Question: Which stories are for Geoff and Sangria's adventures and backstories?
For now, that would be Better Next Time, which includes both of them as well as Sophia, Goze and Marcus. As we get close to Ragnarok they'll run into the Skeins of Fate group and sort of blend, but I'll warn you when that happens.
The game's name comes from Geoff's tendency, once his group has completely ruined something, to promise various gods that he promises they'll do better next time. Honest.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Two Guys, a Girl and Rampant Bloodletting
Question: Hey, I was reading some of your fiction about Geoff lately (awesome job, by the way!) and it got me thinking about Jay Ortiz. It seems like he hates Geoff, but is that only because of the Norse thing? Is it possible that Sangria might have something to do with it? (wink, wink)
I see what you're doing with that winking there, questioner. It's hard to say, actually - Jay is a pretty mysterious guy.
He has plenty of reasons to dislike Geoff without anyone else needing to get involved; Geoff set in motion the violent takeover of Jay's homeland and people by foreign powers, which is not something anyone forgets easily. Of course, Geoff didn't mean to do that and was very upset about it when he found out about it, but that doesn't make it any better. In fact, it might make it worse - seriously, you got my family and home blown up not because you were trying to but just because you're stupid?
And of course Geoff doesn't really help the situation much, since he dislikes Jay right back (watching two high Charisma characters trying very hard not to like one another is pretty hilarious, by the way. Every few minutes they almost give each other the finger guns and then overcompensate with violent hatred). Geoff's angry with Jay for blaming him for crimes that he personally didn't commit even if his family did, and for his obvious opposition to Geoff wherever he can get away with it. Fiction hasn't caught up to the post-Ragnarok landscape yet, but Jay most recently caught Geoff at a really, really bad moment and implied that he didn't actually care about his family, so even though they're getting along a little better now that they're both gods, there's not a lot of love lost on either side.
But Sangria? Well... to tell you the truth, Jay's not a very tell-you-about-his-inner-struggle kind of a dude, so exactly what he thinks about her is still a mystery, even from the players in the game. She's not a particularly pleasant person to be around, nor is she fun to have a conversation with, so it's unlikely that he secretly fell in love with her and hates Geoff's guts for stealing her away or anything like that (although it is tempting to make an awesome Mexican telenovela out of the situation, isn't it?). But she is one of his people, and furthermore a daughter of one of the Tezcatlipocas, making her the only crown princess of the pantheon at the moment opposite his crown prince. It's entirely possible that he's offended as shit that she ended up married to some Norse dude, and the fact that that happened because said Norse dude knocked her up by accident probably doesn't help matters all that much. And now there are white people all up in his country all the time, imprisoning and using his countrymen, and if there's one thing Jay hates above all others, it's people who restrict the freedom of others. (And, even though he tries his best only to do it when it's for her own good or the good of others, Geoff restricts Sangria's freedom a whole lot, too.)
It's actually possible, although never confirmed, that Jay and Sangria might have been meant to be married at some point; it would be a very smart political alliance that solidified the supremacy of the Tezcatlipocas, and the two of them make a fantastic team, with Jay directing everything through his amazing social powers and Sangria carrying out his orders with wrecking-ball efficiency. Nobody was expecting Geoff to wander in and make a completely different alliance. We don't know that for sure, of course, but it's a solid bet that Huitzilopochtli and/or Tezcatlipoca had some plans for one or both of their kids' eventual matrimony, and the introduction of a surprise Aesir might very well have made them start over at square one. Jay still isn't married, although whether that's because he likes being single or for some other motive nobody has ever asked.
But yeah, Jay's probably not nursing a broken heart behind the scenes or anything. He just doesn't like the guy, and he's got lots of reasons for it.
Ironically, it's actually Geoff that occasionally gets jealous of Jay and Sangria, not the other way around. She tends to just do what Jay says instead of arguing with him the way she does with Geoff, and there have been times that the two of them connected on an Aztec-blood-bonding level Geoff couldn't that irritated him.
Also, Chicahua at one point told him he wanted Jay to be his dad instead of Geoff (although really, the kid does that all the time). Cue the angry, testosterone-laden glaring.
I see what you're doing with that winking there, questioner. It's hard to say, actually - Jay is a pretty mysterious guy.
He has plenty of reasons to dislike Geoff without anyone else needing to get involved; Geoff set in motion the violent takeover of Jay's homeland and people by foreign powers, which is not something anyone forgets easily. Of course, Geoff didn't mean to do that and was very upset about it when he found out about it, but that doesn't make it any better. In fact, it might make it worse - seriously, you got my family and home blown up not because you were trying to but just because you're stupid?
And of course Geoff doesn't really help the situation much, since he dislikes Jay right back (watching two high Charisma characters trying very hard not to like one another is pretty hilarious, by the way. Every few minutes they almost give each other the finger guns and then overcompensate with violent hatred). Geoff's angry with Jay for blaming him for crimes that he personally didn't commit even if his family did, and for his obvious opposition to Geoff wherever he can get away with it. Fiction hasn't caught up to the post-Ragnarok landscape yet, but Jay most recently caught Geoff at a really, really bad moment and implied that he didn't actually care about his family, so even though they're getting along a little better now that they're both gods, there's not a lot of love lost on either side.
But Sangria? Well... to tell you the truth, Jay's not a very tell-you-about-his-inner-struggle kind of a dude, so exactly what he thinks about her is still a mystery, even from the players in the game. She's not a particularly pleasant person to be around, nor is she fun to have a conversation with, so it's unlikely that he secretly fell in love with her and hates Geoff's guts for stealing her away or anything like that (although it is tempting to make an awesome Mexican telenovela out of the situation, isn't it?). But she is one of his people, and furthermore a daughter of one of the Tezcatlipocas, making her the only crown princess of the pantheon at the moment opposite his crown prince. It's entirely possible that he's offended as shit that she ended up married to some Norse dude, and the fact that that happened because said Norse dude knocked her up by accident probably doesn't help matters all that much. And now there are white people all up in his country all the time, imprisoning and using his countrymen, and if there's one thing Jay hates above all others, it's people who restrict the freedom of others. (And, even though he tries his best only to do it when it's for her own good or the good of others, Geoff restricts Sangria's freedom a whole lot, too.)
It's actually possible, although never confirmed, that Jay and Sangria might have been meant to be married at some point; it would be a very smart political alliance that solidified the supremacy of the Tezcatlipocas, and the two of them make a fantastic team, with Jay directing everything through his amazing social powers and Sangria carrying out his orders with wrecking-ball efficiency. Nobody was expecting Geoff to wander in and make a completely different alliance. We don't know that for sure, of course, but it's a solid bet that Huitzilopochtli and/or Tezcatlipoca had some plans for one or both of their kids' eventual matrimony, and the introduction of a surprise Aesir might very well have made them start over at square one. Jay still isn't married, although whether that's because he likes being single or for some other motive nobody has ever asked.
But yeah, Jay's probably not nursing a broken heart behind the scenes or anything. He just doesn't like the guy, and he's got lots of reasons for it.
Ironically, it's actually Geoff that occasionally gets jealous of Jay and Sangria, not the other way around. She tends to just do what Jay says instead of arguing with him the way she does with Geoff, and there have been times that the two of them connected on an Aztec-blood-bonding level Geoff couldn't that irritated him.
Also, Chicahua at one point told him he wanted Jay to be his dad instead of Geoff (although really, the kid does that all the time). Cue the angry, testosterone-laden glaring.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Question: How do you do combat in game? My ST is having trouble figuring out the combat system.
Hmm. This is hard to answer, because said combat system belongs to Onyx Path and not us, and we don't want to just sit down and walk through all its mechanics because that kind of makes it unnecessary to buy the books and people get pretty mad and litigious when you encourage people not to buy their books.
Instead, could you tell us what you guys are having trouble with when it comes to the combat system? Is it the tick system? How or when to activate powers? Covering ground with Dash or Move? Damage and soak? DV and attack rolls? We'd be happy to go in-depth on any of those, but let us know so we can narrow the focus down instead of doing something that would just be a copy and paste from the rulebook.
Hmm. This is hard to answer, because said combat system belongs to Onyx Path and not us, and we don't want to just sit down and walk through all its mechanics because that kind of makes it unnecessary to buy the books and people get pretty mad and litigious when you encourage people not to buy their books.
Instead, could you tell us what you guys are having trouble with when it comes to the combat system? Is it the tick system? How or when to activate powers? Covering ground with Dash or Move? Damage and soak? DV and attack rolls? We'd be happy to go in-depth on any of those, but let us know so we can narrow the focus down instead of doing something that would just be a copy and paste from the rulebook.
"You Just Bought Yourself Another Saturday"
I'm not going to lie, this question is kind of stupid, but hopefully it will be a little fun. I'm going to presume you've seen the movie the Breakfast Club and I'm going ask you this, "If the main teenage characters from Breakfast Club were a band of Scions, who do you think would be the best fit for their divine parent?"
I normally hate questions like this....but this one was sooo ridiculous that I wanted to answer it. Plus, anne is super busy with school and so I had to take over for a bit.
For those who dont know, the breakfast club is an old 80s movie(1985). It was before I was really old enough to watch movies, but my mom(who had me very young) fuckin loved this movie. Its considered one of the quintessential movies of the decade. It came smack in the middle and encapsulated a lot of the feelings of kids that grew up in the era. It was also one of the earliest movies of the group known as the "brat pack" a clique of hollywood actors who helped define the era. Some of them are still super famous, others you probably havnt heard of unless you at least a teen back then.
The story is basically a group of kids all get saturday detention(high school). The kids are from all different walks of life(but all white....so like...3 walks of life) and through the course of the film, we learn a little about each of them. Much like scions, each character thinks their problems are like the worst possible problems to deal with. And then they realize they're probably wrong(but like....still these kids have like zero problems compared to most people on earth). And by the end we find we all arent so different after all. Its a movie about massive first world problems(except bender...he has it pretty rough(but still not that bad, relatively speaking).
Links if you want to know more:
Breakfast Club:
Brat Pack:
So.....if they're scions...what is their parentage? Im gonna throw some ideas out and give some explanation, and if you feel inclined you can offer some different options. I generally like to have scions that go a bit counter to their parent, but for this I'll probably be hitting it on the nose pretty hard.
Andrew Clark: Played by Emilio Estevez: Huitzliopochtli
Super athlete, kind of a bully, takes out his daddy issues on others, very insecure. Im not sure on the characters heritage, but estevez is hispanic.....(technically galatian but we're going with it).
So lets say Huitzilopochtli.
Brian Johnson: Played by Anthony Michael Hall: Thoth
Super smart nerd kid. His life is really hard cause his parents put tons of pressure on him to get perfect grades(you know...american pressure though, not real pressure like japanese or chinese family). There isnt really a lot going on with him, so any "weaker" intelligent character is fine. But my first idea was Thoth, so we're sticking with that.
John Bender: Played by Judd Nelson: Marduk
Your quintessential bad boy with an attitude problem caused by hidden factors(O LOOK PEOPLES PARENTS ARE MEAN TO THEM AGAIN!). But this guy does seem to have it pretty rough. He smokes, maybe that can help me put him with a parent I see smoking? Hes a super charismatic dude, gets all the ladies and is strong enough to be a bully. The actor is Jewish....so that doesnt help any. I guess we can go middle europe. But he has a darkness to him...so lemme see if i can work that. Im gonna go with my first inclination, which was Marduk. It doesnt quite fit yet, but hes in a growing period. Perfect scion material.
Claire Standish: Played by Molly Ringwald: Hera
Rich girl is insecure and doesnt love herself so she cant love others. Not a lot to go on here...the movie says shes hot, although I dont see it, but lets assume shes hot. Shes also ignored by her very busy parents. Hrm, this might be a good spot for a Hera...its like super on the nose....but I guess thats what we're doing here.
Allison Reynolds: Played by Ally Sheedy: Moreena
Kind of goth....attractive but hiding it....super quiet and reserved. Im gonna go with moreena.
Richard Vernon: Played by Paul Gleeson: Atar
The principal. Hes grumpy he has to be here on saturday to watch these kids, and he needs them to stay in line so he can leave the room and get other stuff done. He's painted as the "bad guy" but thats just cause most of the kids in the movie are douchebags trying to fuck around instead of taking their detention. Lookin for a pantheon we havnt done yet, just cause....I feel like 1 from each keeps me from making them all greek. We're gonna say Atar. Justice-y, Information and learning...fire is an added bonus.
Ok, there we go. If you're interested, talk about these in comments, but please dont let this fill our inbox with questions about who is a scion of who from movies, pop culture or anything else. If we get some, we probably wont do another one like this for at least 3 months(well, ....if we get a lot, maybe we'd do one for winter solstice or something).
I normally hate questions like this....but this one was sooo ridiculous that I wanted to answer it. Plus, anne is super busy with school and so I had to take over for a bit.
For those who dont know, the breakfast club is an old 80s movie(1985). It was before I was really old enough to watch movies, but my mom(who had me very young) fuckin loved this movie. Its considered one of the quintessential movies of the decade. It came smack in the middle and encapsulated a lot of the feelings of kids that grew up in the era. It was also one of the earliest movies of the group known as the "brat pack" a clique of hollywood actors who helped define the era. Some of them are still super famous, others you probably havnt heard of unless you at least a teen back then.
The story is basically a group of kids all get saturday detention(high school). The kids are from all different walks of life(but all white....so like...3 walks of life) and through the course of the film, we learn a little about each of them. Much like scions, each character thinks their problems are like the worst possible problems to deal with. And then they realize they're probably wrong(but like....still these kids have like zero problems compared to most people on earth). And by the end we find we all arent so different after all. Its a movie about massive first world problems(except bender...he has it pretty rough(but still not that bad, relatively speaking).
Links if you want to know more:
Breakfast Club:
Brat Pack:
So.....if they're scions...what is their parentage? Im gonna throw some ideas out and give some explanation, and if you feel inclined you can offer some different options. I generally like to have scions that go a bit counter to their parent, but for this I'll probably be hitting it on the nose pretty hard.
Andrew Clark: Played by Emilio Estevez: Huitzliopochtli
Super athlete, kind of a bully, takes out his daddy issues on others, very insecure. Im not sure on the characters heritage, but estevez is hispanic.....(technically galatian but we're going with it).
So lets say Huitzilopochtli.
Brian Johnson: Played by Anthony Michael Hall: Thoth
Super smart nerd kid. His life is really hard cause his parents put tons of pressure on him to get perfect grades(you know...american pressure though, not real pressure like japanese or chinese family). There isnt really a lot going on with him, so any "weaker" intelligent character is fine. But my first idea was Thoth, so we're sticking with that.
John Bender: Played by Judd Nelson: Marduk
Your quintessential bad boy with an attitude problem caused by hidden factors(O LOOK PEOPLES PARENTS ARE MEAN TO THEM AGAIN!). But this guy does seem to have it pretty rough. He smokes, maybe that can help me put him with a parent I see smoking? Hes a super charismatic dude, gets all the ladies and is strong enough to be a bully. The actor is Jewish....so that doesnt help any. I guess we can go middle europe. But he has a darkness to him...so lemme see if i can work that. Im gonna go with my first inclination, which was Marduk. It doesnt quite fit yet, but hes in a growing period. Perfect scion material.
Claire Standish: Played by Molly Ringwald: Hera
Rich girl is insecure and doesnt love herself so she cant love others. Not a lot to go on here...the movie says shes hot, although I dont see it, but lets assume shes hot. Shes also ignored by her very busy parents. Hrm, this might be a good spot for a Hera...its like super on the nose....but I guess thats what we're doing here.
Allison Reynolds: Played by Ally Sheedy: Moreena
Kind of goth....attractive but hiding it....super quiet and reserved. Im gonna go with moreena.
Richard Vernon: Played by Paul Gleeson: Atar
The principal. Hes grumpy he has to be here on saturday to watch these kids, and he needs them to stay in line so he can leave the room and get other stuff done. He's painted as the "bad guy" but thats just cause most of the kids in the movie are douchebags trying to fuck around instead of taking their detention. Lookin for a pantheon we havnt done yet, just cause....I feel like 1 from each keeps me from making them all greek. We're gonna say Atar. Justice-y, Information and learning...fire is an added bonus.
Ok, there we go. If you're interested, talk about these in comments, but please dont let this fill our inbox with questions about who is a scion of who from movies, pop culture or anything else. If we get some, we probably wont do another one like this for at least 3 months(well, ....if we get a lot, maybe we'd do one for winter solstice or something).
