aztlanti are, once again, the exception - the Aztecs did believe that their gods needed sacrifice in order to keep the universe from collapsing, but again, that's just them, not something that applies to all pantheons.)
Companion, I think, is suggesting that there's a sort of prestige to having a thriving world religion, which is not untrue. The Devas are in a pretty enviable position, still respected, adored and worshiped by millions of people; even if that doesn't give them any mechanical crunch to play with, it's still something that other gods might easily envy and that they themselves probably feel pretty good about. But other than that, having a living religion is pretty much nothing more than something that looks really nice on their godly resumes.
I assume the "they" you're referring to are the Devas, and I suppose that's true, to a point; they have an extensive base of worshipers in the World and as a result are very well-known and venerated to a degree that most other pantheons aren't. But, in Scion's world, being fancy and beloved is pretty much as far as that goes.
Because worship, in Scion, doesn't translate to power. There is actually no mechanical benefit whatsoever to having humans worship you; they don't give you power in any way other than to stroke your ego and make you feel like the awesome deity you are. It doesn't matter if you have ten kazillion mortals fervently praying to you every day, or if no one remembers you even exist; the only different is in how much static is coming in through your Hear Prayers knack.
There are exceptions, of course. The Aztlanti do gain power from worship (specifically sacrificial worship), but that's because that's what their PSP does, not because it's a feature of the system itself. And, of course, mortals who are Fatebound to you can provide bonuses with the power of their belief, but just believing in you isn't enough to get someone Fatebound to you; you have to be there, in person, blowing Legend around them for that to happen, so the likelihood of more than a tiny fraction of the Devas' worshipers actually being Fatebound to them is slim to none. People who are Fatebound to a god do often form or found cults or religions in their name, but not all (or even most) of the members of those religions are Fatebound. Even if a mortal devoutly believes in you and all your divine exploits, his daily prayers and sacrifices have no effect whatsoever on you if he isn't Fatebound. And even Fatebound mortals aren't always part of your religion; it's entirely possible for a mortal to be Fatebound to you without believing you're a god at all, or without being a member of the religion in which you are worshiped.
This often seems weirdly counter-intuitive to players and Storytellers, especially if they're new to Scion, but it actually makes a great deal of sense. Fatebonds are what make the World go 'round; gods don't like getting saddled with too many Fatebonds, so they stay out of the World, which in turn has caused many of their religions to die out or be mostly replaced by others, which is why the still-thriving Asian religions are an exception. Trying to keep track of worship as a quantifiable mechanic would be a messy, unbalancing endeavor; how would you decide who was getting worshiped "enough" and who wasn't? Where would you draw lines, and based on what criteria? What about people that everyone believes in, but nobody worships? What's the difference between belief and worship? It's a realm of misty, unexplainable questions that don't really add anything to the game, so it's not hard to see why the game's writers left the idea out. The idea of gods requiring worship is a fairly recent one anyway, with a few notable exceptions; most ancient cultures worshiped gods because they wanted their blessings, wanted to avoid their wrath, or recognized them as awesome figures who deserved respect and obeisance. They didn't do it because they thought the gods needed it or got some kind of benefit from it; they did it because they were gods, and when you're confronted with a god, there's not much else to do besides worship or run away. (The Aztlanti are, once again, the exception - the Aztecs did believe that their gods needed sacrifice in order to keep the universe from collapsing, but again, that's just them, not something that applies to all pantheons.)
Companion, I think, is suggesting that there's a sort of prestige to having a thriving world religion, which is not untrue. The Devas are in a pretty enviable position, still respected, adored and worshiped by millions of people; even if that doesn't give them any mechanical crunch to play with, it's still something that other gods might easily envy and that they themselves probably feel pretty good about. But other than that, having a living religion is pretty much nothing more than something that looks really nice on their godly resumes.
Buddhas, Buddhas Everywhere
Question: Has you ever considered creating a Buddhist pantheon based some of the more colorful and spectacular interpretations, or does that step too much on the Devas' toes?
Ooh, man. While Buddhism has many colorful and enjoyable characters, I can't help but feel that trying to work it up as a pantheon would be a nightmare.
Every country's version of Buddhism is different, for one thing. Japanese Buddhism does not have a lot in common with Indian Buddhism at this point, nor do Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism really quite jibe (no matter what modern Chinese rhetoric says about who owns Tibet itself). The basic fundamentals of Buddhism from India have been incredibly changed over time and suited to meet the needs of the various cultures that have imported the religion; the original Buddhism didn't even have deities, being a philosophical religion rather than a worship-based one. Trying to mash all of that together and call it one thing would be a huge headache, and the result would probably be not only vastly unwieldy but also pretty unreasonably culturally syncretized. It'd be a lot like trying to create a Native American pantheon that pretended all Native religions were the same - more convenient for an ST or a writer, maybe, but terribly misrepresentative and simplified for the actual mythology.
I'm more content to let Buddhist deities fall where they fall. Scion already has a few; Guanyin, for example, over in the Celestial Bureaucracy, is as Buddhist a deity as they come, as is Marishiten of the Amatsukami. But the Japanese samurai-goddess and the Chinese bodhisattva of mercy are obviously not from the same pantheon, so I don't mind that they're separated into more appropriate cultural groups. Buddhism sprawls across so many different regions and has involved itself in so many different Asian religions that it makes more sense to me to simply put Buddhist deities in whatever pantheon they most likely belong to. If they're Chinese Buddhist gods, elevate them to the ranks of the Shen; if they're Japanese Buddhist gods, let 'em try to make their way among the Kami.
Not only does it make more cultural sense that way, but you can also run some fun political stories regarding Buddhist deities and how well-accepted (or not) they are within their pantheons; especially for a Scion of one of them, dealing with trying to break into such a rigid political structure as the courtly Kami or get recognition from such condescending ancients as the Devas.
Ooh, man. While Buddhism has many colorful and enjoyable characters, I can't help but feel that trying to work it up as a pantheon would be a nightmare.
Every country's version of Buddhism is different, for one thing. Japanese Buddhism does not have a lot in common with Indian Buddhism at this point, nor do Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism really quite jibe (no matter what modern Chinese rhetoric says about who owns Tibet itself). The basic fundamentals of Buddhism from India have been incredibly changed over time and suited to meet the needs of the various cultures that have imported the religion; the original Buddhism didn't even have deities, being a philosophical religion rather than a worship-based one. Trying to mash all of that together and call it one thing would be a huge headache, and the result would probably be not only vastly unwieldy but also pretty unreasonably culturally syncretized. It'd be a lot like trying to create a Native American pantheon that pretended all Native religions were the same - more convenient for an ST or a writer, maybe, but terribly misrepresentative and simplified for the actual mythology.
I'm more content to let Buddhist deities fall where they fall. Scion already has a few; Guanyin, for example, over in the Celestial Bureaucracy, is as Buddhist a deity as they come, as is Marishiten of the Amatsukami. But the Japanese samurai-goddess and the Chinese bodhisattva of mercy are obviously not from the same pantheon, so I don't mind that they're separated into more appropriate cultural groups. Buddhism sprawls across so many different regions and has involved itself in so many different Asian religions that it makes more sense to me to simply put Buddhist deities in whatever pantheon they most likely belong to. If they're Chinese Buddhist gods, elevate them to the ranks of the Shen; if they're Japanese Buddhist gods, let 'em try to make their way among the Kami.
Not only does it make more cultural sense that way, but you can also run some fun political stories regarding Buddhist deities and how well-accepted (or not) they are within their pantheons; especially for a Scion of one of them, dealing with trying to break into such a rigid political structure as the courtly Kami or get recognition from such condescending ancients as the Devas.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Phenomenal Cosmic Power
Question: What are the rules for Relics you use in your games? Do your Scion PCs need to have a Birthright to access each of their parents associated purviews? I noticed in your Annuna write-up that this wasn't the case, but I thought I'd ask!
Oops! I see that poor young Marcus Duke is, indeed, lacking in a Sky relic to allow him to use his boons. That's a mistake; just as in the original rules, we require Hero-level Scions to have a relic to use any given purview (with the exception, of course, of their pantheon-specific purview, since those are always attuned to a Scion and never require a relic). I think I intended Marc to have one, and just lost my way somewhere between writing him up and statting his sheet. Totally my bad.
Anna also does not have a relic to channel Chaos, but since she's a Demigod, she doesn't technically need one. So I get a pass on my scatterbrainedness there.
Edit: As pointed out in the comments, it's not a mistake after all; Marcus and Anna are Scions of the Anunna and have Me, which allows them to use their chosen purview without requiring a relic. I knew I was doing something right somewhere in there.
Oops! I see that poor young Marcus Duke is, indeed, lacking in a Sky relic to allow him to use his boons. That's a mistake; just as in the original rules, we require Hero-level Scions to have a relic to use any given purview (with the exception, of course, of their pantheon-specific purview, since those are always attuned to a Scion and never require a relic). I think I intended Marc to have one, and just lost my way somewhere between writing him up and statting his sheet. Totally my bad.
Anna also does not have a relic to channel Chaos, but since she's a Demigod, she doesn't technically need one. So I get a pass on my scatterbrainedness there.
Edit: As pointed out in the comments, it's not a mistake after all; Marcus and Anna are Scions of the Anunna and have Me, which allows them to use their chosen purview without requiring a relic. I knew I was doing something right somewhere in there.
Kings in Obscurity
Question: How exactly do the gods feel about monotheism pretty much wiping out their worship? (I say monotheism because the Jews were the ones who wiped out the Elohim's people, the Christians pretty much everyone else and Islam Arab paganism.)
I'd say there's no hard-and-fast rule; it probably depends on individual gods and their feelings rather than there being any broad answer. With the exception of people like the Aztlanti who get direct power from their faithful followers, worship doesn't actually grant any particularly special perks to gods, so some of them (particularly those that were never all that big on humanity in the first place) may not really care. So what if humans don't believe in them? Doesn't mean they don't exist, or that whatever silly monotheistic god they've invented does. I doubt figures like the Morrigan or Loki are very worried about the fact that nobody believes in him anymore; it's not like they were doing much for them when they did.
The more prideful among the gods, however, may be cranky that they're no longer renowned and beloved the world over; after all, they're great and everybody used to acknowledge that they were great, so for some of them it may be pretty galling to watch humanity blithely ignoring, disbelieving or misrepresenting them, especially if the monotheism that most humans adhere to instead is being run as a purely human religion or a construct of a Titan. People like Osiris, Zeus or Amaterasu probably feel it's their due to be worshiped and adored, so the prevalence of monotheism is possibly a sore spot for them.
Of course, the gods intentionally withdrew from the World to avoid the looming spectre of Fatebonds, so it's likely that for most of them this is not a surprise. If you stop hanging out impressing people with your divinity, it stands to reason that they will stop being impressed, and even eventually forget or disbelieve that you ever existed. It also stands to reason that they might invent something to fill that religious gap in their lives. Some gods may have been surprised, assuming that keeping all the gods out of the World would have prevented humanity from worshiping anything, but others, especially the smarter ones, had to have seen that coming.
Of course, some religions are still strong; there's probably not too much reason for the Devas or Celestial Bureaucracy to get all bent out of shape over monotheism (they seem to have taken even Buddhism in stride, after all!). I'd probably generally assume that cultures that experienced gradual assimilation like the Greeks are a little less cranky over the whole business than ones that went up in smoke overnight like the Incas, but again it'd really depend on the god in question and how much they care about whether or not humanity pays them lip service.
The Aztlanti are probably pretty peeved, though - as a pantheon that actually gets tangible power from their religion, losing hundreds of thousands of humans sacrificing to them had to be quite a blow.
I'd say there's no hard-and-fast rule; it probably depends on individual gods and their feelings rather than there being any broad answer. With the exception of people like the Aztlanti who get direct power from their faithful followers, worship doesn't actually grant any particularly special perks to gods, so some of them (particularly those that were never all that big on humanity in the first place) may not really care. So what if humans don't believe in them? Doesn't mean they don't exist, or that whatever silly monotheistic god they've invented does. I doubt figures like the Morrigan or Loki are very worried about the fact that nobody believes in him anymore; it's not like they were doing much for them when they did.
The more prideful among the gods, however, may be cranky that they're no longer renowned and beloved the world over; after all, they're great and everybody used to acknowledge that they were great, so for some of them it may be pretty galling to watch humanity blithely ignoring, disbelieving or misrepresenting them, especially if the monotheism that most humans adhere to instead is being run as a purely human religion or a construct of a Titan. People like Osiris, Zeus or Amaterasu probably feel it's their due to be worshiped and adored, so the prevalence of monotheism is possibly a sore spot for them.
Of course, the gods intentionally withdrew from the World to avoid the looming spectre of Fatebonds, so it's likely that for most of them this is not a surprise. If you stop hanging out impressing people with your divinity, it stands to reason that they will stop being impressed, and even eventually forget or disbelieve that you ever existed. It also stands to reason that they might invent something to fill that religious gap in their lives. Some gods may have been surprised, assuming that keeping all the gods out of the World would have prevented humanity from worshiping anything, but others, especially the smarter ones, had to have seen that coming.
Of course, some religions are still strong; there's probably not too much reason for the Devas or Celestial Bureaucracy to get all bent out of shape over monotheism (they seem to have taken even Buddhism in stride, after all!). I'd probably generally assume that cultures that experienced gradual assimilation like the Greeks are a little less cranky over the whole business than ones that went up in smoke overnight like the Incas, but again it'd really depend on the god in question and how much they care about whether or not humanity pays them lip service.
The Aztlanti are probably pretty peeved, though - as a pantheon that actually gets tangible power from their religion, losing hundreds of thousands of humans sacrificing to them had to be quite a blow.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Awakening the Dragon
Question: What exactly happened between Sverrir and Ryujin?
As usual, it's mostly Odin's fault.
