Question: Why does Thoth have such a creepy picture?
It does have a distinctly Lovecraftian vibe to it, doesn't it? I think it's something about the combination of nude human with oddly fleshy bird-head - even though it's not necessarily trying to be a shocker, it does definitely have a creepy vibe to it. It's by renowned horror artist Nihil, who does a lot of similar pieces.
It's one of my favorite pieces of Thoth artwork ever, probably because it does such a good job of showing how unsettling a real fusion of animal and human can look; it's so creepy precisely because it looks like a real creature made of those two parts, not just an animal head slapped on a human body without any real communication between the two. I also like the sense of profound age it has about it, since the Pesedjet are among the oldest of deities.
Not that Thoth is the creepiest guy ever - he's generally pretty rad, but then again he is the kind of dude who hangs out in the Underworld consigning the unworthy to oblivion and cursing mortals who happen to steal his artifacts from tombs, so he has his share of death and sorcery connotations.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Primeval
Question: So Titanrealms... I was just going back and re-reading the God book and it does occur to me that this is all pretty much made up isn't? (A giant squid captaining a ship with a sea serpent in it too?) So I before I submit them to the same filing system that I dumped the Atlantis gods to I wondered what your take on them was and how you've portrayed them so far.
The Titanrealms in the Scion books are a weird conglomerate of real myth and made-up nonsense. In a sense, if you're going to put made-up nonsense anywhere in Scion, it should be in the Titanrealms; things like sea serpents and mermaids, rakshasa and tengu, and other things that are legitimate folklore but don't belong in the Overworlds, are all theoretically part of a Titanrealm. Titanrealms represent all of a concept's expressions that exist, after all, so they cover a huge amount of ground. They're a place where creativity gets special license.
At the same time, though, the Scion book makes a lot of calls that don't make a lot of sense to me. The Drowned Road is one of our favorite pet peeves - it's a terrible mess of a Titanrealm, with weird choices for Avatars (Cipactli as a water Titan? But it's literally the earth! And what's Tethys doing being all crazy from being incarcerated in Tartarus, when Greek myth specifically notes that she was never banished there with the other Titans?), weird choices for important landmarks (the Henrietta Marie is certainly fine, though I probably would have gone with the Flying Dutchman, but where're the huge, cosmic landmarks from myth?), and just plain embarrassing mythology failures ("Sirens appear pretty much as depicted by Greek mythology"... except that they don't, because the Drowned Road sets them up as mermaids, and Greek sirens look a lot more like this). It's a case, I think, of too much shoehorning; the Drowned Road with Mami Wata at the helm doesn't really work as a Titanrealm as well as others in the game, and the attempt to make it relevant to the Loa (specifically in their New World forms) means that it does a lot of stuff that looks like small potatoes when compared to other Titans (weird small potatoes, at that. Growing-stuff-because-you-let-them-sit-too-long potatoes).
Not that the Drowned Road is the only offender, by a long shot - other Titanrealms are just as guilty, from weird syncretizations (Gaia and Mut are supposed to be the same person? Get out forever) and bizarre characterizations (Shu wants to kill everyone in the world now for some reason? What?) to headache-inducing fudges (you know who's not the Aztecs' main antagonist? Fucking Huracan, that's who, because he's not even Aztec) to outright source failure (what's that? Oh, Mikaboshi is an Avatar of Darkness? Not unless your only source material is Marvel comics, my friend - he's a star-god in Japanese myth, and not a very important one, either). They're one of the places in the Scion books that we like the least, and while they're full of good ideas - some of the landscapes and creatures are awesomely creative, and some of the Avatars spot-on - they're equally full of what-was-this-writer-thinking moments, at least for us.
I wouldn't throw them away wholesale, however; it's all about finding the bits of really good stuff in there, and ignoring the weird stuff that doesn't make sense if you don't want to use it. The Titanrealms as written work great for STs who are just starting out, who want more of a a good feel to the place than strict accuracy, or who just enjoy them as they are. We don't like them much, but then again, we are very prone to poking Scion with a stick until it does what we want. My advice is to use the bits that you like, ignore the others, and supplement with your own ideas as necessary.
We're actually working on our great Titan rewrites at the moment, some of which will hopefully be finished in the next couple of months and up on the site, so our take on the great primeval forces of the universe is forthcoming. In the meantime, though, I feel your pain.
The Titanrealms in the Scion books are a weird conglomerate of real myth and made-up nonsense. In a sense, if you're going to put made-up nonsense anywhere in Scion, it should be in the Titanrealms; things like sea serpents and mermaids, rakshasa and tengu, and other things that are legitimate folklore but don't belong in the Overworlds, are all theoretically part of a Titanrealm. Titanrealms represent all of a concept's expressions that exist, after all, so they cover a huge amount of ground. They're a place where creativity gets special license.
At the same time, though, the Scion book makes a lot of calls that don't make a lot of sense to me. The Drowned Road is one of our favorite pet peeves - it's a terrible mess of a Titanrealm, with weird choices for Avatars (Cipactli as a water Titan? But it's literally the earth! And what's Tethys doing being all crazy from being incarcerated in Tartarus, when Greek myth specifically notes that she was never banished there with the other Titans?), weird choices for important landmarks (the Henrietta Marie is certainly fine, though I probably would have gone with the Flying Dutchman, but where're the huge, cosmic landmarks from myth?), and just plain embarrassing mythology failures ("Sirens appear pretty much as depicted by Greek mythology"... except that they don't, because the Drowned Road sets them up as mermaids, and Greek sirens look a lot more like this). It's a case, I think, of too much shoehorning; the Drowned Road with Mami Wata at the helm doesn't really work as a Titanrealm as well as others in the game, and the attempt to make it relevant to the Loa (specifically in their New World forms) means that it does a lot of stuff that looks like small potatoes when compared to other Titans (weird small potatoes, at that. Growing-stuff-because-you-let-them-sit-too-long potatoes).
Not that the Drowned Road is the only offender, by a long shot - other Titanrealms are just as guilty, from weird syncretizations (Gaia and Mut are supposed to be the same person? Get out forever) and bizarre characterizations (Shu wants to kill everyone in the world now for some reason? What?) to headache-inducing fudges (you know who's not the Aztecs' main antagonist? Fucking Huracan, that's who, because he's not even Aztec) to outright source failure (what's that? Oh, Mikaboshi is an Avatar of Darkness? Not unless your only source material is Marvel comics, my friend - he's a star-god in Japanese myth, and not a very important one, either). They're one of the places in the Scion books that we like the least, and while they're full of good ideas - some of the landscapes and creatures are awesomely creative, and some of the Avatars spot-on - they're equally full of what-was-this-writer-thinking moments, at least for us.
I wouldn't throw them away wholesale, however; it's all about finding the bits of really good stuff in there, and ignoring the weird stuff that doesn't make sense if you don't want to use it. The Titanrealms as written work great for STs who are just starting out, who want more of a a good feel to the place than strict accuracy, or who just enjoy them as they are. We don't like them much, but then again, we are very prone to poking Scion with a stick until it does what we want. My advice is to use the bits that you like, ignore the others, and supplement with your own ideas as necessary.
We're actually working on our great Titan rewrites at the moment, some of which will hopefully be finished in the next couple of months and up on the site, so our take on the great primeval forces of the universe is forthcoming. In the meantime, though, I feel your pain.
The Scales of Morality
Fun stuff from the mailbag today - click to embiggen!
One for the gents:
And one for the ladies:
Not bad. But whither poor Dierdre? She's probably a NG if I've ever heard of one (then again, by old D&D rules, she'd probably be TN, considering that she's obviously a druid).
One for the gents:
And one for the ladies:
Not bad. But whither poor Dierdre? She's probably a NG if I've ever heard of one (then again, by old D&D rules, she'd probably be TN, considering that she's obviously a druid).
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
If You Cut Us, Do We Not Bleed?
Question: Is it just me, or is Greenskin underpowered for a three-dot Boon? You can skip eating for a few days (a poor man's Divine Fortitude), a single point to L/B soak (Which, by Legend 4, isn't that big a deal) and you don't bleed (certainly useful if, say, you get your arm ripped off or suchnot, but does it come up that often?). It just seems lackluster in comparison to other three-dot Boons like Heal/Infect or Phase Cloak... Should the cost be lowered? Or is there a way to make it comparable?
Greenskin operates on a different premise than a lot of other boons; it's a bunch of small benefits, rather than one large one, so when you compare any one of those small benefits, they of course look, well, small. I agree with you; the soak benefit ain't all that, and photosynthesis can be really awesome but is pretty situational. Greenskin is balanced in large part, however, by the fact that it lasts for days; whereas other boons may be more powerful for single-shot uses, they last for only a scene (or, in some cases, only an action or two), while Greenskin keeps on trucking for the long haul unless a Scion consciously chooses to turn it off. I wouldn't lower its cost at all - 2 Legend for days of effects is a steal.
Greenskin's largest benefit lies in that ability to not bleed out that you noted, which is actually a pretty awesome feature that shouldn't be overlooked. Mechanically, it doesn't just apply to losing a limb or other spectacular gore-fests; it means that when a PC with Greenskin active gets knocked out and has lethal in his last health box, he doesn't start dying. He doesn't have to take dying boxes every few seconds, nor does anybody have to stabilize him. He can lie there in that state forever (or until he naturally heals the damage) if left alone, thanks to the resilient coagulation of his sappy blood.
This doesn't always sound like a big deal - I mean, surely one of your bandmates has to be able to roll a decent Wits + Medicine stabilization roll, right? - but it's wonderful for any case where the Scion isn't near his friends (or not near ones who can stabilize him without killing him by accident) or can't count on outside help, and furthermore it leaves his bandmates free to take other actions like punching out the monster that got him, calling for help or busting a heal on him without having to waste an action stopping the bleeding first. It's saved PCs in our games several times when they managed to get themselves knocked out when their friends weren't around, and it's a very handy insurance policy. Having that power alone for days at a time is worth the price of admission as a three-dot boon in my opinion (though the other little additions are still kind of nice, they're not the main event).
Greenskin's a lot more subtle than one-scene superpowers like Phase Cloak, but it's not less awesome, to my mind. It's just more... planty.
Greenskin operates on a different premise than a lot of other boons; it's a bunch of small benefits, rather than one large one, so when you compare any one of those small benefits, they of course look, well, small. I agree with you; the soak benefit ain't all that, and photosynthesis can be really awesome but is pretty situational. Greenskin is balanced in large part, however, by the fact that it lasts for days; whereas other boons may be more powerful for single-shot uses, they last for only a scene (or, in some cases, only an action or two), while Greenskin keeps on trucking for the long haul unless a Scion consciously chooses to turn it off. I wouldn't lower its cost at all - 2 Legend for days of effects is a steal.
Greenskin's largest benefit lies in that ability to not bleed out that you noted, which is actually a pretty awesome feature that shouldn't be overlooked. Mechanically, it doesn't just apply to losing a limb or other spectacular gore-fests; it means that when a PC with Greenskin active gets knocked out and has lethal in his last health box, he doesn't start dying. He doesn't have to take dying boxes every few seconds, nor does anybody have to stabilize him. He can lie there in that state forever (or until he naturally heals the damage) if left alone, thanks to the resilient coagulation of his sappy blood.
This doesn't always sound like a big deal - I mean, surely one of your bandmates has to be able to roll a decent Wits + Medicine stabilization roll, right? - but it's wonderful for any case where the Scion isn't near his friends (or not near ones who can stabilize him without killing him by accident) or can't count on outside help, and furthermore it leaves his bandmates free to take other actions like punching out the monster that got him, calling for help or busting a heal on him without having to waste an action stopping the bleeding first. It's saved PCs in our games several times when they managed to get themselves knocked out when their friends weren't around, and it's a very handy insurance policy. Having that power alone for days at a time is worth the price of admission as a three-dot boon in my opinion (though the other little additions are still kind of nice, they're not the main event).
Greenskin's a lot more subtle than one-scene superpowers like Phase Cloak, but it's not less awesome, to my mind. It's just more... planty.
He of the Sea Foam
Question: So, while I am looking forward to your Incan Pantheon writeup, I'd like your opinion: What associated powers and abilities would you assign to Viracocha? And from there, in a more general sense, how do you go about assigning powers to the more... "omnipotent" gods (for lack of a better term)?
Incas are well under way, I promise; hopefully they'll see the light of day some time soon!
But until they do, my current tentative setup for Viracocha's associateds is Earth, Fire, Health, Water, Epic Intelligence and Epic Stamina, with Art, Craft, Empathy, Investigation, Politics and Stealth on the side. His behavioral and linguistic connections to lakes and oceans make Water a no-brainer, and stories in which he fills the sky with flame or molds living things out of clay only to return them to stone later make those particular purviews easy fits as well. Health I added largely as a function of his role as creator and maintainer of humanity (we specifically use Genesis for a lot of that), though I could see stripping it back off him easily enough if you didn't like the aesthetic. Stamina comes primarily from the myth of him being severely and violently beaten to a pulp before laughing at his assailants and setting everyone on fire, and Intelligence, in the form of fatherly wisdom and cosmic planning, seems to be his major identifier as a deity.
The more "omnipotent" gods, usually creators and distant, awesome figures that are in Scion terms flirting with the skinny edge of Titandom, are harder to stat than your standard totem-god-of-X crowd, that's for sure. They often tend to be treated as very powerful in their religions, but also don't do all that much actively to demonstrate it, or have a wide-ranging set of symbols and ideals associated with them but nothing that really explains where those things come from. It's a problem that a lot of the older creator deities share (Brahma, Ra, Danu, Nuwa, Ahura Mazda), and a problem that I think the Devas suffered from as a whole in Scion: Companion, where they ended up with barrels of associateds each, often things that were only tangentially related to them or that were odd interpolations of their symbolic representations. Sometimes, as we did with Danu, it's easiest just to declare that person a Titan since they don't do a lot to really interact with their pantheon or humanity.
If they need to stay on the roster, however, the myths and tales of their exploits are usually the go-to place for me when looking for what they should be associated with. Rather than giving them every Epic Attribute plus all the elemental purviews (which I have seen suggested in the past as a quick-fix shorthand for "phenomenal cosmic power", and which made me wince), finding those things that are especially highlighted as feats they perform or concepts they embody usually yields a decent overview of that god and what they're about. Since this is Scion, none of them are actually omnipotent (or at least, not more so than other badass old Legend 12 gods); it's okay for some of that to be hoopla and hype from their native religions (though of course you never want to use that as an excuse for underpowering a god, either).
It's always more of a challenge to stat a Viracocha or a Brahma, requiring us to walk a fine line between game balance and doing a deity's superlative reputation justice, but we usually find that sticking to what they actually do and are yields better results than trying to slog through the muck of their general impressiveness.
Incas are well under way, I promise; hopefully they'll see the light of day some time soon!
But until they do, my current tentative setup for Viracocha's associateds is Earth, Fire, Health, Water, Epic Intelligence and Epic Stamina, with Art, Craft, Empathy, Investigation, Politics and Stealth on the side. His behavioral and linguistic connections to lakes and oceans make Water a no-brainer, and stories in which he fills the sky with flame or molds living things out of clay only to return them to stone later make those particular purviews easy fits as well. Health I added largely as a function of his role as creator and maintainer of humanity (we specifically use Genesis for a lot of that), though I could see stripping it back off him easily enough if you didn't like the aesthetic. Stamina comes primarily from the myth of him being severely and violently beaten to a pulp before laughing at his assailants and setting everyone on fire, and Intelligence, in the form of fatherly wisdom and cosmic planning, seems to be his major identifier as a deity.
The more "omnipotent" gods, usually creators and distant, awesome figures that are in Scion terms flirting with the skinny edge of Titandom, are harder to stat than your standard totem-god-of-X crowd, that's for sure. They often tend to be treated as very powerful in their religions, but also don't do all that much actively to demonstrate it, or have a wide-ranging set of symbols and ideals associated with them but nothing that really explains where those things come from. It's a problem that a lot of the older creator deities share (Brahma, Ra, Danu, Nuwa, Ahura Mazda), and a problem that I think the Devas suffered from as a whole in Scion: Companion, where they ended up with barrels of associateds each, often things that were only tangentially related to them or that were odd interpolations of their symbolic representations. Sometimes, as we did with Danu, it's easiest just to declare that person a Titan since they don't do a lot to really interact with their pantheon or humanity.
If they need to stay on the roster, however, the myths and tales of their exploits are usually the go-to place for me when looking for what they should be associated with. Rather than giving them every Epic Attribute plus all the elemental purviews (which I have seen suggested in the past as a quick-fix shorthand for "phenomenal cosmic power", and which made me wince), finding those things that are especially highlighted as feats they perform or concepts they embody usually yields a decent overview of that god and what they're about. Since this is Scion, none of them are actually omnipotent (or at least, not more so than other badass old Legend 12 gods); it's okay for some of that to be hoopla and hype from their native religions (though of course you never want to use that as an excuse for underpowering a god, either).
It's always more of a challenge to stat a Viracocha or a Brahma, requiring us to walk a fine line between game balance and doing a deity's superlative reputation justice, but we usually find that sticking to what they actually do and are yields better results than trying to slog through the muck of their general impressiveness.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Olympian Ladies' Club
Question: What would you think about all the Greek goddesses getting together and going on strike like Demeter did (so Aphrodite can get a divorce, Hera to get Zeus to stop screwing around Athena and Artemis for more equal rights for women)? Etc.
Honestly, I'm not sure it would work very well, and they're probably better off trying to use their specialized social and political skills to get what they want instead. Demeter is kind of a special case; as the fertility goddess extraordinaire, when she decides to go on strike, it means that everybody on earth dies of hunger within a few months. It's serious business. The other ladies of the Dodekatheon going on strike is not necessarily going to have the same effect - so Hera left and now nobody can get married? Or Athena left so now nobody has war strategies anymore? Those would be annoying, but they're not on the same level as imminent global death of humanity.
