TEXT: Apotheosis
  A role-playing game about how legends evolve by Gordie Murphy
  
  2
  CONTENTS
  Your Culture Concept..............................................................5
  Develop the Culture.................................................................6
  Create the Setting................................5
  Seeding the Legend..................................................................7
  Create the Legend....................................................................8
  Create the Timeline..................................................................8
  Create the Legend................................7
  Establishing the Generations.....................................................9
  Telling a Story Through the Generations..................................11
  Player Actions..........................................................................13
  Playing the Game.................................9
  The Fate of Your Culture...........................................................15
  Ending the Game..................................15
  What Is Apotheosis?............................4
  Stories Change.....................................3
  
  3
  Stories Change
  Little Red Riding Hood began was first told sometime in the 10th century 
  by European peasants, and was passed down in oral tradition until it was 
  written down and popularized by Charles Perrault in the 17th century. In 
  the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm created another well-known version. 
  The versions vary greatly, and in another few centuries will look completely 
  different. Little Red Riding Hood’s phylogeny includes hundreds of vari-
  ants.
   
  Our stories evolve over time, influenced by the people who told them to 
  each other around campfire and bedsides, wrote them down, then digitized 
  them.  Our understanding of our stories changes as our culture does.
   
  But for every story that we remember, dozens more might be forgotten.
   
  How many stories have been lost to time?
  
  4
  In Apotheosis, 2-5 players will explore the relationship between a culture’s 
  history and their dominant cultural story as they create and change a legend 
  over the course of generations.
  Your goal as players is to tell an interesting story about the culture you’ll 
  develop, and to tell their dominant story in turn. You’ll be telling this story 
  collaboratively: each player will be roleplaying as an abstraction of the cul-
  ture, not as specific characters.
  You’ll create and develop the basics of the culture together, seed their origi-
  nal dominant legend, and then watch that legend change as major historical 
  events occur. This is a game about the relationship between what a culture 
  experiences, and how they represent that in the stories they tell each other.
  What Is Apotheosis?
  
  5
  Create the Setting
  You’ll be creating a culture to follow through five generations. For the pur-
  poses of this game, a culture is define as any group of people living in prox-
  imity who are united by something: that could be a political boundary, 
  an ideology, shared ancestry, a religion, or anything else you can think of 
  to bind a society together. Proximity could mean physical proximity, or a 
  group who is linked closely by means of technology that allows them to 
  communicate despite their physical distance.
  Choose a time period/setting and an aesthetic for your culture. You can set 
  it anywhere, in any kind of setting you can think of. It could be a real-world 
  time period, a culture in a distant galaxy far in the future, or a fantasy or 
  alternate history setting. Talk with the players at the table to find something 
  everyone is interested in. Decide what unites your culture. Give your cul-
  ture a name. Write the name and concept down on an index card, called 
  your culture card.
  Examples of a culture concept include the Kingdom of Wessex in Viking era 
  England, the members of a fleet of starships searching for a new home, and 
  a city-state in a fantasy-inspired world. 
  Your Culture Concept
  
  6
  Answer the following questions about your culture, and write the answers 
  down on your culture card. Interpret these questions as broadly as you want:
  Develop the Culture
  Example: Culture
  What does your culture believe?
  What does your culture value?
  What law does your culture have?
  What problem does your culture face?
  Xaxis:
  A new colony on an unnamed harsh planet, set in the far future.
   
  We believe that one among us will step forward, and change the landscape 
  of this planet to make it more suited to life.
   
  We value those who respect the planet and are communally minding, shar-
  ing work equally
   
  Our law is that anyone who violates the planet must leave it: a one-way trip.
   
  Our problem is that the conditions on the planet are getting worse, not 
  better.
  
  7
  Create the Legend
  Ask a question about an aspect of your culture that everyone at the table is 
  interested in exploring. You’ll be creating a legend that explains what your 
  people think about this aspect. You might choose to focus on something 
  that your culture believes in and create a religious story. You could choose 
  to explore a creature or monster they believe, why they value something that 
  they do, or explain why they have the problems that they do. 
  Here are some example questions to get started:
  Seeding the Legend
  Why does the monster in the forest exist?
  How did the sacred mountain come to be?
  Who is the ancient hero, Gwynndaen?
  Where is our ancestral home planet, that we search for?
  Why is it righteous for us to strive for perfection in battle?
  Use this question to set the focus of what your legend will be. Myths and 
  legends are often used to explain something about a culture.
  