To sum up a long story in a relatively short period of time, quite a while ago, Odin (along with some cronies from other pantheons) invaded Japan in an attempt to steal a very potent relic that the Japanese were trying to use for their own ends. He blew up a lot of the landscape and several gods were badly injured in the assault, including Ryujin. Fast forward to a couple of years later, when Will Nordstrom accidentally drops into the Sea of Japan thanks to Heimdall's notoriously poor Rainbow Bridge aim. Ryujin, recognizing that there was a Norseman in Japanese waters, immediately came roaring out of the depths to destroy him. Poor Will was only Legend 8 at the time and stood no chance against the dragon-god, though he gave it his valorous best (and, indeed, did not realize he was fighting a god at all; he thought it was just some hostile Titanic beast attacking him for no apparent reason), and eventually ended up crushed to death in its jaws. He tried to hurl a prayer to Odin and the few members of his own family left, knowing he was about to go down; Odin didn't respond, but Freya, his much older sister, did.
And because Freya is a badass, she brought the entire complement of her valkyrie hosts along with her, and they managed to rescue Will out of the dragon's mouth while she harried it. Unfortunately for Will, while Freya used her awesome powers over Death to resurrect him, she was not able to physically overcome Ryujin (who was now quite sure that this was obviously some kind of Norse invasion) and eventually the dragon dragged her down into the depths to her doom, leaving Sverrir in mourning and the Vanir down one more member.
Sverrir and Ryujin have not crossed paths since, as most of that band scrupulously avoids Japan whenever possible, but it seems inevitable that there will one day be a showdown, with Sverrir determined to avenge his sister and Ryujin determined to avenge his pantheon.
(See, cool stories like these are happening all the time, but it's slow going to get them all written down. Sorry!)
As usual, it's mostly Odin's fault.
To sum up a long story in a relatively short period of time, quite a while ago, Odin (along with some cronies from other pantheons) invaded Japan in an attempt to steal a very potent relic that the Japanese were trying to use for their own ends. He blew up a lot of the landscape and several gods were badly injured in the assault, including Ryujin. Fast forward to a couple of years later, when Will Nordstrom accidentally drops into the Sea of Japan thanks to Heimdall's notoriously poor Rainbow Bridge aim. Ryujin, recognizing that there was a Norseman in Japanese waters, immediately came roaring out of the depths to destroy him. Poor Will was only Legend 8 at the time and stood no chance against the dragon-god, though he gave it his valorous best (and, indeed, did not realize he was fighting a god at all; he thought it was just some hostile Titanic beast attacking him for no apparent reason), and eventually ended up crushed to death in its jaws. He tried to hurl a prayer to Odin and the few members of his own family left, knowing he was about to go down; Odin didn't respond, but Freya, his much older sister, did.
And because Freya is a badass, she brought the entire complement of her valkyrie hosts along with her, and they managed to rescue Will out of the dragon's mouth while she harried it. Unfortunately for Will, while Freya used her awesome powers over Death to resurrect him, she was not able to physically overcome Ryujin (who was now quite sure that this was obviously some kind of Norse invasion) and eventually the dragon dragged her down into the depths to her doom, leaving Sverrir in mourning and the Vanir down one more member.
Sverrir and Ryujin have not crossed paths since, as most of that band scrupulously avoids Japan whenever possible, but it seems inevitable that there will one day be a showdown, with Sverrir determined to avenge his sister and Ryujin determined to avenge his pantheon.
(See, cool stories like these are happening all the time, but it's slow going to get them all written down. Sorry!)
Form and Function
Question: Are there any Abilities you notice getting the short end of the stick a lot? They're nifty for flavor, but just feel like big XP-sucking black holes? Like Fortitude.
Holy crap, your example threw me for a loop because Fortitude is one of the least dispensible abilities in the game. Our PCs are constantly trying to shore up their Fortitude, either desperately buying it to keep ahead of Fatebonds or jealously guarding it and keeping it maxed in case something goes wrong.
So I'll answer the opposite of your question first - Awareness, Athletics, Fortitude and Integrity are the abilities that our players generally cannot live without. If you see a PC with zero or only a few dots in one of those, chances are that Fatebonds either took all their dots away or are in the process of trying to do so while the players fight them off with XP. They are freaking miserable when they lose one of those stats (and heaven forfend they lose more than one). It's pretty funny when, every time an Athletics roll comes up, we watch Jioni's player say morosely, "It's fine, I'll just roll to the bottom of the hill on my face, tell me how much damage I take," but only out-of-character.
But, to return to your actual question: the abilities I see passed over most often are probably Investigation, Larceny and Science.
I'm not sure why almost nobody picks up any Investigation - it's such a useful skill! - but there they are, two groups of Legend 9-10 PCs, and only one of them can make an Investigation roll without the benefit of Jack of All Trades. A lot of them are relying on their Awareness to let them know if something is going on, but unfortunately that leads to a lot of PCs being complete idiots when they have to search an office for an envelope or something.
Larceny's more understandable, as the sneaky or manipulative characters usually pick some up but the majority of the rest of the characters do not, even though whenever they have to roll Perception + Larceny or the like to try to figure out someone's security system, they can't understand why they can't make heads or tails of it. It seems like more of a specialty ability, and especially when players plan to be running stand-up, honorable heroes, they often don't think of getting any dots in it, even though it has applications other than thievery.
The specialized abilities (Art, Craft, Control and Science) are completely dependent on the character, I've found. Plenty of people totally ignore them - unless something is very specialized, you can often sub in Academics or Athletics and still have a good shot at figuring out what to do with something, and of course there're always Jack of All Trades and Don't Read the Manual to fall back on. Many of those characters who do pick up some specialized abilities try to invest in the most broad, generalized subject we'll let them get away with - Biology or Boats, for example - so they can try to apply it to as many rolls as possible. But on the other end of the spectrum you have people like Aiona, who, far from trying to avoid getting extra abilities, often calls us to ask for inspiration because she wants a new Craft or Science but isn't sure what's left that she doesn't already have covered, or Sverrir, whose mission it is in life to drive all the things that require driving.
In general, there's no ability in Scion that I would say everyone views as useless or that just funnels away XP pointlessly; they all have their functions and they all contribute to a character's overall skillset. The only time we see players get cranky about XP being spent on abilities is when a Fatebond purchases something that's wholly inappropriate for the character, such as Eztli's followers buying her a bunch of Empathy or Terminus' deciding he needed as much Art (Tribal Dance) as possible. Those are just XP-sucking black holes because there's little chance the PC will ever use (or want to use) those skills, but it's not because of what specific ability they are; it's just because they don't fit the PC's concept. (Though, because that's what Fatebonds do, they often become part of the concept later anyway - Terminus has a particularly hilarious myth involving his dancing prowess and a distractable ogre-god now that would never have occurred without them.)
Besides, just because you have one dot in an ability and can therefore use your Epics doesn't mean that spending XP on any more dots is a waste of XP. Far from it; even if you aren't Greek and don't have to keep up with your Arete, if you're rolling against an enemy who has comparable stats but bought his Brawl all the way up to ten while you sat at one or two, he'll beat you most of the time. And that's a good thing; he should beat you, because he's better at brawling than you are. Abilities are expressions of what you want to be awesome at; if you're not choosing at least a few to follow through on, you're not trying to be awesome, you're trying to be mediocre. And nobody respects the god of mediocrity.
Holy crap, your example threw me for a loop because Fortitude is one of the least dispensible abilities in the game. Our PCs are constantly trying to shore up their Fortitude, either desperately buying it to keep ahead of Fatebonds or jealously guarding it and keeping it maxed in case something goes wrong.
So I'll answer the opposite of your question first - Awareness, Athletics, Fortitude and Integrity are the abilities that our players generally cannot live without. If you see a PC with zero or only a few dots in one of those, chances are that Fatebonds either took all their dots away or are in the process of trying to do so while the players fight them off with XP. They are freaking miserable when they lose one of those stats (and heaven forfend they lose more than one). It's pretty funny when, every time an Athletics roll comes up, we watch Jioni's player say morosely, "It's fine, I'll just roll to the bottom of the hill on my face, tell me how much damage I take," but only out-of-character.
But, to return to your actual question: the abilities I see passed over most often are probably Investigation, Larceny and Science.
I'm not sure why almost nobody picks up any Investigation - it's such a useful skill! - but there they are, two groups of Legend 9-10 PCs, and only one of them can make an Investigation roll without the benefit of Jack of All Trades. A lot of them are relying on their Awareness to let them know if something is going on, but unfortunately that leads to a lot of PCs being complete idiots when they have to search an office for an envelope or something.
Larceny's more understandable, as the sneaky or manipulative characters usually pick some up but the majority of the rest of the characters do not, even though whenever they have to roll Perception + Larceny or the like to try to figure out someone's security system, they can't understand why they can't make heads or tails of it. It seems like more of a specialty ability, and especially when players plan to be running stand-up, honorable heroes, they often don't think of getting any dots in it, even though it has applications other than thievery.
The specialized abilities (Art, Craft, Control and Science) are completely dependent on the character, I've found. Plenty of people totally ignore them - unless something is very specialized, you can often sub in Academics or Athletics and still have a good shot at figuring out what to do with something, and of course there're always Jack of All Trades and Don't Read the Manual to fall back on. Many of those characters who do pick up some specialized abilities try to invest in the most broad, generalized subject we'll let them get away with - Biology or Boats, for example - so they can try to apply it to as many rolls as possible. But on the other end of the spectrum you have people like Aiona, who, far from trying to avoid getting extra abilities, often calls us to ask for inspiration because she wants a new Craft or Science but isn't sure what's left that she doesn't already have covered, or Sverrir, whose mission it is in life to drive all the things that require driving.
In general, there's no ability in Scion that I would say everyone views as useless or that just funnels away XP pointlessly; they all have their functions and they all contribute to a character's overall skillset. The only time we see players get cranky about XP being spent on abilities is when a Fatebond purchases something that's wholly inappropriate for the character, such as Eztli's followers buying her a bunch of Empathy or Terminus' deciding he needed as much Art (Tribal Dance) as possible. Those are just XP-sucking black holes because there's little chance the PC will ever use (or want to use) those skills, but it's not because of what specific ability they are; it's just because they don't fit the PC's concept. (Though, because that's what Fatebonds do, they often become part of the concept later anyway - Terminus has a particularly hilarious myth involving his dancing prowess and a distractable ogre-god now that would never have occurred without them.)
Besides, just because you have one dot in an ability and can therefore use your Epics doesn't mean that spending XP on any more dots is a waste of XP. Far from it; even if you aren't Greek and don't have to keep up with your Arete, if you're rolling against an enemy who has comparable stats but bought his Brawl all the way up to ten while you sat at one or two, he'll beat you most of the time. And that's a good thing; he should beat you, because he's better at brawling than you are. Abilities are expressions of what you want to be awesome at; if you're not choosing at least a few to follow through on, you're not trying to be awesome, you're trying to be mediocre. And nobody respects the god of mediocrity.
The Cambridge Tales
Hey, folks!
John and I are out of town being funny in Boston this weekend starting tomorrow, so we will not be around. Thanks to the magic of the internet (and my own sense that my creaking inbox will not thank me for letting your awesome questions get backed up any further), however, there will still be blog posts during that time, automatically coming to you with love from wherever we may roam. We won't be able to respond to comments much, but please feel free to still leave them and discuss amongst yourselves, and we'll dive in as soon as we get back.
Everybody play nice, and tell us the stories of your awesome games when we come back!
John and I are out of town being funny in Boston this weekend starting tomorrow, so we will not be around. Thanks to the magic of the internet (and my own sense that my creaking inbox will not thank me for letting your awesome questions get backed up any further), however, there will still be blog posts during that time, automatically coming to you with love from wherever we may roam. We won't be able to respond to comments much, but please feel free to still leave them and discuss amongst yourselves, and we'll dive in as soon as we get back.
Everybody play nice, and tell us the stories of your awesome games when we come back!
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Do you live near Boston?
Shot in the dark here, but if you happen to live in the Boston area(or anywhere in the Northeast), we will be up there this weekend. We will be performing my comedy troupes show Hufflepuffed! It is a comedy lark on the Harry Potter world that will have you filled with laughing. It is at ImprovBoston in Cambridge(right by Harvard and MIT).
Also, if you dont want to come to the show, but just wanna get a coffee or something, we'll be around.
Facebook Event:
http://www.facebook.com/events/194647530649089/
Geekweek website:
http://geekweekcomedy.com/shows/mon-frere.shtml
Our website:
http://monfrerecomedy.com/
Some reddit posts I would love upvotes for!(if you reddit)
http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/ssdbt/geekweek_boston_featuring_hufflepuffed_check_out/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Harvard/comments/ssecg/harry_potter_fan_come_see_this_show_at_improv/
http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/ssdbt/geekweek_boston_featuring_hufflepuffed_check_out/
Dont like to advertise much. But thought you guys might be interested. And then realized we need upvotes.
Thank you all!,
Advertising over.
John
King of Anything
Question: Is Sverrir now a political equal to Odin and other pantheon heads (being king of the Vanir and ruler of Vanaheim)?
Ha ha ha. No.
I mean, in all technicality, you could say that. He could even say it (he probably does). But the fact of the matter is that the Legend 9 king of a pantheon which has fewer than five surviving members, has not been active or taken seriously in centuries, and is probably just going to blow up in its entirety at Ragnarok anyhow is not even in the same ballpark as someone like Zeus or Odin. They'll pay him lip-service, of course, because that's the politique thing to do, but he has no political power whatsoever and everybody knows it.
He does get invited to what John calls the "king-moots" now, though. So he has gained the dubious joy of sitting in a room with a whole bunch of insanely more powerful gods who could wipe his realm off the map and occasionally get to express his completely unimportant opinion. Oh, and he's probably also about to get to field eight thousand offers of marriage from deities who figure it can't hurt to get a little royal blood in the family, so that'll be fun for him (in the same way that dental surgery is fun for all of us).
