Divine Legacy: The After Sundown of Scion

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:21 am

So, Scion has a number of issues, being White Wolf. But the concept is definitely salvageable. Hell, the core rolling system is actually pretty similar to AS, since they took out the variable target number and exploding tens thing. Hell, so far as I can tell, it doesn't even have botches. The main thing to fix is Legend and boons.

Divine Legacy
Between horror and action, there lies a shadowy border realm of the empowered few striving against monsters who wish to take over the world, devour it, or both. Sometimes these heroes are simply knowledgeable mortals with a lot of weapons and luck. Sometimes these heroes are monsters themselves (for which you have After Sundown).
Other times, the heroes hold a divine birthright. Literally.
From Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, to the God of War video games. The Mighty Thor, Wonder Woman, Percy Jackson and the Immortals. Entertainment has recently been rife with divinely sired heroes kicking monster ass. Even Supernatural, Grim and Buffy have more than a passing similarity, forming a decent representative scale of heroic power.
Whereas After Sundown is all about playing classic movie monsters and derivatives operating under a masquerade and vying against one another for control and power, Divine Legacy is more about being a classical demigod actually saving the world. Or at least as many people as you can on the way out. After Sundown’s monsters are drawn from some myth, and a lot of Hollywood. Divine Legacy has monsters, but they’re drawn more from myth, mostly being the brood of titans, or crafted by gods.

Prolegamena
(Introduction)
Divine Legacy takes place in a world similar to our own. There is a major difference, however. In the world of Divine Legacy, the gods of myth and legend exist, and they touch the Earth in very firm ways. Very, very firm. What I’m trying to say is they drop down here and bone people. I don’t mean screw them over, I mean screw them. Just like in the myths, Zeus still can’t keep it in his pants. Neither can Osiris, Odin, Baron Samedi, or Susanoo.
In ancient times, the gods regularly walked the Earth. They would war, drink, womanize, and screw with humanity in all kinds of ways. Mostly people put up with this because, well, they didn’t like to be the target of divine retribution. I mean, lightning still hit people then and again, but it happened a lot less when people made with the sacrifices and let Zeus come by to bone their women. There’s also the fact that the gods, and the heroes they made, were often the only answer to the ravages of the Titans. It may suck to come home to see another you schtupping your wife, or to have to give your best calf to the drunken god who comes down and threatens to burn your farm, but the wholesale slaughter and mayhem wrought by the titans was a lot worse.
See, the titans were the old gods. They were the first things humanity had to deal with. Then the new gods came around, and people latched on to the new “sacrifice animals, not your first born” model. This roundly pissed off the titans, which weren’t the most stable of beings to begin with. So the titans decided they wanted to take the lower lifeforms back, and started breaking the gods’ toys. The gods retaliated when chimeras popped up, spot fixing things. Then, well, all hell broke loose. “There was a war in heaven,” as the saying goes. The titans rose up together, making their own beasts and champions on a grand scale. The gods fought, and they won. They sealed away the titans.
But that never works.
Someone will always let the titans out. Whether it’s a god angry about the straw they pulled, or some upstart mortal plied with promises of power. Plus, there are always cracks in the prison. The titans reached through, and could touch mortals. In the end, the gods could only sign a treaty with the titans. Neither side would go down to Earth wreaking havoc personally. They could only act through proxies. The most they could do personally was take mortal form and walk amongst them. When this happens, well, old habits die hard. Some gods save some people and then disappear. Others inspire someone to create some great edifice before their day on the ground is up. Others help people with the passing of a loved one. The darker ones are those serial killers who wrack up absurd body counts and can never be found.
But almost all of them get a little play before they go, and contraceptives aren’t all that effective with gods. These mortal-hidden god unions almost always result in a kid, divinities. Gods produce slightly more divinity children than goddesses do, but only because it takes a lot less time to impregnate someone than carry a child to term.
The titans do it too, though. And they’re a lot more interested in the slaughter and sexin’ than the gods are.

Pollous Theous
(Many Gods)
“There are many forms of gods, but they are all gods.”