  8
  Once you have the focus of your legend, it’s time to actually create the story. 
  You’ll be summarizing it on index cards, but feel free to flesh out the full 
  story at the table. 
  On each index card, write down a short sentence that describes part of the 
  story. These are called story beats. Keep these brief, and treat them like a 
  bullet points version of the story. If your story is about a hero’s defeat of a 
  monster, you don’t need to write down every detail of the battle, just say 
  that the hero slew the monster with a magic sword. The legend of King Ar-
  thur becoming king might look like this, in this format:
  Arthur is a young boy adopted by an English lord
  Arthur meets Merlin the wizard
  Arthur gets his education from Merlin by being turned into animals
  At a tournament, Arthur pulls a sword out of a stone, fulfilling a prophecy
  Arthur becomes king of England, in accordance with the prophecy
  So in this case you’d have five index cards, each with one of these sentences 
  written on them.
  Create the Legend
  Arrange these index cards in chronological order on the table where every-
  one can see them, so that they tell the legend from left to right. This is your 
  legend’s timeline. 
  Create the Timeline
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Over the course of the game you’ll be altering this timeline and the contents 
  in it, as your culture experiences different historic events. 
  
  9
  Playing the Game
  Apotheosis takes place over five generations of your culture’s history. Decide 
  how long you want each generation to be: you could just as easily call them 
  ages, epochs, or something much shorter. Choose a length that makes sense 
  for your community: if you’re creating a folk tale, that might change every 
  few decades as the story changes when it’s passed on to children. A religious 
  story written down in sacred texts might change every thousand years. An 
  urban legend on the internet might change every month, or even quicker. 
  Start by writing “Generation 1” (or whatever other term you choose to use) 
  on an index card. Place it at the beginning of your timeline, perpendicular 
  to the other index cards to help you tell it apart from the others. This is 
  called the generation card.
  Establishing the Generations
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Gen. 1
  
  10
  At the start of each generation, as a table you’ll choose one big event that 
  defines the generation. This is an event that effects the culture directly. Next 
  you’ll decide how this event impacts the legend that your culture tells.
  Collaborate to choose a historical event that everyone at the table is interest-
  ed in. Pick something that will have a big impact on the culture. The scale 
  of this event will depend on the scale of your culture, and the length of your 
  generation. Take a look at some examples below.
  For future generations, you’ll make a new generation card, numbering them 
  in order, with the new historical event defining that generation written be-
  low it. Place the new generation cards on top of the previous ones, creating 
  a stack. You can look at the previous ones at any time, just make sure they 
  remain in the right order: with generation 1 on the bottom, and the newest 
  generation on the top. 
  Write the event down on the generation card. Talk about how that event 
  brought some kind of change to the culture: what’s different now? Get every 
  player’s input.
  Drawing from real history:
  About an internet urban legend: 
  About a sci-fi setting: 
  For a game:
  Vikings invade England
  The story hits cable news
  The fleet finds a habitable world
  The event might be:
  
  11
  The historical event for each generation tells the broad strokes of the story 
  of your culture. Think of these events as a chance to give that narrative some 
  shape. Spend a few minutes thinking about what kind of story you want to 
  tell about this culture.  You can take that in any direction that players find 
  interesting. 
  You might tell the story of a small culture that grows, until something fore-
  shadows doom, and then doom comes to pass: your legend at the end of 
  your game is all that remains of your culture. Or you might tell the story of 
  an empire that becomes mighty and prosperous, that endures, along with 
  the legend you have at the end of the game. 
  Here’s how the historical events for those two examples might look:
  Telling a Story Through the Generations
  1. Discovery of the gold mine that makes us prosperous
  2. Creation of the Wey Trading Consortium
  3. Creature in the mine is awakened by the miners
  4. Death of Robert, famed monster hunter
  5. Destruction of the town by the creature, survivors flee
  Example: The Township of Wey
  