There's also the problem of legality; Zeus is a serious business Justice god, and while Demeter had a legitimate greivance - the kidnapping of her daughter by another family member, definitely a crime that needs addressing - the other goddesses don't necessarily. Aphrodite may not like being married to Hephaestus, but it was Zeus' own decree that she do it, and he's fully able to smite her ass with Justice boons for the various laws she's broken if she starts irritating him (he could actually bust her for adultery about eighty times over already [the irony!], but presumably likes her and/or doesn't want to get involved). I'm sure Zeus would like to make his daughters happy if they want something, but disobeying the king is illegal, so he's under no onus to do so if they're asking for something he doesn't want to grant. He can just say no, and if they try to pull a walkout kick their asses with Justice. (Justice is great that way - he doesn't even have the guilt of having to raise a hand to them.)
Hera actually did stage a walkout on Zeus once in ancient myth; she was so peeved over his latest bout of misbehavior that she decided she was leaving and went to go live on a different mountain, refusing to see him. After realizing that she was serious this time and that he didn't like her being gone at all (this is a woman he pulled some epic stuntery to get to marry in the first place, after all), Zeus went out to find some wise men to advise him and then staged a fake wedding to a new woman. When Hera showed up, furious, he revealed that it was just a piece of wood he'd put a dress on in order to lure her out and begged her to come home, and she was so touched by the lengths he'd gone to for her that she did. She's the only one I could see getting away with pulling that kind of thing again; not only does she have plenty of political power as a queen in her own right, but dragging her home by her hair would not be good for domestic bliss, and since Zeus is pretty undeniably in the wrong when it comes to the adultery issue, Justice is not going to help him a whole lot. (Even Hera's not immune to Zeus' pissery, though - remember that time he hung her from the heavens by her foot because she sassed him?)
I do, however, think that Greek goddesses agitating for change from within the pantheon is an awesome idea (for PCs to instigate especially, but as meta-plot for the gods themselves as well). What worked for Demeter may not work for all of them, but a goddess with Hera's kind of Epic Manipulation doesn't really need to make grand gestures to start change - a Rumor Mill with an especially juicy lie about Zeus' scandalous behavior might be more than enough to rock the boat. Athena's a genius - rather than making a grand gesture, she's in a perfect position to pick her battles and once in a while refuse to give up a perfect tactic in the war on the Titans unless she gets some kind of concession out of it (though I doubt she'd do it too much - she doesn't want the Titans to win, after all, and Zeus can get very testy with the line between being-a-pain and outright-treason). And Aphrodite's tried-and-true trick of just making people fall in love, constantly, with either inappropriate or unappealing people, is a perennial favorite for making her displeasure known. It's almost always a better idea for them to just use their social or mental mojo to manipulate, convince or maneuver people into doing what they want, rather than staging grand gestures that might end with Zeus taking them to task.
In general, moving toward ideas like modern womens' rights or social tolerances are usually better left to the PCs, though. Goddesses (and any other minority group) of ancient pantheons are just as ancient as the gods, and having long been part of an established order that includes a certain treatment of various groups, they may not see anything wrong with it or actively want it to change. Some do, of course (exactly as many as your plot requires, in fact), but when it comes to dragging pantheons screaming into the twenty-first century, Scions are always in the best position to do so. I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a goddess nudging one in that direction, though.
Honestly, I'm not sure it would work very well, and they're probably better off trying to use their specialized social and political skills to get what they want instead. Demeter is kind of a special case; as the fertility goddess extraordinaire, when she decides to go on strike, it means that everybody on earth dies of hunger within a few months. It's serious business. The other ladies of the Dodekatheon going on strike is not necessarily going to have the same effect - so Hera left and now nobody can get married? Or Athena left so now nobody has war strategies anymore? Those would be annoying, but they're not on the same level as imminent global death of humanity.
There's also the problem of legality; Zeus is a serious business Justice god, and while Demeter had a legitimate greivance - the kidnapping of her daughter by another family member, definitely a crime that needs addressing - the other goddesses don't necessarily. Aphrodite may not like being married to Hephaestus, but it was Zeus' own decree that she do it, and he's fully able to smite her ass with Justice boons for the various laws she's broken if she starts irritating him (he could actually bust her for adultery about eighty times over already [the irony!], but presumably likes her and/or doesn't want to get involved). I'm sure Zeus would like to make his daughters happy if they want something, but disobeying the king is illegal, so he's under no onus to do so if they're asking for something he doesn't want to grant. He can just say no, and if they try to pull a walkout kick their asses with Justice. (Justice is great that way - he doesn't even have the guilt of having to raise a hand to them.)
Hera actually did stage a walkout on Zeus once in ancient myth; she was so peeved over his latest bout of misbehavior that she decided she was leaving and went to go live on a different mountain, refusing to see him. After realizing that she was serious this time and that he didn't like her being gone at all (this is a woman he pulled some epic stuntery to get to marry in the first place, after all), Zeus went out to find some wise men to advise him and then staged a fake wedding to a new woman. When Hera showed up, furious, he revealed that it was just a piece of wood he'd put a dress on in order to lure her out and begged her to come home, and she was so touched by the lengths he'd gone to for her that she did. She's the only one I could see getting away with pulling that kind of thing again; not only does she have plenty of political power as a queen in her own right, but dragging her home by her hair would not be good for domestic bliss, and since Zeus is pretty undeniably in the wrong when it comes to the adultery issue, Justice is not going to help him a whole lot. (Even Hera's not immune to Zeus' pissery, though - remember that time he hung her from the heavens by her foot because she sassed him?)
I do, however, think that Greek goddesses agitating for change from within the pantheon is an awesome idea (for PCs to instigate especially, but as meta-plot for the gods themselves as well). What worked for Demeter may not work for all of them, but a goddess with Hera's kind of Epic Manipulation doesn't really need to make grand gestures to start change - a Rumor Mill with an especially juicy lie about Zeus' scandalous behavior might be more than enough to rock the boat. Athena's a genius - rather than making a grand gesture, she's in a perfect position to pick her battles and once in a while refuse to give up a perfect tactic in the war on the Titans unless she gets some kind of concession out of it (though I doubt she'd do it too much - she doesn't want the Titans to win, after all, and Zeus can get very testy with the line between being-a-pain and outright-treason). And Aphrodite's tried-and-true trick of just making people fall in love, constantly, with either inappropriate or unappealing people, is a perennial favorite for making her displeasure known. It's almost always a better idea for them to just use their social or mental mojo to manipulate, convince or maneuver people into doing what they want, rather than staging grand gestures that might end with Zeus taking them to task.
In general, moving toward ideas like modern womens' rights or social tolerances are usually better left to the PCs, though. Goddesses (and any other minority group) of ancient pantheons are just as ancient as the gods, and having long been part of an established order that includes a certain treatment of various groups, they may not see anything wrong with it or actively want it to change. Some do, of course (exactly as many as your plot requires, in fact), but when it comes to dragging pantheons screaming into the twenty-first century, Scions are always in the best position to do so. I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a goddess nudging one in that direction, though.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Puny Child's Beard
Today's hilarious internet find: reviews of Marvel's Thor and Avengers from a mythological perspective.
An unbiased review of the Marvel "Thor" movie
An unbiased review of the Marvel "Avengers" movie
Of course! It all makes so much sense now!
An unbiased review of the Marvel "Thor" movie
An unbiased review of the Marvel "Avengers" movie
Of course! It all makes so much sense now!
Thunder and Lightning
Question: Hey John and Anne, I've been using your site as a helpful reference since 2010, and though I own all of the books, I have always found your site and your house rules to be the fix the game needs to really run smoothly. I was very disappointed by your recent changing of the Gods' purviews and attributes, but after reading this blog I can understand WHY you did it and I respect it... but I'm curious why you weakened Zeus so much? Shouldn't the King of the Gods have at least Epic Strength?
A two-part answer: we don't think Zeus should have Epic Strength associated, but we also don't think he's "weakened" in the slightest because of it.
In all frankness, we couldn't find any reason Zeus should have Epic Strength, so it was stricken from his list fairly early in our edits of the Dodekatheon. Zeus is an incredibly potent and powerful figure, but it's not because of the strength of his arm; it's because of his authority over the gods and his position as the preeminent god of the heavens. Zeus rules by right as the unanimously voted and supported king of the gods. He rules by law and decree, by the respect due him from all other deities and the uncontested authority of his position. He doesn't rule because he goes around busting in the heads of people who disobey; in point of fact, almost nobody disobeys, ever, thanks to his incredible ability to just Lay Down the Law, and those few who do usually end up consigned to Tartarus for their sins. That's what his Epic Charisma and Justice associations are about: his incredible force of will and ability to make rules that nobody - not grieving Demeter, not vengeance-bent Poseidon, not unfairly-punished Apollo, nobody - can argue with. Zeus is In Charge, and it has nothing to do with anything as pedestrian as the threat of punches.
Which is not to say that Zeus isn't terribly scary when he wants to murder you, but he doesn't do that with strength, either; he does it with lightning, because he's an epic master of the Sky purview and has a really rad relic thunderbolt (forged for him by either Hephaestus or the Cyclopes, depending on the story) that we assume does horrific amounts of damage. When Zeus starts striking people with lightning, people die; it's as inevitable as the damage lightning causes in real life, the awesome power of which he represents. Is Zeus mad at somebody? Thunderbolt. Does Zeus need to make a point? Thunderbolt. Is Zeus just in the mood to remind everybody of how awesome he is that day? Thunderbolt. But he almost never makes an altercation physical, because Zeus is not a physical combat kind of a dude. It's not really in his skillset.
In fact, in the only major story in which he does a lot of described physical combatting, his titanic battle against Typhon, he gets his ass kicked when he stops using thunderbolts and decides to grapple directly against the monster; he ends up with his sinews ripped out, in a sack stuffed into a cave, where Hermes has to come rescue him and restore his body parts before he can do anything else. Typhon is a great example of a being with Ultimate Strength; he's unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat and during their second battle just rips mountains out of the earth to use as missiles. Zeus, in contrast, does not do these things, and wins through his awesome command over lightning, striking the flying mountains with his thunderbolts to drive them back against Typhon and eventually bury him. That Zeus is an undisputed master of Sky is totally unarguable; he is the most baddest of dudes ever to throw lightning at someone's face. But stronger than everyone else ever who doesn't have the Ultimate? No, he's not.
But this doesn't make Zeus less than powerful! Far from it. For one thing, I'm sure his Strength (and Wits and Dexterity etc., while we're at it) is perfectly serviceable; I'd assume he probably has eight dots of Epic Strength or somewhere in that area, which is nothing to sneeze at. Just because he doesn't have the Ultimate doesn't mean he's limp and noodle-like. For another thing, Zeus has Arete, and if you haven't played with high levels of Arete yet, it's really easy to forget how insanely powerful having an extra 46 dice to your rolls is. Zeus may not be primarily a combatant (and he shouldn't be - that's what he has people like Ares and Athena for, after all), but that doesn't mean at all that he's weak. On the contrary, I doubt anyone wants to get into a fight with him unless they have nothing left to lose.
It's easy to view gods with more associated powers as more "powerful" and gods with fewer as "weaker", but it ain't necessarily so. Our goal is always to give gods the associations that make the most sense for their stories and roles in ancient myth. Among the Dodekatheon, especially (as Greek and Roman myth are very fond of choosing one or two specific things for a god and sticking with them), having few associated powers is the norm; it doesn't mean that they're weak, but rather that they've specialized to be really amazing in a few areas instead of branching out in a bunch of others. Add in the fact that any of them might have Arete maxed in several abilities (which is equivalent, for them, to having more purviews maxed), and they're the opposite of less powerful: they're extremely potent specialists who can kick any other god's ass in the area of their expertise.
Incidentally, I'm sorry you've been disappointed by our changes. That's never our intention.
A two-part answer: we don't think Zeus should have Epic Strength associated, but we also don't think he's "weakened" in the slightest because of it.
In all frankness, we couldn't find any reason Zeus should have Epic Strength, so it was stricken from his list fairly early in our edits of the Dodekatheon. Zeus is an incredibly potent and powerful figure, but it's not because of the strength of his arm; it's because of his authority over the gods and his position as the preeminent god of the heavens. Zeus rules by right as the unanimously voted and supported king of the gods. He rules by law and decree, by the respect due him from all other deities and the uncontested authority of his position. He doesn't rule because he goes around busting in the heads of people who disobey; in point of fact, almost nobody disobeys, ever, thanks to his incredible ability to just Lay Down the Law, and those few who do usually end up consigned to Tartarus for their sins. That's what his Epic Charisma and Justice associations are about: his incredible force of will and ability to make rules that nobody - not grieving Demeter, not vengeance-bent Poseidon, not unfairly-punished Apollo, nobody - can argue with. Zeus is In Charge, and it has nothing to do with anything as pedestrian as the threat of punches.
Which is not to say that Zeus isn't terribly scary when he wants to murder you, but he doesn't do that with strength, either; he does it with lightning, because he's an epic master of the Sky purview and has a really rad relic thunderbolt (forged for him by either Hephaestus or the Cyclopes, depending on the story) that we assume does horrific amounts of damage. When Zeus starts striking people with lightning, people die; it's as inevitable as the damage lightning causes in real life, the awesome power of which he represents. Is Zeus mad at somebody? Thunderbolt. Does Zeus need to make a point? Thunderbolt. Is Zeus just in the mood to remind everybody of how awesome he is that day? Thunderbolt. But he almost never makes an altercation physical, because Zeus is not a physical combat kind of a dude. It's not really in his skillset.
In fact, in the only major story in which he does a lot of described physical combatting, his titanic battle against Typhon, he gets his ass kicked when he stops using thunderbolts and decides to grapple directly against the monster; he ends up with his sinews ripped out, in a sack stuffed into a cave, where Hermes has to come rescue him and restore his body parts before he can do anything else. Typhon is a great example of a being with Ultimate Strength; he's unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat and during their second battle just rips mountains out of the earth to use as missiles. Zeus, in contrast, does not do these things, and wins through his awesome command over lightning, striking the flying mountains with his thunderbolts to drive them back against Typhon and eventually bury him. That Zeus is an undisputed master of Sky is totally unarguable; he is the most baddest of dudes ever to throw lightning at someone's face. But stronger than everyone else ever who doesn't have the Ultimate? No, he's not.
But this doesn't make Zeus less than powerful! Far from it. For one thing, I'm sure his Strength (and Wits and Dexterity etc., while we're at it) is perfectly serviceable; I'd assume he probably has eight dots of Epic Strength or somewhere in that area, which is nothing to sneeze at. Just because he doesn't have the Ultimate doesn't mean he's limp and noodle-like. For another thing, Zeus has Arete, and if you haven't played with high levels of Arete yet, it's really easy to forget how insanely powerful having an extra 46 dice to your rolls is. Zeus may not be primarily a combatant (and he shouldn't be - that's what he has people like Ares and Athena for, after all), but that doesn't mean at all that he's weak. On the contrary, I doubt anyone wants to get into a fight with him unless they have nothing left to lose.
It's easy to view gods with more associated powers as more "powerful" and gods with fewer as "weaker", but it ain't necessarily so. Our goal is always to give gods the associations that make the most sense for their stories and roles in ancient myth. Among the Dodekatheon, especially (as Greek and Roman myth are very fond of choosing one or two specific things for a god and sticking with them), having few associated powers is the norm; it doesn't mean that they're weak, but rather that they've specialized to be really amazing in a few areas instead of branching out in a bunch of others. Add in the fact that any of them might have Arete maxed in several abilities (which is equivalent, for them, to having more purviews maxed), and they're the opposite of less powerful: they're extremely potent specialists who can kick any other god's ass in the area of their expertise.
Incidentally, I'm sorry you've been disappointed by our changes. That's never our intention.
Wedded Bliss
Question: So is Jioni married to Erebus, and if so is their marriage as happy as you say in Jioni's stories?
Actually, yes, for the most part! Jioni and Erebus are married; she happened to be psychopomping past an area that led to his realm one day and piqued his interest, leading him to keep an eye on her and become increasingly infatuated, and sealed the deal when she not only managed to resist his attempts to use social powers on her and almost turned him down, but did it with sassy charisma of her own. He'd recently split from Nyx (which is another story entirely) and got down on one knee to beg Jioni to be queen of Erebus instead. She was a little hesitant, what with him being a Titan and her not knowing him very well, but he had a truce with the Dodekatheon and was being really sweet and sincere, so she took the plunge. Her bandmates were somewhat shocked - even Vala didn't see that one coming.
They don't see each other all that frequently, since he's busy doing politicking and trying to whip Erebus back into shape after the sorry mess that Mikaboshi left it, and she's busy running all over the worlds with her band, but they're pretty fond of one another when they do. Jioni enjoys the many social benefits of being considered queen of a Titanrealm - the Dodekatheon, in particular, give her all due honors and are a lot more polite to her than her own pantheon ever is - and Erebus dotes on her, gives her fancy Darkness relics and is always ready to leap to her aid if she needs it. She's currently pregnant with their first children, so we'll see what that looks like someday - I'm looking forward to some wildly divine children, considering that one parent is a Titan and the other a god.
Also, apparently their sex life is awesome, and that's like half the battle with Jioni. It's ironic that the one marriage to a full-blown Titan Avatar is probably the most drama-free one in all our games, but there you go.
Actually, yes, for the most part! Jioni and Erebus are married; she happened to be psychopomping past an area that led to his realm one day and piqued his interest, leading him to keep an eye on her and become increasingly infatuated, and sealed the deal when she not only managed to resist his attempts to use social powers on her and almost turned him down, but did it with sassy charisma of her own. He'd recently split from Nyx (which is another story entirely) and got down on one knee to beg Jioni to be queen of Erebus instead. She was a little hesitant, what with him being a Titan and her not knowing him very well, but he had a truce with the Dodekatheon and was being really sweet and sincere, so she took the plunge. Her bandmates were somewhat shocked - even Vala didn't see that one coming.
They don't see each other all that frequently, since he's busy doing politicking and trying to whip Erebus back into shape after the sorry mess that Mikaboshi left it, and she's busy running all over the worlds with her band, but they're pretty fond of one another when they do. Jioni enjoys the many social benefits of being considered queen of a Titanrealm - the Dodekatheon, in particular, give her all due honors and are a lot more polite to her than her own pantheon ever is - and Erebus dotes on her, gives her fancy Darkness relics and is always ready to leap to her aid if she needs it. She's currently pregnant with their first children, so we'll see what that looks like someday - I'm looking forward to some wildly divine children, considering that one parent is a Titan and the other a god.
