Question: How would you suggest a Scion of the Orisha who does not want to invest in Mystery or Prophecy (and has no one in his group who wants to) proceed in regards to his PSP boons?
A Scion of the Orisha who wants nothing to do with divination is embarking on a difficult road. Because the idea of discovering and working toward one's destiny is so deeply and fundamentally important to the religion that supports the Orisha, to the point that the gods themselves practice it as much as the mortals below, a Scion who eschews the idea is setting himself up for a lot of confusion, difficulty and adversity. The Orisha and their worshipers believe that someone who fails to achieve their destiny has lived a failed and wasted life and will fall prey to (and cause for others) many misfortunes, and they're likely to be somewhat aghast at a Scion who refuses to participate. Just as a Scion of the Tuatha who won't take on any geasa would look irresponsible to them, or a Scion of the Aztlanti who refuses to participate in blood sacrifice would look like a deadbeat to his pantheon, so the Orisha probably won't know quite what to do with a kid who isn't doing what they perceive as his job.
However, that doesn't mean anything that doesn't involve divination can't be a valid character type, or that you can't do very neat things with Ori despite not being big into chicken bones and palm nuts. I would think this issue comes up a lot more for Scions of the Orisha who know them in their New World incarnations; while ceremonies strongly associated with Mystery and the gods do exist in vodun and Santeria and the like, the urgent need to perform a divination for everything, all the time isn't as strong as it is at home in Africa, and Scions from across the big water may be from different religious milieus despite still being under of the overall Orisha umbrella. Also, sometimes there are just Scions who don't wanna do what their parents do. That's traditional for this game, after all.
So, anyway. The concept of Ori and figuring out what it is and what to do about it is best expressed in Scion by the Prophecy and Mystery purviews. That makes a lot of sense and gives us a nice clear framework for stuff to happen around the concept of sacred destiny, but it does make life more challenging for Scions who don't have those purviews (or easy access to others who have them). At low Legend levels, the easiest thing to do is probably what everyone who isn't Orisha usually does when they need to talk to an oracle: go find one. Seek out the local wise woman, witch doctor, oracular mouthpiece or servant of the gods, and use your Ori boons on them (and remember, they don't have to be Yoruba or perform divinations the Yoruba way as long as they get you the info you need). You won't be able to do it as often as if you had a mobile oracle with you, but you can still make it something you do before embarking on important missions or making life-changing decisions. You could also try to get a non-Scion oracle to travel with you, at least sometimes; the simplest way to pull that off is just to take a Guide or Follower Birthright that can perform divinations for you, but if you want to save those points, you could also try to just convince oracles you run into to accompany you (or kidnap them, but they're probably less inclined to cooperate that way). Once you've reached Legend 7, of course, you'll be able to use Babalawo/Iyalawo to just designate people as temporary diviners, making it unnecessary to seek out professional ones unless you need a truly epic feat that those with the temporary powers can't manage for you.
If, on the other hand, you happen to be a Scion of the Orisha who just doesn't want to ever bother with divinations and doesn't plan on using those boons at all, you do have a thornier path to travel. Just like a Yazata Scion who is a pathological liar or a Bogovi Scion who doesn't want to be saddled with additional Virtues, you're choosing to go against the traditional powers, dictates and values of your pantheon, and that's naturally going to mean that some doors are closed to you. The divination boons will probably be mostly useless to you, and there's not much that you can really do about that. But the good news is that only three out of ten Ori boons require divination, and they're not all clustered at any one level, meaning that you'll still have the tasty bonuses of Akunlegba to keep you warm at Hero and Akunleyan, Iwa Pele and Olori Rere to prevent your Demigod career from being all about bothering prophets for information. You'll still have to buy those divination-based boons, of course, but you're trying to become well-versed in the powers and beliefs of your native pantheon, after all, and it's not up to you what they consider most religiously important. You can absolutely decide you're not interested in their bullshit and not participate, but it stands to reason that you're not going to get access to all the powers that bullshit brings if you do.
Honestly, I think nonconformist Orisha Scions have it easier than those of some of the other pantheons; at least they do get other powers, and they probably only have to worry about Eshu (who is notoriously easy to offend when he feels he isn't getting enough divination sacrifices) going batshit on them for neglecting their duties. Compared to the poor Aztlanti Scion who won't perform blood sacrifice and has an entirely useless purview and a whole pantheon ready to kick his ass over it or the Yazata Scion who loses his whole PSP and becomes Enemy One to his parent when he starts lying about something as innocent as whether or not his friend looks fat in those jeans, the Orisha Scion who doesn't feel like divination is doing pretty well.
As always, the pantheon determines what their powers, Virtues and outlook on the universe are, but Scions are new creatures who can choose to align themselves with or reject those values as they see fit. Fighting against the current is always harder than swimming with it, but that doesn't mean you can't do it.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Scire, Schmire
Question: You've previously (and often) made your opinions on the Atlantean "pantheon" from Demigod very clear. However, I wanted to know your thoughts on their PSP, Scire, purely from a mechanical and game-balance viewpoint. I'm playing with the idea of using it for a modern-day "techno-pantheon". Considering how many people worship their smartphones...
We have yelled about Atlantis a little bit, haven't we? Don't worry, this post is not about that today.
Scire is a problematic purview because it doesn't really stand on its own. Too many of its powers probably belong elsewhere in the game, particularly in mental knacks, and it's underpowered and underwhelming in the extreme when compared with other pantheon-specific purviews like Itztli or Samsara that actually, you know, do things. We think it was a valiant effort to come up with a technology purview, but it falls short so many ways that we can't recommend using it that way without a vast rewrite.
The level one boon is fine, but level two - auto-download information from discs - is seriously unimpressive for a PSP boon (or a boon at all, really) and probably ought to be an Intelligence knack that follows Speed Reader. Level three is just level one again but extended to other skills - oh, good, another three dice as long as I'm using a computer! - which is both underwhelming and boring, while level four is either massively useless or superpowered depending totally on what the Storyteller feels like that day (not to mention being easily undercut by Mystery). Level five's power - extending your personal immunities to things you carry - is chump change by Legend 6 and later rendered obsolete by Guardian, Magic or just having relic items, and level six is neat but in no way puts Scions who own it in the same league as those reaping buckets of Legend with Poco a Poco or dropping potent freaking geasa on others. Vector is nice but desperately underpowered compared to other PSPs or even APPs, the level nine superpower is castrated completely by Mystery, and level ten tries to be impressive but actually turns out to just be a worse version of Moksha.
Basically, it's not good as written. It's underpowered, uninspiring and has no clear mission statement about what it's supposed to be doing that Scions of other pantheons can't already do. You would have a lot of work ahead of you to shape it into something that would be enticing enough for a player to have an interest in it instead of other more impressive powers, or for antagonists or NPCs to actually be as effective as they need to be.
We don't hate everything about Scire, actually; in fact, it's been cannibalized into our games here and there, usually in the form of Industry boons or Intelligence knacks. But if you're going to commit to using it as a distinct set of powers, you'll have a lot of work in front of you before players don't just look at it and say, "Why would I get this when I could be [insert pantheon] and just get good Epic Intelligence?"
We have yelled about Atlantis a little bit, haven't we? Don't worry, this post is not about that today.
Scire is a problematic purview because it doesn't really stand on its own. Too many of its powers probably belong elsewhere in the game, particularly in mental knacks, and it's underpowered and underwhelming in the extreme when compared with other pantheon-specific purviews like Itztli or Samsara that actually, you know, do things. We think it was a valiant effort to come up with a technology purview, but it falls short so many ways that we can't recommend using it that way without a vast rewrite.
The level one boon is fine, but level two - auto-download information from discs - is seriously unimpressive for a PSP boon (or a boon at all, really) and probably ought to be an Intelligence knack that follows Speed Reader. Level three is just level one again but extended to other skills - oh, good, another three dice as long as I'm using a computer! - which is both underwhelming and boring, while level four is either massively useless or superpowered depending totally on what the Storyteller feels like that day (not to mention being easily undercut by Mystery). Level five's power - extending your personal immunities to things you carry - is chump change by Legend 6 and later rendered obsolete by Guardian, Magic or just having relic items, and level six is neat but in no way puts Scions who own it in the same league as those reaping buckets of Legend with Poco a Poco or dropping potent freaking geasa on others. Vector is nice but desperately underpowered compared to other PSPs or even APPs, the level nine superpower is castrated completely by Mystery, and level ten tries to be impressive but actually turns out to just be a worse version of Moksha.
Basically, it's not good as written. It's underpowered, uninspiring and has no clear mission statement about what it's supposed to be doing that Scions of other pantheons can't already do. You would have a lot of work ahead of you to shape it into something that would be enticing enough for a player to have an interest in it instead of other more impressive powers, or for antagonists or NPCs to actually be as effective as they need to be.
We don't hate everything about Scire, actually; in fact, it's been cannibalized into our games here and there, usually in the form of Industry boons or Intelligence knacks. But if you're going to commit to using it as a distinct set of powers, you'll have a lot of work in front of you before players don't just look at it and say, "Why would I get this when I could be [insert pantheon] and just get good Epic Intelligence?"
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Fucking Crazy: The Story of Eshu
Question: A few things. One, Eshu is awesome. Two, he's also a total sociopath. Three, why is he connected to the god of divination? Four, why have the others not DONE something about him? Five, are any of the OTHER first gods who are his siblings as bad as him? Six, Loki vs Eshu, who loses, Loki, Eshu, or the world?
ONE: We know, right?
TWO: Some gods just want to watch the world burn.
THREE: Eshu and Orunmila are inextricably linked in Yoruba mythology; they need each other and form an inseparable pair (well, inseparable except when Eshu is pranking the poor dude). Orunmila, as one of the sons closest to the great Olodumare and the undisputed holder of all the universe's wisdom from him, has all the divination, foresight and intelligence of the gods, but without Eshu, the master of the ways and keeper of communication, he can't share it with anyone. Because Eshu is the conduit between the gods and humanity, he's fundamentally necessary to any attempt for the two to communicate without gods actually showing up in person, which is why every Yoruba divination ceremony begins with an invocation of Eshu and ends with him offered due sacrifice along with whatever else the diviner required. Mythology paints the symbiotic relationship between the two in the story where Orunmila, at the beginning of time, knows everything but cannot share it with humanity, which as as a result is bumbling and failing hardcore in their attempts to fulfill their destinies. In return for Orunmila allowing him some of the glory and sacrifice of the rituals, Eshu strikes a deal with him that he will open the way between worlds for Orunmila's wisdom to flow down to the mortals who so sorely need it; he teaches him how to perform a divination ceremony so that mortals can understand what he's trying to tell them, and in return the first portion of all sacrifices now goes to Eshu. In places where Eshu's cult is particularly strong, sometimes the story even implies that Eshu was the first diviner himself and taught Orunmila how to see into the mysteries of Fate. Another myth explaining their co-dependence says that Eshu once tried to kill Orunmila in a fit of anger, but found that he was unable to do so because the two of them were so strongly bound together that they could never be parted, and nothing could kill one of them without killing the other.
Of course, Eshu's Eshu, so their partnership is one fraught with peril. If Eshu doesn't like what Orunmila wants to say in a divination, or is just feeling ornery that day, it's understood that he may sometimes garble or forge the message, causing mortals to believe that the god of divination gave them instructions that he distinctly did not. If Eshu doesn't feel like he's getting his fair share of the sacrifices and honors due Orunmila, he's prone to murder and brutal practical jokery, which even extends to Orunmila himself sometimes if the offense was particularly grave. And if Eshu is just being a dick that day, there's nothing much Orunmila can do; he's dependent on him to send his all-important divinations through to the people (and even other gods) who need them. On the other side of the coin, Eshu is fractious but never abandons his role entirely, because he can't stand losing that sweet, sweet sacrificial wine and meat.
FOUR: Unfortunately, nobody can really do anything about Eshu. Olodumare decreed that, despite his penchant for fucking everything up for everyone, Eshu is a necessary part of the universe, because someone has to be in charge of random chance, cruel whim and chaotic disagreement and they might as well all get used to it. He's one of the direct sons of the old creator god and has been around as long as there's been a pantheon, giving him precedence over basically everyone else except for Orunmila and Obatala. Because he's the keeper of the boundaries and paths between worlds, pissing Eshu off is a great way to get blockaded in your house or find that your travels always go wrong when you can least afford them to, and the gods themselves need the divinations that Eshu has so thoroughly made himself a part of, too. And, possibly most importantly, they're afraid of him - not necessarily in the "oh noes he might kill me" sort of way, but in the "he will fucking destroy everything I love and I'll never see it coming" way. It's similar to the way the old World of Darkness Ravnos vampires could get away with shit by threatening to start crime-waving over a city en masse if they were threatened; nobody wants to be the guy who takes Eshu's nuclear-grade "fun pranks" to the face and ends up destitute and miserable forever. It's illustrated best in a story wherein Shango is strutting around, preening like the big old peacock he is and crowing about how he could destroy any of the gods he chose and none of them could possibly challenge his might. Eshu looked up long enough to say, "Oh, yeah?", and Shango immediately said the most dignified and kingly version of "Well, of course not you, that would be ridiculous, we're best friends," and then hastily went home and probably took it out on his wives.
FIVE: It depends on what you mean by "as bad as". As far as pure psychotic tendency to just destroy things and people for no reason, no, Eshu really doesn't have any equal. Aganju's cranky and reclusive and will kill you if you go to his house, but he doesn't do things like going out of his way to kill a dude's wife because he accidentally sacrificed the wrong color of goat, and while Obatala has an unfortunate tendency toward being a lush, he's a model of compassionate goodwill compared to the trickster god. Oshumare, Orunmila and Oduduwa are similarly mostly benevolent, with only the last one showing any real signs of characteristic African god-insanity (mostly by making bad decisions about wars).
If you branch out to the gods of the next generation, Eshu isn't quite equalled, but there are some pretty acid-tripping bonkers other members of the pantheon there. Ogun is a textbook case of Guy Who Uses Riastrad Too Much and Kills All His Friends, Shango is a batshit insane despot who routinely conquers and pillages the countryside, kills himself and attempts to murder his family members, and Olokun has to be chained to the ocean floor to keep him from flooding the entire continent when he's in a bad mood. Really, the Yoruba were pretty worried about their gods, which is reflected in a lot of praise songs and prayers to them that tend to repeat lines like "Please don't kill me in my sleep" or "Please understand I respect you and don't need to be smited" a lot. Some of them are out of control.
SIX: The world loses. Loki and Eshu probably both win.
ONE: We know, right?
TWO: Some gods just want to watch the world burn.
THREE: Eshu and Orunmila are inextricably linked in Yoruba mythology; they need each other and form an inseparable pair (well, inseparable except when Eshu is pranking the poor dude). Orunmila, as one of the sons closest to the great Olodumare and the undisputed holder of all the universe's wisdom from him, has all the divination, foresight and intelligence of the gods, but without Eshu, the master of the ways and keeper of communication, he can't share it with anyone. Because Eshu is the conduit between the gods and humanity, he's fundamentally necessary to any attempt for the two to communicate without gods actually showing up in person, which is why every Yoruba divination ceremony begins with an invocation of Eshu and ends with him offered due sacrifice along with whatever else the diviner required. Mythology paints the symbiotic relationship between the two in the story where Orunmila, at the beginning of time, knows everything but cannot share it with humanity, which as as a result is bumbling and failing hardcore in their attempts to fulfill their destinies. In return for Orunmila allowing him some of the glory and sacrifice of the rituals, Eshu strikes a deal with him that he will open the way between worlds for Orunmila's wisdom to flow down to the mortals who so sorely need it; he teaches him how to perform a divination ceremony so that mortals can understand what he's trying to tell them, and in return the first portion of all sacrifices now goes to Eshu. In places where Eshu's cult is particularly strong, sometimes the story even implies that Eshu was the first diviner himself and taught Orunmila how to see into the mysteries of Fate. Another myth explaining their co-dependence says that Eshu once tried to kill Orunmila in a fit of anger, but found that he was unable to do so because the two of them were so strongly bound together that they could never be parted, and nothing could kill one of them without killing the other.