  12
  These are very different story arcs for a culture to take, and both directions 
  are completely viable. It’s best to have an idea of where you might like to go, 
  or at least a concept for the story at the beginning. There’s no requirement 
  to stick to that plan if something more interesting presents itself. You could 
  also just provide five different snapshots of different periods in the life of 
  your culture, without tying it to a larger narrative if you prefer. 
  Here are some general story arcs you might use:
  1. Birth of the Holy Emperor
  2. Holy Emperor takes the throne
  3. Successful conquest of neighboring kingdoms
  4. Holy Emperor achieves immortality
  5. Manifest destiny: the Empire controls the whole continent
  Example: Empire of the Silver Path
  Culture grows until tragedy befalls and they are destroyed
  Culture begins small, grows into a huge power
  Culture starts strong, gets into trouble, and recovers
  Powerful in the beginning, slowly loses everything
  Despite its struggles to change, things stay the same
  
  13
  With your actions, you’ll make changes to the legend itself. Each player will 
  take one action per generation (if you’re playing a 2-player game, each play-
  er takes two actions per generation). These actions represent what happens 
  to legends, myths, folk tales, and stories over time: they change as the peo-
  ple in a culture change, responding to events. They take on new life. Parts 
  get left behind, or misunderstood, or new aspects rise to give new meanings 
  to events. Choose who will go first, and have play proceed clockwise. Players 
  have four actions available:
  REMOVE: Part of the legend is forgotten. Remove an index card from the 
  timeline, and place it in a discard pile below the generation card. Narrate 
  how that part of the legend has been forgotten or abandoned. Why don’t 
  people tell this part anymore? Maybe the clay tablets with that part of the 
  legend written on them were broken, and people simply forgot in time. 
  Leave the space in the timeline rather than moving index cards to fill the 
  gap. 
  CHANGE: Part of the legend has changed. Write the new version of a 
  story beat on an index card and place it on top of the part of the legend 
  you’re changing. If you prefer, splay the cards slightly so you can see that 
  there’s a previous version underneath. Narrate why this part of the legend 
  has changed. Maybe when your elven culture was invaded by humans, ideas 
  mingled, and your legend changed. Try to keep the new story beat consis-
  tent with the rest of the story. 
  Player Actions
  
  14
  SPLINTER: A subgroup within the culture starts telling a different version 
  of the legend. Write a variant of one story beat on an index card, and place 
  it above or below the original version. For each new splintering, start a new 
  row. Cards on the same row are considered part of the same variant. Cards 
  on these rows are called splinter versions. Narrate who this subgroup is, 
  and why they have started telling their own version. Maybe their values are 
  a little different than the rest of your culture, and they’ve adapted a hero’s 
  actions to fit their value system. Cards in splinter versions can be affected 
  just like any other, in the dominant version.
  PROPAGATE: New aspects of the legend emerge. Write down a new story 
  beat on an index card, and add it to the timeline somewhere where it makes 
  sense. Move index cards as needed to fit it in. You can add this either to the 
  dominant version, or to one of the splinter versions. Narrate why this new 
  part of the story has come into being. Maybe trade with a nearby culture 
  has brought in new values, and the legend starts to reflect those. If a variant 
  timeline grows longer than the original, that is now the dominant version. If 
  it does, narrate how that subgroup has grown to become the cultural center.
  In the middle of play, your setup might look like this:
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Story beat
  Gen. 3
  Discard
  Variant
  Variant
  Variant
  Variant
  
  15
  Ending the Game
  After you’ve concluded five generations, the game is over. The legend you 
  have after the last action of the fifth generation is the version that endures, 
  regardless of whether your civilization survived or not.
  Look over the final version of your legend. Flesh it out a little. Make sure 
  you know what the legend means. If you like, write it down somewhere! 
  Take a minute and think about where the legend started, and where it is 
  now. Look at everything that was removed or forgotten, and all the versions 
  that changed over the generations.
  Spend a few minutes talking about the fate of your culture. The histori-
  cal events will tell the broad strokes, but think about what happened to 
  them after the last event. Was that culture destroyed? Did it change until it 
  became unrecognizable? How did that fate come about, and how did the 
  legend survive? Maybe the culture survived and people wrote the legend 
  down, and retell it to this day. Maybe archaeologists uncover tablets with 
  the legend, like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
  Above all else, create a story that you care about. Bend the rules if you need 
  to, they’re just a starting point. Tell the story you want to tell, together.
  The Fate of Your Culture
  
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