Scion Demo

[bryant]

White Wolf put up the Scion demo the other week; I just got around to downloading it. Scion is the one where you play the children of gods in the modern world; it’s not the World of Darkness. They’re going for a Mage: The Hero Defined feel, and not coming up much short as far as I can tell from reading the demo.

The system is standard Storyteller, tweaked for heroism. Successes are 7 or more on a ten sider, rather than 8 or more. PCs have a Legend rating, and penalties can’t bring your die pool beneath your Legend rating. And, of course, there are stunt rules.

I count six different kinds of special powers you get out of being a hero. Epic attributes are a lot like Aberrant’s Mega-attributes; they give autosuccesses and provide variable benefits related to the attribute. Nothing else is really explained in the demo. I’m a bit concerned that there’s too much complexity there, but we’ll see.

Combat is pretty heavily revamped. It’s reminiscent of Feng Shui, in that every action takes a number of ticks. If we’re on tick 3, and I take a Speed 3 action, I’ll act again on tick 6. There are no rounds, however; you just keep going until the fight’s over.

For example characters, we’ve got a jetsetting gunslinger child of Aphrodite, a former US Marshal investigative type who’s the son of Horus, a cardiac surgeon child of Tezcatlipoca, a teen auto mechanic whose dad is Thor, a necromantic embalmer from New Orleans who’s the daughter of Baron Samedi, and a photographer/martial artist child of Susan-o. That happens to be one Scion from the six pantheons outlined in the main rulebook.

I’m sorta medium amped for this. Street date is a couple of weeks from now.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

okay, that sounds intruigingly shiny.

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely count me as one of the excited for this. I've decided that when Dark Ages: Fae ends that group's game is either going to be this or the V:tR Ancient Rome setting.

[head58.livejournal.com]

You had me at "initiative ticks".

When do we play?

[michele-blue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this sounds awesome.

When do we play?

[bryant]

After Mason eats you all.

[head58.livejournal.com]

So, two weeks then?

[michele-blue.livejournal.com]

...

Won't he just throw up after?

[bryant]

You'll have to find that out for yourselves.

[bryant]

I think that of the vampires you've met, only... three of them could handle all five of you at once. At this point.

[michele-blue.livejournal.com]

Steel, Steel, and Steel.

Who else?

[death-by-monkey.livejournal.com]

Wow. I was a big fan of Matt Wagner's Mage books as well as American Gods (less so of Anansi Boys, though). And I also thought Feng Shui's success system was great....

If I actually played RPGs anymore I'd be all over this.

[head58.livejournal.com]

Is one of them by any chance the one whom all 5 of us were standing in front of when we last left off?

[bluegargantua]

Hi,

I know that one of the authors (who lives in CT) is looking to run a demo or two. This is probably going to be the thing that gets me off my duff and into WoD. Because I love me god-like games (Amber, Nobilis, etc.).

If you're going to run, keep me posted.

later
Tom

[bryant]

Who knows?

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

He can spend blood points to keep us down.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that does sound pretty interesting. I would only play in such a game if you were running it though.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

I am placing my bets on Steel, Mason and Vincent. I just refuse to believe that Vincent dresses all nineteenth century for kicks and wasn't really, y'know, around a hundred years ago.

[bryant]

While I am not going to confirm or deny this, I am going to note that V:tR largely divorces age from power; this is due to the new Torpor mechanic. If someone's just come out of Torpor, they're not all that powerful. They build power as they stay awake, but more power = more chances of falling into Torpor eventually.

So the question to ask Vincent would be "how long have you been awake, anyhow?"

[bryant]

Ah? Cause I was going to make you run it.

Tweak the setting a little. It's all very well to be the badass scions walking America's highways and fighting monsters at truck stops, but wouldn't the children of gods really be attracted to haute society?

• Thor's daughter is a professional tennis player, and hobnobs with Prince William on her days off.


• Athena's son is the best agent in the world; his network of contacts is legendary in Hollywood.


• Ehecatl's daughter manages an investment portfolio worth, conservatively, a hundred billion dollars.


• Amaterasu's son is a model, and plans on returning to Yale for another doctorate in a few years.


• Thoth's daughter's first volume of poetry had the largest hardcover print run of any poetry book for the last fifty years.


• Ogoun's son lives in Washington D.C., and does not restrict his client list to any political party. Last year, he personally won three elections at the highest level.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

Hrm, yes, this is true. I keep forgetting about the new Torpor rules, which is odd, because I love them and think they are genius. So perhaps Vincent is not as much of a threat as I thought. Still, I'm not ruling him out. For all we know he bought Vigor 5 before going down for a few decades, and hey, Vigor 5 only costs 1 Blood Point to activate.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

It's funny you brought that up, because when you wrote about the setting is instinctively thought about how, if I were a scion of a god, I'd make myself rich and famous. I'd have to see the book before I commit to anything, though. I am wary of all things White Wolf these days.

[amberley.livejournal.com]

I love Mage, so that sounds interesting, thanks for the link.

Reminds me a little of Pantheon High, a recent OEL manga set in a Los Angeles high school attended by the children of the gods, or of course of Thorne Smith's The Night Life of the Gods.

The indie game Mortal Coil covers divine PCs, but with nowhere near as much crunch as a Storyteller game would.