Question: Why would you call the crafting purview "Industry"?
Well, originally because we had simply taken Industry, the pantheon-specific purview of the Yankees from that accursed World at War chapter of Scion: Companion, and made it available as an all-purpose purview that any Scion could buy. It was a pretty piss-poor PSP, but its concepts were things all Scions should be able to do, so we ported it over and left the name and most of the boons intact.
Of course, that was back in the dawn of time before we started strongly tinkering with the purview, which eventually morphed into the untidy collection of edited boons from the original book and original powers we added to flesh it out that you can see on the site right now. Working on further editing and fixing it up is our current project, so hopefully someday in the not-too-distant future it'll be much less of a messy dustbin of powers and much more of a vibrant, clear-cut option for creative Scions.
But, at least for the moment, we still have no plans to change the name. We didn't like Industry as presented in the Scion books, but we do like its name, which does a great job of explaining what the purview's all about in a way that applies to many different types of Scions.
The major problem with the name is that many of us tend to only think of the most recent historical definitions of it; either we associated it with big business - as in "the oil industry" or "the banking industry" - or we automatically tie it to the European Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century, bringing up images of factories and assembly lines, steam and coal power and the beginning of the rushing speed of new and developing technologies.
But the word "industry" is actually very versatile and needn't be confined to those popular images! It certainly means those things - which may or may not be related to what a Scion does with the purview - but it also means both the creation of something from raw materials, which basically everyone using it will be doing, and has a secondary meaning of hard work and dedication to a project, which are qualities of Scion builders the world over. On another level, it also makes sense from a mythological perspective; gods of Industry are usually gods of, well, industry - they not only make things, they also encourage creation and technology in their people, acting as patrons of various industries and examples of the best workers within them.
We've also never come up with an alternative name we liked better, which also contributes to our refusal to change it; we'd want to go to something that was even better than "Industry", and so far we haven't met that title. A lot of purviews like it use the name "Forge", but we've never liked that, as it implies a restriction down to only the creation of relics or only those creators who do it in a forging or blacksmithing kind of manner. Plenty of Scions use Industry to build architecture, work in crafts that have nothing to do with forging or even bolster their ability to create works of art, and "Forge" doesn't match up for them at all. At the same time, however, going too broad doesn't work for us, either - some versions like to call the purview "Creation", but that's covering too much ground. Lots of purviews can create, from the elemental purviews creating their relevant substance to the Animal and Health purviews creating living things and even more, and this purview should be restricted to building, innovating and technologizing in various ways, not just creating anything into existence. Creator gods and Industry gods are seldom the same figure, so that label is out for us as well.
If we found a name for the purview that we preferred, we'd of course be ready to change it in a heartbeat, but so far Industry still has our hearts.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monster Mania
Question: Could the giant, evil monsters of Norse myth like Fenrir, Nidhoggr and Jormungandr be considered Titan Avatars?
Question: Would the Fenris Wolf, Jormungandr and Nidhoggr work as Titan Avatars, maybe of Beasts?
Yes, actually! Scion: Ragnarok even stats Fenrir and Jormungandr as if they were Titan Avatars on page 111, explaining that while they owe allegiance to no Titanrealm they are still basically the same kind of creature. The two of them as Titan Avatars is practically a feature of the game even withou house-ruling. Nidhoggr, whose stats are in Scion: Demigod on page 233, gets the short end of the stick in the original line where he has for some reason been demoted to about Legend 7, but if you want to increase his power level, ain't nobody here going to tell you not to.
While we're not sure we want to introduce the idea of Titan Avatars who don't have a realm, since that's something of a contradiction in terms and they'd probably be better off as just gods or very powerful Typhonian beasts, we're all about Fenrir and Jormungandr as Titan Avatars when attached to a realm. We'd likely consider them to be possible representatives of Emamu, the Titanrealm of Beasts that opposes the Anunna, possibly with their terrible mother Angrboda.
Nidhoggr, who has less of a fancy role to play, we might consider just an insanely large and powerful Typhonian beast, but it really depends on the flavor you want to run with. One thing he's definitely not is Legend 7, so make him as badass as your game and heart desire!
Question: Would the Fenris Wolf, Jormungandr and Nidhoggr work as Titan Avatars, maybe of Beasts?
Yes, actually! Scion: Ragnarok even stats Fenrir and Jormungandr as if they were Titan Avatars on page 111, explaining that while they owe allegiance to no Titanrealm they are still basically the same kind of creature. The two of them as Titan Avatars is practically a feature of the game even withou house-ruling. Nidhoggr, whose stats are in Scion: Demigod on page 233, gets the short end of the stick in the original line where he has for some reason been demoted to about Legend 7, but if you want to increase his power level, ain't nobody here going to tell you not to.
While we're not sure we want to introduce the idea of Titan Avatars who don't have a realm, since that's something of a contradiction in terms and they'd probably be better off as just gods or very powerful Typhonian beasts, we're all about Fenrir and Jormungandr as Titan Avatars when attached to a realm. We'd likely consider them to be possible representatives of Emamu, the Titanrealm of Beasts that opposes the Anunna, possibly with their terrible mother Angrboda.
Nidhoggr, who has less of a fancy role to play, we might consider just an insanely large and powerful Typhonian beast, but it really depends on the flavor you want to run with. One thing he's definitely not is Legend 7, so make him as badass as your game and heart desire!
Monday, April 29, 2013
The Fire Never Goes Out
Question: Why don't any of the Aztlanti have Fire associated?
Actually, one does! Xiuhtecuhtli is the Aztec god of fire, flame, the hearth and the renewing power of the sacred burning. He covers both the destructive flame of out-of-control fires, volcanoes and burns and the benevolent flame that provides warmth, safety and light. He had a cult strongly associated with keeping a sacred flame lit except for when it was ceremonially renewed at the end of various sacred calendar periods, and his sacrifices were usually ritually burned to make sure they were handed off properly to him. His destructive and powerful forms usually accompany him looking youthful and vigorous, while his comforting and benevolent form is often of an old, shabby-toothed man.
See? Fire godding is totally covered.
Unfortunately, Xiuhtecuhtli has incredibly strong ties to fire... and just not much else, leaving him in a limbo where we weren't sure he really had enough juice to be a Legend 12 god. Our current assumption is that he's hanging out around Legend 11, important but not truly on the same level as the big Tezcatlipocas and their buddies. We talked about what to do with him in Scion games a bit in this old post; for our games, we assume he's around but not doing a lot, helping with the war effort but not important enough to be directly involved or making Scions unless the PCs decide to go bother him.
As for the rest of the Aztlanti, that answer's easy: they don't have Fire associated because none of them are fire gods. For most of them, there isn't even the vaguest hint of connection to the powers of the overly hot and cranky; the only one who has even a touch of fire association is Tezcatlipoca, who is occasionally said to have invented it, but since he never does anything with fire ever in any of his many myths and that story may apply to Mixcoatl (also not doing anything with fire) anyway, it wasn't strong enough to give it to him as an association for his Scions. Xiuhtecuhtli is so strongly associated with being in charge of all kinds of fire that there's no need for any other gods in the pantheon to mess around with it, so for the most part they don't.
Some pantheons simply don't do a lot with a given purview or set of powers; they all come from different religions and different cultures that view concepts with varying levels of importance, so there will usually be a purview or two that a pantheon doesn't have represented at Legend 12. Just as the Pesedjet, who live in the desert, are unlikely to be aligned with Frost or the Aesir, who are strongly tied to the ideas and concerns of humanity, don't have anyone carrying the Animal torch.
Actually, one does! Xiuhtecuhtli is the Aztec god of fire, flame, the hearth and the renewing power of the sacred burning. He covers both the destructive flame of out-of-control fires, volcanoes and burns and the benevolent flame that provides warmth, safety and light. He had a cult strongly associated with keeping a sacred flame lit except for when it was ceremonially renewed at the end of various sacred calendar periods, and his sacrifices were usually ritually burned to make sure they were handed off properly to him. His destructive and powerful forms usually accompany him looking youthful and vigorous, while his comforting and benevolent form is often of an old, shabby-toothed man.
See? Fire godding is totally covered.
Unfortunately, Xiuhtecuhtli has incredibly strong ties to fire... and just not much else, leaving him in a limbo where we weren't sure he really had enough juice to be a Legend 12 god. Our current assumption is that he's hanging out around Legend 11, important but not truly on the same level as the big Tezcatlipocas and their buddies. We talked about what to do with him in Scion games a bit in this old post; for our games, we assume he's around but not doing a lot, helping with the war effort but not important enough to be directly involved or making Scions unless the PCs decide to go bother him.
As for the rest of the Aztlanti, that answer's easy: they don't have Fire associated because none of them are fire gods. For most of them, there isn't even the vaguest hint of connection to the powers of the overly hot and cranky; the only one who has even a touch of fire association is Tezcatlipoca, who is occasionally said to have invented it, but since he never does anything with fire ever in any of his many myths and that story may apply to Mixcoatl (also not doing anything with fire) anyway, it wasn't strong enough to give it to him as an association for his Scions. Xiuhtecuhtli is so strongly associated with being in charge of all kinds of fire that there's no need for any other gods in the pantheon to mess around with it, so for the most part they don't.
Some pantheons simply don't do a lot with a given purview or set of powers; they all come from different religions and different cultures that view concepts with varying levels of importance, so there will usually be a purview or two that a pantheon doesn't have represented at Legend 12. Just as the Pesedjet, who live in the desert, are unlikely to be aligned with Frost or the Aesir, who are strongly tied to the ideas and concerns of humanity, don't have anyone carrying the Animal torch.
Expand Your Mind
Question: How do you roleplay someone with high levels of Epic Intelligence and Epic Wits, when they are so far beyond your ability to comprehend or predict?
Normally we grouse a bunch when people ask questions we've covered before, but in this case we have to give you a pass. Not only is our search function on the blog not great - for some reason it only searches some of the posts sometimes, and we haven't been able to figure out why - but this question was previously discussed in one of our video blogs, making it more difficult to search for.
So check out our very first vlog ever, from back when we were terrible at videos but still very enthusiastic! There's also some good discussion of playing mental attributes in the comments of that post, as well.
Normally we grouse a bunch when people ask questions we've covered before, but in this case we have to give you a pass. Not only is our search function on the blog not great - for some reason it only searches some of the posts sometimes, and we haven't been able to figure out why - but this question was previously discussed in one of our video blogs, making it more difficult to search for.
So check out our very first vlog ever, from back when we were terrible at videos but still very enthusiastic! There's also some good discussion of playing mental attributes in the comments of that post, as well.
Snakes of Many Colors
Question: What or who is the "Rainbow Serpent" and why do I keep finding mentions of it (him?) in the mythologies of completely different continents?
Neat question! The idea of a rainbow serpent is definitely widespread in different cultures' mythologies, but don't be confused into thinking it's the same global figure all the time. Just as there are many gods of storms or harvest across the world, so there are many gods of the rainbow.
While not every rainbow deity takes the form of a serpent - Ix Chel of the Maya doesn't, nor does Iris of the Greek pantheon - many cultures conceived of the rainbow as a gigantic snake. It's not hard to see why; it looks like one, after all, all long and cosmic and shimmery in the post-rain light.
You can definitely see why an ancient person might look at that and see a thick, many-colored serpent's body arching up over the world, right? This perception of the rainbow as a huge snake appears in several different cultures around the world, each with their own take on what the serpent is and why it exists.
Several Australian tribes believed that the rainbow snake (which bears a number of different names depending on where you are on the continent) was the original creator of the world, making mountain ranges and valleys as it slithered over the earth as well as creating rivers, lakes and other natural features, simply by existing and impressing its gigantic presence on the formless Dreamtime. Now that the world has mostly become created and is populated by humanity, the serpent appears as the rainbow, passing from earth to sky and vice versa, or sometimes as the milky way, another serpent-like thread in the skies.
There are also several African myths regarding a rainbow serpent, again different for different peoples and places across the continent. The Yoruba believe that the rainbow serpent is an Orisha named Oshumare, acting as the messenger between the earth and the other Orisha in the heavens, and appearing in the sky when he stretches his neck up to drink from the wellsprings of unfallen rain. Likewise, the Fon believe in a female rainbow serpent named Ayida Wedo, who ties the sky together and holds it up as the supporter of the heavens and is visible to humanity when she is absorbed in this task. The Luangu people of the Congo believed in several rainbow serpents, one for each color, that always appear together and that fly up into the sky from pools of water, and similarly other nearby tribes claim that only the red stripe is a serpent and rides the rainbow to the sky or other variations on the theme.
And finally, the rainbow serpent was also considered a deity by the ancient Inca, who named him Kuychi and claimed that he sometimes provided transportation to the other gods, who could walk along his enormous length in the heavens or ask him to carry messages to one another for them. Like many of the African rainbow serpents, he (and the appearance of his rainbow tail in the sky) was associated with disease and misfortune, and avoiding the rainbow or taking ritual precautions to ward off its notice was considered necessary to avoid its more malicious qualities.
Obviously, these are not all the same god; the rainbow serpents of various parts of the world are distinctly different deities or monsters who are shaped by the religions of the people who believed in them. Rather, it's just a common way of various ancient peoples interpreting the inexplicable presence of the rainbow in the sky, which other cultures saw as a bridge (like the Norse) or a bow that shoots celestial arrows (like the Indian, Arab or Canaanite myths). Of all the many natural phenomena in the world, rainbows are one of the most awe-inspiring and least explainable, so naturally it's up to myth and legend to explain what they are and where they come from.
Various rainbow serpents may remain as giant monsters all the time or have the option to take on more humanoid godly forms, but they're all fairly important characters in the divine universe. They'd definitely be awesome additions to Scion games that involve those mythologies... and we're now totally envisioning an epically fabulous rainbow snake club, where the goats are free and the dress code is casual splendid.
Neat question! The idea of a rainbow serpent is definitely widespread in different cultures' mythologies, but don't be confused into thinking it's the same global figure all the time. Just as there are many gods of storms or harvest across the world, so there are many gods of the rainbow.
While not every rainbow deity takes the form of a serpent - Ix Chel of the Maya doesn't, nor does Iris of the Greek pantheon - many cultures conceived of the rainbow as a gigantic snake. It's not hard to see why; it looks like one, after all, all long and cosmic and shimmery in the post-rain light.
You can definitely see why an ancient person might look at that and see a thick, many-colored serpent's body arching up over the world, right? This perception of the rainbow as a huge snake appears in several different cultures around the world, each with their own take on what the serpent is and why it exists.
Several Australian tribes believed that the rainbow snake (which bears a number of different names depending on where you are on the continent) was the original creator of the world, making mountain ranges and valleys as it slithered over the earth as well as creating rivers, lakes and other natural features, simply by existing and impressing its gigantic presence on the formless Dreamtime. Now that the world has mostly become created and is populated by humanity, the serpent appears as the rainbow, passing from earth to sky and vice versa, or sometimes as the milky way, another serpent-like thread in the skies.
There are also several African myths regarding a rainbow serpent, again different for different peoples and places across the continent. The Yoruba believe that the rainbow serpent is an Orisha named Oshumare, acting as the messenger between the earth and the other Orisha in the heavens, and appearing in the sky when he stretches his neck up to drink from the wellsprings of unfallen rain. Likewise, the Fon believe in a female rainbow serpent named Ayida Wedo, who ties the sky together and holds it up as the supporter of the heavens and is visible to humanity when she is absorbed in this task. The Luangu people of the Congo believed in several rainbow serpents, one for each color, that always appear together and that fly up into the sky from pools of water, and similarly other nearby tribes claim that only the red stripe is a serpent and rides the rainbow to the sky or other variations on the theme.
And finally, the rainbow serpent was also considered a deity by the ancient Inca, who named him Kuychi and claimed that he sometimes provided transportation to the other gods, who could walk along his enormous length in the heavens or ask him to carry messages to one another for them. Like many of the African rainbow serpents, he (and the appearance of his rainbow tail in the sky) was associated with disease and misfortune, and avoiding the rainbow or taking ritual precautions to ward off its notice was considered necessary to avoid its more malicious qualities.
Obviously, these are not all the same god; the rainbow serpents of various parts of the world are distinctly different deities or monsters who are shaped by the religions of the people who believed in them. Rather, it's just a common way of various ancient peoples interpreting the inexplicable presence of the rainbow in the sky, which other cultures saw as a bridge (like the Norse) or a bow that shoots celestial arrows (like the Indian, Arab or Canaanite myths). Of all the many natural phenomena in the world, rainbows are one of the most awe-inspiring and least explainable, so naturally it's up to myth and legend to explain what they are and where they come from.
Various rainbow serpents may remain as giant monsters all the time or have the option to take on more humanoid godly forms, but they're all fairly important characters in the divine universe. They'd definitely be awesome additions to Scion games that involve those mythologies... and we're now totally envisioning an epically fabulous rainbow snake club, where the goats are free and the dress code is casual splendid.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Gods of Gojoseon
Question: So, I'm currently researching the Korean pantheon with the idea of working them into a playable pantheon. Have you considered doing this, and what general thoughts do you have on them?
Well, you guys know me; I've considered making pretty much everybody playable. If I had the ability to type and create twenty-four hours a day without dropping dead from exhaustion or being evicted from my house, I'd probably have produced five more extra pantheons by now and still be drooling thinking about what awesome stories the next one might have in store. I actually came within a hair of putting the Korean pantheon on the voting poll for the next project this time, but decided against it since Tibet was already there representing Asia, and was more recognizable to most voters to boot.
The Korean pantheon is a weird, weird set of gods, and they absolutely tickle me. They're pretty obscure; most people in the west aren't even aware that Korea had a separate pantheon, assuming they were all doing some general Asian thing like Buddhism over there if they think about it at all. That's not totally off-base, because the Korean gods are certainly heavily influenced by both the Shen (and by extension the Devas, those Buddhism-spawning magnates of Asian religion) and the Amatsukami, but like all cultures' religions they have their own unique figures, concepts and takes on the things they borrow.
