In which our intrepid Spike reviews Scion

I put off buying this book for some time. I've gotten tired of the standard White Wolf system over the years, my players were frustrated by the mess of Exalted's charm system, and quite frankly it felt like one book that I just didn't want or need.

Never mind that White Wolf is pulling a dirty trick on all of us by releasing it as three separate books. You need Hero to play Demigod or God level, but you need Demigod to level up past 'starter' territory, and God, well that requires Demigod and Hero, and only applies, I assume, to very high level play.  I just didn't feel like getting roped into that chain.

But here I am.

I've fallen away from reviewing lately, I don't have the time or energy I used to have for it, there are better reviewers out there, guys that can shake out a system and tell you if the writer was left handed, guys that can spin the review into a story funny enough to make into movie. I'm not that guy, I'm just a long time player that calls it how I see it.

And how do I see it?

Scion takes Exalted, boils away the fat and cruft and crude and puts out a simple, easily understood and playable system, that’s what. I was duly impressed with lessons learned, with ideas stolen from Aberrant and exalted and put to good use here.   Yet despite all that 'lessons learned' goodness, there is a distinct feeling of amateur hour at times.  Simple things like 'Favored Abilities' require extraordinarily close reading of the book to figure out.

But let me back up a bit, let’s start at the beginning.

The cover, we've seen it, or if you want to buy it you'll see it before you do. It’s pretty but not to the point of going 'wow, that's an awesome cover'. It does show an 'Iconic Character' which we'll get to later.

Then we get a fairly hefty short story, one of the longest 'intro fictions' I've ever read, certainly on par with, or exceeding, the intro fiction in my plastic folder edition of Aeon.  It features the guy on the cover, Norse pantheonic stuff, and wasn't horribly painful to read, but perhaps a bit misleading for how your character is going to play out.  And it's long.  I swear it includes chapters.

The book, breaking with a tradition longer than most people have been gaming, then jumps right into character creation. Whazzat?  Gone are the four chapters of 'what is a game and how do we play this?' and setting specific exposition that traditionally lead in the book. Oh, there is a lexicon, White Wolf is still...well...White Wolf after all, but it's short and mostly game terms, rather than 'in game' terms.

Perhaps fittingly, in a book about playing the mortal children of gods, the start of character creation is devoted to the Gods that the players will be choosing as parental figures; Only one God per player. There are six pantheons: Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Voodoo, Japanese and Aztec.  The first three are obvious choices; the last three are a bit of a surprise.  There are plenty of choices here, each pantheon tries to cover all the 'big names', you'll only notice stuff missing if you are a real fan of myth. On the other hand, there is plenty of reinterpretation of the Gods from a modern (post Modern? I dunno...) viewpoint that can be a bit jarring. Then again, they are supposedly really parents in the whole 'dig my girlfriend' sort of way, so I suppose that's necessary.  On the other hand, hearing Artemis depicted as a 'skirt chaser' really makes 'Chaste' a non-issue, and Odin as the ultimate 'out for himself survivalist plotter' just... well it just jars, frankly. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I'd like my virgin goddesses to be a bit more 'virgin' and a bit less 'lesbian'.  Despite this there is still a fair amount of 'they are gods, not people' to spread around, so its not one sided.  And yes, they manage, barely, to account for how Eunuch (Osiris) and Virgin gods can have children (adoption...) in a sidebar.  

The real problem here is not interpretation but explanation. See, each God's entry has a few sub categories, like favored abilities, powers and the like. But there is NO explanation for those categories. This gets confusing later. The 'quick character' creator page tells you to assign your favored abilities. It took me ten minutes of searching for the one line in the entire book that tells you that your characters favored abilities are identical to your God's.  That's just bad writing. Worse, since the line is buried in the 'half page' intro to a subchapter, it’s very likely to be glossed over by gamers like me who look for 'hard coded rules' and skip 'flavor exposition'.  For character creation your God's 'purview’ matters little at character creation, then quite a bit more as you gain experience.

