Divine Legacy: The After Sundown of Scion

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 8:31 am

You don't need to do anything crazy like have a permanently exhaustible power battery for high end monsters to get the dynamic you want. A simple patronage model works fine: People at power level "Duke" can create new people or resurrect people at power level "Count", but can't create other "Dukes" or resurrect themselves. Similarly, people at power level "king" can appoint new "Dukes" but not new "Kings" and so on.

In this manner, every God and Titan will want to send flunkies into any dangerous situation rather than go themselves because losing flunkies is just a temporary setback and losing their own lives is rather more permanent.

Of course, that brings up a new problem of "If Titans can't auto-resurrect, why aren't they all dead after the last war?" And to that I would say that the equations work pretty similarly if high end creatures simply can't bring themselves back "for a long time". That would still leave the incentive at each power level to send flunkies to do dirty work if at all possible, which is ideal. Because losing flunkies is a "short" setback and losing self is a "long" setback.

In any case, the incentives for the villains should be to send wave after wave of monsters of the weak to try various plans of the weak to do bad stuff while the players rise in power and slowly take on higher and higher ranking enemies with more and more power. Because that's the format of the game. So enemy motivations like "The don't care" or "They're misunderstood" which might be OK for a one-shot would obviously not fly. The enemy has to keep coming and coming in wave after wave for however many adventures the campaign ends up lasting, and that obviously excludes enemies who are destroying the world just because it superficially seemed easier than going all the way around.

-Username17

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 8:54 am

Instead of killing, you could say that beings past a certain point really are immortal.

But immortal doesn't mean invulnerable or unbeatable. It just means they'll continue to live no matter what happens to them.

So injuries and defeats reduce a Titan or a God's power

And over centuries, Titans and gods heal and restore themselves. But they both try to avoid personal combat because it -will- put them out of action for a long time. Even longer if you get, say, chopped into a thousand pieces and scattered throughout Tartarus.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 9:11 am

I am sold on the patronage plan just by virtue of having no real bullshit to track that way, not to mention the other crap that goes with comparing and balancing power schedules. I was just trying to come up with a reason for big gods to show restraint and otherwise leave things semi-normal. Of course whether that is even something worth worrying about much depends a bit on if we care about shut like a masquerade or not.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:08 pm

Ok, so specifically mentioning that Lucifer v. God actually fits the archetypical "New race of god-like beings rises against the old race of god-like beings" tale is a no go because it will piss off a bunch of people who aren't likely to buy the game anyway (the kind of abrahamic who'd be pissed off by this is the type who I doubt would play an rpg about being a pagan demigod), but implicitly making the Titan of Death the Abrahamic god is totally fine.

Right, I'll pull out explicit references to my hipster sky fairy that actually refer to a bullshit mythos with a guy of the same name and very close persona. (yes I'm just a bit pissy about you being right)

Wait.

Ahaha... I haven't actually posted the stuff where I mention Lucifer and his rebellion. The reference to Hellboy being a Satan-Legacy is... literal. Hellboy is actually the son of Lucifer/Satan/whatever-Mignola-names-the-king-of-Hell and a mortal witch in the comics. I'm actually not sure I'd even write Hellboy up as a Persona Dramatis. So don't worry Frank. Hellboy as a Satan-Legacy is totally not likely to go into the finished product. Sam and Dean are common enough names to get called out in AS and you not have to worry about hearing from CW's lawyers. Hellboy totally isn't non-unique, and I can't fight Dark Horse's lawyers.

Now, I do actually mention that Lucifer rebelling against god fits the same archetypical story that includes the Enuma Elish, the Titanomachia, Osiris separating Geb and Nut, Odin killing Ymir, etc. But that's it. And if I try really hard I can contain my philosophical hipsterism and leave it at that, and let people play the game "wrong" by considering Lucifer a titan because he lost and was imprisoned "in the Earth."

I've been working on the Titan motivation. The problem is that going mythological, the Titans are pretty much just an older race of gods who were killed/imprisoned by their children for between no and some vaguely ill defined reason. So where I'm at right now is that the Titans just want revenge, and some of them, like Cronus (not to be confused with the totally different Chronos) are maybe jerks that would be bad for humanity, but no more so than Zeus.

