This month I'd like to talk about quite literally playing gods, which is what you can eventually do in Scion, the new-ish roleplaying game from White Wolf. I can't remember if I publicly stated this in a past Playing God column, but I'd previously said that I would never buy another White Wolf book, and probably wouldn't play another White Wolf game, because they'd cancelled Changeling. Well, I think God likes to play this little game with me, where I say "I will never do " and he comes up with some reason for me to do it. Hey God? I am really serious about the never having kids thing. Please don't mess with me on that one. Anyway, since White Wolf came to their senses and made a new version of Changeling (which may or may not be awesome; I didn't get to play it on Free RPG Day, but I flipped through the preview book and noticed that they'd made a lot of changes), maybe I can feel OK about having purchased the Scion: Hero book. Besides, Chris made me do it! (Before I continue on with this, I'd like to note that White Wolf still uses terms like Storyteller, Attribute, and Abilities. In this article, I'm going to stick with more universal terms, like GM, Stat, and Skills) Scion: Hero is the first in a three-book series wherein you play the child of a god. The next two books, Scion: Demi-God (which just released this month) and Scion: God (due sometime later this year) increase your power level in accordance with the titles. So yes, you can quite literally eventually become a God. So far my only experience with actually playing the game was a module, which my husband Chris ran for Free RPG Day. Despite the fact that it was typical RP module quality (that is to say, almost all combat and little chance for diplomacy or roleplaying), and despite the fact that we had pre-made characters (and I chose a non-combat oriented one, not realizing what I was in for), it was enough fun that we bought the book, which I read through in two days. So, the basic story is that the Gods we're all familiar with from legend tend to go around having children with mortals. That should come as no great surprise to anyone who's familiar with Classic Mythology... That Zeus was always knocking up the human girls. Occasionally, the Gods would give their children special powers and gifts (Heracles, anyone?), but for the most part, these kids just go through their lives without knowing that they have deific ichor flowing through their veins. That is, until the Titans broke free from their prison, doing some serious damage to the Underworld, and declared war on their wayward children, the Gods. Now the Gods are going around, granting abilities to their kids, and setting them out to fight the titanspawn that're wreaking havoc throughout the world. That's where you, the player, come in. If you're a huge fan of mythology, folk lore, or the novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman, this is absolutely the roleplaying game for you. The entire system is set up with the epic nature of Greek heroes in mind. Scions can run faster, jump higher, shoot better, and otherwise trump humans in almost every aspect. They perform wild tricks in combat. They make impossible feats look easy. They face impossible odds and come out with mere hero wounds. And they interact with gods, monsters, and magic on an almost daily basis. Due to my aforementioned vow, I haven't played any of the new editions of the World of Darkness games, so I can't say how the system compares to them. I don't think it was intended to be an addition to the WoD family, as the book makes no mention of vampires, werewolves, mages, or the term World of Darkness. I think this is a good thing, because really, the last thing you want is some child of a deity getting turned by a vampire. From what I've been told by those in the know, the dice system is pretty similar to Exalted. The skills are still pretty similar to what you're used to if you've ever played a WoD game, but the combat is so much more streamlined and sensible. When we played Mage, I absolutely abhorred combat, which sucked because I'd built my character around it. One interesting element of the combat system is that instead of rolling initiative and always going on that number, you have a starting init and then your actions have different speeds, which affect how long you have to wait to act again. I found this to be much more realistic than traditional initiative systems. There are also a lot less skills than I'm used to. Many skills that used to be separate have been rolled into one. Academics and linguistics, for instance, and Art and Expression. And because you no longer re-roll 10s (they instead count as two successes, thus cutting down on insane numbers of successes from lucky players), you no longer get a specialization in skills or stats that you have 4 or more ranks in. Instead, you only take specializations in a skill that is so broad that you need to denote what aspect of that category you actually had. For instance, if you're a dancer, you would take Art, with a specialization in Dance. If you're also an author, you would take Art again with a specialization in Writing. Compared to the old WoD system that I'm used to, this one seems as if it would be much easier for new players to grasp, and result in quicker character creation. The less steps there are to making a character, the less intimidated newbies will be by the process. Ok, enough about rules, on to flavor! The book includes six pantheons for players to choose