From there get a vastly overlong bit on picking your characters ‘Calling’. This is a non-mechanical part of the character that most games call a ‘concept’ and leave at a line or two, but being White Wolf, they take a half page to do it. Whatever. From there we run through the usual gamut of attributes, abilities and various other facets of White Wolfs standard system. Scion is high powered, so you get a few extra points over their usual amounts, on par with Exalted.  

Rather than pick ordinary backgrounds, we get another change. The only backgrounds you get are your ‘birthrights’.  Here they get stingy, you get five whole points, and there are a lot of ways to spend them.  There are four Birthright categories. Lets call them ‘Pets, Minions, Teachers and Toys’. That’s not official language there, but it sums up pretty good.  The default seems to be lots of points in Toys, and there is a damn good reason for that. So good one wonders why they even bothered with the other three categories with only five points to play with.

See: You can’t use all those neat godly powers that a Scion can have without a ‘Relic’ that allows you access to the ‘purview’. Each point in Relics (toys in my terms) EITHER allows access to a single purview OR a very minor upgrade over an ordinary object. It is theoretically possible to have ten separate powers, each from a different purview, meaning you’d need ten points in relics… and we haven’t got to bonus points yet.  There are 16 different Purviews, for the record, meaning that eventually, if you are a ‘jack of trades’ sort, you would want 16 points in relics just to cover the purviews.  And we haven’t included the ‘special’ purviews that apparently DON”T need relics.  But let’s go back to birthrights for the moment.

I must game differently than most folks, but in 15 years with WW products I have yet to see anyone ever use a Mentor background in any practical manner.  I won’t dismiss it, but seriously, folks: This is a ‘Godly Gift’?  Then the pets and minions categories: Can’t these be a single category? Do you really need a separate way to track whether or not your minion has two legs or four?  Then again, WW has always been a bit redundant with NPC granting abilities.  

Relics get a lot of ink, particularly here in character creation.  Sadly its mostly wasted, as there isn’t any real rules for creation of a relic beyond the simple ‘this is what one dot gives you’, which could be summed up in a paragraph or so, though having sample relics is always nice.  

Rather backwardly, they let you pick your godly powers after you buy the relic that gives you access to your powers.  I kid, I kid. Epic Attributes are nice and don’t require a relic, they are refined from their prototype days as ‘mega attributes’ in Aberrant. Their effect is clearly labeled, and gone are the days of buying one point of mega-wits, and five knacks for it to make the fastest fool in the land, or buying five points of Mega-Dex and only having one knack. Now you get a knack for every point, period. Sensible and easy, I like it.  Epic dexterity will remain popular for keeping you from getting hit and laying the almighty smackdown on fools. Nothing stops you from buying Epic traits that have nothing to do with your God. Epic Intelligence for a Scion of Thor? Why not, man!  That’s not a ding, exactly, but an interesting point. Scions, we understand, are not just weak reflections of their parents, but potentially Gods in the making with their own abilities… one day.

Everything in the godly department is pretty much limited to ‘three dots’ at this level of play. And to be frank, here is another backwards design flaw: Legend is what limits your ability to buy dots, the default then is ‘one point’ in any power, but you only buy up your legend at the end of character creation… oops.  Not that this is unique to Scion, the bonus point part of character creation has always created a monkey wrench situation for White Wolf character creation. It’s not terrible, just messy.

The Godly powers (boons), what can I say about them? These are minor tricks, mostly. The ‘War’ Purview, for example, doesn’t seem to make you any more capable in a fight (Epic Attributes, on the other hand….), but instead let you magically scare people away, or bolster morale a bit.  The direct benefit is a bit harder to see.  More, some purviews are vastly weighted to be easy to access by ‘god’ others seem woefully underrepresented. War, for example, includes Erzulie as one of the Gods with access. Really? Erzulie? The red eyed temptress?  I thought she was a lover, not a fighter?  What do I know, however?  