At the moment all I can really think of for motivation/plan is that the titans just want revenge and their thrones back, so they send Titanspawn after divinities because divinities are the gods' attempt to create soldiers for the war. Which works, but not so much as the main plot.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:15 pm

Whipstitch wrote:I am sold on the patronage plan just by virtue of having no real bullshit to track that way, not to mention the other crap that goes with comparing and balancing power schedules. I was just trying to come up with a reason for big gods to show restraint and otherwise leave things semi-normal. Of course whether that is even something worth worrying about much depends a bit on if we care about shut like a masquerade or not.

My thoughts on a masquerade range between "kinda" and "fuck it." With the "The gods are afraid humans will do to them what they did to the titans" plot, the masquerade is more important, but mostly to the gods. They can impress upon Divinities that it's important, and maybe even convince them that it's a bad idea for humans to know the gods are still up there. But I do totally want divinities to break the masquerade because masquerades are really stupid on the personal level. The part where Spider-man doesn't just sit down Aunt May and Mary Jane and say "Look, I can do stuff, and because of it I have to fight super villains, and that's going to make me late sometimes, but I'll always show up, and it's only because I'm helping someone." The part where Buffy doesn't tell her mother about the whole slaying thing until, what, season 6? is fucking dumb.

But there does need to be a masquerade to the public at large just so the world resembles our own like it's supposed to.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:26 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:The part where Buffy doesn't tell her mother about the whole slaying thing until, what, season 6? is fucking dumb.

But there does need to be a masquerade to the public at large just so the world resembles our own like it's supposed to.

Season 2 finally, actually. Buffy's mom dies in season 5.

Not telling mom kind as makes sense, though. Chosen One or not, no parent is going to want their teenager running around after midnight fighting vampires. It's dangerous. The slayer thing puts a strain on their relationship for a while. The same applies to superheroics.

Masquarades are really logic-defying from a logistics perspective, though. The sheer amount of evidence destroying and memory altering necessary to maintain one is staggering.

Incidentally, that's why I like alternate history. If you do the Anita Blake thing and assume that everyone always knew about vampires, then you're golden. The Gods have a masquarade and a non-interference policy, the demigods don't. So everyone knows that Abraham Lincoln was the son of Liber via divine three-way and had superpowers but its not a big deal. Its been going on so long that everyone just accepts it.

Allowing the world to resemble out own can be done by handwaving, or just randomly declaring famous historical figures to be demigods, thus the state of the world is a direct result if these divine dalliances.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:37 pm

Ah. It's been a while since I Netflix Binged Buffy. But now that I think about it, yeah, that makes sense.

As far as logistics, I suppose it depends on where things happen and how many heroes you have. A Masquerade in DC or Marvel Comics would be impossible, there are just too many spandexed people running around. The masquerade in the early seasons of Buffy is difficult, because there are shit tons of demons running around doing their own thing, and for whatever reason they're generally not intelligent enough to kill people on back roads and out in the country. The masquerade in Supernatural is... doable, until the attempted apocalypse, because most of the strange murders happen in out of the way areas, in ways that mortal denialism can explain away.

So I suppose it depends on how showy the titans are. And that will depend on their motivations and plans.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 3:19 pm

Original Scion actually had a reasonable take on the Masquerade: no one cares, but also people started gearing up for the war in the 1970s. So none of the Divine Legacies or new Monsters are older than their early forties. And all the gods and titans were hiding away in the overworld or prison in Tartaros almost entirely over the last couple hundred years until they were awoken by Nixon destroying the gold standard or whatever.

So you can fly a pegasus into the middle of downtown, but all of recent history is pretty recognizable.

The alternate option of course is that Agents of Fate will fuck you up if you try to warn society at large of the coming Titanwar before the appointed time (which of course, you do not get to know).