Also, apparently their sex life is awesome, and that's like half the battle with Jioni. It's ironic that the one marriage to a full-blown Titan Avatar is probably the most drama-free one in all our games, but there you go.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Question: I have two questions! How global do your games usually get? In the game I ST, it primarily takes place in Europe, but it will eventually expand to see all 7 continents (yes, even Antarctica!) Do you find it easier to have games be located centrally, or do you feel that the epic feel is better for a global game? Going with this, how would the band get around without a Psychopomp? In my game, two of the NPCs in the band are wealthy defense contractors, so they have access to private planes.
Our games almost always tend to be global by the time the PCs have reached Demigodhood; at that point, there's so much they can do and see and so many mythic parts of the world to visit that chaining them to a certain area usually only makes them cranky. It is generally easier to keep them in one place, because you can set up and plan for almost every eventuality there, and it's usually simplest to do that by giving them a specific goal or set of goals that have to be accomplished there, but that doesn't always mean they'll do it; Scions have their own goals and ideas, too, after all, and are prone to up and leaving to go find an out-of-the-box solution elsewhere, deal with another problem that they decide is more pressing to them personally, or even because they're just refusing whatever you had planned because they've decided they don't want to do it. You can really never rely on them to stay put and do what you want, and anyway, it's more fun to let them do as much globe-hopping as they want to; it helps them realize how much the world really is open to them (and, later, Terrae Incognita and other magical worlds as well).
Psychopomps are great and we usually feel that every group should have one, but sometimes a group doesn't, or that player's out that day, or they just all happen to be too low-Legend for psychopomping to be much help in getting around. Wealth is certainly a good fallback if you have a rich Scion among you (though our better-off Scions found that even large fortunes can be depleted pretty quickly when you use them to constantly requisition global travel and weapons), but in most cases, they tend to just get creative. We've had Loa Scions possess travel agents and ticket-takers to just get train tickets and passports handed to their bandmates, had physical Scions carjack unsuspecting mortals (hey, it sucks for them, but it's for the greater good in the end!), or had sneakier Scions use Darkness or Illusion boons to disappear and just stow away on planes that were going where they were, or just had folks with high Epic Charisma wander up to plane pilots and ask reeeeeally nicely if they'd drive this plane to South America instead of its current destination in Europe. It's not particularly difficult for Scions to get where they want to go if they really put their minds to it (at least, not when they're only dealing with mortals; if they happen to accidentally run into a travel agent who is a lesser immortal, they may have a much harder time of it!). There's also always the relic transportation option; a few of our Scions have taken relic trucks or helicopters at character creation, which gives them a built-in method of getting around at lower Legends.
And finally, some PCs just do it that hard way; if you've got Lightning Swimmer, you can just swim yourself all the way through the Atlantic to Africa, towing your bandmates behind you, or run across the ocean with Fast as Thought or fly with Lightning Flyer + Animal Feature/Wind's Freedom/relic wings. Of course, you're likely to encounter watery Titanspawn along the way, but hey, that's how Scions roll.
Our games almost always tend to be global by the time the PCs have reached Demigodhood; at that point, there's so much they can do and see and so many mythic parts of the world to visit that chaining them to a certain area usually only makes them cranky. It is generally easier to keep them in one place, because you can set up and plan for almost every eventuality there, and it's usually simplest to do that by giving them a specific goal or set of goals that have to be accomplished there, but that doesn't always mean they'll do it; Scions have their own goals and ideas, too, after all, and are prone to up and leaving to go find an out-of-the-box solution elsewhere, deal with another problem that they decide is more pressing to them personally, or even because they're just refusing whatever you had planned because they've decided they don't want to do it. You can really never rely on them to stay put and do what you want, and anyway, it's more fun to let them do as much globe-hopping as they want to; it helps them realize how much the world really is open to them (and, later, Terrae Incognita and other magical worlds as well).
Psychopomps are great and we usually feel that every group should have one, but sometimes a group doesn't, or that player's out that day, or they just all happen to be too low-Legend for psychopomping to be much help in getting around. Wealth is certainly a good fallback if you have a rich Scion among you (though our better-off Scions found that even large fortunes can be depleted pretty quickly when you use them to constantly requisition global travel and weapons), but in most cases, they tend to just get creative. We've had Loa Scions possess travel agents and ticket-takers to just get train tickets and passports handed to their bandmates, had physical Scions carjack unsuspecting mortals (hey, it sucks for them, but it's for the greater good in the end!), or had sneakier Scions use Darkness or Illusion boons to disappear and just stow away on planes that were going where they were, or just had folks with high Epic Charisma wander up to plane pilots and ask reeeeeally nicely if they'd drive this plane to South America instead of its current destination in Europe. It's not particularly difficult for Scions to get where they want to go if they really put their minds to it (at least, not when they're only dealing with mortals; if they happen to accidentally run into a travel agent who is a lesser immortal, they may have a much harder time of it!). There's also always the relic transportation option; a few of our Scions have taken relic trucks or helicopters at character creation, which gives them a built-in method of getting around at lower Legends.
And finally, some PCs just do it that hard way; if you've got Lightning Swimmer, you can just swim yourself all the way through the Atlantic to Africa, towing your bandmates behind you, or run across the ocean with Fast as Thought or fly with Lightning Flyer + Animal Feature/Wind's Freedom/relic wings. Of course, you're likely to encounter watery Titanspawn along the way, but hey, that's how Scions roll.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Social Butterflies
Question: Reading your description of Ishtar made me think. Do you find social characters to be drastically more powerful than physical or mental? It often seems like social characters can do more than physical or mental characters, and whatever they cannot do, they can charm or manipulate a physical or mental character to do for them.
I posed this question to one of our groups yesterday, and Sowiljr's player said, "There's a reason barbarians no longer rule the world." There's some truth to that.
I'm not sure I'd say that social characters are drastically more powerful than all other characters, but social stats are very powerful indeed, and very effective when used against someone who doesn't have the wherewithal to resist. When you talk about "social characters" versus "mental or physical characters", are you talking characters that have those stats most prominently, or characters that have nothing but those stats? Because there's a very big difference, and characters with only one dimension of stats are always crippled in a big way. (Which doesn't mean you can't play them, of course - they're valid archetypes and can be a lot of fun, but they have fatal flaws that always lead to serious problems and/or tragedy.)
Primarily social characters are the movers and shakers of Scion. They make the deals, set in place the foundation for future events, decide who's the band's friend and who's their enemy, and are generally in charge of what the PCs' outlook and relations are if there is no comparably social person to compete with them. They get other people to do what they want, either by guiding them subtly with Manipulation, asking them nicely with Charisma, or just being so impressive with Appearance that people automatically hop to taking care of them. They don't necessarily have to be able to do much on their own, but that's okay, because there's always someone else to do those things for them.
Furthermore, social characters don't actually have to do anything to be effective in getting people to do what they want. Someone with a bunch of dots of Epic Charisma is so commanding and likable that those around them want to do what they want and make them happy, even if no powers were used on them; they're just that awesome and can't be ignored when they're in the room. Someone with a bucket of Epic Manipulation is nearly impossible to argue with; everything they says sounds reasonable, every suggestion they make sounds like a good idea, and those who talk to them find themselves rethinking their positions and realizing they never thought of certain subjects in that way before. They're effortlessly convincing without ever having to use a knack or boon. And, of course, those with a lot of Epic Appearance don't really have to ask others to make them happy; either they'll do it because they can't help wanting that unbelievably gorgeous creature to smile at them, or they'll do it because the idea of risking that horrifying monstrosity's displeasure shakes them to their bones. It's often hard to remember that social characters are always super convincing, likable or amazing to be around, just like physical characters are always strong or mental characters are always smart; using social powers is something they only have to resort to when they're actively working against someone's convictions or better judgment, really, or when dealing with someone of legendary integrity.
But the thing about socials is that you are just as crippled having only socials as you would be having only the other stats. A social character with no mentals is an idiot with poor reaction time and no ability to understand what's going on; sure, they can get everyone to do whatever they want, but they're probably doing things that aren't particularly good even for themselves due to their own short-sightedness and lack of grasp of the situation. And while a social character can drive a physical one around for days on end doing their errands while they eat grapes and lounge around, it only takes a single time that a physical character manages to resist them, and suddenly they've been turned into so many chunks of unidentifiable chop suey. The same is true of purely mental characters (i.e., fragile and easily ignorable no matter how valuable their information) and purely physical ones (i.e., stupid and immediately hated or ignored by everyone around them). Successful Scions don't have to have all attributes in every category - in fact, they're often much more interesting if they have a couple of blind spots that they're just hopelessly bad at - but they do need to have a spread of different attributes if they want to be masters of their own destiny.
Socials may be the hardest set of attributes to do completely without; I've seen characters go purely mental/social or purely physical/social, but it's incredibly difficult for a character with no socials at all to get much done. Either you're completely ignored, which makes cult-building and godly-reputation-spawning very difficult (for a long time, Sophia could only get mortals to notice her by setting them on fire, which was somewhat impractical for getting them to worship her), or you're so lacking in social graces that other immortals and gods are actually offended by you, which never makes your life easier. I could see a really dedicated character going for it, but none of ours, so far, have made it to god without jumping on the social train for at least one attribute.
So yes, fear the social characters; if you're not good at resisting them, they can quite literally run your life and everyone else around you to boot. But they're not the be-all and end-all of powers in Scion, and those who neglect mentals and physicals are not doing themselves any favors. Ishtar is so powerful not because she has all the socials, but because she has all the socials AND some potent physicals and mentals; finding the right combination of skills for your character is much more key than just choosing a category of attributes.
I posed this question to one of our groups yesterday, and Sowiljr's player said, "There's a reason barbarians no longer rule the world." There's some truth to that.
I'm not sure I'd say that social characters are drastically more powerful than all other characters, but social stats are very powerful indeed, and very effective when used against someone who doesn't have the wherewithal to resist. When you talk about "social characters" versus "mental or physical characters", are you talking characters that have those stats most prominently, or characters that have nothing but those stats? Because there's a very big difference, and characters with only one dimension of stats are always crippled in a big way. (Which doesn't mean you can't play them, of course - they're valid archetypes and can be a lot of fun, but they have fatal flaws that always lead to serious problems and/or tragedy.)
Primarily social characters are the movers and shakers of Scion. They make the deals, set in place the foundation for future events, decide who's the band's friend and who's their enemy, and are generally in charge of what the PCs' outlook and relations are if there is no comparably social person to compete with them. They get other people to do what they want, either by guiding them subtly with Manipulation, asking them nicely with Charisma, or just being so impressive with Appearance that people automatically hop to taking care of them. They don't necessarily have to be able to do much on their own, but that's okay, because there's always someone else to do those things for them.
Furthermore, social characters don't actually have to do anything to be effective in getting people to do what they want. Someone with a bunch of dots of Epic Charisma is so commanding and likable that those around them want to do what they want and make them happy, even if no powers were used on them; they're just that awesome and can't be ignored when they're in the room. Someone with a bucket of Epic Manipulation is nearly impossible to argue with; everything they says sounds reasonable, every suggestion they make sounds like a good idea, and those who talk to them find themselves rethinking their positions and realizing they never thought of certain subjects in that way before. They're effortlessly convincing without ever having to use a knack or boon. And, of course, those with a lot of Epic Appearance don't really have to ask others to make them happy; either they'll do it because they can't help wanting that unbelievably gorgeous creature to smile at them, or they'll do it because the idea of risking that horrifying monstrosity's displeasure shakes them to their bones. It's often hard to remember that social characters are always super convincing, likable or amazing to be around, just like physical characters are always strong or mental characters are always smart; using social powers is something they only have to resort to when they're actively working against someone's convictions or better judgment, really, or when dealing with someone of legendary integrity.
But the thing about socials is that you are just as crippled having only socials as you would be having only the other stats. A social character with no mentals is an idiot with poor reaction time and no ability to understand what's going on; sure, they can get everyone to do whatever they want, but they're probably doing things that aren't particularly good even for themselves due to their own short-sightedness and lack of grasp of the situation. And while a social character can drive a physical one around for days on end doing their errands while they eat grapes and lounge around, it only takes a single time that a physical character manages to resist them, and suddenly they've been turned into so many chunks of unidentifiable chop suey. The same is true of purely mental characters (i.e., fragile and easily ignorable no matter how valuable their information) and purely physical ones (i.e., stupid and immediately hated or ignored by everyone around them). Successful Scions don't have to have all attributes in every category - in fact, they're often much more interesting if they have a couple of blind spots that they're just hopelessly bad at - but they do need to have a spread of different attributes if they want to be masters of their own destiny.
Socials may be the hardest set of attributes to do completely without; I've seen characters go purely mental/social or purely physical/social, but it's incredibly difficult for a character with no socials at all to get much done. Either you're completely ignored, which makes cult-building and godly-reputation-spawning very difficult (for a long time, Sophia could only get mortals to notice her by setting them on fire, which was somewhat impractical for getting them to worship her), or you're so lacking in social graces that other immortals and gods are actually offended by you, which never makes your life easier. I could see a really dedicated character going for it, but none of ours, so far, have made it to god without jumping on the social train for at least one attribute.
So yes, fear the social characters; if you're not good at resisting them, they can quite literally run your life and everyone else around you to boot. But they're not the be-all and end-all of powers in Scion, and those who neglect mentals and physicals are not doing themselves any favors. Ishtar is so powerful not because she has all the socials, but because she has all the socials AND some potent physicals and mentals; finding the right combination of skills for your character is much more key than just choosing a category of attributes.
Little Bird, Little Bird
Question: Why is Huitzilopochtli as the fiercest god of his pantheon identified with the hummingbird? I heard that some hummingbirds can be poisonous. Is that the reason?
Actually, Huitzilopochtli is associated with hummingbirds because the Aztecs believed that hummingbirds were among nature's greatest badasses. Their bright colors, incredible speed and sharp-looking beaks represented ferocity, vitality and masculinity in Aztec culture, so it was natural to associate them with Huitzilopochtli, the most ferocious of war-gods. This is also why fallen warriors are sometimes represented as hummingbirds; their warlike souls are easily translated into the energetically fierce little birds.
Modern students of Aztec culture often find this confusing because we tend to think of hummingbirds as symbols of beauty, gentleness and nature thanks to their pretty colors and association with flowers, but the Aztecs were big fans of their boundless energy and stabby beaks. You or I might look at a hummingbird and think, "Oh, that's pretty!", but an Aztec would look at one and think, "Oh, man, that is a tiny winged murderfestival going to town on that jacaranda."
There are actually no poisonous hummingbirds. They're not one of those creatures that's brightly colored to warn you that they'll melt your skin off; they're just an exciting rainbow of feathers to aid them in attracting mates and blending in with flowers.
Actually, Huitzilopochtli is associated with hummingbirds because the Aztecs believed that hummingbirds were among nature's greatest badasses. Their bright colors, incredible speed and sharp-looking beaks represented ferocity, vitality and masculinity in Aztec culture, so it was natural to associate them with Huitzilopochtli, the most ferocious of war-gods. This is also why fallen warriors are sometimes represented as hummingbirds; their warlike souls are easily translated into the energetically fierce little birds.
Modern students of Aztec culture often find this confusing because we tend to think of hummingbirds as symbols of beauty, gentleness and nature thanks to their pretty colors and association with flowers, but the Aztecs were big fans of their boundless energy and stabby beaks. You or I might look at a hummingbird and think, "Oh, that's pretty!", but an Aztec would look at one and think, "Oh, man, that is a tiny winged murderfestival going to town on that jacaranda."
There are actually no poisonous hummingbirds. They're not one of those creatures that's brightly colored to warn you that they'll melt your skin off; they're just an exciting rainbow of feathers to aid them in attracting mates and blending in with flowers.
Friday, May 25, 2012
It's Not the Size that Counts
Question: How do you handle the imbalance of XP from one player to the next? Unfavored things, the Demigod upgrade, and the God Upgrade can all conspire to create a gulf of 200 XP or more by god.
Most of the time, we don't! And that has always worked out pretty great for us. We do some small things to try to keep XP striation down - we award Legend instead of letting it be bought, for one thing, and if there are PCs of different Legend in the same band, those of lower Legend get slightly more XP than those of higher Legend to prevent the higher-Legend people from leaving them in the dust - but most of the time, we let things happen organically based on how the players want to run with their points. There will always be some XP variation between PCs, but the key is that that variation is in their hands, not ours.
You're right; where a PC chooses how to spend bonus points at creation, where to put their dots at the Demigod and God upgrades, whether they're buying favored or unfavored abilities and associated or unassociated powers, whether they're buying knacks on their own or getting them for free from Epics, and whether or not they have the XP-discount or free-dots-of-abilities Knacks all make a difference in how far the same amount of XP stretches. In our games, Fatebonds are a further element, as Fatebonds buy things at a reduced price from what the PC would pay to buy them alone, so someone who has 50 XP worth of a purview bought off will see it coverted into other things that, if they were trying to buy themselves, would be worth more than 50 XP. Players missing games, which happens inevitably over the course of a long game, also now and then causes them to lose out on XP that the other players get. There are a lot of ways to monkey around with XP and how you spend it and where it goes in Scion, and it's inevitable that some characters will end up "ahead" if you consider it a zero-sum total number.
But we generally don't, because the players have almost total control over their own XP and whether or not they want to spend it in the most "efficient" manner or take a hit in order to do something they like better. Sure, the player who wanted to have "the most XP" should probably only buy things that are associated, always immediately buy all the XP-discount knacks and hope they get Fatebound for stats they don't like to be bought off to increase ones they do, but that doesn't sound like very much fun to me, to be honest, and I'd assume it doesn't to our players, either, because none of them have ever tried to do it. Which is not to say that they're not on the lookout for how to stretch their XP the furthest, of course, nor that we don't help out with that whenever it looks like someone's struggling to figure out how to do everything they want to do, but the most important thing is generally getting the most bang for your XP when doing what you want to do, not getting the most bang for it in general terms.