Of course, Eshu's Eshu, so their partnership is one fraught with peril. If Eshu doesn't like what Orunmila wants to say in a divination, or is just feeling ornery that day, it's understood that he may sometimes garble or forge the message, causing mortals to believe that the god of divination gave them instructions that he distinctly did not. If Eshu doesn't feel like he's getting his fair share of the sacrifices and honors due Orunmila, he's prone to murder and brutal practical jokery, which even extends to Orunmila himself sometimes if the offense was particularly grave. And if Eshu is just being a dick that day, there's nothing much Orunmila can do; he's dependent on him to send his all-important divinations through to the people (and even other gods) who need them. On the other side of the coin, Eshu is fractious but never abandons his role entirely, because he can't stand losing that sweet, sweet sacrificial wine and meat.
FOUR: Unfortunately, nobody can really do anything about Eshu. Olodumare decreed that, despite his penchant for fucking everything up for everyone, Eshu is a necessary part of the universe, because someone has to be in charge of random chance, cruel whim and chaotic disagreement and they might as well all get used to it. He's one of the direct sons of the old creator god and has been around as long as there's been a pantheon, giving him precedence over basically everyone else except for Orunmila and Obatala. Because he's the keeper of the boundaries and paths between worlds, pissing Eshu off is a great way to get blockaded in your house or find that your travels always go wrong when you can least afford them to, and the gods themselves need the divinations that Eshu has so thoroughly made himself a part of, too. And, possibly most importantly, they're afraid of him - not necessarily in the "oh noes he might kill me" sort of way, but in the "he will fucking destroy everything I love and I'll never see it coming" way. It's similar to the way the old World of Darkness Ravnos vampires could get away with shit by threatening to start crime-waving over a city en masse if they were threatened; nobody wants to be the guy who takes Eshu's nuclear-grade "fun pranks" to the face and ends up destitute and miserable forever. It's illustrated best in a story wherein Shango is strutting around, preening like the big old peacock he is and crowing about how he could destroy any of the gods he chose and none of them could possibly challenge his might. Eshu looked up long enough to say, "Oh, yeah?", and Shango immediately said the most dignified and kingly version of "Well, of course not you, that would be ridiculous, we're best friends," and then hastily went home and probably took it out on his wives.
FIVE: It depends on what you mean by "as bad as". As far as pure psychotic tendency to just destroy things and people for no reason, no, Eshu really doesn't have any equal. Aganju's cranky and reclusive and will kill you if you go to his house, but he doesn't do things like going out of his way to kill a dude's wife because he accidentally sacrificed the wrong color of goat, and while Obatala has an unfortunate tendency toward being a lush, he's a model of compassionate goodwill compared to the trickster god. Oshumare, Orunmila and Oduduwa are similarly mostly benevolent, with only the last one showing any real signs of characteristic African god-insanity (mostly by making bad decisions about wars).
If you branch out to the gods of the next generation, Eshu isn't quite equalled, but there are some pretty acid-tripping bonkers other members of the pantheon there. Ogun is a textbook case of Guy Who Uses Riastrad Too Much and Kills All His Friends, Shango is a batshit insane despot who routinely conquers and pillages the countryside, kills himself and attempts to murder his family members, and Olokun has to be chained to the ocean floor to keep him from flooding the entire continent when he's in a bad mood. Really, the Yoruba were pretty worried about their gods, which is reflected in a lot of praise songs and prayers to them that tend to repeat lines like "Please don't kill me in my sleep" or "Please understand I respect you and don't need to be smited" a lot. Some of them are out of control.
SIX: The world loses. Loki and Eshu probably both win.
Friday, March 29, 2013
In the Eye of the Beholder
Question: Aphrodite/Venus and Helen of Troy are often depicted as blonde in more modern media, but I was wondering what the standards of feminine beauty might have been like at that time, and how the Ancient Greeks and Romans might have depicted them in the art of the time and how you might have chosen to depict them in your own games.
Ooh, art appreciation post! The most famous beauties of the Greek epics are indeed mysteriously blonde in a lot of modern art, aren't they? Just look at 'em:
It's become a cultural stereotype of both of them, at least in a lot of the West. Even actresses that portray them in movies turn up blonde. But ancient Greek and Roman artwork of them, not surprisingly, depicts a couple of ladies who look, well... more Mediterranean.
Weird, right? Where did all these blondes come from, when the few color images we still have of ancient Aphrodite and Helen are all clearly rocking the brunette look?
Well, I'd like to lay some of the blame on Botticelli.
We've all seen his version of the Birth of Venus; it's an iconic and classic piece of Renaissance art and the very first version of Aphrodite that a lot of people see. His Aphrodite is gloriously golden-haired and cream-skinned, and that's an image that a lot of us immediately internalize as What Aphrodite Looks Like.
But let's not point all of our fingers at Botticelli - this is actually a group effort. The big renaissance of Greek and Roman art and myth was during, well, the Renaissance. Huge quantities of art on the subject of the ancient myths was produced by a veritable army of artists, and because it was a time of cultural and artistic revolution, a great deal of that art has become enshrined as among the best ever produced, subsequently copied, built upon and used as a foundation for generations of artists afterward. Ideals of beauty had changed substantially in the pile of centuries since Aphrodite's heyday in ancient Greece and Rome, and as a result, the images of her changed as well; the Renaissance ideal of beauty was pale, soft-skinned and golden-haired, and therefore the majority of art regarding the two famous beauties of time gone by also sports blonde crowns.
It's a commonly accepted theory that Homer neglects to ever truly describe Helen or Aphrodite because doing so would detract from their beauty - as soon as he says, "Oh, she has blue eyes/thin wrists/is 5'10", that would open the door for someone to say, "Hey, that's not the most beautiful woman in existence, I like brown eyes/I think thin wrists are gross/tall women aren't my thing!" By leaving them mostly undescribed, he allows the audience of his stories to imagine a Helen or Aphrodite who is their own personal standard of beauty; that is, the only way to be absolutely sure that they know she's the most beautiful is to give them and them alone the power to define that beauty. Artwork of the two of them shows a generic-looking Greek woman, because for the artist to comment on exactly how Helen is beautiful or Aphrodite is irresistible would actually diminish that irresistible beauty in the eyes of some other person.
Kind of a brain-twister, right? Aphrodite and Helen are so beautiful that it is literally impossible to describe specific facets of their beauty. Now project that forward: we know that ancient Greeks probably conceived of both ladies as looking like super-hot Greek women, but because the concepts of beauty are universal and subjective, everyone after has changed what that idealized image must look like. Artwork of Aphrodite became heavierset and more generous in the hips and breasts during the Romantic period of painting because that had become a popular image of beauty, and now, in the modern age, popular conceptions of blondeness and slenderness as an ideal of beauty lead naturally to a lot of images of a blonde, slender Aphrodite.
So: how do you describe the indescribable for Scion games? Helen has never appeared in our games, but the PCs have encountered Aphrodite and were appropriately blown away by her. Honestly, we take our cue from those good old poets of yore; we don't give specific details about what she looks like, saying instead that she is stunningly beautiful, impossibly seductive, intoxicatingly fragrant and so on. And wouldn't you know it, none of our players have ever even noticed that we didn't tell them what color her hair or eyes were - they automatically filled in the blanks with their own personal idea of what she looks like. Her ancient cult of absolute power over the subjective nature of beauty did all our work for us. Aphrodite looks exactly like you imagine her, and also exactly like the person next to you imagines her. She is everything you find attractive and nothing that you don't.
But if you really do like describing exactly what gods and goddesses look like and aren't satisfied just heaping adverbs on them, this is one of our favorite modern artist interpretations of Aphrodite: simple, but a great example of both classical Greek features and obviously modern western ideals of sexiness.
Ooh, art appreciation post! The most famous beauties of the Greek epics are indeed mysteriously blonde in a lot of modern art, aren't they? Just look at 'em:
Aphrodite
Helen
It's become a cultural stereotype of both of them, at least in a lot of the West. Even actresses that portray them in movies turn up blonde. But ancient Greek and Roman artwork of them, not surprisingly, depicts a couple of ladies who look, well... more Mediterranean.
Aphrodite
Helen
Weird, right? Where did all these blondes come from, when the few color images we still have of ancient Aphrodite and Helen are all clearly rocking the brunette look?
Well, I'd like to lay some of the blame on Botticelli.
We've all seen his version of the Birth of Venus; it's an iconic and classic piece of Renaissance art and the very first version of Aphrodite that a lot of people see. His Aphrodite is gloriously golden-haired and cream-skinned, and that's an image that a lot of us immediately internalize as What Aphrodite Looks Like.
But let's not point all of our fingers at Botticelli - this is actually a group effort. The big renaissance of Greek and Roman art and myth was during, well, the Renaissance. Huge quantities of art on the subject of the ancient myths was produced by a veritable army of artists, and because it was a time of cultural and artistic revolution, a great deal of that art has become enshrined as among the best ever produced, subsequently copied, built upon and used as a foundation for generations of artists afterward. Ideals of beauty had changed substantially in the pile of centuries since Aphrodite's heyday in ancient Greece and Rome, and as a result, the images of her changed as well; the Renaissance ideal of beauty was pale, soft-skinned and golden-haired, and therefore the majority of art regarding the two famous beauties of time gone by also sports blonde crowns.
It's a commonly accepted theory that Homer neglects to ever truly describe Helen or Aphrodite because doing so would detract from their beauty - as soon as he says, "Oh, she has blue eyes/thin wrists/is 5'10", that would open the door for someone to say, "Hey, that's not the most beautiful woman in existence, I like brown eyes/I think thin wrists are gross/tall women aren't my thing!" By leaving them mostly undescribed, he allows the audience of his stories to imagine a Helen or Aphrodite who is their own personal standard of beauty; that is, the only way to be absolutely sure that they know she's the most beautiful is to give them and them alone the power to define that beauty. Artwork of the two of them shows a generic-looking Greek woman, because for the artist to comment on exactly how Helen is beautiful or Aphrodite is irresistible would actually diminish that irresistible beauty in the eyes of some other person.
Kind of a brain-twister, right? Aphrodite and Helen are so beautiful that it is literally impossible to describe specific facets of their beauty. Now project that forward: we know that ancient Greeks probably conceived of both ladies as looking like super-hot Greek women, but because the concepts of beauty are universal and subjective, everyone after has changed what that idealized image must look like. Artwork of Aphrodite became heavierset and more generous in the hips and breasts during the Romantic period of painting because that had become a popular image of beauty, and now, in the modern age, popular conceptions of blondeness and slenderness as an ideal of beauty lead naturally to a lot of images of a blonde, slender Aphrodite.
So: how do you describe the indescribable for Scion games? Helen has never appeared in our games, but the PCs have encountered Aphrodite and were appropriately blown away by her. Honestly, we take our cue from those good old poets of yore; we don't give specific details about what she looks like, saying instead that she is stunningly beautiful, impossibly seductive, intoxicatingly fragrant and so on. And wouldn't you know it, none of our players have ever even noticed that we didn't tell them what color her hair or eyes were - they automatically filled in the blanks with their own personal idea of what she looks like. Her ancient cult of absolute power over the subjective nature of beauty did all our work for us. Aphrodite looks exactly like you imagine her, and also exactly like the person next to you imagines her. She is everything you find attractive and nothing that you don't.
But if you really do like describing exactly what gods and goddesses look like and aren't satisfied just heaping adverbs on them, this is one of our favorite modern artist interpretations of Aphrodite: simple, but a great example of both classical Greek features and obviously modern western ideals of sexiness.
Ooh la la!
Star Sense
Question: How would you handle a blind Scion with the Stars purview? Since the boons require you to be able to see them, would she be completely banned from having it?
Not at all! Man, we should really fix the wording on those. In fact, I'm going to go do that right now.
The Stars purview depends upon a Scion being able to interact with the stars, but it doesn't necessarily have to be visual; if she can perceive them in some other way, she can still call upon their powers. It's a Perception + Awareness roll to perceive the stars, and while a Storyteller may impose a penalty on blind Scions depending on how they feel about enforcing blindness (-4 dice is usually a good number), if that Scion can make the roll, she's able to tell the stars are there. Her player is free to stunt however she wants to explain that happening, whether it's the faint sound of the cosmic song of the stars, her skin being so sensitive that she can feel their pale light on it, or just that she senses their presence above her and knows instinctively that they are there.
In general, blind Scions can do most things regular Scions can, just at a disadvantage due to their handicap. How well they're able to function and find things around them depends on their Perception, just like it does for any other Scion, so those with low Perception are hamstrung by their blindness and those with high have uncannily sharp other senses compensating for it. We've had both kinds in our games: Aurora, who could hear into space and feel the tiniest pinprick of the smallest star on her skin, and Jude, who despite wearing twelve pounds of glass lenses strapped to his head still couldn't see well enough to back the car out of the garage without running over one of his bandmates.
I'll make it a point to go through and change the word "see" in the Stars purview to something more appropriate, like "sense" or "perceive", though, to avoid confusion!
Not at all! Man, we should really fix the wording on those. In fact, I'm going to go do that right now.
The Stars purview depends upon a Scion being able to interact with the stars, but it doesn't necessarily have to be visual; if she can perceive them in some other way, she can still call upon their powers. It's a Perception + Awareness roll to perceive the stars, and while a Storyteller may impose a penalty on blind Scions depending on how they feel about enforcing blindness (-4 dice is usually a good number), if that Scion can make the roll, she's able to tell the stars are there. Her player is free to stunt however she wants to explain that happening, whether it's the faint sound of the cosmic song of the stars, her skin being so sensitive that she can feel their pale light on it, or just that she senses their presence above her and knows instinctively that they are there.
In general, blind Scions can do most things regular Scions can, just at a disadvantage due to their handicap. How well they're able to function and find things around them depends on their Perception, just like it does for any other Scion, so those with low Perception are hamstrung by their blindness and those with high have uncannily sharp other senses compensating for it. We've had both kinds in our games: Aurora, who could hear into space and feel the tiniest pinprick of the smallest star on her skin, and Jude, who despite wearing twelve pounds of glass lenses strapped to his head still couldn't see well enough to back the car out of the garage without running over one of his bandmates.
I'll make it a point to go through and change the word "see" in the Stars purview to something more appropriate, like "sense" or "perceive", though, to avoid confusion!
Thursday, March 28, 2013
On the Installment Plan
Question: I definitely loved what you did with the Orisha. If/When you ever have the time and energy, would you ever consider doing a supplement like what you have done with the pantheons you've made so far?
It's not in our plans right at this moment, but there's at least some good news: a lot of the things that would be in a normal pantheon supplement will probably make their way to the site in some form over time. As we slowly add Titanrealms, the writeup for theirs will be included, and likewise if we ever get around to the lower-Legend god-statting project, they may someday gain their own writeups and stats as well. Some Birthrights geared toward the Orisha have already made an appearance in our Reliquary supplement. We don't currently have Overworlds and Underworlds on the site, but it's also a possibility far off in the future.
Mostly, we went ahead and got these guys up and running without doing a full PDF workup because they were active in our games and we had PCs (what up, Jioni!) who needed their powers and cosmology fixed as soon as possible. But that doesn't mean we can't or won't do more with them in the future; let us know what kinds of things you guys are interested in, and we'll consider them!
It's not in our plans right at this moment, but there's at least some good news: a lot of the things that would be in a normal pantheon supplement will probably make their way to the site in some form over time. As we slowly add Titanrealms, the writeup for theirs will be included, and likewise if we ever get around to the lower-Legend god-statting project, they may someday gain their own writeups and stats as well. Some Birthrights geared toward the Orisha have already made an appearance in our Reliquary supplement. We don't currently have Overworlds and Underworlds on the site, but it's also a possibility far off in the future.
Mostly, we went ahead and got these guys up and running without doing a full PDF workup because they were active in our games and we had PCs (what up, Jioni!) who needed their powers and cosmology fixed as soon as possible. But that doesn't mean we can't or won't do more with them in the future; let us know what kinds of things you guys are interested in, and we'll consider them!