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 3:40 pm

Yeah, I'm trying to envision a world with publicly known demigods. I know that a trickster divinity would go claim the James Randi Educational Foundation million dollar prize for verifiable supernatural phenomena, and governments would probably be searching for a way to mass produce Divinities for the army, and there would probably be a resurgence in the old religions. The alternative is a masquerade enforced by strength of arms, either by The Agents of Fate, or the heroes trying to avoid bringing hordes of monsters down on their loved ones and their communities.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 5:13 pm

Prak wrote:Yeah, I'm trying to envision a world with publicly known demigods.

Basically, your obvious answers lie in Comic Books, and thus we will name the options after Comic Books.

The X-Men Option

Humanity as a whole has a very negative reaction to Demigods, and people publicly denounce Ares and his children for being warmongering abominations against Allah (or the locally appropriate religion). Major religions denounce them as being either servants of false gods or false prophets pretending to be working for the "right" gods (for those who are locally appropriate like Agni's daughter in India). Demigods thus have to hide out and pull out the stops only to fight the monsters of the week, lest people they are close to get lynched by angry mobs.

The Hulk Option

Human governments don't really know what the difference between a Demigod and a Titanspawn is, and even if they did they wouldn't be very happy hearing your explanation about how your pet Symphalian Stimpy is totally cool, and not at all like that Bloody Tongue Lord Titanspawn who sacked Wichita. When Demigods and Titanspawn throw down, the national guard comes in force as quickly as they can manage, so you gotta run off and make yourself scarce lest the army guys blow you and everyone around you up with rockets.

The Superman Option

Demigods are well known as defenders of the planet, and the local authorities will try to call on them when monsters go around rampaging. But the Titanspawn also have no scruples about brutally murdering the family and friends of a Demigod in order to get at the hero. So you gotta wear a mask when you go Titan fighting, and maintain a secret identity to keep the people you are close to relatively safe.

The Flashpoint Option

Themiskyra and Atlantis and Helheim are all back. And they have declared war on a bunch of countries. Shit has gone crazy, and Demigods are going to be assumed to be Atlantean agents unless they subject themselves to extreme loyalty demonstrations to their local governments. There's a multi-sided global war on, and the fact that you're some dumb kid with super powers who wants to protect your home town from monster assault is enough to convince all the major players that you are "on a side", and since they can all check their HR reports and confirm that you aren't on their side, you'd better keep any of them from finding you.

Then there are Masquerade setups, where the government (or at least the government aside from a secret agency or two) doesn't know. There's the Harry Potter Option, the Supernatural Option, the Warhammer Option, the Werewolf: the Apocalypse Option, the Men in Black Option, and the Vampire: the Masquerade Option.

Basically, the Demigods could either be keeping the supernatural a secret voluntarily because they don't want to be interfered with (Harry Potter), they secretly run the world (Masquerade), or people knowing about the Titans makes the Titans stronger somehow (Warhammer); or they could be unable to get the story out because humans forget about such things (Werewolf), the Agents of Fate are going to run around scrubbing your evidence away (Men in Black), or simply because it's crazy and no one would believe you (Supernatural).

-Username17

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 5:43 pm

There's also the Thor option were Demigods don't have secret identities and are just treated like dudes who run around in funny clothes occasionally saving the world and talking in butchered Elizabethan English for no apparent reason.

This is the option where the thundergod wears his thundergod clothes to the supermarket to buy fresh eggs.

In this set up, Demigods are basically rock stars. They're rich and famous and everyone knows who they are. This comes with all of the benefits and all the problems of fame.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:24 pm

So, putting aside the question of masquerade and starting the "book" by explaining what the hell all is going on for the moment, powers:

Purviews
Purviews are areas of reality over which a god or demigod has power, as in "War is Ares' purview." These are groups of thematically related powers, such as the power to walk through flame unharmed and set things on fire with your merest touch. Some purviews grant powers just for having the purview at all, regardless of the specific powers you have, which scale according to which level of powers you have reached in that purview.

A beginning Demigod picks eight powers at character creation, which may be in as many purviews as they desire.