The history of human civilization shows well enough that there are many forms of god. They are typically roughly anthropomorphic, but even then, they come in many forms. Greek/Roman and Nordic gods are essentially larger than life humans. Egyptian gods (mostly) had animal heads, and sometimes were animals. Hinduism has an elephant man and gods with four arms. If you go farther back, or cross the pond to America, you find “gods” that are essentially powerful animals.
Fortunately, we have an easier task here than After Sundown did. “Vampire” includes a vast variety of things from little crickets that burrow into your flesh, to wizened hopping things that feed on “life essence.” On the other hand, “god” pretty much refers to powerful entities which represent natural phenomena and aspects of the physical world. You might think this actually makes things harder, but it doesn’t. Godly powers will run the gamut, but all gods do the same things. Coyote, Anansi, Loki, Thoth and Mercury are all trickster gods. This means they typically have an ability to break the rules of godhood, and are great thieves. Neptune, Susanoo, Sobek, Njodr, and Poseidon are all sea gods. As such, they have power over water, and can frequently control sea life.
What I’m saying is that whereas vampires represent a wide range of discreet attributes and powers with the one unifying trait being “drinks blood”, “god” represents some very specific things across all mythologies. Sextuple wings, four arms, eight eyes, al l of that’s just superfluous. Complete dominion over a specific purview is what defines a god.
Divinities start at the shallow end of this ocean of power. They can spend days underwater with no need to breath, reach into burning fire and only come out sanitized, or walk by surveillance cameras unnoticed. It’s not much, but imagine what you could do with just a little power. For one thing, you could go get more.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:39 am

Can I suggest a name that's not already a failed D&D campaign setting? Maybe something like "Bloodright" or "Inheritance" or "Goodgenes"?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:41 am

Eugenics the Roleplaying Game?

I don't know, birthright sounded, well, right. I'm open to suggestions. And unfortunately, though not surprisingly, Scion is actually copyrighted.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:47 am

I was going to say, "wasn't Birthright that metal AD&D setting? I'm pretty sure people who like AD&D talk about that one."

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:54 am

Birthright was one of the stupider AD&D settings, it just appealed to what today would be the Game of Thrones crowd - it's a game where nobility literally are better than you 'cause they have MajikPowerz, and you're actually concerned about what tracts of land your family owns.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:00 pm

Personally I really doubt that matters a whole lot.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:02 pm

Yeah, BIRTHRIGHT™ is the trademarked name of an AD&D 2nd edition setting designed by Rich Baker (Frostburn) and Colin McComb (Complete Book of Elves). It is hit and miss. Unfortunately, "Nephilim" is also the name of an RPG (from France). Still usable but only barely: "Demigod" is a book for Scion, and "Half Blood" is a Percy Jackson online MUD.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:16 pm

And Divinities just sounds stupid. It works as a name for the character type, but the game? Not really. On the other hand, apparently "Birthright" is "Section 8-Cancelled" which means it could conceivably be usable. Outside of that, well, there's "Birth Right."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:24 pm

You're also free to use "[Fill in Blank] Legacy". There are several games that use that format. Pokemon Legacy, Urth's Legacy, and even just "Legacy". Hell, "Divine Legacy" was a failed forum RPG from 2010, but since it hasn't been poked at for years, you could easily appropriate the title.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:35 pm

That could work. Thanks Frank.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 2:41 pm

Some rehashing from AS, some division drawing. Trying to figure out if there need to be multiple worlds.
Nasty, Brutish and Short
Life in the Garden of Gods

It’s funny. You would think a world watched by powerful entities who claim to have created us would be… happier. Maybe the problem is that they didn’t create us. Maybe the problem is they did, but that they aren’t really the loving parent type. Whatever it is, the focus of gods just brings pain.
Horrible beasts with multiple heads, scorpion tales and fiery breath used to roam the lands. It got so that people knew the lairs and the game. “In that mountain pass dwells the sphinx, answer her riddle, and you may pass.” “Here there be monsters.” Terra Incognita.
Most of those monsters were put down or sealed up when the treaty was signed. A show of good faith, a divine disarmament.
But, as surely as the titans will slip their bonds, so too will their spawn. Centaurs roam the back roads of America. Chimera lurk in caves and forests. People disappear. Some, never seen again. Others, found only after they’ve been eviscerated. Others still, glimpsed in mountain lakes, or seen for an instant in a ring of flowers, where the next, there is only dust.

