It's a little hard to think of gaming stuff to talk about this month. I spent half the month visiting my in-laws, with absolutely no gaming during that time. I didn't even play video games, as I'm not very comfortable playing on a laptop. I did spend some time thinking about gaming, especially since my husband had started running a solo Scion game for me right before we went out of town. Man, was I waiting eagerly to play once I got home! Too bad I spent my first week back with a sore throat... I guess, since I'm playing Scion, it's a good time to talk about how to handle real world religion and mythology in games. As I mentioned in my review of the Scion: Hero sourcebook, there are only 6 pantheons represented, but guidelines are included for expanding upon that. In preparation for our game, I was given permission to create the Tuatha De Danann, the Celtic gods. Because this was a project that would only be seen by our gaming group (Scion will take over our mid-week game when the Legend of the Five Rings campaign ends), I didn't have to worry about being 100% accurate. But as a mythology geek, it was pretty important to me to be as close to the recorded tales as I could, while still fitting into the concepts of the game. That's where I hit a snag. There's simply not as much information on the Tuatha as there is on Greco-Roman, Norse, or Egyptian gods. Consulting my assorted mythology books and pantheon.org, I'd often come up with only a handful of facts on each deity that I wanted to include in my mini-pantheon (rather than recreating every Celtic god, I narrowed it down to a well-rounded selection of major or otherwise awesome deities). Oh, and best of all, a lot of the things they were associated with were not covered by the Purviews in Scion. I was left with a few options: I could give up on the project altogether, I could change the gods to suit the rules, I could make up new Purviews, or I could interpret the myths and rules in such a way that it more or less worked. Giving up wasn't a real option. I really wanted to play a Scion of The Morrigan, and I wanted the Tuatha to be available to future players of any Scion campaign in our group. I'm a fan of the Celtic myths, with their hyperbole and faeries and respect for storytellers and whatnot. Besides, I needed something to do while I was procrastinating on all the stuff I needed to get done before my trip. Tempting as it was to change the gods to suit the game, I always get mad when games, books, and movies do that, so I couldn't very well live with myself if I did so. And although I don't think anyone in our group worships the Tuatha and would be offended by the changes, at the very least they might have read up on them and be as annoyed about the changes as I always get. If I was more familiar with the game, I might have been comfortable making up new Purviews. However, I'm always very uncomfortable making new content for existing games, as I'm never quite sure how to balance it. As it is, I had to make a Pantheon-specific Purview, which I'll have to test sometime before the actual campaign, so it can be tweaked if it's unbalanced. In the end, I had to settle for creative interpretation. I chose the existing Purviews that went with things the deity was associated with, and epic stats that seemed to go with the stories about them. If they needed more abilities, I just gave them more epic stats. Epic Charisma and Epic Appearance seem like a pretty safe bet for almost any god, unless the stories specifically say they were a jerk, or rather plain-looking. And for a warrior god, well, any and all physical stats are open for epic status. Crafter gods might have Epic Intelligence to represent their cleverness at their craft. Anything that couldn't be covered by a Purview, I tried to cover with a skill. Any god who didn't have enough associated skills (they're supposed to have 6) got generic skills to round them out. One problem I came across was that some gods are just supposed to be good at everything. Take The Dagda for example. He was called "The Good" not because he was a paragon of virtue, but because he excelled in practically every field. Try narrowing that down to just 6 associated skills! In the case of Purviews and Epic Stats, I felt free to dish out a lot, as there were a few gods in the book who had plenty of abilities. Face it, in the myths, some gods were just more elite than others. In some cases, gods just weren't awesome enough to make the cut. I wanted to include Danu, because she's the namesake of the Tuatha De Danann, but there's just not enough information on her to work with. Whether you want to create pantheons for your own Scion game, or work them into a book, D&D campaign, or other medium, respect for the source is important. It doesn't matter if you believe in the gods; you have to be mindful of the fact that people did, and some still do, and those people may end up in your game. If they were worth being worshiped at some point in the past, they're worth treating kindly in the present. This doesn't mean that you can't portray the gods humorously in your game; I'm the first to make jokes about Zeus's philandering ways, and I'm also pretty quick with a quip about my own faith, when it seems appropriate. What it means that whether you're going to be humorous or serious, it has to fit with the generally held opinion of the god. Jokes about Zeus being a skirt-chaser are only funny because he fathered a lot of children with assorted women. It wouldn't be nearly as funny to make that joke about Osiris, especially since some legends say he doesn't even have the right equipment for the job, if you know what I mean. I recommend that when you research a pantheon, you use several different sources. I've found that each one tends to have a little information that the others don't, and maybe a unique spin. For my recent research, I mostly referred to: Encyclopedia of Gods by Michael Jordan. This book has an alphabetical listing of deities from many, many pantheons. It includes information on where they were worshiped, when, what symbols were associated with them, and more. Major deities have lengthy entries, whereas minor gods have only a paragraph, sometimes just a single line. Despite the sometimes sparse information, it is immensely useful due to the multiple indexes, which allow you to look up deities by culture and what they were the god of. It serves as a good springboard for further research. A Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology by Marian Edwardes, Lewis Spence and Netta Peacock. This beautiful gem of a book is from 1923. Ok, so you may have some trouble getting your hands on an 84 year old book, but I just had to brag about having it. It contains a lot of obscure gods. Some of the information in it doesn't quite match the more modern books I read, which makes me think that more has been learned since it was published, so it isn't quite foolproof... but I love it. Www.pantheon.org aka Encylopedia Mythica. This website is my favorite source for mythology information. It has articles of various lengths on almost every god, mythical hero, and beast you can imagine. The cross-referencing links make researching entire pantheons very easy. You may also want to visit www.wikipedia.org because while it's not 100% reliable, it usually has more information than you ever needed on anything. I didn't get that far on my research, but I might check it out to polish up the Tuatha before the main campaign. If you're really serious about getting it right, you may want to seek out mythology professors, disciples of old religions, and pop culture representations of the deities in question. Seeing how modern people perceive these gods can really help you shape your portrayal of them in your game. Until next month, happy gaming!

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Copyright © 2007 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.com