We've never had a PC who didn't at some point start buying something that was unassociated or unfavored of their own accord; we've never had one who had only Fatebonds that made life easy (nor one who only had Fatebonds that made life hard, in fact). We've had a few buy up all the XP discount knacks, but it's much more common for them to have one or two in the attributes that make the most sense for them. Those are things that naturally happen over the course of a character's growth, as their priorities and plans change and they grow beyond being just a servant of their parents and start becoming a deity of their own. And of course this means that they end up with, as you note, an XP "gulf" of a few (on up to quite a few) points between different PCs, but that disparity has never made the slightest difference in play.
There are just so many ways to be powerful and effective in Scion that having the most points doesn't matter as much as where you put them and whether or not you're covering areas the other PCs aren't, which is one of the wonderful things about the game. Someone like Terminus, who has had his stats bought off and rebought by Fatebonds so many times that he's like a walking patchwork quilt of a god, covered in Arete and trailing thread, may have technically "more" XP spent on his character than someone like Zwazo Fou Fou, but the fact remains that Zwazo frequently saves Terminus' bacon, because Terminus' points are in things like "seeing really far" and "using Magic to make Fate hate me", while Zwazo's are in more concrete things like "chopping people into small pieces" and "running away really fast". Scion is a beautiful example of a game in which where you spend your points and what you choose as your specialties is much more important than your gross amount of XP, which leaves XP (basically just the measure of how quickly your character can learn something) free to be more of an in-game flavor source than a be-all and end-all almighty game-decider.
So, yeah, if you reverse-engineered, say, all nine of our current Legend 9 PCs, you'd find that probably none of them have the exact same total amount of XP as represented by dots and boons. But all of them are incredibly powerful and vital members of their teams, and the fact that Sowiljr probably has slightly less total XP than Eztli does not in any way make him less powerful than she is or less critically important to the success and survival of the entire band. The only time a difference of XP is going to be a problem is if two PCs in the same game have exactly the same associations and favored abilities and exactly the same Fatebonds and are buying only exactly the same stats with no variations or extras, and I can't imagine that ever happening. Ironically, it's just as often the PCs who technically have more XP calling frantically for help from a PC who has less as it is the other way around; in Scion, unless you're looking at incredibly extreme cases, the differences in PCs' XP totals don't matter even remotely as much as what they have chosen to do with that XP.
Most of the time, we don't! And that has always worked out pretty great for us. We do some small things to try to keep XP striation down - we award Legend instead of letting it be bought, for one thing, and if there are PCs of different Legend in the same band, those of lower Legend get slightly more XP than those of higher Legend to prevent the higher-Legend people from leaving them in the dust - but most of the time, we let things happen organically based on how the players want to run with their points. There will always be some XP variation between PCs, but the key is that that variation is in their hands, not ours.
You're right; where a PC chooses how to spend bonus points at creation, where to put their dots at the Demigod and God upgrades, whether they're buying favored or unfavored abilities and associated or unassociated powers, whether they're buying knacks on their own or getting them for free from Epics, and whether or not they have the XP-discount or free-dots-of-abilities Knacks all make a difference in how far the same amount of XP stretches. In our games, Fatebonds are a further element, as Fatebonds buy things at a reduced price from what the PC would pay to buy them alone, so someone who has 50 XP worth of a purview bought off will see it coverted into other things that, if they were trying to buy themselves, would be worth more than 50 XP. Players missing games, which happens inevitably over the course of a long game, also now and then causes them to lose out on XP that the other players get. There are a lot of ways to monkey around with XP and how you spend it and where it goes in Scion, and it's inevitable that some characters will end up "ahead" if you consider it a zero-sum total number.
But we generally don't, because the players have almost total control over their own XP and whether or not they want to spend it in the most "efficient" manner or take a hit in order to do something they like better. Sure, the player who wanted to have "the most XP" should probably only buy things that are associated, always immediately buy all the XP-discount knacks and hope they get Fatebound for stats they don't like to be bought off to increase ones they do, but that doesn't sound like very much fun to me, to be honest, and I'd assume it doesn't to our players, either, because none of them have ever tried to do it. Which is not to say that they're not on the lookout for how to stretch their XP the furthest, of course, nor that we don't help out with that whenever it looks like someone's struggling to figure out how to do everything they want to do, but the most important thing is generally getting the most bang for your XP when doing what you want to do, not getting the most bang for it in general terms.
We've never had a PC who didn't at some point start buying something that was unassociated or unfavored of their own accord; we've never had one who had only Fatebonds that made life easy (nor one who only had Fatebonds that made life hard, in fact). We've had a few buy up all the XP discount knacks, but it's much more common for them to have one or two in the attributes that make the most sense for them. Those are things that naturally happen over the course of a character's growth, as their priorities and plans change and they grow beyond being just a servant of their parents and start becoming a deity of their own. And of course this means that they end up with, as you note, an XP "gulf" of a few (on up to quite a few) points between different PCs, but that disparity has never made the slightest difference in play.
There are just so many ways to be powerful and effective in Scion that having the most points doesn't matter as much as where you put them and whether or not you're covering areas the other PCs aren't, which is one of the wonderful things about the game. Someone like Terminus, who has had his stats bought off and rebought by Fatebonds so many times that he's like a walking patchwork quilt of a god, covered in Arete and trailing thread, may have technically "more" XP spent on his character than someone like Zwazo Fou Fou, but the fact remains that Zwazo frequently saves Terminus' bacon, because Terminus' points are in things like "seeing really far" and "using Magic to make Fate hate me", while Zwazo's are in more concrete things like "chopping people into small pieces" and "running away really fast". Scion is a beautiful example of a game in which where you spend your points and what you choose as your specialties is much more important than your gross amount of XP, which leaves XP (basically just the measure of how quickly your character can learn something) free to be more of an in-game flavor source than a be-all and end-all almighty game-decider.
So, yeah, if you reverse-engineered, say, all nine of our current Legend 9 PCs, you'd find that probably none of them have the exact same total amount of XP as represented by dots and boons. But all of them are incredibly powerful and vital members of their teams, and the fact that Sowiljr probably has slightly less total XP than Eztli does not in any way make him less powerful than she is or less critically important to the success and survival of the entire band. The only time a difference of XP is going to be a problem is if two PCs in the same game have exactly the same associations and favored abilities and exactly the same Fatebonds and are buying only exactly the same stats with no variations or extras, and I can't imagine that ever happening. Ironically, it's just as often the PCs who technically have more XP calling frantically for help from a PC who has less as it is the other way around; in Scion, unless you're looking at incredibly extreme cases, the differences in PCs' XP totals don't matter even remotely as much as what they have chosen to do with that XP.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Local Color
Question: So what's the deal with gods and PSPs? Do they all have them maxed when they become Legend 12 gods? Is it expected of them?
Interestingly, there's a complete riot of different opinions on PSPs in the Scion community, and nobody agrees with anybody else. Our assumption for our games is that all Legend 12 NPC gods have their PSP maxed unless there's a good reason for them not to (i.e., they have a myth that specifically shows them failing to be able to do that thing, or they're fundamentally philosophically opposed to it). PSPs are one of the major sources of cultural flavor for the pantheons, and they're meant to be a set of powers that are as quintessentially representative of a pantheon as possible. A Greek who doesn't have Arete isn't being very Greek; an Aztlanti who doesn't sacrifice is failing at Aztlanti. It's certainly possible and can make for good plots when it happens, but it's a rarity; most Legend 12 gods should have access to those powers.
As always, things are different for PCs. PSPs are actually one of the few things in our games that Fatebonds don't affect; mortal Reverence can't take away or apply negatives to your PSP because it's a core part of your divine blood and will always be part of your Fate, but neither do they help it. This means that, unlike most Epic Attributes and APPs in the game, Scions have to buy their PSPs with XP all by themselves. In many cases, investment in a PSP is a measure of a Scion's investment in their pantheon, as they spend time learning its core concepts and developing its most celebrated abilities.
Of course, Scions can choose to ignore their PSPs, and they can get all the way to Legend 12 while ignoring them if they want to; there's no rule that will force them to buy them and no reason their players can't choose to spend that XP on other things, and furthermore, not having their PSP maxed doesn't necessarily have to mean that a Scion doesn't care about their pantheon, either. We have a wide-range spread of PSP investment across our god-level PCs, from those who have their PSP maxed out to those who only have one or two levels, and everything in between. In some cases, the low PSP is a reflection of the PC's general displeasure with their pantheon (that would be Vala), while in others it's just a result of the PC focusing on other things (Jioni, for example).
But the major kicker is that the gods of a PC's pantheon generally expect them to be able to do the same things that all gods of their pantheon can do, and the irritation, mockery or outright ridicule that often occurs if they discover that they can't is a powerful social motivator. Aztlanti who can't pull power from sacrifice with Itztli are Aztlanti that their pantheon frankly has no confidence in whatsoever - what are they going to do if they need the juice for something important and can't get it? - and as a result are unlikely to be trusted with any essential tasks or prominent roles. Devas who can't break out of the cycle of Samsara are practically as deluded as mortals (in the opinion of the properly enlightened, of course), and are likely to be treated like stupid children no matter what their Legend level until they get their act together in that regard. Scions of the Dodekatheon who don't excel in at least one or two areas of Arete skill have even odds of being laughed off Olympus or shoved out into the World so they stop embarrassing everyone, and Tuatha who can't handle the sacred oaths of Enech are not looking particularly trustworthy or heroic to the rest of their family, no matter what else they might be doing (double jeopardy, Tuatha Scions - this applies to you if you have all the Enech but break it, too! Yay!). If you're a Babylonian Scion without mastery over Me, they'll probably consider you unimportant and beneath them regardless of your Legend rating because of your inability to show yourself to be an ultimate power like the rest of them, and if you're Pesedjet and you can't figure out your own soul, the weighty frowns of the entire pantheon's collective disapproval of your obtuseness is likely to crush you (dude, even humans figured out how to deal with that when they die!). And god forbid an Aesir Scion ever decides they don't feel like being a gigantic juggernaut of physical strength and endurance; in one session, Odin ordered Vala to start getting some Jotunblut so she'd be less fragile and stop embarrassing him in front of the rest of the Aesir. When she refused ("You can't even open doors here!" "I have other people for that."), he split one of the long tables of his hall and destroyed one of her Birthrights, furious at her obstinacy.
So really, PSPs are a very big deal; they're one of the strongest emblems of a pantheon and one of the easiest things for any god, PC or NPC, to be judged on if they don't have what's expected. PCs are always and forever free not to buy them, but they're likely to have to deal with social consequences as a result (which many of them are perfectly willing to do, if Vala continuing to stubbornly spend all her XP on Mystery instead is any indication). NPC gods should pretty much have all of the PSP boons in every case except when you have a strong reason for them not to - it's one of the most important parts of a pantheon, after all, and its the PCs' jobs to be mold-breakers and trailblazers, not their ancient parents'.
Interestingly, there's a complete riot of different opinions on PSPs in the Scion community, and nobody agrees with anybody else. Our assumption for our games is that all Legend 12 NPC gods have their PSP maxed unless there's a good reason for them not to (i.e., they have a myth that specifically shows them failing to be able to do that thing, or they're fundamentally philosophically opposed to it). PSPs are one of the major sources of cultural flavor for the pantheons, and they're meant to be a set of powers that are as quintessentially representative of a pantheon as possible. A Greek who doesn't have Arete isn't being very Greek; an Aztlanti who doesn't sacrifice is failing at Aztlanti. It's certainly possible and can make for good plots when it happens, but it's a rarity; most Legend 12 gods should have access to those powers.
As always, things are different for PCs. PSPs are actually one of the few things in our games that Fatebonds don't affect; mortal Reverence can't take away or apply negatives to your PSP because it's a core part of your divine blood and will always be part of your Fate, but neither do they help it. This means that, unlike most Epic Attributes and APPs in the game, Scions have to buy their PSPs with XP all by themselves. In many cases, investment in a PSP is a measure of a Scion's investment in their pantheon, as they spend time learning its core concepts and developing its most celebrated abilities.
Of course, Scions can choose to ignore their PSPs, and they can get all the way to Legend 12 while ignoring them if they want to; there's no rule that will force them to buy them and no reason their players can't choose to spend that XP on other things, and furthermore, not having their PSP maxed doesn't necessarily have to mean that a Scion doesn't care about their pantheon, either. We have a wide-range spread of PSP investment across our god-level PCs, from those who have their PSP maxed out to those who only have one or two levels, and everything in between. In some cases, the low PSP is a reflection of the PC's general displeasure with their pantheon (that would be Vala), while in others it's just a result of the PC focusing on other things (Jioni, for example).
But the major kicker is that the gods of a PC's pantheon generally expect them to be able to do the same things that all gods of their pantheon can do, and the irritation, mockery or outright ridicule that often occurs if they discover that they can't is a powerful social motivator. Aztlanti who can't pull power from sacrifice with Itztli are Aztlanti that their pantheon frankly has no confidence in whatsoever - what are they going to do if they need the juice for something important and can't get it? - and as a result are unlikely to be trusted with any essential tasks or prominent roles. Devas who can't break out of the cycle of Samsara are practically as deluded as mortals (in the opinion of the properly enlightened, of course), and are likely to be treated like stupid children no matter what their Legend level until they get their act together in that regard. Scions of the Dodekatheon who don't excel in at least one or two areas of Arete skill have even odds of being laughed off Olympus or shoved out into the World so they stop embarrassing everyone, and Tuatha who can't handle the sacred oaths of Enech are not looking particularly trustworthy or heroic to the rest of their family, no matter what else they might be doing (double jeopardy, Tuatha Scions - this applies to you if you have all the Enech but break it, too! Yay!). If you're a Babylonian Scion without mastery over Me, they'll probably consider you unimportant and beneath them regardless of your Legend rating because of your inability to show yourself to be an ultimate power like the rest of them, and if you're Pesedjet and you can't figure out your own soul, the weighty frowns of the entire pantheon's collective disapproval of your obtuseness is likely to crush you (dude, even humans figured out how to deal with that when they die!). And god forbid an Aesir Scion ever decides they don't feel like being a gigantic juggernaut of physical strength and endurance; in one session, Odin ordered Vala to start getting some Jotunblut so she'd be less fragile and stop embarrassing him in front of the rest of the Aesir. When she refused ("You can't even open doors here!" "I have other people for that."), he split one of the long tables of his hall and destroyed one of her Birthrights, furious at her obstinacy.
So really, PSPs are a very big deal; they're one of the strongest emblems of a pantheon and one of the easiest things for any god, PC or NPC, to be judged on if they don't have what's expected. PCs are always and forever free not to buy them, but they're likely to have to deal with social consequences as a result (which many of them are perfectly willing to do, if Vala continuing to stubbornly spend all her XP on Mystery instead is any indication). NPC gods should pretty much have all of the PSP boons in every case except when you have a strong reason for them not to - it's one of the most important parts of a pantheon, after all, and its the PCs' jobs to be mold-breakers and trailblazers, not their ancient parents'.
A Walk on the Wild Side
Question: My question is about totem animals, specifically the differences between them. For example, in one post you said that Sowiljr is trying to get a nahualli - how is that different from a Hindu Scion trying to get a vahana? And once you get one, how do you represent it? With a series of Animal boons, with a magic version of the animal as a Creature Birthright? How does it show up on paper?
Ooh, what a fun question! Different cultures' totem animals are indeed different, you're right; how they differ exactly depends on what they represent and how they're used in that culture. In the case of both nahualli and vahana, we represent the creature as a specialty Birthright, but as one is the other half of an Aztlanti god's feral soul and the other a symbol representing its Deva master's attributes and dominion, they are very different in execution.
So here are some examples! First, let's just use Eztli's nahualli, because she's an easy one to point to.
Eztli's nahualli is an enormous bat named Cuacitlali ("eater of stars"). It's represented as an eight-dot special Birthright that cannot be stolen or removed from her in any way. She gained it during her ascension to godhood without too much muss and fuss because she had been raised more or less in what was left of Aztec society and had been properly named and ceremonialized and so forth, so grabbing hold of and harnessing the other half of her own soul came naturally to her. Exactly what the nahualli animal is is generally left up to the player, but it is usually related to their personality and the meaning behind their Aztec name; with a name meaning "blood" and a reputation for scaring the daylights out of people, Eztli's soul taking the form of a vampire bat is not a surprise to anyone.
Nahualli are literally part of their Scions as the other half of their souls; Eztli is Cuacitlali and Cuacitlali is Eztli. Therefore, she can choose to appear as herself, as the bat, or walking side-by-side with it as the dual creature she is. She can swap between them any time, for free and without requiring an action, because she's not really changing anything, just showing a different aspect of what she already is. She can't take advantage of this for combat purposes - she can't attack with the bat to use her Perfect Partner, for example, nor can she use it to get extra attacks on the same action - because it's not truly a separate creature, but she still often stunts double attacks as being done one by herself and one by the bat, and swapping between forms is particularly convenient when she needs wings in a hurry but doesn't want to spend an action growing them or using Wind's Freedom. We also encourage PCs with nahualli to play their personalities, which is usually a lot of fun; they're the "missing" half of that PC's soul, so they often behave in ways the PC wouldn't. Cuacitlali, in particular, is volatile, emotional and bad-tempered, things that Eztli herself is not, because it has all the emotional parts of her soul. (In the words of Sowiljr, "Great. Now I have a wife who couldn't care less about me and a violently jealous and angry bat.") She's also had a lot of fun with its aversion to light; it's not mechanically hurt by it, but man does it get upset when Sowiljr starts busting Sun boons in its face (and Terminus, who has Animal Communication for Bat and is the only other person who can understand it, finds the resulting furious diatribes hilarious).
Having access to her nahualli gives Eztli a lot of mechanical bonuses; since she's one with batkind, she is able to use her Itztli boons on bats as well as she could on humans, particularly useful when she's running low on Legend but her band isn't letting her eat the hearts of any people right at that moment. She can also pay 5 points of Legend instead of 1 when she uses Animal Form, and if she does she keeps all her own stats instead of reverting to a normal bat's, again because she already is a bat (the biggest and baddest bat, in fact). Finally, being in touch with her animal side gives her bonuses to her use of the Animal purview for bats, and she gets to count her Itztli boons as if they were Animal boons when she uses Animal Feature and Bestial Nature.