Monday, October 28, 2013
Scion Symphony
Question: In a previous vlog you had mentioned that many of the characters have a "theme song" without the knack itself. Could you share some tunes for your characters who are not rocking Theme Music?
I hope you guys are ready for this! We got all the players involved, went to our own giant playlists of character theme songs, and even after slimming it down (WAY down) we still have an awesome musical journey going on here. I'm not kidding when I say that John and I have songlists that are literally five or more hours long for each of our games, including songs for each character, for their relationships and for their great deeds. We love epic musical soundtracks!
Don't mind the videos for these. We're talking about the music, not the silly band dances.
Better Next Time:
There's a pretty neverending stream of music for these guys; you can sit through our iTunes list for them for about six hours without even being able to see the end of the tunnel. In addition to Geoff's official theme music - "How You Like Me Now" by The Heavy and "Lover of the Light" by Mumford & Sons, depending on his moon - we also like Natasha Marsh's "He Moves, Eyes Follow" and Rise Against's "Savior". The last one in particular is a great song for describing his relationships with his family members (mostly women) over the course of his life.
Sangria has a cocktail of songs about physical badassery and determination, but our top favorites would be "No Gringo" by Vienna Teng, "Indestructible" by Disturbed and "Titanium" by Sia/David Guetta.
Sophia's image song has always been Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger", which really captures her attitude (and lack of normal human-like function). At the point where she became (according to John) infatuated with a particular Scion who shall remain nameless, we also started playing Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain" a lot.
Goze's playlist is as multiple-personality as he is, but Jim's Big Ego does both of his major songs, the frenetic "Stress" and the introspective "The Ballad of Barry Allen". When he impersonated Geoff, we also used to always play Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" to illustrate his hilarious impersonation of his more charismatic friend.
Marcus James' unofficial theme song was always "I'm On a Boat" by The Lonely Island, which covered his bombastic crazy-ass personality traits, but in his sadder moments we also associate him with "I Need a Dollar" by Aloe Blacc. His player has also been known to remark that any song by Jay-Z is relevant to Marcus' life.
Eastern Promises:
There are a ton of characters in this game, so we'll try to be brief and split them up by group.
Mohini is all about some high-energy dance music (if techno dance beats had existed in her time period, she'd have been all over them); she has a lot of similar songs on her list, but some of the most often-played are "Come and Get It" by Selena Gomez and "Turn Me On" by Nicki Minaj/David Guetta. Shadan, the ever-irrepressible, rocks out to "Crown on the Ground" by Sleigh Bells, while Kebo's easy-going nature lends itself to "Movin' Right Along" by The Muppets and Cassara of course has to be "Food Glorious Food" from the musical Oliver! Padma's player wasn't sure what song to use for her, but said that she and Shadan should totally be the subjects of "Something There" from Beauty and the Beast. Akhi's song is Peter Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood", which handily contrasts with Faruza, who obviously has to go with Alicia Keys' "Girl on Fire". Samuel, scourge of the skies on his ornithopter, is heralded by Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", while Darrius' secretive nature lends itself to the moody "Hideaway" by Passion Pit. Mshai's player suggests "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky for his brief run, and Alvin, the suave son of a bitch, gets "In the Air Tonight" covered by Nonpoint. Adorable Yadi is Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine", and old, crochety, adventurous Paniwi rolls along to "Muddy Water" from the musical Big River. Lionel's grossness is aptly represented by Radiohead's "Creep" and "Brand New Day" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and Mrs. Young's creepy personality makes everyone uncomfortable with "Danse Macabre" by Saint-Saens, rounding out our unpleasant team members. James' player suggests several upper-crust classical pieces for him, including "Dawn" by Dario Marianelli, and "Rule Britannia" by Thomas Arne; Leona of course gets Katy Perry's "Roar".
Terry's player totally did not okay it, but we play "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" by Big & Rich for him anyway.
Gangs of New York:
The first Gangs group, full of socialites with poor decision-making skills, was of course headlined by Michael, whose official theme song is Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" and whose unofficial followup is Franz Ferdinand's "Michael". Sexy mysterious Valentina gets "Die Another Day" by Madonna, poor displaced party boy Nic gets "All I Ever Wanted" by Airborne Toxic Event, and psychotically vengeful James gets "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley.
The second group, which was more of a moving demolition derby than a set of semi-human beings, has an accordingly sadder and more dystopian list of music. Poor Winona's song is "Grey Street" by Dave Matthews Band, with "Down" by Jason Walker/Molly Reed as a secondary choice. Alan's song is Great Big Sea's "Wave Over Wave" or "Nautical Disaster" by Tragically Hip, while Jake (and everyone else in the group, eventually) gets Radioactive by Imagine Dragons and Simon's player informs us that, now bereft of his only true love in death, his character will be represented by Puff Daddy's "I'll Be Missing You".
Our current group (the... good group?) in that game is slightly less depressed about their lives. Anton's song is "Stickshifts and Safety Belts" by Cake, Isaac's is "The Future Soon" by Jonathon Coulton, Skylar's is "Hannah's Theme" by The Chemical Brothers, and Zoe's is "By the Sword" by Emilie Autumn.
Land of the Red Sun:
Alison and Colin have an entire album dedicated to them, but a few highlights for the fractious son of Dionysus include "Frontier Psychiatrist" by The Avalanches, "Magic" by B.o.B. and "Unwell" by Matchbox 20. Alison's official theme music is "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People, but she's also partial to "I Am a Scientist" by The Dandy Warhols, "Control" by Poe and "Sunny Came Home" by Shawn Colvin.
Of the Japanese crew, only Saki ("Bumblebee" from DDR) and Hachiro ("This Is Halloween" covered by Marilyn Manson) have the Theme Music knack. The rest of the group wasn't played for long and didn't have a strong musical set yet, but the Japanese group was so consistently ice-cool that we enjoy playing Far East Movement's "Like a G6" for them as a unit.
Skeins of Fate:
Aurora has hours of music all by herself, but in addition to her official theme music (Kelly Sweet's cover of "Dream On"), I'm also fond of Sara Lov's cover of "My Body is a Cage" for her, while John loves Michael Card's "The Prophet". We actually made the saddest double CD of music about her and Wolf several months ago, but listening to it made us turn to drink.
Woody, the old soldier that he is, has always had "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas as his main song, but songs about war almost always suit him; some of our other favorites are Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son".
Vivian's official theme song is the 30 Rock Theme, which suits her awesomely, but she is a lady of many and mercurial moods. We also love Nightwish's "Slow Love Slow" for her, and of course "Lady Marmalade" from Moulin Rouge.
People often forget that Will actually has Theme Music - Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" - because he doesn't use it very often. Bonus: John Doe's unofficial theme song was "Going Down" by Sick Puppies... and he did.
Kettila's adorable theme song is "I Won't Grow Up" from Peter Pan, and her creepy childhood schtick dominates her playlist. We also recommend "In My Arms" by Plumb, "Fields of Innocence" by Evanescence and "I Want My Innocence Back" by Emilie Autumn.
Strawberry Fields:
Cheerful Dierdre is the frontrunner here, with either "The Elfin Knight" by Kate Rusby or "Turn Loose the Mermaids" by Nightwish. Seamus is gloomier with "Save Yourself" by Stabbing Westward or "Disarm" by Smashing Pumpkins. The other Irish kids were sort of cannon fodder in Seamus' ruthless quest, so they didn't end up with many songs of their own.
I'm serious, this could go on for a very long time, but that's not very surprising. Lots of players and games have theme songs for their characters, so our list is only impressive because of the sheer number of characters making it massive.
I hope you guys are ready for this! We got all the players involved, went to our own giant playlists of character theme songs, and even after slimming it down (WAY down) we still have an awesome musical journey going on here. I'm not kidding when I say that John and I have songlists that are literally five or more hours long for each of our games, including songs for each character, for their relationships and for their great deeds. We love epic musical soundtracks!
Don't mind the videos for these. We're talking about the music, not the silly band dances.
Better Next Time:
There's a pretty neverending stream of music for these guys; you can sit through our iTunes list for them for about six hours without even being able to see the end of the tunnel. In addition to Geoff's official theme music - "How You Like Me Now" by The Heavy and "Lover of the Light" by Mumford & Sons, depending on his moon - we also like Natasha Marsh's "He Moves, Eyes Follow" and Rise Against's "Savior". The last one in particular is a great song for describing his relationships with his family members (mostly women) over the course of his life.
Sangria has a cocktail of songs about physical badassery and determination, but our top favorites would be "No Gringo" by Vienna Teng, "Indestructible" by Disturbed and "Titanium" by Sia/David Guetta.
Sophia's image song has always been Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger", which really captures her attitude (and lack of normal human-like function). At the point where she became (according to John) infatuated with a particular Scion who shall remain nameless, we also started playing Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain" a lot.
Goze's playlist is as multiple-personality as he is, but Jim's Big Ego does both of his major songs, the frenetic "Stress" and the introspective "The Ballad of Barry Allen". When he impersonated Geoff, we also used to always play Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" to illustrate his hilarious impersonation of his more charismatic friend.
Marcus James' unofficial theme song was always "I'm On a Boat" by The Lonely Island, which covered his bombastic crazy-ass personality traits, but in his sadder moments we also associate him with "I Need a Dollar" by Aloe Blacc. His player has also been known to remark that any song by Jay-Z is relevant to Marcus' life.
Eastern Promises:
There are a ton of characters in this game, so we'll try to be brief and split them up by group.
Mohini is all about some high-energy dance music (if techno dance beats had existed in her time period, she'd have been all over them); she has a lot of similar songs on her list, but some of the most often-played are "Come and Get It" by Selena Gomez and "Turn Me On" by Nicki Minaj/David Guetta. Shadan, the ever-irrepressible, rocks out to "Crown on the Ground" by Sleigh Bells, while Kebo's easy-going nature lends itself to "Movin' Right Along" by The Muppets and Cassara of course has to be "Food Glorious Food" from the musical Oliver! Padma's player wasn't sure what song to use for her, but said that she and Shadan should totally be the subjects of "Something There" from Beauty and the Beast. Akhi's song is Peter Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood", which handily contrasts with Faruza, who obviously has to go with Alicia Keys' "Girl on Fire". Samuel, scourge of the skies on his ornithopter, is heralded by Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", while Darrius' secretive nature lends itself to the moody "Hideaway" by Passion Pit. Mshai's player suggests "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky for his brief run, and Alvin, the suave son of a bitch, gets "In the Air Tonight" covered by Nonpoint. Adorable Yadi is Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine", and old, crochety, adventurous Paniwi rolls along to "Muddy Water" from the musical Big River. Lionel's grossness is aptly represented by Radiohead's "Creep" and "Brand New Day" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and Mrs. Young's creepy personality makes everyone uncomfortable with "Danse Macabre" by Saint-Saens, rounding out our unpleasant team members. James' player suggests several upper-crust classical pieces for him, including "Dawn" by Dario Marianelli, and "Rule Britannia" by Thomas Arne; Leona of course gets Katy Perry's "Roar".
Terry's player totally did not okay it, but we play "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" by Big & Rich for him anyway.
Gangs of New York:
The first Gangs group, full of socialites with poor decision-making skills, was of course headlined by Michael, whose official theme song is Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" and whose unofficial followup is Franz Ferdinand's "Michael". Sexy mysterious Valentina gets "Die Another Day" by Madonna, poor displaced party boy Nic gets "All I Ever Wanted" by Airborne Toxic Event, and psychotically vengeful James gets "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley.
The second group, which was more of a moving demolition derby than a set of semi-human beings, has an accordingly sadder and more dystopian list of music. Poor Winona's song is "Grey Street" by Dave Matthews Band, with "Down" by Jason Walker/Molly Reed as a secondary choice. Alan's song is Great Big Sea's "Wave Over Wave" or "Nautical Disaster" by Tragically Hip, while Jake (and everyone else in the group, eventually) gets Radioactive by Imagine Dragons and Simon's player informs us that, now bereft of his only true love in death, his character will be represented by Puff Daddy's "I'll Be Missing You".
Our current group (the... good group?) in that game is slightly less depressed about their lives. Anton's song is "Stickshifts and Safety Belts" by Cake, Isaac's is "The Future Soon" by Jonathon Coulton, Skylar's is "Hannah's Theme" by The Chemical Brothers, and Zoe's is "By the Sword" by Emilie Autumn.
Land of the Red Sun:
Alison and Colin have an entire album dedicated to them, but a few highlights for the fractious son of Dionysus include "Frontier Psychiatrist" by The Avalanches, "Magic" by B.o.B. and "Unwell" by Matchbox 20. Alison's official theme music is "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People, but she's also partial to "I Am a Scientist" by The Dandy Warhols, "Control" by Poe and "Sunny Came Home" by Shawn Colvin.
Of the Japanese crew, only Saki ("Bumblebee" from DDR) and Hachiro ("This Is Halloween" covered by Marilyn Manson) have the Theme Music knack. The rest of the group wasn't played for long and didn't have a strong musical set yet, but the Japanese group was so consistently ice-cool that we enjoy playing Far East Movement's "Like a G6" for them as a unit.
Skeins of Fate:
Aurora has hours of music all by herself, but in addition to her official theme music (Kelly Sweet's cover of "Dream On"), I'm also fond of Sara Lov's cover of "My Body is a Cage" for her, while John loves Michael Card's "The Prophet". We actually made the saddest double CD of music about her and Wolf several months ago, but listening to it made us turn to drink.
Woody, the old soldier that he is, has always had "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas as his main song, but songs about war almost always suit him; some of our other favorites are Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son".
Vivian's official theme song is the 30 Rock Theme, which suits her awesomely, but she is a lady of many and mercurial moods. We also love Nightwish's "Slow Love Slow" for her, and of course "Lady Marmalade" from Moulin Rouge.
People often forget that Will actually has Theme Music - Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" - because he doesn't use it very often. Bonus: John Doe's unofficial theme song was "Going Down" by Sick Puppies... and he did.
Kettila's adorable theme song is "I Won't Grow Up" from Peter Pan, and her creepy childhood schtick dominates her playlist. We also recommend "In My Arms" by Plumb, "Fields of Innocence" by Evanescence and "I Want My Innocence Back" by Emilie Autumn.
Strawberry Fields:
Cheerful Dierdre is the frontrunner here, with either "The Elfin Knight" by Kate Rusby or "Turn Loose the Mermaids" by Nightwish. Seamus is gloomier with "Save Yourself" by Stabbing Westward or "Disarm" by Smashing Pumpkins. The other Irish kids were sort of cannon fodder in Seamus' ruthless quest, so they didn't end up with many songs of their own.
I'm serious, this could go on for a very long time, but that's not very surprising. Lots of players and games have theme songs for their characters, so our list is only impressive because of the sheer number of characters making it massive.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Brythonic Breeding
Question: I've heard that Merlin, of Athurian Myth, may have been an imported Zeus in ancient Brittonic times. I'm also curious, if Merlin were like this, would he have the same purviews he possessed in the Greek pantheon in addition to having Magic/Prophecy, or would Fate have changed things far too much?
Looks like someone has been reading Professor John Rhys. This is totally an opinion, so feel free to disagree with it, but: that guy is fucking crazy.
Actually, I have nothing against Rhys, who was a distinguished old scholar in the late nineteenth century and who did a lot of good work in the field of Celtic languages and folktales, but his views on Zeus are unorthodox, to say the least. You will not find much literature that links Merlin to Zeus other than Rhys' - in fact, there's hardly any, because it's not a theory that is shared by much of even the fringe community when it comes to Arthurian myth. Merlin is an enigmatic figure and it's a very popular notion among historians and mythographers that he might have roots in some Celtic deity or myth, but Zeus is usually not one of the people anyone is thinking about when they say that.
The evidence Rhys draws upon to link the two figures is sketchy at best. Being a linguist, he draws his conclusions from language, most prominently that he believed that the Irish Mac Og (a byname of Aengus) was the same root name as the Welsh Myrddin (which of course becomes Merlin after Geoffrey of Monmouth gets hold of it). Since he also believed that Mac Og and Zeus were the same (largely because both "overthrow" their fathers, Zeus in the Titanomachy and Mac Og in tricking the Dagda into giving up his home), it followed that Myrddin/Merlin, being Mac Og, must also be Zeus, albeit in a much later descended form. As for story evidence, Merlin turns Uther into Ygraine's husband in order to allow him to have sex with her without getting caught, which is similar to the myth in which Zeus turns himself into Alcmene's husband for the same reason, and Merlin was trapped by Nimue in an oak tree, which happens to be the tree sacred to Zeus. He also points to similarities between Greek temples to Zeus and Stonehenge, and theorizes that Stonehenge itself might have been dedicated to the worship of Merlin/Zeus.