They're also exceptionally hard to find information about in English; I know we whine about that for a lot of gods, but even the Chinese pantheon has nothing on these guys. Most of their stories were orally preserved and therefore basically forgotten when modern religions took the area over, and those that remain are very seldom translated into English because, well, do them white people in Europe and the Americas even care? Most of them don't even know Korea had an indigenous religion, much less give a damn who it was about! At best you can find folktales and small-scale stories that give you a flavor of the local folklore, but that leave the ancient gods out entirely.
But, anyway, yes, there are Korean gods and I'd love to see them ready to go in Scion someday. They're as fabulously out of control as the gods of any other pantheon: Taebyolwang and Sobyolwang, the creator gods of the sun and moon who are constantly arguing with one another over who should be the dominant power; Kangim, the lord of the Underworld who works to reduce the fear of hapless humanity of his unknown realm; Chachongbi, the goddess of agriculture who is having none of your shit and, when asked to masquerade as a man, used a reed to make sure she could piss further than any other man around; Hwang Uyang, the protector of hearth and home, who leads the spirits of divine ancestors and protects or lets languish the good fortune of the families who honor him. There's also a heavy emphasis on divine figures cheating at honorable games, which inevitably leads to disaster and sets the course of the world in some detrimental way, and the interpretations of Buddhism are absolutely hilarious. In particular, the great creator god Maitreya has the same name as one of the foretold Buddhas but absolutely nothing else in common with him, and the evil antagonistic cheater god Sakyamuni who fights against him is one of the alternative names of Gautama Buddha, meaning either the Koreans are hilarious in their subtle digs at Buddhism or some seriously weird shit is going down on the divine plains of upper Asia.
I don't know if the Korean gods will become a big project for us any time soon; as I said, few people are aware of their existence which doesn't exactly put them in great demand, and the absolute bitchfits needed to find any reliable information on their divine legends are expensive and exhausting. If you're researching them and come up with any awesome sources for information on them, please share! The best source we've got on them by far is Choi Won-Oh's An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology; it's hard to come by, suffers from occasional translation troubles (it was written by a Korean author, and once in a while there's a slip-up in the text) and is one of the most expensive books we own, but it's got a lot of great stories that are hard to find elsewhere.
Until then, we salute you for bringing Korea into the game. They deserve it every bit as much as every other culture.
Well, you guys know me; I've considered making pretty much everybody playable. If I had the ability to type and create twenty-four hours a day without dropping dead from exhaustion or being evicted from my house, I'd probably have produced five more extra pantheons by now and still be drooling thinking about what awesome stories the next one might have in store. I actually came within a hair of putting the Korean pantheon on the voting poll for the next project this time, but decided against it since Tibet was already there representing Asia, and was more recognizable to most voters to boot.
The Korean pantheon is a weird, weird set of gods, and they absolutely tickle me. They're pretty obscure; most people in the west aren't even aware that Korea had a separate pantheon, assuming they were all doing some general Asian thing like Buddhism over there if they think about it at all. That's not totally off-base, because the Korean gods are certainly heavily influenced by both the Shen (and by extension the Devas, those Buddhism-spawning magnates of Asian religion) and the Amatsukami, but like all cultures' religions they have their own unique figures, concepts and takes on the things they borrow.
They're also exceptionally hard to find information about in English; I know we whine about that for a lot of gods, but even the Chinese pantheon has nothing on these guys. Most of their stories were orally preserved and therefore basically forgotten when modern religions took the area over, and those that remain are very seldom translated into English because, well, do them white people in Europe and the Americas even care? Most of them don't even know Korea had an indigenous religion, much less give a damn who it was about! At best you can find folktales and small-scale stories that give you a flavor of the local folklore, but that leave the ancient gods out entirely.
But, anyway, yes, there are Korean gods and I'd love to see them ready to go in Scion someday. They're as fabulously out of control as the gods of any other pantheon: Taebyolwang and Sobyolwang, the creator gods of the sun and moon who are constantly arguing with one another over who should be the dominant power; Kangim, the lord of the Underworld who works to reduce the fear of hapless humanity of his unknown realm; Chachongbi, the goddess of agriculture who is having none of your shit and, when asked to masquerade as a man, used a reed to make sure she could piss further than any other man around; Hwang Uyang, the protector of hearth and home, who leads the spirits of divine ancestors and protects or lets languish the good fortune of the families who honor him. There's also a heavy emphasis on divine figures cheating at honorable games, which inevitably leads to disaster and sets the course of the world in some detrimental way, and the interpretations of Buddhism are absolutely hilarious. In particular, the great creator god Maitreya has the same name as one of the foretold Buddhas but absolutely nothing else in common with him, and the evil antagonistic cheater god Sakyamuni who fights against him is one of the alternative names of Gautama Buddha, meaning either the Koreans are hilarious in their subtle digs at Buddhism or some seriously weird shit is going down on the divine plains of upper Asia.
I don't know if the Korean gods will become a big project for us any time soon; as I said, few people are aware of their existence which doesn't exactly put them in great demand, and the absolute bitchfits needed to find any reliable information on their divine legends are expensive and exhausting. If you're researching them and come up with any awesome sources for information on them, please share! The best source we've got on them by far is Choi Won-Oh's An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology; it's hard to come by, suffers from occasional translation troubles (it was written by a Korean author, and once in a while there's a slip-up in the text) and is one of the most expensive books we own, but it's got a lot of great stories that are hard to find elsewhere.
Until then, we salute you for bringing Korea into the game. They deserve it every bit as much as every other culture.
Art Ahoy!
Question: Where is the picture on the banner of the link to Ori on the Orisha page from, and where does the picture from Kyofujin's character sheet come from?
The banner that links to the Ori sports a bit of a painting called "Pestilence" by Gonzalo Ordóñez Arias, or Genzoman to his internet fans. He's graciously allowed us to use an absolute bucket of his art all over our site, drawn from his extensive collection of mythology- and folklore-based art. We loved the image because of its resemblance to what we think Shapona might look like, not to mention the fact that it's one of his few pieces that doesn't features a very European-looking subject. Check him out - he is the fanciest of artists.
The image you see on Kyofujin's character sheet is the top bit of the excellently creepy painting "Dark and Darkness" by Serj, a Moldovan artist who is way too talented to be allowed. Like Kyofujin, it's an image of a creature that is built expressly to cause nightmares in the minds of anyone unfortunate enough to see him.
The banner that links to the Ori sports a bit of a painting called "Pestilence" by Gonzalo Ordóñez Arias, or Genzoman to his internet fans. He's graciously allowed us to use an absolute bucket of his art all over our site, drawn from his extensive collection of mythology- and folklore-based art. We loved the image because of its resemblance to what we think Shapona might look like, not to mention the fact that it's one of his few pieces that doesn't features a very European-looking subject. Check him out - he is the fanciest of artists.
The image you see on Kyofujin's character sheet is the top bit of the excellently creepy painting "Dark and Darkness" by Serj, a Moldovan artist who is way too talented to be allowed. Like Kyofujin, it's an image of a creature that is built expressly to cause nightmares in the minds of anyone unfortunate enough to see him.
Movement of the Mind
Question: Have you considered adding a telekinesis-based Knack/Boon?
Not really, because the idea's already covered. But let's go through it!
To start with, telekinesis, as in moving stuff around with the powers of your pulsating magical brains, is one of those modern science fiction concepts (like time travel) that doesn't actually appear in most ancient myths; it was really firmed up as a concept in the late nineteenth century, long after most of Scion's pantheons were far and away no longer active, and as a result it doesn't appear in any of the heroic legends of yore. Gods don't tend to point at stuff and make it fly around for them; they go pick it the hell up and do stuff with it, because why wouldn't they? They're gods. They don't have the normal human problems of not having enough arms or strength to do things, or of being too slow or clumsy to manage a bunch of items at once. The majority of them don't even need telekinesis for anything, which probably explains why it didn't occur to ancient people to ascribe it to them.
But Scions do like doing new stuff, so luckily there are also several powers already in the game that can be used to perform telekinesis-like feats if they so wish. The Intelligence knack Remote Control and its prerequisite Wireless Interface are probably the closest things in the game to straight telekinesis, and allow Scions to interface with and operate machines and mechanical devices from a distance without touching them. Wind Grapple from Sky can lift and move around anything you want from a distance, which is pretty much exactly telekinesis, and covers everything that isn't usable with the mechanical knacks. Amatsukami Scions can effectively duplicate telekinesis by calling upon the spirits of objects to animate themselves with Tsukumo-gami as well, a purview that hasn't been rewritten by us yet but that is likely to retain some form of that power in the final draft. The Shen's Taiyi purview also has straight telekinesis with the Qi Hand boon, but as we've noted before, we're pretty sure we're going to be punting that entire purview into space when it comes time to give the Bureaucracy due attention.
We're not really worried about adding any more than that; that's way plenty options for those who want to roll with the idea, and we don't see any reason to invent more without a good mythological precedent. In a recent game, Sowiljr simultaneously told Eztli to stop touching things and to transcribe something for him, and she shrugged and used Wind Grapple to write without touching anything. Can't get much more telekinetic than that!
Not really, because the idea's already covered. But let's go through it!
To start with, telekinesis, as in moving stuff around with the powers of your pulsating magical brains, is one of those modern science fiction concepts (like time travel) that doesn't actually appear in most ancient myths; it was really firmed up as a concept in the late nineteenth century, long after most of Scion's pantheons were far and away no longer active, and as a result it doesn't appear in any of the heroic legends of yore. Gods don't tend to point at stuff and make it fly around for them; they go pick it the hell up and do stuff with it, because why wouldn't they? They're gods. They don't have the normal human problems of not having enough arms or strength to do things, or of being too slow or clumsy to manage a bunch of items at once. The majority of them don't even need telekinesis for anything, which probably explains why it didn't occur to ancient people to ascribe it to them.
But Scions do like doing new stuff, so luckily there are also several powers already in the game that can be used to perform telekinesis-like feats if they so wish. The Intelligence knack Remote Control and its prerequisite Wireless Interface are probably the closest things in the game to straight telekinesis, and allow Scions to interface with and operate machines and mechanical devices from a distance without touching them. Wind Grapple from Sky can lift and move around anything you want from a distance, which is pretty much exactly telekinesis, and covers everything that isn't usable with the mechanical knacks. Amatsukami Scions can effectively duplicate telekinesis by calling upon the spirits of objects to animate themselves with Tsukumo-gami as well, a purview that hasn't been rewritten by us yet but that is likely to retain some form of that power in the final draft. The Shen's Taiyi purview also has straight telekinesis with the Qi Hand boon, but as we've noted before, we're pretty sure we're going to be punting that entire purview into space when it comes time to give the Bureaucracy due attention.
We're not really worried about adding any more than that; that's way plenty options for those who want to roll with the idea, and we don't see any reason to invent more without a good mythological precedent. In a recent game, Sowiljr simultaneously told Eztli to stop touching things and to transcribe something for him, and she shrugged and used Wind Grapple to write without touching anything. Can't get much more telekinetic than that!
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Man in the Woods
Today, John goes out into the woods and vlogs alone, like the man of nature he obviously is, to answer a bunch of questions like some kind of crochety forest troll. I hope you're ready for his manly beard and masculine robe and hat combo.
Question: In Follower Upgrade, you mention having a list of adjusted templates for Creatures and Followers. Would you please post it? It doesn't need to be a beautiful PDF, I would gladly take a Google Doc or .txt!
Question: Just how is marriage structured in the Orisha pantheon, and by extension the Yoruba? It seems that everyone is married to everyone else, both male and female, and that the women are pretty much equal to the men unless Shango is wailing on them.
Question: Did you ever see the History Channel's "Clash of the Gods"? And if so, what did you think?
Question: Do all dogs go to heaven? Do animals have souls? And most of all, how do I get spectral wolves to do my bidding?
Question: Have you ever considered scaling the Legend point gains from Raise Your Glass, making it usable more than once per day or in the presence of people who have seen you use it already? I understand why the limits are what they are, but I think the knack would still be balanced (maybe even a little fairer, since one Legend doesn't seem like much of a reward at late Demigod or God) if any of those were removed.
Question: Mictlantecuhtli is presented in the Scion RAW as a completely evil misanthrope, that apparently only exists to torture his own Scions and everyone else for that matter. Since you guys deal with a lot of Aztec politics in games, I just wanted to ask how you characterize him?
Question: Any players thinking of creating a new Orisha PC for your next game?
Question: We know a lot about your god game, but what can you tell us about your other two games? Still hush-hush?
Question: Is stunting pretty much limited by your own imagination (in conjunction with the rules)?
Question: In your game, what did Odin do to make Amaterasu his enemy? Was it because of the Aesir assault on Japan, and what's up with that?
Question: Does your PSP count as a Birthright that takes up one of your five Birthright points?
Question: In a game that's all about smashing monsters, what good way is there to play a character with the Pacifist Nature?
Question: Could a character use high levels of Epic Manipulation to convince mortals that he is really great at a purview and gain Fatebonds from those mortals (assuming he spent Legend around them)? Like, if he tells great tales (lies) of destroying entire cities and civilizations with Fire when he has actually never used the Fire purview? If this does not work, how is it different from mortals misconstruing an event they see a PC perform from one purview to another and Fatebinding based on that?
Question: What kind of asks do you reject or refuse to answer?
That was delightful. I don't have much extra to add except that if you're the question-asker who wanted to know about Epic Manipulation and Fatebonds, there are also a couple of old posts here and here that might also help.
Question: In Follower Upgrade, you mention having a list of adjusted templates for Creatures and Followers. Would you please post it? It doesn't need to be a beautiful PDF, I would gladly take a Google Doc or .txt!
Question: Just how is marriage structured in the Orisha pantheon, and by extension the Yoruba? It seems that everyone is married to everyone else, both male and female, and that the women are pretty much equal to the men unless Shango is wailing on them.
Question: Did you ever see the History Channel's "Clash of the Gods"? And if so, what did you think?
Question: Do all dogs go to heaven? Do animals have souls? And most of all, how do I get spectral wolves to do my bidding?
Question: Have you ever considered scaling the Legend point gains from Raise Your Glass, making it usable more than once per day or in the presence of people who have seen you use it already? I understand why the limits are what they are, but I think the knack would still be balanced (maybe even a little fairer, since one Legend doesn't seem like much of a reward at late Demigod or God) if any of those were removed.
Question: Mictlantecuhtli is presented in the Scion RAW as a completely evil misanthrope, that apparently only exists to torture his own Scions and everyone else for that matter. Since you guys deal with a lot of Aztec politics in games, I just wanted to ask how you characterize him?
Question: Any players thinking of creating a new Orisha PC for your next game?
Question: We know a lot about your god game, but what can you tell us about your other two games? Still hush-hush?
Question: Is stunting pretty much limited by your own imagination (in conjunction with the rules)?
Question: In your game, what did Odin do to make Amaterasu his enemy? Was it because of the Aesir assault on Japan, and what's up with that?
Question: Does your PSP count as a Birthright that takes up one of your five Birthright points?
Question: In a game that's all about smashing monsters, what good way is there to play a character with the Pacifist Nature?
Question: Could a character use high levels of Epic Manipulation to convince mortals that he is really great at a purview and gain Fatebonds from those mortals (assuming he spent Legend around them)? Like, if he tells great tales (lies) of destroying entire cities and civilizations with Fire when he has actually never used the Fire purview? If this does not work, how is it different from mortals misconstruing an event they see a PC perform from one purview to another and Fatebinding based on that?
Question: What kind of asks do you reject or refuse to answer?
That was delightful. I don't have much extra to add except that if you're the question-asker who wanted to know about Epic Manipulation and Fatebonds, there are also a couple of old posts here and here that might also help.
Social Climbing
Question: You had Eshu vs Loki the other day, how about Isis vs Tezcat? How would you handle conflicts between those kind of social powerhouses who always get what they want? How could PCs handle them when they reach godhood? I know Geoff's already told Isis where to get off, but surely she hasn't just left it at that?
Social powers have so many options and layers that this question is basically unanswerable (which is also why it's sat in the queue for so long - sorry, asker!). If you think about all the different things social characters can do to perpetrate shenanigans, encourage behavior and influence one another even as Heroes and Demigods, you already have an idea of how insane the scale must become when they get to the level of actual deities.
As we've talked about before, it's mostly fruitless to talk about "which god would win", because that's not only something that is nearly impossible to forecast thanks to all the variables and kinds of powers in play, it's also unlikely to come up because there are entire pantheons and relatives associated with them that know better than to let things get to that level. Actual outright conflict between gods is probably pretty rare, because it makes life miserable for everyone, not just the main members of the feud. As we said before, when Eshu and Loki get into a tiff, the world loses.
But social conflicts don't necessarily have to erupt into armed beatings - in fact, most of the time they probably don't, except in the rare cases of socially manipulative people who are not smart enough to realize what a bad idea that is. Instead, they look a lot more like terrible, terrible cold wars, where both sides play a game of vicious wizard's chess with all the people they know and can get their hands on as pieces. Social characters with Charisma will play Who's Your Daddy with everyone they know, always winning friends and allies away from others with sheer force of their awesomeness; whomever's actually in the room is probably winning, because Charisma requires that kind of up close and personal attention most of the time, but your friends can prevail on their friends and soon it's a chain of a bunch of people doing crazy things out of love for you just to stick it to the other guy. Characters with Manipulation, on the other hand, can weave their influence even more subtly, spreading evil rumors about you, convincing others that you want things you don't want, turning your friends and even relatives against you and laying curses and traps just waiting to trip you up.