And that's pretty much how we roll with a nahualli. It's not a creature Birthright, because those are already in the game and it wouldn't be doing anything particularly unique and interesting for us, but instead a custom Birthright that reflects Eztli's connection to her nahualli animal and how it bolsters her power. It also depends heavily on the fact that Eztli is good with her totem animals; in a contrasting example, Yoloxochitl has a nahualli (an axolotl, because, like her, it's ridiculously adorable and refuses to leave its immature stage and grow up), but she doesn't know its name because she can't talk to it and doesn't have any real connection to it, and her total lack of Animal Ken means that it pretty much dislikes her and provides very few bonuses. At the moment, it only gives her her total Animal boons as a bonus to Appearance rolls and her total Animal Ken dots as a bonus to Survival rolls (and the second is useless because she has no Animal Ken). Her lack of any ability to commune or deal with her nahualli means that she can't swap back and forth into it at will the way Eztli does, and instead we have her roll a die each day; if she gets a 1, the nahualli takes over and she abruptly turns into an axolotl that does whatever it wants for the rest of the day, which has led to some hilarious situations. ("Why are your eyes crossed?" "Vigil Brand." "Did something happen to Kettila?" "I don't know, but there's a pink salamander falling off the World Tree.") She's working on getting some Animal boons and Animal Ken to hopefully make peace with her animal half, but for now they have something of an adorably antagonistic relationship, and the giant pool full of axolotls in her Sanctum just run from one side of the pond to the other to avoid her whenever she's there.
We have not gotten to stat up a vahana in game yet because none of our Devas are above Legend 4 at the moment, but we're looking forward to it. Like the nahualli above, we'd expect a player to come up with an appropriate animal that represents either their own attributes, something they suppress by controlling and riding it, or both. Unlike the nahualli, it probably would be a separate creature or follower Birthright that could take actions on its own if you wanted it to, but it's unlikely that it'd be that great in combat; we'd probably give it bonuses to traveling quickly, safely and surely to reflect its main function as a mount, and possibly some extra bonuses to the purviews that it represents and to its master when they take actions while impressively mounted on it. Considering that vahana are usually lesser immortals or minor deities that dedicate themselves to the service of a Deva, there would probably also need to be some kind of quest or at least prior connection between the Scion and his chosen vahana. Considering that some Devas even have people or inanimate objects as vahana (very very rarely, but it does happen), I'd entertain PC suggestions for those, too, though an animal's the most likely. I could also see a Deva god getting a couple of vahana for different occasions, as many of the Hindu gods are seen riding different ones at different times; alternatively, a vahana might be a Birthright that can be loaned out to others to help them take advantage of its bonuses, unlike the very personal and inseparable nahualli of the Aztecs.
Anyway: what all those paragraphs of examples are trying to say is that things like nahualli, vahana or fylgja are super-cool expressions of a specific culture's beliefs about totem animals, and as such are not really covered adequately by just using Animal boons or normal creature Birthrights. Custom Birthrights hit the spot just right for us; not only are they designed to capture the spirit of the myths that the creature comes from, but they also allow us to specifically tailor it to fit the individual PC, which is what totem animals are really meant to do in the first place.
Ooh, what a fun question! Different cultures' totem animals are indeed different, you're right; how they differ exactly depends on what they represent and how they're used in that culture. In the case of both nahualli and vahana, we represent the creature as a specialty Birthright, but as one is the other half of an Aztlanti god's feral soul and the other a symbol representing its Deva master's attributes and dominion, they are very different in execution.
So here are some examples! First, let's just use Eztli's nahualli, because she's an easy one to point to.
Eztli's nahualli is an enormous bat named Cuacitlali ("eater of stars"). It's represented as an eight-dot special Birthright that cannot be stolen or removed from her in any way. She gained it during her ascension to godhood without too much muss and fuss because she had been raised more or less in what was left of Aztec society and had been properly named and ceremonialized and so forth, so grabbing hold of and harnessing the other half of her own soul came naturally to her. Exactly what the nahualli animal is is generally left up to the player, but it is usually related to their personality and the meaning behind their Aztec name; with a name meaning "blood" and a reputation for scaring the daylights out of people, Eztli's soul taking the form of a vampire bat is not a surprise to anyone.
Nahualli are literally part of their Scions as the other half of their souls; Eztli is Cuacitlali and Cuacitlali is Eztli. Therefore, she can choose to appear as herself, as the bat, or walking side-by-side with it as the dual creature she is. She can swap between them any time, for free and without requiring an action, because she's not really changing anything, just showing a different aspect of what she already is. She can't take advantage of this for combat purposes - she can't attack with the bat to use her Perfect Partner, for example, nor can she use it to get extra attacks on the same action - because it's not truly a separate creature, but she still often stunts double attacks as being done one by herself and one by the bat, and swapping between forms is particularly convenient when she needs wings in a hurry but doesn't want to spend an action growing them or using Wind's Freedom. We also encourage PCs with nahualli to play their personalities, which is usually a lot of fun; they're the "missing" half of that PC's soul, so they often behave in ways the PC wouldn't. Cuacitlali, in particular, is volatile, emotional and bad-tempered, things that Eztli herself is not, because it has all the emotional parts of her soul. (In the words of Sowiljr, "Great. Now I have a wife who couldn't care less about me and a violently jealous and angry bat.") She's also had a lot of fun with its aversion to light; it's not mechanically hurt by it, but man does it get upset when Sowiljr starts busting Sun boons in its face (and Terminus, who has Animal Communication for Bat and is the only other person who can understand it, finds the resulting furious diatribes hilarious).
Having access to her nahualli gives Eztli a lot of mechanical bonuses; since she's one with batkind, she is able to use her Itztli boons on bats as well as she could on humans, particularly useful when she's running low on Legend but her band isn't letting her eat the hearts of any people right at that moment. She can also pay 5 points of Legend instead of 1 when she uses Animal Form, and if she does she keeps all her own stats instead of reverting to a normal bat's, again because she already is a bat (the biggest and baddest bat, in fact). Finally, being in touch with her animal side gives her bonuses to her use of the Animal purview for bats, and she gets to count her Itztli boons as if they were Animal boons when she uses Animal Feature and Bestial Nature.
And that's pretty much how we roll with a nahualli. It's not a creature Birthright, because those are already in the game and it wouldn't be doing anything particularly unique and interesting for us, but instead a custom Birthright that reflects Eztli's connection to her nahualli animal and how it bolsters her power. It also depends heavily on the fact that Eztli is good with her totem animals; in a contrasting example, Yoloxochitl has a nahualli (an axolotl, because, like her, it's ridiculously adorable and refuses to leave its immature stage and grow up), but she doesn't know its name because she can't talk to it and doesn't have any real connection to it, and her total lack of Animal Ken means that it pretty much dislikes her and provides very few bonuses. At the moment, it only gives her her total Animal boons as a bonus to Appearance rolls and her total Animal Ken dots as a bonus to Survival rolls (and the second is useless because she has no Animal Ken). Her lack of any ability to commune or deal with her nahualli means that she can't swap back and forth into it at will the way Eztli does, and instead we have her roll a die each day; if she gets a 1, the nahualli takes over and she abruptly turns into an axolotl that does whatever it wants for the rest of the day, which has led to some hilarious situations. ("Why are your eyes crossed?" "Vigil Brand." "Did something happen to Kettila?" "I don't know, but there's a pink salamander falling off the World Tree.") She's working on getting some Animal boons and Animal Ken to hopefully make peace with her animal half, but for now they have something of an adorably antagonistic relationship, and the giant pool full of axolotls in her Sanctum just run from one side of the pond to the other to avoid her whenever she's there.
We have not gotten to stat up a vahana in game yet because none of our Devas are above Legend 4 at the moment, but we're looking forward to it. Like the nahualli above, we'd expect a player to come up with an appropriate animal that represents either their own attributes, something they suppress by controlling and riding it, or both. Unlike the nahualli, it probably would be a separate creature or follower Birthright that could take actions on its own if you wanted it to, but it's unlikely that it'd be that great in combat; we'd probably give it bonuses to traveling quickly, safely and surely to reflect its main function as a mount, and possibly some extra bonuses to the purviews that it represents and to its master when they take actions while impressively mounted on it. Considering that vahana are usually lesser immortals or minor deities that dedicate themselves to the service of a Deva, there would probably also need to be some kind of quest or at least prior connection between the Scion and his chosen vahana. Considering that some Devas even have people or inanimate objects as vahana (very very rarely, but it does happen), I'd entertain PC suggestions for those, too, though an animal's the most likely. I could also see a Deva god getting a couple of vahana for different occasions, as many of the Hindu gods are seen riding different ones at different times; alternatively, a vahana might be a Birthright that can be loaned out to others to help them take advantage of its bonuses, unlike the very personal and inseparable nahualli of the Aztecs.
Anyway: what all those paragraphs of examples are trying to say is that things like nahualli, vahana or fylgja are super-cool expressions of a specific culture's beliefs about totem animals, and as such are not really covered adequately by just using Animal boons or normal creature Birthrights. Custom Birthrights hit the spot just right for us; not only are they designed to capture the spirit of the myths that the creature comes from, but they also allow us to specifically tailor it to fit the individual PC, which is what totem animals are really meant to do in the first place.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Triumvirate of Kings
Question: In your games how does Hades feel about being screwed out of ruling the universe (as the oldest son) by Zeus (the youngest son)? (I read Max's fiction.)
Oh, nobody screwed anybody out of anything. The three brothers agreed to cast lots for their kingdoms, which means that they chose them randomly - Homer doesn't give the exact method, but it was most likely drawing sticks or using dice. There's no mention anywhere of Zeus cheating, nor, in fact, of Hades feeling that he'd been gypped; the heavens, the seas and the underworld were considered three equal kingdoms, which the brothers ruled as equal kings, while the earth and Olympus itself are considered common ground that they all three have a right to. This is why Zeus can't do anything to force Hades to let someone out of the Underworld, for example; he's not king there, plain and simple, and Hades makes the rules, not him. All he can do is ask, and then shrug his shoulders at Demeter when Hades says no. The idea of Hades having gotten the short end of the stick is a peculiarly modern interpretation of the situation; because humanity is afraid of the underworld and doesn't particularly like it or its king, modern readers often assume that Hades would rather have been the lord of the sky or the ocean, but there's actually nothing in myth to suggest he feels that way. He was still regularly sacrificed to and respected (if feared), and the underworld also includes a lot of pleasant real estate like the Elysian Fields (some of the modern idea that Hades must not like being in the underworld also comes from syncretization with the Christian Hell, I think, and the assumption that it must suck for everyone who has to live there). Kingship of the underworld is as valid as kingship of the heavens; he has no reason to be upset or jealous of Zeus in that respect, because they're equals with equivalent spheres of power.
As far as becoming king of the other gods goes, the situation's not clear-cut there, either. Hesiod point-blank says that Zeus becomes the leader of the gods because they unanimously decided he should be, because he was the one who saved all his siblings from Cronus and then led the battle against the Titans; as in the story of the lot-casting, there is no hint anywhere that Hades and Poseidon aren't okay with this (in fact, it's implied that they agree along with everyone else). The fact that Hades is the oldest brother makes it easy for us northern-European-steeped folks to assume he was next in line for the throne and therefore might be upset about not getting it, but it's worth nothing that royal succession in ancient Greece actually didn't always follow in a patrilineal father-to-son line; often brothers, nephews, sons-in-law or completely unrelated dudes could succeed to the throne just as easily as blood sons when the old king died (this varies from kingdom to kingdom - Sparta tends more toward the father-to-son model with rare exceptions, while Athens and Argos have a long history of only following a patrilineal line when they feel like it). It's a bit of a leap to assume that Hades is upset about Zeus' rule when there's no suggestion of such a thing anywhere and he might not have expected to be handed the kingship in the first place anyway.
And, of course, there's always the philosophical switcheroo that Greek myth loves to pull with Zeus and his siblings: Hestia and Hades may have been born first, but Cronus vomited them up last, so in a sense they are the youngest (having been "born" last the second time) and Zeus, who was never devoured, the oldest. Lawyered.
So, anyway, Hades is not actually upset about Zeus' position; he really doesn't have any reason to be pissy about either of his brothers being kings, because they're all equal monarchs in their own right. Now if Zeus starts meddling in the underworld, making demands or trying to lay down laws, there's going to be a problem - it's not Zeus' show down there, and Hades is likely to get very cranky indeed and probably start hostilities that nobody wants to deal with. But for the moment, all's well; the three of them politick against one another like any kings do, but there's no grand scheme to overthrow each other in the offing (or IS there, players?).
Hades' cryptic statements to Max reveal that he has some plans and ambitions for the future - but what those might be is still a mystery. Max is certainly very aware that he's being groomed to take over at least some of the running of the realm, but what that means for Hades himself is just one of the death-god's many secrets.
(Personally, I always figured Hades' marriage to Persephone was probably politically weirder than the division of kingdoms - how weird is it to have your older brother as your son-in-law?)
Oh, nobody screwed anybody out of anything. The three brothers agreed to cast lots for their kingdoms, which means that they chose them randomly - Homer doesn't give the exact method, but it was most likely drawing sticks or using dice. There's no mention anywhere of Zeus cheating, nor, in fact, of Hades feeling that he'd been gypped; the heavens, the seas and the underworld were considered three equal kingdoms, which the brothers ruled as equal kings, while the earth and Olympus itself are considered common ground that they all three have a right to. This is why Zeus can't do anything to force Hades to let someone out of the Underworld, for example; he's not king there, plain and simple, and Hades makes the rules, not him. All he can do is ask, and then shrug his shoulders at Demeter when Hades says no. The idea of Hades having gotten the short end of the stick is a peculiarly modern interpretation of the situation; because humanity is afraid of the underworld and doesn't particularly like it or its king, modern readers often assume that Hades would rather have been the lord of the sky or the ocean, but there's actually nothing in myth to suggest he feels that way. He was still regularly sacrificed to and respected (if feared), and the underworld also includes a lot of pleasant real estate like the Elysian Fields (some of the modern idea that Hades must not like being in the underworld also comes from syncretization with the Christian Hell, I think, and the assumption that it must suck for everyone who has to live there). Kingship of the underworld is as valid as kingship of the heavens; he has no reason to be upset or jealous of Zeus in that respect, because they're equals with equivalent spheres of power.
As far as becoming king of the other gods goes, the situation's not clear-cut there, either. Hesiod point-blank says that Zeus becomes the leader of the gods because they unanimously decided he should be, because he was the one who saved all his siblings from Cronus and then led the battle against the Titans; as in the story of the lot-casting, there is no hint anywhere that Hades and Poseidon aren't okay with this (in fact, it's implied that they agree along with everyone else). The fact that Hades is the oldest brother makes it easy for us northern-European-steeped folks to assume he was next in line for the throne and therefore might be upset about not getting it, but it's worth nothing that royal succession in ancient Greece actually didn't always follow in a patrilineal father-to-son line; often brothers, nephews, sons-in-law or completely unrelated dudes could succeed to the throne just as easily as blood sons when the old king died (this varies from kingdom to kingdom - Sparta tends more toward the father-to-son model with rare exceptions, while Athens and Argos have a long history of only following a patrilineal line when they feel like it). It's a bit of a leap to assume that Hades is upset about Zeus' rule when there's no suggestion of such a thing anywhere and he might not have expected to be handed the kingship in the first place anyway.
And, of course, there's always the philosophical switcheroo that Greek myth loves to pull with Zeus and his siblings: Hestia and Hades may have been born first, but Cronus vomited them up last, so in a sense they are the youngest (having been "born" last the second time) and Zeus, who was never devoured, the oldest. Lawyered.
So, anyway, Hades is not actually upset about Zeus' position; he really doesn't have any reason to be pissy about either of his brothers being kings, because they're all equal monarchs in their own right. Now if Zeus starts meddling in the underworld, making demands or trying to lay down laws, there's going to be a problem - it's not Zeus' show down there, and Hades is likely to get very cranky indeed and probably start hostilities that nobody wants to deal with. But for the moment, all's well; the three of them politick against one another like any kings do, but there's no grand scheme to overthrow each other in the offing (or IS there, players?).
Hades' cryptic statements to Max reveal that he has some plans and ambitions for the future - but what those might be is still a mystery. Max is certainly very aware that he's being groomed to take over at least some of the running of the realm, but what that means for Hades himself is just one of the death-god's many secrets.
(Personally, I always figured Hades' marriage to Persephone was probably politically weirder than the division of kingdoms - how weird is it to have your older brother as your son-in-law?)
Meet My Better Half
Question: For your Animal Purview, how do you determine what counts as a specific enough category? For example, when it comes to fish and some birds, would you require that the player choose, I don't know, Animal (Piranha or Flounder etc,) or Animal (Sparrow or Blackbird, etc.), or would Animal (Fish) and Animal (Smaller Birds) be enough as long as the player didn't go nuts with it?
Your question sparked heated debate between John and myself during a long car ride, which came to verbal fisticuffs and declarations of war. The landscape trembled at our passing; the vehicle went faster in the hopes that we would get out of it sooner. You contributed to the epicness of our day.
But, anyway, the most important rule for Animal is this: is the animal being chosen specific enough to actually be a mythic totem animal? The Animal purview is designed to allow you to choose a totem animal that you identify with or that represents you, so if your chosen Animal specialty isn't doing that or is doing it poorly, you may need to rethink it.
For example, Animal (Piranha) and Animal (Sparrow) both sound awesome, because they show a player choosing a specific creature as their totem; they're choosing something because it has a certain feel to it, whether it's the piranha representing their small size but ferocious might or the sparrow representing their quick thinking and light-wingedness. A player doesn't necessarily have to be that specific, but neither do they want to be too general; Animal (Fish), for example, includes a huge range of other fish who really don't resemble the piranha and its symbolism at all, so I'd rule that it wouldn't work to try to use it as an umbrella there. Animal (Fish) would cover any fish that was just a general sort of fish: flounders, trout, perch, anything that in a myth would easily be reduced to "you know, a fish". Piranhas, on the other hand, are quite specifically about teeth and scariness, not about the normal qualities of fish, so I'd rule that if you want piranhas, you'd need Animal (Piranha). Similarly, someone with Animal (Fish) wouldn't have any power over sharks in our games; sure, science may know that sharks are a kind of very big, very toothy fish, but as a totem they're a distinctly different creature with distinctly different associations, so they're really not the same for purposes of the Animal purview.