There's a lot going on there, and not very much that we're particularly sold on, especially the root theory that Aengus and Zeus are the same dude (because they're not... like, at all). It's certainly possible, even likely, that Merlin has a basis in ancient mythology somewhere, and it's even possible that that mythology is from the more recent Greco-Roman imports instead of the native Celtic myths, but we don't think it's very likely. They just don't have very much in common, and the idea has been largely discarded in the last century or so of Celtic studies.
We'd suspect that Merlin is more likely to be an echo of one of the Celtic gods, especially one associated with magic or wizardry; maybe Manannan mac Lir or the Dagda or even Cernunnos. But, if you're really sold on the idea of Zeus-as-Merlin and we're just raining all over your Storytelling parade right now, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to decide that maybe Merlin was an Avatar form of Zeus, in which he decided to visit the World and meddle in the affairs of the northern Europeans for some reason, or even a Scion of Zeus (after all, Merlin is said to be half human!) who happens to resemble his father in a few key ways. The Fate half of your question is difficult to answer because we really don't think there's any way Zeus was worshiped as Merlin-a-god at any point so Fate doesn't give a damn about his associateds, but he already has Prophecy and probably at least a little bit of Magic for some of the shapechanging shenanigans he perpetrates on himself and others, so it wouldn't be much of a change even if you do go that route.
If you're going to roll with the wacky Merlin theory, we can only imagine you must have a truly amazing plot seed in mind.
Looks like someone has been reading Professor John Rhys. This is totally an opinion, so feel free to disagree with it, but: that guy is fucking crazy.
Actually, I have nothing against Rhys, who was a distinguished old scholar in the late nineteenth century and who did a lot of good work in the field of Celtic languages and folktales, but his views on Zeus are unorthodox, to say the least. You will not find much literature that links Merlin to Zeus other than Rhys' - in fact, there's hardly any, because it's not a theory that is shared by much of even the fringe community when it comes to Arthurian myth. Merlin is an enigmatic figure and it's a very popular notion among historians and mythographers that he might have roots in some Celtic deity or myth, but Zeus is usually not one of the people anyone is thinking about when they say that.
The evidence Rhys draws upon to link the two figures is sketchy at best. Being a linguist, he draws his conclusions from language, most prominently that he believed that the Irish Mac Og (a byname of Aengus) was the same root name as the Welsh Myrddin (which of course becomes Merlin after Geoffrey of Monmouth gets hold of it). Since he also believed that Mac Og and Zeus were the same (largely because both "overthrow" their fathers, Zeus in the Titanomachy and Mac Og in tricking the Dagda into giving up his home), it followed that Myrddin/Merlin, being Mac Og, must also be Zeus, albeit in a much later descended form. As for story evidence, Merlin turns Uther into Ygraine's husband in order to allow him to have sex with her without getting caught, which is similar to the myth in which Zeus turns himself into Alcmene's husband for the same reason, and Merlin was trapped by Nimue in an oak tree, which happens to be the tree sacred to Zeus. He also points to similarities between Greek temples to Zeus and Stonehenge, and theorizes that Stonehenge itself might have been dedicated to the worship of Merlin/Zeus.
There's a lot going on there, and not very much that we're particularly sold on, especially the root theory that Aengus and Zeus are the same dude (because they're not... like, at all). It's certainly possible, even likely, that Merlin has a basis in ancient mythology somewhere, and it's even possible that that mythology is from the more recent Greco-Roman imports instead of the native Celtic myths, but we don't think it's very likely. They just don't have very much in common, and the idea has been largely discarded in the last century or so of Celtic studies.
We'd suspect that Merlin is more likely to be an echo of one of the Celtic gods, especially one associated with magic or wizardry; maybe Manannan mac Lir or the Dagda or even Cernunnos. But, if you're really sold on the idea of Zeus-as-Merlin and we're just raining all over your Storytelling parade right now, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to decide that maybe Merlin was an Avatar form of Zeus, in which he decided to visit the World and meddle in the affairs of the northern Europeans for some reason, or even a Scion of Zeus (after all, Merlin is said to be half human!) who happens to resemble his father in a few key ways. The Fate half of your question is difficult to answer because we really don't think there's any way Zeus was worshiped as Merlin-a-god at any point so Fate doesn't give a damn about his associateds, but he already has Prophecy and probably at least a little bit of Magic for some of the shapechanging shenanigans he perpetrates on himself and others, so it wouldn't be much of a change even if you do go that route.
If you're going to roll with the wacky Merlin theory, we can only imagine you must have a truly amazing plot seed in mind.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
South Pacific
This was one of the longest pantheon projects ever, but we hope you guys will think it was worth the wait. From the windswept tropical islands of the Polynesian triangle, we bring you the Atua, stormy gods of the natural elements and bringers of supernatural adventure on a cosmic scale. Brace yourselves, because they are out of control.
We've updated the master post for Atua-specific details, but if you have questions, by all means, hit us. We had a blast working with these guys, who are in the interesting position of being worshiped over a wide range of different islands but often in different ways, for different things or at differing degrees of importance, making them a jack-of-all-trades group of gods ready to leap into action in a dozen wildly varying ways.
I don't mind telling you guys that I'm going to take a little time off from pantheons (maybe a whole week!) to recuperate, but when we leap back into action it'll be with the Inuit gods of the far northern reaches of North America. We are way super excited to finally be adding a North American pantheon to our gameset, not to mention getting to flesh out several Inuit characters who have already made appearances in our games, and the unique (and scary, and awful) flavor of the arctic gods is going to be a whole new world of horrific fun.
Voting was really, really close this time; for a while there were three frontrunners that were neck and neck, and every week we wondered if the deciding factor was just going to be who was on top when we finally got the supplement out the door. If you were part of the very vocal factions who didn't quite come out ahead, don't despair; the next round of voting is up and both of the other heavyweight contenders from this time around are back again, as are some fresh new options for folks who have been looking for something different. As always, we're happy to talk about any of the pantheons up for voting if you have questions about them.
As always, thanks to all of you for reading and discussing and cheering us on. Go get yourselves some gods of the islands.
We've updated the master post for Atua-specific details, but if you have questions, by all means, hit us. We had a blast working with these guys, who are in the interesting position of being worshiped over a wide range of different islands but often in different ways, for different things or at differing degrees of importance, making them a jack-of-all-trades group of gods ready to leap into action in a dozen wildly varying ways.
I don't mind telling you guys that I'm going to take a little time off from pantheons (maybe a whole week!) to recuperate, but when we leap back into action it'll be with the Inuit gods of the far northern reaches of North America. We are way super excited to finally be adding a North American pantheon to our gameset, not to mention getting to flesh out several Inuit characters who have already made appearances in our games, and the unique (and scary, and awful) flavor of the arctic gods is going to be a whole new world of horrific fun.
Voting was really, really close this time; for a while there were three frontrunners that were neck and neck, and every week we wondered if the deciding factor was just going to be who was on top when we finally got the supplement out the door. If you were part of the very vocal factions who didn't quite come out ahead, don't despair; the next round of voting is up and both of the other heavyweight contenders from this time around are back again, as are some fresh new options for folks who have been looking for something different. As always, we're happy to talk about any of the pantheons up for voting if you have questions about them.
As always, thanks to all of you for reading and discussing and cheering us on. Go get yourselves some gods of the islands.
Affairs of the Soul
Our marathon vlog series continues, this week with a two-for-one subject deal! Look at us go. We're not tired at all.
Question: I was just reading the Fatebinding rules on your site and something confused me. The way that the rules are written makes it seem like Scions have to be Legend 3 before they can get Fatebonds. Am I understanding that correctly?
Question: I remember John saying a while ago (in comments) that Fatebonds in general don't buy Attributes below 3 dots, but is there a theoretical maximum? Could one measly Fatebond and enough time buy a character up from zero Epic to ultimate attribute?
Question: What happens when the total amount of XP Siphoned by Fatebonds exceeds 100%? For example, if you pick up seven Level 10 Fatebonds - you'd end up with 105% of your XP being siphoned to meet your Fatebonds' expectations. Do you end up with more XP, but no discretionary spending?
Question: What would happen to the entire universe of Scion if Fate was either destroyed or could no longer influence the Gods?
Question: Neith is said to be a goddess that "made" Fate. how does that work in Scion?
Question: What's the difference between a Valor pantheon and a Courage pantheon? What makes you decide to give the Theoi Valor instead of Courage, or give the Tuatha Courage and not Valor?
Question: Have you ever considered having the Virtue Benevolence? Helping others, even sometimes at great cost to oneself?
Question: Is Malice going to be one of the core Virtues of the Inuit? It might be a little strange to have a Dark Virtue, but from your description the Inuit people were constantly scared shitless of their gods.
This is our fiftieth vlog - how the time flies. We should do something special, right?
Hey, guys. We're aware that our video is being a massive pain in the ass right now and refusing to load, and since we're stuck on a hotel connection this weekend, it's not being polite about our attempts to fix it. Please be patient - we promise it'll be up some time tonight.
We decided to celebrate our fiftieth vlog with technical difficulties.
Question: I was just reading the Fatebinding rules on your site and something confused me. The way that the rules are written makes it seem like Scions have to be Legend 3 before they can get Fatebonds. Am I understanding that correctly?
Question: I remember John saying a while ago (in comments) that Fatebonds in general don't buy Attributes below 3 dots, but is there a theoretical maximum? Could one measly Fatebond and enough time buy a character up from zero Epic to ultimate attribute?
Question: What happens when the total amount of XP Siphoned by Fatebonds exceeds 100%? For example, if you pick up seven Level 10 Fatebonds - you'd end up with 105% of your XP being siphoned to meet your Fatebonds' expectations. Do you end up with more XP, but no discretionary spending?
Question: What would happen to the entire universe of Scion if Fate was either destroyed or could no longer influence the Gods?
Question: Neith is said to be a goddess that "made" Fate. how does that work in Scion?
Question: What's the difference between a Valor pantheon and a Courage pantheon? What makes you decide to give the Theoi Valor instead of Courage, or give the Tuatha Courage and not Valor?
Question: Have you ever considered having the Virtue Benevolence? Helping others, even sometimes at great cost to oneself?
Question: Is Malice going to be one of the core Virtues of the Inuit? It might be a little strange to have a Dark Virtue, but from your description the Inuit people were constantly scared shitless of their gods.
This is our fiftieth vlog - how the time flies. We should do something special, right?
Hey, guys. We're aware that our video is being a massive pain in the ass right now and refusing to load, and since we're stuck on a hotel connection this weekend, it's not being polite about our attempts to fix it. Please be patient - we promise it'll be up some time tonight.
We decided to celebrate our fiftieth vlog with technical difficulties.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Extra! Extra!
Question: Let's say that tomorrow, some archaeologists came across some legitimate but crazy game changing evidence about a particular pantheon. For example, texts that suggest Sobek should have Illusion, or that Tezcatlipoca is a squirrel deity, or that Shamash was the true king of the Anunna. Would you try to implement these changes to the gods and pantheons involved, or would you deem them too ridiculous or upsetting to your current order and ignore them?
Well, first of all, "legitimate" is in the eye of the beholder. We'd have to really believe in whatever new piece of evidence's authenticity and religious importance; if there are questions about whether or not it's the genuine article or serious arguments over its translation, we'd probably hold off. We would, however, read everything we could get our hands on about it in the hopes of being able to make that judgment ourselves. We do have healthy egos about this kind of thing, after all.
But if it was a real and true archaeological source that made a strong case for Sobek to have Illusion, then yeah, absolutely, Sobek would gain Illusion. Part of the fun of Scion is of course in playing with the familiar figures of the gods, so it might be a little bit jarring for a while, but we'd also have a great time telling our players the new story of Sobek's illusionary antics and figuring out how he might now interact with his pantheon differently. Goodness knows we've made culturally jarring association decisions before (Loki not having Fire, for example), but the more stories, evidence and details we have about a god, the more meaty a portrait of them we can draw in game, which is always fun.
We tend to make this kind of change as a going-forward thing, so we probably wouldn't retcon Sobek into having done Illusion stuff in our games that he really didn't, but it would be added to his arsenal for the future; likewise, we wouldn't change his Scions' associations if they were already in play, because that wouldn't be particularly fair to them.
Power changes are easy, but your last example, Shamash being suddenly king of the Anunna, would be more of a thorny issue. Changes like that that would be seriously opposed to events and politics already in play would affect the players and the plot a lot more, so while we wouldn't necessarily ignore them, how we'd handle them would depend a lot on what exactly the new myth said and how we could work it into our current narrative. Maybe we'd need to say that Shamash is normally king of the Anunna but is letting Marduk take the reins right now while they're fighting the Titans, or that Shamash has been in charge the whole time but using Marduk as his proxy unbeknownst to the PCs (or Marduk himself, even), or that Shamash is king of a specific area or idea but not necessarily the whole pantheon and all its operations, or that Shamash was king once but was overthrown at some point during the events of our games, or whatever else makes sense.
What we don't want to do is tell our players, "Hey, everything you thought you knew/worked toward/politically accomplished was wrong, start over," because we learned something we didn't already know. It's the Storyteller's responsibility to make sure the story flows smoothly and draws on the appropriate sources to be a good ride, and that doesn't go out the window just because we realize we've made a mistake behind the scenes (and we do make those, even without new archaeological evidence, from time to time). No Storyteller can ever anticipate or remember everything, especially if nobody in the world even knows about it yet, but that just means that you have to be quick on your feet to figure out how to make that work within the game you already have. Tweaking, changing or anything else is always fine, but make sure your players don't suffer because of it.
Well, first of all, "legitimate" is in the eye of the beholder. We'd have to really believe in whatever new piece of evidence's authenticity and religious importance; if there are questions about whether or not it's the genuine article or serious arguments over its translation, we'd probably hold off. We would, however, read everything we could get our hands on about it in the hopes of being able to make that judgment ourselves. We do have healthy egos about this kind of thing, after all.
But if it was a real and true archaeological source that made a strong case for Sobek to have Illusion, then yeah, absolutely, Sobek would gain Illusion. Part of the fun of Scion is of course in playing with the familiar figures of the gods, so it might be a little bit jarring for a while, but we'd also have a great time telling our players the new story of Sobek's illusionary antics and figuring out how he might now interact with his pantheon differently. Goodness knows we've made culturally jarring association decisions before (Loki not having Fire, for example), but the more stories, evidence and details we have about a god, the more meaty a portrait of them we can draw in game, which is always fun.
We tend to make this kind of change as a going-forward thing, so we probably wouldn't retcon Sobek into having done Illusion stuff in our games that he really didn't, but it would be added to his arsenal for the future; likewise, we wouldn't change his Scions' associations if they were already in play, because that wouldn't be particularly fair to them.
Power changes are easy, but your last example, Shamash being suddenly king of the Anunna, would be more of a thorny issue. Changes like that that would be seriously opposed to events and politics already in play would affect the players and the plot a lot more, so while we wouldn't necessarily ignore them, how we'd handle them would depend a lot on what exactly the new myth said and how we could work it into our current narrative. Maybe we'd need to say that Shamash is normally king of the Anunna but is letting Marduk take the reins right now while they're fighting the Titans, or that Shamash has been in charge the whole time but using Marduk as his proxy unbeknownst to the PCs (or Marduk himself, even), or that Shamash is king of a specific area or idea but not necessarily the whole pantheon and all its operations, or that Shamash was king once but was overthrown at some point during the events of our games, or whatever else makes sense.
What we don't want to do is tell our players, "Hey, everything you thought you knew/worked toward/politically accomplished was wrong, start over," because we learned something we didn't already know. It's the Storyteller's responsibility to make sure the story flows smoothly and draws on the appropriate sources to be a good ride, and that doesn't go out the window just because we realize we've made a mistake behind the scenes (and we do make those, even without new archaeological evidence, from time to time). No Storyteller can ever anticipate or remember everything, especially if nobody in the world even knows about it yet, but that just means that you have to be quick on your feet to figure out how to make that work within the game you already have. Tweaking, changing or anything else is always fine, but make sure your players don't suffer because of it.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Bright Future
Question: I remember reading about a Scion game idea involving the second Titan War taking place one hundred years from now. In your opinion, is that a time period that would make for an interesting game?
Well, that really depends. A hundred years from now is in The Future, which means we actually have no idea what things will be like then. We can guess, of course, but every person comes up with a different vision of the coming century, which means that inevitably every forward-looking Scion game will take place in a totally different future setting.