I'm sure that if he sticks with it, Sverrir will one day be a Legend 12 juggernaut who rebuilds his kingdom to a comparable level of glory with everyone else's - but at the moment, he's kind of playing toy soldiers next to a bunch of dudes with actual armies. He's doing remarkably well with trying to clean Vanaheim up and establish cordial relations with other pantheons' leaders, but he's just a baby in a cruel, cruel political world full of baby-eating crocodiles.
So hurrah for royalty!
Ha ha ha. No.
I mean, in all technicality, you could say that. He could even say it (he probably does). But the fact of the matter is that the Legend 9 king of a pantheon which has fewer than five surviving members, has not been active or taken seriously in centuries, and is probably just going to blow up in its entirety at Ragnarok anyhow is not even in the same ballpark as someone like Zeus or Odin. They'll pay him lip-service, of course, because that's the politique thing to do, but he has no political power whatsoever and everybody knows it.
He does get invited to what John calls the "king-moots" now, though. So he has gained the dubious joy of sitting in a room with a whole bunch of insanely more powerful gods who could wipe his realm off the map and occasionally get to express his completely unimportant opinion. Oh, and he's probably also about to get to field eight thousand offers of marriage from deities who figure it can't hurt to get a little royal blood in the family, so that'll be fun for him (in the same way that dental surgery is fun for all of us).
I'm sure that if he sticks with it, Sverrir will one day be a Legend 12 juggernaut who rebuilds his kingdom to a comparable level of glory with everyone else's - but at the moment, he's kind of playing toy soldiers next to a bunch of dudes with actual armies. He's doing remarkably well with trying to clean Vanaheim up and establish cordial relations with other pantheons' leaders, but he's just a baby in a cruel, cruel political world full of baby-eating crocodiles.
So hurrah for royalty!
The Bovine Bulwark
Question: At what point does the good of the people outweigh the good of Enech? For example, if the Morrigan has the geas Beast (Cattle) is she able to eat beef? Does she oppose people killing and eating just enough cattle to feed themselves? Does she turn eco-terrorist and break into every slaughter house on earth? In short, at what point is inaction acceptable by the standards of Enech?
Enech is fabulously simple: it does exactly what it says it does. This is often incredibly inconvenient, but that's Irish myth for you. Getting screwed over by your geasa is practically a rite of passage over there.
The Morrigan probably can eat beef, but only if it's presented to her long after it was killed - at that point, it's not an animal that can be hurt anymore, so there's no conflict that would cause her to "protect" it, just like she's not obligated to protect any already-dead cow carcasses she happens to see when she passes by. I have to imagine it would be weird to eat beef, though, all things considered, but then again the Morrigan is pretty stone-cold badass about these things, so she might not be too put off by the weird quasi-cannibalism of it. Might as well put that Faunaphagia to good use.
Whether or not the Morrigan herself opposes people killing cattle purely to subsist on them, her geas opposes it absolutely; she can't let a farmer slaughter a cow in front of her no matter how hungry he is, because her geas cares more about the cow than it does about the farmer, no matter what she personally cares about. She is the champion of cows everywhere. She is the patron saint of the Chick-fil-A cows. She is going to save that cow regardless of who wants to eat it or why, because if she doesn't her geas is going to break into a million pieces.
Of course, she can choose to let the farmer eat his cow, thus saving his starving children, but doing so will break her geas because she's traded the cow's well-being for the human's. Enech is a bitch that way. It doesn't bind her to always defend cows except when it's inconvenient or morally questionable; it binds her to always defend cows, period. This is why people get screwed over by their geasa in Irish myth, because it's very easy to maneuver them into no-win situations that way. (Though, to be honest, I doubt the Morrigan is going to lose any sleep over depriving a farmer of his cow - she's not exactly the most lovingly empathetic goddess ever to walk the earth.)
However, she does get a little bit of a pass: she doesn't have to make it her crusade to go around blowing up slaughterhouses and cattle farms if she doesn't want to, because they're not right in her face confronting her. If she happens to pass by a cow in distress, she'll have to ride to the rescue, but if cows are getting slaughtered in China while she's at home in the Emerald Isles, she's unaware of the incident and her Enech isn't going to punish her for not immediately eradicating cattle-suffering across the globe. The purview's written a little bit confusingly, but if we go with what happens in Irish myth as well as what makes sense in play, the Morrigan is only going to need to deal with saving cows that she actually sees in danger - she can't let anything happen to them when it comes up, but she doesn't have to seek out possible cattle-murderers pre-emptively. (Of course, this will not help anyone that she happens across while she's doing something else - heaven help the poor bastards that run a slaughterhouse when the Morrigan is passing through on some other errand.)
Despite being awesomely badass in its rewards, Enech can be very punishing, so I wouldn't make it even harder for your players to handle by making it apply to all things, all the time, everywhere, especially since before they have access to things like high-level Guardian or Ultimate Perception, they have no chance in hell of hoping to handle such a global application. Just as Bres' Guest geas won't explode if he doesn't find every supermarket giving out free samples in the world and partake, so the Morrigan won't lose her Enech for not reinventing herself as the Butcher of Butchers. But when it comes to wanting to break a geas just because you feel bad keeping it... unfortunately, that's not how it works. Enech represents a sacred oath to perform a sacred duty; if you break it, even with the best intentions or in order to help someone else, you're still in breach of that sacred trust and will have to work your way back up.
Enech is fabulously simple: it does exactly what it says it does. This is often incredibly inconvenient, but that's Irish myth for you. Getting screwed over by your geasa is practically a rite of passage over there.
The Morrigan probably can eat beef, but only if it's presented to her long after it was killed - at that point, it's not an animal that can be hurt anymore, so there's no conflict that would cause her to "protect" it, just like she's not obligated to protect any already-dead cow carcasses she happens to see when she passes by. I have to imagine it would be weird to eat beef, though, all things considered, but then again the Morrigan is pretty stone-cold badass about these things, so she might not be too put off by the weird quasi-cannibalism of it. Might as well put that Faunaphagia to good use.
Whether or not the Morrigan herself opposes people killing cattle purely to subsist on them, her geas opposes it absolutely; she can't let a farmer slaughter a cow in front of her no matter how hungry he is, because her geas cares more about the cow than it does about the farmer, no matter what she personally cares about. She is the champion of cows everywhere. She is the patron saint of the Chick-fil-A cows. She is going to save that cow regardless of who wants to eat it or why, because if she doesn't her geas is going to break into a million pieces.
Of course, she can choose to let the farmer eat his cow, thus saving his starving children, but doing so will break her geas because she's traded the cow's well-being for the human's. Enech is a bitch that way. It doesn't bind her to always defend cows except when it's inconvenient or morally questionable; it binds her to always defend cows, period. This is why people get screwed over by their geasa in Irish myth, because it's very easy to maneuver them into no-win situations that way. (Though, to be honest, I doubt the Morrigan is going to lose any sleep over depriving a farmer of his cow - she's not exactly the most lovingly empathetic goddess ever to walk the earth.)
However, she does get a little bit of a pass: she doesn't have to make it her crusade to go around blowing up slaughterhouses and cattle farms if she doesn't want to, because they're not right in her face confronting her. If she happens to pass by a cow in distress, she'll have to ride to the rescue, but if cows are getting slaughtered in China while she's at home in the Emerald Isles, she's unaware of the incident and her Enech isn't going to punish her for not immediately eradicating cattle-suffering across the globe. The purview's written a little bit confusingly, but if we go with what happens in Irish myth as well as what makes sense in play, the Morrigan is only going to need to deal with saving cows that she actually sees in danger - she can't let anything happen to them when it comes up, but she doesn't have to seek out possible cattle-murderers pre-emptively. (Of course, this will not help anyone that she happens across while she's doing something else - heaven help the poor bastards that run a slaughterhouse when the Morrigan is passing through on some other errand.)
Despite being awesomely badass in its rewards, Enech can be very punishing, so I wouldn't make it even harder for your players to handle by making it apply to all things, all the time, everywhere, especially since before they have access to things like high-level Guardian or Ultimate Perception, they have no chance in hell of hoping to handle such a global application. Just as Bres' Guest geas won't explode if he doesn't find every supermarket giving out free samples in the world and partake, so the Morrigan won't lose her Enech for not reinventing herself as the Butcher of Butchers. But when it comes to wanting to break a geas just because you feel bad keeping it... unfortunately, that's not how it works. Enech represents a sacred oath to perform a sacred duty; if you break it, even with the best intentions or in order to help someone else, you're still in breach of that sacred trust and will have to work your way back up.
John Has Uninspired Titles
Question:
1)The idea I have is a Scion game focused heavily on Fate and Prophecy and how they may not be so binding, and that actions of a few can change the course of the many. What are you thoughts on a game like this? Do you have any suggestions on how to capture that 'epic' feeling lacking in the other games?
2)Storytellers also playing Scions. It's worked fairly well for us in the past (we've been able to separate ST knowledge from character knowledge), and in this game I would once again be playing my Scion of The Morrigan (since she is a goddess of prophecy and a seer), and thus The Morrigan would sort of become more or less a 'patron' or 'hidden mover' to the Band. Do you think this is viable? Is it still a 'faux pas' even if the group can make it work and still be enjoyable as any other game?
1)Phew, difficult question. I think that can definitely work. I think a game that goes against fate has to be BRUTAL on the PCs. If they are doing what hundreds of other gods could not, they need to not get away from it unscathed.
I think there are two ways to go about it. One is slow rewriting and re-"defining" prophecy. You have to find a way to make the prophecy still come true, but come true in a way that you want it. Prophecies are generally vague, so you get some play room with the words and facts of it. It's a difficult thing to do, and one that I can't seem to do off the cuff with any particular one that I can mention (i.e. not one I'm already using in my campaigns).
The other way to go about it is brute force. This happened two weeks ago in our game. Terminus and Tezcatlipoca worked together to destroy a prophecy by venturing into the Titanrealm of Fate and slowly tearing it apart. It was dangerous and horrible. It left them both scarred and "fate-fucked." They have some permanent magical problems, and their fatebonds have gone all awry. But they were able to undo the prophecy of Mexican cities falling in the order Huitzilopotchli founded them, thus saving Tenochtitlan before the rest of the team and Huitzilopotchli returned to Aztlan. It was horrible, but it succeeded.
I think both options are excellent to mine for possibilities. I think a new generation able to rewrite the last generation's prophecies is a perfect theme for Scion, but it's a difficult one to do correctly. Prophecy still has to be VERY powerful, and Fate needs to rule all. But as long as you keep that in mind, and weave the story well, I think it can be done.
2) Usually I answer with a "well if it works with your group, sure", but I can't here. My answer is a very resounding NOPE. I've gotten in a few arguments about this in the past. And you have to believe me when I say I know where you're coming from. I run an average of 120 game sessions a year. I get to play in 1 game session a year, on ST Appreciation Day when my players all get together and throw an awesome party and let me play in a game. But for the rest of the year, I'm all ST all the time. And I would love to have the chance to create and build a character to play and watch him grow along with the other characters
But it's just not a good idea, for several reasons.
a) You cannot get past favoritism. You just can't. If you think you can, you're lying to yourself, or you're doing the opposite which is just as bad(having your PC ALWAYS be the one that takes the hits and gets shat on). You don't want your players to ever think there is unfairness at the table. This is hard enough when you have friends all together. It is even harder if one of the friends you have to adjudicate is yourself.
b) Any time you're spending with that, your personal PC, could be time you spent working on a story or an NPC.
c) Anything your PC does in a scene is taking the spotlight away from something a real PC could be doing in the scene. It's hard enough to make sure the spotlight is shared without the ST hogging it also. You also have to think about the roles in the group. In my 6 player game, there's a little more overlap than in my 5 player game. And sometimes PCs dont get the spotlight they deserve. In anything but a 2-3 player game I could see an ST character making this a real problem
d) Scenes just become so much harder to run. I loathe scenes where I have to play more than one main character at once. Jumping back and forth to give their reactions, expressions, interjections is a huge pain in the ass. I think very highly of myself and my skills, but having to run every single scene playing an additional person would be taxing beyond belief. Not to mention scenes where I'm playing 3-4 main NPCs... adding a PC to that would be miserable.
I know it sucks for people who have to ST games and don't get to play in them. I truly understand. But that does not give you license to make your games worse by playing in them, and I promise you, if you have a full-time PC your game will be worse. It's just a fact. Even if you're the GOD of STs, it will be worse than if you didnt play a PC in the game and focused your energy on the players instead.
You can still do everything you want with the Morrigan being a mover and shaker to the band, but you don't have to have your pet PC in there to make it work. I promise you it cannot possibly be as enjoyable as any other game. Because you are taking a portion of your STing skills, time and energy and devoting them to yourself instead of to the players.
1)The idea I have is a Scion game focused heavily on Fate and Prophecy and how they may not be so binding, and that actions of a few can change the course of the many. What are you thoughts on a game like this? Do you have any suggestions on how to capture that 'epic' feeling lacking in the other games?
2)Storytellers also playing Scions. It's worked fairly well for us in the past (we've been able to separate ST knowledge from character knowledge), and in this game I would once again be playing my Scion of The Morrigan (since she is a goddess of prophecy and a seer), and thus The Morrigan would sort of become more or less a 'patron' or 'hidden mover' to the Band. Do you think this is viable? Is it still a 'faux pas' even if the group can make it work and still be enjoyable as any other game?
1)Phew, difficult question. I think that can definitely work. I think a game that goes against fate has to be BRUTAL on the PCs. If they are doing what hundreds of other gods could not, they need to not get away from it unscathed.