The world of Divine Legacy bears notable similarities to the horror movie world of After Sundown. There are terrible horrors in the night that hunger for human flesh. Cops tend to be less infiltrated by cultists and monsters (though it happens), and more just… useless. Mortal gunmen can’t do much about lions with impervious skin, or snakes with toxic blood (though a bullet *is* even better than a spear on the latter). There are a few things to keep in mind about the world of Divine Legacy:

All Myths Are True- There’s no real favouritism in Divine Legacy for a given pantheon. The Olympians are just as real as the Aesir are just as real as the Pharonics.
“There's always an immense flood, or a fiery holocaust, or a demonic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet”- The world of Divine Legacy is always under threat of annihilation. About once a year, the monsters get their shit together and try to end everything we know and love. Usually this happens to coincide with sweeps week.
“Godly is not Goodly”- Gods aren’t good people. Few of them are even nice. More than a few are outright man eating ogres. Even the most righteous are… really righteous. Hell, the Teotl use human sacrifice to make the seasons run. It’s almost as if they think they’re the only beings worth respect, have magnifying glasses and we’re all ants…
“(You’re) on a mission from (gods)”- Generally speaking, characters in Divine Legacy don’t choose to start killing titanspawn. They’re told to do it. If they’re lucky, they’re given the magic sword first. If they’re unlucky… well, we already covered the fact that gods are jerks. Divinities are the heirs to gods. Gods watch that sort of thing. You can do a lot with access to the blood of a god, even diluted. Divinities may not have their parents watching every step, but they are generally under surveillance. The titanspawn too, though.

However, you also have to keep in mind that the average person doesn’t know this stuff. Even the modern worshippers of the gods aren’t privy to what’s going on most of the time. A nice god might add “oh, you’re now carrying my child, flesh-eating monsters might start showing up to kill it” to the pillow talk. Most can’t be arsed. Most divinities are brought into the world by, or sired by, normal people who just had a one night stand. There were no glowy lights, or chorus of angels. At best, they might notice a few oddities of junior, like he doesn’t burn when he accidentally knocks a pot of boiling water over on himself. The vast majority of people think that things are normal, and that monsters and heroes a la the myths don’t exist.

Divine Patronage
“…the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.”

The world of Divine Legacy has two types of people in it- extras, people destined to be eaten by the titanspawn, turned into stags to be hunted, sent as offerings to the minotaur, and generally play bit parts in motivating the other, Luminaries. Luminaries are the special people of the story. They may not be divinities themselves, but when Cronos unleashes the Sands of Time and everyone starts rapidly aging, the extras will crumble, the Luminaries can be cured. It sucks, and it’s kind of facist, but it’s the way it is. The elite few carry the power, and everyone else is just so much chaff before the harvest. If a titanspawn can convert victims, extras get changed into minor spawn, at best, but Luminaries become full titanspawn. In the garden of statues of a gorgon, every crumbling soldier in hoplite armour was an extra. The immaculate statue of a hero, still holding a spark of life is a Luminary, and his petrification can be reversed.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 2:46 pm

The next obvious thing is the splats. 6x3 doesn't work for this. Three pantheons would be a bit limiting, and three archetypes even more so.

One idea is to just map out 18 associations of gods. Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Death, etc. Another is to outline a few specific pantheons, with their specific types of gods and do the AS style splats, just with more splats. 5x5 or 6x5or 6 would probably be ok here.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 2:51 pm

In any Mythology-based game, I would recommend that instead of statting out individual pantheons you focus on the player characters - what legacies that the Luminaries can build their characters around, and then let them go to the library and pick out a suitable divine parent. Just my two cents, though.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:09 pm

I would be tempted to have the players pick two "tags" if I went that route. So a divinity of Zeus has the Sky and Dominion tags, or a divinity of Loki has Fire and Trickery. Not all of them fit that well, though (Ares is pretty much "War and War"), so maybe doubling down should get you something.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:16 pm

Or maybe you're Grinda Magnisdottir, and have superstrength. Just throwing that out there.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:18 pm

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. ...unless you're trying to point out that the abilities of demigods don't necessarily follow logically from their parents when you look at myth, which I must admit they don't.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:34 pm

I guess what I'm trying to say is you shouldn't try to pidgeonhole your demigods and quasigods by saying "Pick two <keywords>" and derive your powers from there. Instead (and I know people will hate this) think of it like a super hero game - let the players pick their character's powers. Defining the gods and their attribute-tags is a bit of a losing game - there are too many out there for you to do a good job.