What would you assume the world is like a hundred years from now? Is it basically the same as now, but with better networks and social programs? Is space travel commonplace or still something that is barely dabbled in? Have aliens landed? What social problems, like racism and classism, is humanity still grappling with? Is this a utopian future where everything is perfect and people are free to pursue their passions without worrying about everyday survival, or a dystopian future where society has fallen apart and only the strong can survive? Is it some of both, maybe, with enclaves of perfection surrounded by seas of misery? Do we have sentient androids? Is there a world government or do we still have local governments, and have those local governments remained the same? Do we still have the same standards of beauty? Have our collective views on ethics and morality changed? How many humans are left, especially if something apocalyptic might have happened?
And that's just the mortal world. The world of the gods will have marched on, too, leading to questions about whether or not monotheism has gained even more control or receded into the background, whether any new pantheons or religions might have risen up to throw their hats into the ring, whether older, more obscure pantheons have become better known through subsequent discoveries or worse known when their materials or temples are destroyed, and so on. When you're talking about setting a game in the future, you're really talking about building an entire massive universe setting basically from scratch; there's no commonly agreed-upon future to draw from and the visions of science fiction authors are as wild and varied as the gods themselves.
Worldbuilding is a ton of work. One of Scion's draws is that, at least in the default setting, it's just set here and now so you don't have to do that work since you can just sub in what you already know about your present society and world. But if you do want to do all that work, then sure, it could be a good Scion setting... but we don't know what kind of future you have in mind, so we can't approve or disapprove, really. A Scion story set in a dystopian, post-nuclear ruin would be massively different from one set in a galactic spacefaring future and still different from one set in an idyllic, paradisaical human-made utopia.
If you're looking for a few possible future universes to use (aside from just assuming "basically the same, but maybe with flying cars"), science fiction is a motherlode of possible settings and adventure hooks. There are the big universes, of course, especially for spacefaring - Star Trek's benevolent Federation or Star Wars' defiant Rebel Alliance and crushing Empire are obvious ways you can handle the idea of a future in which the stars are humanity's to command as well as the World. A great setting for a seriously dark and moody dystopian future might be the Junkyard of Battle Angel Alita (the new movie Elysium is almost the same exact thing); a less extreme version could be the technology-obsessed society of Fahrenheit 451, which has the added bonus of being a great environment for plots concerning the loss or preservation of knowledge about the ancient gods, or the seedy world of Blade Runner. Post-apocalyptic settings are all over the place, from the divided future societies of The Time Machine (which raises great questions about which gods control which groups of beings!) to the wasteland of Mad Max.
But really, there are few settings we would say are bad for a Scion game; it's all in how you run it, what you do with your characters and how good a story you tell. If you want to go for the future, go for it, we say; just be aware that there's a lot more your players (and you) will need to know, and a lot fewer easy answers for you to rely on.
Well, that really depends. A hundred years from now is in The Future, which means we actually have no idea what things will be like then. We can guess, of course, but every person comes up with a different vision of the coming century, which means that inevitably every forward-looking Scion game will take place in a totally different future setting.
What would you assume the world is like a hundred years from now? Is it basically the same as now, but with better networks and social programs? Is space travel commonplace or still something that is barely dabbled in? Have aliens landed? What social problems, like racism and classism, is humanity still grappling with? Is this a utopian future where everything is perfect and people are free to pursue their passions without worrying about everyday survival, or a dystopian future where society has fallen apart and only the strong can survive? Is it some of both, maybe, with enclaves of perfection surrounded by seas of misery? Do we have sentient androids? Is there a world government or do we still have local governments, and have those local governments remained the same? Do we still have the same standards of beauty? Have our collective views on ethics and morality changed? How many humans are left, especially if something apocalyptic might have happened?
And that's just the mortal world. The world of the gods will have marched on, too, leading to questions about whether or not monotheism has gained even more control or receded into the background, whether any new pantheons or religions might have risen up to throw their hats into the ring, whether older, more obscure pantheons have become better known through subsequent discoveries or worse known when their materials or temples are destroyed, and so on. When you're talking about setting a game in the future, you're really talking about building an entire massive universe setting basically from scratch; there's no commonly agreed-upon future to draw from and the visions of science fiction authors are as wild and varied as the gods themselves.
Worldbuilding is a ton of work. One of Scion's draws is that, at least in the default setting, it's just set here and now so you don't have to do that work since you can just sub in what you already know about your present society and world. But if you do want to do all that work, then sure, it could be a good Scion setting... but we don't know what kind of future you have in mind, so we can't approve or disapprove, really. A Scion story set in a dystopian, post-nuclear ruin would be massively different from one set in a galactic spacefaring future and still different from one set in an idyllic, paradisaical human-made utopia.
If you're looking for a few possible future universes to use (aside from just assuming "basically the same, but maybe with flying cars"), science fiction is a motherlode of possible settings and adventure hooks. There are the big universes, of course, especially for spacefaring - Star Trek's benevolent Federation or Star Wars' defiant Rebel Alliance and crushing Empire are obvious ways you can handle the idea of a future in which the stars are humanity's to command as well as the World. A great setting for a seriously dark and moody dystopian future might be the Junkyard of Battle Angel Alita (the new movie Elysium is almost the same exact thing); a less extreme version could be the technology-obsessed society of Fahrenheit 451, which has the added bonus of being a great environment for plots concerning the loss or preservation of knowledge about the ancient gods, or the seedy world of Blade Runner. Post-apocalyptic settings are all over the place, from the divided future societies of The Time Machine (which raises great questions about which gods control which groups of beings!) to the wasteland of Mad Max.
But really, there are few settings we would say are bad for a Scion game; it's all in how you run it, what you do with your characters and how good a story you tell. If you want to go for the future, go for it, we say; just be aware that there's a lot more your players (and you) will need to know, and a lot fewer easy answers for you to rely on.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Light My Way
Question: This is going to roam a bit, but what are the core concepts to the Stars purview? How does starlight differ from either sunlight or moonlight and so on?
Hmm, well, this is really talking about two different things: core concepts for Stars, and core concepts for light in general.
Light is of course a big deal in mythology because it's a big deal in the world, especially for ancient peoples who didn't have things like reliable or portable artificial lights to help them out when things got dark. The sun, moon and stars (and to a lesser extent fire, although it tends to more often be celebrated for heat than light) are the natural lights of the cosmos and therefore objects of reverence and worship in many ancient religions, simply because they kept away the terror of darkness and the things that might lurk in it. They are, however, different in the quality of that light. The sun was celebrated because it was the great light of day; it gave mankind the ability to move and trade and craft and do things during the brightly lit daylight hours, and its light was also recognized to feed plants and contribute to the fertility of the earth. The moon, on the other hand, was beloved as the great light in the darkness, the strongest comfort during nighttime when almost all else was black and dangerous, and the one thing that could help a lost traveler in the night find his way. The stars, finally, were objects of awe because of the mysteriousness of their lights, which were visible but not strong enough to really illuminate anything; ancient mankind wondered what that light was for if not for seeing, and invented hosts of different stories to explain it.
The Stars purview is therefore a little more eclectic than Sun or even Moon. Where Sun is all about light all the time because most mythological concepts for it are all light all the time, and Moon depends on several boons that refer to its light in the darkness roll and the changing light shed by its phases, Stars has to be and do a lot more than just light, since it has such a varied role in mythologies around the world.
Light is a concept that Stars uses, but in a less in-your-face role than the other two purviews; things like Aurora or Starfire trade on that idea of the light of the stars, but they focus on its conceptualization as a strange and faraway beauty rather than something people would use to light their way in the dark. Another major theme is that of navigation; once humanity realized that the stars appeared to have fixed patterns and movements, they became used widely as points of reference for travelers and seafarers, which is what boons like Axis of the Heavens or Celestial Beacon are working with. Another very strong theme is the idea of supernatural knowledge from the stars, which many cultures believed held secrets, writing or wisdom from the very gods in their unfathomable patterns, and that's where you'll see boons like Astronomer's Eye or Portent come into play. That concept's a little harder to deal with without stepping on Mystery's or Prophecy's venerable toes, but it's still a strong one for the overall global myths about stars.
Some other star themes are present in the purview, including creatures that live there (Summon Northern Spirit and Star Beast), the stars as the walkway or traveling path of the gods (The Milky Road) and stars as governers of fortune and fate (Lucky Star, Red Star), which is particularly popular in Asian astrology. Between you and me, we do have quite a few other potential Stars boons now that we've had some time to think about it since the great overhaul from the original rules, although I don't know if they'll get to come to light any time soon. Something for the voting poll, eh?
Hmm, well, this is really talking about two different things: core concepts for Stars, and core concepts for light in general.
Light is of course a big deal in mythology because it's a big deal in the world, especially for ancient peoples who didn't have things like reliable or portable artificial lights to help them out when things got dark. The sun, moon and stars (and to a lesser extent fire, although it tends to more often be celebrated for heat than light) are the natural lights of the cosmos and therefore objects of reverence and worship in many ancient religions, simply because they kept away the terror of darkness and the things that might lurk in it. They are, however, different in the quality of that light. The sun was celebrated because it was the great light of day; it gave mankind the ability to move and trade and craft and do things during the brightly lit daylight hours, and its light was also recognized to feed plants and contribute to the fertility of the earth. The moon, on the other hand, was beloved as the great light in the darkness, the strongest comfort during nighttime when almost all else was black and dangerous, and the one thing that could help a lost traveler in the night find his way. The stars, finally, were objects of awe because of the mysteriousness of their lights, which were visible but not strong enough to really illuminate anything; ancient mankind wondered what that light was for if not for seeing, and invented hosts of different stories to explain it.
The Stars purview is therefore a little more eclectic than Sun or even Moon. Where Sun is all about light all the time because most mythological concepts for it are all light all the time, and Moon depends on several boons that refer to its light in the darkness roll and the changing light shed by its phases, Stars has to be and do a lot more than just light, since it has such a varied role in mythologies around the world.
Light is a concept that Stars uses, but in a less in-your-face role than the other two purviews; things like Aurora or Starfire trade on that idea of the light of the stars, but they focus on its conceptualization as a strange and faraway beauty rather than something people would use to light their way in the dark. Another major theme is that of navigation; once humanity realized that the stars appeared to have fixed patterns and movements, they became used widely as points of reference for travelers and seafarers, which is what boons like Axis of the Heavens or Celestial Beacon are working with. Another very strong theme is the idea of supernatural knowledge from the stars, which many cultures believed held secrets, writing or wisdom from the very gods in their unfathomable patterns, and that's where you'll see boons like Astronomer's Eye or Portent come into play. That concept's a little harder to deal with without stepping on Mystery's or Prophecy's venerable toes, but it's still a strong one for the overall global myths about stars.
Some other star themes are present in the purview, including creatures that live there (Summon Northern Spirit and Star Beast), the stars as the walkway or traveling path of the gods (The Milky Road) and stars as governers of fortune and fate (Lucky Star, Red Star), which is particularly popular in Asian astrology. Between you and me, we do have quite a few other potential Stars boons now that we've had some time to think about it since the great overhaul from the original rules, although I don't know if they'll get to come to light any time soon. Something for the voting poll, eh?
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Eight Times the Fun
Question: Who are the Eight Immortals and what do they do?
The Eight Immortals are part of the proud Chinese tradition of humans who transcend their mortality to become something more. They have achieved incredible philosophical enlightenment and possess great spiritual powers as a result, and appear frequently in Chinese mythology, embarking on quests for religious knowledge or granting their gifts to help others who are doing the same. They're not strictly gods, but rather former mortals who became powerful through their own merits; western translations often refer to them as "saints", but they are also worshiped as deities in China with temples and tales of their own.
If you're thinking that "humans who become worshiped as gods through their awesomeness" sounds like Scions, you're right! We would consider the Eight Immortals, who now hang out having rocking awesome parties on a magical island in the sea somewhere, to be fantastic examples of ancient Scions who succeeded at achieving apotheosis thanks to their adventures. A cadre of benevolent, good-time-lovin' Legend 9 former Scions is a fantastic set of Guides, characters or plot motivators for any Scion game that wants to bring in some Chinese goodness.
The Scion books take a different approach as usual; they set Immortals up as a class of Chinese lesser immortals on page 101, which gives you a basic template if you'd prefer not to elevate them all the way up to the level of gods. Personally, we think it's a bit silly to ignore their human origin and claim they were never mortal in the first place, or to keep them at Legend 8 or lower when they're so famous and widely worshiped in China, but it's an option if you're trying to keep the roster of deities down. You know, from the ten bazillion gods China already has besides these guys.
As for what they do... they help people. They grant good fortune and healing and encourage enlightenment and balance, especially for those who worship them appropriately. Including your Scions!
The Eight Immortals are part of the proud Chinese tradition of humans who transcend their mortality to become something more. They have achieved incredible philosophical enlightenment and possess great spiritual powers as a result, and appear frequently in Chinese mythology, embarking on quests for religious knowledge or granting their gifts to help others who are doing the same. They're not strictly gods, but rather former mortals who became powerful through their own merits; western translations often refer to them as "saints", but they are also worshiped as deities in China with temples and tales of their own.
If you're thinking that "humans who become worshiped as gods through their awesomeness" sounds like Scions, you're right! We would consider the Eight Immortals, who now hang out having rocking awesome parties on a magical island in the sea somewhere, to be fantastic examples of ancient Scions who succeeded at achieving apotheosis thanks to their adventures. A cadre of benevolent, good-time-lovin' Legend 9 former Scions is a fantastic set of Guides, characters or plot motivators for any Scion game that wants to bring in some Chinese goodness.
The Scion books take a different approach as usual; they set Immortals up as a class of Chinese lesser immortals on page 101, which gives you a basic template if you'd prefer not to elevate them all the way up to the level of gods. Personally, we think it's a bit silly to ignore their human origin and claim they were never mortal in the first place, or to keep them at Legend 8 or lower when they're so famous and widely worshiped in China, but it's an option if you're trying to keep the roster of deities down. You know, from the ten bazillion gods China already has besides these guys.
As for what they do... they help people. They grant good fortune and healing and encourage enlightenment and balance, especially for those who worship them appropriately. Including your Scions!
Monday, October 21, 2013
What Runs in Your Blood
Question: Okay, so is it possible to have true Titanic Scions? I remember reading in the Grecian deluge myth that Prometheus had a demigod son.
No, it is not. Scions are specifically the children of gods; they are free of the taint of the Titans and made of equal parts divinity and humanity. Titans can corrupt humans to be their servants or have sex with humans to create Titanspawn offspring, but they can't make Scions. That ability lies with gods alone.
The person you are thinking of is Deucalion, so let's talk about him a little bit! There are actually a couple of Greek deluge myths, but Deucalion and his wife Pyrhha are the stars of the most famous one, in which Zeus floods the earth to destroy the people of the Bronze Age and only Prometheus' timely warning to his son allows the two of them to create an appropriate vessel and escape death. Deucalion and Pyrhha then repopulate the earth and foud a line of Grecian kings.
Greek heroes aren't always clearly labeled, and Deucalion is no exception. Apollodorus refers to him as "god-like", while Hyginus implies him to be part of the "human race"; Nonnus muddies the water by saying that "all mortal men perished" but Deucalion remained to repopulate with his wife. All different writers agree that Prometheus was Deucalion's father, while his mother is sometimes given as Pronoia (an Oceanid daughter of Oceanus and Tethys) but often goes mentioned. Deucalion does a lot of things that are Scion-esque, including receiving aid and favor from the gods to try to save himself from the flood, and he's considered to be dead but the manner of that death is never discussed, implying that he might have died of old age, a distinctly mortal condition. Pyrhha is clearly half-human, half-Titan, as a daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, although depending on your take on the myth of Pandora's creation you might or might not consider her human.
All this certainly sounds like a Scion, but while we're totally down with running Deucalion as a Scion if you want to, we're not down with running him as the Scion of a Titan. That simply doesn't exist in Scion's framework - and shouldn't, in our opinion, because the creation of Scions is an important and unique feature of humanity that doesn't make sense for Titans, who are by definition no longer capable of interacting with humanity in that kind of close and positive way. This is a lot like that time we talked about Demeter trying to burn the mortality out of a kid with fire; Greek mythology (and every other mythology) occasionally does things that just don't fit into the game's world anywhere easily, because religions and gods are weird and you'll never be able to create a system that covers every ridiculous thing they've ever done, so if you want to reconcile it as a Storyteller, you have to be creative.