Birds are trickier, because while there are umpteen bazillion kinds of birds, they aren't all easily distinguishable and don't all need to be their own animal (unless a player wants them to be, in which case I salute them). It's important to be clear with the player what exactly their purview does and does not cover - for example, I'd sit down with a player taking something like Animal (Small Birds) and point out that while it would cover sparrows and finches and robins and so forth (because for purposes of storytelling, they really aren't particularly functionally different), it would not cover other birds with distinctly different symbolic connotations, like crows or parrots, no matter what size those other birds might be. The important thing is the animal's function as a totem; if it's too general to be a reasonable totem, then you probably need to narrow it down. If it's trying to include several things that are obviously distinct totems on their own, it's trying to do too much.
Some examples from our games:
Eztli has Animal (Bat), which allows her control not only over the bloodthirsty American vampire bats, but also over the gigantic fruit-eating bats of Asia. It doesn't matter that they don't share the same general behavior or come from the same part of the world; anyone who sees either is going to know it's a bat, because bats are universally recognizable and are perfect for a totemic symbol. Bats are bats are bats, whether they have fuzzy orange fur or gigantic echolocation ears.
Jioni and Chicahua both have Animal (Spider). They tend to express it very differently - Jioni usually takes on the aspects of the myriad tiny black spiders of her swampy homeland, while Chicahua is all about the bright colors and rigid fur of tarantulas. They can both use (Spider) as a general Animal without needing to specialize, because spiders are another symbol that anybody can look at and immediately recognize - we all know what spiders are, and what they usually represent, and it doesn't matter if they're big and orange or small and brown. If Chicahua had wanted to specialize into just Animal (Tarantula), he'd definitely have been welcome to; it would be a matter of flavor, but not a requirement.
Saki has Animal (Fox), which she needs to communicate and misbehave with her little fox Kawaii. She needs the specificity of (Fox); we wouldn't allow something more general like (Canine), because different kinds of canines - wolves, dogs, foxes and jackals - all have very different symbols and ideas attached, so they can't be under that same umbrella. Saki can, however, talk to tiny desert fennec foxes just as easily as to the large red northern foxes.
Sowiljr has Animal (Bear); it applies to all bears everywhere, unless they are specifically different creatures (like pandas or koalas). While there are a bunch of different kinds of bears in the world, in mythic terms humanity basically always treats them the same (usually some variant of "oh shit, a bear"), so he's equally as at home with the spectacled bears of South America as he is with the brown bears of northern Europe. There's no need to lock him to a specific species of bear; the bear is a powerful totem that doesn't need to be narrowed that way.
Vala has Animal (Blackbirds), which includes things like ravens, crows, magpies and rooks. Those are birds with very similar traits and similar symbolism, so they fall under the same umbrella. She can't just use Animal (Corvids), however, because that symbolism does not include all members of the scientific family of corvids, however - for example, bluejays are corvids, too, but they are obviously a different bird for totemic purposes, so Vala has nothing to do with them.
Zwazo Fou Fou has some Animal (Lobster), incidentally one of the most entertaining animal totems ever, and it specifically applies only to lobsters. The fact that lobsters are technically arthropods does not mean that he also gets to talk to cockroaches, since those are completely different creatures, symbolically speaking; he also doesn't get to hang out with shrimp or mussels or crabs, which are noticeably different from lobsters. We would not have allowed Animal (Shellfish) or similar, simply because there are too many varieties within that that can represent or symbolize too many things. It wouldn't be a totem, but rather a category, so it's out.
Yoloxochitl is buying Animal (Axolotl). Axolotls are so specific and unique as creatures that she can't get away with just Animal (Salamander) - one of these things is just not like the other.
You're right that it is always a concern that players aren't trying to game the system by choosing the broadest category they can get away with; things like Animal (Hoofed Animals) or Animal (All Birds) are usually obvious attempts by players to get more versatility out of the purview by sacrificing the intent to provide them a totemic animal association. It's not hard to spot those attempts, and it's usually pretty easy to say, "That's a little too general; what did you have in mind more specifically?", or maybe just sit down and explain the mythic concept of a totem animal and why it's cooler to have one that's unique to you than to try to cheat yourself out of it. And, of course, you don't want to have your player with the super-cool Animal (Scarab) feeling gypped because someone else has Animal (Insects) and is running roughshod across the entire bug kingdom.
If you'd like a general rule, we usually recommend keeping Animal at Family (or lower - Genus and Species as necessary) level of scientific classification, which usually gives you a good idea of similar and related animals but doesn't give you too much of a huge umbrella that might include obviously different creatures. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, though; there'll always be exceptions (families that are too specific, or that contain too many things that are clearly different totems), and each player's idea for an Animal specialization is considered on a case by case basis in our games. The last thing we want, after all, is a rule that screws someone's really cool idea, or enables someone else to cheat on a technicality.
Watching people come up with cool Animal totems is one of my favorite things about Scion. Other personal favorite greatest hits from our game have included Gila Monster, Hummingbird, Jellyfish and Wasp.
Your question sparked heated debate between John and myself during a long car ride, which came to verbal fisticuffs and declarations of war. The landscape trembled at our passing; the vehicle went faster in the hopes that we would get out of it sooner. You contributed to the epicness of our day.
But, anyway, the most important rule for Animal is this: is the animal being chosen specific enough to actually be a mythic totem animal? The Animal purview is designed to allow you to choose a totem animal that you identify with or that represents you, so if your chosen Animal specialty isn't doing that or is doing it poorly, you may need to rethink it.
For example, Animal (Piranha) and Animal (Sparrow) both sound awesome, because they show a player choosing a specific creature as their totem; they're choosing something because it has a certain feel to it, whether it's the piranha representing their small size but ferocious might or the sparrow representing their quick thinking and light-wingedness. A player doesn't necessarily have to be that specific, but neither do they want to be too general; Animal (Fish), for example, includes a huge range of other fish who really don't resemble the piranha and its symbolism at all, so I'd rule that it wouldn't work to try to use it as an umbrella there. Animal (Fish) would cover any fish that was just a general sort of fish: flounders, trout, perch, anything that in a myth would easily be reduced to "you know, a fish". Piranhas, on the other hand, are quite specifically about teeth and scariness, not about the normal qualities of fish, so I'd rule that if you want piranhas, you'd need Animal (Piranha). Similarly, someone with Animal (Fish) wouldn't have any power over sharks in our games; sure, science may know that sharks are a kind of very big, very toothy fish, but as a totem they're a distinctly different creature with distinctly different associations, so they're really not the same for purposes of the Animal purview.
Birds are trickier, because while there are umpteen bazillion kinds of birds, they aren't all easily distinguishable and don't all need to be their own animal (unless a player wants them to be, in which case I salute them). It's important to be clear with the player what exactly their purview does and does not cover - for example, I'd sit down with a player taking something like Animal (Small Birds) and point out that while it would cover sparrows and finches and robins and so forth (because for purposes of storytelling, they really aren't particularly functionally different), it would not cover other birds with distinctly different symbolic connotations, like crows or parrots, no matter what size those other birds might be. The important thing is the animal's function as a totem; if it's too general to be a reasonable totem, then you probably need to narrow it down. If it's trying to include several things that are obviously distinct totems on their own, it's trying to do too much.
Some examples from our games:
Eztli has Animal (Bat), which allows her control not only over the bloodthirsty American vampire bats, but also over the gigantic fruit-eating bats of Asia. It doesn't matter that they don't share the same general behavior or come from the same part of the world; anyone who sees either is going to know it's a bat, because bats are universally recognizable and are perfect for a totemic symbol. Bats are bats are bats, whether they have fuzzy orange fur or gigantic echolocation ears.
Jioni and Chicahua both have Animal (Spider). They tend to express it very differently - Jioni usually takes on the aspects of the myriad tiny black spiders of her swampy homeland, while Chicahua is all about the bright colors and rigid fur of tarantulas. They can both use (Spider) as a general Animal without needing to specialize, because spiders are another symbol that anybody can look at and immediately recognize - we all know what spiders are, and what they usually represent, and it doesn't matter if they're big and orange or small and brown. If Chicahua had wanted to specialize into just Animal (Tarantula), he'd definitely have been welcome to; it would be a matter of flavor, but not a requirement.
Saki has Animal (Fox), which she needs to communicate and misbehave with her little fox Kawaii. She needs the specificity of (Fox); we wouldn't allow something more general like (Canine), because different kinds of canines - wolves, dogs, foxes and jackals - all have very different symbols and ideas attached, so they can't be under that same umbrella. Saki can, however, talk to tiny desert fennec foxes just as easily as to the large red northern foxes.
Sowiljr has Animal (Bear); it applies to all bears everywhere, unless they are specifically different creatures (like pandas or koalas). While there are a bunch of different kinds of bears in the world, in mythic terms humanity basically always treats them the same (usually some variant of "oh shit, a bear"), so he's equally as at home with the spectacled bears of South America as he is with the brown bears of northern Europe. There's no need to lock him to a specific species of bear; the bear is a powerful totem that doesn't need to be narrowed that way.
Vala has Animal (Blackbirds), which includes things like ravens, crows, magpies and rooks. Those are birds with very similar traits and similar symbolism, so they fall under the same umbrella. She can't just use Animal (Corvids), however, because that symbolism does not include all members of the scientific family of corvids, however - for example, bluejays are corvids, too, but they are obviously a different bird for totemic purposes, so Vala has nothing to do with them.
Zwazo Fou Fou has some Animal (Lobster), incidentally one of the most entertaining animal totems ever, and it specifically applies only to lobsters. The fact that lobsters are technically arthropods does not mean that he also gets to talk to cockroaches, since those are completely different creatures, symbolically speaking; he also doesn't get to hang out with shrimp or mussels or crabs, which are noticeably different from lobsters. We would not have allowed Animal (Shellfish) or similar, simply because there are too many varieties within that that can represent or symbolize too many things. It wouldn't be a totem, but rather a category, so it's out.
Yoloxochitl is buying Animal (Axolotl). Axolotls are so specific and unique as creatures that she can't get away with just Animal (Salamander) - one of these things is just not like the other.
You're right that it is always a concern that players aren't trying to game the system by choosing the broadest category they can get away with; things like Animal (Hoofed Animals) or Animal (All Birds) are usually obvious attempts by players to get more versatility out of the purview by sacrificing the intent to provide them a totemic animal association. It's not hard to spot those attempts, and it's usually pretty easy to say, "That's a little too general; what did you have in mind more specifically?", or maybe just sit down and explain the mythic concept of a totem animal and why it's cooler to have one that's unique to you than to try to cheat yourself out of it. And, of course, you don't want to have your player with the super-cool Animal (Scarab) feeling gypped because someone else has Animal (Insects) and is running roughshod across the entire bug kingdom.
If you'd like a general rule, we usually recommend keeping Animal at Family (or lower - Genus and Species as necessary) level of scientific classification, which usually gives you a good idea of similar and related animals but doesn't give you too much of a huge umbrella that might include obviously different creatures. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, though; there'll always be exceptions (families that are too specific, or that contain too many things that are clearly different totems), and each player's idea for an Animal specialization is considered on a case by case basis in our games. The last thing we want, after all, is a rule that screws someone's really cool idea, or enables someone else to cheat on a technicality.
Watching people come up with cool Animal totems is one of my favorite things about Scion. Other personal favorite greatest hits from our game have included Gila Monster, Hummingbird, Jellyfish and Wasp.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Mad Beats
Question: Why does Odin not have Art as one of his Associated Abilities? He is known also as the god of poetry.
He certainly is! Alas, the answer is just that Odin is good at too many things, and he only gets six associated abilities, so after much pondering Art didn't make the cut. I sometimes wonder about that only-six-abilities thing and want to remove it (Odin is not the only god with this problem), but I'm never sure if it's a good idea mechanically. Mechanical math is what I have John for.
I would assume for game purposes that Odin has boatloads of Art - he probably has it maxed out for Poetry, at least, thanks to Kvasir's mead, and I imagine a few other dots here and there. His associated abilities represent what he's most likely to pass down to his children, so we thought his connections to things like Occult, Awareness and Melee were more pressing, but Odin himself is right up there with the greatest divine poets of all time (in artistic ability, if not in raw Charismatic emotion).
If you wanted to swap Art in, I'd suggest replacing Integrity or Presence, since they seem like the least thoroughly attached to him in his current setup.
EDIT: After ponderment, we agree! Odin now has Art associated instead of Integrity, because he is way better at poetic juju than he is at being impeccably moral and unswayable.
He certainly is! Alas, the answer is just that Odin is good at too many things, and he only gets six associated abilities, so after much pondering Art didn't make the cut. I sometimes wonder about that only-six-abilities thing and want to remove it (Odin is not the only god with this problem), but I'm never sure if it's a good idea mechanically. Mechanical math is what I have John for.
I would assume for game purposes that Odin has boatloads of Art - he probably has it maxed out for Poetry, at least, thanks to Kvasir's mead, and I imagine a few other dots here and there. His associated abilities represent what he's most likely to pass down to his children, so we thought his connections to things like Occult, Awareness and Melee were more pressing, but Odin himself is right up there with the greatest divine poets of all time (in artistic ability, if not in raw Charismatic emotion).
If you wanted to swap Art in, I'd suggest replacing Integrity or Presence, since they seem like the least thoroughly attached to him in his current setup.
EDIT: After ponderment, we agree! Odin now has Art associated instead of Integrity, because he is way better at poetic juju than he is at being impeccably moral and unswayable.
Great Tastes That Don't Go Together
Question: How do you feel about adding elements of pop culture (superheroes, anime etc.) into your storytelling, and how flexible can you be with your setting and the rules in general?
To be bluntly honest, we feel like that is a terrible idea and one that we probably would not consider using. (Remember, this is opinion time - you are free to have all the superheroes you want in your own games!) Scion's a game about mythology, which is what we play it to enjoy; we don't play it to play with superheroes (we have Marvel Super Heroes for that) or anime (we have Teenagers from Outer Space for that, and if you recognize that game's title you and I are both dating ourselves). There are plenty of kitchen-sink-style combine-whatever-you-want games out there, and they're cool, but Scion's about mythology and ancient religions - what the hell do we want all that other stuff for in that context?
As a side note, I actually think it's pretty cool, sociologically speaking, to see that a lot of people automatically gravitate toward trying to combine Scion with superheroes, because the modern superhero genre is basically using the same tropes, themes and ideas but applying them to fiction instead of to religion. It's a neat mirror of ourselves - we tend to tell the same kinds of stories about larger-than-life heroes even thousands of years later, because those kinds of stories are the ones that mankind loves. We're creatures of epic habit.
But anyway, we're willing to do a lot of things with our setting, but this is a game about world mythology, so folks like Superman and Rei Ayanami are not invited. But that's talking about the game world itself; within the characters and their perceptions, as in most cases, the players are free to do anything they want. For example, we had a Scion of Thor who thought he was a superhero during his Hero career because it seemed like the best explanation for his powers (Thor is not good at explaining things), and Zwazo Fou Fou went through a period in his Demigodhood when he decided to act as a superhero for several towns in Australia and introduced himself as MinotaurBirdMan whenever he was out and about. And, of course, Saki's eternal-schoolgirl-with-tiny-cute-animal-sidekick schtick is classic magical girl anime (with subversive horror undertones, but that really just adds to the magic). Another couple of PCs built a set of giant humanoid robots with souls in Japan - classic mecha anime at its finest.
And that's cool! If the PCs want to do things within the world that are homages, callbacks or reinventions of those modern pop culture ideas, by all means, we won't stop them. Scions are modern people, after all, and most of them have grown up with modern pop culture; it only makes sense that they might look there for inspiration and guidance before those dusty old tales of yore, which they may or may not be comfortable with. It never lasts - eventually they grow into gods, after all - but as modern characters, there's nothing wrong with Scions starting there.
But it's not part of the gameworld at large. There's no mutant strain, no hammerspace, no copyrighted characters and no modern fiction conventions unless the characters create them - and that's just the way we like it.
As far as being flexible with the rules goes, I'm not sure what you mean - we try to make our rules allow as many cool things as possible while still being consistent and keeping things fair, but if you're around, give us some examples in the comments and we'll try to give you a better answer.
To be bluntly honest, we feel like that is a terrible idea and one that we probably would not consider using. (Remember, this is opinion time - you are free to have all the superheroes you want in your own games!) Scion's a game about mythology, which is what we play it to enjoy; we don't play it to play with superheroes (we have Marvel Super Heroes for that) or anime (we have Teenagers from Outer Space for that, and if you recognize that game's title you and I are both dating ourselves). There are plenty of kitchen-sink-style combine-whatever-you-want games out there, and they're cool, but Scion's about mythology and ancient religions - what the hell do we want all that other stuff for in that context?
As a side note, I actually think it's pretty cool, sociologically speaking, to see that a lot of people automatically gravitate toward trying to combine Scion with superheroes, because the modern superhero genre is basically using the same tropes, themes and ideas but applying them to fiction instead of to religion. It's a neat mirror of ourselves - we tend to tell the same kinds of stories about larger-than-life heroes even thousands of years later, because those kinds of stories are the ones that mankind loves. We're creatures of epic habit.
But anyway, we're willing to do a lot of things with our setting, but this is a game about world mythology, so folks like Superman and Rei Ayanami are not invited. But that's talking about the game world itself; within the characters and their perceptions, as in most cases, the players are free to do anything they want. For example, we had a Scion of Thor who thought he was a superhero during his Hero career because it seemed like the best explanation for his powers (Thor is not good at explaining things), and Zwazo Fou Fou went through a period in his Demigodhood when he decided to act as a superhero for several towns in Australia and introduced himself as MinotaurBirdMan whenever he was out and about. And, of course, Saki's eternal-schoolgirl-with-tiny-cute-animal-sidekick schtick is classic magical girl anime (with subversive horror undertones, but that really just adds to the magic). Another couple of PCs built a set of giant humanoid robots with souls in Japan - classic mecha anime at its finest.