I think there are two ways to go about it. One is slow rewriting and re-"defining" prophecy. You have to find a way to make the prophecy still come true, but come true in a way that you want it. Prophecies are generally vague, so you get some play room with the words and facts of it. It's a difficult thing to do, and one that I can't seem to do off the cuff with any particular one that I can mention (i.e. not one I'm already using in my campaigns).
The other way to go about it is brute force. This happened two weeks ago in our game. Terminus and Tezcatlipoca worked together to destroy a prophecy by venturing into the Titanrealm of Fate and slowly tearing it apart. It was dangerous and horrible. It left them both scarred and "fate-fucked." They have some permanent magical problems, and their fatebonds have gone all awry. But they were able to undo the prophecy of Mexican cities falling in the order Huitzilopotchli founded them, thus saving Tenochtitlan before the rest of the team and Huitzilopotchli returned to Aztlan. It was horrible, but it succeeded.
I think both options are excellent to mine for possibilities. I think a new generation able to rewrite the last generation's prophecies is a perfect theme for Scion, but it's a difficult one to do correctly. Prophecy still has to be VERY powerful, and Fate needs to rule all. But as long as you keep that in mind, and weave the story well, I think it can be done.
2) Usually I answer with a "well if it works with your group, sure", but I can't here. My answer is a very resounding NOPE. I've gotten in a few arguments about this in the past. And you have to believe me when I say I know where you're coming from. I run an average of 120 game sessions a year. I get to play in 1 game session a year, on ST Appreciation Day when my players all get together and throw an awesome party and let me play in a game. But for the rest of the year, I'm all ST all the time. And I would love to have the chance to create and build a character to play and watch him grow along with the other characters
But it's just not a good idea, for several reasons.
a) You cannot get past favoritism. You just can't. If you think you can, you're lying to yourself, or you're doing the opposite which is just as bad(having your PC ALWAYS be the one that takes the hits and gets shat on). You don't want your players to ever think there is unfairness at the table. This is hard enough when you have friends all together. It is even harder if one of the friends you have to adjudicate is yourself.
b) Any time you're spending with that, your personal PC, could be time you spent working on a story or an NPC.
c) Anything your PC does in a scene is taking the spotlight away from something a real PC could be doing in the scene. It's hard enough to make sure the spotlight is shared without the ST hogging it also. You also have to think about the roles in the group. In my 6 player game, there's a little more overlap than in my 5 player game. And sometimes PCs dont get the spotlight they deserve. In anything but a 2-3 player game I could see an ST character making this a real problem
d) Scenes just become so much harder to run. I loathe scenes where I have to play more than one main character at once. Jumping back and forth to give their reactions, expressions, interjections is a huge pain in the ass. I think very highly of myself and my skills, but having to run every single scene playing an additional person would be taxing beyond belief. Not to mention scenes where I'm playing 3-4 main NPCs... adding a PC to that would be miserable.
I know it sucks for people who have to ST games and don't get to play in them. I truly understand. But that does not give you license to make your games worse by playing in them, and I promise you, if you have a full-time PC your game will be worse. It's just a fact. Even if you're the GOD of STs, it will be worse than if you didnt play a PC in the game and focused your energy on the players instead.
You can still do everything you want with the Morrigan being a mover and shaker to the band, but you don't have to have your pet PC in there to make it work. I promise you it cannot possibly be as enjoyable as any other game. Because you are taking a portion of your STing skills, time and energy and devoting them to yourself instead of to the players.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Seers and Soothsayers
Question: What are the criteria you use to determine whether or not a God gets the Mystery Purview associated? I noticed that in all three of your homebrew pantheons, not a single of the Legend 12 gods has Mystery associated. Additionally, with your changes to associated purviews, four canon pantheons and two homebrew pantheons lack any gods with Prophecy associated as opposed to just one in canon. While myths are core to Scion, shouldn't game balance be considered too?
Actually, two of the homebrewed pantheons have a god with Prophecy: Svantovit of the Bogovi and Shamash and Nanshe of the Anunna. You are correct, though, none of them have Mystery.
Mystery is one of the rarer purviews, and you're right, it's become rarer still since some of our rewrites. Our criteria for Mystery is actually very basic: a god gets it if they have some kind of strong association with knowledge from an unexplainable source. Odin gets it because he gained the runes of knowledge from hanging himself on Yggdrasil. Dionysus gets it because of his in vino veritas and madness-equivalent-to-enlightenment concepts. Damballa gets it because he inspires his followers with sudden occult knowledge from no explainable source, and so on and so forth. Just being very wise or being able to come up with an answer aren't enough for us, because those are things you could do with Epic Intelligence. There has to be a strong component of knowledge from beyond the veil for us to associate a god or goddess with Mystery.
Alas, none of the three pantheons on our downloads page had anybody with Mystery, but that's not overly surprising, since they're just not mysticism-and-smoke kinds of pantheons. Some cultures hold that kind of thing in awe, and some don't; the Elohim are all about some badassery and some kingliness and some deciding the order of the world, but they don't have a lot of interest in arcane knowledge, so none of them ended up with Mystery associated because it's something they just don't do. Similarly, the very earthy Bogovi and the very civic-minded Anunna don't come from religions with any real strong mysticism, mystery or vision traditions or rituals; their religions were practiced and celebrated in different ways and their deities renowned for different things.
Prophecy and Mystery are rare, but that's not really a mistake, I don't think - they're rare in mythology, too, even in cultures wherein they happen in important ways. Prophets and seers are fairly uncommon and usually held in pretty high esteem because of it; even pantheons like the Aesir, which pretty much live and die based on prophecy and are probably the most prophecy-heavy pantheon out there, don't have everyone practicing it simply because it's a skill that only a select few ever master. The cultures that view those things as most important (for Prophecy, the Aesir and Dodekatheon) are the most likely to have them, but there's no reason others, in which even stories involving prophecies are rare, would necessarily have anyone associated with them. I don't have a problem with there being no prophets among the Elohim, because none of the Elohim ever foretell the future, just like I have no problem with there being no Chaos god among the incredibly order-focused Yazata or no problem with there being no Frost god among the desert-dwelling Aztlanti.
(I feel compelled at this point to note that we're not done with associated overhauls yet, though - the Aztlanti, Amatsukami, Celestial Bureacracy and Loa still haven't had their turn, so a lot of them are subject to change. For example, I'm pretty sure Quetzalcoatl will be getting Prophecy back once we're finished with the Aztec gods, but sadly we're not quite at the stage where we can post things to the website yet.)
Game balance is very important in Scion, but the spread of associated purviews isn't unbalancing for the game at all in its current form; you will never have every purview represented in every pantheon without shoehorning things in where they don't belong, and I don't think there's any need to. One of the beautiful things about Scion, after all, is that you can pick up whatever purviews you like; you're not stuck with only the things your divine parent does, and while it'd be nice to have them at a reduced XP cost, the discount is not nearly enough to make operating without it unreasonable (especially for Mystery and Prophecy, which don't even have alternate boon levels to buy). The game is not made unplayable for those who want to invest in non-associated purviews; at the very worst, it's made mildly inconvenient in one small dimension. Each pantheon has its own unique flavor, and that's going to show up in its associated spread; I'm not about to use flimsy reasoning to try to claim that some poor Tuatha has Darkness when they don't, or start stripping away Animal associations from the Aztlanti and Pesedjet because they have more of that purview than everybody else. It's not necessary for every pantheon to represent every available association; in fact, it would detract from their unique flavor and make them more of a whitewash, something that we're constantly trying to avoid because (outside of PSP and Virtues) there's already precious little mechanically dividing them. It's reasonable for a pantheon's associations to reflect what the individual gods and the culture as a whole revere and practice in myths, even if that means some purviews won't be represented and others will do double duty.
I recognize that sometimes you have a cool concept and you really want to bring it into play, but nobody in that pantheon has the stats you want most. That can be frustrating. But the XP difference is not huge; it really is not, especially not over time, and I've never had a PC that didn't start buying boons or Epic Attributes that weren't associated by the time they were Legend 5 anyway. Your divine parent's associations are there to illustrate that, as their child, you're predisposed to be good at what they're good at. Not very many gods are good at Prophecy and Mystery, which are traditionally culture-specific rarities that are held in great esteem by the pantheons that have them. That doesn't have to be a bad thing; in fact, becoming the first holder of occult knowledge for a pantheon that has never had one before is a worthy and badass goal for a budding Scion.
I'm surprised you singled out Prophecy and Mystery, to be honest. They're far from the least-represented purviews - at the moment, there are fewer gods with Darkness (10), Frost (5), Illusion (6), Industry (6) or Stars (11) than there are with Prophecy or Mystery (13 and 12, respectively), and they're right on par with other low-population purviews like Chaos or Moon.
Actually, two of the homebrewed pantheons have a god with Prophecy: Svantovit of the Bogovi and Shamash and Nanshe of the Anunna. You are correct, though, none of them have Mystery.
Mystery is one of the rarer purviews, and you're right, it's become rarer still since some of our rewrites. Our criteria for Mystery is actually very basic: a god gets it if they have some kind of strong association with knowledge from an unexplainable source. Odin gets it because he gained the runes of knowledge from hanging himself on Yggdrasil. Dionysus gets it because of his in vino veritas and madness-equivalent-to-enlightenment concepts. Damballa gets it because he inspires his followers with sudden occult knowledge from no explainable source, and so on and so forth. Just being very wise or being able to come up with an answer aren't enough for us, because those are things you could do with Epic Intelligence. There has to be a strong component of knowledge from beyond the veil for us to associate a god or goddess with Mystery.
Alas, none of the three pantheons on our downloads page had anybody with Mystery, but that's not overly surprising, since they're just not mysticism-and-smoke kinds of pantheons. Some cultures hold that kind of thing in awe, and some don't; the Elohim are all about some badassery and some kingliness and some deciding the order of the world, but they don't have a lot of interest in arcane knowledge, so none of them ended up with Mystery associated because it's something they just don't do. Similarly, the very earthy Bogovi and the very civic-minded Anunna don't come from religions with any real strong mysticism, mystery or vision traditions or rituals; their religions were practiced and celebrated in different ways and their deities renowned for different things.
Prophecy and Mystery are rare, but that's not really a mistake, I don't think - they're rare in mythology, too, even in cultures wherein they happen in important ways. Prophets and seers are fairly uncommon and usually held in pretty high esteem because of it; even pantheons like the Aesir, which pretty much live and die based on prophecy and are probably the most prophecy-heavy pantheon out there, don't have everyone practicing it simply because it's a skill that only a select few ever master. The cultures that view those things as most important (for Prophecy, the Aesir and Dodekatheon) are the most likely to have them, but there's no reason others, in which even stories involving prophecies are rare, would necessarily have anyone associated with them. I don't have a problem with there being no prophets among the Elohim, because none of the Elohim ever foretell the future, just like I have no problem with there being no Chaos god among the incredibly order-focused Yazata or no problem with there being no Frost god among the desert-dwelling Aztlanti.
(I feel compelled at this point to note that we're not done with associated overhauls yet, though - the Aztlanti, Amatsukami, Celestial Bureacracy and Loa still haven't had their turn, so a lot of them are subject to change. For example, I'm pretty sure Quetzalcoatl will be getting Prophecy back once we're finished with the Aztec gods, but sadly we're not quite at the stage where we can post things to the website yet.)
Game balance is very important in Scion, but the spread of associated purviews isn't unbalancing for the game at all in its current form; you will never have every purview represented in every pantheon without shoehorning things in where they don't belong, and I don't think there's any need to. One of the beautiful things about Scion, after all, is that you can pick up whatever purviews you like; you're not stuck with only the things your divine parent does, and while it'd be nice to have them at a reduced XP cost, the discount is not nearly enough to make operating without it unreasonable (especially for Mystery and Prophecy, which don't even have alternate boon levels to buy). The game is not made unplayable for those who want to invest in non-associated purviews; at the very worst, it's made mildly inconvenient in one small dimension. Each pantheon has its own unique flavor, and that's going to show up in its associated spread; I'm not about to use flimsy reasoning to try to claim that some poor Tuatha has Darkness when they don't, or start stripping away Animal associations from the Aztlanti and Pesedjet because they have more of that purview than everybody else. It's not necessary for every pantheon to represent every available association; in fact, it would detract from their unique flavor and make them more of a whitewash, something that we're constantly trying to avoid because (outside of PSP and Virtues) there's already precious little mechanically dividing them. It's reasonable for a pantheon's associations to reflect what the individual gods and the culture as a whole revere and practice in myths, even if that means some purviews won't be represented and others will do double duty.
I recognize that sometimes you have a cool concept and you really want to bring it into play, but nobody in that pantheon has the stats you want most. That can be frustrating. But the XP difference is not huge; it really is not, especially not over time, and I've never had a PC that didn't start buying boons or Epic Attributes that weren't associated by the time they were Legend 5 anyway. Your divine parent's associations are there to illustrate that, as their child, you're predisposed to be good at what they're good at. Not very many gods are good at Prophecy and Mystery, which are traditionally culture-specific rarities that are held in great esteem by the pantheons that have them. That doesn't have to be a bad thing; in fact, becoming the first holder of occult knowledge for a pantheon that has never had one before is a worthy and badass goal for a budding Scion.
I'm surprised you singled out Prophecy and Mystery, to be honest. They're far from the least-represented purviews - at the moment, there are fewer gods with Darkness (10), Frost (5), Illusion (6), Industry (6) or Stars (11) than there are with Prophecy or Mystery (13 and 12, respectively), and they're right on par with other low-population purviews like Chaos or Moon.
Political Free-for-All
Question: What will you do if/when all your PCs get to legend 12? At that point it seems the older gods start to get nervous.