The first and most interesting option we'd explore is that Prometheus maybe wasn't a Titan at this point in time. While Pandora's existence tells us that this is after all his shenanigans with the stealing of sacrifices and dissemination of fire and earning Zeus' eternal hatred, Deucalion himself might still have been born before the battle lines between the two were drawn. Zeus himself helps Deucalion, which suggests that there are no hard feelings there. Prometheus is of course definitely of a Titanic generation, but he's also the same generation as Zeus (they're first cousins), so it's theoretically possible that he wasn't a Titan from the beginning and only defected later. Certainly he doesn't appear to have fought in the Titanomachy, and he's generally a more benevolent and unthreatening figure where humanity is concerned. If you go with that option, Deucalion really is just a normal Scion of Prometheus - possibly the only one that ever existed.
Another possibility is that Prometheus is Deucalion's father figuratively instead of literally, and that he's someone else's Scion (perhaps Zeus'?) that Prometheus acts as Guide or mentor for. We're not as big fans of this approach since Greek myth is very clear about repeating that Deucalion is Prometheus' son, but for those who want him to be Titanic from the very beginning but also want Deucalion to be a true Scion, this may be a useful compromise.
Or, you can also decide that Deucalion wasn't really a Scion at all, and proceed accordingly. He's very closely associated with humanity and rebuilding it after the flood, so maybe he was a Legendary mortal, created by Prometheus through the use of Artistry or other creative powers (which would explain why a mother is mentioned so seldom). Maybe he was a normal human that Prometheus decided to adopt, possibly because he married Pyrhha and therefore Prometheus felt some responsibility for her since he made her mother Pandora. Maybe he was actually a lesser immortal or Titanspawn of some kind or even a god, living in the World before the time that the gods left it for good; if his mother is an Oceanid, he could be one of the tritones, or any other kind of supernatural figure associated with water, which certainly couldn't hurt him in his quest to survive the great flood. The mortals that Deucalion engenders to repopulate the world aren't actually children of his but rather created from rock and earth, so he wouldn't need to be human in order to "create" human children in this way.
Honestly, this is one of those places where game rules don't match up and it's a pain in the ass. Use your best judgment, and best of luck to you.
No, it is not. Scions are specifically the children of gods; they are free of the taint of the Titans and made of equal parts divinity and humanity. Titans can corrupt humans to be their servants or have sex with humans to create Titanspawn offspring, but they can't make Scions. That ability lies with gods alone.
The person you are thinking of is Deucalion, so let's talk about him a little bit! There are actually a couple of Greek deluge myths, but Deucalion and his wife Pyrhha are the stars of the most famous one, in which Zeus floods the earth to destroy the people of the Bronze Age and only Prometheus' timely warning to his son allows the two of them to create an appropriate vessel and escape death. Deucalion and Pyrhha then repopulate the earth and foud a line of Grecian kings.
Greek heroes aren't always clearly labeled, and Deucalion is no exception. Apollodorus refers to him as "god-like", while Hyginus implies him to be part of the "human race"; Nonnus muddies the water by saying that "all mortal men perished" but Deucalion remained to repopulate with his wife. All different writers agree that Prometheus was Deucalion's father, while his mother is sometimes given as Pronoia (an Oceanid daughter of Oceanus and Tethys) but often goes mentioned. Deucalion does a lot of things that are Scion-esque, including receiving aid and favor from the gods to try to save himself from the flood, and he's considered to be dead but the manner of that death is never discussed, implying that he might have died of old age, a distinctly mortal condition. Pyrhha is clearly half-human, half-Titan, as a daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, although depending on your take on the myth of Pandora's creation you might or might not consider her human.
All this certainly sounds like a Scion, but while we're totally down with running Deucalion as a Scion if you want to, we're not down with running him as the Scion of a Titan. That simply doesn't exist in Scion's framework - and shouldn't, in our opinion, because the creation of Scions is an important and unique feature of humanity that doesn't make sense for Titans, who are by definition no longer capable of interacting with humanity in that kind of close and positive way. This is a lot like that time we talked about Demeter trying to burn the mortality out of a kid with fire; Greek mythology (and every other mythology) occasionally does things that just don't fit into the game's world anywhere easily, because religions and gods are weird and you'll never be able to create a system that covers every ridiculous thing they've ever done, so if you want to reconcile it as a Storyteller, you have to be creative.
The first and most interesting option we'd explore is that Prometheus maybe wasn't a Titan at this point in time. While Pandora's existence tells us that this is after all his shenanigans with the stealing of sacrifices and dissemination of fire and earning Zeus' eternal hatred, Deucalion himself might still have been born before the battle lines between the two were drawn. Zeus himself helps Deucalion, which suggests that there are no hard feelings there. Prometheus is of course definitely of a Titanic generation, but he's also the same generation as Zeus (they're first cousins), so it's theoretically possible that he wasn't a Titan from the beginning and only defected later. Certainly he doesn't appear to have fought in the Titanomachy, and he's generally a more benevolent and unthreatening figure where humanity is concerned. If you go with that option, Deucalion really is just a normal Scion of Prometheus - possibly the only one that ever existed.
Another possibility is that Prometheus is Deucalion's father figuratively instead of literally, and that he's someone else's Scion (perhaps Zeus'?) that Prometheus acts as Guide or mentor for. We're not as big fans of this approach since Greek myth is very clear about repeating that Deucalion is Prometheus' son, but for those who want him to be Titanic from the very beginning but also want Deucalion to be a true Scion, this may be a useful compromise.
Or, you can also decide that Deucalion wasn't really a Scion at all, and proceed accordingly. He's very closely associated with humanity and rebuilding it after the flood, so maybe he was a Legendary mortal, created by Prometheus through the use of Artistry or other creative powers (which would explain why a mother is mentioned so seldom). Maybe he was a normal human that Prometheus decided to adopt, possibly because he married Pyrhha and therefore Prometheus felt some responsibility for her since he made her mother Pandora. Maybe he was actually a lesser immortal or Titanspawn of some kind or even a god, living in the World before the time that the gods left it for good; if his mother is an Oceanid, he could be one of the tritones, or any other kind of supernatural figure associated with water, which certainly couldn't hurt him in his quest to survive the great flood. The mortals that Deucalion engenders to repopulate the world aren't actually children of his but rather created from rock and earth, so he wouldn't need to be human in order to "create" human children in this way.
Honestly, this is one of those places where game rules don't match up and it's a pain in the ass. Use your best judgment, and best of luck to you.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Play It Again, Sam
Question: Is reincarnation a thing in your games, or do all dead souls end up in an Underworld permanently?
It is indeed a thing, but like all things in Scion, it depends on the myths of the culture in question!
Reincarnation was an integral part of the afterlife beliefs of many ancient religions; Hinduism and Buddhism (up to the present day!) are the most obvious examples, but it applies to several others, including the Gaulish celts (who believed that the greatest heroes could be reincarnated to fight their battles anew), the Norse (who believed that particularly deserving dead people could be reborn as new creatures like the valkyries), and even the Aztecs (who believed that certain classes of people might be briefly reborn in new forms, like warriors that returned to the earth as hummingbirds). Of course, the majority of Scion's religions didn't believe in reincarnation and do prefer the model where the dead are locked away in the Underworld forever; this has to do with ancient fears of the dead interfering with the lives of the living and is also a perfectly valid way of approaching the afterlife, but the two can coexist with a little in-game creativity.
Like most things that surround death and the souls consigned to it, the best place to handle questions of reincarnation and eternity is almost always in the Underworld or the god who rules it. The Scion books (with the exception of a side mention in the Shen underworld of Di Yu) tend to shoehorn everyone into the underworld-forever model for conformity's sake, but the Underworlds of pantheons who espouse reincarnation are the perfect place to provide mechanics and possibilities for riding the wheel of incarnation again. Di Yu should house the great wheel of reincarnation, accessible only to those who have come through their purifying punishments intact and ready to attempt life again; the souls of Naraka should be brought up before Yama for judgment whenever he deems it appropriate and then sent back to the World in whatever form he considers them worthy of; the warriors of the House on the Left should return to earth when their formidable master commands them to and not before.
The best way to handle this is probably with some sort of Underworld feature that accomplishes reincarnation; the wheel of Di Yu is a great example, since it's a permanent feature of the Underworld that exists specifically to accomplish reincarnation and keep the cycle of lives going. We'd consider it either a massive multi-star relic or a part of the Underworld itself, usable in whatever ways and by whatever people the Storyteller considers best for the tale at hand. For religions that don't have easy features like that to mechanically explain how reincarnation works, you may want to invent some - after all, just because Gaulish myth doesn't actually say there's a tree/well/wheel/river/whatever of reincarnation doesn't mean you can't invent one to explain how the process of getting heroes back into the World actually happens. The Underworld is the implied place where all disposition of dead people occurs, so extending that to include their return to the world only makes sense.
The other option is that, in religions where there is clearly a form of reincarnation but also clearly no mechanism in the Underworld to explain it, it's simply the death god him- or herself that is accomplishing the task. Resurrection of the dead is difficult and not to be taken lightly - in most cases, it would require The Reaper - but it's still part of the job for gods whose afterlife duties include overseeing reincarnation. Some may use their Avatar once in a blue moon to reincarnate the particularly worthy; others, who operate in mythologies where many souls are reincarnated, may do it regularly in a large cattle-call and then rest up for a month before going at it again. Just as the death gods who manage Underworlds where no one is allowed to escape to trouble the living have a serious responsibility to ensure that that never happens, so the death gods of the reincarnation pantheons have an equally serious duty to ensure that those who are meant to walk the earth again do so. Being a god of death, especially one who administers the Underworld, is one of the heavier responsibilities in any pantheon, after all.
So yes, reincarnation can and should happen in Scion, where it's appropriate. It will seldom be a get-out-of-Di Yu-free card for Scions, since few religions believe in instant reincarnation and instead require the dead to undergo a waiting period or trials of purification and judgment first, but it's still out there for all your Storytelling plot needs. Scions angling to become gods of death themselves might be particularly interested in it, since they'll need to decide if they're going to be reincarnators or jailers, and what each different kind of Underworld control might mean for them as deities.
It is indeed a thing, but like all things in Scion, it depends on the myths of the culture in question!
Reincarnation was an integral part of the afterlife beliefs of many ancient religions; Hinduism and Buddhism (up to the present day!) are the most obvious examples, but it applies to several others, including the Gaulish celts (who believed that the greatest heroes could be reincarnated to fight their battles anew), the Norse (who believed that particularly deserving dead people could be reborn as new creatures like the valkyries), and even the Aztecs (who believed that certain classes of people might be briefly reborn in new forms, like warriors that returned to the earth as hummingbirds). Of course, the majority of Scion's religions didn't believe in reincarnation and do prefer the model where the dead are locked away in the Underworld forever; this has to do with ancient fears of the dead interfering with the lives of the living and is also a perfectly valid way of approaching the afterlife, but the two can coexist with a little in-game creativity.
Like most things that surround death and the souls consigned to it, the best place to handle questions of reincarnation and eternity is almost always in the Underworld or the god who rules it. The Scion books (with the exception of a side mention in the Shen underworld of Di Yu) tend to shoehorn everyone into the underworld-forever model for conformity's sake, but the Underworlds of pantheons who espouse reincarnation are the perfect place to provide mechanics and possibilities for riding the wheel of incarnation again. Di Yu should house the great wheel of reincarnation, accessible only to those who have come through their purifying punishments intact and ready to attempt life again; the souls of Naraka should be brought up before Yama for judgment whenever he deems it appropriate and then sent back to the World in whatever form he considers them worthy of; the warriors of the House on the Left should return to earth when their formidable master commands them to and not before.
The best way to handle this is probably with some sort of Underworld feature that accomplishes reincarnation; the wheel of Di Yu is a great example, since it's a permanent feature of the Underworld that exists specifically to accomplish reincarnation and keep the cycle of lives going. We'd consider it either a massive multi-star relic or a part of the Underworld itself, usable in whatever ways and by whatever people the Storyteller considers best for the tale at hand. For religions that don't have easy features like that to mechanically explain how reincarnation works, you may want to invent some - after all, just because Gaulish myth doesn't actually say there's a tree/well/wheel/river/whatever of reincarnation doesn't mean you can't invent one to explain how the process of getting heroes back into the World actually happens. The Underworld is the implied place where all disposition of dead people occurs, so extending that to include their return to the world only makes sense.
The other option is that, in religions where there is clearly a form of reincarnation but also clearly no mechanism in the Underworld to explain it, it's simply the death god him- or herself that is accomplishing the task. Resurrection of the dead is difficult and not to be taken lightly - in most cases, it would require The Reaper - but it's still part of the job for gods whose afterlife duties include overseeing reincarnation. Some may use their Avatar once in a blue moon to reincarnate the particularly worthy; others, who operate in mythologies where many souls are reincarnated, may do it regularly in a large cattle-call and then rest up for a month before going at it again. Just as the death gods who manage Underworlds where no one is allowed to escape to trouble the living have a serious responsibility to ensure that that never happens, so the death gods of the reincarnation pantheons have an equally serious duty to ensure that those who are meant to walk the earth again do so. Being a god of death, especially one who administers the Underworld, is one of the heavier responsibilities in any pantheon, after all.
So yes, reincarnation can and should happen in Scion, where it's appropriate. It will seldom be a get-out-of-Di Yu-free card for Scions, since few religions believe in instant reincarnation and instead require the dead to undergo a waiting period or trials of purification and judgment first, but it's still out there for all your Storytelling plot needs. Scions angling to become gods of death themselves might be particularly interested in it, since they'll need to decide if they're going to be reincarnators or jailers, and what each different kind of Underworld control might mean for them as deities.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Power Plays
Our vlogging spree continues! This is only the second of the many vlogs we filmed at the same tinme, so we barely look fatigued at all yet! This week's theme is boons, knacks and powers, because you guys never run out of questions about those things. Never.
Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?
Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?
Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?
Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?
Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?
Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?
Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?
Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?
Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)
Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.
Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?
Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?
Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?
Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?
Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?
Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?
Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?
Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?
Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)
Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Melting Pot
Question: How do cross-pantheon gods and PSPs work? Does Quetzalcoatl, for example, have Itztli, Tal'ich, both? Apologies if this has been answered before, I've got a feeling it has but couldn't find it anywhere.
We've talked about it on and off, but I think mostly in comments and asides, so no worries about not finding those. We don't actually come to your house and hit you with bats when you ask about something that's been talked about before. That's just something John threatens people with.
The most important thing is that no god gets to rock two PSPs at once, regardless of line-crossing between pantheons. PSPs are so powerful that it's insane to have more than one, and many PSPs would have even more off-the-scale effects if stacked on one another. They were never meant to be used together and aren't balanced for it, so some will render one another redundant while others will be wildly out of control together. If Quetzalcoatl had both Tal'ich and Itztli, he would end up with Utzil Keban and Communal Divinity overlapping to an annoying degree, but his boons would end up almost free thanks to the combination of Caan Cab rendering them Willpower-free and Itztli boons making Legend an easily wasted commodity. Other combinations are even more bananas - can you imagine the guy who has both Dvoeverie and Heku and his endless, unconquerable Virtue Channel mill?
But Quetzalcoatl is clearly both Maya (as Kulkulkan) and Aztec, and he's not the only one. There are plenty of gods in more than one pantheon; if Mithra is a major figure in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism and a Roman mystery cult, how do you decide which of his cultural affiliations grants the PSP? Does he just choose one, and if so, which one? Does he swap between them depending on where he is and what he's doing, so that his command of Asha suddenly turns into an affinity for Samsara as soon as he crosses the Indian border? What if he's the major god of one religion and then centuries later becomes much more prominent in a different one - is he stuck with the PSP of the pantheon he barely belongs to anymore for the rest of eternity?
This is one of those places that Scion doesn't have a good way to reconcile ancient religions with game mechanics. Scion treats pantheons as discrete entities with their own specific powers, which means that gods have to be considered a member of one or the other no matter what their ancient cultural roots might be. It's a Storyteller call in the end, but we use the following guidelines:
1. What pantheon is the god most prominent in?
2. What pantheon's PSP does the god demonstrate powers from?
3. What pantheon are we planning to run the god's stories around?
Most of the time, the decision's made pretty easily by just looking at which pantheon a given god is most important, present or celebrated in. Guanyin is also known in India and Japan, for example, but her Chinese worship is clearly much more widespread and centrally important, so she has Taiyi instead of Samsara or Tsukumo-gami. But sometimes it's not so clear-cut which culture has the best claim to be a god's home base, as in Quetzalcoatl's case, so then we move on to seeing whether or not he actually uses any of the powers of that PSP in his myths. We have the feathered serpent mostly pegged at this point; he certainly appears in Maya myth, but he doesn't have much in the way of alternate personas or aspects, while on the other hand we know he does receive sacrifices and perform autosacrifice on himself in Aztec myths.