One of the things about being Isis or Tezcatlipoca is that, yeah, you always get what you want - inside your own little pool, that is. Unless you're going up against someone with a truly heinous resistance score, your home pantheon-mates are probably mostly susceptible to your charms - you're the resident manipulator or major presence, after all. But when you branch out into the larger world of Scion and come up against other puppetmasters and leaders, it becomes an increasingly complex and insane web of possibilities, and there's no way to predict what would happen. Every new person, situation, alliance or enmity introduces new variables that could completely change what happens, and a feud between the same two gods could go off infinite different ways, like a multitude of parallel universes.
So the answer is really whatever your Storyteller can come up with. If Isis and Tezcatlipoca want to get into it, they're going to be in an insane, subtle, ongoing prank and influence war that might stretch anywhere from corrupting one anothers' cults to misdirecting one anothers' Scions to interfering in one anothers' family lives and everything else they think they can get away with. PCs trying to deal with it are going to find themselves embroiled, possibly even before they know it, and more often than not targeted. Hopefully they can play the game right back (or if not, survive its consequences).
As for Isis in our games... well, she and Geoff are not getting along. There's been kidnapping, violence, influencing other gods to attack one another, pantheon schisms and probably a whole lot more behind the scenes that the PCs aren't even aware she's up to. Recently, Jioni tried to pray at a temple to Isis to regain some Legend and everyone got attacked by members of the Centzonmimixcoa that Isis shanghai'd into striking against them, which led to a lot of heartbreak and screaming Aztec fury. That problem's probably not going to get fixed any time soon, but feuds between gods that last forever are one of the staples of mythology, so it only stands to reason that Scions pick some up as they go.
Social powers have so many options and layers that this question is basically unanswerable (which is also why it's sat in the queue for so long - sorry, asker!). If you think about all the different things social characters can do to perpetrate shenanigans, encourage behavior and influence one another even as Heroes and Demigods, you already have an idea of how insane the scale must become when they get to the level of actual deities.
As we've talked about before, it's mostly fruitless to talk about "which god would win", because that's not only something that is nearly impossible to forecast thanks to all the variables and kinds of powers in play, it's also unlikely to come up because there are entire pantheons and relatives associated with them that know better than to let things get to that level. Actual outright conflict between gods is probably pretty rare, because it makes life miserable for everyone, not just the main members of the feud. As we said before, when Eshu and Loki get into a tiff, the world loses.
But social conflicts don't necessarily have to erupt into armed beatings - in fact, most of the time they probably don't, except in the rare cases of socially manipulative people who are not smart enough to realize what a bad idea that is. Instead, they look a lot more like terrible, terrible cold wars, where both sides play a game of vicious wizard's chess with all the people they know and can get their hands on as pieces. Social characters with Charisma will play Who's Your Daddy with everyone they know, always winning friends and allies away from others with sheer force of their awesomeness; whomever's actually in the room is probably winning, because Charisma requires that kind of up close and personal attention most of the time, but your friends can prevail on their friends and soon it's a chain of a bunch of people doing crazy things out of love for you just to stick it to the other guy. Characters with Manipulation, on the other hand, can weave their influence even more subtly, spreading evil rumors about you, convincing others that you want things you don't want, turning your friends and even relatives against you and laying curses and traps just waiting to trip you up.
One of the things about being Isis or Tezcatlipoca is that, yeah, you always get what you want - inside your own little pool, that is. Unless you're going up against someone with a truly heinous resistance score, your home pantheon-mates are probably mostly susceptible to your charms - you're the resident manipulator or major presence, after all. But when you branch out into the larger world of Scion and come up against other puppetmasters and leaders, it becomes an increasingly complex and insane web of possibilities, and there's no way to predict what would happen. Every new person, situation, alliance or enmity introduces new variables that could completely change what happens, and a feud between the same two gods could go off infinite different ways, like a multitude of parallel universes.
So the answer is really whatever your Storyteller can come up with. If Isis and Tezcatlipoca want to get into it, they're going to be in an insane, subtle, ongoing prank and influence war that might stretch anywhere from corrupting one anothers' cults to misdirecting one anothers' Scions to interfering in one anothers' family lives and everything else they think they can get away with. PCs trying to deal with it are going to find themselves embroiled, possibly even before they know it, and more often than not targeted. Hopefully they can play the game right back (or if not, survive its consequences).
As for Isis in our games... well, she and Geoff are not getting along. There's been kidnapping, violence, influencing other gods to attack one another, pantheon schisms and probably a whole lot more behind the scenes that the PCs aren't even aware she's up to. Recently, Jioni tried to pray at a temple to Isis to regain some Legend and everyone got attacked by members of the Centzonmimixcoa that Isis shanghai'd into striking against them, which led to a lot of heartbreak and screaming Aztec fury. That problem's probably not going to get fixed any time soon, but feuds between gods that last forever are one of the staples of mythology, so it only stands to reason that Scions pick some up as they go.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Beast, Blood and Barbary
Question: Hey, so how come the giants and ghoul-beasts created by Jotunblut are so incredibly wimpy compared to Nemean or Typhonian Beasts created by Animal?
For a couple of reasons - balance and purpose, the best reasons any boons could have.
Firstly, they aren't equal levels of power because they aren't supposed to be. The purviews do fundamentally different kinds of things and represent fundamentally different mythological concepts, so it only stands to reason that they don't do the same thing. The Animal purview represents a god's powers over his chosen totem animal, allowing him to create and control specimens of it ranging anywhere from the normal and mundane to the enormous and undefeatable. Jotunblut, on the other hand, is about the Scion's ancestry as a child of giants, and the power of that giants-blood in her veins that can affect even mortal creatures with its savage ferocity.
We don't want Animal and Jotunblut to do the same things because of that difference in theme. Animal's meant to be about absolute mastery over animals of your chosen type, from the lowliest kitten to the most ferocious Typhonian jungle-cat, and as a result it has powers over animals that other purviews and powers simply can't duplicate. Animal should always be the top dog when it comes to beasts and power over them. Jotunblut, on the other hand, should be able to do things with animals as well as every other creature that can imbibe blood, but it's about granting power from your blood in a more generalized way. Fury and battlelust and strength, but not necessarily any more animalism than any other power.
Simple balance is also a major factor here. For one thing, Jotunblut is much more versatile than Animal; with the exception of Hounds of War, it can also be used on humans, lesser immortals, even your own bandmates, where Animal is restricted to only beasts (and before Protean Understanding, only a specific beast at that). Having the ability to buff anybody and everybody is an additional power that has to be taken into account when balancing against things that can't. And, of course, Jotunblut and Animal are stackable, so it would be insanely overpowered if both could grant the same giant bonus - since you can feed your blood to any animal, even if it's already Typhonian, and grant it bonuses, having the bonuses be the same would be creating double-Typhonian animals. Which would be flatly nuts.
Jotunblut's not intended to be a substitute for Animal; it can buff animals and does a good job with it when it does, but it doesn't replace having the superpowers of a real god of beasts. It has plenty of other powers in its bag of tricks; it allows Scions with the purview to do a whole bunch of other gianty business, and as a bonus allows them to do things with animals even if they're normally as beast-stupid as they come.
For a couple of reasons - balance and purpose, the best reasons any boons could have.
Firstly, they aren't equal levels of power because they aren't supposed to be. The purviews do fundamentally different kinds of things and represent fundamentally different mythological concepts, so it only stands to reason that they don't do the same thing. The Animal purview represents a god's powers over his chosen totem animal, allowing him to create and control specimens of it ranging anywhere from the normal and mundane to the enormous and undefeatable. Jotunblut, on the other hand, is about the Scion's ancestry as a child of giants, and the power of that giants-blood in her veins that can affect even mortal creatures with its savage ferocity.
We don't want Animal and Jotunblut to do the same things because of that difference in theme. Animal's meant to be about absolute mastery over animals of your chosen type, from the lowliest kitten to the most ferocious Typhonian jungle-cat, and as a result it has powers over animals that other purviews and powers simply can't duplicate. Animal should always be the top dog when it comes to beasts and power over them. Jotunblut, on the other hand, should be able to do things with animals as well as every other creature that can imbibe blood, but it's about granting power from your blood in a more generalized way. Fury and battlelust and strength, but not necessarily any more animalism than any other power.
Simple balance is also a major factor here. For one thing, Jotunblut is much more versatile than Animal; with the exception of Hounds of War, it can also be used on humans, lesser immortals, even your own bandmates, where Animal is restricted to only beasts (and before Protean Understanding, only a specific beast at that). Having the ability to buff anybody and everybody is an additional power that has to be taken into account when balancing against things that can't. And, of course, Jotunblut and Animal are stackable, so it would be insanely overpowered if both could grant the same giant bonus - since you can feed your blood to any animal, even if it's already Typhonian, and grant it bonuses, having the bonuses be the same would be creating double-Typhonian animals. Which would be flatly nuts.
Jotunblut's not intended to be a substitute for Animal; it can buff animals and does a good job with it when it does, but it doesn't replace having the superpowers of a real god of beasts. It has plenty of other powers in its bag of tricks; it allows Scions with the purview to do a whole bunch of other gianty business, and as a bonus allows them to do things with animals even if they're normally as beast-stupid as they come.
Eyes of the Heavens
Question: The Moon and Sun purviews, mostly Moon, feel really weak to me. I just feel like they are either too specified and nuanced in what they do or what they do just won't come up enough to be worth spending time learning those boons. Thoughts? Comments? Also, are these the purviews that your celestial boons adds/edits option is talking about in the latest poll?
Yep, Sun and Moon are among the celestial purviews we are talking about working on in the poll option. Stars and Darkness, as the other major powers in the heavens, are also included.
Well... honestly, we're not sure how to help you. Since you didn't explain why you think those purviews are weak or what you're comparing them to, it's hard to know what might be tripping you up or what options might help you. But we do love Sun and Moon, so we'll talk about how they're awesome and hopefully something will come out of that that you can use!
First of all, we wouldn't say the boons don't come up - far from it, really. One of our flagship characters, Sowiljr, has been abusing Sun for all it's worth since his wee Hero level days, and when Zwazo Fou Fou was alive he was a scourge to be feared with Moon. Sun's baseline abilities - shedding light, creating heat and enhancing the user's presence - are pretty much always great to have around, while Moon's powers that allow Scions to manipulate others and literally disappear are hella useful. Seldom do games go by in which characters with these boons don't use them; how effective they are depends on what they're doing, of course, but nobody's sitting around thinking, "Man, what a useless purview I bought."
Let's get into specifics, starting with Moon. Moon is a grab-bag of insanely (ha!) useful stuff, making it one of the most versatile and fun purviews out there; it's got more than enough to keep any reasonably creative Scion happy, and is generally one of the purviews envied by other players when they don't have it. Scions with Moon can inflict madness and Virtue Extremities on their enemies or heal them from their allies, vanish from sight and resist mental meddling, literally turn the tides of battle and at high levels inflict lasting curses and incredible cures as they see fit. Scions with Moon are forces to be feared, especially since so many of them are half-mad themselves; they hold exclusive powers over the mind that other Scions can't hope to compete with.
Scions with Sun, on the other hand, rely on the bright flashiness of their powers to stun, awe and overcome all who see them. They can inflict penalties from heat and blindness on enemies or bolster their allies with the gentle warmth of sunshine, enhance their own weapons and attacks with blistering heat and at high levels instantly decimate anything related to Darkness, see through the most potent disguises and super-cook anything in their vicinity with a thought. Control of the sun is one of the most beloved powers across all cultures' mythologies, and Scion's expressions of it retain that feeling of incredible power to enhance life or harm it.
And that's not even counting the ridiculously useful stuff like the Moon and Sun Chariots and Lunar Estate, which are so awesome and applicable to so many situations later in the game that the crying over not having access to them is like the wails of a thousand orphaned children in some of our games. If you don't want an awesome inviolate free moonbase where you run the entire show, I don't know what you do think is useful or neat.
Now, if you're talking about purely combat applications, as some players do, Sun and Moon are not the strongest purviews you could get for those purposes. They still have excellent combat applications here and there - Tidal Interference and Silver Blessing are already rocking it up in Moon for the fighters as early as Legend 3, while Sun's Flare Missile and Burn make solar Demigods fearsome on the battlefield indeed, not to mention the later insanity of Bleach - but they are not dedicated solely to the destruction of monsters. If you're just looking to buff your beating fists, you'll probably be happier picking up something like War or Animal.
How different Storytellers run their games is also a factor in how useful these purviews (or any others, for that matter) will be in your game. If your Storyteller never pays any attention to Virtues or runs Extremities as humorous asides that don't really affect anything, Moon's powers over insanity will of course be less potent than they would be in a game where the Storyteller enforces the madness of damaged Virtues. If your Storyteller never runs a story that involves vampires or werewolves or other creepy crawlies, the purviews' special abilities to destroy those things obviously aren't going to come up, and so on. Every Storyteller runs their game a little (or a lot) differently, so it's possible that yours might simply not be giving you very many opportunities to use your powers, which would be a bummer. If you feel like that's the case, go ahead and talk to him or her; explain that you think these powers are really neat but aren't being given a fair shake in the game, and see what they have to say. If they aren't going to change anything or dismiss the problem, then yeah, you'll probably want to just buy something else, but some Storytellers may not realize that's happening or may be interested in your ideas to make the powers pop more. You'll never know if you don't ask!
And, of course, in the end it's up to the player to take ownership of his powers and use them. If you buy a bunch of Sun boons and don't use them, then of course they're going to look useless; if your first instinct is always to find a different way to solve the problem or shine in a scene, then you probably aren't really interested in having these boons at all. If you never try to find creative ways to use boons and just sit around wondering when the Storyteller's going to hand you a platter marked USE MOON NOW, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities that you might have been able to sieze if you were on the ball. It's okay, of course, to not want to use these or any other purviews - maybe they just don't fit your play style or you enjoy something else more or you have specific goals in mind they don't cater to - but that's the case with all powers in the game. Every purview could be considered useless if you don't, you know, use it.
But all of those above are extenuating circumstances that can affect the purviews, not failures of the purviews themselves. Moon and Sun are not only useful, they're useful for a wide range of different character types - fighters who take advantange of their awesome buffs, social characters who use them to affect the hearts and minds of those around them, defensive characters who take advantage of the protections they award or tricksters and psychopaths who just want to watch the world burn and aren't afraid to inflict a little exhaustion, blindness and insanity to see it happen. And they're also really neat; Moon is a Swiss army knife of purview versatility with all kinds of cool powers that have different applications, and Sun is like an instant to-the-front-of-the-line set of powers for those who want to be front and center and noticed. They're not just adequate purviews, they're awesome purviews.
If you're out there, feel free to comment and let us know if you have specific problems that you've encountered using the purviews that we didn't cover. We'd love to help find a way for the celestial lights to be as awesome for your game as they are for ours!
Yep, Sun and Moon are among the celestial purviews we are talking about working on in the poll option. Stars and Darkness, as the other major powers in the heavens, are also included.
Well... honestly, we're not sure how to help you. Since you didn't explain why you think those purviews are weak or what you're comparing them to, it's hard to know what might be tripping you up or what options might help you. But we do love Sun and Moon, so we'll talk about how they're awesome and hopefully something will come out of that that you can use!
First of all, we wouldn't say the boons don't come up - far from it, really. One of our flagship characters, Sowiljr, has been abusing Sun for all it's worth since his wee Hero level days, and when Zwazo Fou Fou was alive he was a scourge to be feared with Moon. Sun's baseline abilities - shedding light, creating heat and enhancing the user's presence - are pretty much always great to have around, while Moon's powers that allow Scions to manipulate others and literally disappear are hella useful. Seldom do games go by in which characters with these boons don't use them; how effective they are depends on what they're doing, of course, but nobody's sitting around thinking, "Man, what a useless purview I bought."
Let's get into specifics, starting with Moon. Moon is a grab-bag of insanely (ha!) useful stuff, making it one of the most versatile and fun purviews out there; it's got more than enough to keep any reasonably creative Scion happy, and is generally one of the purviews envied by other players when they don't have it. Scions with Moon can inflict madness and Virtue Extremities on their enemies or heal them from their allies, vanish from sight and resist mental meddling, literally turn the tides of battle and at high levels inflict lasting curses and incredible cures as they see fit. Scions with Moon are forces to be feared, especially since so many of them are half-mad themselves; they hold exclusive powers over the mind that other Scions can't hope to compete with.
Scions with Sun, on the other hand, rely on the bright flashiness of their powers to stun, awe and overcome all who see them. They can inflict penalties from heat and blindness on enemies or bolster their allies with the gentle warmth of sunshine, enhance their own weapons and attacks with blistering heat and at high levels instantly decimate anything related to Darkness, see through the most potent disguises and super-cook anything in their vicinity with a thought. Control of the sun is one of the most beloved powers across all cultures' mythologies, and Scion's expressions of it retain that feeling of incredible power to enhance life or harm it.
And that's not even counting the ridiculously useful stuff like the Moon and Sun Chariots and Lunar Estate, which are so awesome and applicable to so many situations later in the game that the crying over not having access to them is like the wails of a thousand orphaned children in some of our games. If you don't want an awesome inviolate free moonbase where you run the entire show, I don't know what you do think is useful or neat.
Now, if you're talking about purely combat applications, as some players do, Sun and Moon are not the strongest purviews you could get for those purposes. They still have excellent combat applications here and there - Tidal Interference and Silver Blessing are already rocking it up in Moon for the fighters as early as Legend 3, while Sun's Flare Missile and Burn make solar Demigods fearsome on the battlefield indeed, not to mention the later insanity of Bleach - but they are not dedicated solely to the destruction of monsters. If you're just looking to buff your beating fists, you'll probably be happier picking up something like War or Animal.