As they grow in power, the PCs' political status will inevitably change. Already they're discovering that they're fairly powerful forces even at Legend 9 or 10; Sowiljr already numbers among the most beautiful gods in existence, Jioni can teleport further than many less-adept Psychopomp gods without even breaking a sweat, Eztli delivered a beatdown to a Legend 12 goddess that she'll be feeling for weeks, and Vala's powers of prophecy exceed those of anyone else in her pantheon. Already they're beginning to shift and try to find their own niches, whether they're carving out their own unique territories and roles or competing with other gods at roughly the same power level to attempt to take theirs. It's a really fascinating things to watch, and of course the gods choose to oppose some of them and aid others for their own political ends.
Indeed, some gods may become nervous, especially those with a history of smacking down possible competition for their thrones with extreme prejudice (looking at you, Shango) or those with notoriously bad tempers when others do things they perceive as competing with them (Dian Cecht, you are a horrible person). On the other hand, many gods may be overjoyed to have new, powerful allies to help in the war against the Titans and welcome them eagerly into the ranks, especially if they're related or happen to be very personable (I mean, how long could you really stay pissed at a guy with ten Epic Charisma?). Still others are likely to continue puppetmastering them from behind the scenes (or attempting to do so, at least) - if they're good at it, a Legend 12 tool is probably even more useful than a lower-Legend one, and depending on the PC they may be able to get away with it for quite some time. Just as Odin can effortlessly direct Thor wherever he wants, so might he be able to influence PCs into doing what he wants regardless of how powerful they are. It'll be more difficult, but for many manipulative types, challenge is the spice of life.
Some PCs, I'm sure, will agitate and try to change up their pantheon's politics and hierarchy - some may even succeed. Others may be happy just to be part of the pantheon and have no interest in swapping its rulers or taking over someone else's job. I don't foresee any of them having any trouble finding something to do, however, or any pantheon ever getting tired of fielding them against various threats - personal or public, battlefield or political.
As they grow in power, the PCs' political status will inevitably change. Already they're discovering that they're fairly powerful forces even at Legend 9 or 10; Sowiljr already numbers among the most beautiful gods in existence, Jioni can teleport further than many less-adept Psychopomp gods without even breaking a sweat, Eztli delivered a beatdown to a Legend 12 goddess that she'll be feeling for weeks, and Vala's powers of prophecy exceed those of anyone else in her pantheon. Already they're beginning to shift and try to find their own niches, whether they're carving out their own unique territories and roles or competing with other gods at roughly the same power level to attempt to take theirs. It's a really fascinating things to watch, and of course the gods choose to oppose some of them and aid others for their own political ends.
Indeed, some gods may become nervous, especially those with a history of smacking down possible competition for their thrones with extreme prejudice (looking at you, Shango) or those with notoriously bad tempers when others do things they perceive as competing with them (Dian Cecht, you are a horrible person). On the other hand, many gods may be overjoyed to have new, powerful allies to help in the war against the Titans and welcome them eagerly into the ranks, especially if they're related or happen to be very personable (I mean, how long could you really stay pissed at a guy with ten Epic Charisma?). Still others are likely to continue puppetmastering them from behind the scenes (or attempting to do so, at least) - if they're good at it, a Legend 12 tool is probably even more useful than a lower-Legend one, and depending on the PC they may be able to get away with it for quite some time. Just as Odin can effortlessly direct Thor wherever he wants, so might he be able to influence PCs into doing what he wants regardless of how powerful they are. It'll be more difficult, but for many manipulative types, challenge is the spice of life.
Some PCs, I'm sure, will agitate and try to change up their pantheon's politics and hierarchy - some may even succeed. Others may be happy just to be part of the pantheon and have no interest in swapping its rulers or taking over someone else's job. I don't foresee any of them having any trouble finding something to do, however, or any pantheon ever getting tired of fielding them against various threats - personal or public, battlefield or political.
Trickster Shell Game
Question: In Scion: Hero, Eshu is listed as another name for Legba, but I feel that there are enough differences between the two gods for them to be separate deities. Am I wrong in this view? If not, would Eshu be high enough Legend to be a PC god, and what would his associated purviews be? (I'm not very familiar with the Loa of Voodoo or Orisha of Yoruba, so sorry if this question seems silly.)
Don't be sorry! We love the orisha and we love it when other people do, too.
Eshu and Legba are basically the same person in African myth; they're both crazy trickster gods with large phalluses and an inclination toward making everyone's lives more difficult in order to teach them a lesson (though, of course, both also have the power to open doorways and provide communication between gods and mankind). The real difference is just where you are geographically, as Eshu is a prominent figure in the Yoruba religion, while Legba/Elegba is more often found further east and north. Functionally and story-wise, they're the same person; the Yoruba just happen to call him something different.
However, I'd note that most of the confusion probably comes from the figure of Papa Legba in Haitian and New Orleans voudun; he's quite different in character, as the new world syncretic beliefs have basically left him with all his crossroads and message-bearing connotations but removed all his traditional trickster and virility associations (which have been relocated to the New-World-only figure of Kalfu). In essence, the New World splits Eshu into two parts - the benevolent Legba and the malevolent Kalfu - whereas in Africa he's a single figure, capable of being helpful or mischievous as the mood takes him. So really, voudun (and Scion) have already done the work for you - if you want Legba and Eshu to be separate beings, just use Legba and Kalfu as they exist in the west, and you're pretty close already.
If you're trying to get back to some African roots, however, I wouldn't separate Eshu and Legba; they're pretty much identical, with some of their stories even being ascribed to one or the other verbatim depending on the origin of the storyteller. For the opener of the way and trickster extraordinaire of African myth, I'd probably associate Eshu with Epic Manipulation, Chaos, Magic and Psychopomp as the strongest facets of his character.
Trying to figure out what to use with all the differences between African gods as they exist in their traditional religions, orisha as they exist in South and Central American worship, and loa as they exist in Cuba and the United States is a crazy mish-mash of a journey that most games just have to arrive at based on what the PCs and ST have in mind (are we going to set most of this stuff in Louisiana? Great, we're using the voudun version. Are we actually going to Africa and planning story arcs set there? Might want to use the orisha of the Yoruba religion, then). We'll tackle it one day in our Great Loa Rewrite, but for the moment, we're in the same limbo. We salute your efforts; carry on, sir or madam.
Don't be sorry! We love the orisha and we love it when other people do, too.
Eshu and Legba are basically the same person in African myth; they're both crazy trickster gods with large phalluses and an inclination toward making everyone's lives more difficult in order to teach them a lesson (though, of course, both also have the power to open doorways and provide communication between gods and mankind). The real difference is just where you are geographically, as Eshu is a prominent figure in the Yoruba religion, while Legba/Elegba is more often found further east and north. Functionally and story-wise, they're the same person; the Yoruba just happen to call him something different.
However, I'd note that most of the confusion probably comes from the figure of Papa Legba in Haitian and New Orleans voudun; he's quite different in character, as the new world syncretic beliefs have basically left him with all his crossroads and message-bearing connotations but removed all his traditional trickster and virility associations (which have been relocated to the New-World-only figure of Kalfu). In essence, the New World splits Eshu into two parts - the benevolent Legba and the malevolent Kalfu - whereas in Africa he's a single figure, capable of being helpful or mischievous as the mood takes him. So really, voudun (and Scion) have already done the work for you - if you want Legba and Eshu to be separate beings, just use Legba and Kalfu as they exist in the west, and you're pretty close already.
If you're trying to get back to some African roots, however, I wouldn't separate Eshu and Legba; they're pretty much identical, with some of their stories even being ascribed to one or the other verbatim depending on the origin of the storyteller. For the opener of the way and trickster extraordinaire of African myth, I'd probably associate Eshu with Epic Manipulation, Chaos, Magic and Psychopomp as the strongest facets of his character.
Trying to figure out what to use with all the differences between African gods as they exist in their traditional religions, orisha as they exist in South and Central American worship, and loa as they exist in Cuba and the United States is a crazy mish-mash of a journey that most games just have to arrive at based on what the PCs and ST have in mind (are we going to set most of this stuff in Louisiana? Great, we're using the voudun version. Are we actually going to Africa and planning story arcs set there? Might want to use the orisha of the Yoruba religion, then). We'll tackle it one day in our Great Loa Rewrite, but for the moment, we're in the same limbo. We salute your efforts; carry on, sir or madam.
They Say Thee Nay!
Question: How do your resistance rolls scale with Epic Stats? It seems improbable to ever resist a knack from someone with 5-6 epics because of automatic successes that the resistance roll doesn't have.
This is completely true, and it was one of the major problems that Scion's original system had - a Willpower + Integrity + Legend roll was almost never going to win against an aggressor with more than a couple of dots in an Epic Attribute. The original rules attempt to solve this problem by letting you just spend a point of Willpower to ignore any mental or social effect, but that's just as bad in a different direction (we don't want mental and social power-users, Scions included, to end up totally fangless, after all). Obviously, this was all lame and definitely didn't work past the early Hero level, but at the same time we didn't want to lose the coolness factor of getting to roll a resist; a static "resist DV" calculation removed the ability to do things like blow Legendary deeds or Virtue channels for truly epic feats of spiritual fortitude, so we didn't like that solution, either (though many games do use some variation on that idea and seem to do fine with it).
So instead, we offer several trees of knacks to allow PCs to raise their resistance to a competitive level with their own Epic Attributes: Bedazzling Image and Disorienting Countenance are found under Appearance, and work on the theory that you are so visually distracting that it's difficult to concentrate on you hard enough to break your will. Blockade of Reason and Parapet of the Mind are under Intelligence, and allow you to draw on the incredible power of your sharply honed and intricate mind to reason through and reject outside interference. And Lateral Thinking and Crazy Like a Fox are under Wits, illustrating that your mind is so slippery quick and responsive that it's difficult to keep up with it long enough to affect it. The second-level knacks add a few dice to your roll, giving you a leg up on your would-be puppetmasters, and the third-level ones allow you to gain your Epic Attribute successes instead of rolling your Legend, thus bringing you up to an even footing with users of mental powers.
Having three different Epic Attributes gives PCs of various concepts options for buffing their resists; like everything else in the game, it's something that you can choose to invest in or not as you please, depending on how important resistance is to you and your character concept. Not everybody decides to go for it, but those who do usually find cool ways to weave it into their characters - whether it's Sowiljr's mind-blowing hotness overwhelming anyone who tries to meddle with him, Vala's impregnably complex mind, too difficult to unravel in order to command, or Eztli's lightning-quick, so-fast-you-missed-it thought processes simply leaving any lesser immortals in the dust wondering why she was already moving before they even finished trying to redirect her.
This is completely true, and it was one of the major problems that Scion's original system had - a Willpower + Integrity + Legend roll was almost never going to win against an aggressor with more than a couple of dots in an Epic Attribute. The original rules attempt to solve this problem by letting you just spend a point of Willpower to ignore any mental or social effect, but that's just as bad in a different direction (we don't want mental and social power-users, Scions included, to end up totally fangless, after all). Obviously, this was all lame and definitely didn't work past the early Hero level, but at the same time we didn't want to lose the coolness factor of getting to roll a resist; a static "resist DV" calculation removed the ability to do things like blow Legendary deeds or Virtue channels for truly epic feats of spiritual fortitude, so we didn't like that solution, either (though many games do use some variation on that idea and seem to do fine with it).
So instead, we offer several trees of knacks to allow PCs to raise their resistance to a competitive level with their own Epic Attributes: Bedazzling Image and Disorienting Countenance are found under Appearance, and work on the theory that you are so visually distracting that it's difficult to concentrate on you hard enough to break your will. Blockade of Reason and Parapet of the Mind are under Intelligence, and allow you to draw on the incredible power of your sharply honed and intricate mind to reason through and reject outside interference. And Lateral Thinking and Crazy Like a Fox are under Wits, illustrating that your mind is so slippery quick and responsive that it's difficult to keep up with it long enough to affect it. The second-level knacks add a few dice to your roll, giving you a leg up on your would-be puppetmasters, and the third-level ones allow you to gain your Epic Attribute successes instead of rolling your Legend, thus bringing you up to an even footing with users of mental powers.
Having three different Epic Attributes gives PCs of various concepts options for buffing their resists; like everything else in the game, it's something that you can choose to invest in or not as you please, depending on how important resistance is to you and your character concept. Not everybody decides to go for it, but those who do usually find cool ways to weave it into their characters - whether it's Sowiljr's mind-blowing hotness overwhelming anyone who tries to meddle with him, Vala's impregnably complex mind, too difficult to unravel in order to command, or Eztli's lightning-quick, so-fast-you-missed-it thought processes simply leaving any lesser immortals in the dust wondering why she was already moving before they even finished trying to redirect her.
Brother, My Brother
Question: One of my PCs playing a Scion of Amaterasu recently killed his half-brother - admittedly in an attempt to stop him from doing dark deeds. What is the general attitude to kin-slaying amongst the different pantheons, as I can imagine this will pop up again at some point and wondering what opportunities for trouble (I mean development) I can put my players through?
You'd be hard-pressed to find a culture whose myths don't find fratricide pretty much as abhorrent a crime as there is. It's interesting that you're working with the Amatsukami, because they're actually one of the few pantheons that doesn't have an immediate and incredibly violent response to kin-slaying - or, at least, not necessarily to the extreme that other pantheons do. It's still definitely, definitely not okay - not only murder, but murder of a family member is beyond the pale of social rules for pretty much everybody - but they're not the Dodekatheon.
However, if, like most Scions, your PC is in a band with children of gods from other pantheons, he may have to deal with their extreme reactions (or even their parents'). The Dodekatheon are notoriously harsh when it comes to punishing kin-slayers - murdering a family member (especially a divine one) is likely to gain you the extremely unpleasant attentions of folks like Nemesis or the Furies, not to mention usually involving the extreme censure and disavowal of any Greeks who know about it. Greek mythology usually assigns great calamity, misfortune and eventual destruction to those who murder their families; even if your PC's Greek bandmates are understanding that it had to be done, they may want to give him a wide berth to avoid getting hit by any of the inevitable fallout. The Norse are similarly harsh when it comes to the murder of family members, though, depending on how liberal the Aesir your PC associates with are, he might be able to appease some of them by making an appropriately massive weregild to Amaterasu for the loss of her son (and I doubt she'd argue). Persian culture, especially where it rubs up against the Greek lands, is very disapproving of familicide of any kind, and the Tuatha are likely to be appalled by such an act.