Emperor of Heaven
Question: Hello, John. I'm curious. In the Celestial Bureaucracy, Shang Di is not listed. I'm looking over any myths of Shang Di detailing his attributes and I can find nothing except for a flood story. I had thought perhaps I could play as a Scion of Shang Di, but it may be more difficult than I had bargained for. May I have some help? ^_^
John's actually out this week while we get his motherboard replaced, but since the mention of China makes him start chain-eating pizza and muttering anyway, he authorized me to answer you instead. :)
Shang Di is one of those figures that is so old, remote and at once super powerful but also mostly absent from the religion after ancient times that he doesn't have much to offer as a parent for a Scion. He doesn't do very much and has little personality you could call upon; he's essentially one of those deities that exists but does not act. The only really strong connections you could make for him are with the Sky, as he's the ancient embodiment and ruler of the heavens, and the concept of Justice, as the ultimate authority and law over all of heaven and earth. Unfortunately, that's seriously all we've got for you in terms of associations you could pass on to a Scion. He does those things as well as only the Emperor of Heaven can, but he doesn't branch out.
Because of this, we actually run Shang Di as a Titan Avatar of Sedeq, Titanrealm of Order (which you can find more on in our Elohim supplement if you're interested). He ruled the Celestial Bureaucracy in times long gone by, but was eventually (and regretfully) imprisoned by them after his obsession with perfect order began to restrict creativity and encourage stagnation in their people and gods. We consider him to embody authority and order that are so perfect that they strangle change and growth.
If you prefer to run him as less confrontational, he also makes a good mostly-neutral Titan Avatar; if you're using Logos from he original Scion books, he makes a good addition to its very small roster and might be willing to aid the gods or stay out of the conflict altogether as your story requires.
We haven't gotten to the Chinese pantheon overhaul that needs to happen sooner or later (we know guys, we know, I promise someday) so we don't have super firm stats on anyone yet, but I'd suggest trying the Jade Emperor or Huang Di for gods with a similar imperial feel and a lot of sway among their peers.
John's actually out this week while we get his motherboard replaced, but since the mention of China makes him start chain-eating pizza and muttering anyway, he authorized me to answer you instead. :)
Shang Di is one of those figures that is so old, remote and at once super powerful but also mostly absent from the religion after ancient times that he doesn't have much to offer as a parent for a Scion. He doesn't do very much and has little personality you could call upon; he's essentially one of those deities that exists but does not act. The only really strong connections you could make for him are with the Sky, as he's the ancient embodiment and ruler of the heavens, and the concept of Justice, as the ultimate authority and law over all of heaven and earth. Unfortunately, that's seriously all we've got for you in terms of associations you could pass on to a Scion. He does those things as well as only the Emperor of Heaven can, but he doesn't branch out.
Because of this, we actually run Shang Di as a Titan Avatar of Sedeq, Titanrealm of Order (which you can find more on in our Elohim supplement if you're interested). He ruled the Celestial Bureaucracy in times long gone by, but was eventually (and regretfully) imprisoned by them after his obsession with perfect order began to restrict creativity and encourage stagnation in their people and gods. We consider him to embody authority and order that are so perfect that they strangle change and growth.
If you prefer to run him as less confrontational, he also makes a good mostly-neutral Titan Avatar; if you're using Logos from he original Scion books, he makes a good addition to its very small roster and might be willing to aid the gods or stay out of the conflict altogether as your story requires.
We haven't gotten to the Chinese pantheon overhaul that needs to happen sooner or later (we know guys, we know, I promise someday) so we don't have super firm stats on anyone yet, but I'd suggest trying the Jade Emperor or Huang Di for gods with a similar imperial feel and a lot of sway among their peers.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
A Stitch in Time
Question: Please consider changing all of your static times (once per week, once per month, etc.) to narrative time (once per game, once per story, etc.)!
No dice, my friend. While we sympathize with your yearning for the simplified bookkeeping that not keeping track of time within the game would bring, removing all static times from the game would result in a disappointing watering-down and oversimplification of many of the ideas that various powers are trying to represent and a general reduction in the number of ways powers could be differentiated meaningfully from one another. Also, it would be inconsistent as hell.
This varies from power to power, but many of the knacks and boons in Scion that are bound by time instead of story events are that way because they need to be to make mythic sense. Scions using the Sun purview need to be bound by day measurements sometimes because daytime's boundaries are specifically what sun is all about, while Scions using Fertility need to be bound by the growing life cycles of plants and those using the Moon purview need to be tied to a monthly cycle because that's what the moon itself does and what most of the mythology surrounding it is based on. Some powers, like Last Act, measure time in specific increments because they're illustrating similar events from myth and legend. Others, like the Dinsenchas geas or many Justice boons, need to use real time because they have to illustrate a significant time commitment on the part of the Scion, and using narrative time would actually make it far too easy to handwave that away.
Besides, how would you want that equivalency to work? There are more useful divisions of time being used in Scion - minutes, hours, days, months and even years, all of them providing different degrees of precision and symbolism - than there are useful story measurements, which really only offer scene, game session and story. How would you go about deciding which go where?
The most major problem with trying to reduce regular time to narrative time is that narrative time isn't, well, time. It's a narration, and that means it's wildly inconsistent depending upon what's happening in the story. We've had scenes that lasted ten minutes and scenes that lasted four hours; game sessions that lasted half an hour and game sessions that lasted two years; and stories that lasted only a few months or that lasted half a decade. If powers depended on narrative time instead of static, people would be crippled by being unable to use their powers for far too long, or able to bust out the same power over and over and over again if they were going through several rapid-fire scenes. Can you imagine if we replaced the once per day clause on Health with once per game session? That'd be fine for those games that take place over short periods of time, but how ridiculous would it have been if Sophia hadn't been able to heal Geoff for literally months when they were lost in the Mirkwood? Why would her powers have suddenly randomly shut off during that time? It doesn't make sense within the world of the game itself; the very act of trying to hang the mechanic on the game's narration causes the power to become awkward, useless or inconsistent within that same narration.
This is not to say that powers that use narrative time in their mechanics are bad or that they can never work; on the contrary, they're very useful mechanics for some things, and we use them ourselves all over the place (Control Aging, Bona Fortuna, several PSPs and Mystery, among others, all lean heavily on once-per-story or once-per-game mechanics). But they're mechanics that are not universally applicable to everything that Scion needs to do and represent, and we wouldn't want to try to use them for everything any more than we would want to throw Willpower away and only use Legend for everything. It would simplify things, yes, but we would lose more than we gained.
We also don't like overusing those mechanics simply because every gaming group's narrative time is going to be different. Some games always play strictly in realtime, meaning that game sessions lasting more than four hours are a rarity; some games incorporate large amounts of offscreen "downtime" that can take up whatever amount of time in the gameworld the Storyteller decrees; some play tightly-focused combat-heavy games that have extremely short periods of time involved, and others play more broad-strokes and descriptional styles that can stretch on for large periods of time within the space of a single session. Some Storytellers run very short stories with hard caps - three game sessions and we move on! - while others run massive epics that span months of realtime. And all of this is subject to change within the same games themselves, because PCs do unexpected things that prolong plots to the breaking point or abruptly end them with sudden flashes of insight, or Storytellers keep a story going longer in order to make sure their plots points occur or cut them short if they feel the game has gotten off-topic.
And we'd rather provide useful, concrete timelines that make sense and are mythically resonant than fiddly per-narrative-event ones that, depending on the game, may unfairly restrict or unnecessarily overpower characters in the name of avoiding paying a little attention to what day it is. So, while we're totally willing to consider changing a power's mechanics on a case-by-case basis if it makes sense for a particular boon or knack to move to narrative time, we're probably never going to move wholesale to a system without normal time. It's just not workable.
By the way, if anyone out there is struggling with keeping up with times and dates for Scion powers, we've found that just keeping a simple shared calendar works great for that kind of thing. If you're playing an online game, Google Calendar is just a click away and can have anything added to it that you need to keep track of, and we keep one calendar on a smartphone for face-to-face games so it can be whipped out whenever necessary. Some Storytellers like to be in charge of the calendar to make sure no shenanigans are going on; we don't mind having a player take care of it during game, since they can take a second to add things to it while their fellow players are taking actions, and that way someone's always on deck when the Storyteller says "Okay, two days later," to add, "Hey, Geoff, your Resilience from Sangria just ran out," or "Just a reminder, Woody, your geas will kick in if you're not in Mag Mell in the next four days."
Having a calendar for any kind of ongoing game is actually usually a pretty great idea, even if you don't use it much during the game proper. It allows you to add narrative events as well - here's this PC's birthday, here's when we have a meeting scheduled with Dionysus, here's the deadline Marduk gave us to have that treasure reclaimed for him - so that it can function as a helpful source to keep anyone from forgetting what's going on.
Of course, if you play short chronicles, seldom have more than one plot at a time or otherwise have no need for that much bookkeeping, nobody's going to force you to set up an administrative schedule. It's just one of the many tools you can look into if you want to make sure all your powers and events are happening when they're supposed to be.
No dice, my friend. While we sympathize with your yearning for the simplified bookkeeping that not keeping track of time within the game would bring, removing all static times from the game would result in a disappointing watering-down and oversimplification of many of the ideas that various powers are trying to represent and a general reduction in the number of ways powers could be differentiated meaningfully from one another. Also, it would be inconsistent as hell.
This varies from power to power, but many of the knacks and boons in Scion that are bound by time instead of story events are that way because they need to be to make mythic sense. Scions using the Sun purview need to be bound by day measurements sometimes because daytime's boundaries are specifically what sun is all about, while Scions using Fertility need to be bound by the growing life cycles of plants and those using the Moon purview need to be tied to a monthly cycle because that's what the moon itself does and what most of the mythology surrounding it is based on. Some powers, like Last Act, measure time in specific increments because they're illustrating similar events from myth and legend. Others, like the Dinsenchas geas or many Justice boons, need to use real time because they have to illustrate a significant time commitment on the part of the Scion, and using narrative time would actually make it far too easy to handwave that away.
Besides, how would you want that equivalency to work? There are more useful divisions of time being used in Scion - minutes, hours, days, months and even years, all of them providing different degrees of precision and symbolism - than there are useful story measurements, which really only offer scene, game session and story. How would you go about deciding which go where?
The most major problem with trying to reduce regular time to narrative time is that narrative time isn't, well, time. It's a narration, and that means it's wildly inconsistent depending upon what's happening in the story. We've had scenes that lasted ten minutes and scenes that lasted four hours; game sessions that lasted half an hour and game sessions that lasted two years; and stories that lasted only a few months or that lasted half a decade. If powers depended on narrative time instead of static, people would be crippled by being unable to use their powers for far too long, or able to bust out the same power over and over and over again if they were going through several rapid-fire scenes. Can you imagine if we replaced the once per day clause on Health with once per game session? That'd be fine for those games that take place over short periods of time, but how ridiculous would it have been if Sophia hadn't been able to heal Geoff for literally months when they were lost in the Mirkwood? Why would her powers have suddenly randomly shut off during that time? It doesn't make sense within the world of the game itself; the very act of trying to hang the mechanic on the game's narration causes the power to become awkward, useless or inconsistent within that same narration.
This is not to say that powers that use narrative time in their mechanics are bad or that they can never work; on the contrary, they're very useful mechanics for some things, and we use them ourselves all over the place (Control Aging, Bona Fortuna, several PSPs and Mystery, among others, all lean heavily on once-per-story or once-per-game mechanics). But they're mechanics that are not universally applicable to everything that Scion needs to do and represent, and we wouldn't want to try to use them for everything any more than we would want to throw Willpower away and only use Legend for everything. It would simplify things, yes, but we would lose more than we gained.
We also don't like overusing those mechanics simply because every gaming group's narrative time is going to be different. Some games always play strictly in realtime, meaning that game sessions lasting more than four hours are a rarity; some games incorporate large amounts of offscreen "downtime" that can take up whatever amount of time in the gameworld the Storyteller decrees; some play tightly-focused combat-heavy games that have extremely short periods of time involved, and others play more broad-strokes and descriptional styles that can stretch on for large periods of time within the space of a single session. Some Storytellers run very short stories with hard caps - three game sessions and we move on! - while others run massive epics that span months of realtime. And all of this is subject to change within the same games themselves, because PCs do unexpected things that prolong plots to the breaking point or abruptly end them with sudden flashes of insight, or Storytellers keep a story going longer in order to make sure their plots points occur or cut them short if they feel the game has gotten off-topic.
And we'd rather provide useful, concrete timelines that make sense and are mythically resonant than fiddly per-narrative-event ones that, depending on the game, may unfairly restrict or unnecessarily overpower characters in the name of avoiding paying a little attention to what day it is. So, while we're totally willing to consider changing a power's mechanics on a case-by-case basis if it makes sense for a particular boon or knack to move to narrative time, we're probably never going to move wholesale to a system without normal time. It's just not workable.
By the way, if anyone out there is struggling with keeping up with times and dates for Scion powers, we've found that just keeping a simple shared calendar works great for that kind of thing. If you're playing an online game, Google Calendar is just a click away and can have anything added to it that you need to keep track of, and we keep one calendar on a smartphone for face-to-face games so it can be whipped out whenever necessary. Some Storytellers like to be in charge of the calendar to make sure no shenanigans are going on; we don't mind having a player take care of it during game, since they can take a second to add things to it while their fellow players are taking actions, and that way someone's always on deck when the Storyteller says "Okay, two days later," to add, "Hey, Geoff, your Resilience from Sangria just ran out," or "Just a reminder, Woody, your geas will kick in if you're not in Mag Mell in the next four days."
Having a calendar for any kind of ongoing game is actually usually a pretty great idea, even if you don't use it much during the game proper. It allows you to add narrative events as well - here's this PC's birthday, here's when we have a meeting scheduled with Dionysus, here's the deadline Marduk gave us to have that treasure reclaimed for him - so that it can function as a helpful source to keep anyone from forgetting what's going on.
Of course, if you play short chronicles, seldom have more than one plot at a time or otherwise have no need for that much bookkeeping, nobody's going to force you to set up an administrative schedule. It's just one of the many tools you can look into if you want to make sure all your powers and events are happening when they're supposed to be.
Portrait of Greece
Question: Is there a separate pantheon that the Dorian Greeks worshipped on the mainland? I know the Minoans of Crete had a separate religion and I have heard rumours that the Dorians (notably those of Sparta) did not worship Ares but some other war god that the Hellenic Greeks mislabelled as Ares. I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter as I have found little about the rumour on the net.
There is no separate Dorian pantheon, but this is a good opportunity to talk about Greek mythology and how it's not nearly as simple as we usually tend to think of it!
Ancient Greece, as a whole, is not really a thing. At best, it's a general geographic area linked to specific Greek ethnic groups and shared cultures. Its borders changed many times during successive wars and expansions and changes of power, and often there was no overarching contiguous power, with individual city-states controlling their own territories, connected only by alliances or treaties. Ancient Greek people were likely to identify themselves as citizens of whatever city they lived in; if they didn't live in the city, they weren't likely to identify themselves as part of any larger group except for their ethnicity, which might be Aeolian, Attic, Mycenaean, Dorian, Ionic, Macedonian or others even less well-known. It wasn't until the Hellenic period that the many disparate parts of the ancient Greek kingdoms became universalized and homogenized, becoming close to what you could actually call a single unit.
This of course looks bizarre to us now, and that's because Europe invented the concept of nationalism in the nineteenth century. Nationalism, boiled down to very simple terms, is the concept of a single country having an identity that is shared by all its citizens - that is, it's nationalism in action when someone says they're proud to be Canadian, or that such and such is part of the national tradition or heritage of Germany. Before this idea of the country as an independent entity that provides an identity to its people, those concepts didn't really exist in that form; people would identify with their ethnic group (I'm an Arab), with their religion (I'm a Buddhist), with their specific home (I'm a Trojan) or with their family (I'm one of the Julii). They probably knew who was in charge of their home - Celts were perfectly well aware that the Roman Empire technically owned their land, for example - but it didn't make much difference to them, and certainly didn't convert them into Romans as a result.
So, yeah, nationalism is a relatively young concept; it's so deeply ingrained in most modern cultures now that it's difficult to see around, but it didn't take the same form for ancient people, and we're really just projecting our modern idea of what a country and people are onto them when we think of ancient Greece as a single country with a unified vision and people. This is also why movies like 300 or Braveheart that give impassioned speeches about defending one's country are exceptionally silly, since that concept wouldn't have made much sense to the people of that time. (They'll defend their homes, sure, or their people or their possessions, but a country? What the hell is that?)
But, anyway, the point of all this rambling is that, while we tend to look at ancient Greece as a single place with a single idea about religion and politics, in point of fact this just ain't true. The Hellenistic "unification" of Greece brought a lot of its scattered elements together, but there are still unique characteristics throughout the different lands and ethnic groups of the place.