Most gods are sorted out by the time you get through those first two criteria, but once in a while one is just overly difficult to figure out, or you don't want to cut your options down too much as a Storyteller. In that case, it all comes down to the final and possibly most important issue, which is what you're planning to do with a god in your story. If you're crafting a giant master metaplot surrounding the Deva but aren't planning to do much with the Yazata, you're probably better off using Vayu in his Hindu guise rather than bothering with his Persian persona and powers, and if you have a story that revolves around the pantheons of the Celtic isles, you probably want Ogma as one of the Enech-wielding Tuatha instead of the continental Gaulish gods.
We're mostly talking about Storytelling here; which powers a god uses are under the control of the Storyteller, of course, and separate from issues of Scions and character creation. If you're a player and you're wondering what PSP you might get from a given god, always check with your Storyteller first. We've done a little monkeying around with it in the spirit of experimentation; in our Eastern Promises game, some of the Deva and Yazata that have overlap allow Scions to choose either Samsara or Asha for their PSP at character creation, although they can't change it later. It's a neat idea that allows the Scions to choose which culture and expression of their patron god they most identify with. That's worked out all right so far, although we're not sure how far we want to extend that or if it's a great system-wide idea.
But the most important thing to take away for Scions (the same as their parents) is this: they do not get two PSPs, ever. Whatever you choose, you'll have to give them access to one and only one PSP unless you feel like doing a massive, far-reaching rewrite of all the PSPs to make them capable of playing nicely together without being overpowered. We definitely don't want to do that and can't imagine anyone else would want to... but if you do undertake the sisyphean labor, let us know how it turns out!
We've talked about it on and off, but I think mostly in comments and asides, so no worries about not finding those. We don't actually come to your house and hit you with bats when you ask about something that's been talked about before. That's just something John threatens people with.
The most important thing is that no god gets to rock two PSPs at once, regardless of line-crossing between pantheons. PSPs are so powerful that it's insane to have more than one, and many PSPs would have even more off-the-scale effects if stacked on one another. They were never meant to be used together and aren't balanced for it, so some will render one another redundant while others will be wildly out of control together. If Quetzalcoatl had both Tal'ich and Itztli, he would end up with Utzil Keban and Communal Divinity overlapping to an annoying degree, but his boons would end up almost free thanks to the combination of Caan Cab rendering them Willpower-free and Itztli boons making Legend an easily wasted commodity. Other combinations are even more bananas - can you imagine the guy who has both Dvoeverie and Heku and his endless, unconquerable Virtue Channel mill?
But Quetzalcoatl is clearly both Maya (as Kulkulkan) and Aztec, and he's not the only one. There are plenty of gods in more than one pantheon; if Mithra is a major figure in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism and a Roman mystery cult, how do you decide which of his cultural affiliations grants the PSP? Does he just choose one, and if so, which one? Does he swap between them depending on where he is and what he's doing, so that his command of Asha suddenly turns into an affinity for Samsara as soon as he crosses the Indian border? What if he's the major god of one religion and then centuries later becomes much more prominent in a different one - is he stuck with the PSP of the pantheon he barely belongs to anymore for the rest of eternity?
This is one of those places that Scion doesn't have a good way to reconcile ancient religions with game mechanics. Scion treats pantheons as discrete entities with their own specific powers, which means that gods have to be considered a member of one or the other no matter what their ancient cultural roots might be. It's a Storyteller call in the end, but we use the following guidelines:
1. What pantheon is the god most prominent in?
2. What pantheon's PSP does the god demonstrate powers from?
3. What pantheon are we planning to run the god's stories around?
Most of the time, the decision's made pretty easily by just looking at which pantheon a given god is most important, present or celebrated in. Guanyin is also known in India and Japan, for example, but her Chinese worship is clearly much more widespread and centrally important, so she has Taiyi instead of Samsara or Tsukumo-gami. But sometimes it's not so clear-cut which culture has the best claim to be a god's home base, as in Quetzalcoatl's case, so then we move on to seeing whether or not he actually uses any of the powers of that PSP in his myths. We have the feathered serpent mostly pegged at this point; he certainly appears in Maya myth, but he doesn't have much in the way of alternate personas or aspects, while on the other hand we know he does receive sacrifices and perform autosacrifice on himself in Aztec myths.
Most gods are sorted out by the time you get through those first two criteria, but once in a while one is just overly difficult to figure out, or you don't want to cut your options down too much as a Storyteller. In that case, it all comes down to the final and possibly most important issue, which is what you're planning to do with a god in your story. If you're crafting a giant master metaplot surrounding the Deva but aren't planning to do much with the Yazata, you're probably better off using Vayu in his Hindu guise rather than bothering with his Persian persona and powers, and if you have a story that revolves around the pantheons of the Celtic isles, you probably want Ogma as one of the Enech-wielding Tuatha instead of the continental Gaulish gods.
We're mostly talking about Storytelling here; which powers a god uses are under the control of the Storyteller, of course, and separate from issues of Scions and character creation. If you're a player and you're wondering what PSP you might get from a given god, always check with your Storyteller first. We've done a little monkeying around with it in the spirit of experimentation; in our Eastern Promises game, some of the Deva and Yazata that have overlap allow Scions to choose either Samsara or Asha for their PSP at character creation, although they can't change it later. It's a neat idea that allows the Scions to choose which culture and expression of their patron god they most identify with. That's worked out all right so far, although we're not sure how far we want to extend that or if it's a great system-wide idea.
But the most important thing to take away for Scions (the same as their parents) is this: they do not get two PSPs, ever. Whatever you choose, you'll have to give them access to one and only one PSP unless you feel like doing a massive, far-reaching rewrite of all the PSPs to make them capable of playing nicely together without being overpowered. We definitely don't want to do that and can't imagine anyone else would want to... but if you do undertake the sisyphean labor, let us know how it turns out!
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Sting Like a Bee... or Not
Question: Is there anything that you can tell us about the Maya bee god Ah-Muzen-Cub?
Question: Hi! So recently I've been reading up as much as I can on various Mesoamerican myths and deities. What I'd love to know is if you know anything (stories, descriptions, etc.) about Ah Muzen-Cab, the Maya bee god. Besides it apparently being a he, I've got squat.
Ah, the bee god. You're not alone in not being able to find out much about him; he isn't included in the adventures in the Popol Vuh and is generally enigmatic in art, so most of what we know about him is reconstructed from art and iconography or recorded by Europeans who mentioned some local practices or customs for posterity.
Ah Muzen Cub is subject to a lot of theory, like most Maya gods who don't have specific stories to tell us what they're up to. Because he often appears in what Maya scholars call the "diving" position, possibly because bees dive into flowers, there's conjecture that he might be the same as the so-called Diving God, a collective name for the popular Maya deity that frequently appears upside-down in art.
However, other scholars heavily dispute this and instead claim that the Diving God, who usually appears with maize and other plants, is more likely to be an example of the corn god Hun Nal/Hun Hunahpu, who went down into the Underworld in myth, which might explain the diving position. The diving position is also theorized to have to do with fertilizing the earth, and about a bajillion other things that basically boil down to "we don't know, we're trying to guess". Trying to identify anything meaningful about a religion from just art is pretty challenging, as I'm sure you can guess.
Bees do of course also fertilize the earth by pollinating plants, but it's hard to tell if that's why Ah Muzen Cub shows up upside down or if we're all just fooling ourselves. However, we can do a little more solid guessing about his purpose in life from the Maya love for honey, which was one of their most important luxury foods. It was the only sweetener available to them (they didn't have sugars) and thus used liberally in many dishes as well as being a major ingredient in balche, the local form of alcohol. Not surprisingly since it was the only sweet thing they knew, the Maya also ascribed magical and healing properties to honey, which was used to treat a large range of diseases; and since honey is naturally antimicrobial, this was actually surprisingly successful, which only increased the importance of the precious golden liquid to the ancient Maya. And, the bees of the Maya kingdoms are actually stingless, which meant that beekeeping was considered a noble profession with no more hazards than farming any other kind of animal, and became an important part of their trading, medical and religious life.
So with all this love of bees and honey going on, not to mention the local bees being shockingly friendly by the standards of everyone else in the world who has been stung by an angry hive, it seems likely that Ah Muzen Cub was, if not super important, at least major enough to be the patron of the bees themselves and by extension the honey farmers and physicians who depended on them. We have no stories of his exploits and thus would not consider him to be very powerful, probably only Legend 9 with Animal (Bee) as his sole association, but he's still a neat character to have available if you're playing with the K'uh or just generally interested in apian pursuits.
Question: Hi! So recently I've been reading up as much as I can on various Mesoamerican myths and deities. What I'd love to know is if you know anything (stories, descriptions, etc.) about Ah Muzen-Cab, the Maya bee god. Besides it apparently being a he, I've got squat.
Ah, the bee god. You're not alone in not being able to find out much about him; he isn't included in the adventures in the Popol Vuh and is generally enigmatic in art, so most of what we know about him is reconstructed from art and iconography or recorded by Europeans who mentioned some local practices or customs for posterity.
Ah Muzen Cub is subject to a lot of theory, like most Maya gods who don't have specific stories to tell us what they're up to. Because he often appears in what Maya scholars call the "diving" position, possibly because bees dive into flowers, there's conjecture that he might be the same as the so-called Diving God, a collective name for the popular Maya deity that frequently appears upside-down in art.
However, other scholars heavily dispute this and instead claim that the Diving God, who usually appears with maize and other plants, is more likely to be an example of the corn god Hun Nal/Hun Hunahpu, who went down into the Underworld in myth, which might explain the diving position. The diving position is also theorized to have to do with fertilizing the earth, and about a bajillion other things that basically boil down to "we don't know, we're trying to guess". Trying to identify anything meaningful about a religion from just art is pretty challenging, as I'm sure you can guess.
Bees do of course also fertilize the earth by pollinating plants, but it's hard to tell if that's why Ah Muzen Cub shows up upside down or if we're all just fooling ourselves. However, we can do a little more solid guessing about his purpose in life from the Maya love for honey, which was one of their most important luxury foods. It was the only sweetener available to them (they didn't have sugars) and thus used liberally in many dishes as well as being a major ingredient in balche, the local form of alcohol. Not surprisingly since it was the only sweet thing they knew, the Maya also ascribed magical and healing properties to honey, which was used to treat a large range of diseases; and since honey is naturally antimicrobial, this was actually surprisingly successful, which only increased the importance of the precious golden liquid to the ancient Maya. And, the bees of the Maya kingdoms are actually stingless, which meant that beekeeping was considered a noble profession with no more hazards than farming any other kind of animal, and became an important part of their trading, medical and religious life.
So with all this love of bees and honey going on, not to mention the local bees being shockingly friendly by the standards of everyone else in the world who has been stung by an angry hive, it seems likely that Ah Muzen Cub was, if not super important, at least major enough to be the patron of the bees themselves and by extension the honey farmers and physicians who depended on them. We have no stories of his exploits and thus would not consider him to be very powerful, probably only Legend 9 with Animal (Bee) as his sole association, but he's still a neat character to have available if you're playing with the K'uh or just generally interested in apian pursuits.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
What's in a Name?
Question: When writing up pantheons, how do you decide on an overall name for the particular pantheon? Especially in cases where a culture might not have a distinctive name for its gods other than well... "The Gods"?
We talked about this a lot in the comments when we recently changed the names of the pantheons, but I think it's a good topic to talk about here, too!
Honestly, naming conventions for pantheons are very simple for us. If there's a collective name for the pantheon that was actually used by the culture in question - the Tuatha de Danann or Aesir, for example - we use that. If there isn't, we use whatever term they would have used for their gods, which is exactly what you suggest: usually a translation meaning "gods" (which is the case for most of the other folks on the site, including the Theoi, Kami, Deva and so on).
What's a little more interesting to think about, however, is whether or not pantheons need a so-called distinctive name. The original Scion books used them as sort of banner titles for a given group of gods; this makes it easier to talk about them as a whole (it's a bit faster to say "the Deva" than "the Indian gods" or "the gods of India"), but is also probably in large part a holdover from other games White Wolf wrote and published during its heyday. In the major White Wolf gamelines, Exalted and World of Darkness, each subset of creature types was given a distinct name to differentiate it from the others, which is a practice that carried over into Scion. But where such naming conventions were necessary in a game like Vampire, which had ten thousand different bloodlines and coteries and philosophical paths and clans to keep track of, they're not nearly as necessary in Scion.
The major reason for that is that Scion is based in the real world, using real-world religions, whereas the political worlds of games like Exalted or Vampire were largely invented by the writers. Because we know our own world and its different countries and cultures, at least generally, we don't strictly need a banner name for a group of gods, because we can just say "the Greek gods" or "the Norse gods" or "the Maya gods" and instantly know what we're talking about. That's not the case for a game like Vampire; you can say "the Spanish vampires" or "the seafaring vampires" or "the darkness vampires", but that isn't going to tell the average player much useful information, so it's much better for the game to be able to say "the Lasombra".
Obviously, we're still using collective pantheon names in Scion right now in spite of this. We don't think they're strictly necessary, but they do make talking about them a little quicker and it can be fun for players to take a little clannish pride in being able to say, "I'm one of the Yazata!" or "I'm part of the Teotl!" It's also useful from a game design standpoint to be able to quickly and easily divide them up with a convenient label, although again not really necessary (we could just as easily label things Egypt and Scandinavia instead, after all).
But really, the pantheon names don't actually make sense in context of the game itself, because they're just cultural terms meaning "gods", so the gods themselves probably wouldn't use them. No Japanese god is going to refer to a Persian god as a Yazata most of the time; he's going to call him a kami, because kami is the word for gods and that means all gods, not just the local ones. The Yazata divide not just themselves and the Deva into ahura/yazata and daeva, but all other gods also fall into one of those categories for them, while the Teotl would just view the gods of Iceland as Icelandic teteoh rather than some other thing. Gods are not really separate "species" in Scion the way clans/bloodlines/breeds/castes/whatever in other games are, but rather the same kind of being that is simply from a different culture.
So honestly, we are not in the slightest bothered by the fact that most pantheon names (at last count, 9 out of 15) simply mean "gods". That's what they are and what they would probably call themselves, not to mention everyone else. Where specific names are appropriate, we absolutely use them (Lugh ain't callin' no jackass not from the line of Danu one of the Tuatha de, after all), but they often aren't and that's perfectly fine. Ptah is more likely to talk about the Orisha as "western Netjer" than anything else, because there's no earthly (or godly) reason he would randomly call them gods in some other language instead of his own.
But clan-style names are a roleplaying game tradition and a lot of players are very comfortable with them, so we see no reason not to keep using them if you want to. Especially if you've already been using them for a while, it probably cuts down on player confusion if a god can just say "go talk to the Shen" even if it's more likely he would actually be using his own terminology.
Of our original pantheons, four of the six - the Apu, K'uh, Bogovi and Alihah - have names that mean simply "the gods". The other two come from cultures with specific names for that particular group of gods - the Anunna, meaning "gods of heaven" as distinct from the underworld gods, and the Elohim, meaning "sons of El", a general descent-based title for all the Canaanite gods that is very similar to the Irish Tuatha de Danann.
We talked about this a lot in the comments when we recently changed the names of the pantheons, but I think it's a good topic to talk about here, too!
Honestly, naming conventions for pantheons are very simple for us. If there's a collective name for the pantheon that was actually used by the culture in question - the Tuatha de Danann or Aesir, for example - we use that. If there isn't, we use whatever term they would have used for their gods, which is exactly what you suggest: usually a translation meaning "gods" (which is the case for most of the other folks on the site, including the Theoi, Kami, Deva and so on).
What's a little more interesting to think about, however, is whether or not pantheons need a so-called distinctive name. The original Scion books used them as sort of banner titles for a given group of gods; this makes it easier to talk about them as a whole (it's a bit faster to say "the Deva" than "the Indian gods" or "the gods of India"), but is also probably in large part a holdover from other games White Wolf wrote and published during its heyday. In the major White Wolf gamelines, Exalted and World of Darkness, each subset of creature types was given a distinct name to differentiate it from the others, which is a practice that carried over into Scion. But where such naming conventions were necessary in a game like Vampire, which had ten thousand different bloodlines and coteries and philosophical paths and clans to keep track of, they're not nearly as necessary in Scion.
The major reason for that is that Scion is based in the real world, using real-world religions, whereas the political worlds of games like Exalted or Vampire were largely invented by the writers. Because we know our own world and its different countries and cultures, at least generally, we don't strictly need a banner name for a group of gods, because we can just say "the Greek gods" or "the Norse gods" or "the Maya gods" and instantly know what we're talking about. That's not the case for a game like Vampire; you can say "the Spanish vampires" or "the seafaring vampires" or "the darkness vampires", but that isn't going to tell the average player much useful information, so it's much better for the game to be able to say "the Lasombra".