So instead, let the players do the work for you. Instead of saying "Okay, your divine parent is Thor from the Norse pantheon, so you get bonuses to buying up strength and lightning and an inherited dislike of frost giants..." you say "Okay, your divine parent is Thor. How do you take after him?"

Challenge the PCs to get creative. Maybe Thor's grandkid is a nerd who spends all his divine legacy points on pumping up his hacking skill, and he buys a feat where he can actually electrocute people through the computer, and he still hates frost giants as much as granddad.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:12 pm

Why do you want to have Luminaries at all if you already have a class of genetically superior people to obsess over, and you already have population control?

(Also, I want to play Thor's hacker grandson and electrocute people over TCP/IP.)

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:14 pm

What?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 5:11 pm

RISK: Godstorm gives out like 4 different god types and declares them equivalent across pantheons. The God of Death or the God of War gets the same power set whether they are Ares or Thor, Osiris or Arawn. If you made your deific domains big enough, you could just declare that if someone wanted to be the Legacy of Anubis or Mictlantecuhtli they got the same choices of power set. Hell, I don't know if you should necessarily come out and specify whether Loviatar and Sitala are different people. You could totally Monomyth that shit.

If you get too specific about what powers characters inherit from their divine sponsor, then you get into Scionish bullshit where if you want to be good at a specific thing then you are a fucking sucker if you weren't sired by a specific "major god" from Soviet propaganda that you've never heard of. That kind of shit is bullshit. Just pick somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen "god archetypes", and if someone wants to be descended from Ukko or Peckols they just do that.

-Username17

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 5:15 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:RISK: Godstorm gives out like 4 different god types and declares them equivalent across pantheons... <snip analysis>

Yes, yes. But can any of those god types change the winning strategy from the usual "capture Oceania first"?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 6:42 pm

Yeah, I'm kind of looking a "build a steve" set up. I'm obviously using After Sundown's guts, but some fleshy bits will necessarily change.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 7:05 pm

nockermensch wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:RISK: Godstorm gives out like 4 different god types and declares them equivalent across pantheons... <snip analysis>
Yes, yes. But can any of those god types change the winning strategy from the usual "capture Oceania first"?

What is with people's insane Australia fetish in Risk? You get two armies. TWO. It's objectively awful. Having a choke point is super bad when you want to capture a territory every turn, for the Risk card. And it's not like it gives you a useful staging platform into Asia. No one wins land wars in Asia. Just get your Risk cards, that's how you win the game.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 7:10 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Yeah, I'm kind of looking a "build a steve" set up. I'm obviously using After Sundown's guts, but some fleshy bits will necessarily change.

Even if you go the full point buy, your Steves aren't going to be very Steveish. Every supernatural in the setting is a Divine Legacy, a Titan Spawn, or a Servitor.

With only three classes of supernatural (Us, Them, and Those Other Guys), there can be a quite substantial set of assumed supernatural rules without things getting weird. No one is a Vampire or an Alien, everyone's a Demigod. They can all get a consistent Demigod package before they start buying their Steve powers. Similarly, there can be a constant set of Titan Shard or Servitor powers. So when you go up against Metatron or Euryale you know that they are Servitors and have the broad set of Servitor powers and weaknesses whatever other Steve magic they know.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 9:52 pm

At the moment I'm looking at basically saying "To start, pick a Core Purview, you get both basic powers from there. Then take four more basic powers. Finally, choose two advanced powers, at least one should be from your core purview." and reorganizing and adding to the AS powers.

The question is, "what are the core powers of being 1) a demigod, 2) a titanspawn, and 3) a servitor?"

There are also other questions:
Do you need ways to detect demigod, titanspawn and servitors? If so, what should they be? I like the idea of things associated with your patron displaying weird phenomenon when your powers are active, so if you're the son of Thor, anyone wearing a mjolnir pendant will notice it crackle with electricity, and at higher levels, you make all hammers in the area do this. But it's not really a good way to track a given type of supernatural. I mean, sure, if you know that you're looking for a divinity of Thor you could just carry a hammer around and wait to get shocked, but that's kind of shitty.
There should probably be a way to counter or shut down people's magic. I'm a bit torn as to how defined to make it.

Ok, so I'm not fully writing up a bunch of splats. But I can at least give an overview of major pantheons and say "this is how you track Aesir-children." And basically each major pantheon has a counter and a tell. I'd need to do some thinking on what those should be.