To get down specifically to the Dorians, however: no, they do not have a separate pantheon, and there are no uniquely Dorian gods that are not shared by the Greek pantheon as a whole (although some of them may have begun with the Dorians - Apollo, in particular, probably spread to a lot of Greece thanks to their influence). One of the reasons it's so easy to generalize about ancient Greece is that it shared a great deal of its culture, starting around the time of the Myceneaens who spread their language and religious ideas around thoroughly enough to start a trend. The general core religion of most ancient Greeks is basically the same; Zeus is in charge everywhere, though he takes slightly different forms and attributes based on different populaces' needs, and the general tenor and practice of the religion remains the same. There are no separate, purely Dorian gods that we know of (though there are quite a few purely Dorian Scions and mortal heroes, for your gaming pleasure!), and it's likely that Sparta's patron was indeed Ares, albeit Ares worshiped in different style than he was in Athens or Olympia. This is very common for religions around the Mediterranean in that time period - Canaanite gods had specific cities dedicated to them but were still worshiped in others with slightly different attributes, Mesopotamian gods were spread all throughout the successive empires but still remained largely the same and so on. The presence of different ethnic groups does not always automatically indicate the presence of different religions, especially when those ethnic groups have been trading linguistics and culture for millennia.
However, it's very true that every part of ancient Greece has different religious influences thanks to being near different other cultures that they also shared with, and the Dorians are no exception. While in the post-Myceneaen age they were firmly entrenched in southern Greece and thus mostly being influenced by other Greeks, most scholars agree that they originally came from further north, around Macedonia and Albania, and therefore likely carried some influence down from that area. Macedonia was and still is influenced not just by Greek culture but by Slavic as well, and the Albanians have their own mythological traditions that could have influenced Dorian thought before their migration.
There is an outside chance that a war deity from a nearby culture could have come south with the Dorians, but it's very unlikely that he could have avoided being completely transformed into Ares by the time we have any records about their worship to look at, and if that happened we would have no way of knowing about it. Everything we know about Spartan Ares points to him as the preeminent Greek deity of war, not an import suffering from the interpretatio graeca.
We would be interested in hearing about where you found this rumor, though - we're always intrigued by scholarly theories that get into the little details of origin and cultural borrowing among gods, and the truly ancient Greek cultures are still fairly poorly understood.
There is no separate Dorian pantheon, but this is a good opportunity to talk about Greek mythology and how it's not nearly as simple as we usually tend to think of it!
Ancient Greece, as a whole, is not really a thing. At best, it's a general geographic area linked to specific Greek ethnic groups and shared cultures. Its borders changed many times during successive wars and expansions and changes of power, and often there was no overarching contiguous power, with individual city-states controlling their own territories, connected only by alliances or treaties. Ancient Greek people were likely to identify themselves as citizens of whatever city they lived in; if they didn't live in the city, they weren't likely to identify themselves as part of any larger group except for their ethnicity, which might be Aeolian, Attic, Mycenaean, Dorian, Ionic, Macedonian or others even less well-known. It wasn't until the Hellenic period that the many disparate parts of the ancient Greek kingdoms became universalized and homogenized, becoming close to what you could actually call a single unit.
This of course looks bizarre to us now, and that's because Europe invented the concept of nationalism in the nineteenth century. Nationalism, boiled down to very simple terms, is the concept of a single country having an identity that is shared by all its citizens - that is, it's nationalism in action when someone says they're proud to be Canadian, or that such and such is part of the national tradition or heritage of Germany. Before this idea of the country as an independent entity that provides an identity to its people, those concepts didn't really exist in that form; people would identify with their ethnic group (I'm an Arab), with their religion (I'm a Buddhist), with their specific home (I'm a Trojan) or with their family (I'm one of the Julii). They probably knew who was in charge of their home - Celts were perfectly well aware that the Roman Empire technically owned their land, for example - but it didn't make much difference to them, and certainly didn't convert them into Romans as a result.
So, yeah, nationalism is a relatively young concept; it's so deeply ingrained in most modern cultures now that it's difficult to see around, but it didn't take the same form for ancient people, and we're really just projecting our modern idea of what a country and people are onto them when we think of ancient Greece as a single country with a unified vision and people. This is also why movies like 300 or Braveheart that give impassioned speeches about defending one's country are exceptionally silly, since that concept wouldn't have made much sense to the people of that time. (They'll defend their homes, sure, or their people or their possessions, but a country? What the hell is that?)
But, anyway, the point of all this rambling is that, while we tend to look at ancient Greece as a single place with a single idea about religion and politics, in point of fact this just ain't true. The Hellenistic "unification" of Greece brought a lot of its scattered elements together, but there are still unique characteristics throughout the different lands and ethnic groups of the place.
To get down specifically to the Dorians, however: no, they do not have a separate pantheon, and there are no uniquely Dorian gods that are not shared by the Greek pantheon as a whole (although some of them may have begun with the Dorians - Apollo, in particular, probably spread to a lot of Greece thanks to their influence). One of the reasons it's so easy to generalize about ancient Greece is that it shared a great deal of its culture, starting around the time of the Myceneaens who spread their language and religious ideas around thoroughly enough to start a trend. The general core religion of most ancient Greeks is basically the same; Zeus is in charge everywhere, though he takes slightly different forms and attributes based on different populaces' needs, and the general tenor and practice of the religion remains the same. There are no separate, purely Dorian gods that we know of (though there are quite a few purely Dorian Scions and mortal heroes, for your gaming pleasure!), and it's likely that Sparta's patron was indeed Ares, albeit Ares worshiped in different style than he was in Athens or Olympia. This is very common for religions around the Mediterranean in that time period - Canaanite gods had specific cities dedicated to them but were still worshiped in others with slightly different attributes, Mesopotamian gods were spread all throughout the successive empires but still remained largely the same and so on. The presence of different ethnic groups does not always automatically indicate the presence of different religions, especially when those ethnic groups have been trading linguistics and culture for millennia.
However, it's very true that every part of ancient Greece has different religious influences thanks to being near different other cultures that they also shared with, and the Dorians are no exception. While in the post-Myceneaen age they were firmly entrenched in southern Greece and thus mostly being influenced by other Greeks, most scholars agree that they originally came from further north, around Macedonia and Albania, and therefore likely carried some influence down from that area. Macedonia was and still is influenced not just by Greek culture but by Slavic as well, and the Albanians have their own mythological traditions that could have influenced Dorian thought before their migration.
There is an outside chance that a war deity from a nearby culture could have come south with the Dorians, but it's very unlikely that he could have avoided being completely transformed into Ares by the time we have any records about their worship to look at, and if that happened we would have no way of knowing about it. Everything we know about Spartan Ares points to him as the preeminent Greek deity of war, not an import suffering from the interpretatio graeca.
We would be interested in hearing about where you found this rumor, though - we're always intrigued by scholarly theories that get into the little details of origin and cultural borrowing among gods, and the truly ancient Greek cultures are still fairly poorly understood.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Happy Families
Question: Suppose a child of Zeus finds out about his or her parentage prior to Visitation and asks to serve Hera as a preemptive means of appeasing her. Is this the kind of thing that Hera might accept? If so, is she going to single out the Scion for poor treatment or treat him or her the same as the rest of her adopted children?
Neat idea! Although a little difficult to pull off - not a lot of ways for mortal children of the gods who haven't had Visitations yet to find out about their birth parents or go talk to goddesses, but I'm sure there could be some way it could happen.
I think Hera would be likely to find it an interesting gesture, and depending on what kind of mood this supplicant Scion caught her in, she might be willing to adopt him. But alas, she would never treat him the same as the rest of her children; not only is she probably not inclined to, but she's almost actually incapable of doing so.
Hera has Vengeance, like all of the Dodekatheon, and is probably one of those who has it at a full, unapologetic five dots to boot. Even if she genuinely likes someone, if her Vengeance says they've done her wrong and need to be lashed out against, that lashing out has a good chance of happening. This poor Scion is coming in with no bargaining power, nothing to offer (because he's still a mortal - he has potential, but she doesn't yet know how that will develop) and no features except being the living evidence of Zeus' disrespect for their marriage, and as a result he's rolling the dice on even surviving his attempt to make nice with her. If she does keep it under control long enough to accept him, he's won a single battle in a possibly neverending war, because her Vengeance will continue to rail against him whenever she sees him.
Of course, if she turns out to really like the kid, she's more likely to be willing to try to roll against her Vengeance and pay Willpower to keep him in one piece, but if she doesn't have a reason to go to all that trouble, she's probably going to make his life hell at least some of the time. Then, too, there's always the danger that she'll make a catastrophic roll one day and hit Vengeance Extremity, at which point the Scion or his philandering biological daddy are both potentially in deep trouble as she goes to rampage mode. The more the Scion can do to ingratiate himself with her, from praising her, bringing her gifts, performing her tasks and speaking out against Zeus' misbehavior, the better his odds will be, but every god has the occasional moment of Virtue-motivated insanity, and Hera's not immune to that.
Just generally speaking, Virtues aside, Hera is probably always going to be harder on this Scion than on her others. He's going to get worse jobs, more difficult problems and colder treatment at the very least; he'll need to prove himself to her in ways that the other children, chosen by her and from less painful origins, don't. The sins of his father are going to hang over his head for a long time, and while he can certainly work to change her perception of him, the simple act of asking Hera to take him on won't make her forget where he came from or prevent her from responding emotionally. Think of the usual response a normal human husband or wife might have to suddenly having to raise their spouse's lovechild from an affair, and then multiply that by the giant overblown emotions of the gods. It can happen, but it won't be easy.
But it's definitely still possible, and I think it would make for a very interesting character story to see how that Scion tried to handle the family politics around him and decided to grow and side with one, the other, or neither of these hugely bad-tempered parents. It's a perfect plot for someone with the Expositor or Penitent nature, and depending on how well the Scion pulled it off, could lead to considerable political power for him on Olympus once he ascended to godhood himself. Hera has accepted Scions of Zeus before - Dionysus and Heracles, though both went through severe trial by fire before she stopped harassing them - and potentially could again, but it's all in how you play it.
And Hera is a pretty awesome patron for a young hero and pretty fond of blessings and forcing the other gods to provide aid or stay out of the way, so there are certainly also rewards for working for her. It's a hard road but one that probably can't help but lead to some really rewarding stories.
Neat idea! Although a little difficult to pull off - not a lot of ways for mortal children of the gods who haven't had Visitations yet to find out about their birth parents or go talk to goddesses, but I'm sure there could be some way it could happen.
I think Hera would be likely to find it an interesting gesture, and depending on what kind of mood this supplicant Scion caught her in, she might be willing to adopt him. But alas, she would never treat him the same as the rest of her children; not only is she probably not inclined to, but she's almost actually incapable of doing so.
Hera has Vengeance, like all of the Dodekatheon, and is probably one of those who has it at a full, unapologetic five dots to boot. Even if she genuinely likes someone, if her Vengeance says they've done her wrong and need to be lashed out against, that lashing out has a good chance of happening. This poor Scion is coming in with no bargaining power, nothing to offer (because he's still a mortal - he has potential, but she doesn't yet know how that will develop) and no features except being the living evidence of Zeus' disrespect for their marriage, and as a result he's rolling the dice on even surviving his attempt to make nice with her. If she does keep it under control long enough to accept him, he's won a single battle in a possibly neverending war, because her Vengeance will continue to rail against him whenever she sees him.
Of course, if she turns out to really like the kid, she's more likely to be willing to try to roll against her Vengeance and pay Willpower to keep him in one piece, but if she doesn't have a reason to go to all that trouble, she's probably going to make his life hell at least some of the time. Then, too, there's always the danger that she'll make a catastrophic roll one day and hit Vengeance Extremity, at which point the Scion or his philandering biological daddy are both potentially in deep trouble as she goes to rampage mode. The more the Scion can do to ingratiate himself with her, from praising her, bringing her gifts, performing her tasks and speaking out against Zeus' misbehavior, the better his odds will be, but every god has the occasional moment of Virtue-motivated insanity, and Hera's not immune to that.
Just generally speaking, Virtues aside, Hera is probably always going to be harder on this Scion than on her others. He's going to get worse jobs, more difficult problems and colder treatment at the very least; he'll need to prove himself to her in ways that the other children, chosen by her and from less painful origins, don't. The sins of his father are going to hang over his head for a long time, and while he can certainly work to change her perception of him, the simple act of asking Hera to take him on won't make her forget where he came from or prevent her from responding emotionally. Think of the usual response a normal human husband or wife might have to suddenly having to raise their spouse's lovechild from an affair, and then multiply that by the giant overblown emotions of the gods. It can happen, but it won't be easy.
But it's definitely still possible, and I think it would make for a very interesting character story to see how that Scion tried to handle the family politics around him and decided to grow and side with one, the other, or neither of these hugely bad-tempered parents. It's a perfect plot for someone with the Expositor or Penitent nature, and depending on how well the Scion pulled it off, could lead to considerable political power for him on Olympus once he ascended to godhood himself. Hera has accepted Scions of Zeus before - Dionysus and Heracles, though both went through severe trial by fire before she stopped harassing them - and potentially could again, but it's all in how you play it.
And Hera is a pretty awesome patron for a young hero and pretty fond of blessings and forcing the other gods to provide aid or stay out of the way, so there are certainly also rewards for working for her. It's a hard road but one that probably can't help but lead to some really rewarding stories.
Impatient Inventors
Question: Can you guys explain the Intelligence knack Concept to Execution? What are the actual mechanics for item creation with this knack? How does it interact with the Industry purview? Is it just intended to be an easy item-creation alternative for gods who don't want to fully devote themselves to Industry?
Not only can we, we already did! That old post discusses the difference between Industry and Concept to Execution, and also gives you a general outline of how you'd use either to make things.
Since we're working on revamping Industry right now, you can expect that you'll see more elaboration and new material on this kind of stuff fairly soon in the future. Crafters, we're on it!
This also seems like a good moment to remind everyone that there's a search box in the righthand column. We don't mind pointing you to a post on the subject if you ask something that's been asked before, but you can also run a search over there if you'd rather check the backlog before having to wait around a week or two for us to answer you. :)
Not only can we, we already did! That old post discusses the difference between Industry and Concept to Execution, and also gives you a general outline of how you'd use either to make things.
Since we're working on revamping Industry right now, you can expect that you'll see more elaboration and new material on this kind of stuff fairly soon in the future. Crafters, we're on it!
This also seems like a good moment to remind everyone that there's a search box in the righthand column. We don't mind pointing you to a post on the subject if you ask something that's been asked before, but you can also run a search over there if you'd rather check the backlog before having to wait around a week or two for us to answer you. :)
Shock and Awe
Question: Have you ever had any of your characters play being either elated or terrified of their new powers?
Sure. That's a pretty common response to suddenly being able to do crazy shit you couldn't before, as any comic book superhero's origin story will attest. Those new powers, combined with the potent knowledge of actually being related to gods, tends to see Scions react strongly no matter who they are.
Some Scions were delighted by their new powers. Tyler Hamilton Orton immediately took to the rooftops to start a career saving the innocent and reveling in his new powers over the sky (although the local authorities burst his bubble pretty early on). Darcy and Hime could not have been happier to have awesome magical powers to play with, show off to others and use when they shouldn't, and Mohini was overjoyed to receive the favor of her beloved divine patron. Yadi was pretty consistently delighted whenever she discovered a new skill she didn't know she possessed, and, of course, magic toys and missions in faraway lands are the things that Colin had been waiting for his entire life. A lot of Scions are excited about their new powers, or at the least pleased that they can do cool stuff and glad to have useful tools; they aren't all bouncing off the walls singing their joy, but it's a good thing for them nonetheless.
And, yes, sometimes Scions are afraid of what's happening and what they might be able to do, which is also a reasonable reaction. Faruza was both elated and afraid, thanks to a combination of religious affirmation and the justifiable fear that people around her can simply drop dead at any moment now, while Alison couldn't handle the splintering of her logically scientific world and responded with fierce and unconquerable denial. Saki is pretty terrified of her own powers and relics, courtesy of her equally terrifying father, and Nic is currently in a state of shellshocked horror after accidentally brutally murdering someone when his newfound mojo got out of control.