Obviously, we're still using collective pantheon names in Scion right now in spite of this. We don't think they're strictly necessary, but they do make talking about them a little quicker and it can be fun for players to take a little clannish pride in being able to say, "I'm one of the Yazata!" or "I'm part of the Teotl!" It's also useful from a game design standpoint to be able to quickly and easily divide them up with a convenient label, although again not really necessary (we could just as easily label things Egypt and Scandinavia instead, after all).
But really, the pantheon names don't actually make sense in context of the game itself, because they're just cultural terms meaning "gods", so the gods themselves probably wouldn't use them. No Japanese god is going to refer to a Persian god as a Yazata most of the time; he's going to call him a kami, because kami is the word for gods and that means all gods, not just the local ones. The Yazata divide not just themselves and the Deva into ahura/yazata and daeva, but all other gods also fall into one of those categories for them, while the Teotl would just view the gods of Iceland as Icelandic teteoh rather than some other thing. Gods are not really separate "species" in Scion the way clans/bloodlines/breeds/castes/whatever in other games are, but rather the same kind of being that is simply from a different culture.
So honestly, we are not in the slightest bothered by the fact that most pantheon names (at last count, 9 out of 15) simply mean "gods". That's what they are and what they would probably call themselves, not to mention everyone else. Where specific names are appropriate, we absolutely use them (Lugh ain't callin' no jackass not from the line of Danu one of the Tuatha de, after all), but they often aren't and that's perfectly fine. Ptah is more likely to talk about the Orisha as "western Netjer" than anything else, because there's no earthly (or godly) reason he would randomly call them gods in some other language instead of his own.
But clan-style names are a roleplaying game tradition and a lot of players are very comfortable with them, so we see no reason not to keep using them if you want to. Especially if you've already been using them for a while, it probably cuts down on player confusion if a god can just say "go talk to the Shen" even if it's more likely he would actually be using his own terminology.
Of our original pantheons, four of the six - the Apu, K'uh, Bogovi and Alihah - have names that mean simply "the gods". The other two come from cultures with specific names for that particular group of gods - the Anunna, meaning "gods of heaven" as distinct from the underworld gods, and the Elohim, meaning "sons of El", a general descent-based title for all the Canaanite gods that is very similar to the Irish Tuatha de Danann.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Moon-Mad
Question: How did the moon get so associated with madness and mental illness?
You know, we don't actually know the answer to that completely? The folk belief that lunacy (named after Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon, in our modern English terminology) is connected to the moon is a very ancient one, with mentions of it cropping up in ancient Babylonian texts and all the way through to the modern day. Nobody really started writing down why the moon should affect peoples' minds until comparatively late in mythological development, probably because before that it was one of those folk beliefs that was simply common knowledge, unquestioned and less than understood.
The earliest really firm explanation of lunacy is from Aristotle; he believed that the mind was the "wettest" or "moistest" part of the body, and that therefore the moon's phase would affect it the same way it affects the tides of the ocean and other bodies of water. Various cultures have always noted that there are obvious things affected by the moon, including peoples' bodies in the case of womens' menstruation, so it wasn't a stretch for them to believe that more things might be affected by it as well. Legends of things like lycanthropes, hungry moon deities who became ill or mad during the different phases of the moon, or magical creatures that could only be seen by the light of the full moon all contributed to a general idea that the full moon could and did cause strange things to happen, and many of those things could be considered forms of madness, which naturally opened the door to all madnesses being associated with the moon. Since there are some "madnesses" that only strike at night - for example, sleepwalking, nightmares or night terrors - some ancient peoples believed those must come from the moon, which was obviously the power over the nighttime world.
There are tons of scholarly theories about where people might have gotten this idea and whether or not it's actually true that people are mentally affected by the phase of the moon; even in the modern day there are a lot of very rational, scientific people who are utterly convinced that there is a greater chance for people to go fucking nuts on the full moon than at any other time, or who think everyone's moods automatically shift with the moon phase. Some have suggested that since menstrual cycles follow a lunar pattern and often include heavy mood swings or emotional changes thanks to hormonal shifting, the legend might have arisen as a result of women seeming to go a little more "mad" at certain times of the month, naturally ruled over by the moon; others have pointed out that since the moon sheds more light at certain times of the month than others, it might disrupt some peoples' sleep patterns more and more as it grows full, leading to them being irritable or having bad dreams that could be interpreted as madness; still others think it might be sociological in nature and lead back to an ancient survival instinct that tells people to become more alert and paranoid as the moon's phases change in preparation for the increased danger of the lightless nights that come with the new moon.
And, of course, there are also plenty of scientists who point to studies that show that there really isn't much correlation between moon phases and insanity at all, and who believe everyone who thinks there is is just chasing a bunch of red herrings in order to scientifically prove an old folkloric superstition.
Everyone has their own opinion on it, but most ancient peoples didn't explain why they felt the moon caused madness (except in cases where a god associated with the moon explicitly inflicts madness on someone, such as when Sin is said to cause insanity in those touched by specific rays of lunacy-causing moonlight when he's annoyed by someone); it was simply a fact of life that they all knew and believed, like the fact that plants need sunlight to grow. That folkloric belief is so strong that it's continued into the modern day, especially in western European countries and the Americas, still in that unformed, nebulous way that is not explained but only believed.
Having personally frightened the living daylights out of John with night terrors (seriously, I have straight up attacked him in the middle of the night without ever knowing it), I can definitely see how ancient people might believe that the moon, presiding cold and alien over the strange events of the night, might be the harbinger of madness and inflicter of insanity.
You know, we don't actually know the answer to that completely? The folk belief that lunacy (named after Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon, in our modern English terminology) is connected to the moon is a very ancient one, with mentions of it cropping up in ancient Babylonian texts and all the way through to the modern day. Nobody really started writing down why the moon should affect peoples' minds until comparatively late in mythological development, probably because before that it was one of those folk beliefs that was simply common knowledge, unquestioned and less than understood.
The earliest really firm explanation of lunacy is from Aristotle; he believed that the mind was the "wettest" or "moistest" part of the body, and that therefore the moon's phase would affect it the same way it affects the tides of the ocean and other bodies of water. Various cultures have always noted that there are obvious things affected by the moon, including peoples' bodies in the case of womens' menstruation, so it wasn't a stretch for them to believe that more things might be affected by it as well. Legends of things like lycanthropes, hungry moon deities who became ill or mad during the different phases of the moon, or magical creatures that could only be seen by the light of the full moon all contributed to a general idea that the full moon could and did cause strange things to happen, and many of those things could be considered forms of madness, which naturally opened the door to all madnesses being associated with the moon. Since there are some "madnesses" that only strike at night - for example, sleepwalking, nightmares or night terrors - some ancient peoples believed those must come from the moon, which was obviously the power over the nighttime world.
There are tons of scholarly theories about where people might have gotten this idea and whether or not it's actually true that people are mentally affected by the phase of the moon; even in the modern day there are a lot of very rational, scientific people who are utterly convinced that there is a greater chance for people to go fucking nuts on the full moon than at any other time, or who think everyone's moods automatically shift with the moon phase. Some have suggested that since menstrual cycles follow a lunar pattern and often include heavy mood swings or emotional changes thanks to hormonal shifting, the legend might have arisen as a result of women seeming to go a little more "mad" at certain times of the month, naturally ruled over by the moon; others have pointed out that since the moon sheds more light at certain times of the month than others, it might disrupt some peoples' sleep patterns more and more as it grows full, leading to them being irritable or having bad dreams that could be interpreted as madness; still others think it might be sociological in nature and lead back to an ancient survival instinct that tells people to become more alert and paranoid as the moon's phases change in preparation for the increased danger of the lightless nights that come with the new moon.
And, of course, there are also plenty of scientists who point to studies that show that there really isn't much correlation between moon phases and insanity at all, and who believe everyone who thinks there is is just chasing a bunch of red herrings in order to scientifically prove an old folkloric superstition.
Everyone has their own opinion on it, but most ancient peoples didn't explain why they felt the moon caused madness (except in cases where a god associated with the moon explicitly inflicts madness on someone, such as when Sin is said to cause insanity in those touched by specific rays of lunacy-causing moonlight when he's annoyed by someone); it was simply a fact of life that they all knew and believed, like the fact that plants need sunlight to grow. That folkloric belief is so strong that it's continued into the modern day, especially in western European countries and the Americas, still in that unformed, nebulous way that is not explained but only believed.
Having personally frightened the living daylights out of John with night terrors (seriously, I have straight up attacked him in the middle of the night without ever knowing it), I can definitely see how ancient people might believe that the moon, presiding cold and alien over the strange events of the night, might be the harbinger of madness and inflicter of insanity.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Call Once in a While!
Question: What happened to mortal parents of your God PCs?
Various fates. It's hard to be a human who has been touched by the divine; your life never goes smoothly or normally, and when it ends (which is often) it's usually in an unusual way.
Sowiljr's mortal mother, Marlene Matheson, was a Las Vegas showgirl and single mother who raised him on her own before dying of cancer when he was in his twenties. Her story, and Geoff's rise to Scionhood, are told in the story Close to the Sun.
Folkwardr's mortal parents, Benjamin and Margaret Anderson, are long dead of natural causes; they lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and while Woody had Eternal Youth and whiled away the centuries until today, they had no such option.
Jioni's mortal mother, Eugenia Landry, was a devout Catholic stay-at-home mother who was put into the care of a nunnery shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, right before Vivian was called away to go become a Scion. No one ever checked in on her again, so it's generally assumed that since she was in frail health anyway, she probably died during Fimbulwinter. If she didn't, she'd be somewhere in Africa right now with the rest of the population of New Orleans that Zwazo Fou Fou and Shango hijacked and relocated. The story of her interactions with Vivian is in her backstory, Godless.
Eztli's mortal mother (her name was Necahual but she went by Maria if anyone wonders, although Sangria never knew her and doesn't know her name herself) died in childbirth with Sangria, who came into the world bloody from the beginning. Since the Aztecs considered women who died in childbirth to have died in glorious combat, it is generally assumed she went to the House on the Left, although no one ever checked.
Vala's mortal mother, Hilda Dahl, died in a car accident the night of her Visitation. No one has any proof, but it seems like there might have been some kind of foul play involved. Read the story of Hilda and Aurora, Colors of Fate, and decide for yourself.
Kettila's mortal parents (her real ones, not any of the random ones she adopted), Oskar and Emma Blomgren, were never checked up on and probably also died during Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok. If they survived, they'd be among the meager few post-apocalypse people that live under Sowiljr's protection, although he would have no way of recognizing them.
Zwazo Fou Fou's mortal mother, Katherine James, died of natural causes somewhere during his Hero-to-Demigod career. He and his twin brother Mathias visited her grave once in a while, but not much once they got busy enough to make trips home impractical for them.
Aiona's mortal parents, Richard and Brenda Archimedes, were actually adoptive and she was aware of this from the start, consequently giving the poor couple little of her attention. Her real mother, Olivia, was seen several times in Hephaestus' company while he was posing as a mortal scientist, but her current whereabouts and what might have happened to her are unknown.
Sverrir's mortal mother, Amelia Nordstrom, was killed by a criminal during a holdup when he was a teenager, something that deeply affected his life and outlook thereafter. His stepfather, Michael Whitman, knew he wasn't Will's real father but was actually coopted to become his Guide by Njord, and helped his stepson as much as possible until he arrived at godhood, at which point he was lost to the furor of Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok.
Terminus' mortal mother, Claire Gozer, continued living in Wisconsin after his abrupt departure until he returned at Legend 9 to save her from Fimbulwinter, relocating her to his cult at Delphi. After Goze's death, Sowiljr took her in out of honor for his dead comrade, transplanting her to his Sanctum for a short period of time before resettling her in his cult lands in Iceland. She's one of the few parents of god-level Scions who is confirmed to still be alive and active, although she's pretty broken up over the loss of her son. Some of the story of their interaction is in his backstory, Wayward Son.
Elissa Margaritas, mother of both Alison and Colin, was left something of an emotional wreck after being left by both Apollo and Dionysus, but she was last seen still living quietly alone in her home in North Carolina. Alison saw her briefly just before her apotheosis and she seemed normal; no one has checked on her since, so it's unsure whether she survived Fimbulwinter to the end.
Saki's parents, Ichiro and Natsumi Kimura, are extremely not alive anymore. You can see why in her backstory, Little Fish.
And that's everybody that's a god right now! Many of the younger Scions of the Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games are very much still part of their parents' lives; Zoe went to get nagged incessantly by her mother about getting married this weekend, while James sends telegrams home to the family when possible, Leona is deeply put out with her father for kicking her out of the house to go have adventures, and Skylar's poor mother is beside herself with worry trying to figure out what to do about her son being a mentally unstable superhero that the government won't let her see.
Any of you guys got any interesting stories about what mortal Scion parents are up to these days?
Various fates. It's hard to be a human who has been touched by the divine; your life never goes smoothly or normally, and when it ends (which is often) it's usually in an unusual way.
Sowiljr's mortal mother, Marlene Matheson, was a Las Vegas showgirl and single mother who raised him on her own before dying of cancer when he was in his twenties. Her story, and Geoff's rise to Scionhood, are told in the story Close to the Sun.
Folkwardr's mortal parents, Benjamin and Margaret Anderson, are long dead of natural causes; they lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and while Woody had Eternal Youth and whiled away the centuries until today, they had no such option.
Jioni's mortal mother, Eugenia Landry, was a devout Catholic stay-at-home mother who was put into the care of a nunnery shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, right before Vivian was called away to go become a Scion. No one ever checked in on her again, so it's generally assumed that since she was in frail health anyway, she probably died during Fimbulwinter. If she didn't, she'd be somewhere in Africa right now with the rest of the population of New Orleans that Zwazo Fou Fou and Shango hijacked and relocated. The story of her interactions with Vivian is in her backstory, Godless.
Eztli's mortal mother (her name was Necahual but she went by Maria if anyone wonders, although Sangria never knew her and doesn't know her name herself) died in childbirth with Sangria, who came into the world bloody from the beginning. Since the Aztecs considered women who died in childbirth to have died in glorious combat, it is generally assumed she went to the House on the Left, although no one ever checked.
Vala's mortal mother, Hilda Dahl, died in a car accident the night of her Visitation. No one has any proof, but it seems like there might have been some kind of foul play involved. Read the story of Hilda and Aurora, Colors of Fate, and decide for yourself.
Kettila's mortal parents (her real ones, not any of the random ones she adopted), Oskar and Emma Blomgren, were never checked up on and probably also died during Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok. If they survived, they'd be among the meager few post-apocalypse people that live under Sowiljr's protection, although he would have no way of recognizing them.
Zwazo Fou Fou's mortal mother, Katherine James, died of natural causes somewhere during his Hero-to-Demigod career. He and his twin brother Mathias visited her grave once in a while, but not much once they got busy enough to make trips home impractical for them.
Aiona's mortal parents, Richard and Brenda Archimedes, were actually adoptive and she was aware of this from the start, consequently giving the poor couple little of her attention. Her real mother, Olivia, was seen several times in Hephaestus' company while he was posing as a mortal scientist, but her current whereabouts and what might have happened to her are unknown.
Sverrir's mortal mother, Amelia Nordstrom, was killed by a criminal during a holdup when he was a teenager, something that deeply affected his life and outlook thereafter. His stepfather, Michael Whitman, knew he wasn't Will's real father but was actually coopted to become his Guide by Njord, and helped his stepson as much as possible until he arrived at godhood, at which point he was lost to the furor of Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok.
Terminus' mortal mother, Claire Gozer, continued living in Wisconsin after his abrupt departure until he returned at Legend 9 to save her from Fimbulwinter, relocating her to his cult at Delphi. After Goze's death, Sowiljr took her in out of honor for his dead comrade, transplanting her to his Sanctum for a short period of time before resettling her in his cult lands in Iceland. She's one of the few parents of god-level Scions who is confirmed to still be alive and active, although she's pretty broken up over the loss of her son. Some of the story of their interaction is in his backstory, Wayward Son.
Elissa Margaritas, mother of both Alison and Colin, was left something of an emotional wreck after being left by both Apollo and Dionysus, but she was last seen still living quietly alone in her home in North Carolina. Alison saw her briefly just before her apotheosis and she seemed normal; no one has checked on her since, so it's unsure whether she survived Fimbulwinter to the end.