And that's cool! If the PCs want to do things within the world that are homages, callbacks or reinventions of those modern pop culture ideas, by all means, we won't stop them. Scions are modern people, after all, and most of them have grown up with modern pop culture; it only makes sense that they might look there for inspiration and guidance before those dusty old tales of yore, which they may or may not be comfortable with. It never lasts - eventually they grow into gods, after all - but as modern characters, there's nothing wrong with Scions starting there.
But it's not part of the gameworld at large. There's no mutant strain, no hammerspace, no copyrighted characters and no modern fiction conventions unless the characters create them - and that's just the way we like it.
As far as being flexible with the rules goes, I'm not sure what you mean - we try to make our rules allow as many cool things as possible while still being consistent and keeping things fair, but if you're around, give us some examples in the comments and we'll try to give you a better answer.
Monday, May 21, 2012
All the Single Ladies
Question: How many cultures allowed women to become warriors? We hear about them in popular culture, but how true is it considering that the gods have such fierce female warriors like Sekhmet, Ishtar, the Morrigan, Athena, and Kali?
It's time for History Corner again! Women warriors are indeed a real phenomenon in various cultures throughout history, but they are generally the exception; it's much more common that the vast bulk of warriors were male, with a few female exceptions such as the Spartan women who fought at Troy or the pre-Islamic Persian women who marched into battle along with their men. It's more likely that you'll see a few really famous or important names as generals or advisors than that you'll find evidence of women being common in the military itself; soldiers' graves and archaeological evidence usually point toward the overwhelming majority of warriors and soldiers being men, but once in a while you'll have a woman in a position of tactical or wartime power, and history tends to remember them exactly because they were rare and impressive.
But those women who are warriors are pretty much exclusively badasses, from Boudicca (or Boadicea, for the old scholars in the audience), the Celtic queen who led one of the most successful revolts against the Roman Empire, to Ahhotep, the Egyptian queen who kicked the Upper Kingdom's ass until it settled down, to Vishpala, a Hindu warrior who had her lost leg replaced by an iron prosthesis so she could go back into battle, to Empress Jingu, who just shrugged and tied her belly up so that pregnancy wouldn't inconvenience her enough to stop her from conquering Korea. It's a lot less common, but there are also occasional tales of full units of female warriors, particularly as you get east - Scythia is famous for having mass graves of female warriors as well as males, something you rarely see in western Europe.
Warrior goddesses are interesting, because they really represent how that culture feels about the idea of women as powerful or warlike forces; their presence doesn't always mean that women were considered to be appropriate as warriors, but it does always have something to say about the culture's perceptions of gender roles. Amaterasu's impressive war dance, which frightens even Susano-o into not fucking with her for a little while, recalls the ancient Japanese matriarchy, illustrating that she's a powerful figure through the metaphor of war; the Morrigan's ironclad control over who lives and who dies in battle is a not-so-subtle reflection of the Celtic fear of women in power being able to rule or destroy lives (Queen Medb in the same stories is another, smaller-scale examples of this). Other goddesses, like Ishtar, Sekhmet, Oya or Kali, instead represent the unfettered chaotic power of the female, which must be harnessed and controlled by a male (Tammuz or Ptah/Ra or Shango or Shiva, in their cases) to prevent it from rampaging around destroying everything; they're both acknowledgments that women could be considered powerful and examples of why they had to be controlled in their societies to prevent them from raining that chaotic warlike power down on everyone. Some war goddesses, like Athena, Anahita or Freya, are female to reflect the exact opposite - level-headedness, tactics and reason in war, in contrast to the more masculine warrior ideals of bloodlust and physical strength (and there's usually a male warrior god - for those examples, Ares, Mithra and Odin - to show the contrast between the two ideas).
Even the absence of female warrior goddesses tells you something about that culture; for examples, the Aztecs do not have a major goddess associated with war, and instead considered the struggle of childbirth to be a woman's equivalent to battle (up to and including according her the same honors as a fallen warrior if she died while giving birth). In a sense, this makes all Aztec goddesses (and all Aztec women) warriors, since they're almost all associated with fertility and childbirth - but when they take on the traditionally masculine role of a warrior, as in the myth of Chimalman/Coatlicue confronting and fighting Mixcoatl, they are invariably punished in some way for messing around with the natural order of things. It's a culture that considered all its people to be warriors, but that did not have room for a female trying to move to the "male" warrior role.
Of course, these are all ancient perceptions, and furthermore it's a case where the rules of humanity don't necessarily apply to the gods - just because we have no record of any women ever being warriors or military commanders in Babylon doesn't prevent Ishtar from being the queen of the divine battlefield. It's one of the many areas in which female Scions can really shine and make some choices and decisions that affect the divine landscape; they're modern people with modern ideas, including modern perceptions of women, and as such they may challenge the status quo or make the more male-dominated pantheons uncomfortable with their new ideas. Several in our games have started doing so, from Eztli, who some of the Aztec gods have started referring to as Tlazohtlaloni's husband, performing both the roles of childbirther and warrior, to Jioni, bringing new women into the traditionally very male Loa and campaigning for their equal rights in councils and politics, to Aiona, who has managed to systematically avoid exhibiting any of the expected traits of Greek goddesses, leaving her looking like a confusingly neutral-sex creature to the patriarchally traditional Dodekatheon.
Not every game is going to be into having a subtextual Women's Studies class every game, of course, but for those that are interested in the topic, shaking up the ancient ideals of women and replacing them with new ones is a worthy goal and a legendary quest for any Scion, male or female (or swapping between the two, I'm looking at you, Undeniable Resemblance-users).
It's time for History Corner again! Women warriors are indeed a real phenomenon in various cultures throughout history, but they are generally the exception; it's much more common that the vast bulk of warriors were male, with a few female exceptions such as the Spartan women who fought at Troy or the pre-Islamic Persian women who marched into battle along with their men. It's more likely that you'll see a few really famous or important names as generals or advisors than that you'll find evidence of women being common in the military itself; soldiers' graves and archaeological evidence usually point toward the overwhelming majority of warriors and soldiers being men, but once in a while you'll have a woman in a position of tactical or wartime power, and history tends to remember them exactly because they were rare and impressive.
But those women who are warriors are pretty much exclusively badasses, from Boudicca (or Boadicea, for the old scholars in the audience), the Celtic queen who led one of the most successful revolts against the Roman Empire, to Ahhotep, the Egyptian queen who kicked the Upper Kingdom's ass until it settled down, to Vishpala, a Hindu warrior who had her lost leg replaced by an iron prosthesis so she could go back into battle, to Empress Jingu, who just shrugged and tied her belly up so that pregnancy wouldn't inconvenience her enough to stop her from conquering Korea. It's a lot less common, but there are also occasional tales of full units of female warriors, particularly as you get east - Scythia is famous for having mass graves of female warriors as well as males, something you rarely see in western Europe.
Warrior goddesses are interesting, because they really represent how that culture feels about the idea of women as powerful or warlike forces; their presence doesn't always mean that women were considered to be appropriate as warriors, but it does always have something to say about the culture's perceptions of gender roles. Amaterasu's impressive war dance, which frightens even Susano-o into not fucking with her for a little while, recalls the ancient Japanese matriarchy, illustrating that she's a powerful figure through the metaphor of war; the Morrigan's ironclad control over who lives and who dies in battle is a not-so-subtle reflection of the Celtic fear of women in power being able to rule or destroy lives (Queen Medb in the same stories is another, smaller-scale examples of this). Other goddesses, like Ishtar, Sekhmet, Oya or Kali, instead represent the unfettered chaotic power of the female, which must be harnessed and controlled by a male (Tammuz or Ptah/Ra or Shango or Shiva, in their cases) to prevent it from rampaging around destroying everything; they're both acknowledgments that women could be considered powerful and examples of why they had to be controlled in their societies to prevent them from raining that chaotic warlike power down on everyone. Some war goddesses, like Athena, Anahita or Freya, are female to reflect the exact opposite - level-headedness, tactics and reason in war, in contrast to the more masculine warrior ideals of bloodlust and physical strength (and there's usually a male warrior god - for those examples, Ares, Mithra and Odin - to show the contrast between the two ideas).
Even the absence of female warrior goddesses tells you something about that culture; for examples, the Aztecs do not have a major goddess associated with war, and instead considered the struggle of childbirth to be a woman's equivalent to battle (up to and including according her the same honors as a fallen warrior if she died while giving birth). In a sense, this makes all Aztec goddesses (and all Aztec women) warriors, since they're almost all associated with fertility and childbirth - but when they take on the traditionally masculine role of a warrior, as in the myth of Chimalman/Coatlicue confronting and fighting Mixcoatl, they are invariably punished in some way for messing around with the natural order of things. It's a culture that considered all its people to be warriors, but that did not have room for a female trying to move to the "male" warrior role.
Of course, these are all ancient perceptions, and furthermore it's a case where the rules of humanity don't necessarily apply to the gods - just because we have no record of any women ever being warriors or military commanders in Babylon doesn't prevent Ishtar from being the queen of the divine battlefield. It's one of the many areas in which female Scions can really shine and make some choices and decisions that affect the divine landscape; they're modern people with modern ideas, including modern perceptions of women, and as such they may challenge the status quo or make the more male-dominated pantheons uncomfortable with their new ideas. Several in our games have started doing so, from Eztli, who some of the Aztec gods have started referring to as Tlazohtlaloni's husband, performing both the roles of childbirther and warrior, to Jioni, bringing new women into the traditionally very male Loa and campaigning for their equal rights in councils and politics, to Aiona, who has managed to systematically avoid exhibiting any of the expected traits of Greek goddesses, leaving her looking like a confusingly neutral-sex creature to the patriarchally traditional Dodekatheon.
Not every game is going to be into having a subtextual Women's Studies class every game, of course, but for those that are interested in the topic, shaking up the ancient ideals of women and replacing them with new ones is a worthy goal and a legendary quest for any Scion, male or female (or swapping between the two, I'm looking at you, Undeniable Resemblance-users).
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Wild Rover No More
Question: So has Marduk's wanderlust ever faded over the ages? I would think that now that Sumeria is long dead he has more time to travel to other lands.
Marduk was actually pretty small potatoes back in Sumeria - it wasn't until the rise of Babylon and the diligent workings of his number-one fanboy Hammurabi that he really became the pantheon's big cheese. But once he did, nobody ever argued again!
The story of Marduk's statue and its wanderings is a really interesting one to play with for a Scion game; each time it was stolen, the Babylonians panicked and had generally bad fortunes in war until it was recovered (usually by invading somewhere in a terribly ill temper). Several small-scale prophecies surrounded the event, including the fact that Marduk's statue would only return to Babylon when it had proven itself worthy of him again, or that its return would usher in a new and even more glorious age for the empire.
Those kinds of prophecies practically write Scion plots for you - especially if you're playing with Anunna Scions or their allies, the idea that perhaps Marduk's salmu has been missing lo these many years and that the Scions must go on a quest to find it and return it to the ruins of Babylon, thus rebirthing the new empire, is certainly the stuff of heroic legend. The antagonists could be anyone - Titans, intentionally depriving the Anunna of the support of a kingdom in the World? A rival pantheon (perhaps near neighbors the Yazata or the Elohim, both of whom were invaded more than a few times, or the ever-volatile, ever-grudge-holding Dodekatheon)? Even one of the other gods of the Anunna might be the culprit, attempting to stage a coup to take over the pantheon or get revenge on him for some ancient slight. The possibilities are endless, and the resurgence of Babylon is certainly something the Anunna and their chidlren would have a strong opinion on (one way or another!).
As for Marduk himself, I'm not sure how much time he has to wander around with Shamu under seige by Tiamat's forces; he's probably on pretty much twenty-four hour border patrol and monster smashing duty. But if and when he does have some leisure time, I wouldn't be surprised if he disappears to wherever that missing statue might be (especially if it's somewhere interesting or plot-worthy!).
Marduk was actually pretty small potatoes back in Sumeria - it wasn't until the rise of Babylon and the diligent workings of his number-one fanboy Hammurabi that he really became the pantheon's big cheese. But once he did, nobody ever argued again!
The story of Marduk's statue and its wanderings is a really interesting one to play with for a Scion game; each time it was stolen, the Babylonians panicked and had generally bad fortunes in war until it was recovered (usually by invading somewhere in a terribly ill temper). Several small-scale prophecies surrounded the event, including the fact that Marduk's statue would only return to Babylon when it had proven itself worthy of him again, or that its return would usher in a new and even more glorious age for the empire.
Those kinds of prophecies practically write Scion plots for you - especially if you're playing with Anunna Scions or their allies, the idea that perhaps Marduk's salmu has been missing lo these many years and that the Scions must go on a quest to find it and return it to the ruins of Babylon, thus rebirthing the new empire, is certainly the stuff of heroic legend. The antagonists could be anyone - Titans, intentionally depriving the Anunna of the support of a kingdom in the World? A rival pantheon (perhaps near neighbors the Yazata or the Elohim, both of whom were invaded more than a few times, or the ever-volatile, ever-grudge-holding Dodekatheon)? Even one of the other gods of the Anunna might be the culprit, attempting to stage a coup to take over the pantheon or get revenge on him for some ancient slight. The possibilities are endless, and the resurgence of Babylon is certainly something the Anunna and their chidlren would have a strong opinion on (one way or another!).
As for Marduk himself, I'm not sure how much time he has to wander around with Shamu under seige by Tiamat's forces; he's probably on pretty much twenty-four hour border patrol and monster smashing duty. But if and when he does have some leisure time, I wouldn't be surprised if he disappears to wherever that missing statue might be (especially if it's somewhere interesting or plot-worthy!).
Friday, May 18, 2012
When Mama Ain't Happy
Question: Where does Rhea fit among the other Titans? What Titanic aspect does she represent? Also, her role in myth is distinctly benevolent, so is she on the Gods' side in this conflict?
Rhea is a difficult being to peg for Scion; she's very obviously a Titan, but equally obviously not opposed to the gods, and furthermore she doesn't seem to represent any particular natural force in Greek myth, outside of motherhood. So what to do with poor Rhea? Surely Zeus wouldn't have tossed his mother into Tartarus, right? But then where is she?
There are a few options you can pursue with Rhea. The Romans transformed her into Ops, goddess of prosperity, and her links through them to fertility and wealth give her the potential to be considered a member of Terra as an earth and fertility Titan. As the ruling queen of the Titans and gods during the Golden Age (and especially highly regarded as such by the Romans), you might also consider her to be part of the Justice realm - if you use the book's version of Logos, she is similarly inoffensive and neutral as are the other Avatars that populate it, and if you run with our version of Sedeq, she might represent justice in opposition to tyranny.
If you want to use Rhea as an antagonistic Titan, the best way to do so is probably by following her fusion and eventual transformation into the mad goddess Cybele, which occurred over the course of her cults in Greece and actually predated the rise of Roman Ops. Cybele is one of my personal favorite crazy antagonists, because she's both sometimes benevolent - she served as protectress of some cities and occasionally provided hidden wisdom and prophecies to her worshipers - and sometimes violently insane and dangerous, to the point that her worship was eventually banned in most areas of the ancient world. She was most well-known as a goddess of mysterious visions, drunkenness and hallucinations, and terrifying orgiastic rituals that sometimes included male celebrants castrating themselves in her honor. It's craziness on an epic and frightening scale, and it's not hard to see why, despite her inexplicable popularity, various kings and emperors tried to stamp out her worship to stem the flow of insane drunken murders and mutilations.
The Greeks, once they realized that Cybele had a very prominent cult and was clearly no one to be fucked with, decided that she must be the same person as Rhea, and that she had fled from Cronus' anger after saving her children to go mad in the mountains of Phyrgia to the east; it's not a stretch to believe that poor Rhea might go bonkers, especially since her attempts to save her children resulted in said children killing or imprisoning everyone in her immediate family and taking over the world that she had once ruled with her husband. As a figure representing motherhood, madness and mystery, she might be a good candidate to join the Avatars of Comprenion as the representation of madness revealing enlightenment to those who can handle it, or again as part of Terra thanks to her connection to mountains and wildlands.
I'd probably consider Rhea and Cybele to be the same for Scion's purposes; it works very well, from explaining why Rhea's not around anymore to explaining why Zeus and company seem to have accepted Cybele's cult without so much as a peep of protest. Depending on how thoroughly you want her to oppose the gods, you could play her madness plenty of ways: she might have good days when she remembers that they're her children and aids them or bad days when she only remembers their crimes against her family and wants them punished, or she could have no memory of being Rhea at all, having become and elusive wild card that the gods might or might not want to get involved in their troubles. If you really want her to be an antagonist, it's easy to rule that Zeus had her belatedly dumped into Tartarus as well after he realized that she had gone nuts; if you want her to stay more ambiguous, she might never have been imprisoned, and Zeus and his siblings probably just hem and haw and try not to talk about her if at all possible.
I know John's going to call me out because he knows about my passionate love of Cybele and how much I want her to be in Scion somewhere, but she's still probably the first place I'd go to include the mother of the Olympians. Just think of all the fun you could have with Scions trying to redeem her or trying to work around her because their parents have forbidden them to actively fight her - not to mention the earth-shaking parties she and Dionysus could throw if they ever got together!
Rhea is a difficult being to peg for Scion; she's very obviously a Titan, but equally obviously not opposed to the gods, and furthermore she doesn't seem to represent any particular natural force in Greek myth, outside of motherhood. So what to do with poor Rhea? Surely Zeus wouldn't have tossed his mother into Tartarus, right? But then where is she?
There are a few options you can pursue with Rhea. The Romans transformed her into Ops, goddess of prosperity, and her links through them to fertility and wealth give her the potential to be considered a member of Terra as an earth and fertility Titan. As the ruling queen of the Titans and gods during the Golden Age (and especially highly regarded as such by the Romans), you might also consider her to be part of the Justice realm - if you use the book's version of Logos, she is similarly inoffensive and neutral as are the other Avatars that populate it, and if you run with our version of Sedeq, she might represent justice in opposition to tyranny.