Of course, those aren't the only options; abject confusion about what's happening is also a popular first Scion reaction to powers, while resignation to duty, rejection and desire to go back to a normal life, or generalized patterns of denial and acceptance also happen fairly regularly until life settles down and the young godspawn start to figure out their places in the grand scheme of the universe.
Only in Scion does "life settles down" mean "people get used to the idea of insane divine adventures".
Sure. That's a pretty common response to suddenly being able to do crazy shit you couldn't before, as any comic book superhero's origin story will attest. Those new powers, combined with the potent knowledge of actually being related to gods, tends to see Scions react strongly no matter who they are.
Some Scions were delighted by their new powers. Tyler Hamilton Orton immediately took to the rooftops to start a career saving the innocent and reveling in his new powers over the sky (although the local authorities burst his bubble pretty early on). Darcy and Hime could not have been happier to have awesome magical powers to play with, show off to others and use when they shouldn't, and Mohini was overjoyed to receive the favor of her beloved divine patron. Yadi was pretty consistently delighted whenever she discovered a new skill she didn't know she possessed, and, of course, magic toys and missions in faraway lands are the things that Colin had been waiting for his entire life. A lot of Scions are excited about their new powers, or at the least pleased that they can do cool stuff and glad to have useful tools; they aren't all bouncing off the walls singing their joy, but it's a good thing for them nonetheless.
And, yes, sometimes Scions are afraid of what's happening and what they might be able to do, which is also a reasonable reaction. Faruza was both elated and afraid, thanks to a combination of religious affirmation and the justifiable fear that people around her can simply drop dead at any moment now, while Alison couldn't handle the splintering of her logically scientific world and responded with fierce and unconquerable denial. Saki is pretty terrified of her own powers and relics, courtesy of her equally terrifying father, and Nic is currently in a state of shellshocked horror after accidentally brutally murdering someone when his newfound mojo got out of control.
Of course, those aren't the only options; abject confusion about what's happening is also a popular first Scion reaction to powers, while resignation to duty, rejection and desire to go back to a normal life, or generalized patterns of denial and acceptance also happen fairly regularly until life settles down and the young godspawn start to figure out their places in the grand scheme of the universe.
Only in Scion does "life settles down" mean "people get used to the idea of insane divine adventures".
Monday, March 25, 2013
Today, We Have Failed Persia
Question: It seems kind of unfair that a Fertility-focused Persian Scion can get his Amesha Spenta two Legend earlier than his Sky-using counterpart, who literally has to be on the cusp of godhood. Would you consider it acceptable to let Yazata Scions choose in which order to buy the Amesha Spenta boons? They'd still have to buy them all to get the God level boons of course.
We discussed this a lot when we were working on the Asha rewrite back in the day. You're right; it is slightly unfair. We're sorry about that. But at the moment, we don't have a great fix in mind for it.
Asha, as originally written in the Scion: Yazata supplement, was a mess of a purview. It was clearly written by someone with a great understanding of Zoroastrian religious concepts and a lot of enthusiasm, but it was an absolute mechanical nightmare, underpowered here, overpowered there and bizarrely boring when you least expected it. The Amesha Spenta boons - Ameretat/Vohu Manah, Asha Vahishta/Haurvetat and Armaiti/Kshathra - as they were originally written do exactly what you're suggesting, and allowed a Scion to pick whichever auras of the Amesha Spentas they liked at each level. They were identical - in fact, so identical that the creators of the supplement didn't even bother giving them different levels and names, just lumped them together as "Asha OOOO to OOOOO OO".
If you went back to that, you'd just be going back to the published purview's roots, so if that floats your game, we won't stop you, of course. But we did change it for a reason, and the new setup is for reasons, too. We love reasons.
First of all, with the notable exception of Arete which we love in its beautiful simplicity, having a purview whose internal levels are "eh, whatever, pay escalating XP costs for the same thing three times" is incredibly disappointing and unexciting. Seriously, it's the same problem old Mystery used to have, except now in someone's PSP where things are supposed to be at their most awesome and flavorful. We found it generally appalling because it didn't have a good reason behind it - there's nothing in Persian mythology that suggests the kind of flexibility that would justify a mix-and-match-style purview (see: the Bogovi), and the repetition of the same power three times instead of writing separate ones looks an awful lot like someone didn't have enough ideas to fill out a whole PSP. And those different levels don't do anything different - even if you have purviews for all three you buy, why does the higher-level one cost more than the other two did? At least Arete adds more dice when it goes up, for crying out loud.
We don't know if there was a wordcount restriction that cut an entire chunk of the Yazata PSP or if there was just a lot of laziness or lack of inspiration involved, but in the end, Asha's midsection was a big gaping hole of boring, XP-sucking mess. Which sucks.
We totally recognize, however, that our current patch on it doesn't really fix it - at least, not nearly as well as we want it to be fixed. Cutting it into three distinct boons at least gives you different levels and a sense of continuity, and we intentionally set them up as dichotomies - Animal versus Plant, Fire versus Water, Sky versus Earth - in order to make them more closely align with the Zoroastrian concepts of equal and separate gods of those elements (that is, a single ahura almost never embodies two disparate forces). The order of which boons come when is also not arbitrary; it's based on the hierarchy of sacred elements in Zoroastrianism. Fertility and Animal, as boons that control worldly life and the sustenance of humans, come first because they're things that are less "powerful" in the grand scale of the universe; Fire and Water come next, as the potent underlying forces that support life and the essences that inspire religion and divinity; and finally Sky and Earth, the foundations that hold the universe together, come last as the most cosmic and difficult of the powers to harness. (This is all based on elemental theory, by the way, not on the Amesha Spentas themselves, who have no hierarchy and are considered equals under Ahura Mazda.)
All that helps give it more shape, form and meaning, but unfortunately the base problems - that your XP is basically being spent on the same thing three times and that you may or may not even have purviews that apply to those three times - are still there. We roughed the purview into decentish shape so our Yazata Scions could use it in our Eastern Promises game, but it needs another overhaul, not because it's broken but because it's just not as good as it could be. And damn, we hate it when things aren't as good as they could be.
So I sympathize with you, friend. It does indeed suck that your Scion who is one with the heavens doesn't get his Amesha Spenta until two Legend after his friend the gardener did. There's a good mythological reason - the guy with Fertility has chosen an earthly and "lesser" power by Yazata standards, so of course it's easier for him to master it than for you to master the awesome power of the sky - but there's not a good mechanical compensation for that, and we apologize for it. Faruza feels your pain.
I'd say we'll put Asha on the poll next time, but I kind of have a suspicion that not very many people are jonesing for that fix next and that it wouldn't garner much support. Not too many people play with Yazata PCs still, probably partly because the pantheon isn't very familiar to western gamers and partly because its supplement was such a ball-punching disaster. We think that's a shame because we love our Yazata, but we know the score, so this rework will probably have to go in the bin of Things We Need to Change for Our Own Games at Some Point but Nobody's Going to Vote for Them So We'll Get to It When We Get to It.
In the meantime, talk to your ST (or make a call, if you are the ST!) about how to use Asha in your own games, and please feel free to ask anything else about it you want to.
We discussed this a lot when we were working on the Asha rewrite back in the day. You're right; it is slightly unfair. We're sorry about that. But at the moment, we don't have a great fix in mind for it.
Asha, as originally written in the Scion: Yazata supplement, was a mess of a purview. It was clearly written by someone with a great understanding of Zoroastrian religious concepts and a lot of enthusiasm, but it was an absolute mechanical nightmare, underpowered here, overpowered there and bizarrely boring when you least expected it. The Amesha Spenta boons - Ameretat/Vohu Manah, Asha Vahishta/Haurvetat and Armaiti/Kshathra - as they were originally written do exactly what you're suggesting, and allowed a Scion to pick whichever auras of the Amesha Spentas they liked at each level. They were identical - in fact, so identical that the creators of the supplement didn't even bother giving them different levels and names, just lumped them together as "Asha OOOO to OOOOO OO".
If you went back to that, you'd just be going back to the published purview's roots, so if that floats your game, we won't stop you, of course. But we did change it for a reason, and the new setup is for reasons, too. We love reasons.
First of all, with the notable exception of Arete which we love in its beautiful simplicity, having a purview whose internal levels are "eh, whatever, pay escalating XP costs for the same thing three times" is incredibly disappointing and unexciting. Seriously, it's the same problem old Mystery used to have, except now in someone's PSP where things are supposed to be at their most awesome and flavorful. We found it generally appalling because it didn't have a good reason behind it - there's nothing in Persian mythology that suggests the kind of flexibility that would justify a mix-and-match-style purview (see: the Bogovi), and the repetition of the same power three times instead of writing separate ones looks an awful lot like someone didn't have enough ideas to fill out a whole PSP. And those different levels don't do anything different - even if you have purviews for all three you buy, why does the higher-level one cost more than the other two did? At least Arete adds more dice when it goes up, for crying out loud.
We don't know if there was a wordcount restriction that cut an entire chunk of the Yazata PSP or if there was just a lot of laziness or lack of inspiration involved, but in the end, Asha's midsection was a big gaping hole of boring, XP-sucking mess. Which sucks.
We totally recognize, however, that our current patch on it doesn't really fix it - at least, not nearly as well as we want it to be fixed. Cutting it into three distinct boons at least gives you different levels and a sense of continuity, and we intentionally set them up as dichotomies - Animal versus Plant, Fire versus Water, Sky versus Earth - in order to make them more closely align with the Zoroastrian concepts of equal and separate gods of those elements (that is, a single ahura almost never embodies two disparate forces). The order of which boons come when is also not arbitrary; it's based on the hierarchy of sacred elements in Zoroastrianism. Fertility and Animal, as boons that control worldly life and the sustenance of humans, come first because they're things that are less "powerful" in the grand scale of the universe; Fire and Water come next, as the potent underlying forces that support life and the essences that inspire religion and divinity; and finally Sky and Earth, the foundations that hold the universe together, come last as the most cosmic and difficult of the powers to harness. (This is all based on elemental theory, by the way, not on the Amesha Spentas themselves, who have no hierarchy and are considered equals under Ahura Mazda.)
All that helps give it more shape, form and meaning, but unfortunately the base problems - that your XP is basically being spent on the same thing three times and that you may or may not even have purviews that apply to those three times - are still there. We roughed the purview into decentish shape so our Yazata Scions could use it in our Eastern Promises game, but it needs another overhaul, not because it's broken but because it's just not as good as it could be. And damn, we hate it when things aren't as good as they could be.
So I sympathize with you, friend. It does indeed suck that your Scion who is one with the heavens doesn't get his Amesha Spenta until two Legend after his friend the gardener did. There's a good mythological reason - the guy with Fertility has chosen an earthly and "lesser" power by Yazata standards, so of course it's easier for him to master it than for you to master the awesome power of the sky - but there's not a good mechanical compensation for that, and we apologize for it. Faruza feels your pain.
I'd say we'll put Asha on the poll next time, but I kind of have a suspicion that not very many people are jonesing for that fix next and that it wouldn't garner much support. Not too many people play with Yazata PCs still, probably partly because the pantheon isn't very familiar to western gamers and partly because its supplement was such a ball-punching disaster. We think that's a shame because we love our Yazata, but we know the score, so this rework will probably have to go in the bin of Things We Need to Change for Our Own Games at Some Point but Nobody's Going to Vote for Them So We'll Get to It When We Get to It.
In the meantime, talk to your ST (or make a call, if you are the ST!) about how to use Asha in your own games, and please feel free to ask anything else about it you want to.
Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum
Question: 506+ Mystery questions per story seems a little excessive. Maybe let the players add successes as if Mystery were an Epic Attribute, then let them save any unasked questions to be used throughout the story?
We were a little confused by this one. John responds to confusion by yelling. I respond by organizing things. So here's a shouty but very well-organized post, comin' at ya.
In case anyone missed it or wasn't quite sure what we were doing, I'll preamble with a quick explanation of the recent change to Mystery and why it's now better than it was. In the old system, your Scion with Mystery had channels equal to his dots of Mystery each story, and to use them he'd pay a point of Legend, roll his Intelligence + Occult without the benefit of Epic Attributes or Fatebonds, and then use the resulting successes as a pool of questions he could ask the Storyteller to gain secret knowledge. In the new system, the Attribute is removed; the Scion instead rolls only her Occult, and gains her level of Mystery as automatic successes as if it were an Epic Attribute. Then, just as before, she uses those total successes to ask her questions.
The old version worked well enough, but its major problem was that it wasn't justifying its XP cost. Scions who purchased more Mystery were spending ever greater amounts of XP, but their only reward was a single Mystery channel more per story than they already had, and that remained constant throughout the purview's lifetime. It sucks to pay 40 XP and still get only the same benefit you got when you were paying 15 XP, and since the roll was totally dependent on an Attribute and Ability, it didn't actually make you any better at your powers and buying more Mystery became an increasingly expensive way to throw some XP down a black hole until you made it to the Wyrd. You were getting benefits for your XP, but they weren't scaling the way they should have been. So the new system solves that problem; each dot of Mystery you buy still gets you an additional channel, but your increased XP cost also brings with it increased success at actually using the purview.
So that's why we made the change, and it's a good one that rewards Scions for their investment. So on to your question!
First of all, the number 506 puzzled the daylights out of us - where did it come from? What kind of character are you envisioning and what kind of model are you using? What's going on here? In an effort to put the world in order, I made a table of the average Mystery questions at each level, because shut up I can do that if I want to.
Okay, there we go - obviously, you're thinking of someone with maximum Mystery (and probably maximum Occult or close to it). Groovy. Keep in mind that the table above is just for average, unadorned rolls - if you have Arete or Serendipity, apply dice adders to Occult, choose to use Legendary Deeds or channel Virtues or do anything else to buff your Mystery rolls, these numbers can easily go up. Of course, that's not new - you could do all those things in the old Mystery system, too (at least the new one cuts Animal Aspect out of the equation).
Moving on to the question: actually, we don't think 500+ish is excessive at all. The person you're talking about is a god or goddess of Mystery; they are one of the few embodiments of that concept walking the Worlds and are masters of it in a way that very few deities ('bout 10% of the gods available as divine parents) could ever hope to be. We're not just talking about a Scion's Mystery roll - we're talking about Thoth's Mystery roll, and we have no trouble whatsoever believing that Thoth can easily pull a 50+ every time he reaches into the mysteries of the universe. It can look a little daunting when you realize that you'll have to deal with that same level of successes, either from the point of view of a Storyteller who's going to have to answer all of them or a player who's going to have to come up with that many things he needs to ask about, but it's important to remember that, once that PC has reached this level, he's on a level playing field with Thoth. Scion's famous for the stratospheric power curve that lets lowly semi-mortals become insane divinities by the time they reach godhood, and that goes for the mental powers just as much as for the physical ability to hit stuff or the social moxy to charm the kingdoms of heaven. If you don't want to Storytell for PCs who become equivalent in power to the gods themselves, you'd better tell your players ahead of time that you'll be capping them after Demigod or else get out of the game entirely. If you don't want to play as a being equivalent in power to the gods, you probably aren't looking for God-level Scion play.
It's also important to remember that worrying about the 506/510 number is more of a panic and distraction issue than a useful one. That's going to be spread out over the course of a story, remember; nobody is ever going to sit down in front of the ST and say, "Okay, I got 510 questions and YOU WILL ANSWER THEM RIGHT NOW." (Well, I suppose that could happen if they blew all their channels at once, but sweet fried froglegs, why would you ever do that?) What you'll actually be encountering are PCs who say, "Okay, I got 55 questions," and they'll do that occasionally over the course of the story, when it's most important or useful for them to do so. This is manageable for both player and Storyteller; I promise it is. Our Prophecy and Mystery PCs at Legend 9 were rolling more than that in the old system because they wanted to juice their rolls or would blow more than one channel together, and it still worked just fine. Don't let the big number scare you - it's theoretical, not a bogeyman that will ever actually appear at your table in all its glory.
Now, down into the nitty gritty of managing large numbers of Mystery questions. I sympathize with you, actually, because I personally hate using Mystery on my own characters because I always feel pressured to come up with questions. I don't have a lot of real-life Wits, so in the heat of the ASK YOUR QUESTIONS moment I often get scatterbrained or feel like I must be forgetting something I need to know. I'm also familiar with the dilemma of, "Well, I learned everything I popped Mystery for, what the hell do I do with these other twenty questions I still have?" I feel you, I really do. But there are things that both parties involved can do to make large numbers of Mystery questions not just palatable but fun, and nobody need groan when they roll high. Like all other things in Scion except for Virtue Extremities, rolling high is good! It means you are awesome and able to do and learn ever more awesome things!