Saki's parents, Ichiro and Natsumi Kimura, are extremely not alive anymore. You can see why in her backstory, Little Fish.
And that's everybody that's a god right now! Many of the younger Scions of the Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games are very much still part of their parents' lives; Zoe went to get nagged incessantly by her mother about getting married this weekend, while James sends telegrams home to the family when possible, Leona is deeply put out with her father for kicking her out of the house to go have adventures, and Skylar's poor mother is beside herself with worry trying to figure out what to do about her son being a mentally unstable superhero that the government won't let her see.
Any of you guys got any interesting stories about what mortal Scion parents are up to these days?
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Spot the Spider
Question: In Vlog 22, you talked about statting up Anansi and putting him up on the site. Did that ever happen? If not, how come? If so, where should I be looking?
Anansi has not been statted yet, though not from any lack of love on our parts. We have frequently talked about two different projects that might include doing so, but so far haven't moved to those projects in the constant sea of things we could be doing.
The first project, which you'll see on the poll over to the right, is the statting of lower-Legend gods. While we would definitely say that Anansi is Legend 12, this project seems like a great time for us to mess around with adding all kinds of gods to the site.
The second, which isn't up for voting right not but probably will be in the future, is the creation of a "non-pantheon" god section for deities from pantheons that aren't officially written up and available for Scion play at the moment. Anansi would belong here in the absence of an official Ashanti pantheon, along with other major figures that are famous independent of their fellows.
So you're not missing him; he's not here, but hopefully he will be someday.
Anansi has not been statted yet, though not from any lack of love on our parts. We have frequently talked about two different projects that might include doing so, but so far haven't moved to those projects in the constant sea of things we could be doing.
The first project, which you'll see on the poll over to the right, is the statting of lower-Legend gods. While we would definitely say that Anansi is Legend 12, this project seems like a great time for us to mess around with adding all kinds of gods to the site.
The second, which isn't up for voting right not but probably will be in the future, is the creation of a "non-pantheon" god section for deities from pantheons that aren't officially written up and available for Scion play at the moment. Anansi would belong here in the absence of an official Ashanti pantheon, along with other major figures that are famous independent of their fellows.
So you're not missing him; he's not here, but hopefully he will be someday.
Scribe and Chronicler
Question: Hi, I have two questions to ask. How does a god transform into a purview Avatar? Like for the Flood, does their body just turn into a human-shaped water construct, or is there more? My second question is that I plan to write Scion fiction, so do you have any tips on how to to start it?
Your first question has already been answered in this blog post! Go ye and read.
As for your second, a few people have asked me about writing Scion fiction, although it's always been over email before so you guys haven't seen it here on the blog. Most writers will tell you that giving advice about writing is fucking impossible and usually not helpful, but I'll do my best!
When I started writing Scion fiction, I did it very freeform; I wrote up the events of game sessions as stories rather than inventing any plots of my own, and I didn't do it every game, only when something happened that I thought was interesting. I approached it sort of like tuning in to a TV show every few episodes, and I was only writing for the other players who already knew what was going on and who all the characters were, so I didn't have to do any background work or setup.
That gave me a good springboard to get comfortable, and I'd recommend doing something like that to get yourself ready to both branch out into more new stories and people to share them with (unless you're naturally all about sharing and you don't get uncomfortable about showing your work to others, in which case, awesome, go for it!).
Other than that, though, it's mostly just general writing advice I have for you. Don't worry if the first few things you write aren't what you want them to be; you can always revise them, and anyway, writing is like anything else. It takes practice, and that means that your earliest things will of course not be as good as ones you create later when you've had more time to hone your skills. Write things you're interested in, because if you write about something you think is boring, you'll have a hard time doing it and you'll bore the audience besides. Talk to the players who have characters in your story, if there are any besides yourself, because they'll know more about their characters than you do. Have fun!
I can't get a lot more specific than that, because writing's different for everyone. Some people have to write five thousand words a day and just edit them down, others write once a month when inspiration strikes them, some listen to music, others need silence, and so on and so forth. Find what works for you and go with it, and remember that Scion's all about heroic tales and divine myths, and it's awesome that we get to write those down.
Oh, and use your spellcheck and grammarcheck.
Your first question has already been answered in this blog post! Go ye and read.
As for your second, a few people have asked me about writing Scion fiction, although it's always been over email before so you guys haven't seen it here on the blog. Most writers will tell you that giving advice about writing is fucking impossible and usually not helpful, but I'll do my best!
When I started writing Scion fiction, I did it very freeform; I wrote up the events of game sessions as stories rather than inventing any plots of my own, and I didn't do it every game, only when something happened that I thought was interesting. I approached it sort of like tuning in to a TV show every few episodes, and I was only writing for the other players who already knew what was going on and who all the characters were, so I didn't have to do any background work or setup.
That gave me a good springboard to get comfortable, and I'd recommend doing something like that to get yourself ready to both branch out into more new stories and people to share them with (unless you're naturally all about sharing and you don't get uncomfortable about showing your work to others, in which case, awesome, go for it!).
Other than that, though, it's mostly just general writing advice I have for you. Don't worry if the first few things you write aren't what you want them to be; you can always revise them, and anyway, writing is like anything else. It takes practice, and that means that your earliest things will of course not be as good as ones you create later when you've had more time to hone your skills. Write things you're interested in, because if you write about something you think is boring, you'll have a hard time doing it and you'll bore the audience besides. Talk to the players who have characters in your story, if there are any besides yourself, because they'll know more about their characters than you do. Have fun!
I can't get a lot more specific than that, because writing's different for everyone. Some people have to write five thousand words a day and just edit them down, others write once a month when inspiration strikes them, some listen to music, others need silence, and so on and so forth. Find what works for you and go with it, and remember that Scion's all about heroic tales and divine myths, and it's awesome that we get to write those down.
Oh, and use your spellcheck and grammarcheck.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Political Pantheon Party!
Aha! I bet you thought we forgot to vlog today, didn't you? Shows what you know! Not only did we remember, we actually did a whole pile of vlogs in one day, so that if we end up in a scheduling crunch in the weeks to come, you won't go without answered questions and our cheerful faces.
Question: What would you guys think of a game where Scions deal with a number of NPCs in the world bringing their pantheons back to prominance, all the while secretly guarding Zeus's "successor"?
Question: Why does Hades have Epic Stamina associated?
Question: I'm a little bit intrigued by the Orisha. It's crazy how everyone is married to everyone. How does that really work? Are they a big happy family or what?
Question: I'm STing a game and my scions (of Hel, Hades and Odin) are getting to God soon, and I need some ideas on how to make their rise to God memorable.
Question: My scion of Izanagi is finding himself being attracted to Amaterasu. He blames his attraction on being named the god of the moon (Tsuki-Yomi died), so is this argument valid? Also, should he be disgusted with himself since he is attracted to his sister? Would she be his full or half sister, since Izanagi created her and her brothers?
Question: Hey, I noticed that in your Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games you only allow your PCs to pick four pantheons that actually had some level of cultural interaction. Just wondering if any other major pantheons on your site that could have that kind of thing going on, like say the Celtic pantheons, for instance?
Question: In your games, when and how did the gods learn that the Titans had escaped? Was there some big explosion in the Underworld? Did they simply slip out unnoticed until someone actually checked and saw that they had flown the coop?
Question: The Aztecs have a god of homosexuality despite their obvious dislike of the concept. How does the rest of the pantheon treat him?
Question: Norse vs. Borgovi? SWEET! But, say Loki tricked Thor and Perun into a room together - what would happen? A SPECTACULAR light show, or lots of drinking? OR something else?
Question: Power and responsibility go hand in hand. And with every great decision comes regret. Regret for what could have been, should have been, and what ultimately was. What do the gods regret?
Today's vlog is about gods, pantheons and related issues of their politics and powers. Happy viewing!
Question: What would you guys think of a game where Scions deal with a number of NPCs in the world bringing their pantheons back to prominance, all the while secretly guarding Zeus's "successor"?
Question: Why does Hades have Epic Stamina associated?
Question: I'm a little bit intrigued by the Orisha. It's crazy how everyone is married to everyone. How does that really work? Are they a big happy family or what?
Question: I'm STing a game and my scions (of Hel, Hades and Odin) are getting to God soon, and I need some ideas on how to make their rise to God memorable.
Question: My scion of Izanagi is finding himself being attracted to Amaterasu. He blames his attraction on being named the god of the moon (Tsuki-Yomi died), so is this argument valid? Also, should he be disgusted with himself since he is attracted to his sister? Would she be his full or half sister, since Izanagi created her and her brothers?
Question: Hey, I noticed that in your Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games you only allow your PCs to pick four pantheons that actually had some level of cultural interaction. Just wondering if any other major pantheons on your site that could have that kind of thing going on, like say the Celtic pantheons, for instance?
Question: In your games, when and how did the gods learn that the Titans had escaped? Was there some big explosion in the Underworld? Did they simply slip out unnoticed until someone actually checked and saw that they had flown the coop?
Question: The Aztecs have a god of homosexuality despite their obvious dislike of the concept. How does the rest of the pantheon treat him?
Question: Norse vs. Borgovi? SWEET! But, say Loki tricked Thor and Perun into a room together - what would happen? A SPECTACULAR light show, or lots of drinking? OR something else?
Question: Power and responsibility go hand in hand. And with every great decision comes regret. Regret for what could have been, should have been, and what ultimately was. What do the gods regret?
Today's vlog is about gods, pantheons and related issues of their politics and powers. Happy viewing!
Friday, October 11, 2013
Anne's Fiction Corner
The long-awaited, hotly anticipated first story for Gangs of New York is here: The Gidim, starring Winona Nelson. It's her backstory and life prior to becoming a Scion, and is a tale of slow entropy, disadvantaged childhood and the very worst human nature has to offer. I don't normally put ratings or warnings on stories, but if you're upset by people being very, very horrible to one another, you may want to give this one a miss.
Gangs won the last vote in a landslide, so they'll be getting the next story as well (hopefully more quickly... I can't decide if it was class or Winona herself that made this one take forever). They're booted off the poll now so someone else can have a turn - happy voting!
Gangs won the last vote in a landslide, so they'll be getting the next story as well (hopefully more quickly... I can't decide if it was class or Winona herself that made this one take forever). They're booted off the poll now so someone else can have a turn - happy voting!
- If you vote for Better Next Time, you're voting for stories from our ever-active, cross-cultural globetrotting band - Geoff Matheson of the Aesir, Sangria Tecuhtli of the Aztlanti, Mitchell Gozer and Sophia Archimedes of the Dodekatheon and Marcus James of the Orisha. They're currently dealing with safeguarding territories they never expected to be responsible for, attempting to right wrongs and walking the long, hard road of repentence.
- If you vote for Eastern Promises, you're voting for stories from the nineteenth-century band in a world of colonialism and industry - Leona Middleton, Samuel Vanderbilt and Paniwi Bayteru of the Pesedjet, Faruza Alinejad and Yadi of the Yazata, Mohini Misra and Padma Billingsworth of the Devas, and many more. They're currently fighting corruption among local authorities, learning what other cultures have to offer them and finding ways to survive no matter what the cost.
- If you vote for Skeins of Fate, you're voting for stories from our frozen northern band - Aurora Dahl, Woody Anderson and Will Nordstrom of the Aesir, Kettila Blomgren of the Aztlanti and Vivian Landry of the Orisha. They're currently handling the looming shadow of Ragnarok, the fallout of their parents' political decisions and their own personal desire to deviate from the paths Fate has set them.
- If you vote for Strawberry Fields, you're voting for stories from the wild-eyed Celtic band - Dierdre O'Riordan, Seamus McMann, Jude Shriver and Auggie MacDonough of the Tuatha de Danann and Alaina Bertrand and Ignatius Rex of the Nemetondevos. They're currently gearing up to challenge the combined might of the military and their shadowy puppeteers, while reaching out to their kinsmen around the world.
Literally Star-Crossed
Question: Hi! I know the Amatsukami rewrite is some time away but I was curious about something. I've heard that Izanagi is a kami associated with the stars as well as the sky, and the myth of Tanabata is a retelling of his doomed affair with Izanami. Is there anything in your research that would indicate that's true?
Well, it is possible that some people might consider Izanagi a stellar deity. In Japanese myth, the stars were created by Izanagi when he drew the heavenly spear out of the earth at the creation of the world and flung the clots of mud clinging to it into space, so he has a connection to stars in that he created them. We wouldn't consider it a strong enough association to make him a star god, really, though, considering that Izanami also helped with the spear-creations and that Izanagi presumably created everything else that exists in Japan at the same time and we wouldn't think of him as a god of Fertility or Water or Earth, either.
As for the mythology surrounding Tanabata, that's actually imported from China, where it's the well-known tale of the Weaver's Daughter and Cowherd's Son, Zhi Nu and Niu Lang; in at least one version, Zhi Nu is the daughter of the Jade Emperor and the saga is played out as a conflict between celestial gods, although in other places it's a folktale of two mortal lovers kept apart by a Romeo & Juliet style family feud. Tanabata is the Japanese name for the goddess, who is patroness of weavers, while Hikoboshi is the Japanese name of her cattle-aligned counterpart. Kept apart by the decree of her father or whatever other outside forces a given retelling of the myth chooses, the two lovers can meet only once per year, when the stars Altair and Vega that represent them line up.
But we've never heard of Tanabata and Hikaboshi being cognates of Izanami and Izanagi, and we don't know of any reason they'd be connected. Izanagi and Izanami have no similar connotations to the two formerly Chinese gods other than the very tenuous stellar connection of being creator gods, and furthermore the mythology doesn't line up; nobody ever forbade them to get together and in fact their pantheon encouraged them, and once Izanami died and Izanagi failed to retrieve her, there was definitely no interest on either of their parts in having a romantic once-a-year tryst even if they could. You could definitely call their relationship a "doomed affair" if you want to, but it's in no way a similar one to that between Tanabata and Hikoboshi.
However, that doesn't mean the Tanabata myth can't do neat stuff in Japan. You might be able to do some cool stuff with what these Shen are doing being so prominent in Japanese myth and whether or not they're seeking some kind of asylum from their pantheon there, and it might also be interesting to remember that Amaterasu is also a goddess with weaving connotations. She isn't a star goddess, but she and her brother and former consort Tsuki-Yomi are both heavenly deities that inhabit the sky but never touch, and there might be something you could mess with in that parallel situation.
Well, it is possible that some people might consider Izanagi a stellar deity. In Japanese myth, the stars were created by Izanagi when he drew the heavenly spear out of the earth at the creation of the world and flung the clots of mud clinging to it into space, so he has a connection to stars in that he created them. We wouldn't consider it a strong enough association to make him a star god, really, though, considering that Izanami also helped with the spear-creations and that Izanagi presumably created everything else that exists in Japan at the same time and we wouldn't think of him as a god of Fertility or Water or Earth, either.
As for the mythology surrounding Tanabata, that's actually imported from China, where it's the well-known tale of the Weaver's Daughter and Cowherd's Son, Zhi Nu and Niu Lang; in at least one version, Zhi Nu is the daughter of the Jade Emperor and the saga is played out as a conflict between celestial gods, although in other places it's a folktale of two mortal lovers kept apart by a Romeo & Juliet style family feud. Tanabata is the Japanese name for the goddess, who is patroness of weavers, while Hikoboshi is the Japanese name of her cattle-aligned counterpart. Kept apart by the decree of her father or whatever other outside forces a given retelling of the myth chooses, the two lovers can meet only once per year, when the stars Altair and Vega that represent them line up.
But we've never heard of Tanabata and Hikaboshi being cognates of Izanami and Izanagi, and we don't know of any reason they'd be connected. Izanagi and Izanami have no similar connotations to the two formerly Chinese gods other than the very tenuous stellar connection of being creator gods, and furthermore the mythology doesn't line up; nobody ever forbade them to get together and in fact their pantheon encouraged them, and once Izanami died and Izanagi failed to retrieve her, there was definitely no interest on either of their parts in having a romantic once-a-year tryst even if they could. You could definitely call their relationship a "doomed affair" if you want to, but it's in no way a similar one to that between Tanabata and Hikoboshi.
However, that doesn't mean the Tanabata myth can't do neat stuff in Japan. You might be able to do some cool stuff with what these Shen are doing being so prominent in Japanese myth and whether or not they're seeking some kind of asylum from their pantheon there, and it might also be interesting to remember that Amaterasu is also a goddess with weaving connotations. She isn't a star goddess, but she and her brother and former consort Tsuki-Yomi are both heavenly deities that inhabit the sky but never touch, and there might be something you could mess with in that parallel situation.
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