[terminology note: a demigod who possesses a purview is said to be a "demigod of [purview]." E.g. a demigod with any powers from the water purview is said to be a demigod of water. In cases of multiple purviews, a demigod is considered, in game, to be primarily a demigod of whichever purview they have the highest number of powers from]

Water
A demigod of water is at home in his element. They can always operate underwater as if they were capable of breathing, or had no need to breath, whichever is more beneficial at a given moment. A demigod of water also gains a +2 bonus to athletics tests made in water or other liquid environments (yes, a demigod of water swims just as well in a vat of ethyl alcohol as he does in water, though there would be other concerns). This bonus increases to +4 when the demigod possesses an advanced power, and +6 when they possess an elder power.

Lead the School
The demigod has the ability to grant others the ability to breath underwater for a short amount of time. They may give this ability to a number of targets equal to their potency score.
Roll [pool]. Each hit increases the Delay of the "unable to breath" DOT condition that would be experienced underwater by one step.
For example, Katy the Water Demigod uses Lead the School to grant Aaron the ability to breath underwater. Normally, after his breath ran out, Aaron would fill a wound box every two rounds. Instead, Katy rolls [pool], getting five hits. This grants Aaron the ability to breath underwater for 30 minutes, and he does not need to fill a wound box until that time has elapsed.
Lead the School lasts for one delay. After that, the delay for "unable to breath" returns to normal, and the person affected will suffer damage as normal.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 8:02 pm

So I just read the Aquaman/Wonderwoman teamup comic against the Giant Born. It's basically exactly what you want: there are titan spawn who have escaped their extradimensional imprisonment, and now they hide out in remote corners of the world eating people. Then the daughter of Zeus teams up with Atlantean royalty to try to convince them to stop doing this and then murder them with extreme stabination when they refuse.

The moral of the story is that some people in this are going to want to be non-gods but instead like Atlanteans or Naiads or something who happen to also be wizards.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 8:25 pm

FrankTrollman, could you elaborate on the plot a bit? Maybe even use spoilers? Like, do the titan spawn have a good casus belli for behaving like they do but they just took it too far or are they just little more than wild animals?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 9:01 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:FrankTrollman, could you elaborate on the plot a bit? Maybe even use spoilers? Like, do the titan spawn have a good casus belli for behaving like they do but they just took it too far or are they just little more than wild animals?

It's mostly an action piece, so I don't think I'm spoiling anything. The concept is that there was a war between the Gods and the Titans a long time ago and noone on team Earth particularly gives a shit. The Titans did a monster breeding program to make soldiers and apparently their monsters were banished by Atlantean sorcery back then.

Now the Titanspawn are back because of reasons and their long separation from Gaia has left them horrendously deficient in life force. To keep themselves from withering up, and to build up their own power so that they can take vengeance on the descendants of those who banished them in the first place, they hide out in various fortresses (natural and otherwise) in order to capture humans and eat their life force. Either with various soul stealing gems or through the less efficient but less capital intensive method of eating people.

There's a somewhat interesting angle in there about how neither Aquaman nor Wonderwoman actually care over much who was right or wrong in the original Titanomachy because it was several ages before they were born and it doesn't matter. They offer the Titanspawn truce if they will refrain from eating people, and the Titanspawn refuse and we get a bunch of pages of Aquaman and Wonderwoman ripping the arms off of crazy monsters.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 2:22 am

Nice, I'll have to read up on that. I'm trying to get one of my various games in a publishable state because last week I didn't want to stop working on a game to go to my real job, and realized I better fucking publish something if I want to have a choice in that. So while I've been tapping away at Monster/Sunset High/Academy, Divine Legacy is up for it too if I can figure out more of what I need to for it.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:49 pm

Call your game "HEAVEN & HELL: Lets Rock"

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:03 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:There's a somewhat interesting angle in there about how neither Aquaman nor Wonderwoman actually care over much who was right or wrong in the original Titanomachy because it was several ages before they were born and it doesn't matter. They offer the Titanspawn truce if they will refrain from eating people, and the Titanspawn refuse and we get a bunch of pages of Aquaman and Wonderwoman ripping the arms off of crazy monsters.

Do all of the titanspawn refuse peace? That's kind of depressing if they did.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:22 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Do all of the titanspawn refuse peace? That's kind of depressing if they did.

"Kind of depressing" is very descriptive of many facets of the New 52 DC continuity, unfortunately. It's like the editors think it's still 1994.