How different Storytellers run their games is also a factor in how useful these purviews (or any others, for that matter) will be in your game. If your Storyteller never pays any attention to Virtues or runs Extremities as humorous asides that don't really affect anything, Moon's powers over insanity will of course be less potent than they would be in a game where the Storyteller enforces the madness of damaged Virtues. If your Storyteller never runs a story that involves vampires or werewolves or other creepy crawlies, the purviews' special abilities to destroy those things obviously aren't going to come up, and so on. Every Storyteller runs their game a little (or a lot) differently, so it's possible that yours might simply not be giving you very many opportunities to use your powers, which would be a bummer. If you feel like that's the case, go ahead and talk to him or her; explain that you think these powers are really neat but aren't being given a fair shake in the game, and see what they have to say. If they aren't going to change anything or dismiss the problem, then yeah, you'll probably want to just buy something else, but some Storytellers may not realize that's happening or may be interested in your ideas to make the powers pop more. You'll never know if you don't ask!
And, of course, in the end it's up to the player to take ownership of his powers and use them. If you buy a bunch of Sun boons and don't use them, then of course they're going to look useless; if your first instinct is always to find a different way to solve the problem or shine in a scene, then you probably aren't really interested in having these boons at all. If you never try to find creative ways to use boons and just sit around wondering when the Storyteller's going to hand you a platter marked USE MOON NOW, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities that you might have been able to sieze if you were on the ball. It's okay, of course, to not want to use these or any other purviews - maybe they just don't fit your play style or you enjoy something else more or you have specific goals in mind they don't cater to - but that's the case with all powers in the game. Every purview could be considered useless if you don't, you know, use it.
But all of those above are extenuating circumstances that can affect the purviews, not failures of the purviews themselves. Moon and Sun are not only useful, they're useful for a wide range of different character types - fighters who take advantange of their awesome buffs, social characters who use them to affect the hearts and minds of those around them, defensive characters who take advantage of the protections they award or tricksters and psychopaths who just want to watch the world burn and aren't afraid to inflict a little exhaustion, blindness and insanity to see it happen. And they're also really neat; Moon is a Swiss army knife of purview versatility with all kinds of cool powers that have different applications, and Sun is like an instant to-the-front-of-the-line set of powers for those who want to be front and center and noticed. They're not just adequate purviews, they're awesome purviews.
If you're out there, feel free to comment and let us know if you have specific problems that you've encountered using the purviews that we didn't cover. We'd love to help find a way for the celestial lights to be as awesome for your game as they are for ours!
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Exercise Your Liberties!
Apparently this week is just Announcements on the Blog Week. Every time John looks at the log and sees more than two posts a day, he starts yelling.
But this announcement is important anyway! As most of you have noticed, Blogger's built-in polls have been a royal mess lately; losing or eating votes, resetting at random moments, and generally doing a piss-poor job of actually giving us a good picture of what people are voting on. We've been looking for a good replacement for a while and haven't come up with one that we really love, but it's getting to the point where we wonder why we even bother with the Blogger ones. And if you think seeing your votes is annoying, imagine being the person (me) in the guts of the thing trying to figure out what it's stupid problem is.
So, anyway, we're going to try a new polling software for a bit. It's got a couple of major drawbacks, so we'll tell you about them up front: the first is that voting takes you to the poll's page, which is minorly annoying (although nothing a back button on your browser can't fix in under a second). The second is that that page sometimes has a popup ad, which we are very sorry about but which most computers theoretically ought to block for you automatically. The third is that you won't have the neat little bars on the blog itself telling you how the poll's progressing - you'll have to actually click on the View button to check out what others have voted for.
But it also has good things. The most important is that it is stable as bedrock - there won't be randomly disappearing votes or shifting numbers all the time, and that's the most important thing, because those are useless and we hate anybody feeling like their voice isn't being heard. It's also nice that it's a lot harder to cheat than the Blogger polls were, thus allowing John's rage at the internet to sink to a safer, less coronary-like level, and that it's a lot easier for me to tinker with behind the scenes. We'd like to find something in the future that does all of the above at once (without, you know, costing a zillion dollars), but until then, we're giving this a test run.
So come test with us! Your old votes on the Blogger polls are gone, but to be honest Blogger was eating them like a hungry man at an hors d'oevres table and we had no idea if any of them were accurate anymore. We apologize if you have to vote again, but invite you to do so anyway. Vote. For science. For mythology. For the joy of clicking buttons.
No goddamn technology is going to keep us down. Take that!
But this announcement is important anyway! As most of you have noticed, Blogger's built-in polls have been a royal mess lately; losing or eating votes, resetting at random moments, and generally doing a piss-poor job of actually giving us a good picture of what people are voting on. We've been looking for a good replacement for a while and haven't come up with one that we really love, but it's getting to the point where we wonder why we even bother with the Blogger ones. And if you think seeing your votes is annoying, imagine being the person (me) in the guts of the thing trying to figure out what it's stupid problem is.
So, anyway, we're going to try a new polling software for a bit. It's got a couple of major drawbacks, so we'll tell you about them up front: the first is that voting takes you to the poll's page, which is minorly annoying (although nothing a back button on your browser can't fix in under a second). The second is that that page sometimes has a popup ad, which we are very sorry about but which most computers theoretically ought to block for you automatically. The third is that you won't have the neat little bars on the blog itself telling you how the poll's progressing - you'll have to actually click on the View button to check out what others have voted for.
But it also has good things. The most important is that it is stable as bedrock - there won't be randomly disappearing votes or shifting numbers all the time, and that's the most important thing, because those are useless and we hate anybody feeling like their voice isn't being heard. It's also nice that it's a lot harder to cheat than the Blogger polls were, thus allowing John's rage at the internet to sink to a safer, less coronary-like level, and that it's a lot easier for me to tinker with behind the scenes. We'd like to find something in the future that does all of the above at once (without, you know, costing a zillion dollars), but until then, we're giving this a test run.
So come test with us! Your old votes on the Blogger polls are gone, but to be honest Blogger was eating them like a hungry man at an hors d'oevres table and we had no idea if any of them were accurate anymore. We apologize if you have to vote again, but invite you to do so anyway. Vote. For science. For mythology. For the joy of clicking buttons.
No goddamn technology is going to keep us down. Take that!
Half-Breeds
Question: Do you think that non-human Scions are viable characters? As PCs or as NPCs?
We think it depends on the needs of your game. It's a neat concept, but we haven't ever met a player who actually did much with it that he wouldn't have been doing with a human Scion anyway.
First of all, let's get our usual disagreement out of the way: Scions must be half-mortal, period. It is a massively important part of their Legend and makeup as divine heroes, and we are never going to allow Scions who are half alfar or half troll or half tengu or whatever other craziness people sometimes try to pull off. Not only is there no reason for it - there are loads of ways to work those creatures or their imagery into your backstory and flavor if you want to without making yourself randomly of a magical race, and of all games, Scion hardly needs help special-snowflaking its characters up! - but it directly detracts from the core conceit of Scion, which is beginning as a mortal and progressing to divinity through your actions and deeds. If a being is half god and half something that's not mortal, it's not a Scion (although it might be some other kind of semi-divine hero or creature). It was never mortal and can't be part of that heroic progression.
However, it is theoretically possible to have Scions who are half-mortal but were never human, because the option of creating Scions with mortal animals exists. If a god happened to want to roll on down to earth in the form of an animal (well, or anything else - gods are weird) and impregnate a normal animal, that animal's offspring would technically also be half-god and possibly a candidate for Scionhood.
Different Storytellers run with this in different ways. Some just disallow the concept off the bat, saying that humanity and humanity alone has the potential to become Scions, and that's a position that makes sense; animals don't follow the same rules as humans, don't create mythologies, don't tell stories of heroic deeds, don't generate Fatebonds and so on, so they're already not part of the usual paradigm when it comes to human interaction with the divine. There are occasional tales of animals that become divine - Monkey, who becomes Sun Wukong, is the most obvious if you don't want to use Scion's claim that he was a Titanspawn creature to begin with - but even those are only told by humans, to humans and for humans. The ability to create religion, after all, is a uniquely human trait, and the gods themselves are part of those religions.
But some Storytellers do run with the possibility of half-animal, half-god Scions, so if yours is down with it, that might be an option. Of course, there are a lot more inherent problems and complications with playing a Scion that isn't human; can your bandmates talk to you? How are you supposed to function in this totally alien society? Do you become humanoid, and if not, what other challenges await you? Are the gods ever going to take you seriously? Do you have Human Ken instead of Animal Ken? Does the Animal purview sort of not work for you half the time, or does your ST need to write a whole new Human purview for you to be able to do things? Are you, the player, even going to be able to roleplay this in an interesting and effective way, or is it just going to be either annoying for everyone or forgotten and played mostly the same way you'd play a human-based character? And so on and so forth.
But hey, if you're game for all that and your Storyteller is, too, we don't see anything necessarily wrong with playing a half-animal Scion. We probably wouldn't do it in our games without a really great pitch from a player, but it's still in the realm of the reasonable. We think of it as a little bit like playing a lupus werewolf in White Wolf's old Werewolf: The Apocalypse: not many people really do it, and those who do usually end up just playing exactly the same as if they'd played homid anyway, but in rare cases it might turn out to be really neat. Not a perfect metaphor since Werewolf's premise certainly lends itself to playing animals better than Scion's, but not out of the ballpark, either.
It'd be interesting to have players of the same god, but one from a human base and one from an animal. Not that there aren't always vast gulfs of difference between each character, even if they have the same parent, but that would be even more of a culture shock barrier, wouldn't it?
We think it depends on the needs of your game. It's a neat concept, but we haven't ever met a player who actually did much with it that he wouldn't have been doing with a human Scion anyway.
First of all, let's get our usual disagreement out of the way: Scions must be half-mortal, period. It is a massively important part of their Legend and makeup as divine heroes, and we are never going to allow Scions who are half alfar or half troll or half tengu or whatever other craziness people sometimes try to pull off. Not only is there no reason for it - there are loads of ways to work those creatures or their imagery into your backstory and flavor if you want to without making yourself randomly of a magical race, and of all games, Scion hardly needs help special-snowflaking its characters up! - but it directly detracts from the core conceit of Scion, which is beginning as a mortal and progressing to divinity through your actions and deeds. If a being is half god and half something that's not mortal, it's not a Scion (although it might be some other kind of semi-divine hero or creature). It was never mortal and can't be part of that heroic progression.
However, it is theoretically possible to have Scions who are half-mortal but were never human, because the option of creating Scions with mortal animals exists. If a god happened to want to roll on down to earth in the form of an animal (well, or anything else - gods are weird) and impregnate a normal animal, that animal's offspring would technically also be half-god and possibly a candidate for Scionhood.
Different Storytellers run with this in different ways. Some just disallow the concept off the bat, saying that humanity and humanity alone has the potential to become Scions, and that's a position that makes sense; animals don't follow the same rules as humans, don't create mythologies, don't tell stories of heroic deeds, don't generate Fatebonds and so on, so they're already not part of the usual paradigm when it comes to human interaction with the divine. There are occasional tales of animals that become divine - Monkey, who becomes Sun Wukong, is the most obvious if you don't want to use Scion's claim that he was a Titanspawn creature to begin with - but even those are only told by humans, to humans and for humans. The ability to create religion, after all, is a uniquely human trait, and the gods themselves are part of those religions.
But some Storytellers do run with the possibility of half-animal, half-god Scions, so if yours is down with it, that might be an option. Of course, there are a lot more inherent problems and complications with playing a Scion that isn't human; can your bandmates talk to you? How are you supposed to function in this totally alien society? Do you become humanoid, and if not, what other challenges await you? Are the gods ever going to take you seriously? Do you have Human Ken instead of Animal Ken? Does the Animal purview sort of not work for you half the time, or does your ST need to write a whole new Human purview for you to be able to do things? Are you, the player, even going to be able to roleplay this in an interesting and effective way, or is it just going to be either annoying for everyone or forgotten and played mostly the same way you'd play a human-based character? And so on and so forth.
But hey, if you're game for all that and your Storyteller is, too, we don't see anything necessarily wrong with playing a half-animal Scion. We probably wouldn't do it in our games without a really great pitch from a player, but it's still in the realm of the reasonable. We think of it as a little bit like playing a lupus werewolf in White Wolf's old Werewolf: The Apocalypse: not many people really do it, and those who do usually end up just playing exactly the same as if they'd played homid anyway, but in rare cases it might turn out to be really neat. Not a perfect metaphor since Werewolf's premise certainly lends itself to playing animals better than Scion's, but not out of the ballpark, either.
It'd be interesting to have players of the same god, but one from a human base and one from an animal. Not that there aren't always vast gulfs of difference between each character, even if they have the same parent, but that would be even more of a culture shock barrier, wouldn't it?
Untangling the Clans
Question: I wasn't gonna ask this, since you've been harassed by a lot of Welsh questions, but since it concerns the Irish as well, I figured I'd ask anyway. While Danu has 8 generations seperating her from the Irish gods, Don directly has children, and one of those children is Arianrhod, who in turn has Dylan and Lleu. So if Lleu and Lugh are the same god, should Lugh be treated as older than the rest of the Tuatha? And if thats the case, should he be treated as a member of the Welsh pantheon or the Irish?
Fucking Lugh. Every time.
As we all know, Celtic mythology is a clusterfuck; different Celtic peoples worshiped several of the same figures but told different stories about them, and when those stories include genealogy, everything goes straight to nTech Duinn in a handbasket. Lugh, according to the Irish, is the son of Ethniu and Cian, grandson of Balor and at least ten generations removed from Danu. But according to the Welsh, he's the son of Arianhrod, who is the daughter of Don, which is probably just Danu's Welsh name. To further add to the confusion, he's not the only one with this problem - Don is also the mother of Gofannon, better known to the Irish as Goibnhiu, one of the Tri Dee Dana and a bucket of generations away from the source as well, and of Eufydd, widely considered to be known as Ogma when you skip across the water, also a son of Ethniu in Ireland. And, of course, Irish Nuada is in Wales probably Llud Llaw Eraint, who's the son of Beli Mawr, who happens to be Arianhrod's dad and Don's consort and probably the same as the Gaulish Belenos, so somehow he's even higher in the genealogical chart but now not related to Don/Danu at all and possibly a Gaul.
Basically, Celtic mythology is drunk. Some Storytellers may simply choose to shrug and accept this, and that's a totally valid way of going about things. If your game doesn't have a pressing need for you to sit down and rearrange three different pantheons' worth of family trees and equivalencies, then for god's sake, don't do it.
For everyone else, however, the headache is only just beginning. With all this going on, it's not really surprising that the original Scion books just decided to sweep the Welsh gods under the Tuatha's rug and pretend they weren't an independent force, or that the Nemetondevos supplement just threw its hands up in the air via sidebar and said, "Yeah, well, Lugh can't be in every pantheon, deal with it." A lot of the decision-making surrounding who goes where and why and how far will depend on your game's needs; are your Scions(or your story) interested in playing with a bunch of different Celtic pantheons and their interrelations, or will that stuff just be extra or in the way? Is Wales going to be a major force in your story, or can you safely handwave some of this stuff? Do you have Scions from all three areas, and are the players themselves looking to explore any of this?
The golden rule is, of course, that when a god turns up in more than one pantheon, the pantheon in which he's most important and central should be considered his "home". Of course, Lugh is pissing all over that rule right now by being one of the main characters in all three of the Celtic pantheons, but for some of the smaller figures, you can pursue that line and do all right - for example, Eufydd is much less important in Welsh mythology than Ogma is in Ireland, so it would make more sense to declare that Ogma is a Tuatha god who sometimes visits and gets worshiped in Wales, not the other way around.
As for deciding who's senior to whom based on genealogy... well, as you can see, there are multiple options and none are really more "right" than the others. If you're primarily rolling with either the Irish or Welsh myths, you can ignore the genealogical claims of the other with impunity, but if you're using both, compromises are going to have to happen. The easiest thing to do is just to declare that the eight generations of Tuatha between Danu and her most famous children is a poetic device meaning "a really goddamn long time" instead of a literal number of people. Yeah, that means you're pretending that some of those gods whose names are listed in the Tuatha's historical lineage might not have existed, but since the vast majority of them never did anything and are known only as a name, that might be okay. If you don't like ignoring those poor disenfranchised ancestors, you might also consider that Danu keeps having children even several generations later, possibly with her own offspring, so that when Irish mythology says Nuada is the son of Eochaid and never mentions any woman involved, Danu herself might be the mother, continually procreating on down the tree. You could also rule that one or both of these pantheons is just straight lying about their heritage - either the Tuatha de Danann claiming they have many more generations than they actually do to give them legitimacy, particularly when it comes to their claim on Ireland, or that the Welsh gods are not actually as close to ancient Don as they say and are conveniently omitting some intervening gods to make themselves sound more important.
Lugh is still always the problem, though, because both of his birth stories are very strong and apparently contradictory. While there's a general theme in common - divine princess has accident baby, turns out to be Lugh - Ethniu, the Fomorian princess, doesn't have a lot in common with Arianhrod, as Welsh a goddess as they come. There you may simply need to make a choice about which one you want to use; we have no easy answer for you. As we said, Celtic mythology is drunk. Whichever you choose, treat him as having a family position appropriate to the myth you're running with.
Someday we'll make our own determination on all this and put it in a PDF, whenever we have a chance to really sink our teeth into the Welsh pantheon, but that day is not today. Which is probably good for our sanity.
Fucking Lugh. Every time.