If you want to use Rhea as an antagonistic Titan, the best way to do so is probably by following her fusion and eventual transformation into the mad goddess Cybele, which occurred over the course of her cults in Greece and actually predated the rise of Roman Ops. Cybele is one of my personal favorite crazy antagonists, because she's both sometimes benevolent - she served as protectress of some cities and occasionally provided hidden wisdom and prophecies to her worshipers - and sometimes violently insane and dangerous, to the point that her worship was eventually banned in most areas of the ancient world. She was most well-known as a goddess of mysterious visions, drunkenness and hallucinations, and terrifying orgiastic rituals that sometimes included male celebrants castrating themselves in her honor. It's craziness on an epic and frightening scale, and it's not hard to see why, despite her inexplicable popularity, various kings and emperors tried to stamp out her worship to stem the flow of insane drunken murders and mutilations.
The Greeks, once they realized that Cybele had a very prominent cult and was clearly no one to be fucked with, decided that she must be the same person as Rhea, and that she had fled from Cronus' anger after saving her children to go mad in the mountains of Phyrgia to the east; it's not a stretch to believe that poor Rhea might go bonkers, especially since her attempts to save her children resulted in said children killing or imprisoning everyone in her immediate family and taking over the world that she had once ruled with her husband. As a figure representing motherhood, madness and mystery, she might be a good candidate to join the Avatars of Comprenion as the representation of madness revealing enlightenment to those who can handle it, or again as part of Terra thanks to her connection to mountains and wildlands.
I'd probably consider Rhea and Cybele to be the same for Scion's purposes; it works very well, from explaining why Rhea's not around anymore to explaining why Zeus and company seem to have accepted Cybele's cult without so much as a peep of protest. Depending on how thoroughly you want her to oppose the gods, you could play her madness plenty of ways: she might have good days when she remembers that they're her children and aids them or bad days when she only remembers their crimes against her family and wants them punished, or she could have no memory of being Rhea at all, having become and elusive wild card that the gods might or might not want to get involved in their troubles. If you really want her to be an antagonist, it's easy to rule that Zeus had her belatedly dumped into Tartarus as well after he realized that she had gone nuts; if you want her to stay more ambiguous, she might never have been imprisoned, and Zeus and his siblings probably just hem and haw and try not to talk about her if at all possible.
I know John's going to call me out because he knows about my passionate love of Cybele and how much I want her to be in Scion somewhere, but she's still probably the first place I'd go to include the mother of the Olympians. Just think of all the fun you could have with Scions trying to redeem her or trying to work around her because their parents have forbidden them to actively fight her - not to mention the earth-shaking parties she and Dionysus could throw if they ever got together!
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Demigod Demographics
Question: How many Scions are there in the world at any given time? If the gods need footsoldiers, wouldn't it be best if they sired a LOT of children to serve in this capacity, especially since they have a high death rate? Particularly, what's keeping gods like Zeus from going, 'Oh, we need minions to fight our war on earth while we deal with the Titans - later, Hera, I'm off to knock up 100 women!' and things like that from playing out in general?
The answer to how many Scions are in the world is always "as many as you need for your current plot." If you need there to be six more Amatsukami Scions running around to oppose (or help, or do plot-worthy things for) your PCs, then there are. If you don't need them, then there aren't. There's no need to really worry about how many Scions are loose in the World unless Scion population plays a role in your plot; play with what you need and ignore what you don't. Simple, clean, and always gets the job done perfectly.
But if you do want to know how many Scions are in the World, either to satisfy curiosity or because it is part of your plot, we usually recommend around a hundred. It's a nice round number that allows you to use as many of them as necessary for almost any plot, but isn't so many that it starts to infringe on the PCs and their status as rare and special creatures. It does mean that not every god out there has a Scion; if you gave one Scion to every god from the original line (excluding Atlanteans, Allies and Yankees), you'd have 123 Scions. If you add the extras we play with on our site, you'd have 140, and if you add the ones in our extra supplements, it rockets up to 164 (and that's just for one Scion each; if you want those gods to have more than one, it's likely to head up to the 2-300 range). We don't mind assuming that not every god has an active Scion; some may be doing other things to help with the war effort or refusing on principle, and there's no need to have a flock of NPCs sitting around not doing anything unless the story specifically calls for them. (And also Scions are a pain in the butt, but we'll get to that in a minute.)
Our games have had a total of 131 Scions show up over the course of all games; 38 of them are known to be dead, leaving us with just under a hundred known Scions in the World. The number may go up if we need new NPCs or new PCs join; it may go down if more of them kick the bucket (as, with Ragnarok looming and inter-pantheon hostilities getting worse, is unfortunately quite likely).
It does seem, on the surface, that gods should be creating Scions willy nilly; Scions are soldiers, councilors and leaders in the war against the Titans, and more soldiers is always better for the war, right? But there are a few reasons they don't, and they're compelling ones.
For one thing, creating and maintaining a Scion is a pain in a god's ass. Sex is the easy part - it's the Visitations, the Birthrights and the general keeping of this kid alive that suck up a lot of time, energy and resources. Birthrights, in particular, are a huge resource sink; time and energy spent crafting your kid a weapon or follower is time and energy you're not spending on other aspects of the Titan war, and if you're not a Magic and/or Industry god, you don't have the ability to make those things on your own anyway, meaning you're going to have to get help from other gods and probably owe favors that you may or may not have a good time repaying later. And once you have gone to all the trouble to get the kid some Birthrights and get a magic-user to bind them to her, you then have the comfortable knowledge that the odds are very much against her surviving for very long. Scions are thrown against terrible monster, horrible disasters and backbreaking quests every day; sure, sometimes they survive and even flourish, but they also have a much higher than average chance of getting killed pretty much every day. And if they do, all that time and effort you spent on setting them up in the first place has just been wasted, and you're left with a dead kid, some Birthrights that will have to be rebound to someone else before anyone can use them, and a bunch of people still expecting you to repay the debts you incurred setting the now-gone Scion up in the first place. Of course, you can try to just get your Scion resurrected - if you want to spend even more time and energy and owe even more favors to other gods, and still know that they have just as good a chance of dying again tomorrow.
And, of course, there's always the chance that your Scion just isn't very useful. Maybe you wanted a soldier and you got someone who just wants to cast spells and read books, making them useless for the purpose you created them for. Maybe they don't like you or actively oppose you; maybe they go crazy from the stress of becoming divine, or they turn out to make really stupid decisions. You might have just invested all that time and energy into making a Scion that you don't even want, and you have no way of knowing beforehand (unless, of course, Prophecy is being nice to you that day).
In short, Scions are always a gamble. Some gods may choose to go for it, particularly if they have kids they're already fond of or they believe that Scions are the best tool they can wield against the Titans. But some may not be willing to take the chance on ending up with nothing for their time and energy, especially if they've lost a child (and their investment) before.
The other major reason that gods aren't creating Scions every time they turn around is that Scions aren't just useful footsoldiers; they're nascent gods. Gods like Zeus are not about to create a hundred sons that might one day challenge him for his throne, overrun Olympus or try to muscle older gods out of their roles. A lot of them will die - most of them, in fact - but each one that survives has the potential to be a problem later, whether they try to change the status quo, challenge their elders or just create problems that the rest of the pantheon will have to clean up. Scions are great in the short-term as warm bodies to throw at jobs and battles the gods don't have time for, but having hordes of them around, each one carrying the seed of possible rebellion within them, is seldom a good idea unless you're the kind of god who's comfortable with just killing your kids off when they start to become problematic. And it's not just the Scions and their goals who can be a problem - the more Scions you have, the harder it is to watch, guide and help them, and the more likely it is that they'll be tricked or seduced into helping a Titan (or a rival god) against you.
So gods generally tend to have only one or two Scions when they have any at all, which allows them to really lavish the attention, discipline and magical support on them that they need to survive (and also allows their parents to keep an eye on them to head off any signs of corruption or rebellion before they become an issue). And that's okay, because it actually works with the game very well - the fewer Scions there are in the World, the more unique and precious the PCs are to their pantheons, and the more important they are to the survival of the World and the Overworlds. They're the Big Damn Heroes, after all, not NPCs - the less competition for the spotlight they so richly deserve, the more they'll shine.
The answer to how many Scions are in the world is always "as many as you need for your current plot." If you need there to be six more Amatsukami Scions running around to oppose (or help, or do plot-worthy things for) your PCs, then there are. If you don't need them, then there aren't. There's no need to really worry about how many Scions are loose in the World unless Scion population plays a role in your plot; play with what you need and ignore what you don't. Simple, clean, and always gets the job done perfectly.
But if you do want to know how many Scions are in the World, either to satisfy curiosity or because it is part of your plot, we usually recommend around a hundred. It's a nice round number that allows you to use as many of them as necessary for almost any plot, but isn't so many that it starts to infringe on the PCs and their status as rare and special creatures. It does mean that not every god out there has a Scion; if you gave one Scion to every god from the original line (excluding Atlanteans, Allies and Yankees), you'd have 123 Scions. If you add the extras we play with on our site, you'd have 140, and if you add the ones in our extra supplements, it rockets up to 164 (and that's just for one Scion each; if you want those gods to have more than one, it's likely to head up to the 2-300 range). We don't mind assuming that not every god has an active Scion; some may be doing other things to help with the war effort or refusing on principle, and there's no need to have a flock of NPCs sitting around not doing anything unless the story specifically calls for them. (And also Scions are a pain in the butt, but we'll get to that in a minute.)
Our games have had a total of 131 Scions show up over the course of all games; 38 of them are known to be dead, leaving us with just under a hundred known Scions in the World. The number may go up if we need new NPCs or new PCs join; it may go down if more of them kick the bucket (as, with Ragnarok looming and inter-pantheon hostilities getting worse, is unfortunately quite likely).
It does seem, on the surface, that gods should be creating Scions willy nilly; Scions are soldiers, councilors and leaders in the war against the Titans, and more soldiers is always better for the war, right? But there are a few reasons they don't, and they're compelling ones.
For one thing, creating and maintaining a Scion is a pain in a god's ass. Sex is the easy part - it's the Visitations, the Birthrights and the general keeping of this kid alive that suck up a lot of time, energy and resources. Birthrights, in particular, are a huge resource sink; time and energy spent crafting your kid a weapon or follower is time and energy you're not spending on other aspects of the Titan war, and if you're not a Magic and/or Industry god, you don't have the ability to make those things on your own anyway, meaning you're going to have to get help from other gods and probably owe favors that you may or may not have a good time repaying later. And once you have gone to all the trouble to get the kid some Birthrights and get a magic-user to bind them to her, you then have the comfortable knowledge that the odds are very much against her surviving for very long. Scions are thrown against terrible monster, horrible disasters and backbreaking quests every day; sure, sometimes they survive and even flourish, but they also have a much higher than average chance of getting killed pretty much every day. And if they do, all that time and effort you spent on setting them up in the first place has just been wasted, and you're left with a dead kid, some Birthrights that will have to be rebound to someone else before anyone can use them, and a bunch of people still expecting you to repay the debts you incurred setting the now-gone Scion up in the first place. Of course, you can try to just get your Scion resurrected - if you want to spend even more time and energy and owe even more favors to other gods, and still know that they have just as good a chance of dying again tomorrow.
And, of course, there's always the chance that your Scion just isn't very useful. Maybe you wanted a soldier and you got someone who just wants to cast spells and read books, making them useless for the purpose you created them for. Maybe they don't like you or actively oppose you; maybe they go crazy from the stress of becoming divine, or they turn out to make really stupid decisions. You might have just invested all that time and energy into making a Scion that you don't even want, and you have no way of knowing beforehand (unless, of course, Prophecy is being nice to you that day).
In short, Scions are always a gamble. Some gods may choose to go for it, particularly if they have kids they're already fond of or they believe that Scions are the best tool they can wield against the Titans. But some may not be willing to take the chance on ending up with nothing for their time and energy, especially if they've lost a child (and their investment) before.
The other major reason that gods aren't creating Scions every time they turn around is that Scions aren't just useful footsoldiers; they're nascent gods. Gods like Zeus are not about to create a hundred sons that might one day challenge him for his throne, overrun Olympus or try to muscle older gods out of their roles. A lot of them will die - most of them, in fact - but each one that survives has the potential to be a problem later, whether they try to change the status quo, challenge their elders or just create problems that the rest of the pantheon will have to clean up. Scions are great in the short-term as warm bodies to throw at jobs and battles the gods don't have time for, but having hordes of them around, each one carrying the seed of possible rebellion within them, is seldom a good idea unless you're the kind of god who's comfortable with just killing your kids off when they start to become problematic. And it's not just the Scions and their goals who can be a problem - the more Scions you have, the harder it is to watch, guide and help them, and the more likely it is that they'll be tricked or seduced into helping a Titan (or a rival god) against you.
So gods generally tend to have only one or two Scions when they have any at all, which allows them to really lavish the attention, discipline and magical support on them that they need to survive (and also allows their parents to keep an eye on them to head off any signs of corruption or rebellion before they become an issue). And that's okay, because it actually works with the game very well - the fewer Scions there are in the World, the more unique and precious the PCs are to their pantheons, and the more important they are to the survival of the World and the Overworlds. They're the Big Damn Heroes, after all, not NPCs - the less competition for the spotlight they so richly deserve, the more they'll shine.
They Are Risen
Question: Do Tammuz and Persephone ever get together, considering their pantheons' close relations and that they are both pretty much the same (fertility dieties who spend half their time in the Underworld to represent winter)? If they do get together, are they just friends or do they have secret sexy time?
Heh, the idea of a secret dying fertility god club is pretty awesome; they could have meetings during the fertile season and a secret handshake! Tammuz and Persephone aren't the only ones; Adonis, Baal, Osiris, Jarilo, and even Baldur are all similar figures, dying or journeying to the Underworld in the infertile season only to rise again and represent new growth later. I'd love to see them hanging out and swapping tales of their incarceration or sharing tips on how to stay fresh while stuck in the realm of the dead.
As far as hanging out while in the Underworld, though, no, I don't imagine they do; Persephone's in Hades with a husband who, according to all reports, is very smitten with her and historically bad-tempered about anyone trying to make a play for her, and Tammuz is in Irkallu, where the mistress of the house is most famous for not letting anybody leave ever. Tammuz is outright a prisoner, and I doubt very much that Persephone has any prayer of sneaking off without Hades noticing. Most dying gods are pretty much stuck in the specific Underworld they go to until they get rescued or the time of their sentence is up; I doubt there's a visiting program going on between the deathrealms just so they can get together while imprisoned.
I could see them getting together outside of gloomy Underworld vacations, but whether or not that includes romance is something each game would have to determine. Would Tammuz really want to stray from magnificent Ishtar (and even if he did, would he dare)? Does Persephone really want to jeopardize a pretty sweet political setup by canoodling with somebody else? They're both super attractive and they have some common ground, but is that enough, especially since they probably have to go out of their way just to meet since both of their Overworlds are under seige and life's pretty darn busy? In our games, I would say no, there's probably not any inappropriateness going on between those two, but I could certainly see someone pursuing it as a plot in a different game (and god help everyone when/if Ishtar and Hades find out - that's some truly cosmic fallout right there).
Personally, if you like the idea of a secret dying-fertility-god love plot, I'd be more inclined to run with Persephone and Adonis - not only do they share the same Underworld during their times below ground, but Adonis is only there because Persephone wanted him to be, and it's difficult to tell from the myth whether she feels maternal affection or romantic love for him. Of course, them trying to have a relationship would have all sorts of terrifying problems - Aphrodite's not as scary as Ishtar but she's still awfully volatile, and trying to have an affair in your husband's kingdom when you know he is a master of invisibility has to be a harrowing ordeal - but that might be just the ticket if it's a story you'd like to play with.
I totally want the Dying Fertility God Club to be a real thing, though. They could have rotating farewell parties for those of them going down to the Underworld at various times! Act as a support group for their fellow death-oppressed deities! Plan Underworld revolutions! The possibilities are endless, especially if a PC decides to take on a similar role.
Heh, the idea of a secret dying fertility god club is pretty awesome; they could have meetings during the fertile season and a secret handshake! Tammuz and Persephone aren't the only ones; Adonis, Baal, Osiris, Jarilo, and even Baldur are all similar figures, dying or journeying to the Underworld in the infertile season only to rise again and represent new growth later. I'd love to see them hanging out and swapping tales of their incarceration or sharing tips on how to stay fresh while stuck in the realm of the dead.
As far as hanging out while in the Underworld, though, no, I don't imagine they do; Persephone's in Hades with a husband who, according to all reports, is very smitten with her and historically bad-tempered about anyone trying to make a play for her, and Tammuz is in Irkallu, where the mistress of the house is most famous for not letting anybody leave ever. Tammuz is outright a prisoner, and I doubt very much that Persephone has any prayer of sneaking off without Hades noticing. Most dying gods are pretty much stuck in the specific Underworld they go to until they get rescued or the time of their sentence is up; I doubt there's a visiting program going on between the deathrealms just so they can get together while imprisoned.
I could see them getting together outside of gloomy Underworld vacations, but whether or not that includes romance is something each game would have to determine. Would Tammuz really want to stray from magnificent Ishtar (and even if he did, would he dare)? Does Persephone really want to jeopardize a pretty sweet political setup by canoodling with somebody else? They're both super attractive and they have some common ground, but is that enough, especially since they probably have to go out of their way just to meet since both of their Overworlds are under seige and life's pretty darn busy? In our games, I would say no, there's probably not any inappropriateness going on between those two, but I could certainly see someone pursuing it as a plot in a different game (and god help everyone when/if Ishtar and Hades find out - that's some truly cosmic fallout right there).
Personally, if you like the idea of a secret dying-fertility-god love plot, I'd be more inclined to run with Persephone and Adonis - not only do they share the same Underworld during their times below ground, but Adonis is only there because Persephone wanted him to be, and it's difficult to tell from the myth whether she feels maternal affection or romantic love for him. Of course, them trying to have a relationship would have all sorts of terrifying problems - Aphrodite's not as scary as Ishtar but she's still awfully volatile, and trying to have an affair in your husband's kingdom when you know he is a master of invisibility has to be a harrowing ordeal - but that might be just the ticket if it's a story you'd like to play with.
I totally want the Dying Fertility God Club to be a real thing, though. They could have rotating farewell parties for those of them going down to the Underworld at various times! Act as a support group for their fellow death-oppressed deities! Plan Underworld revolutions! The possibilities are endless, especially if a PC decides to take on a similar role.
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