For players, the first thing to keep in mind is that there are other fish in the sea. Most of us use Mystery because we're in a predicament, stumped by a puzzle or in need of more information before we go into a situation, but it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you can ask about anything, not just what was first and foremost on your mind when you decided to use Mystery. If you get thirty questions and still have ten left over, those ten aren't accidental excess and cause for consternation; they're an opportunity to get some other stuff figured out, like a bonus! Ask about other things that are important to your character, perhaps personal issues, side quests or just things she's curious about and can't figure out on her own. Ask about events transpiring elsewhere, about the secrets of your fellow Scions, about the weaknesses of recurring enemies who aren't here right now. There is an entire world that your Scion lives in that contains secrets she doesn't yet know; ask about those secrets! Some of our Mystery-using PCs in the past have kept a list with their character sheet of things they might want to know about, so they can whip it out and start firing off questions if they have any extra available. That's actually how Sophia solved the riddle of her true birth parents; she used extra questions to ask about them whenever she had them until she finally figured out what was going on. Yes, Mystery is often used to succeed at whatever the band's up to and to help out the team, but don't be afraid to use questions on your own agenda, too. If your friends complain about it, they can get their own Mystery channels.
And speaking of your friends, that's the other really helpful part of extra Mystery questions - you can open the field to everybody else! Mystery is modeled mechanically by the player asking the Storyteller for information, but that doesn't mean that within the gameworld it necessarily means that, so you could learn hidden knowledge you weren't even looking for at the drop of a hat. If you've got extra questions and don't have anything to use them on, see if your fellow players have suggestions; just as we talked about above, there may be plenty of things they want to know about that aren't directly related to your current mission, or they may have suggestions that didn't occur to you. You should never feel pressured or obligated to use your Mystery questions for others if you don't want to - as I said, they can buy their own damn Mystery if they're that hungry for it - but if you've got extras, why not share the love? Remember, too, that you're the one gaining that knowledge, not them, and if you're so inclined you can wait until the perfect moment to reveal what you know or hide it until it most benefits you. Aurora drove Will absolutely bonkers by withholding Mystery knowledge so that he would do what she wanted him to do, and we had a really fun time with the interaction of those two characters bartering knowledge and favors.
On the other side of the table, the single most important tool at a Storyteller's disposal for Mystery is this line right here from the purview's description, bolded for your convenience: Extremely complex, fateful or intentionally obscured questions may require more than one question be used in order for Fate to provide the answer. That means that successes don't necessarily translate directly to questions. Some questions, by virtue of being too important, large or mysterious, cost more than one success in order for a Scion to get an answer about them, and if they don't pony up they'll remain in the dark. Sure, if all of a Scion's questions are along the lines of "How many soldiers does the enemy have right now?" or "Where is the troll's treasure-hoard buried?", those will all be easy one-question answers. But if they start asking things like, "Who was that suspiciously clever old one-eyed man who disappeared when we weren't looking?", you know what? That's gonna cost you, let's say... fifty questions. Odin ain't as easy to find information about as your garden-variety spartan soldiers. Cough up or go home.
That doesn't mean you should abuse the system just to cut down on questions; your player paid XP and Legend to use this power, and you should let him shine just as much as the guy who did the same to buy Mortal Stroke or Theme Music. If you charge five questions a pop for mundane things like the movements of people the same Legend as the Scion or what the secret code to a locked safe is, you're being an asshole. But you're fully justified when, if your Legend 4 player rolls in with his ten questions and asks you where Atlantis is sunk, you smile cheerfully and tell him he'll need like six times as many questions to find that out. After all, if some things are mysteries even to some gods, your Scions with only a couple of dots of Mystery shouldn't be able to easily find them out. Remember that anybody after Legend 4 can pick up a few dots of Mystery for a couple measly XP, so there are a lot of things in the world that can't be and shouldn't be answered for the price of a single success on that roll.
This also means that your players can never cheat the system, they can never use clever wordplay to screw with you, and they can never get more answers out of you than they should. They never get to say, "Ah, but I worded like five questions into one so you have to answer all five for the price of one question!" You don't. Tell them no. They never get to say, "It's only a single question I'm asking so you have to answer even though I'm demanding to know where the lost regalia of Amaterasu is hidden!" You don't. Tell them no. You are in charge of personifying Fate, and Fate is not impressed by their shenanigans. You're the one in charge of this show, and your job is to appropriately dispense hidden wisdom in proportion to the effort, power and success of their Mystery rolls. You want to encourage them to discover neat stuff and to peer past the mists of obscurement, but you don't have to put up with them being dicks.
Another thing to keep in mind to increase your players' comfort level with Mystery is that every player's different in how they want to actually do the deed. Some love to do their Mystery at the table as a community event, sharing all the info around so they don't have to repeat it later and relishing the excitement as everyone learns new stuff together. Others prefer their answers to be secret, since after all only they actually know this information in the game's world, and need more shenanigans to be involved. Don't be afraid to step into another room with your Mystery player for a second to give them their secret answers, or to write them down on a piece of paper and slide it over to them instead of speaking things aloud, whatever works best for your group. If the other players grouse about not being in the loop, remind them, once again, that they can buy Mystery themselves if they want access to this power.
Finally, if you see that a player's struggling with their Mystery questions, it's okay to make suggestions. Don't outright spend their questions for them by just giving them info they might not have asked for, but as the Storyteller you're totally free to suggest alternative options they might not have thought of, or to remind them of things they've mentioned wanting to know more about in the past. Just as you'd nudge a group that was floundering with where to go or what to do, you can nudge a player who's floundering on Mystery.
With all of those things in your corner, you should be able to make Mystery as awesome as it needs to be whether you're a player or a Storyteller. Remember that it's all about the magical power to discover secret knowledge, and have fun with that; don't get stressed or panicky because it's "too hard to think of questions" or "might ruin your plot". Scions have a lot of things going on that they need to know about, and their actions can change the course of plots in a lot of ways, regardless of whether or not Mystery is involved. Treat the purview like a collaborative effort between the Storyteller and the player (and the rest of the band, if the player is so inclined) so that everybody knows what to do and can benefit from that Scion's awesome and unexpected wisdom.
As for the last part of your question: no, we're not going to do that. Mystery is about learning unknown or arcane knowledge through some ritual agency - throwing bones, entering a trance, becoming intoxicated or otherwise calling in some impressive way upon Fate to reveal its mysteries. Actually performing Mystery (which could be any of those ways or whatever other thing your players want to stunt) should be an event that has a result in the sudden gain of mysterious enlightenment. It isn't, however, a random "let me ask whatever I want whenever I want regardless of what's happening" power, and it shouldn't be used that way. "Banking" questions like that takes Mystery from the realm of the divinations and enlightenments of mythology to a bland RPG power that's just about getting the ST to answer your questions, and it loses all of its mythological resonance as a result.
Then, too, it's also powergamey in the extreme; isn't it always better to "bank" questions if you can, because then you can ask them after you're learned more later rather than when you first decided you needed Mystery? You're in effect able to finagle it so that your Mystery questions are worth more if you save them because they can build on knowledge you didn't have yet back when you first used Mystery, and it would be silly to do anything but always use all your Mystery channels at the beginning of a story and then just sit on the monster pile of questions and parcel them out throughout. Doing so at the beginning of the story also ensures that you never have to worry about having enough resources to use your Mystery, that you have all your channels, Deeds and other buffs ready and unused and just waiting to go into buffing it, and that you're never in danger of picking up Fatebonds or spending ticks in combat doing it, thus avoiding all the normal issues that powers are prey to. That system actually encourages Scions to field the giant number of questions rather than discouraging it, and, more importantly, it's not part of the mythology of what people like Dionysus or Orunmila actually do and represent.
And besides, it's just the reverse mirror of what is already happening in the current system. You're suggesting they do a divination, then ask questions when they need to know things; we're suggesting they wait until they need to know things, then do a divination. There's no good reason to swap - it doesn't even bring the total number of questions down! - and a very good reason, the dissolution of Mystery's actual function in mythology, not to.
I hope you guys wanted to read a lot about Mystery today.
We were a little confused by this one. John responds to confusion by yelling. I respond by organizing things. So here's a shouty but very well-organized post, comin' at ya.
In case anyone missed it or wasn't quite sure what we were doing, I'll preamble with a quick explanation of the recent change to Mystery and why it's now better than it was. In the old system, your Scion with Mystery had channels equal to his dots of Mystery each story, and to use them he'd pay a point of Legend, roll his Intelligence + Occult without the benefit of Epic Attributes or Fatebonds, and then use the resulting successes as a pool of questions he could ask the Storyteller to gain secret knowledge. In the new system, the Attribute is removed; the Scion instead rolls only her Occult, and gains her level of Mystery as automatic successes as if it were an Epic Attribute. Then, just as before, she uses those total successes to ask her questions.
The old version worked well enough, but its major problem was that it wasn't justifying its XP cost. Scions who purchased more Mystery were spending ever greater amounts of XP, but their only reward was a single Mystery channel more per story than they already had, and that remained constant throughout the purview's lifetime. It sucks to pay 40 XP and still get only the same benefit you got when you were paying 15 XP, and since the roll was totally dependent on an Attribute and Ability, it didn't actually make you any better at your powers and buying more Mystery became an increasingly expensive way to throw some XP down a black hole until you made it to the Wyrd. You were getting benefits for your XP, but they weren't scaling the way they should have been. So the new system solves that problem; each dot of Mystery you buy still gets you an additional channel, but your increased XP cost also brings with it increased success at actually using the purview.
So that's why we made the change, and it's a good one that rewards Scions for their investment. So on to your question!
First of all, the number 506 puzzled the daylights out of us - where did it come from? What kind of character are you envisioning and what kind of model are you using? What's going on here? In an effort to put the world in order, I made a table of the average Mystery questions at each level, because shut up I can do that if I want to.
| Level of Mystery | Average Successes | Total per Story |
| 1 | 2-4 | 2-4 |
| 2 | 3-5 | 6-10 |
| 3 | 5-8 | 15-24 |
| 4 | 8-10 | 32-40 |
| 5 | 12-14 | 60-70 |
| 6 | 17-20 | 102-120 |
| 7 | 23-26 | 161-182 |
| 8 | 30-34 | 240-272 |
| 9 | 38-42 | 342-378 |
| 10 | 47-51 | 470-510 |
Okay, there we go - obviously, you're thinking of someone with maximum Mystery (and probably maximum Occult or close to it). Groovy. Keep in mind that the table above is just for average, unadorned rolls - if you have Arete or Serendipity, apply dice adders to Occult, choose to use Legendary Deeds or channel Virtues or do anything else to buff your Mystery rolls, these numbers can easily go up. Of course, that's not new - you could do all those things in the old Mystery system, too (at least the new one cuts Animal Aspect out of the equation).
Moving on to the question: actually, we don't think 500+ish is excessive at all. The person you're talking about is a god or goddess of Mystery; they are one of the few embodiments of that concept walking the Worlds and are masters of it in a way that very few deities ('bout 10% of the gods available as divine parents) could ever hope to be. We're not just talking about a Scion's Mystery roll - we're talking about Thoth's Mystery roll, and we have no trouble whatsoever believing that Thoth can easily pull a 50+ every time he reaches into the mysteries of the universe. It can look a little daunting when you realize that you'll have to deal with that same level of successes, either from the point of view of a Storyteller who's going to have to answer all of them or a player who's going to have to come up with that many things he needs to ask about, but it's important to remember that, once that PC has reached this level, he's on a level playing field with Thoth. Scion's famous for the stratospheric power curve that lets lowly semi-mortals become insane divinities by the time they reach godhood, and that goes for the mental powers just as much as for the physical ability to hit stuff or the social moxy to charm the kingdoms of heaven. If you don't want to Storytell for PCs who become equivalent in power to the gods themselves, you'd better tell your players ahead of time that you'll be capping them after Demigod or else get out of the game entirely. If you don't want to play as a being equivalent in power to the gods, you probably aren't looking for God-level Scion play.
It's also important to remember that worrying about the 506/510 number is more of a panic and distraction issue than a useful one. That's going to be spread out over the course of a story, remember; nobody is ever going to sit down in front of the ST and say, "Okay, I got 510 questions and YOU WILL ANSWER THEM RIGHT NOW." (Well, I suppose that could happen if they blew all their channels at once, but sweet fried froglegs, why would you ever do that?) What you'll actually be encountering are PCs who say, "Okay, I got 55 questions," and they'll do that occasionally over the course of the story, when it's most important or useful for them to do so. This is manageable for both player and Storyteller; I promise it is. Our Prophecy and Mystery PCs at Legend 9 were rolling more than that in the old system because they wanted to juice their rolls or would blow more than one channel together, and it still worked just fine. Don't let the big number scare you - it's theoretical, not a bogeyman that will ever actually appear at your table in all its glory.
Now, down into the nitty gritty of managing large numbers of Mystery questions. I sympathize with you, actually, because I personally hate using Mystery on my own characters because I always feel pressured to come up with questions. I don't have a lot of real-life Wits, so in the heat of the ASK YOUR QUESTIONS moment I often get scatterbrained or feel like I must be forgetting something I need to know. I'm also familiar with the dilemma of, "Well, I learned everything I popped Mystery for, what the hell do I do with these other twenty questions I still have?" I feel you, I really do. But there are things that both parties involved can do to make large numbers of Mystery questions not just palatable but fun, and nobody need groan when they roll high. Like all other things in Scion except for Virtue Extremities, rolling high is good! It means you are awesome and able to do and learn ever more awesome things!
For players, the first thing to keep in mind is that there are other fish in the sea. Most of us use Mystery because we're in a predicament, stumped by a puzzle or in need of more information before we go into a situation, but it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you can ask about anything, not just what was first and foremost on your mind when you decided to use Mystery. If you get thirty questions and still have ten left over, those ten aren't accidental excess and cause for consternation; they're an opportunity to get some other stuff figured out, like a bonus! Ask about other things that are important to your character, perhaps personal issues, side quests or just things she's curious about and can't figure out on her own. Ask about events transpiring elsewhere, about the secrets of your fellow Scions, about the weaknesses of recurring enemies who aren't here right now. There is an entire world that your Scion lives in that contains secrets she doesn't yet know; ask about those secrets! Some of our Mystery-using PCs in the past have kept a list with their character sheet of things they might want to know about, so they can whip it out and start firing off questions if they have any extra available. That's actually how Sophia solved the riddle of her true birth parents; she used extra questions to ask about them whenever she had them until she finally figured out what was going on. Yes, Mystery is often used to succeed at whatever the band's up to and to help out the team, but don't be afraid to use questions on your own agenda, too. If your friends complain about it, they can get their own Mystery channels.
And speaking of your friends, that's the other really helpful part of extra Mystery questions - you can open the field to everybody else! Mystery is modeled mechanically by the player asking the Storyteller for information, but that doesn't mean that within the gameworld it necessarily means that, so you could learn hidden knowledge you weren't even looking for at the drop of a hat. If you've got extra questions and don't have anything to use them on, see if your fellow players have suggestions; just as we talked about above, there may be plenty of things they want to know about that aren't directly related to your current mission, or they may have suggestions that didn't occur to you. You should never feel pressured or obligated to use your Mystery questions for others if you don't want to - as I said, they can buy their own damn Mystery if they're that hungry for it - but if you've got extras, why not share the love? Remember, too, that you're the one gaining that knowledge, not them, and if you're so inclined you can wait until the perfect moment to reveal what you know or hide it until it most benefits you. Aurora drove Will absolutely bonkers by withholding Mystery knowledge so that he would do what she wanted him to do, and we had a really fun time with the interaction of those two characters bartering knowledge and favors.
On the other side of the table, the single most important tool at a Storyteller's disposal for Mystery is this line right here from the purview's description, bolded for your convenience: Extremely complex, fateful or intentionally obscured questions may require more than one question be used in order for Fate to provide the answer. That means that successes don't necessarily translate directly to questions. Some questions, by virtue of being too important, large or mysterious, cost more than one success in order for a Scion to get an answer about them, and if they don't pony up they'll remain in the dark. Sure, if all of a Scion's questions are along the lines of "How many soldiers does the enemy have right now?" or "Where is the troll's treasure-hoard buried?", those will all be easy one-question answers. But if they start asking things like, "Who was that suspiciously clever old one-eyed man who disappeared when we weren't looking?", you know what? That's gonna cost you, let's say... fifty questions. Odin ain't as easy to find information about as your garden-variety spartan soldiers. Cough up or go home.