As we all know, Celtic mythology is a clusterfuck; different Celtic peoples worshiped several of the same figures but told different stories about them, and when those stories include genealogy, everything goes straight to nTech Duinn in a handbasket. Lugh, according to the Irish, is the son of Ethniu and Cian, grandson of Balor and at least ten generations removed from Danu. But according to the Welsh, he's the son of Arianhrod, who is the daughter of Don, which is probably just Danu's Welsh name. To further add to the confusion, he's not the only one with this problem - Don is also the mother of Gofannon, better known to the Irish as Goibnhiu, one of the Tri Dee Dana and a bucket of generations away from the source as well, and of Eufydd, widely considered to be known as Ogma when you skip across the water, also a son of Ethniu in Ireland. And, of course, Irish Nuada is in Wales probably Llud Llaw Eraint, who's the son of Beli Mawr, who happens to be Arianhrod's dad and Don's consort and probably the same as the Gaulish Belenos, so somehow he's even higher in the genealogical chart but now not related to Don/Danu at all and possibly a Gaul.
Basically, Celtic mythology is drunk. Some Storytellers may simply choose to shrug and accept this, and that's a totally valid way of going about things. If your game doesn't have a pressing need for you to sit down and rearrange three different pantheons' worth of family trees and equivalencies, then for god's sake, don't do it.
For everyone else, however, the headache is only just beginning. With all this going on, it's not really surprising that the original Scion books just decided to sweep the Welsh gods under the Tuatha's rug and pretend they weren't an independent force, or that the Nemetondevos supplement just threw its hands up in the air via sidebar and said, "Yeah, well, Lugh can't be in every pantheon, deal with it." A lot of the decision-making surrounding who goes where and why and how far will depend on your game's needs; are your Scions(or your story) interested in playing with a bunch of different Celtic pantheons and their interrelations, or will that stuff just be extra or in the way? Is Wales going to be a major force in your story, or can you safely handwave some of this stuff? Do you have Scions from all three areas, and are the players themselves looking to explore any of this?
The golden rule is, of course, that when a god turns up in more than one pantheon, the pantheon in which he's most important and central should be considered his "home". Of course, Lugh is pissing all over that rule right now by being one of the main characters in all three of the Celtic pantheons, but for some of the smaller figures, you can pursue that line and do all right - for example, Eufydd is much less important in Welsh mythology than Ogma is in Ireland, so it would make more sense to declare that Ogma is a Tuatha god who sometimes visits and gets worshiped in Wales, not the other way around.
As for deciding who's senior to whom based on genealogy... well, as you can see, there are multiple options and none are really more "right" than the others. If you're primarily rolling with either the Irish or Welsh myths, you can ignore the genealogical claims of the other with impunity, but if you're using both, compromises are going to have to happen. The easiest thing to do is just to declare that the eight generations of Tuatha between Danu and her most famous children is a poetic device meaning "a really goddamn long time" instead of a literal number of people. Yeah, that means you're pretending that some of those gods whose names are listed in the Tuatha's historical lineage might not have existed, but since the vast majority of them never did anything and are known only as a name, that might be okay. If you don't like ignoring those poor disenfranchised ancestors, you might also consider that Danu keeps having children even several generations later, possibly with her own offspring, so that when Irish mythology says Nuada is the son of Eochaid and never mentions any woman involved, Danu herself might be the mother, continually procreating on down the tree. You could also rule that one or both of these pantheons is just straight lying about their heritage - either the Tuatha de Danann claiming they have many more generations than they actually do to give them legitimacy, particularly when it comes to their claim on Ireland, or that the Welsh gods are not actually as close to ancient Don as they say and are conveniently omitting some intervening gods to make themselves sound more important.
Lugh is still always the problem, though, because both of his birth stories are very strong and apparently contradictory. While there's a general theme in common - divine princess has accident baby, turns out to be Lugh - Ethniu, the Fomorian princess, doesn't have a lot in common with Arianhrod, as Welsh a goddess as they come. There you may simply need to make a choice about which one you want to use; we have no easy answer for you. As we said, Celtic mythology is drunk. Whichever you choose, treat him as having a family position appropriate to the myth you're running with.
Someday we'll make our own determination on all this and put it in a PDF, whenever we have a chance to really sink our teeth into the Welsh pantheon, but that day is not today. Which is probably good for our sanity.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Errata
Question: I noticed that in your Alihah writeup Whedh has no favoured or banned Purviews. Is that a typo, or a deliberate decision, considering what Whedh is the Titanrealm of?
Oh, damn, no! That's a mistake and the realm's associated and banned purviews should have been listed at the beginning like those of all other Titans. Allah's writeup and the Henosic template offer some clues, but I apologize for not including the official rulings.
Whedh's favored purviews are Chaos, Justice, Mystery and Psychopomp. Chaos and Psychopomp are the two purviews that break down barriers and encourage the chaotic recombination of everything and anything, which is of course Whedh's ultimate goal. Mystery does the same for knowledge, causing anyone to be able to learn anything regardless of experience or division, and Justice works for Whedh's uncompromising belief in unification and the ultimate order that it brings.
Whedh's banned purviews are Guardian and Magic. Guardian is all about placing boundaries and blocking things from going where and when they wish, anathema to Whedh's desire to destroy such restrictions, and Magic, as the purview that controls the restricting bonds and activities of Fate, does the same thing in the realm of the occult.
And speaking of mistakes, the Henosic template states that creatures using it suffer piercing damage from attacks against them made with the Justice and Magic purviews. This is incorrect; replace Justice with Guardian.
Gah, I hate it when mistakes make it into the PDFs. Sorry, everybody!
Oh, damn, no! That's a mistake and the realm's associated and banned purviews should have been listed at the beginning like those of all other Titans. Allah's writeup and the Henosic template offer some clues, but I apologize for not including the official rulings.
Whedh's favored purviews are Chaos, Justice, Mystery and Psychopomp. Chaos and Psychopomp are the two purviews that break down barriers and encourage the chaotic recombination of everything and anything, which is of course Whedh's ultimate goal. Mystery does the same for knowledge, causing anyone to be able to learn anything regardless of experience or division, and Justice works for Whedh's uncompromising belief in unification and the ultimate order that it brings.
Whedh's banned purviews are Guardian and Magic. Guardian is all about placing boundaries and blocking things from going where and when they wish, anathema to Whedh's desire to destroy such restrictions, and Magic, as the purview that controls the restricting bonds and activities of Fate, does the same thing in the realm of the occult.
And speaking of mistakes, the Henosic template states that creatures using it suffer piercing damage from attacks against them made with the Justice and Magic purviews. This is incorrect; replace Justice with Guardian.
Gah, I hate it when mistakes make it into the PDFs. Sorry, everybody!
Working in a Coal Mine
Hey, everybody!
Okay, so despite the incredibly fierce competition (seriously, I didn't look all day and then I was like holy cow why are there eighty-plus votes in here), we have a winner for the next pantheon writeup: the Polynesian gods, who eked out a photo-finish win with one vote more than the Australians. Both areas of the world are pretty big blind spots for Scion, and I can see you guys felt passionately about them. Don't worry, proponents of the gods down under - they'll have more chances!
However, I do want to tell you guys that we're going to be trying out a little more laid-back production schedule right now, at least for the first couple of months of the summer. Working on three different projects and a new pantheon and fiction has slowed the wheels on all of them, and some catchup time is in order. For the next little while, we'll be putting off starting on the Polynesian gods to give John more time to spend on things like mechanics and crafting and me some more time to focus on writing up fiction; the stories especially have fallen behind a lot, and we'd like to see Ragnarok get published some time before we've all died of old age, so I'm going to be dedicating as much time as I've got to cranking through the heroic adventures of our bands of unlikely protagonists. Hopefully, this will mean that we'll be seeing more than one new piece of fiction per month (dare I dream, two new pieces of fiction per month?!).
We won't forget about the Polynesians, of course. As soon as we feel like fiction's respectably caught up (not all the way to current events, but at least not still stuck in the dark ages of Demigod) or we get the itch to go for it, we'll start working on them. We're planning to start no later than mid-to-end of July unless something goes wrong, and to put all our fervor into it when we do.
In the meantime, thanks to all of you for voting, being awesome and cheering us on. You know we'd just write new pantheon supplements for you all day long if we could, but them pesky things called work and rent keep distracting us. New pantheon poll is up over to the right to start the wars over who'll be following Polynesia - you know what to do!
Okay, so despite the incredibly fierce competition (seriously, I didn't look all day and then I was like holy cow why are there eighty-plus votes in here), we have a winner for the next pantheon writeup: the Polynesian gods, who eked out a photo-finish win with one vote more than the Australians. Both areas of the world are pretty big blind spots for Scion, and I can see you guys felt passionately about them. Don't worry, proponents of the gods down under - they'll have more chances!
However, I do want to tell you guys that we're going to be trying out a little more laid-back production schedule right now, at least for the first couple of months of the summer. Working on three different projects and a new pantheon and fiction has slowed the wheels on all of them, and some catchup time is in order. For the next little while, we'll be putting off starting on the Polynesian gods to give John more time to spend on things like mechanics and crafting and me some more time to focus on writing up fiction; the stories especially have fallen behind a lot, and we'd like to see Ragnarok get published some time before we've all died of old age, so I'm going to be dedicating as much time as I've got to cranking through the heroic adventures of our bands of unlikely protagonists. Hopefully, this will mean that we'll be seeing more than one new piece of fiction per month (dare I dream, two new pieces of fiction per month?!).
We won't forget about the Polynesians, of course. As soon as we feel like fiction's respectably caught up (not all the way to current events, but at least not still stuck in the dark ages of Demigod) or we get the itch to go for it, we'll start working on them. We're planning to start no later than mid-to-end of July unless something goes wrong, and to put all our fervor into it when we do.
In the meantime, thanks to all of you for voting, being awesome and cheering us on. You know we'd just write new pantheon supplements for you all day long if we could, but them pesky things called work and rent keep distracting us. New pantheon poll is up over to the right to start the wars over who'll be following Polynesia - you know what to do!
The King Did Not Hang Himself
Question: Shango was the king of the Loa, but who rules the Orisha?
Still Shango!
Possible the most important thing about Shango is the fact that he is The King. Most of his myths revolve around his kingship, either threats to it, laws imposed by it or extending it to conquer other territories, and he absolutely suffers no challenges to his authority. In fact, Shango's identity as a monarch is so strong that that's the entire reason he was also considered king of the Loa, despite the fact that he's of lesser importance in some of the New World religions than he was in the ancient Yoruba one.
There are other figures of authority among the Orisha, of course. Ogun may not be king right now, but he was for a very brief period of time (or, at the very least, challenged Shango fairly evenly for it before giving it up) and has several stories in which the other Orisha ask him to take the throne, perhaps hoping he'd be less insane than Shango when it comes to divine administration. Obatala, whose most common epithet is King of the White Cloth, has never officially been the pantheon's leader but nevertheless wields enormous influence and political power as the oldest among the gods and the one who most often directly works for Olodumare. And Olodumare, of course, is the ultimate authority over the gods, though he doesn't directly rule or interact with them much and leaves questions of law and enforcement to his children to sort out for themselves.
Someone else is only going to get power over this pantheon by prying it from Shango's clenched and dead hands, and even then they'd probably better beware - he has a habit of getting back up after that sort of thing.
Still Shango!
Possible the most important thing about Shango is the fact that he is The King. Most of his myths revolve around his kingship, either threats to it, laws imposed by it or extending it to conquer other territories, and he absolutely suffers no challenges to his authority. In fact, Shango's identity as a monarch is so strong that that's the entire reason he was also considered king of the Loa, despite the fact that he's of lesser importance in some of the New World religions than he was in the ancient Yoruba one.
There are other figures of authority among the Orisha, of course. Ogun may not be king right now, but he was for a very brief period of time (or, at the very least, challenged Shango fairly evenly for it before giving it up) and has several stories in which the other Orisha ask him to take the throne, perhaps hoping he'd be less insane than Shango when it comes to divine administration. Obatala, whose most common epithet is King of the White Cloth, has never officially been the pantheon's leader but nevertheless wields enormous influence and political power as the oldest among the gods and the one who most often directly works for Olodumare. And Olodumare, of course, is the ultimate authority over the gods, though he doesn't directly rule or interact with them much and leaves questions of law and enforcement to his children to sort out for themselves.
Someone else is only going to get power over this pantheon by prying it from Shango's clenched and dead hands, and even then they'd probably better beware - he has a habit of getting back up after that sort of thing.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Guiding Light
Question: I had an idea for using Historical figure ghosts as Birthrights, the one problem I'm seeing is as they are "mortalish" it would be hard to justify upgrading them as the character transcends the status of Hero. Any justification you guys can think of to keep Homer for example relevant as Guide?
Guides can be really tricky. They provide useful information and guidance and are experts in their field, but at the same time they're distinct NPCs and have fairly static levels of power and knowledge, meaning most of them won't scale up their level of know-how as a Scion evolves.
First of all, we give all Guides an extra ability: they grant a small number of automatic successes (equal to the Guide's Birthright rating) to three purviews associated in some way with them. For example, Shmashana, a minor Deva associated with cemeteries and cremation, grants Faruza +3 successes to all boons in the Death, Health and Sky purviews; Faruza's close association with and guidance from a being that is so strongly aligned with death and the disposition of the dead gives her an advantage in using those boons. In Homer's case, if he were a three-dot Guide you could say that he grants bonuses to War (for his stirring preservation of the greatest battles of the Dodekatheon), Death (because he's a ghost and dispenses his wisdom from beyond the grave), and... well, I don't have a great suggestion for the third one because you picked a hard example, but you get the drift.
When it comes to the Guide's advice and ability to help Scions with knowledge, that question's a little harder, though. Guides who are already fairly high Legend - having Thoth for a Guide, for example, or some other god - will still have things to teach a Scion most of the way through her career, but mortal Guides don't have the luxury of coming from a higher level of knowledge. Homer would undoubtedly be a great help to his Scion while she was a Hero or even a Demigod, giving her insight into the workings of the Dodekatheon, the exploits of heroes gone before and the laws of ancient Greece, but once she's a goddess it's unlikely that he can tell her anything she doesn't already know.
There are a few things that can mitigate this. If your Scion happens to be fairly stupid (especially with Fatebonds against Intelligence, Academics, Occult or any combination thereof), she can probably still benefit from Homer's advice, even though other gods her level probably wouldn't (but at the same time, if she has smarter people in her band that probably won't come up much). You can also try to widen the scope of the Guide's information; if these are all ghosts of previous heroes or historical figures, they may have key information about the Underworlds they reside in that wouldn't be available to others. If you feel like a Scion's Guide is too useless, you may also want to include some important clue to the current situation that only they would know about, such as some thing they witnessed way back when they were alive, though you should make sure not to overuse that device since it can be frustrating if they don't think to ask the Guide and therefore can't move the plot along. Things may or may not be happening to or around the Guide during the course of your stories as well, so if they would have been in a position to learn important things about current events, you could call upon them for that (much as Vivian used to call her Guide, who she knew lived in the Overworld, to check on current events among her pantheon members).
Guides are a great Birthright because they're very freeform and give the Storyteller many opportunities for how to help the Scion who owns them, so we're always in favor of encouraging Scions to have and talk to them.
Guides can be really tricky. They provide useful information and guidance and are experts in their field, but at the same time they're distinct NPCs and have fairly static levels of power and knowledge, meaning most of them won't scale up their level of know-how as a Scion evolves.
First of all, we give all Guides an extra ability: they grant a small number of automatic successes (equal to the Guide's Birthright rating) to three purviews associated in some way with them. For example, Shmashana, a minor Deva associated with cemeteries and cremation, grants Faruza +3 successes to all boons in the Death, Health and Sky purviews; Faruza's close association with and guidance from a being that is so strongly aligned with death and the disposition of the dead gives her an advantage in using those boons. In Homer's case, if he were a three-dot Guide you could say that he grants bonuses to War (for his stirring preservation of the greatest battles of the Dodekatheon), Death (because he's a ghost and dispenses his wisdom from beyond the grave), and... well, I don't have a great suggestion for the third one because you picked a hard example, but you get the drift.
When it comes to the Guide's advice and ability to help Scions with knowledge, that question's a little harder, though. Guides who are already fairly high Legend - having Thoth for a Guide, for example, or some other god - will still have things to teach a Scion most of the way through her career, but mortal Guides don't have the luxury of coming from a higher level of knowledge. Homer would undoubtedly be a great help to his Scion while she was a Hero or even a Demigod, giving her insight into the workings of the Dodekatheon, the exploits of heroes gone before and the laws of ancient Greece, but once she's a goddess it's unlikely that he can tell her anything she doesn't already know.
There are a few things that can mitigate this. If your Scion happens to be fairly stupid (especially with Fatebonds against Intelligence, Academics, Occult or any combination thereof), she can probably still benefit from Homer's advice, even though other gods her level probably wouldn't (but at the same time, if she has smarter people in her band that probably won't come up much). You can also try to widen the scope of the Guide's information; if these are all ghosts of previous heroes or historical figures, they may have key information about the Underworlds they reside in that wouldn't be available to others. If you feel like a Scion's Guide is too useless, you may also want to include some important clue to the current situation that only they would know about, such as some thing they witnessed way back when they were alive, though you should make sure not to overuse that device since it can be frustrating if they don't think to ask the Guide and therefore can't move the plot along. Things may or may not be happening to or around the Guide during the course of your stories as well, so if they would have been in a position to learn important things about current events, you could call upon them for that (much as Vivian used to call her Guide, who she knew lived in the Overworld, to check on current events among her pantheon members).
Guides are a great Birthright because they're very freeform and give the Storyteller many opportunities for how to help the Scion who owns them, so we're always in favor of encouraging Scions to have and talk to them.
Fire & Water
Question: Concerning Chac Uayab Xoc: He does have the Devourer, but is forbidden to use Fire boons? That does not sound right.
Well... shit. Okay, let me explain how that happened.
Chac Uayab Xoc definitely always seemed like a Titan Avatar to me; he's large, he's angry, he eats everybody he can get away with, and he directly battles them sometimes (particularly Chaac and Itzamna, thanks to the idea of conflict between sea and sky at the horizon line).