The ‘Pantheon Purviews’ are another special case. There are a lot of exceptions to purviews, my man.  Pantheon Purviews are not bought like regular boons, but are sequential, and don’t apparently require a birthright for no good reason. There are only six, but in the case of the Greek Gods, that’s actually ‘24’… as it can be bought separately for each ability… Less flashy, but more generically useful, nice.

Then you have three ‘super special’ purviews (magic, prophecy and ‘mystery’…) that also don’t seem to require relics, meaning at the end of the day there are actually more things to be ‘godlike’ with that don’t require relics than those that do!  Nine Epic attributes, six pantheon purviews and three super special purviews?  That’s 18 to 16, and that’s not counting the fact that Arête really is twenty four in its own right!  Maybe relics aren’t as important as I thought, eh?  Well, all six Iconic Characters have relics, and three of them ONLY have relics.  Man, I don’t know WHAT this game is trying to tell me…

Let’s move on to virtues. This was one ‘new twist’ that I saw. Every character has four virtues that act similar to the Exalted Virtues, but the player picks them from a list. Ok, your godly pantheon provides a strong guideline for these virtues, backed by XP penalties for violating them, but the choice is there.   The downside is that virtues force you into behavior patterns. Bad Game Designer, no cookie!  Nearly every Scion will either have Courage or Valor as one of their virtues unless they chose the XP penalty to toss one out. There isn’t much difference between the two (bad designer, no cookie!) other than a few words here and there, but one thing they share in common: They don’t allow for guerrilla style combats, no hunting superior forces through the woods.  That can be interpreted as ‘ambush’ a no god ever ambushed an enemy or tricked them… nosiree.  Now, true, the GM might just be rightfully called an ass for forcing virtue checks to, say, be a stealthy hunter with a bow (if one is a scion of Artemis, say) instead of standing up for a face to face fight, but the book does say to run it that way.  The idea that one must naturally have a ‘low valor’ to fight that way is frankly a little offensive, which is why I always say not to tell people how to play their characters…

Valor determines your base willpower, and is easily ‘gameable’. Pick two of your four valors to put your points into and ‘presto!’ starting willpower is 7 out of a possible 10.  Depending on your character that can even be viewed as ‘being in character’. Say a Scion of Ares having most of his virtues in Valor and Vengeance and none in Intellect or Expression… sounds like Ares to me, buddy. Not the most poetic of souls, was he.  

The last real part of character creation is spending bonus points. Technically the last part of the chapter is ‘Legend’ but since there is nothing to be determined here except by spending Bonus Points… there isn’t much to say. Other than ‘fatebinding’ which is poorly explained in the early parts of the book, there isn’t any reason NOT to get your Legend up to 4 as fast as you can, as the ability of your character to do cool stuff is directly tied to your rating, both in terms of spendable points (squared rating) and max cap for kewl powerz.  Oddly, you can deliberately lose ‘Legend’, presumably because of the ‘Fatebinding’.

At last we get to actual useable rules. If you don’t know White Wolf Games, you roll a bunch of ten sided dice equal to attribute + ability and hope for seven and up.  For everyone else: like much of Scion, the basic rules and combat seem to be a streamlined port from Exalted Second Edition.  This is mostly a good thing, both from lower learning curve among people familiar with WW games, and because the combat in exalted, barring the chunky charm set, was actually pretty smooth when I last ran it.  Thankfully, the Social Combat is entirely missing. I suppose if you really miss it, you could steal it en toto from Exalted 2e, but really, you shouldn’t need it.  The rules chapter ends with a list of weapons armor and vehicles, without a single word about buying them. Hey, you are the children of Gods, what need have you for mortal wealth?

Roughly two thirds of the way through the book we run into the ‘Storytelling chapter’.  It starts pretty strong, giving some solid advice on capturing the feel of epic sagas.  Maybe a bit long winded, but in good faith.