That doesn't mean you should abuse the system just to cut down on questions; your player paid XP and Legend to use this power, and you should let him shine just as much as the guy who did the same to buy Mortal Stroke or Theme Music. If you charge five questions a pop for mundane things like the movements of people the same Legend as the Scion or what the secret code to a locked safe is, you're being an asshole. But you're fully justified when, if your Legend 4 player rolls in with his ten questions and asks you where Atlantis is sunk, you smile cheerfully and tell him he'll need like six times as many questions to find that out. After all, if some things are mysteries even to some gods, your Scions with only a couple of dots of Mystery shouldn't be able to easily find them out. Remember that anybody after Legend 4 can pick up a few dots of Mystery for a couple measly XP, so there are a lot of things in the world that can't be and shouldn't be answered for the price of a single success on that roll.
This also means that your players can never cheat the system, they can never use clever wordplay to screw with you, and they can never get more answers out of you than they should. They never get to say, "Ah, but I worded like five questions into one so you have to answer all five for the price of one question!" You don't. Tell them no. They never get to say, "It's only a single question I'm asking so you have to answer even though I'm demanding to know where the lost regalia of Amaterasu is hidden!" You don't. Tell them no. You are in charge of personifying Fate, and Fate is not impressed by their shenanigans. You're the one in charge of this show, and your job is to appropriately dispense hidden wisdom in proportion to the effort, power and success of their Mystery rolls. You want to encourage them to discover neat stuff and to peer past the mists of obscurement, but you don't have to put up with them being dicks.
Another thing to keep in mind to increase your players' comfort level with Mystery is that every player's different in how they want to actually do the deed. Some love to do their Mystery at the table as a community event, sharing all the info around so they don't have to repeat it later and relishing the excitement as everyone learns new stuff together. Others prefer their answers to be secret, since after all only they actually know this information in the game's world, and need more shenanigans to be involved. Don't be afraid to step into another room with your Mystery player for a second to give them their secret answers, or to write them down on a piece of paper and slide it over to them instead of speaking things aloud, whatever works best for your group. If the other players grouse about not being in the loop, remind them, once again, that they can buy Mystery themselves if they want access to this power.
Finally, if you see that a player's struggling with their Mystery questions, it's okay to make suggestions. Don't outright spend their questions for them by just giving them info they might not have asked for, but as the Storyteller you're totally free to suggest alternative options they might not have thought of, or to remind them of things they've mentioned wanting to know more about in the past. Just as you'd nudge a group that was floundering with where to go or what to do, you can nudge a player who's floundering on Mystery.
With all of those things in your corner, you should be able to make Mystery as awesome as it needs to be whether you're a player or a Storyteller. Remember that it's all about the magical power to discover secret knowledge, and have fun with that; don't get stressed or panicky because it's "too hard to think of questions" or "might ruin your plot". Scions have a lot of things going on that they need to know about, and their actions can change the course of plots in a lot of ways, regardless of whether or not Mystery is involved. Treat the purview like a collaborative effort between the Storyteller and the player (and the rest of the band, if the player is so inclined) so that everybody knows what to do and can benefit from that Scion's awesome and unexpected wisdom.
As for the last part of your question: no, we're not going to do that. Mystery is about learning unknown or arcane knowledge through some ritual agency - throwing bones, entering a trance, becoming intoxicated or otherwise calling in some impressive way upon Fate to reveal its mysteries. Actually performing Mystery (which could be any of those ways or whatever other thing your players want to stunt) should be an event that has a result in the sudden gain of mysterious enlightenment. It isn't, however, a random "let me ask whatever I want whenever I want regardless of what's happening" power, and it shouldn't be used that way. "Banking" questions like that takes Mystery from the realm of the divinations and enlightenments of mythology to a bland RPG power that's just about getting the ST to answer your questions, and it loses all of its mythological resonance as a result.
Then, too, it's also powergamey in the extreme; isn't it always better to "bank" questions if you can, because then you can ask them after you're learned more later rather than when you first decided you needed Mystery? You're in effect able to finagle it so that your Mystery questions are worth more if you save them because they can build on knowledge you didn't have yet back when you first used Mystery, and it would be silly to do anything but always use all your Mystery channels at the beginning of a story and then just sit on the monster pile of questions and parcel them out throughout. Doing so at the beginning of the story also ensures that you never have to worry about having enough resources to use your Mystery, that you have all your channels, Deeds and other buffs ready and unused and just waiting to go into buffing it, and that you're never in danger of picking up Fatebonds or spending ticks in combat doing it, thus avoiding all the normal issues that powers are prey to. That system actually encourages Scions to field the giant number of questions rather than discouraging it, and, more importantly, it's not part of the mythology of what people like Dionysus or Orunmila actually do and represent.
And besides, it's just the reverse mirror of what is already happening in the current system. You're suggesting they do a divination, then ask questions when they need to know things; we're suggesting they wait until they need to know things, then do a divination. There's no good reason to swap - it doesn't even bring the total number of questions down! - and a very good reason, the dissolution of Mystery's actual function in mythology, not to.
I hope you guys wanted to read a lot about Mystery today.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Salted Water Buffalo, Lightly Toasted
Question: How feasible is the use of Faunaphagia at Hero level when you have things like Leopard, Lion or Orca as your choosen Animal? Does conserved meat work, like leopard, lion, orca jerky?
One of the challenges of the Animal purview is that some of its boons are easier to use when you choose a commonly available animal, and some Scions who choose very exotic totems will have a harder time finding critters to use them on. This isn't just a problem for Faunaphagia, but also for things like Animal Communication, Animal Command, Call of the Wild and Ride Animal; if there aren't any gila monsters around and that's your chosen beastie, well, you're just out of luck and will have to find some.
Feasibility of the boon really depends on where your Scion is and what's happening, so it'll vary over the course of your adventures. Scions who pick up Animal (Orca) are going to have difficulty using some of that purview's powers any time they're inland and not at Sea World, and even if they're asea, trying to catch and eat a killer whale is probably going to prove to be something of a challenge. Unless your Scion happens to be a whaler or the sort of wealthy and unscrupulous dude who can pay poachers to import wildly illegal meat from the endangered predators on your list, he probably isn't going to be able to get much out of his Faunaphagia at Hero level.
Most Scions in our games who choose animals that are difficult to sink their teeth into pick up Animal Command as Heroes instead of bothering with Faunaphagia, which they can go back and grab after they're more mobile or able to make their own animals as Demigods. Scions who choose more commonly available animals, like Cattle or Dog or Tuna, are more likely to get mileage out of Faunaphagia at early Legend ratings.
But, a happy answer to the second half of your question: yes, you can use Faunaphagia with preserved meats, as long as they are legitimately made of the animal in question! Salted and smoked leopard-meat is just as legit for Faunaphagia as the raw steaming guts of a freshly-killed beast, so if you think it's possible you won't have access to your chosen animal for a while, you can always take some pickled monkeybrains or vacuum-dried sloth with you wherever you go, or even just put fresh meat in a plastic bag and drop some Delay Rot on it. The normal problems with carrying supplies apply here - they're easy to lose, may make stealthing more difficult and can be instantly destroyed by things like fire or hails of bullets - but at least you'll be no worse off than if you hadn't brought any with you.
Having a rare animal totem is more challenging than having one that hangs out on every streetcorner, but as always, make sure that players know that and that you don't push them one way or the other. Some will take Animal (Rat) so they can know they'll never be without tiny friends or have to worry about lacking things to use their boons on, and some will take Animal (Electric Eel) and damn the consequences, waiting until later so their awesome concept can truly (and literally!) shine. Either's fine, and it's all about what the Scion in question wants to do.
One of the challenges of the Animal purview is that some of its boons are easier to use when you choose a commonly available animal, and some Scions who choose very exotic totems will have a harder time finding critters to use them on. This isn't just a problem for Faunaphagia, but also for things like Animal Communication, Animal Command, Call of the Wild and Ride Animal; if there aren't any gila monsters around and that's your chosen beastie, well, you're just out of luck and will have to find some.
Feasibility of the boon really depends on where your Scion is and what's happening, so it'll vary over the course of your adventures. Scions who pick up Animal (Orca) are going to have difficulty using some of that purview's powers any time they're inland and not at Sea World, and even if they're asea, trying to catch and eat a killer whale is probably going to prove to be something of a challenge. Unless your Scion happens to be a whaler or the sort of wealthy and unscrupulous dude who can pay poachers to import wildly illegal meat from the endangered predators on your list, he probably isn't going to be able to get much out of his Faunaphagia at Hero level.
Most Scions in our games who choose animals that are difficult to sink their teeth into pick up Animal Command as Heroes instead of bothering with Faunaphagia, which they can go back and grab after they're more mobile or able to make their own animals as Demigods. Scions who choose more commonly available animals, like Cattle or Dog or Tuna, are more likely to get mileage out of Faunaphagia at early Legend ratings.
But, a happy answer to the second half of your question: yes, you can use Faunaphagia with preserved meats, as long as they are legitimately made of the animal in question! Salted and smoked leopard-meat is just as legit for Faunaphagia as the raw steaming guts of a freshly-killed beast, so if you think it's possible you won't have access to your chosen animal for a while, you can always take some pickled monkeybrains or vacuum-dried sloth with you wherever you go, or even just put fresh meat in a plastic bag and drop some Delay Rot on it. The normal problems with carrying supplies apply here - they're easy to lose, may make stealthing more difficult and can be instantly destroyed by things like fire or hails of bullets - but at least you'll be no worse off than if you hadn't brought any with you.
Having a rare animal totem is more challenging than having one that hangs out on every streetcorner, but as always, make sure that players know that and that you don't push them one way or the other. Some will take Animal (Rat) so they can know they'll never be without tiny friends or have to worry about lacking things to use their boons on, and some will take Animal (Electric Eel) and damn the consequences, waiting until later so their awesome concept can truly (and literally!) shine. Either's fine, and it's all about what the Scion in question wants to do.
Ritual Flame
Question: Okay, there's one thing I've never understood and maybe you can explain it. Fire is a big deal in the Japanese religion, but no gods of the Amatsukami have it associated... why not?
Largely because of the reasons why fire is important in Shinto practice. While some religions revere fire, most Japanese practices involving it are dedicated to overcoming and controlling it, because it's conceived of as a dangerous force that must be bound and restrained. Traditional Japanese religion doesn't conceive of fire as something worthy of worship, but rather as a natural force that threatens the world unless harnessed for good purposes (like cooking, providing warmth and so on).
There is a Japanese god associated with fire: Kagutsuchi, the kami of flame and volcanic eruption, who killed his mother with his arrival into the world and was in turn put down by his father. This is a symbolic story on a number of levels, but the most important is that Izanagi, by killing and chopping Kagutsuchi up into separate components, manages to conquer and subdue fire rather than allowing it to run rampant. Order, in the person of the heavenly father Izanagi, overcomes the dangerous and chaotic power of fire in the person of Kagutsuchi, which thereafter can only occasionally threaten the universe. Had he not been conquered, the subtext implies, everything would probably have been burned in a great conflagration, or at least the world would be a lot more unpleasant and prone to flash fires than it is now. The variant of the story in which Izanami also uses her dying moments to give birth to Mizuhame, the kami of water, also underscores this point; the powers of the universe must create water in order to prevent fire from getting out of control.
Shinto's exceptionally strong emphasis on ritual means that things like the control of fire and the bending of it to human uses are repeated over and over again, emphasizing the religion's unwritten law that as long as you keep up with its rituals, the universe will remain in the correct order. Things like fire ceremonies and coal-walking are rituals specifically designed to repeat, re-emphasize and re-establish control of the faithful priests and worshipers of Shinto over the naturally dangerous force of fire, rendering it benevolent - or if not that, at least subdued - for a while longer.
But the gods themselves aren't really involved in that process; because Shinto is a very segmented religion, in which the rituals of mankind, the worship of the kami and the actions of the kami themselves are not always related, the gods have no need to repeat all this control of fire stuff that their worshipers are still doing. They already did that on a cosmic scale when Kagutsuchi was dismembered; from their divine perspective, the problem is solved and fire is successfully lidded and harnessed. Therefore, the ancient Japanese had no need for any of the kami they worshiped to be in charge of fire, because fire is already covered, belonging to Kagustuchi who has in turn already been prevented by his parents from doing any irredeemable harm to the world. Fire's not something they considered a necessary facet of their gods and it's not something they were interested in worshiping for its own sake, so none of the kami are associated with it. Essentially, Shintoism has no need of fire gods other than Kagutsuchi, so it doesn't have any.
It's especially interesting to contrast the Shinto fire rituals with those of cultures that perceive fire much more positively - the Yazata, whose religion considers fire a purifying agent that cleanses the world and is closer than any other element to the gods, are a good example. Ancient Persian worshipers held fire ceremonies because they believed that the flame itself was sacred and brought them closer to the gods, while ancient Japanese worshipers held vigiliant fire ceremonies as part of their contribution to conquering what they saw as a dangerous and fractious element.
And therefore the Yazata have a couple of fire gods, and the Amatsukami have none; the importance of the element in their religious practices is for different reasons and therefore manifests differently when it comes to the associations of the pantheon that oversees that religion.
Largely because of the reasons why fire is important in Shinto practice. While some religions revere fire, most Japanese practices involving it are dedicated to overcoming and controlling it, because it's conceived of as a dangerous force that must be bound and restrained. Traditional Japanese religion doesn't conceive of fire as something worthy of worship, but rather as a natural force that threatens the world unless harnessed for good purposes (like cooking, providing warmth and so on).
There is a Japanese god associated with fire: Kagutsuchi, the kami of flame and volcanic eruption, who killed his mother with his arrival into the world and was in turn put down by his father. This is a symbolic story on a number of levels, but the most important is that Izanagi, by killing and chopping Kagutsuchi up into separate components, manages to conquer and subdue fire rather than allowing it to run rampant. Order, in the person of the heavenly father Izanagi, overcomes the dangerous and chaotic power of fire in the person of Kagutsuchi, which thereafter can only occasionally threaten the universe. Had he not been conquered, the subtext implies, everything would probably have been burned in a great conflagration, or at least the world would be a lot more unpleasant and prone to flash fires than it is now. The variant of the story in which Izanami also uses her dying moments to give birth to Mizuhame, the kami of water, also underscores this point; the powers of the universe must create water in order to prevent fire from getting out of control.
Shinto's exceptionally strong emphasis on ritual means that things like the control of fire and the bending of it to human uses are repeated over and over again, emphasizing the religion's unwritten law that as long as you keep up with its rituals, the universe will remain in the correct order. Things like fire ceremonies and coal-walking are rituals specifically designed to repeat, re-emphasize and re-establish control of the faithful priests and worshipers of Shinto over the naturally dangerous force of fire, rendering it benevolent - or if not that, at least subdued - for a while longer.
But the gods themselves aren't really involved in that process; because Shinto is a very segmented religion, in which the rituals of mankind, the worship of the kami and the actions of the kami themselves are not always related, the gods have no need to repeat all this control of fire stuff that their worshipers are still doing. They already did that on a cosmic scale when Kagutsuchi was dismembered; from their divine perspective, the problem is solved and fire is successfully lidded and harnessed. Therefore, the ancient Japanese had no need for any of the kami they worshiped to be in charge of fire, because fire is already covered, belonging to Kagustuchi who has in turn already been prevented by his parents from doing any irredeemable harm to the world. Fire's not something they considered a necessary facet of their gods and it's not something they were interested in worshiping for its own sake, so none of the kami are associated with it. Essentially, Shintoism has no need of fire gods other than Kagutsuchi, so it doesn't have any.
It's especially interesting to contrast the Shinto fire rituals with those of cultures that perceive fire much more positively - the Yazata, whose religion considers fire a purifying agent that cleanses the world and is closer than any other element to the gods, are a good example. Ancient Persian worshipers held fire ceremonies because they believed that the flame itself was sacred and brought them closer to the gods, while ancient Japanese worshipers held vigiliant fire ceremonies as part of their contribution to conquering what they saw as a dangerous and fractious element.