Since the Great Demon Shark is... well, he's a great demon shark, and moreover he was believed to have control over the coasts and waters as well as all life inside them, the Drowned Road seemed like the obvious place to put him. And, among the other nastinesses he occasionally perpetrates, one of his stories involves him causing particularly spectacular sunsets by setting the sky on fire when he's fighting the gods, so Fire seemed obvious at well.
But, alas, what I forgot was that I was writing to try to fit the original Scion line's rules, and their Titanrealms have hard and fast exclusions for purviews in different Titanrealms. I statted Chac Uayab Xoc and then added the Drowned Road Titan template to him, and failed to notice that in the original books, Avatars of the Drowned Road are forbidden to have Fire.
Obviously, this is a problem. There are a few possibilities here, and the first is just to ignore that rule from the RAW and say that the Great Demon Shark can have whatever purviews he damn well pleases, because who's going to argue with those teeth? If you prefer the RAW models, however, you could also maybe decide that he has Sun instead of Fire, since the fire theoretically involved here is expressed as the sunset. And, of course, you could also just drop him in Legend and treat him as a very antagonistic god instead of a Titan Avatar, thus avoiding the entire Titan template problem altogether.
Jeez. The supplement's out for less than twelve hours and it's already full of goofs. I'm quitting.
Well... shit. Okay, let me explain how that happened.
Chac Uayab Xoc definitely always seemed like a Titan Avatar to me; he's large, he's angry, he eats everybody he can get away with, and he directly battles them sometimes (particularly Chaac and Itzamna, thanks to the idea of conflict between sea and sky at the horizon line).
Since the Great Demon Shark is... well, he's a great demon shark, and moreover he was believed to have control over the coasts and waters as well as all life inside them, the Drowned Road seemed like the obvious place to put him. And, among the other nastinesses he occasionally perpetrates, one of his stories involves him causing particularly spectacular sunsets by setting the sky on fire when he's fighting the gods, so Fire seemed obvious at well.
But, alas, what I forgot was that I was writing to try to fit the original Scion line's rules, and their Titanrealms have hard and fast exclusions for purviews in different Titanrealms. I statted Chac Uayab Xoc and then added the Drowned Road Titan template to him, and failed to notice that in the original books, Avatars of the Drowned Road are forbidden to have Fire.
Obviously, this is a problem. There are a few possibilities here, and the first is just to ignore that rule from the RAW and say that the Great Demon Shark can have whatever purviews he damn well pleases, because who's going to argue with those teeth? If you prefer the RAW models, however, you could also maybe decide that he has Sun instead of Fire, since the fire theoretically involved here is expressed as the sunset. And, of course, you could also just drop him in Legend and treat him as a very antagonistic god instead of a Titan Avatar, thus avoiding the entire Titan template problem altogether.
Jeez. The supplement's out for less than twelve hours and it's already full of goofs. I'm quitting.
Wikiedits
Question: So according to the White Wolf wiki: "A god may come before the Scion's mortal parent in any number of ways: as themselves, in the guise of a mortal, by possessing a mortal's body, or as another form." What's your rule about it here?
Um... it's the same as that one? We have no special rules about how gods get their freak on with mortals. They can do the wild thing however the spirit moves them.
In case there's some confusion here, that paragraph from the wiki is saying that gods don't have to look like themselves when coming among mortals for purposes of the banginating, but it's not granting them special magical powers outside of their usual ones. You don't suddenly gain shapeshifting or possession powers you didn't already have just because you need to go down to the World and start pumping out Scions; if you have those powers, sure, pretend to be a mortal, turn into an animal, show up in their swimming pool in liquid form or anything else you want, but if you don't, you're going as yourself. The paragraph's just trying to say that you can sleep with a mortal without them having any idea who or what you are if you so choose.
Incidentally, the "possessing a mortal's body" clause probably refers to Cheval, the old Loa PSP that we no longer use. Individual Storytellers will probably want to rule differently when it comes to whether or not that works; Cheval allows you to see through a mortal's eyes and direct their actions, but some Storytellers may rule that it's still a mortal's body and doesn't have any divine ichor to pass on to another mortal.
And, as always, remember that the wiki is public property and can be edited by anyone. Anything it says has been added by someone with their own interpretation or agenda, so never feel like you have to obey it.
Um... it's the same as that one? We have no special rules about how gods get their freak on with mortals. They can do the wild thing however the spirit moves them.
In case there's some confusion here, that paragraph from the wiki is saying that gods don't have to look like themselves when coming among mortals for purposes of the banginating, but it's not granting them special magical powers outside of their usual ones. You don't suddenly gain shapeshifting or possession powers you didn't already have just because you need to go down to the World and start pumping out Scions; if you have those powers, sure, pretend to be a mortal, turn into an animal, show up in their swimming pool in liquid form or anything else you want, but if you don't, you're going as yourself. The paragraph's just trying to say that you can sleep with a mortal without them having any idea who or what you are if you so choose.
Incidentally, the "possessing a mortal's body" clause probably refers to Cheval, the old Loa PSP that we no longer use. Individual Storytellers will probably want to rule differently when it comes to whether or not that works; Cheval allows you to see through a mortal's eyes and direct their actions, but some Storytellers may rule that it's still a mortal's body and doesn't have any divine ichor to pass on to another mortal.
And, as always, remember that the wiki is public property and can be edited by anyone. Anything it says has been added by someone with their own interpretation or agenda, so never feel like you have to obey it.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Gods of Many Faces
They've been a long time coming, but here they are, post-2012 and still going strong: the K'uh, gods of the ancient Maya, fully written up and ready for download!
This is one of the longest pantheon expansions yet; is it because there are tons of intricate Maya gods and legends to cover? Because their cosmology lends itself to Scion's so extensively? Because I'm totally biased toward Mesoamerican mythology? I don't know, but they're rocking a super fancy new PSP, a Titanrealm full of terrible nasties and a group of gods as vibrant and changeable as the world itself. We hope you all enjoy them, and as always, we're happy to answer any questions about them you may have!
Normally I would go flop down on my face in exhaustion now, but there's a very important detail to take care of: the next new pantheon to get a writeup. As some of you may have noticed, our polls over to the right have been experiencing technical difficulties lately, with the result being that an unknown number of votes - as far as I can tell, anywhere between 20 and 50 - were lost at some point. The two frontrunners have been neck and neck, and since we're not sure which one of them legitimately won thanks to the glitches, we're holding a tiebreaker round, right here, right now. For the next twenty-four hours, we're running this tie-breaker poll. Vote, ye the people.
Which will it be - the many-colored and primordial gods of Australia's Dreamtime, or the watery gods of storm and life in the Polynesian islands?
By the way, I'll be updating the fiddly bits post in a few minutes with the details on the K'uh, so stay tuned. Go go new gods and powers!
EDIT: Just uploaded a new version that doesn't have a repeated page and confusing legacy text hidden behind a sidebar. Thanks for catching those, everybody!
This is one of the longest pantheon expansions yet; is it because there are tons of intricate Maya gods and legends to cover? Because their cosmology lends itself to Scion's so extensively? Because I'm totally biased toward Mesoamerican mythology? I don't know, but they're rocking a super fancy new PSP, a Titanrealm full of terrible nasties and a group of gods as vibrant and changeable as the world itself. We hope you all enjoy them, and as always, we're happy to answer any questions about them you may have!
Normally I would go flop down on my face in exhaustion now, but there's a very important detail to take care of: the next new pantheon to get a writeup. As some of you may have noticed, our polls over to the right have been experiencing technical difficulties lately, with the result being that an unknown number of votes - as far as I can tell, anywhere between 20 and 50 - were lost at some point. The two frontrunners have been neck and neck, and since we're not sure which one of them legitimately won thanks to the glitches, we're holding a tiebreaker round, right here, right now. For the next twenty-four hours, we're running this tie-breaker poll. Vote, ye the people.
Which will it be - the many-colored and primordial gods of Australia's Dreamtime, or the watery gods of storm and life in the Polynesian islands?
By the way, I'll be updating the fiddly bits post in a few minutes with the details on the K'uh, so stay tuned. Go go new gods and powers!
EDIT: Just uploaded a new version that doesn't have a repeated page and confusing legacy text hidden behind a sidebar. Thanks for catching those, everybody!
Animal Army
Question: So do Animal gods have a lot of Typhonian creatures? Are they surrounded by lots of colossal beasts?
Well, they certainly could be! Animal-aligned gods who are at least Legend 11 and purchase the appropriate boon have the ability to create Typhonian beasts to do their bidding, engendering massive monsters that obey no law except that of the god who made them. If an animalistic god wants to, he can surround himself with beastly creatures to his heart's content.
Not every Animal god will necessarily do that, however. Typhonian creatures cost a lot to create, and once they're in existence they need upkeep like all other kinds of animals. They need somewhere to live and something to eat, not to mention room to indulge their natural instincts, and as much larger-scale monsters than normal animals all those needs are also accordingly larger-scale. They can't just be unleashed on the World, which can't handle them, or on an Overworld proper, where all the other gods may not appreciate a rampaging Typhonian crocodile eating everyone's servants at random, so they normally end up confined to Terrae Incognita, individual gods' Sanctums or Titanrealms. Some gods also probably just don't feel the need to have large entourages of beasts, expressing their connection to the bestial through their own actions and appearance, or prefer to keep lesser-Legend beasts like Nemean or even normal animals, which are more manageable.
Gods might take Typhonian creatures around with them when they do things, but are likely not to take too many at a time, since it would be difficult to control them all at once and they tend to take up a lot of space and cause a lot of property damage. If they're just hanging out in their Sanctums, though, it's totally plausible that many of them might have tons of Nemean or Typhonian creatures lounging around or descending on unwary intruders.
We do want to mention that it's also technically possible to be an Animal god who can't create Typhonian creatures; if you're less than Legend 11 you don't have access to that boon yet, and even if you are Legend 11, you could theoretically have Protean Understanding instead and avoid buying the Typhonian boon entirely if you also had no Fatebonds working on it for you. But that's probably rare; most Animal gods are almost certainly able to do it, so whether or not they do depends on whether they want to spend their resources on it and what their personal preferences might be.
Well, they certainly could be! Animal-aligned gods who are at least Legend 11 and purchase the appropriate boon have the ability to create Typhonian beasts to do their bidding, engendering massive monsters that obey no law except that of the god who made them. If an animalistic god wants to, he can surround himself with beastly creatures to his heart's content.
Not every Animal god will necessarily do that, however. Typhonian creatures cost a lot to create, and once they're in existence they need upkeep like all other kinds of animals. They need somewhere to live and something to eat, not to mention room to indulge their natural instincts, and as much larger-scale monsters than normal animals all those needs are also accordingly larger-scale. They can't just be unleashed on the World, which can't handle them, or on an Overworld proper, where all the other gods may not appreciate a rampaging Typhonian crocodile eating everyone's servants at random, so they normally end up confined to Terrae Incognita, individual gods' Sanctums or Titanrealms. Some gods also probably just don't feel the need to have large entourages of beasts, expressing their connection to the bestial through their own actions and appearance, or prefer to keep lesser-Legend beasts like Nemean or even normal animals, which are more manageable.
Gods might take Typhonian creatures around with them when they do things, but are likely not to take too many at a time, since it would be difficult to control them all at once and they tend to take up a lot of space and cause a lot of property damage. If they're just hanging out in their Sanctums, though, it's totally plausible that many of them might have tons of Nemean or Typhonian creatures lounging around or descending on unwary intruders.
We do want to mention that it's also technically possible to be an Animal god who can't create Typhonian creatures; if you're less than Legend 11 you don't have access to that boon yet, and even if you are Legend 11, you could theoretically have Protean Understanding instead and avoid buying the Typhonian boon entirely if you also had no Fatebonds working on it for you. But that's probably rare; most Animal gods are almost certainly able to do it, so whether or not they do depends on whether they want to spend their resources on it and what their personal preferences might be.
The Course of True Love
Question: I don't know if you play DOTA, or even know of it, but Zeus is a character in it. In DOTA, he's fighting other, lesser creature, and since its a game they can fight back. The explanation for this is that Hera, sick of his sleeping around, turns him into a mortal (but he still has some power) until such time as he learns to be faithful. So, thoughts, opinions? Why or why not would this be able to happen? Personally, I thought that his brothers would get PISSED and stop her, but I don't know for sure.
Heh, we know the DOTA (Defense of the Ancients, for those who don't, a battle mod for online multiplayer in Warcraft III). We're old WC3 players ourselves, and now John is dancing around the room singing about it.
While the Lord of Heaven is totally awesome to have on a DOTA team, we wouldn't duplicate his circumstances in Scion for a few reasons. The most important one is that we feel strongly that there should not be powers in the game that can drop someone Legend permanently, no matter who's doing it or why. It would be horrendously overbalanced, being immediately the most powerful ability in the entire game (Death of the Soul is already bananas, and it can only do this to gods for a few ticks!), capable of instantly rendering any and every god or Scion murderable, controllable and comparatively helpless when dealing with foes of his former Legend or higher. When your Legend is taken away, you lose all your powers and innate abilities that are higher than that current Legend, representing not just an insane loss of XP but a massive and incontrovertible drop to where you are literally incapable of dealing with the people and problems you know anymore. The gods that had the power to drop others' Legend would outright rule the world with no competition except for one another, and everyone else would be at their depressing mercy.
It's a case where one of the golden rules of roleplaying comes into play: is this something that you would find absolutely horrible, unfair or grounds for immediately quitting the game if it happened to your character? If so, it should not be in the game at all, because if it is, at some point it might happen to the PCs. If you can't look your player in the eye and say, "Sorry, bud, you drop from Legend 10 to 4 permanently and lose all your powers," it probably shouldn't be an option for things that can happen to NPCs, either. On top of that, we don't think losing Legend dots from any agency other than your own actions makes much sense in Scion's setting; Legend isn't just your power stat but also represents your importance to the World and its religions, the strength of your renown and stories, and the general effect you have on the universe as a whole. Dropping your Legend means erasing your renown and power in mythology from the universe itself, and it runs counter to the entire idea of Legend as the measure of a god's existence.
That doesn't mean this scenario couldn't happen in Scion, though, just that we would probably operate it differently. Zeus can presumably drop his own Legend and stay lower-powered indefinitely if he has the Avatar Birthright, so the easiest assumption here is that he's the one keeping himself at a lower Legend rating. This is a marital spat, after all, and while the king and queen of Olympus don't have them very often, they're legendarily disruptive when they do; Hera might simply have kicked him out until he proved he could behave himself, and he's trying to do that to appease her. If that doesn't feel like enough to convince him to give up the comfy throne for a while (which is reasonable - he presumably has a lot to do, and while he's very fond of Hera he also sometimes gets pissed off rather than apologizing for his shenanigans), Hera could enforce his desire to do these things with some of her own powers. Demand a Labor would make it in Zeus' best interests to prove his love to his wife because it would be very difficult for him to get anything else done before he did, and it would be a simple thing for Hera to hit him with any number of unpleasant, crippling or painful Justice boons, refusing to grant him a Pardon until he earned it.
Of course, this would be a very bad idea while the gods are busy trying to fight a war against high-powered enemies, but love (and Virtues) sometimes makes people do crazy things. As for Hades and Poseidon, I could see them being peeved if Zeus being AWOL interferes with their own plans or makes the defense of Olympus more difficult, but as a generality I imagine they probably wouldn't care about whether or not Hera is inflicting marital vengeance on her husband. They don't have Loyalty and aren't really big on interfering in their brothers' affairs, so they'd be most likely to shake their heads and ignore it unless it started causing them personal problems. There's also a possibility that they'd get up to more shenanigans of their own than usual, too - with Zeus, the only dude in their pantheon who can really try to argue with them about anything, out of commission, now's the perfect time for power plays or vengeance gambits that might not normally be worth it.
I think Zeus' absence and the PCs' actions, either to help him succeed or try to get things done in his absence, could be a lot of fun as the foundation plot for a chronicle. You could call it "When Mama Ain't Happy."
Heh, we know the DOTA (Defense of the Ancients, for those who don't, a battle mod for online multiplayer in Warcraft III). We're old WC3 players ourselves, and now John is dancing around the room singing about it.
While the Lord of Heaven is totally awesome to have on a DOTA team, we wouldn't duplicate his circumstances in Scion for a few reasons. The most important one is that we feel strongly that there should not be powers in the game that can drop someone Legend permanently, no matter who's doing it or why. It would be horrendously overbalanced, being immediately the most powerful ability in the entire game (Death of the Soul is already bananas, and it can only do this to gods for a few ticks!), capable of instantly rendering any and every god or Scion murderable, controllable and comparatively helpless when dealing with foes of his former Legend or higher. When your Legend is taken away, you lose all your powers and innate abilities that are higher than that current Legend, representing not just an insane loss of XP but a massive and incontrovertible drop to where you are literally incapable of dealing with the people and problems you know anymore. The gods that had the power to drop others' Legend would outright rule the world with no competition except for one another, and everyone else would be at their depressing mercy.
It's a case where one of the golden rules of roleplaying comes into play: is this something that you would find absolutely horrible, unfair or grounds for immediately quitting the game if it happened to your character? If so, it should not be in the game at all, because if it is, at some point it might happen to the PCs. If you can't look your player in the eye and say, "Sorry, bud, you drop from Legend 10 to 4 permanently and lose all your powers," it probably shouldn't be an option for things that can happen to NPCs, either. On top of that, we don't think losing Legend dots from any agency other than your own actions makes much sense in Scion's setting; Legend isn't just your power stat but also represents your importance to the World and its religions, the strength of your renown and stories, and the general effect you have on the universe as a whole. Dropping your Legend means erasing your renown and power in mythology from the universe itself, and it runs counter to the entire idea of Legend as the measure of a god's existence.