Then we get a chapter on ‘Fate’. It’s short but stupid. All that fatebinding that was so terrible in character creation? Yeah, it don’t mean much. First you roll your legend pool (up to four dice) and hope you don’t get five successes.  Sure, 10’s, as always, count as double, but still… odds are pretty damn slim. Then, what is the mechanical effect?  Well… mostly 24 hours later they aren’t showing up regularly. That’s it.  In other words, the rules make them a mandatory recurring NPC (possibly a PC… who cares, they are always hanging around anyway, right?) for a short spell.   Talk about a huge build up to nothing.

Then we hit a huge snag. Sixty odd pages of the book is a massive adventure… thing. Let me sum it up: The Gods are in Vegas for the weekend, and they want their Iconic Scions (the players) to do stuff for them.  There are, consequently, six mini-adventures, one for each Iconic Scion. One has you do some research, kill a monster and take it’s stuff, the next has you get a hot date for a randy god who doesn’t care about marital status or willingness of his chosen girl.

Sixty freaking pages! For Iconics! I LIKE having my own characters, thank you much. Sure, I COULD adapt the adventures, but… Look, I suppose they are fine as adventures go. Pretty open ended for the most part, at least the ones I actually bothered to read through. But they are adventures… long ones… in a core book.  For this I paid an extra five to ten bucks?!!! Between this and the short story I could have bought the book for half price!  Sure, the six mini’s turn into a short campaign, but… nah, you already know how I feel about this.

Anyway, after that huge waste of space the writers leave us with a fairly substantial chapter on properly godly minions and enemies, and NPCs of all stripes. There is obvious bias on the authors for certain types, as various entries are substantially longer and more detailed than others. As with the Gods there are some minor liberties taken, mostly in presenting a specific interpretation of a given myth. Overall, however, the chapter is extremely useful, though it does seem very heavily weighted towards the Greek and Norse pantheons, with the Japanese coming in a respectable third.

I will suggest a single anomaly that was irritating. We are given six pantheons to play with, which I can respect. But for some reason, hanging out in the wings (in the adventure and in a few bits of artwork) is a Scion from a ‘non-detailed’ pantheon. I call foul. What if I really wanted to play a scion of the Monkey King myself? Where are the rules for the Chinese pantheon? Obviously you have SOMETHING otherwise this guy wouldn’t exist. Cough up the goods, man.

In summation:

The Good: Gives you the epic power play of Exalted without the mindbendingly heavy crunch of the charmset.  Pulls in some of the best tricks from the White Wolf lineup, making it one of the most refined products they’ve produced.  Generally delivers what it claims without resorting to smoke and mirrors.  For once using your awesome powers isn’t punished.

The Bad: Aside from a few layout gaffs and generally awkward methods of conveying information, I found the purviews to be oddly balanced.  If you don’t mind a bit of generic awesome, you can’t go far wrong sticking with epic attributes and (if you like the Greek gods…) Arête. Prophecy and Mystery could be potentially game wrecking from a purely metagame aspect, or utterly useless with certain GM’s.   The ‘generic’ boons are less awesome power but provide far more color.

The Ugly: Page wasting. Far too much attention on the Iconics. Fatebinding is mostly a waste of time.

Overall I rate this a very good buy, particularly if you have some familiarity with White Wolf products. If you ever ran Vampire games like you were in the Matrix, this book is going to be right up your alley. Obviously, some of my problems with it are less an issue for some of you, the adventure, for example, will occupy quite some time for many groups I’m sure.  
 

Well, you sacrificed your money on a horrifically bad game.

On the one hand, this was altruistic --  now other readers are forewarned about why they should not buy the game.

On the other hand, it's likely that some portion of your money went to the persons who wasted ink and paper on that game.

I don't have a solution for this conundrum, but as long as these scribblers and vandals are not stopped, they will continue dragging the culture down.

I dunno.  If you like White Wolf stuff for the most part and you're into mythology, this game is very highly recommended by myself and others.  I liked reading Hero, and Demigod is even better.  I expect great things from the "God" book, being released soon.