from, each with six or more deities. This includes the Egyptian gods, the Greco-Roman pantheon, Aztec gods, Japanese deities, the Norse Aesir (with a few Vanir for good measure), and even the Loa of Voodoo traditions. Lest you find yourself disappointed with the small selection, the book states clearly that these are only the most active/prolific pantheons and deities, and includes loose guidelines for creating more. They even leave it open to the idea of porting in the Mythos of Lovecraft, or pantheons of your own unique creation. Each pantheon has a list of four virtues that they espouse, and these have an interesting effect on your character. And each deity has a list of powers and skills that are associated with them, which you can buy at a discounted price. Each pantheon also has a specific power set that is available to only children of those gods. This means that even if you have two Scions of two different Underworld deities (let's say, Osiris and Hades), you can be sure that they won't have the same powers. You're not limited to only choosing the powers of your parental deity. While on the one hand, I think this is nice because it allows you to have more freedom and variety in character creation, I think it also has the potential for abuse. I would not recommend allowing a power gamer to play this game, unless everyone in your group is a Munchkin and will all make equally overpowered characters. Because to be honest, every character is going to be at least a little over-the-top (tis the nature of the beast), but it could easily get out of hand. As for the powers themselves, they run the gamut from Epic Attributes (which give you automatic successes and a choice of Knacks, which are special semi-magical abilities based on the stat; Epic Endurance can allow you to eat anything, for instance) to the ability to speak to animals, to the ability to cast spells or see the future. And then there are the backgrounds you can buy. If you've played Mage, you'll remember them as being things like Mentor, Arcane, Avatar, etc. In this case they represent mentors, magical items, followers (supernatural ones, my character had zombies!), and animal companions (also supernatural, you could even have a dragon or a pegasus). One cool difference between Scion and games like Mage is that you don't feel forced to hide your awesomeness. You want to be careful, lest other peoples' fate get bound to yours, but on the other hand, you're expected to show off so your legend will grow. That's how you become a demi-god and eventually a god. After all, no one would have talked about Heracles if he'd spent all of his time just sitting at home drinking wine. He had to go out and do heroic deeds, and people had to see them to talk about them. I do have a few complaints with the book. One is the limited number of pantheons and deities. Oh, sure, "over 50 gods" sounds like a lot, but it doesn't seem like so much when some of your favorites are missing. Granted, you are given the freedom to make your own (GM willing), but that's a lot of work. You're also given guidelines to make new powers, magic items, etc. Again, lots of work. It's all work that I'm willing to do, provided I end up liking the game when I play it for real, but I'd rather they'd done it for me. Also, the book is so chock-full of rules that it really skimps on important details like typical ways that gods let their kids know about their special powers, how goddesses get their kids back to their mortal fathers, how often Scions interact with their Deific parents, etc etc. Although I'm perfectly capable of figuring out that stuff myself, I like to have examples so I can think about background stories. The book does not have as much flavor as my old WoD books. It's missing the random song quotes, the examples of different attribute levels, and the stories at the beginning of every chapter. It does, however, still have the beautiful and varied artwork that you would expect from a big-name RPG book like this. Because of the power level and potential for abuse, I am going to suggest that this game be mostly reserved for mature or experienced players, and definitely for experienced GMs. A newbie GM running this for experienced players with a tendency to min-max their characters would get eaten alive. It definitely requires a good grasp of the power of the characters and the sort of challenges they need to face to actually feel challenged. From a technical POV, the layout is pretty intuitive (unlike, say, the average L5R book), the book is hardbound, printed on nice glossy paper. Artwork is mostly black and white with some lovely full-color work in the pantheon section. There is a short story at the beginning, it's actually fairly well-written and gives a good idea of the scope of a Scion's abilities. There are 6 pre-gen characters, one from each pantheon. These are the characters we had to play on Free RPG Day. As far as pre-gens go, they're actually pretty good. The one I played was the sort of character I might have rolled for myself. There are some typos and minor errors in the book, but again, not as bad as the average L5R book. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the purchase so far, and I'm looking forward to actually playing it. Hopefully I can talk Chris into running a little game over Independence Weekend. If it goes well, we'll likely pick up Scion: Demi-God, and I'll be sure to post a review here. Happy Gaming!

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