That doesn't mean this scenario couldn't happen in Scion, though, just that we would probably operate it differently. Zeus can presumably drop his own Legend and stay lower-powered indefinitely if he has the Avatar Birthright, so the easiest assumption here is that he's the one keeping himself at a lower Legend rating. This is a marital spat, after all, and while the king and queen of Olympus don't have them very often, they're legendarily disruptive when they do; Hera might simply have kicked him out until he proved he could behave himself, and he's trying to do that to appease her. If that doesn't feel like enough to convince him to give up the comfy throne for a while (which is reasonable - he presumably has a lot to do, and while he's very fond of Hera he also sometimes gets pissed off rather than apologizing for his shenanigans), Hera could enforce his desire to do these things with some of her own powers. Demand a Labor would make it in Zeus' best interests to prove his love to his wife because it would be very difficult for him to get anything else done before he did, and it would be a simple thing for Hera to hit him with any number of unpleasant, crippling or painful Justice boons, refusing to grant him a Pardon until he earned it.
Of course, this would be a very bad idea while the gods are busy trying to fight a war against high-powered enemies, but love (and Virtues) sometimes makes people do crazy things. As for Hades and Poseidon, I could see them being peeved if Zeus being AWOL interferes with their own plans or makes the defense of Olympus more difficult, but as a generality I imagine they probably wouldn't care about whether or not Hera is inflicting marital vengeance on her husband. They don't have Loyalty and aren't really big on interfering in their brothers' affairs, so they'd be most likely to shake their heads and ignore it unless it started causing them personal problems. There's also a possibility that they'd get up to more shenanigans of their own than usual, too - with Zeus, the only dude in their pantheon who can really try to argue with them about anything, out of commission, now's the perfect time for power plays or vengeance gambits that might not normally be worth it.
I think Zeus' absence and the PCs' actions, either to help him succeed or try to get things done in his absence, could be a lot of fun as the foundation plot for a chronicle. You could call it "When Mama Ain't Happy."
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Eyes Full of Light
Question: Are there no sun or moon gods among the Orisha? Were they not important to the Yoruba, or not prominent enough to feature as PC parents?
Actually, there really aren't. There is no Huitzilopochtli among the Yoruba gods, nor is there an Orisha equivalent to Artemis. It's an apparent omission that baffled scholars studying the religion early in the nineteenth century, especially the crazy ones who were convinced that the Yoruba religion must have grown out of the Egyptian one but who couldn't figure out where Ra and Horus disappeared to. The sun and the moon are certainly important, the way they are for most human cultures, but they don't have dedicated deities of their own.
One of the reasons the lights in the heavens don't get their own deities is that they're assumed to be the purview of Olodumare, the great father-god of the Orisha. Olodumare created sun, moon and stars and, as the lights in the vault of heaven, they are controlled and owned by him as the great primordial sky god. None of the Orisha can really compete with the big man when it comes to the affairs of the sky; even Shango is only in charge of storms, not the sky in which they rage.
The only myth we know of that directly involves someone other than Olodumare affecting the sun or moon is about Obatala, which isn't surprising since he's the second-most powerful creator deity in the pantheon. In that story, Obatala consecrates a sacred tree, turns it into sparkling metal and sends it off to Ogun to have it fashioned into a pot. He then puts the pot into a boat with his slave (possibly the same slave that once tried to kill him with a rock) and sends him to fly it back and forth to the earth each day, driving a solar boat for the rest of time. Based on that story, Obatala's the only one close to having Sun, but it's still a bit fishy - Ogun's crafting abilities are also involved and the slave is technically the guy actually doing the sun-driving - and we ended up deciding that it might not be quite strong enough on its own since the god has no whisper of solar connotations in any other story or cult practice.
Our only other possibility is Shango, who at some point during the religion's evolution was syncretized with a neighboring culture's deity named Jakuta who some scholars believe might have originally been solar in nature. Shango has of course lost that association almost completely at this point, but you could decide that he might have a few boons from the purview still kicking around.
It is surprising to see a culture that really doesn't do much in the way of direct veneration of the celestial bodies, especially sun-worship, which is nearly ubiquitous across a great number of different cultures. But every mythology is different, and in the case of the Yoruba there's no direct person representing for the sun or moon. Instead, everyone is covered in water, dirt and plants, and that's how the gods of western Africa roll.
Actually, there really aren't. There is no Huitzilopochtli among the Yoruba gods, nor is there an Orisha equivalent to Artemis. It's an apparent omission that baffled scholars studying the religion early in the nineteenth century, especially the crazy ones who were convinced that the Yoruba religion must have grown out of the Egyptian one but who couldn't figure out where Ra and Horus disappeared to. The sun and the moon are certainly important, the way they are for most human cultures, but they don't have dedicated deities of their own.
One of the reasons the lights in the heavens don't get their own deities is that they're assumed to be the purview of Olodumare, the great father-god of the Orisha. Olodumare created sun, moon and stars and, as the lights in the vault of heaven, they are controlled and owned by him as the great primordial sky god. None of the Orisha can really compete with the big man when it comes to the affairs of the sky; even Shango is only in charge of storms, not the sky in which they rage.
The only myth we know of that directly involves someone other than Olodumare affecting the sun or moon is about Obatala, which isn't surprising since he's the second-most powerful creator deity in the pantheon. In that story, Obatala consecrates a sacred tree, turns it into sparkling metal and sends it off to Ogun to have it fashioned into a pot. He then puts the pot into a boat with his slave (possibly the same slave that once tried to kill him with a rock) and sends him to fly it back and forth to the earth each day, driving a solar boat for the rest of time. Based on that story, Obatala's the only one close to having Sun, but it's still a bit fishy - Ogun's crafting abilities are also involved and the slave is technically the guy actually doing the sun-driving - and we ended up deciding that it might not be quite strong enough on its own since the god has no whisper of solar connotations in any other story or cult practice.
Our only other possibility is Shango, who at some point during the religion's evolution was syncretized with a neighboring culture's deity named Jakuta who some scholars believe might have originally been solar in nature. Shango has of course lost that association almost completely at this point, but you could decide that he might have a few boons from the purview still kicking around.
It is surprising to see a culture that really doesn't do much in the way of direct veneration of the celestial bodies, especially sun-worship, which is nearly ubiquitous across a great number of different cultures. But every mythology is different, and in the case of the Yoruba there's no direct person representing for the sun or moon. Instead, everyone is covered in water, dirt and plants, and that's how the gods of western Africa roll.
Interview Questions
Question: We all have weaknesses. What is John's biggest weakness as a Storyteller? What is Anne's biggest weakness as a player?
Well... when we're in games together, the answer is usually "each other". John and I have been together a long time and know each other well, which means that we sometimes forget the usual rules about interacting at a gaming table. I tend to question John a lot more than I would most Storytellers, since I work with him a lot behind the scenes and am used to a cooperative idea-bouncing model instead of the iron control an ST needs to have during the game itself, which can frustrate him a lot. Conversely, he's harder on me than he would be on most players, which sometimes irritates me when he assumes I know something from background work that I might not or snaps at me for not paying enough attention when he'd have let the same behavior go in another player. We've pretty much given up on both being players in the same game unless we're allied; we're not good at convincingly lying to or manipulating each other and neither of us will stop shy of murdering the other person in the pursuit of in-character goals, so it's usually better to avoid the heartbreak and play people who at least vaguely get along with one another. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least patterns and expectations that aren't always quite in line with good RPG practice, so we sometimes ping off each other but try our best not to let things get weird for everyone else.
When not talking about the two of us bothering each other, though, we do still have our weaknesses. John has an infallible memory when it comes to game stuff and makes leaps of intuition very easily, so he occasionally forgets that players may not remember that plot point from six months ago or be surprised that they haven't yet unraveled a puzzle that he didn't provide any clues to. He also tells me he sometimes has trouble reining in a player that has gone off the rails for too long; he doesn't mind letting players do their own thing or drive the story somewhere surprising, but when one player dives off to do something insane and eats up four other peoples' time for too many hours, he sometimes finds it challenging to get everyone back on track. As for me as a player, I spectate too much sometimes, getting so caught up in what others are doing that when it comes around to my turn to take an action I haven't prepared as well as I could have. I also sometimes let character motivations overrun game sense when they're especially strong, and have been known to refuse to do things that my character wouldn't do even when I know it would speed the scene up or help other characters that are struggling.
I'm sure our players will jump in and find other things to complain about us, but those are the ones that stick out as the biggest ones to us. We like to think we don't overdo any of them, but like everyone else, we could always be better.
Well... when we're in games together, the answer is usually "each other". John and I have been together a long time and know each other well, which means that we sometimes forget the usual rules about interacting at a gaming table. I tend to question John a lot more than I would most Storytellers, since I work with him a lot behind the scenes and am used to a cooperative idea-bouncing model instead of the iron control an ST needs to have during the game itself, which can frustrate him a lot. Conversely, he's harder on me than he would be on most players, which sometimes irritates me when he assumes I know something from background work that I might not or snaps at me for not paying enough attention when he'd have let the same behavior go in another player. We've pretty much given up on both being players in the same game unless we're allied; we're not good at convincingly lying to or manipulating each other and neither of us will stop shy of murdering the other person in the pursuit of in-character goals, so it's usually better to avoid the heartbreak and play people who at least vaguely get along with one another. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least patterns and expectations that aren't always quite in line with good RPG practice, so we sometimes ping off each other but try our best not to let things get weird for everyone else.
When not talking about the two of us bothering each other, though, we do still have our weaknesses. John has an infallible memory when it comes to game stuff and makes leaps of intuition very easily, so he occasionally forgets that players may not remember that plot point from six months ago or be surprised that they haven't yet unraveled a puzzle that he didn't provide any clues to. He also tells me he sometimes has trouble reining in a player that has gone off the rails for too long; he doesn't mind letting players do their own thing or drive the story somewhere surprising, but when one player dives off to do something insane and eats up four other peoples' time for too many hours, he sometimes finds it challenging to get everyone back on track. As for me as a player, I spectate too much sometimes, getting so caught up in what others are doing that when it comes around to my turn to take an action I haven't prepared as well as I could have. I also sometimes let character motivations overrun game sense when they're especially strong, and have been known to refuse to do things that my character wouldn't do even when I know it would speed the scene up or help other characters that are struggling.
I'm sure our players will jump in and find other things to complain about us, but those are the ones that stick out as the biggest ones to us. We like to think we don't overdo any of them, but like everyone else, we could always be better.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Grimm Tidings
Vlog time again! We continue our Greatest Hits of the Inbox series (and may for a few more until we've gotten the number of questions under control again). Today, Titans and warriors and Yazata, oh my!
Question: If a Yazata Scion has Ashavan for Guardian and summons his Amesha Spenta, who then activates Unseen Shield, does he need to remain non-violent for the shield to function if he's not in it? Similarly, does a Stars Amesha Spenta need to see the stars?
Question: Is Olodumare a god or a Titan? And how can he be the greatest creator and power in the universe if his children like Eshu and Oshun keep punking him?
Question: Have you watched "Grimm"? If so, please give us your opinion of it and how the Grimms might fit into the Scion setting (I think they would fit better in Changeling, but I'm not the only one here). If not, please watch it, it is a neat series.
Question: Are there Titans or Titan Avatars that are sympathetic toward mortals, even if they battle against the gods?
Question: My Storyteller wants to divide the War purview into two separate paths (like the Health purview). I've told him it would be easier just to write two separate Avatars, but he's determined. Any advice?
Yay videos and productivity!
Question: If a Yazata Scion has Ashavan for Guardian and summons his Amesha Spenta, who then activates Unseen Shield, does he need to remain non-violent for the shield to function if he's not in it? Similarly, does a Stars Amesha Spenta need to see the stars?
Question: Is Olodumare a god or a Titan? And how can he be the greatest creator and power in the universe if his children like Eshu and Oshun keep punking him?
Question: Have you watched "Grimm"? If so, please give us your opinion of it and how the Grimms might fit into the Scion setting (I think they would fit better in Changeling, but I'm not the only one here). If not, please watch it, it is a neat series.
Question: Are there Titans or Titan Avatars that are sympathetic toward mortals, even if they battle against the gods?
Question: My Storyteller wants to divide the War purview into two separate paths (like the Health purview). I've told him it would be easier just to write two separate Avatars, but he's determined. Any advice?
Yay videos and productivity!
And This Installment's Villain...
Question: Whenever you get around to putting up new Titanrealms, which ones do you think they will be?
Well, we're not promising anything, but our tentative plan is most likely Maya, the Titanrealm of Illusion, and Emamu, the Titanrealm of Beasts. We want to get our version of the "core" pantheons' enemies up as soon as possible, which means the Devas and Anunna need representation!
Theoretically, though, any of the potential Titanrealms we talked about back here are possibilities. We won't commit to anything until we actually start on it, and for now we're way too busy trying to keep this raft of Industry and crafting rules we're trying to build afloat.
Well, we're not promising anything, but our tentative plan is most likely Maya, the Titanrealm of Illusion, and Emamu, the Titanrealm of Beasts. We want to get our version of the "core" pantheons' enemies up as soon as possible, which means the Devas and Anunna need representation!
Theoretically, though, any of the potential Titanrealms we talked about back here are possibilities. We won't commit to anything until we actually start on it, and for now we're way too busy trying to keep this raft of Industry and crafting rules we're trying to build afloat.
Boom!
Question: My player wants to use Industry to build a relic rocket launcher. What the hell kind of stats would that have?
We're still working on our Industry and relics revamp, so we aren't ready to slap you with a magic formula for building relics, rocket-filled or otherwise. But we can do just some general advice for handling this specific request!
Start with stats for a normal, basic rocket launcher, the kind any mortal with the right government or mob connections might be able to get hold of. Scion: Companion lists stats for a bazooka on page 269 that might be useful for a quick template, or you can come up with your own idea of what kind of range and damage it ought to have.
Once you're armed with that, talk to the player about what they want the rocket launcher to be able to do outside of a normal, non-relic weapon's capabilities. Does the player want it to deal more damage or splash in a larger radius? Never run out of rockets? Provide any passive bonuses to anything? Grant increased effectiveness at other powers when using it? Whatever it is, your player needs to have a clear idea of what it's supposed to do before you can set the relic cost or determine the difficulty involved in making it. If the player isn't sure what it's actually supposed to do besides being a relic, work together to provide suggestions, and if they suggest something too wacky and insane ("I want it to deal ten million dice of damage and instantly vaporize anyone not named Dave!" No.), be on hand to rein it in or explain why such a thing would be game-breaking or too many relic dots. If the Scion in question only has Industry, make sure to remind the player what things are and aren't possible with the boons provided; if they have CtE, there'll be much more flexibility in what it could potentially do and you may need to do more work to decide what its requirements and power levels are.
After you know what the player is trying to create, you could use the relic points system detailed in Companion starting on page 150 to determine how many dots the thing will end up being, which should in turn give you some idea of how difficult it will be for the Scion to produce it with Concept to Execution or Industry boons. If you don't like the Companion table or use different criteria for relic costs, roll with those instead, but you should have the basic tools needed to build your relic.
That's all we've really got for you, but hopefully it's somewhere to start, at least. Our advice past that point is to just make sure that the relic balances - either that it's in line with the relics already in the game for the other players, or that it represents enough of a significant investment of time, energy or both for the Scion building it that it's justified in being more powerful.
We're still working on our Industry and relics revamp, so we aren't ready to slap you with a magic formula for building relics, rocket-filled or otherwise. But we can do just some general advice for handling this specific request!
Start with stats for a normal, basic rocket launcher, the kind any mortal with the right government or mob connections might be able to get hold of. Scion: Companion lists stats for a bazooka on page 269 that might be useful for a quick template, or you can come up with your own idea of what kind of range and damage it ought to have.
Once you're armed with that, talk to the player about what they want the rocket launcher to be able to do outside of a normal, non-relic weapon's capabilities. Does the player want it to deal more damage or splash in a larger radius? Never run out of rockets? Provide any passive bonuses to anything? Grant increased effectiveness at other powers when using it? Whatever it is, your player needs to have a clear idea of what it's supposed to do before you can set the relic cost or determine the difficulty involved in making it. If the player isn't sure what it's actually supposed to do besides being a relic, work together to provide suggestions, and if they suggest something too wacky and insane ("I want it to deal ten million dice of damage and instantly vaporize anyone not named Dave!" No.), be on hand to rein it in or explain why such a thing would be game-breaking or too many relic dots. If the Scion in question only has Industry, make sure to remind the player what things are and aren't possible with the boons provided; if they have CtE, there'll be much more flexibility in what it could potentially do and you may need to do more work to decide what its requirements and power levels are.
After you know what the player is trying to create, you could use the relic points system detailed in Companion starting on page 150 to determine how many dots the thing will end up being, which should in turn give you some idea of how difficult it will be for the Scion to produce it with Concept to Execution or Industry boons. If you don't like the Companion table or use different criteria for relic costs, roll with those instead, but you should have the basic tools needed to build your relic.
That's all we've really got for you, but hopefully it's somewhere to start, at least. Our advice past that point is to just make sure that the relic balances - either that it's in line with the relics already in the game for the other players, or that it represents enough of a significant investment of time, energy or both for the Scion building it that it's justified in being more powerful.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Spot the Difference
Question: Zeus has, in a number of myths displayed an impressive command of shapeshifting, even going so far as to impregnate Danae in the form of a shower of gold. Do you think it would be too much of a stretch to give him Illusion as associated? And if not, what are the criteria you look for while giving out this particular association? Most other purviews are fairly self-explanatory, but Illusion has always been a purview I have not been able to properly ascertain the applicability of.