Your PC has all the makings of a tragic hero; he may have done what he did for the good of everyone and it might have been the only choice, but fratricide is right up there with the most unforgivable sins for a lot of pantheons. He's likely to find himself dogged by that stigma for a very long time if not forever; depending on his personality, he may try to provide restitution to the family to try to smooth things over, perform some prescribed act (or acts) of penance to appease his allies, or just try to continue being the best hero he can be and hope that his valorous deeds eventually outshine the unfortunate necessity of killing his brother. Scions are by definition more modern than their pantheons, so he may find that his band supports him, as they're likely to have seen firsthand what said brother was capable of and to have wanted him out of the picture.
Sometimes you just have to stick to your guns. It may make life hell when dealing with the fratricide-opposed pantheons... but then again, Kane can seriously be a huge dick.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a culture whose myths don't find fratricide pretty much as abhorrent a crime as there is. It's interesting that you're working with the Amatsukami, because they're actually one of the few pantheons that doesn't have an immediate and incredibly violent response to kin-slaying - or, at least, not necessarily to the extreme that other pantheons do. It's still definitely, definitely not okay - not only murder, but murder of a family member is beyond the pale of social rules for pretty much everybody - but they're not the Dodekatheon.
However, if, like most Scions, your PC is in a band with children of gods from other pantheons, he may have to deal with their extreme reactions (or even their parents'). The Dodekatheon are notoriously harsh when it comes to punishing kin-slayers - murdering a family member (especially a divine one) is likely to gain you the extremely unpleasant attentions of folks like Nemesis or the Furies, not to mention usually involving the extreme censure and disavowal of any Greeks who know about it. Greek mythology usually assigns great calamity, misfortune and eventual destruction to those who murder their families; even if your PC's Greek bandmates are understanding that it had to be done, they may want to give him a wide berth to avoid getting hit by any of the inevitable fallout. The Norse are similarly harsh when it comes to the murder of family members, though, depending on how liberal the Aesir your PC associates with are, he might be able to appease some of them by making an appropriately massive weregild to Amaterasu for the loss of her son (and I doubt she'd argue). Persian culture, especially where it rubs up against the Greek lands, is very disapproving of familicide of any kind, and the Tuatha are likely to be appalled by such an act.
Your PC has all the makings of a tragic hero; he may have done what he did for the good of everyone and it might have been the only choice, but fratricide is right up there with the most unforgivable sins for a lot of pantheons. He's likely to find himself dogged by that stigma for a very long time if not forever; depending on his personality, he may try to provide restitution to the family to try to smooth things over, perform some prescribed act (or acts) of penance to appease his allies, or just try to continue being the best hero he can be and hope that his valorous deeds eventually outshine the unfortunate necessity of killing his brother. Scions are by definition more modern than their pantheons, so he may find that his band supports him, as they're likely to have seen firsthand what said brother was capable of and to have wanted him out of the picture.
Sometimes you just have to stick to your guns. It may make life hell when dealing with the fratricide-opposed pantheons... but then again, Kane can seriously be a huge dick.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Gilgamesh is Better than You
Question: I read somewhere that Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine instead of half. Since you guys have obviously done some amazingly thorough research I figured I would run this by you. Is this Gilgamesh thing true or false, and if true how is it possible? (Sorry, I don't remember where I got this information.)
Gilgamesh is indeed frequently referred to in his myths as "two-thirds divine", a repeated phrase that highlights his badassery for those listening to the tale. It's mathematically improbable, as you note, but it's likely that it isn't intended to be literal; it's a poetic device to describe how Gilgamesh is not just more divine than a human, but more divine than the average demigod as well. He's not just a demigod, he's more demigod than he is man. The Babylonians were very keen to make sure people understood that Gilgamesh was a super warrior pimp.
As far as his actual parentage goes, his mother, Ninsun or Ninsuna, is definitely a goddess, and a fairly important one at that as the daughter of almighty Anu. His father Lugalbanda frequently appears to be merely a mortal soldier and later a mortal king, which would make Gilgamesh a standard Scion, but Lugalbanda also ends up getting deified later in Babylonian religion, so you could easily take the stance that he was actually a Scion. Which would make Gilgamesh three-fourths divine, not two-thirds, but it's still an option!
We like to play Gilgamesh as a Scion of Anu, his grandfather, which explains why he's so awesome and why he gets so much special treatment throughout his stories (there's a lot of people not being allowed to murder him, gods helping him when he asks, and the eventual decision by Anu to let him help judge the dead in the Underworld as a near-equal instead of just being sent there like everybody else when he dies). In that case, you could also decide that being "two-thirds divine" just refers to his eminently powerful patron - sort of the same way an uppity Scion of Zeus might refer to himself as more divine than your garden-variety Scion of Hermes.
Gilgamesh is indeed frequently referred to in his myths as "two-thirds divine", a repeated phrase that highlights his badassery for those listening to the tale. It's mathematically improbable, as you note, but it's likely that it isn't intended to be literal; it's a poetic device to describe how Gilgamesh is not just more divine than a human, but more divine than the average demigod as well. He's not just a demigod, he's more demigod than he is man. The Babylonians were very keen to make sure people understood that Gilgamesh was a super warrior pimp.
As far as his actual parentage goes, his mother, Ninsun or Ninsuna, is definitely a goddess, and a fairly important one at that as the daughter of almighty Anu. His father Lugalbanda frequently appears to be merely a mortal soldier and later a mortal king, which would make Gilgamesh a standard Scion, but Lugalbanda also ends up getting deified later in Babylonian religion, so you could easily take the stance that he was actually a Scion. Which would make Gilgamesh three-fourths divine, not two-thirds, but it's still an option!
We like to play Gilgamesh as a Scion of Anu, his grandfather, which explains why he's so awesome and why he gets so much special treatment throughout his stories (there's a lot of people not being allowed to murder him, gods helping him when he asks, and the eventual decision by Anu to let him help judge the dead in the Underworld as a near-equal instead of just being sent there like everybody else when he dies). In that case, you could also decide that being "two-thirds divine" just refers to his eminently powerful patron - sort of the same way an uppity Scion of Zeus might refer to himself as more divine than your garden-variety Scion of Hermes.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Lovely Nanshe
Question: I love the painting of Nanshe that you created. It means a lot to me because of my personal affinity for this goddess. This may sound odd, but I would like to know if I can use it as my Facebook profile picture. I am someone that is not comfortable with placing a photo of myself on the internet and, therefore, have never done so. This is why I would like to use another kind of image and the one that you created is perfect. Thank you.
Hi, there!
I'm glad you like the painting - so do I, but we're not the original artists. The painting of Nanshe on our site is actually simply titled "Goddess" and is by the very talented Jennifer Lee, who graciously allowed us to use it and whose art you can see over here at her DeviantArt page. If you'd like to use it for something, just shoot her a message over there to ask for permission.
We here at JSR have many talents, but painting is not one of them. As always, we're super grateful to all the talented artists who have allowed us to use their work to make this place look spiffy.
Hi, there!
I'm glad you like the painting - so do I, but we're not the original artists. The painting of Nanshe on our site is actually simply titled "Goddess" and is by the very talented Jennifer Lee, who graciously allowed us to use it and whose art you can see over here at her DeviantArt page. If you'd like to use it for something, just shoot her a message over there to ask for permission.
We here at JSR have many talents, but painting is not one of them. As always, we're super grateful to all the talented artists who have allowed us to use their work to make this place look spiffy.
Self-Determination
Question: Does the Fate realm trump the other realms? It seems that a realm that has the ability to alter outcomes of other legendary Beings would be pretty terrifying. Wouldn't the Titan avatars and gods seek to eliminate fate all together? Especially our favorite one-eyed Wednesday?
Comprenion is a unique place, no argument there; it's pretty much consensus among our players that it's by far the most frightening Faterealm, and though some of the PCs have gone there in the past, in general they try to avoid it whenever there's even the tiniest sliver of a chance that they could be doing something else instead.
In a sense, it does trump the other realms; Fate still applies to everyone, after all, Titan or not, but when it comes to individual Avatars and actions, the Fate realm does not always get an instant I-Win Button. Whether or not you can change Fate, or at least bend it so that its outcome is more what you want it to be without actually changing its terms, is one of the biggest themes in our games; Fate itself may be untouchable, but its representatives aren't necessarily. Gods and Titans are just as likely to oppose them as to oppose anything else, particularly if they have some control over Fate already (i.e., mages), though, as with any Titanrealm, they might find themselves suffering the consequences in short order. A certain deity is actually marching on Comprenion in one of our games right now, though what they plan to accomplish and how they plan to go about it is still a mystery (and one the PCs should probably get on, stat).
But good heavens, no - nobody is insane enough to try to actually kill the Fates or destroy Comprenion. If killing a Titan Avatar from another realm might permanently blow up some aspect of life in the World, what would killing a Titan Avatar of Comprenion do? Sure, it might theoretically cause everyone to be free of Fate's strictures - but it might also stop anyone from ever using Magic, Mystery or Prophecy again, cause Fateful prophecies to bind even more tightly without moderation or start occurring spontaneously, or even obliterate all of existence without the background of Fate to support it. The gods simply have no idea what would happen if they tried to blow up Comprenion and its representatives (what are they going to do, ask Mystery?), so no one who isn't full-blown insane and desperate is going to try.
Which is not to say that someone (cough, cough, Odin) might not become insanely desperate enough to try it at some point, but it seems likely that the rest of the gods would unite to stop him or her as soon as they realized what was going on. Killing Titans is always Bad with a capital B; messing around with Fate Titans is terrifying.
Comprenion is a unique place, no argument there; it's pretty much consensus among our players that it's by far the most frightening Faterealm, and though some of the PCs have gone there in the past, in general they try to avoid it whenever there's even the tiniest sliver of a chance that they could be doing something else instead.
In a sense, it does trump the other realms; Fate still applies to everyone, after all, Titan or not, but when it comes to individual Avatars and actions, the Fate realm does not always get an instant I-Win Button. Whether or not you can change Fate, or at least bend it so that its outcome is more what you want it to be without actually changing its terms, is one of the biggest themes in our games; Fate itself may be untouchable, but its representatives aren't necessarily. Gods and Titans are just as likely to oppose them as to oppose anything else, particularly if they have some control over Fate already (i.e., mages), though, as with any Titanrealm, they might find themselves suffering the consequences in short order. A certain deity is actually marching on Comprenion in one of our games right now, though what they plan to accomplish and how they plan to go about it is still a mystery (and one the PCs should probably get on, stat).
But good heavens, no - nobody is insane enough to try to actually kill the Fates or destroy Comprenion. If killing a Titan Avatar from another realm might permanently blow up some aspect of life in the World, what would killing a Titan Avatar of Comprenion do? Sure, it might theoretically cause everyone to be free of Fate's strictures - but it might also stop anyone from ever using Magic, Mystery or Prophecy again, cause Fateful prophecies to bind even more tightly without moderation or start occurring spontaneously, or even obliterate all of existence without the background of Fate to support it. The gods simply have no idea what would happen if they tried to blow up Comprenion and its representatives (what are they going to do, ask Mystery?), so no one who isn't full-blown insane and desperate is going to try.
Which is not to say that someone (cough, cough, Odin) might not become insanely desperate enough to try it at some point, but it seems likely that the rest of the gods would unite to stop him or her as soon as they realized what was going on. Killing Titans is always Bad with a capital B; messing around with Fate Titans is terrifying.
Big Bird
Question: I read about a few figures in Slavic mythology that I don't remember finding in your write up. The first are the Zorya, I guess they would be lesser deities but I'd like to know what kind of personalities would they have? What about Simargl? Is he a Titan Avatar or just a titanspawn, and more importantly what would his stats be?
Ah, Slavs. I actually had several extra personalities I wanted to include in that supplement, but it was getting unwieldy so I pared things down. But I'm happy to talk about them here!
The Zorya are actually mentioned a few times - the two of them guard the Isle of Buyan and its fabled stone, so I set them up there in the Overworld chapter. I like to imagine that they're not necessarily hostile, just dedicated to their duty - they probably hang out with (and charm) Scions who visit as long as they don't try to steal the Alatnir, but are fully willing to alert Perun to any would-be thieves if they feel it necessary. They're also mentioned under Myesyats' heading later on; as his dual wives, they spend the short days of the month when he is in adult form with him before he dies and is reborn as the child moon once again.
There really isn't much out there on the Zoryas' personalities; they're fairly minor goddesses and don't have much in the way of stories, though their tenderly caring for the moon-god until he passes away each month suggests a certain amount of compassion for their husband. I'd treat them both as Legend 9 goddesses with all the Stars boons and Epic Appearance they can have access to, and perhaps some Sun boons as well - they're the daughters of Dazbog in some sources and Slavic lands close to the Dodekatheon territories often refer to them as the Auroras, so they may have picked up some traits of that Roman goddess as well.
The Simargl's an odder creature to deal with, mostly because its treatment varies wildly across different Slavic lands. It gets a lot of press as part of Ivan's Kievan pantheon, though other than being included there's almost no information about it there, so we mostly have to rely on stories of it from other areas. It is, however, overwhelmingly always a positive being, so barring some crazy game-specific plot, I'd never set the bird as a Titan, always as a god or ally of the gods. In most eastern Slavic territories, it heavily resembles the Persian Simurgh - a monstrous bird, always female, who guards the tree of life and offers salvation to those in need and punishment to those who misbehave. (I'd steer clear of the bizarre writeup on the Simurgh in Demigod, however - from making it male to aligning it with the sun to shortening its period of rebirth from centuries to every day to having it going about seducing people because it's a Titan now, there's pretty much nothing in that entire story seed that makes any mythological sense.)
