Scion

I picked up White Wolf’s latest creation: Scion. They are released it in three stages: Hero, Demi-God and God. As might be gleaned from the riddle that is their title, this game is about playing the child of a god, who, if they gain enough legend, might one day achieve god-hood.

The concept is pretty sound and that’s very good…because this game only has a concept. There is virtually no follow through.

I remember a while ago being excited about another game, called Sorcerer. It was something about controlling demons via magic to do…stuff. Sweet. Sounds great. Had a friend pick it up from Gencon for me.

I got it and was entirely disappointed. It had some pretty barebones rules, some GM stuff and some essays about gaming (if you can believe that) and no setting whatsoever. In fact, the point of the game was for me, the GM, to make the setting. That was a total cop out. I don’t buy games to create the world. I buy them for the world. I most certainly don’t buy them for the weak rules, because I can create far better ones than a lot of games out there.

So I think you know where I might be heading with Scion. At least, Scion has a better concept. The Titans have awakened. The gods are in peril. The world is in peril. The gods have no time to save the world so it’s up to their kids to do it.

I love this concept. Sure do love that concept. I couldn’t wait to dive into the book and consume the juicy details within. Only problem is, they were missing.

I have to wonder if the fact that this game lacks a true setting/world because they wanted to do something very much the opposite of their bread and butter games in the World of Darkness line.

Oh you can figure out the setting and the world, more or less. There is a 40 page story at the beginning of the book that is the usual blah that most games produce. There is a lengthy 1st Adventure that is including in the back of the book, some parts of which pretty much contradict the fiction in the front. But I really am not paying good money so that I can extrapolate your setting. I am paying good money so that I can go to the GM section and read the juicy secrets. I will choose what I want and what I don’t want. But at least give me some world to use or discard.

There are the basics, given out in brief point form which one would presume is for the players. But instead I must use it as a GM to build my world from. I really find this shoddy work.

So what do they have in place for a GM? Well they have this handy dandy section on how to be a Storyteller with many tips on what makes these Epic stories different from other things you may have run. Okay…I can see this being of some value. But only to a select few. To be honest you really will end up with two types of GM’s here. Inexperienced GM’s, who will not ‘get’ what this type of section has to say or experienced GM’s who ignore this section in favour of flipping to the “Adventure Seeds” section (which naturally does not exist in this book). Because experienced GM’s know their trade or are too stuck in their routine/rut to re-read what they think they already know. What they really want to know is what this world is about so they can let it sit and gel in their mind’s eye and develop into a story that they need to run.

The rest of the book is filled with character creation, powers and rules. I won’t say it’s the worst set or rules I’ve seen. I’m sure I’ve purged the Palladium system out of my head. But it is not good.

White Wolf has a formula. Stat plus skill as a pool of dice, normally totalling between 3 and 10 dice. When this was compared to all the d20 games at the time, it was new and innovative. Now it’s pretty darn common. There is nothing wrong with this mechanic, however. When it first hit Vampire, each die that rolled a 6 or better (their standard difficulty) yielded a success. So successes were plentiful. As you watched WW games over the years, you got to witness as each one in turn slimmed down on the successes. The default difficulty became 7 with Aeon Trinity. Now the success number is 8 or better. We’ve gone from a 50% chance per dice to get a success to a 30% chance for a success per dice.

Some math nerd better than I could tell me I’m full of it, but I certainly have seen that trying to get an 8+ provides a player with wildly random results. After building a character in Vampire with 11 or higher dice to roll for their Dominate, a few lucky dice rolls from opponents with less than half my dice pool and I was beginning to think that my poor vampire was only fooling himself into believing that he could control people’s minds.

But I could live with the 30% chance per dice. If the rest of the system wasn’t so bad.

Scion uses a very close system to another popular WW game, Exalted. I never got into Exalted but it looks neat (think crazy martial art action in a fictional world). But it looks like the creators of Scion tried to tighten up the system here and there. In combat, Exalted has an opposed dice roll (where I roll for attack and you roll for defense). In Scion there is a just a defense value (DV). Okay, nice and simple. But I guess this didn’t feel like 2nd Edition D&D enough for them so they decided to have multiple DV’s for every character (Parry & Dodge and a third one which amounts to None). Sorry, I should say poorly defined multiple DV’s because there is no reason to rely on anything other than your best one unless there is an attack that denied you the right to use that DV. What are those attacks? I wish I knew because they give you some vague examples that are confusing and really just amount to the fact that you still will want to rely on your higher DV.
Oh and those DV’s change the second your character takes any action other than standing around looking bored. So the DV’s constantly get adjusted while combat progresses. Fine. Stupid…but fine. I know it makes sense. If you extend yourself with a fierce attack, you’re easier to hit. But it’s a serious pain to deal with in the thick of combat.
They also made a Soak value, which means you take less damage from things when hit. No real problems with that. Until you actually try to use the system.
See the system might work fine until you factor in the Epic stats. Supernatural stats that overwhelm and break the system. This wouldn’t be so bad if some extra thought and playtesting went into it, but…I don’t think it did.
Epic stats give you automatic successes tacked on top of what you roll. The problem doesn’t like in the Epic stat itself. The problem occurs when one character as the Epic stat and the other character does not have the Epic stat to counter.
If I hit your character and you have Epic Stamina…but I do not have Epic Strength…the vast majority of my attacks will simply not hurt you. Likewise if I don’t have Epic Dex but you do, I will never hit you in combat, while you will always hit me in combat. The moral of this story might be: Make a well balanced character, but in practice it really does mean: Everybody be the same. Everybody take Epic Strength, Dex and Stamina. And that isn’t fun.
Their sample characters are not balanced. The chick from the Asian gods can pretty much beat all the rest 9 times out of 10, because she is impossible to hit and can always hit them. She has everything put into Dex, Epic Dex. Her Epic Dex allows her to hit so accurately that her excess to hit successes can translate into damage so she may even be able to circumvent Epic Stamina.
So…basically…in the WW world: Dexterity is god. If you don’t take Epic Dex, you’ve all but crippled your character.
So…whatever. I don’t like the system. Maybe it could work better on practice than it does on paper? The answer to that is a resounding no. The system is criminal.
It is slow.
It is dull.
It is painful.
Two of these are bad enough. But this has all three . It takes a long time to conclude one attack (slow), that takes a bunch of math to figure out (painful) and ultimately, it just comes down to “I attack.” (dull) with little variation. Exalted worked because you had half a dozen bad ass maneuvers you could pull off. Scion is just…bad.
So...a great concept, a poorly executed setting and a god awful system. Scion is a titanic failure, as far as I’m concerned. I will run a game, but I gutted the system and even after one session of playing it, I’m gleeful at the possibilities (more on that in the future). Without much of a setting, I guess I am free to do whatever the hell I want. But I didn’t need to pay money to do that…seriously. As a GM, I can always do whatever the hell I want. But if I’m going to do that, I’ll use the far superior Fate system.
So I can’t recommend Scion to anybody. I will run it and then never pick it up again. Not for ideas or brainstorming. It adds nothing helpful to the world of gaming.
I guess I should say something nice: the covers are very pretty.