You're not alone. Illusion is probably the most difficult purview to assign to a god of all of them, which shouldn't be too surprising. It is, after all, a set of powers dedicated to looking like you're doing other things, which makes it difficult to notice it happening without a really great degree in Shenanigans Studies.
To get the easier question out of the way, no, we wouldn't consider Illusion for Zeus. He does do quite a bit of shapechanging, but that's the only thing he ever does that could be interpreted as an Illusion power, and it's something even a Legend 5 Scion could probably do with Dreamcraft and a decent roll. Combined with the total lack of illusionist, trickster or dream imagery associated with Zeus, it's just not enough to justify saying that he has the Avatar of the purview.
As for deciding when a god should have Illusion, however, there's no really clear answer and it's sometimes just exceptionally difficult to figure out. Some gods do have Illusion, but others are good at mundane disguises, using Magic spells creatively, messing around with their Appearance or just really great liars. There are a few good hallmarks we look for, but in the end sometimes we just have to make a judgment call and keep refining it if we come up with new stories or information.
Some gods are very easy to identify as masters of illusion; Manannan mac Lir is a good example of this, since he not only shapechanges but also does things like laying permanent veils of invisibility over people to separate them and conjuring up false images of a phantom fleet to confound his enemies. For those gods who aren't actively conjuring up visions, those who perform a lot of different transformations are often candidates, particularly if they transform into various different kinds of things instead of only animals or only different images of people (Loki's a good example of this kind of illusion usage). Gods who manipulate dreams or visions in others, like Morpheus, for example, are also possible candidates for Illusion since they specialize in creating and manipulating unreality. Gods who obscure reality in some way and are called upon to do so on behalf of others are also possible illusionists, which is the case for Marishiten, who was called upon to obscure the movements of armies and confuse their enemies.
But these are all just indicators; some gods that do those things really aren't suitable candidates for Illusion, while others that don't still end up with the purview (like Brahma, who is lord of creation in a world where all things created are illusions). It's also important to consider what the god is the patron deity of, what his character is as a god and whether or not those things affect his eligibility for the purview. We consider tricksters to be more "likely" candidates for Illusion than some other kinds of gods, since bending reality and creating diversions is part of their character as gods, and similarly we might consider gods who are known as dreamweavers or shapeshifters before others. Conversely, gods who do things that might be illusions but who have characters completely opposite the idea - Zeus, for example, who represents divine order and doesn't have a trickstery bone in his body, falls under this category - are poor candidates for gods who can embody The Trickster in times of need.
But, of course, every trickster does not have Illusion, and every god with Illusion is not a trickster. In the end, it's a judgment call based on stories and epithets and divine personality, like all the other purviews, but since the purview is about uncertainty, confusion and misdirection by nature, it's correspondingly harder to pinpoint than something straightforward like Fire or Guardian.
Basically, Illusion is more of a headache than most purviews. There's no quick and easy absolute, just a set of guidelines and possibilities to come to with an open mind.
You're not alone. Illusion is probably the most difficult purview to assign to a god of all of them, which shouldn't be too surprising. It is, after all, a set of powers dedicated to looking like you're doing other things, which makes it difficult to notice it happening without a really great degree in Shenanigans Studies.
To get the easier question out of the way, no, we wouldn't consider Illusion for Zeus. He does do quite a bit of shapechanging, but that's the only thing he ever does that could be interpreted as an Illusion power, and it's something even a Legend 5 Scion could probably do with Dreamcraft and a decent roll. Combined with the total lack of illusionist, trickster or dream imagery associated with Zeus, it's just not enough to justify saying that he has the Avatar of the purview.
As for deciding when a god should have Illusion, however, there's no really clear answer and it's sometimes just exceptionally difficult to figure out. Some gods do have Illusion, but others are good at mundane disguises, using Magic spells creatively, messing around with their Appearance or just really great liars. There are a few good hallmarks we look for, but in the end sometimes we just have to make a judgment call and keep refining it if we come up with new stories or information.
Some gods are very easy to identify as masters of illusion; Manannan mac Lir is a good example of this, since he not only shapechanges but also does things like laying permanent veils of invisibility over people to separate them and conjuring up false images of a phantom fleet to confound his enemies. For those gods who aren't actively conjuring up visions, those who perform a lot of different transformations are often candidates, particularly if they transform into various different kinds of things instead of only animals or only different images of people (Loki's a good example of this kind of illusion usage). Gods who manipulate dreams or visions in others, like Morpheus, for example, are also possible candidates for Illusion since they specialize in creating and manipulating unreality. Gods who obscure reality in some way and are called upon to do so on behalf of others are also possible illusionists, which is the case for Marishiten, who was called upon to obscure the movements of armies and confuse their enemies.
But these are all just indicators; some gods that do those things really aren't suitable candidates for Illusion, while others that don't still end up with the purview (like Brahma, who is lord of creation in a world where all things created are illusions). It's also important to consider what the god is the patron deity of, what his character is as a god and whether or not those things affect his eligibility for the purview. We consider tricksters to be more "likely" candidates for Illusion than some other kinds of gods, since bending reality and creating diversions is part of their character as gods, and similarly we might consider gods who are known as dreamweavers or shapeshifters before others. Conversely, gods who do things that might be illusions but who have characters completely opposite the idea - Zeus, for example, who represents divine order and doesn't have a trickstery bone in his body, falls under this category - are poor candidates for gods who can embody The Trickster in times of need.
But, of course, every trickster does not have Illusion, and every god with Illusion is not a trickster. In the end, it's a judgment call based on stories and epithets and divine personality, like all the other purviews, but since the purview is about uncertainty, confusion and misdirection by nature, it's correspondingly harder to pinpoint than something straightforward like Fire or Guardian.
Basically, Illusion is more of a headache than most purviews. There's no quick and easy absolute, just a set of guidelines and possibilities to come to with an open mind.
Sticky Fingers
Question: Can you have a high Larceny score without having any kind of criminal record?
Yes, absolutely!
Larceny can be used in a lot of different ways for a lot of different purposes. The skill represents your understanding and skill when trying to crack safes, get through security systems, pick locks and case buildings and so on. Criminals often have Larceny, it's true, but so do those who fight them; a specialist in security, for example, must have a lot of Larceny in order to design things that can stop opportunistic criminals from trying to get past them, and most law enforcement officers and intelligence gatherers need a good amount of Larceny in order to go about their jobs. Magicians and other street performers who make a career out of escaping handcuffs or locked chests also probably have high Larceny scores. These are all career options that might lead to high Larceny scores with no criminal behavior that would end up on your record whatsoever.
It's also possible to be a criminal with lots of Larceny and just never have been caught. If you're so awesome at your burglaries or other shenanigans that police never catch you, then naturally you'll have no pre-existing criminal record. Granted, that's very difficult to do with modern forensics and information on the job, but if anyone can do it, it's a Scion-in-waiting. Things only go on your record if you get caught - and even then, if you happen to have parents or friends in high places, you might even get away with no criminal record even if you did get caught, if you've got enough hush-money or crooked friends to help you out.
It'll depend on what your character has done in her backstory and what she is and represents as a person, but there are plenty of ways to have a high Larceny score without having done hard time. Be creative and don't be afraid to ask the Storyteller for help if you're stumped on how to express your skills in your backstory.
Yes, absolutely!
Larceny can be used in a lot of different ways for a lot of different purposes. The skill represents your understanding and skill when trying to crack safes, get through security systems, pick locks and case buildings and so on. Criminals often have Larceny, it's true, but so do those who fight them; a specialist in security, for example, must have a lot of Larceny in order to design things that can stop opportunistic criminals from trying to get past them, and most law enforcement officers and intelligence gatherers need a good amount of Larceny in order to go about their jobs. Magicians and other street performers who make a career out of escaping handcuffs or locked chests also probably have high Larceny scores. These are all career options that might lead to high Larceny scores with no criminal behavior that would end up on your record whatsoever.
It's also possible to be a criminal with lots of Larceny and just never have been caught. If you're so awesome at your burglaries or other shenanigans that police never catch you, then naturally you'll have no pre-existing criminal record. Granted, that's very difficult to do with modern forensics and information on the job, but if anyone can do it, it's a Scion-in-waiting. Things only go on your record if you get caught - and even then, if you happen to have parents or friends in high places, you might even get away with no criminal record even if you did get caught, if you've got enough hush-money or crooked friends to help you out.
It'll depend on what your character has done in her backstory and what she is and represents as a person, but there are plenty of ways to have a high Larceny score without having done hard time. Be creative and don't be afraid to ask the Storyteller for help if you're stumped on how to express your skills in your backstory.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Next Celtic Pantheon, Please!
Question: Do you have any plans for doing a Welsh pantheon?
Actually, yes, someday! There's a long list of pantheons that we'd love to see add their gods to the Scion community, and the Welsh is one of them. If you'll look over to the right, you'll see that the Welsh pantheon is one of the options on the poll we're maintaining to decide what the next pantheon we work on will be, and though they're not in the lead, they're definitely making a strong showing.
The list on the poll is usually a pretty good indication of what pantheons we're interested in working on, but there are always some more and our excitement often changes as we read about a particular pantheon and get all enthusiastic about it. Today, I'm jonesing to work on the Inuit, Finnish or Hittite (hey, I can dream!) pantheons, but tomorrow, who knows?
Hey, let's take this opportunity to talk about pantheons that aren't in the game yet! We usually put up the pantheons we're considering adding on the poll, but which ones are you guys most interested in seeing? Are there any missing from the list that you just can't live without?
Actually, yes, someday! There's a long list of pantheons that we'd love to see add their gods to the Scion community, and the Welsh is one of them. If you'll look over to the right, you'll see that the Welsh pantheon is one of the options on the poll we're maintaining to decide what the next pantheon we work on will be, and though they're not in the lead, they're definitely making a strong showing.
The list on the poll is usually a pretty good indication of what pantheons we're interested in working on, but there are always some more and our excitement often changes as we read about a particular pantheon and get all enthusiastic about it. Today, I'm jonesing to work on the Inuit, Finnish or Hittite (hey, I can dream!) pantheons, but tomorrow, who knows?
Hey, let's take this opportunity to talk about pantheons that aren't in the game yet! We usually put up the pantheons we're considering adding on the poll, but which ones are you guys most interested in seeing? Are there any missing from the list that you just can't live without?
Mortal and Magical
Question: What's your opinion of historical figures who were deified or hailed as children of gods? Were the pharaohs all Scions? Alexander a son of Zeus/Amun, Antinous a son of Dionysus/Osiris? Or all just mortals caught up in the politics of ancient religion?
This question is like a perennial flower - it keeps blooming over and over as time goes by. Here's a handy link to the last time we talked about it!
Short answer: whatever you want, really. Probably most of them weren't actually gods or Scions, but any one you want to be could be, and those who aren't are probably just mortals using the idea of deification for their own ends.
This question is like a perennial flower - it keeps blooming over and over as time goes by. Here's a handy link to the last time we talked about it!
Short answer: whatever you want, really. Probably most of them weren't actually gods or Scions, but any one you want to be could be, and those who aren't are probably just mortals using the idea of deification for their own ends.
Horus of the Ages
Question: What is the difference between Horus the Elder and Horus the Younger? Is it another case of religious beliefs changing over time?
Indeed it is, but, as with most Egyptian religious evolutions, it's long and complicated and full of neat little developments.
Horus the Elder is so called because he's both an older god - one of the oldest in Egyptian mythology, in fact - and because he's of an older generation than his younger counterpart. While we're used to the neat symmetry of couples in Egyptian mythological genealogy, Horus the Elder was originally one of the youngest generation of the Ennead, a sibling of Isis, Osiris, Nephthys and Set. This Horus is the one who is the more primordial, powerfully cosmic deity; he is the representative of the sky and firmament, which are contained in his great wingspan and fill with air from the wind of his wingbeats, and the speckles of his feathers are stars while his eyes are the sun and the moon. His conflict with Set is one of warring brothers, representing opposing forces such as the day sky against the sky of the night, or the god of air against the god of storms. The two of them also represent upper and lower Egypt, and they are often shown eventually reconciling and uniting the kingdom between them. Because he's a cosmic and powerful figure, on par with his brothers Osiris and Set, he was often associated with the oldest gods of the pantheon, particularly Hathor (sometimes said to be either his mother or wife) or Ra, with whom he was syncretized as the sun in the sky.
So Horus the Elder is a really fucking big deal, and his cults were no joke. Horus the Younger is also a big deal, but for different reasons; he's the royal son of Isis and Osiris, the heir to the united halves of Egypt and a god of war, cleverness and rulership. This version of Horus, when not out doing king things, is actually often represented as an infant or child, linking him as the heir of Osiris and Isis and emphasizing his youth when compared to his parents' generation. He was the special patron of the pharaohs and the power that ensured their victory in war, and his conflicts with Set are not the symbolic and representative variety of the elder Horus but direct struggles with his uncle for the throne of the gods and the disposition of the kingdoms. He, too, represents the kingdom of Upper Egypt as opposed to Set as Lower Egypt, but their fight does not end in reconciliation and balance but in the triumph of Horus over his enemy and unification through conquest. It's likely that Horus the Younger was originally another god entirely, but that he was syncretized with Horus the Elder over time until that original god's name was forgotten.
Translating hieroglyphs is always a journey, even now, but there's some linguistic evidence that originally even their names were different. Horus the Elder was actually named something similar to "Harwer", while Horus the Younger might have been closer to "Harsiese". Over the many centuries of the Egyptian religion, Horus the Younger slowly absorbed the attributes and stories of Horus the Elder until they were no longer unentanglable in most cases, and Horus the Elder became a faded and outdated cult figure with little presence of his own. By the New Kingdom, there was effectively only one important Horus, and he's the one we all know about - Horus the Younger, son of Osiris and heir of the Ennead, wearing the moon and sun eyes of his older and largely forgotten forbear.
For Scion, this gives us the usual Egyptian god conundrum: is there one Horus or two, and how much of his syncretization should be used when deciding what these gods are like and what they do? Are there two Horuses, one older, more powerful and remote, and the other younger and wily, ruling the pantheon? Is there only one, and has he changed over time or are these merely two cults with differing opinions on what Horus is all about? You can see from our current page on him that we're running Horus the Younger as having some of the associations of his older iteration, but whether or not that means there was only one of him or that the younger one just happened to become Fatebound to some of the elder's qualities remains to be seen.
Personally, I really like the idea of an old, crusty Horus the Elder hanging out somewhere, grousing with his brothers about kids these days and their uppity ideas about the sky and the sun.
Indeed it is, but, as with most Egyptian religious evolutions, it's long and complicated and full of neat little developments.
Horus the Elder is so called because he's both an older god - one of the oldest in Egyptian mythology, in fact - and because he's of an older generation than his younger counterpart. While we're used to the neat symmetry of couples in Egyptian mythological genealogy, Horus the Elder was originally one of the youngest generation of the Ennead, a sibling of Isis, Osiris, Nephthys and Set. This Horus is the one who is the more primordial, powerfully cosmic deity; he is the representative of the sky and firmament, which are contained in his great wingspan and fill with air from the wind of his wingbeats, and the speckles of his feathers are stars while his eyes are the sun and the moon. His conflict with Set is one of warring brothers, representing opposing forces such as the day sky against the sky of the night, or the god of air against the god of storms. The two of them also represent upper and lower Egypt, and they are often shown eventually reconciling and uniting the kingdom between them. Because he's a cosmic and powerful figure, on par with his brothers Osiris and Set, he was often associated with the oldest gods of the pantheon, particularly Hathor (sometimes said to be either his mother or wife) or Ra, with whom he was syncretized as the sun in the sky.
So Horus the Elder is a really fucking big deal, and his cults were no joke. Horus the Younger is also a big deal, but for different reasons; he's the royal son of Isis and Osiris, the heir to the united halves of Egypt and a god of war, cleverness and rulership. This version of Horus, when not out doing king things, is actually often represented as an infant or child, linking him as the heir of Osiris and Isis and emphasizing his youth when compared to his parents' generation. He was the special patron of the pharaohs and the power that ensured their victory in war, and his conflicts with Set are not the symbolic and representative variety of the elder Horus but direct struggles with his uncle for the throne of the gods and the disposition of the kingdoms. He, too, represents the kingdom of Upper Egypt as opposed to Set as Lower Egypt, but their fight does not end in reconciliation and balance but in the triumph of Horus over his enemy and unification through conquest. It's likely that Horus the Younger was originally another god entirely, but that he was syncretized with Horus the Elder over time until that original god's name was forgotten.
Translating hieroglyphs is always a journey, even now, but there's some linguistic evidence that originally even their names were different. Horus the Elder was actually named something similar to "Harwer", while Horus the Younger might have been closer to "Harsiese". Over the many centuries of the Egyptian religion, Horus the Younger slowly absorbed the attributes and stories of Horus the Elder until they were no longer unentanglable in most cases, and Horus the Elder became a faded and outdated cult figure with little presence of his own. By the New Kingdom, there was effectively only one important Horus, and he's the one we all know about - Horus the Younger, son of Osiris and heir of the Ennead, wearing the moon and sun eyes of his older and largely forgotten forbear.
For Scion, this gives us the usual Egyptian god conundrum: is there one Horus or two, and how much of his syncretization should be used when deciding what these gods are like and what they do? Are there two Horuses, one older, more powerful and remote, and the other younger and wily, ruling the pantheon? Is there only one, and has he changed over time or are these merely two cults with differing opinions on what Horus is all about? You can see from our current page on him that we're running Horus the Younger as having some of the associations of his older iteration, but whether or not that means there was only one of him or that the younger one just happened to become Fatebound to some of the elder's qualities remains to be seen.
Personally, I really like the idea of an old, crusty Horus the Elder hanging out somewhere, grousing with his brothers about kids these days and their uppity ideas about the sky and the sun.
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