However, if you want to leave the Simurgh in the Yazata toybox and get more purely Slavic with it, another source describes the twin gods Sim and Rygl, sons of the judge-god Prove who are joined at the spine, symbolically representing the two perspectives to every issue. Their physical hardships make them unable to leave the tree on their own since getting around is extremely difficult for them, so they learned to transform themselves into the Simargl, a gigantic two-headed bird, and in that form roam the Overworld and do the work of the gods. They can't leave the tree unless they're in the form of the Simargl, and, oddly enough, the Simargl is still always female even though both gods that make her up are male (even the book containing this tale had no explanation for it; they were pretty much like, "Because the Simargl's always female, so it doesn't matter what they are. Look, we don't know, gods are mysterious").
I'm quite fond of the imagery for Sim and Rygl and I was sad when I ended up not including them, though I'd probably do so if I ever go back and re-edit the Bogovi supplement. I'd set the twins at Legend 9 but the Simargl at Legend 10 or 11, probably with mostly Epic Attributes (the twins don't really do anything related to a purview) and a smattering of Justice and Guardian boons to round her out. The Simargl's been known to wound even warrior gods when trying to prevent them from misbehaving or while defending Dub, so I'd also consider giving her some hefty fighting stats and some wicked claws.
Ah, Slavs. I actually had several extra personalities I wanted to include in that supplement, but it was getting unwieldy so I pared things down. But I'm happy to talk about them here!
The Zorya are actually mentioned a few times - the two of them guard the Isle of Buyan and its fabled stone, so I set them up there in the Overworld chapter. I like to imagine that they're not necessarily hostile, just dedicated to their duty - they probably hang out with (and charm) Scions who visit as long as they don't try to steal the Alatnir, but are fully willing to alert Perun to any would-be thieves if they feel it necessary. They're also mentioned under Myesyats' heading later on; as his dual wives, they spend the short days of the month when he is in adult form with him before he dies and is reborn as the child moon once again.
There really isn't much out there on the Zoryas' personalities; they're fairly minor goddesses and don't have much in the way of stories, though their tenderly caring for the moon-god until he passes away each month suggests a certain amount of compassion for their husband. I'd treat them both as Legend 9 goddesses with all the Stars boons and Epic Appearance they can have access to, and perhaps some Sun boons as well - they're the daughters of Dazbog in some sources and Slavic lands close to the Dodekatheon territories often refer to them as the Auroras, so they may have picked up some traits of that Roman goddess as well.
The Simargl's an odder creature to deal with, mostly because its treatment varies wildly across different Slavic lands. It gets a lot of press as part of Ivan's Kievan pantheon, though other than being included there's almost no information about it there, so we mostly have to rely on stories of it from other areas. It is, however, overwhelmingly always a positive being, so barring some crazy game-specific plot, I'd never set the bird as a Titan, always as a god or ally of the gods. In most eastern Slavic territories, it heavily resembles the Persian Simurgh - a monstrous bird, always female, who guards the tree of life and offers salvation to those in need and punishment to those who misbehave. (I'd steer clear of the bizarre writeup on the Simurgh in Demigod, however - from making it male to aligning it with the sun to shortening its period of rebirth from centuries to every day to having it going about seducing people because it's a Titan now, there's pretty much nothing in that entire story seed that makes any mythological sense.)
However, if you want to leave the Simurgh in the Yazata toybox and get more purely Slavic with it, another source describes the twin gods Sim and Rygl, sons of the judge-god Prove who are joined at the spine, symbolically representing the two perspectives to every issue. Their physical hardships make them unable to leave the tree on their own since getting around is extremely difficult for them, so they learned to transform themselves into the Simargl, a gigantic two-headed bird, and in that form roam the Overworld and do the work of the gods. They can't leave the tree unless they're in the form of the Simargl, and, oddly enough, the Simargl is still always female even though both gods that make her up are male (even the book containing this tale had no explanation for it; they were pretty much like, "Because the Simargl's always female, so it doesn't matter what they are. Look, we don't know, gods are mysterious").
I'm quite fond of the imagery for Sim and Rygl and I was sad when I ended up not including them, though I'd probably do so if I ever go back and re-edit the Bogovi supplement. I'd set the twins at Legend 9 but the Simargl at Legend 10 or 11, probably with mostly Epic Attributes (the twins don't really do anything related to a purview) and a smattering of Justice and Guardian boons to round her out. The Simargl's been known to wound even warrior gods when trying to prevent them from misbehaving or while defending Dub, so I'd also consider giving her some hefty fighting stats and some wicked claws.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Ancient Heroes in the Digital Age
Question: I'm a long time fan of White Wolf. I really liked the game Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines. So my question (silly though it is) is this, do you think Scion would transfer well into a video game? Why or why not?
Hey, we're long-time fans of White Wolf, too! (You can tell because sometimes we refer to combo disciplines or what a given god has "in-clan".) We've both played Bloodlines and enjoyed it. In fact, we've also played Redemption, seen all of Kindred: the Embraced and not only play Vampire: the Eternal Struggle but also have an inordinate number of cards old enough to still have the Jyhad and Rage logos on them, but now we're just dating ourselves. We're pretty jazzed to see what the good folks at WW and CCP come up with for the forthcoming V:tM MMORPG, as well.
As far as Scion goes, we have pretty solid faith that video games, as a medium, can do almost any amazing thing you want them to. We definitely think a great Scion video game could be made - but, sadly, we don't think one will. For one thing, much as we love Scion to bits, we're aware that it's not WW's bread and butter - the World of Darkness is where most of their hype and money comes from (with Exalted a close second), so it's unlikely that they'll sink any significant investment into Scion or any of the other less popular lines. It's probably not the most sound financial decision they could make, especially since there are tons of mythology-based video games already out there, and they don't have much in the way of proprietary copyright the way they do with their other properties.
There's also the issue of the fact that, while an awesome Scion video game definitely could be made, it'd be a very expensive, very complicated endeavor, and we fear that it's more likely that it'd end up substandard. For all the reasons above, it probably wouldn't have the financial backing to go 100% as badass as it needs to, and we wouldn't want to see something that could have been awesome be demoted to flawed and serviceable (again, we've already played Redemption - zing).
I totally think it's possible. I'd love to see it someday - you better believe I'd be the first in line to get a copy the second it came out! But I don't know if I believe there's really any chance of it happening, and I'm not sure I have faith in WW, at this time, to really give it the love it'd need to be great.
That's a Kickstarter campaign I'd totally donate to, though.
Hey, we're long-time fans of White Wolf, too! (You can tell because sometimes we refer to combo disciplines or what a given god has "in-clan".) We've both played Bloodlines and enjoyed it. In fact, we've also played Redemption, seen all of Kindred: the Embraced and not only play Vampire: the Eternal Struggle but also have an inordinate number of cards old enough to still have the Jyhad and Rage logos on them, but now we're just dating ourselves. We're pretty jazzed to see what the good folks at WW and CCP come up with for the forthcoming V:tM MMORPG, as well.
As far as Scion goes, we have pretty solid faith that video games, as a medium, can do almost any amazing thing you want them to. We definitely think a great Scion video game could be made - but, sadly, we don't think one will. For one thing, much as we love Scion to bits, we're aware that it's not WW's bread and butter - the World of Darkness is where most of their hype and money comes from (with Exalted a close second), so it's unlikely that they'll sink any significant investment into Scion or any of the other less popular lines. It's probably not the most sound financial decision they could make, especially since there are tons of mythology-based video games already out there, and they don't have much in the way of proprietary copyright the way they do with their other properties.
There's also the issue of the fact that, while an awesome Scion video game definitely could be made, it'd be a very expensive, very complicated endeavor, and we fear that it's more likely that it'd end up substandard. For all the reasons above, it probably wouldn't have the financial backing to go 100% as badass as it needs to, and we wouldn't want to see something that could have been awesome be demoted to flawed and serviceable (again, we've already played Redemption - zing).
I totally think it's possible. I'd love to see it someday - you better believe I'd be the first in line to get a copy the second it came out! But I don't know if I believe there's really any chance of it happening, and I'm not sure I have faith in WW, at this time, to really give it the love it'd need to be great.
That's a Kickstarter campaign I'd totally donate to, though.
The Authority in Heaven
Question: I've noticed that Shangdi has been written up as a Titan of Order in the Elohim supplement - is he intended to be the same as one of the Three Pure Ones? If so, are the other Pure Ones also Titans doing whatever it is that primordial entities do in their spare time?
Actually, Shang Di is not intended to be one of the Three Pure Ones; heaven worship with him as the central figure predates Taoism by several centuries, going all the way back to the Shang dynasty and its fixation on a master authority in heaven that handed down laws to all other, lesser deities. He's one of the oldest mythical figures in China; both Taoism and Confucianism came along much later, and though they have since completely replaced heaven worship as the major components of religious thought in China, the imperial dynasties still recognized his authority even into the twentieth century.
The Three Pure Ones are an interesting place to explore, in Scion - I'd probably think of them as Titans as well, but how to run them would be a thorny question. I've always thought that whole "surprise, if you ever think something impure you'll immediately die" trick pulled on them was probably pretty cheap, and in the ensuing millennia they may have had ample time to find ways to get around the Jade Emperor without resorting to "impurity" (what exactly an ancient, probably Titanic figure considers impure is a great question, too - is it acting against Virtues? What if they get Dark Virtues, are they then "impure" if they start being nice?).
We don't currently have any Shen PCs, so Chinese setting work has been on our backburner (the disgraceful state of our Taiyi page makes that kind of obvious). The Three Pure Ones are among the many hordes of cool Chinese mythical figures that we'll hopefully get to tackle at some point in the future.
Actually, Shang Di is not intended to be one of the Three Pure Ones; heaven worship with him as the central figure predates Taoism by several centuries, going all the way back to the Shang dynasty and its fixation on a master authority in heaven that handed down laws to all other, lesser deities. He's one of the oldest mythical figures in China; both Taoism and Confucianism came along much later, and though they have since completely replaced heaven worship as the major components of religious thought in China, the imperial dynasties still recognized his authority even into the twentieth century.
The Three Pure Ones are an interesting place to explore, in Scion - I'd probably think of them as Titans as well, but how to run them would be a thorny question. I've always thought that whole "surprise, if you ever think something impure you'll immediately die" trick pulled on them was probably pretty cheap, and in the ensuing millennia they may have had ample time to find ways to get around the Jade Emperor without resorting to "impurity" (what exactly an ancient, probably Titanic figure considers impure is a great question, too - is it acting against Virtues? What if they get Dark Virtues, are they then "impure" if they start being nice?).
We don't currently have any Shen PCs, so Chinese setting work has been on our backburner (the disgraceful state of our Taiyi page makes that kind of obvious). The Three Pure Ones are among the many hordes of cool Chinese mythical figures that we'll hopefully get to tackle at some point in the future.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Can't Touch This
Question: How would you model Achilles' invulnerability, or invulnerability like it? A trait like that used by the Hydra and the Gorgons in Demigod? Baldur's unique Stamina Knack 'Unkillable' from Ragnarok? 'Mere' high Epic Stamina? Or another solution?
It really depends on what you want as a Storyteller and how you intend for Achilles (or whomever) to appear in your games. A number of different approaches are possible, but each one is good for different things.
If you actually want Achilles to be invulnerable, decide what that means to you - does it mean he can't be injured? Does it mean he can be injured but not knocked out? Does it mean he can be knocked out but not killed? Once you know that, if you're not planning for him to fight any PCs, your work is pretty much done; the excellent Storyteller tool of Fate will do the rest for you. You're telling the story, after all; Achilles isn't going to get hit, hurt, or distracted by anything unless you weave that into the story, so simply don't include that. If things are happening around him, just narrate what he's doing as if he were the hero of an action film - bullets fly every which way, enemies always get taken out before they can touch him, and so forth. The players will get the impression of his badassery and you don't have to worry about fiddly things like mechanics at all. This is actually also what we do with a lot of the Aesir gods - Thor can't die before Ragnarok, after all, because he's scheduled to die then, so unless someone pulls off some insanely crazy stunts that manage to flout Fate itself, he pretty much gets a pass when he goes out to stomp around and bust heads.
I'm actually not at all fond of the idea of giving people unique "I can't be killed!" knacks, for a lot of reasons. The first is just that it's weird and out of line with everything else in the setting. The second is that it prevents PCs from being able to do anything whatsoever to deal with it - sure, Thor probably isn't going to die before Ragnarok, but if a group of PCs decided to hate him and pulled off some truly insane, Fate-defying feats in an attempt to seal his doom, having their efforts invalidated by a flat, incontrovertible knack would be super lame. The third is that I've never seen a situation wherein it was necessary - its only purpose is to give the ST an easy out to prevent anyone from killing an NPC, but if you're the ST, you can already keep any NPC alive that you want. Give them Rainbow Bridge. Give them Deus Ex Machina. Have some other NPC come save them. Nobody needs a weird extra knack to illustrate that they aren't going to get killed - if the plot says they aren't going to get killed, the ST should find a (politique, sense-making, non-player-cockblocking) way to see that they keep ticking.
Also, in Baldur's case it's always seemed a bit weird, anyway - Baldur doesn't have better Stamina than everyone else, after all, he just has the knowledge that his mother went around and did some voodoo to keep anything from hurting him. His story is actually the inspiration behind our invention of the Entreat Immunity boon, which basically does exactly what Frigg probably did for him but on a smaller scale. If he actually had uniquely awesome Epic Stamina, he probably wouldn't get immediately taken down by the first wound he ever sustains in his life.
