Allegiance in a Pantheon

[Tywyll]

So, I am considering tacking on Allegiance to the game I'm going to run. In my world there is the usual Law/Balance/Chaos divide (long ago Moorcock influence). And I really like the idea from Mythic Iceland of different gods granting abilities based on your Allegiance scores. 

So my question is, how to handle it? Do they keep a Law v Balance v Chaos score? Do they have individual scores for the Nine Gods (there are 3 of each Pantheon)? 

Mythic Iceland gets around the issue by only having dedicated activities count for Allegiance purposes. But then that doesn't have the benefit/drawback of you getting points in your opposing camp with misdeeds (yeah, I know there is the loki score, but that doesn't work in an opposed system like this). 

I guess it feels weird that someone's score in the Lawful Wargod's Allegiance could also impact the Healer God's rewards.

Any suggestions on how to rationalize these elements? 

[Atgxtg]

9 hours ago, Tywyll said:

Any suggestions on how to rationalize these elements? 

Yeah there are a few options.

First off there is the original Strombringer method, where someone track allegiance towards one deity. It is simple and it works. But there is little feeling on a pantheron. 

Or, you  just track allergenic to the Panethon, but that would probably limit the ways a character could gain alliance to the common/universal ones.

Or you could track allegiance for every god, but I think that would be way too much work, and you'd wind up spending more time bookkeeping than playing. 

 

If you want to try for a compromise how about  you track allegiance towards one  Patron Deity, but  give a sort of affiliated status modifier (say half rating) towards the other gods in the Pantheon? Then apply an appropriateness modifier based on the purpose of the roll. For instance asking the goodness of Love to help you win the heart of someone would get a bonus, asking the god of war to do so would not. 

[Tywyll]

So, mulling it over as I lay in bed, recovering from having my gallbladder removed, I thought, what if we keep the L/B/C score as is. These earn points as normal.

In addition, you have a bonus score in Gods you dedicate actions to. So you might have Law 25, Dakanan +25 (so for Dakanan you were considered to have a 50). I think the generic abilities of the Allegiance would go off your generic score, with the special abilities being off your God score. So this character could call on Law to grant them +25% to any skill, and +25% to Communication Skills, 1H Spear, Lore: Science which are the Dakanan skills...or whatever). Talia, the lawful goddess of Marriage, Motherhood, Harth and Magic could probably be called upon to grant bonus MP just like Chaos. Etc, etc.

I think that your opposite alignment always tempts you, without dedicating acts to any God. You earn checks against general antagonistic faith for performing any of the antagonistic acts...though I want to be careful with Balance characters as that seem punitive for them to constantly get checks in both Law and Chaos. Maybe if Balance is your highest, when you succeed in an Alliegance check for an opposing act you only gain 1d3 or 1d4 points, instead of the normal amount. 

 

[Atgxtg]

That works, it just a question of how many gods do you want to be bother tracking bonus scores for. Depending on how many gods there are and ways there are to earn/lose allegiance points it could get complicated. 

Maybe you could make the gods jealous of each other so a PK can only have favor with one at a time?

[Tywyll]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

That works, it just a question of how many gods do you want to be bother tracking bonus scores for. Depending on how many gods there are and ways there are to earn/lose allegiance points it could get complicated. 

Maybe you could make the gods jealous of each other so a PK can only have favor with one at a time?

It's tracking all the gods that's a problem. But I think you will only have to track within your pantheon. The opposing forces won't grant you anything but the base Allegiance ability, as you won't have points in the specific God(s) of the pantheon, but the tempation is there.

 

[Atgxtg]

33 minutes ago, Tywyll said:

It's tracking all the gods that's a problem. But I think you will only have to track within your pantheon. The opposing forces won't grant you anything but the base Allegiance ability, as you won't have points in the specific God(s) of the pantheon, but the tempation is there.

 

Yes. Maybe you shouldn't Just give the characters a base Pantheon score, and track their Patron Deity. Stuff that would add to another deity in the Pantheon could be a flat +1 to the Pantheon scores.

For instance, Let's say you had a PC who was a follower of Athena with Greek Pantheon 26 and Athena +40. He stops and helps a pair of young lovers to elope. This pleases Aphrodite,  and would be worth 1d4 Alliance points to her followers, but as the PC follows Athena, he only gets a flat +1 to their Pantheon Score raising it to 27 to  represent the fact that he pleased Aphrodite and she might use a little influence on some other deity on his behalf. If a PC does something than pleases on deity but angers another it would be a wash.

You could opt to track the alliance/enmity score with a deity that dislikes the PC some some reason, too So you please Zeus but tick off Hera. 

I think that would keep everyone from going crazy tracking multiple allegiances. 

 

I'm not debating or anything, just trying to figure out how to keep the bookkeeping from becoming overwhelming, and the GM having to view every single action in terms of what every single god is going to think about it. Plus you have to figure that they miss a lot of the minor stuff. There must be people out there more interesting to watch than the PCs at least some of the time. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by Atgxtg

[Tywyll]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'm not debating or anything, just trying to figure out how to keep the bookkeeping from becoming overwhelming, and the GM having to view every single action in terms of what every single god is going to think about it. Plus you have to figure that they miss a lot of the minor stuff. There must be people out there more interesting to watch than the PCs at least some of the time. 

Yeah, that's the key point and one of the problems I've always had with the Allegiance system, tracking all the bits! This idea makes it a bit worse, having the God's be individual.

Though I do think there's something to lumping other gods into the general pool, unless you want to dedicate to multiple gods, in which case you choose to keep track of that stuff. That's not a bad idea at all. 

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Tywyll said:

Yeah, that's the key point and one of the problems I've always had with the Allegiance system, tracking all the bits! This idea makes it a bit worse, having the God's be individual.

Though I do think there's something to lumping other gods into the general pool, unless you want to dedicate to multiple gods, in which case you choose to keep track of that stuff. That's not a bad idea at all. 

I think you could go with something similar to how RQ handles associate priests.

I'll suggest changing the name form allegiance to divine favor or karma or some such. There isn't necessarily a war going on between pantheons (even in Moorcock is was really a war within the same pantheon) so something like a general divine favor score could work better and help with the concept. Then if a PC gets singled out by one deity they could track that score as above.

 

Although, you could ditch the allegiance point system too and run it as a skill that the character raises by doing things that please the gods. When a character makes his improvement roll the amount of skill it improves is equal to the alliance points he would have gotten. That way you'd only have to look up the awards at the end of the game session. When a player uses it, he losses the skill, just lie with allegiance. You could even have the skill bleed off a point even so often to reflect the fact that god are fickle an have a sort of "what have you done for me, lately?" aspect to them. 

If you did that Patron deities scores would use the base skill as a default and go up from there. 

 

Just brainstorming.