And therefore the Yazata have a couple of fire gods, and the Amatsukami have none; the importance of the element in their religious practices is for different reasons and therefore manifests differently when it comes to the associations of the pantheon that oversees that religion.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Little Things from Yorubaland
Another solo vlog! Sorry, folks. You'll have to put up with me for just a week longer, but to make up for it, here's a bunch of questions about the Orisha!
Question: How should a group that doesn't use your Fatebond system use the Akunleyan boon?
Question: Is there any correlation between Erinle and Ganesha?
Question: How much of a freaking badass is Eshu?
Question: What are some cool Orisha relics for a Scion of Oko?
Question: Hello. I'm a little curious about something in your Orisha writeup. You mention that Oya is a warlike goddess, yet she doesn't have the War purview. Why not?
I'm imagining elephant parties now and they are totally ponderously awesome. (But the posturing and gang signs between the African and Indian elephants are getting dangerous. Elephants are serious business.)
Question: How should a group that doesn't use your Fatebond system use the Akunleyan boon?
Question: Is there any correlation between Erinle and Ganesha?
Question: How much of a freaking badass is Eshu?
Question: What are some cool Orisha relics for a Scion of Oko?
Question: Hello. I'm a little curious about something in your Orisha writeup. You mention that Oya is a warlike goddess, yet she doesn't have the War purview. Why not?
I'm imagining elephant parties now and they are totally ponderously awesome. (But the posturing and gang signs between the African and Indian elephants are getting dangerous. Elephants are serious business.)
Owls of the Apocalypse
Question: Could you potentially burn Nemean or Typhonian Beast simultaneously with Epic Enhancement to get creatures that are awesome in traits besides Strength and Stamina?
Alas, no, you could not. Epic Enhancement specifically applies only to mundane animals, not Nemean ones, and that's intentional. A Nemean beast's lack of mental or social traits is the major limiting factor that prevents it from being monstrously overpowered for a Scion to have access to; it's awesome to make a creature that's a physical juggernaut to fight your battles and perform your feats of strength for you, but if it can also outshine everyone in the other arenas, it's very quickly becoming more effective than your bandmates or even yourself, which is not the intent. Nemean creatures are powerful and useful but not very bright.
You can make very intelligent creatures with Epic Enhancement, though! That's where you get your magical creatures that are awesome at things besides Strength and Stamina, but you need to start with a normal animal as your base to prevent things from getting out of hand. If you want to enhance a normal grizzly into some kind of Einsteinian Science Bear, you can do that, and grant it at least a few physical powers to boot if you roll high enough. But you have a limited number of successes to pass around to various traits when you're enhancing your Nobel prize-winning poet turtle, so you have to choose what you want it to excel in the most. If you were able to layer that on top of a Nemean creature, you'd be basically getting all the points you were going to spend on size or physical capabilities for free and then some.
There's an exception to this rule, however: if you have a Birthright creature, you can use Epic Enhancement on it (one time only), even if it's already Nemean, to represent that you're much closer to this particular creature and let you sink some resources into enhancing your animal Birthrights just as an Industry god might sink some energy into enhancing her relics. Sowiljr actually did this for Ull a while ago, so the giant grumpy mountain bear now also speaks Latin and finds the other bears disappointingly pedestrian and below his intellectual level.
But otherwise, unless you're fielding The Beast to create your unstoppable animal forces, no dice. Epic Enhancement and the boons that create Nemean animals are meant to be used for different purposes and to show different kinds of your power over animals, not to pull off cheesy combo moves.
Alas, no, you could not. Epic Enhancement specifically applies only to mundane animals, not Nemean ones, and that's intentional. A Nemean beast's lack of mental or social traits is the major limiting factor that prevents it from being monstrously overpowered for a Scion to have access to; it's awesome to make a creature that's a physical juggernaut to fight your battles and perform your feats of strength for you, but if it can also outshine everyone in the other arenas, it's very quickly becoming more effective than your bandmates or even yourself, which is not the intent. Nemean creatures are powerful and useful but not very bright.
You can make very intelligent creatures with Epic Enhancement, though! That's where you get your magical creatures that are awesome at things besides Strength and Stamina, but you need to start with a normal animal as your base to prevent things from getting out of hand. If you want to enhance a normal grizzly into some kind of Einsteinian Science Bear, you can do that, and grant it at least a few physical powers to boot if you roll high enough. But you have a limited number of successes to pass around to various traits when you're enhancing your Nobel prize-winning poet turtle, so you have to choose what you want it to excel in the most. If you were able to layer that on top of a Nemean creature, you'd be basically getting all the points you were going to spend on size or physical capabilities for free and then some.
There's an exception to this rule, however: if you have a Birthright creature, you can use Epic Enhancement on it (one time only), even if it's already Nemean, to represent that you're much closer to this particular creature and let you sink some resources into enhancing your animal Birthrights just as an Industry god might sink some energy into enhancing her relics. Sowiljr actually did this for Ull a while ago, so the giant grumpy mountain bear now also speaks Latin and finds the other bears disappointingly pedestrian and below his intellectual level.
But otherwise, unless you're fielding The Beast to create your unstoppable animal forces, no dice. Epic Enhancement and the boons that create Nemean animals are meant to be used for different purposes and to show different kinds of your power over animals, not to pull off cheesy combo moves.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Bugs: Zapped!
Hey, everybody!
Thank you to all of you fabulous readers for your help on the Bug Hunt, because you were totally awesome. We've cleaned up a huge number of typos, unclear wording, missing mechanics and non-updated quick-reference entries, and it's largely thanks to you all being so excellent and helping pitch in with us. How did you know there's nothing we like as much as spending extra hours updating old HTML files? You're just spoiling us now.
It's been more than a week, so I'm moving the bug hunt post off the top of the blog so y'all don't have to scroll past it to see us yelling about new stuff. It's still available for any new bugs you find, however, and can be easily found by searching for "bug hunt" on the search to the right. Or you guys can just send it in to the question box - either way, we'll get it!
We did have a request for a concise list of major changes that were made as a result; while I'm not going to list all the nitty gritty little typo cleanups, the major changes were as follows:
*Hippocratic Oath mistakenly said it granted dice equal to Health boons rather than level of Health, which has been corrected.
*Dexterity and Perception knacks have had their wording fixed regarding the difference between throwing and shooting weapons.
*Itztli now correctly deals lethal damage instead of bashing when sacrifices are healed and a Scion's Legend pool isn't great enough to cover the loss of power.
*Doppelganger now correctly costs 1 Willpower instead of being free.
*All-Seeing Eye now clearly states that you cannot rebuy the permanent Willpower spent while the power is active, not that you can't buy it back ever.
*Aurora can now be used with negative Epic Appearance as well as positive.
*Fertile Soil/Salted Earth now only augments positive or negative Fertility boons, depending on which aspect of it is used.
*Adaptive Fighting now correctly applies dice equal to the successes a Scion receives from Epic Wits.
In addition, two other issues were reported that we haven't yet been able to fix: Shroud of Silence will be gaining some kind of Stealth bonus in the future, and the Dvoeverie boons Dva Dukhom and Dvoinobog will be getting Ori options added to them as soon as we finish balancing them.
Thank you all again for your awesome help!
Thank you to all of you fabulous readers for your help on the Bug Hunt, because you were totally awesome. We've cleaned up a huge number of typos, unclear wording, missing mechanics and non-updated quick-reference entries, and it's largely thanks to you all being so excellent and helping pitch in with us. How did you know there's nothing we like as much as spending extra hours updating old HTML files? You're just spoiling us now.
It's been more than a week, so I'm moving the bug hunt post off the top of the blog so y'all don't have to scroll past it to see us yelling about new stuff. It's still available for any new bugs you find, however, and can be easily found by searching for "bug hunt" on the search to the right. Or you guys can just send it in to the question box - either way, we'll get it!
We did have a request for a concise list of major changes that were made as a result; while I'm not going to list all the nitty gritty little typo cleanups, the major changes were as follows:
*Hippocratic Oath mistakenly said it granted dice equal to Health boons rather than level of Health, which has been corrected.
*Dexterity and Perception knacks have had their wording fixed regarding the difference between throwing and shooting weapons.
*Itztli now correctly deals lethal damage instead of bashing when sacrifices are healed and a Scion's Legend pool isn't great enough to cover the loss of power.
*Doppelganger now correctly costs 1 Willpower instead of being free.
*All-Seeing Eye now clearly states that you cannot rebuy the permanent Willpower spent while the power is active, not that you can't buy it back ever.
*Aurora can now be used with negative Epic Appearance as well as positive.
*Fertile Soil/Salted Earth now only augments positive or negative Fertility boons, depending on which aspect of it is used.
*Adaptive Fighting now correctly applies dice equal to the successes a Scion receives from Epic Wits.
In addition, two other issues were reported that we haven't yet been able to fix: Shroud of Silence will be gaining some kind of Stealth bonus in the future, and the Dvoeverie boons Dva Dukhom and Dvoinobog will be getting Ori options added to them as soon as we finish balancing them.
Thank you all again for your awesome help!
Sorry, Thomas
Question: Do negative Fatebonds ever start removing your PSP?
Ooh, a very good question. No, they do not.
When we first pioneered the Fatebond system, we allowed Fatebonds to apply to PSPs; if you happened to use them a lot you could get positively Fatebound to them, and if you didn't use them or were obviously bad at them, you could get negatively Fatebound away from them. We found, however, that it didn't work very well for a few reasons.
For one thing, PSPs don't often spend much Legend. Since it's Legend that triggers Fatebonds from mortals, that means PSPs almost never garner Fatebonds, and when they do they're very difficult to change or cancel out. In turn, that means if you get an unlucky negative Fatebond to your PSP, you could potentially get it bought off with a much lower chance than usual to be able to fix that problem, even if you were actively trying. We saw this happen firsthand when, very early in his career, Woody got a negative Fatebound to his Jotunblut and lost the entire purview. It sucked. We felt really bad about it.
The most important reason besides that is that at the basic idea of Fatebonds affecting PSPs doesn't really make any sense. It makes sense for a Fatebond to add or detract from other things; if it's your Fate to be a storm god and you thus get bonuses to Sky, that makes sense, and if it's your Fate to be flummoxed by illusions and you thus get penalties to Perception, that makes sense, too. Fatebonds model where your destiny lies very well that way. But a PSP isn't the same kind of a creature, and it represents your closeness to the ancestral and inborn powers of your pantheon. It is not the destiny of one Tuatha Scion to be more Irish than the other, nor of one Aztec Scion to be more Mexican than his fellow; except for the very, very rare case of a Scion that performs the theoretical jump from one pantheon to the other, all Scions are created with a destiny that includes being part of their pantheon. It doesn't make sense for one Hindu Scion to have a bonus to Samsara, another to have a penalty and still another to have no modification, because that implies that these Scions are not all equally destined to be Devas.
So we changed that ruling. PSPs are unaffected by Fatebonds and proceed - or don't - according to a Scion's wishes, allowing them to be direct measures of how much that character wants to invest in the powers and ideals of their pantheon. For Fatebond purposes, we consider them to conceptually have more in common with Virtues than with purviews.
Ooh, a very good question. No, they do not.
When we first pioneered the Fatebond system, we allowed Fatebonds to apply to PSPs; if you happened to use them a lot you could get positively Fatebound to them, and if you didn't use them or were obviously bad at them, you could get negatively Fatebound away from them. We found, however, that it didn't work very well for a few reasons.
For one thing, PSPs don't often spend much Legend. Since it's Legend that triggers Fatebonds from mortals, that means PSPs almost never garner Fatebonds, and when they do they're very difficult to change or cancel out. In turn, that means if you get an unlucky negative Fatebond to your PSP, you could potentially get it bought off with a much lower chance than usual to be able to fix that problem, even if you were actively trying. We saw this happen firsthand when, very early in his career, Woody got a negative Fatebound to his Jotunblut and lost the entire purview. It sucked. We felt really bad about it.
The most important reason besides that is that at the basic idea of Fatebonds affecting PSPs doesn't really make any sense. It makes sense for a Fatebond to add or detract from other things; if it's your Fate to be a storm god and you thus get bonuses to Sky, that makes sense, and if it's your Fate to be flummoxed by illusions and you thus get penalties to Perception, that makes sense, too. Fatebonds model where your destiny lies very well that way. But a PSP isn't the same kind of a creature, and it represents your closeness to the ancestral and inborn powers of your pantheon. It is not the destiny of one Tuatha Scion to be more Irish than the other, nor of one Aztec Scion to be more Mexican than his fellow; except for the very, very rare case of a Scion that performs the theoretical jump from one pantheon to the other, all Scions are created with a destiny that includes being part of their pantheon. It doesn't make sense for one Hindu Scion to have a bonus to Samsara, another to have a penalty and still another to have no modification, because that implies that these Scions are not all equally destined to be Devas.
So we changed that ruling. PSPs are unaffected by Fatebonds and proceed - or don't - according to a Scion's wishes, allowing them to be direct measures of how much that character wants to invest in the powers and ideals of their pantheon. For Fatebond purposes, we consider them to conceptually have more in common with Virtues than with purviews.
Geasa! Fix Them!
Question: We need that Enech Overhaul! It's the only PSP on your pantheon page that is not up to your standards!
Then get over there and vote, my friend! Your cries for fair treatment of Irish purviews have been duly noted, and we promise we are aware that the people need more northern Celtic awesomeness.
Enech's one of many things that we definitely want to get fixed, but there is just only so much of the two of us to go around!
Then get over there and vote, my friend! Your cries for fair treatment of Irish purviews have been duly noted, and we promise we are aware that the people need more northern Celtic awesomeness.
Enech's one of many things that we definitely want to get fixed, but there is just only so much of the two of us to go around!
Irish Mystery Theatre
Question: What's the story of Danu aligning with the Titans in your games? Alternatively, if there is fiction written on the subject, could you point me to it?
Actually, there is no story of Danu aligning with the Titans in our story, at least not yet. For most games, we'd recommend she start as a Titan and never be available as a playable parent. She was way too ancient, remote and uninvolved to really be a candidate for godhood, but since Dierdre is there, clearly we are Up to Something and the plot must needs explain what the hell is going on.
And that I can't tell you, because players are still involved in that plot. If Dierdre is a true Scion - and she does seem to be - then Danu must have been a goddess when she created her, but what does that mean? Was she the last Scion of Danu before the ancient mother of the Tuatha departed to join the Titans? Is she the first Scion of Danu, returning to aid her people after centuries apart? Is she really a Scion at all, and if she's not, how does she so perfectly approximate one? What was Danu's reason for creating her, when she hasn't had children since she founded the Celtic pantheons in the mists of ages past? Are there secret clues embedded in the fiction surrounding the plot?
Nobody knows. All they know is that she's for some reason Important, at least enough for the Tuatha to dedicate an entire band of Scions to a rescue mission to retrieve her, and Manannan mac Lir, when he can be convinced to talk about the subject, has vaguely implied that there may be A Prophecy. And for the moment, that's all anybody knows about it.
Speculation! Mystery!
Actually, there is no story of Danu aligning with the Titans in our story, at least not yet. For most games, we'd recommend she start as a Titan and never be available as a playable parent. She was way too ancient, remote and uninvolved to really be a candidate for godhood, but since Dierdre is there, clearly we are Up to Something and the plot must needs explain what the hell is going on.
And that I can't tell you, because players are still involved in that plot. If Dierdre is a true Scion - and she does seem to be - then Danu must have been a goddess when she created her, but what does that mean? Was she the last Scion of Danu before the ancient mother of the Tuatha departed to join the Titans? Is she the first Scion of Danu, returning to aid her people after centuries apart? Is she really a Scion at all, and if she's not, how does she so perfectly approximate one? What was Danu's reason for creating her, when she hasn't had children since she founded the Celtic pantheons in the mists of ages past? Are there secret clues embedded in the fiction surrounding the plot?
Nobody knows. All they know is that she's for some reason Important, at least enough for the Tuatha to dedicate an entire band of Scions to a rescue mission to retrieve her, and Manannan mac Lir, when he can be convinced to talk about the subject, has vaguely implied that there may be A Prophecy. And for the moment, that's all anybody knows about it.
Speculation! Mystery!
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