So really, unless you plan for this indestructible NPC to actually fight the PCs, you have no reason whatsoever to have any mechanical model for what makes him indestructible at all. As the ST, you have unlimited options for keeping him alive, and your players don't need to know the mechanical details of how Achilles is invulnerable, since their characters certainly aren't going to be privy to that information.
If you are, however, planning for your PCs to fight Achilles (or preparing in case they decide to do so on their own), you do have a more difficult situation. Again, this goes back to what you, as the ST, want Achilles' invulnerability to look like - you might rule that PCs wound him countless times but he keeps on going, or that their attacks bounce off, or just that he seems to be extraordinarily lucky and they can't get a shot to hit him without something interfering. The only part of Achilles you need to worry about is his heel - that's the only place the PCs are going to be doing anything to him, right? And unless they're extremely stupid PCs or have never heard of classical literature, they're going to know it, too, so figure out what kind of difficulty they need to meet to get him where it counts, and don't sweat the behind-the-scenes, unimportant details of all the things that don't count.
John suggests, on his way out the door to rehearsal, that the easiest way to do it is just to declare that Achilles' skin is now a star-level relic with hundreds of soak, so that they can hit him all they want but are probably not going to have any chance of injuring him. If you'd really like a mechanical basis, that's short, sweet, and also might help clue in PCs if they happen to take a look at him through the Unlidded Eye.
Most of this post was about Achilles because he's the easiest example, but the idea really applies to any indestructible (as decided by the Storyteller) NPC or being in the game. If it suits the story's purpose for him to be indestructible and the PCs have no chance of getting around it, it doesn't really matter what mechanical justification you want to give for it (and beware - players can be very crafty, so if you do give a mechanic, there's always a chance they can find a sneaky way around it!). If the PCs can destroy him if they try hard enough, focus on how they'd have to go about doing it and what they'd need to succeed. Everything else is gravy, and gravy the PCs and players will never even need to know about at that. Whatever makes most sense to you and fits the character in question is the best solution. (That said, though, I'd also use truly invulnerable characters extremely sparingly - neither enemies the PCs can't hope to defeat nor friends they can't hope to measure up to are fun for them for long.)
Incidentally, Achilles has appeared in our games as a guest star. The PCs did not attempt to destroy him, partly because they convinced him to go do what they wanted him to do in the first place (fight Agamemnon) and partly because at some point they noticed that he was actually missing his heel entirely and got pretty spooked. (Also, I'm fairly certain Aurora might have had the tiniest little crush on him after he gallantly caught her when her prophecy of his success knocked her over.)
Addendum: It occurs to me that you might be asking this question because you suspect there's a chance that PCs might throw themselves into the Styx in an attempt to gain the same kind of invulnerability Achilles has themselves. In that case, I'd totally let them if they can get there and have the stones to do it, and I'd probably give them giant bonuses to their soaks and/or Stamina rolls - but considering that everybody doesn't go take a quick dip in the Styx, I'd probably also suggest slapping them with some negative consequences as well to explain why. Maybe they suddenly gain five dots of Malice (since the word "styx" can also mean "hatred") or find themselves having lost some of their mental or social stats to make up for their newfound excellence in the physical arena.
It really depends on what you want as a Storyteller and how you intend for Achilles (or whomever) to appear in your games. A number of different approaches are possible, but each one is good for different things.
If you actually want Achilles to be invulnerable, decide what that means to you - does it mean he can't be injured? Does it mean he can be injured but not knocked out? Does it mean he can be knocked out but not killed? Once you know that, if you're not planning for him to fight any PCs, your work is pretty much done; the excellent Storyteller tool of Fate will do the rest for you. You're telling the story, after all; Achilles isn't going to get hit, hurt, or distracted by anything unless you weave that into the story, so simply don't include that. If things are happening around him, just narrate what he's doing as if he were the hero of an action film - bullets fly every which way, enemies always get taken out before they can touch him, and so forth. The players will get the impression of his badassery and you don't have to worry about fiddly things like mechanics at all. This is actually also what we do with a lot of the Aesir gods - Thor can't die before Ragnarok, after all, because he's scheduled to die then, so unless someone pulls off some insanely crazy stunts that manage to flout Fate itself, he pretty much gets a pass when he goes out to stomp around and bust heads.
I'm actually not at all fond of the idea of giving people unique "I can't be killed!" knacks, for a lot of reasons. The first is just that it's weird and out of line with everything else in the setting. The second is that it prevents PCs from being able to do anything whatsoever to deal with it - sure, Thor probably isn't going to die before Ragnarok, but if a group of PCs decided to hate him and pulled off some truly insane, Fate-defying feats in an attempt to seal his doom, having their efforts invalidated by a flat, incontrovertible knack would be super lame. The third is that I've never seen a situation wherein it was necessary - its only purpose is to give the ST an easy out to prevent anyone from killing an NPC, but if you're the ST, you can already keep any NPC alive that you want. Give them Rainbow Bridge. Give them Deus Ex Machina. Have some other NPC come save them. Nobody needs a weird extra knack to illustrate that they aren't going to get killed - if the plot says they aren't going to get killed, the ST should find a (politique, sense-making, non-player-cockblocking) way to see that they keep ticking.
Also, in Baldur's case it's always seemed a bit weird, anyway - Baldur doesn't have better Stamina than everyone else, after all, he just has the knowledge that his mother went around and did some voodoo to keep anything from hurting him. His story is actually the inspiration behind our invention of the Entreat Immunity boon, which basically does exactly what Frigg probably did for him but on a smaller scale. If he actually had uniquely awesome Epic Stamina, he probably wouldn't get immediately taken down by the first wound he ever sustains in his life.
So really, unless you plan for this indestructible NPC to actually fight the PCs, you have no reason whatsoever to have any mechanical model for what makes him indestructible at all. As the ST, you have unlimited options for keeping him alive, and your players don't need to know the mechanical details of how Achilles is invulnerable, since their characters certainly aren't going to be privy to that information.
If you are, however, planning for your PCs to fight Achilles (or preparing in case they decide to do so on their own), you do have a more difficult situation. Again, this goes back to what you, as the ST, want Achilles' invulnerability to look like - you might rule that PCs wound him countless times but he keeps on going, or that their attacks bounce off, or just that he seems to be extraordinarily lucky and they can't get a shot to hit him without something interfering. The only part of Achilles you need to worry about is his heel - that's the only place the PCs are going to be doing anything to him, right? And unless they're extremely stupid PCs or have never heard of classical literature, they're going to know it, too, so figure out what kind of difficulty they need to meet to get him where it counts, and don't sweat the behind-the-scenes, unimportant details of all the things that don't count.
John suggests, on his way out the door to rehearsal, that the easiest way to do it is just to declare that Achilles' skin is now a star-level relic with hundreds of soak, so that they can hit him all they want but are probably not going to have any chance of injuring him. If you'd really like a mechanical basis, that's short, sweet, and also might help clue in PCs if they happen to take a look at him through the Unlidded Eye.
Most of this post was about Achilles because he's the easiest example, but the idea really applies to any indestructible (as decided by the Storyteller) NPC or being in the game. If it suits the story's purpose for him to be indestructible and the PCs have no chance of getting around it, it doesn't really matter what mechanical justification you want to give for it (and beware - players can be very crafty, so if you do give a mechanic, there's always a chance they can find a sneaky way around it!). If the PCs can destroy him if they try hard enough, focus on how they'd have to go about doing it and what they'd need to succeed. Everything else is gravy, and gravy the PCs and players will never even need to know about at that. Whatever makes most sense to you and fits the character in question is the best solution. (That said, though, I'd also use truly invulnerable characters extremely sparingly - neither enemies the PCs can't hope to defeat nor friends they can't hope to measure up to are fun for them for long.)
Incidentally, Achilles has appeared in our games as a guest star. The PCs did not attempt to destroy him, partly because they convinced him to go do what they wanted him to do in the first place (fight Agamemnon) and partly because at some point they noticed that he was actually missing his heel entirely and got pretty spooked. (Also, I'm fairly certain Aurora might have had the tiniest little crush on him after he gallantly caught her when her prophecy of his success knocked her over.)
Addendum: It occurs to me that you might be asking this question because you suspect there's a chance that PCs might throw themselves into the Styx in an attempt to gain the same kind of invulnerability Achilles has themselves. In that case, I'd totally let them if they can get there and have the stones to do it, and I'd probably give them giant bonuses to their soaks and/or Stamina rolls - but considering that everybody doesn't go take a quick dip in the Styx, I'd probably also suggest slapping them with some negative consequences as well to explain why. Maybe they suddenly gain five dots of Malice (since the word "styx" can also mean "hatred") or find themselves having lost some of their mental or social stats to make up for their newfound excellence in the physical arena.
Opposites Attract
Question: How would you justify a character having purviews that are direct opposites to each other? Such as Justice and Chaos, Sun and Darkness, etc?
There are lots of ways to explain having seemingly opposing purviews; in fact, pretty much any reason a player can come up with is valid. Some characters may be proponents of balance (particularly those with the Harmony Virtue) and therefore find it prudent to have opposing purviews so they can use powers from either side to avoiding tipping the scales one way or the other. Others may be conflicted by what they want to do - maybe dear old dad wants them to follow in his footsteps as a Fire god, but what they really feel a passion for is Water, so they end up buying both and becoming a hybrid creature of both worlds. Still others (at least in our games) may end up with opposing purviews quite by accident - if one group of Fatebound mortals believes a Scion has Justice because he saved them from marauders and another group believes he has Chaos because he blew up a building in front of them, he might end up finding himself with positive Fatebonds to both. (This actually happened to Goze for a while, though he later ended up losing both purviews.)
Easy as it is to pick a purview and stick only to its concept ("I'm a god of the sun!"), there are loads of mythic ideas that are better expressed by a combination of purviews, even seemingly opposite ones. If you want to be God of Eclipses, you probably want both Sun and Darkness (maybe Moon, too!). If you want to be God of Natural Disasters, you probably want both Earth and Sky. If you want to be God of Life and Death, you probably want both Health and Death. There are tons of character concepts that easily encompass "opposite" purviews - honestly, I don't see any need for a character to justify having them. Wanting to have them and having a concept idea for them is good enough for me.
Keep in mind, too, that there are plenty of gods in various world mythologies with "opposing" purviews, too. Tlaloc has both Earth (as he is literally the foundation of the world) and Sky (as he is the thunderer and bringer of rain). Njord controls both Fire and Water, Baron Samedi and Nephthys are both strongly tied to both Death and Health, Set is notorious for embodying both Chaos and Guardian, and so on and so forth. Opposites aren't exclusive in Scion; in fact, they're a great place for budding Scions to find a unique niche for themselves that an older god isn't already occupying.
There are lots of ways to explain having seemingly opposing purviews; in fact, pretty much any reason a player can come up with is valid. Some characters may be proponents of balance (particularly those with the Harmony Virtue) and therefore find it prudent to have opposing purviews so they can use powers from either side to avoiding tipping the scales one way or the other. Others may be conflicted by what they want to do - maybe dear old dad wants them to follow in his footsteps as a Fire god, but what they really feel a passion for is Water, so they end up buying both and becoming a hybrid creature of both worlds. Still others (at least in our games) may end up with opposing purviews quite by accident - if one group of Fatebound mortals believes a Scion has Justice because he saved them from marauders and another group believes he has Chaos because he blew up a building in front of them, he might end up finding himself with positive Fatebonds to both. (This actually happened to Goze for a while, though he later ended up losing both purviews.)
Easy as it is to pick a purview and stick only to its concept ("I'm a god of the sun!"), there are loads of mythic ideas that are better expressed by a combination of purviews, even seemingly opposite ones. If you want to be God of Eclipses, you probably want both Sun and Darkness (maybe Moon, too!). If you want to be God of Natural Disasters, you probably want both Earth and Sky. If you want to be God of Life and Death, you probably want both Health and Death. There are tons of character concepts that easily encompass "opposite" purviews - honestly, I don't see any need for a character to justify having them. Wanting to have them and having a concept idea for them is good enough for me.
Keep in mind, too, that there are plenty of gods in various world mythologies with "opposing" purviews, too. Tlaloc has both Earth (as he is literally the foundation of the world) and Sky (as he is the thunderer and bringer of rain). Njord controls both Fire and Water, Baron Samedi and Nephthys are both strongly tied to both Death and Health, Set is notorious for embodying both Chaos and Guardian, and so on and so forth. Opposites aren't exclusive in Scion; in fact, they're a great place for budding Scions to find a unique niche for themselves that an older god isn't already occupying.
Big God Safari
Question: Have your African gods (Jioni and Zwazu) ever come across the gods and spirits of the African Bushmen (Grandfather Mantis, Porcupine, the Great Devourer, etc)?
They have not yet (though they have gotten into a few scrapes with some of the Ashanti gods - they are split down the middle on the subject of Anansi, but no one is really much of a fan of Nyame). My love of /Kaggen is pretty well-documented, however, so I hold out hope that this will change in the future. The two of them both have roots in the U.S. and have only recently begun doing much in Africa, and distractions like Ragnarok are making it hard for them to spend much time at home, but I'm sure that'll be changing (especially since Shango is currently agitating for Marcus to go put down some pesky uprisings in Africa). More time in Africa will likely lead to more African gods making appearances (and messes).
They have not yet (though they have gotten into a few scrapes with some of the Ashanti gods - they are split down the middle on the subject of Anansi, but no one is really much of a fan of Nyame). My love of /Kaggen is pretty well-documented, however, so I hold out hope that this will change in the future. The two of them both have roots in the U.S. and have only recently begun doing much in Africa, and distractions like Ragnarok are making it hard for them to spend much time at home, but I'm sure that'll be changing (especially since Shango is currently agitating for Marcus to go put down some pesky uprisings in Africa). More time in Africa will likely lead to more African gods making appearances (and messes).
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