#scion2e

So, I've since realized this term is a bit confusing because it has since been used to differentiate on-camera Actual Plays from private games. But I started using it because I was unsatisfied with the typical concept of the "favorite" game.

Basically, I have four games that I will always return to if given a chance. These are:

Fate Core

Scion 2e (Storypath)

City of Mist

Monster of the Week

I really can't choose between these four games as to which I enjoy more. However, some people may have noticed that I don't recommend them equally. So here's why Monster of the Week is the game I recommend the most.

Fate Core

Fate Core is one of the more recent variations of the Fate system which descended from FUDGE and first appeared in specific games like Spirit of the Century or Dresden Files RPG. It is a narrative game and uses the Aspects from FUDGE, a mechanic which has influenced a lot of narrative games ever since. It can and has been adjusted to hit a large number of genres with a large collection of much varied official release content, the majority of which is available Pay-What-You-Want, and a very easy to work with open license for making third party material.

However, Fate Core is very much a toolkit system. This means that the base rules are meant to be modded so that you can hit the exact gameplay flavor you're hoping for. This means that a GM will be faced with making a fair amount of homebrewing mechanics to match desired narrative. That mentioned vast library of sample worlds does help as you can borrow mechanics from any of a number of existing world books to make your world, but it still requires some work.

On top of this, as one of the earlier narrative games, it has some rough spots in mechanics and, most glaringly, a lot of tables struggle with getting the Fate Point economy flowing at just the right level. This can cause the game to underperform. This is because the metacurrency of Fate Points generally requires the GM and players to actively engage with it by experiencing problems as a result of the down side of their Aspects. A common story I've been told is that tables will just RP their negative aspects without being encouraged to, which is fine because the game allows for giving Fate Points for that, but forget that it is a thing they should get Fate Points for. More recent narrative games have answered this problem by including purely game play ways for the metacurrency to refill so it isn't entirely dependent on players and GMs remembering to do it.

So, that brings me to the following for Fate Core

Very low buy-in cost, most of the material can be purchased for low cost or gotten for free.

Lots of support and examples.

High flexibility

High GM campaign prep required (session prep is pretty easy though)

The mechanics takes a bit of a re-working some player's approaches to gaming.

Scion 2e

A roleplaying game where you can play a hero with a spark of divinity in a modern day setting where the supernatural is public and all myths are true, especially the contradictory ones. Yup, sign me up. I am always up for this genre of game play. You got a lots of cases of "Jus' Folks" supernaturals alongside the heroes and where magic is a simple part of life.

Also, the Storypath system is a great mix of narrative and tactical. It scratches my desire to do character builds and doesn't require me to perform absurd mathematical gymnastics in order to get exactly the flavor I want for my character. The stunt system is great and seems to take inspiration from Green Ronin's AGE game's stunt point mechanics, but the gem is Enhancements and Scale.

Enhancements range from +1 to +5, with +4 and +5 only possible to reach with supernatural abilities. These are bonus successes that only apply to your roll if you have rolled at least one success on the dice. This keeps the dice relevant, as compared to Scion 1e where eventually bonus successes reached a point that dice just didn't matter anymore. The cap on enhancements would keep the power bound within a certain power level if this wasn't then match with the Scale mechanic which allows the characters to be the demigod or superhero they're meant to be.

The default setting makes some assumptions about the world but also explains how you can adjust these to your desire. For example, I generally ignore the whole idea of the war between gods and titans. So this is neither a good nor bad bit.

The big downside to this game is that the financial buy-in to get into the game is pretty significant. At minimum to play the game you need both Origin and Hero to have all the basic rules you need to play the game at its best. You can play Origin for a good long while and have fun, but it has very limited advancement and scaling, so you're eventually going to want to move on to Hero. Demigod and God are significantly different gameplay feels and you may never end up reaching that level and still be fully satisfied, so you don't need those, but they do have extra Pantheons and ideas about the world setting.

Accompanying this is that the supplements of the game are rather hit and miss. Mysteries of the World, Saints and Monsters, Demigod, God, and Titanmachy are definitely worth a purpose. However, Dragon, Masks of the Mythos, and a few others are sort of middling. Dragon and Masks in particular feel over-engineered and fiddly.

High buy-in cost

Minimum 2 book requirement

Varying supplement quality

Variable gameplay flavor from social to combat

Amazing flavor

Excellent mix of narrative and tactical mechanics

City of Mist

City of Mist is a noir superhero game where you play people who are empowered by their connection with a story (or multiple stories in the case of one of my PCs). This Mythos has a desire to relive itself on an epic scale and will empower your character to do just that. For example, the Little Match Girl mythos will seek to relive her story of deprivation, delusion, and death by exposure and if not anchored by a human will, will spread this concept throughout all of society.

It is a game descended from Powered by the Apocalypse but the extent of its changes are such that I feel that it is its own thing. It still uses the 2d6, but where it uses Fate Aspect-like "tags" instead of the common range of usually 5 stats and the combination of four themebooks instead of a single playbook makes it incredibly different.

The themebook mechanics does make City of Mist perhaps the best mechanics for doing character development out of any game I have ever played. The themebooks are meant to grow in effectiveness and versatility but also to be lost and replaced, granting experience based on the strength of the replaced theme. This process has a pacing controlled almost entirely by the player with dice-based changes well sign-posted as risks so they will never come as a surprise. You can have your character change as much or as little, as fast or as slow as you want. There is also a built in reset option for characters that don't want to retire their character but do want to go back to an entirely fresh sheet.

In addition, the Iceberg approach to planning stories and campaigns is exceptional and it has some truly great advice on how to manage spotlight between players to make sure nobody is recommended. The publishers have also started to make other games based on this system but I do not believe there is an open license as of yet, so for now the only Written in the Mist games (yes, I just made that up) we're getting are going to com out of Son of Oak Games.

However, the mechanics are a bit intricate. In my opinion they are not over-designed or extraneous and move fluidly once you're used to them but they can take a bit of getting used to. Also, while it was originally a single book, the publisher found that it was too large a book to allow for efficient publishing so it was split into two books. This puts its financial buy-in at similar levels to Scion 2e. There are some supplements, Shadows and Showdowns is especially good providing new themebooks to use, but I believe most add setting elements, example cases, and example characters.

Somewhat high buy-in cost

Minimum two book requirement

Somewhat complex rules that do work well after a brief learning curve.

Excellent character development mechanics.

Such flavor.

Monster of the Week

Of the Powered by the Apocalypse games not created by the original designers of the system, Maguey and Vincent Baker, this is the game that most understands both the limits and strengths of the PbtA system. It is a very straightforward and simple systems that knows exactly what it is and what it is here to do. And this self-awareness has allowed it to grow in ways a lot of other PbtA games struggle to do so (without becoming something entirely different at least).

As long as a story fits within the framework of investigative action horror, Monster of the Week can do it. The playbooks represent story arcs for the character drawn from recognizable shows and books like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Dresden Files, Evil Dead, Penny Dreadful, and even Scooby Doo.

The hunters are able and encouraged to borrow from other playbooks to fill out their personal character build and each move is also an element of the character's story.

To date, all of the supplements have been excellent, and I'm going to say that the new supplements co-authored by myself and Marek Golonka are set to fit that mold. Also, essentially, the supplements do not change the game to such a degree that they become absolutely necessary to playing the game the way some supplements have become in other's game (a certain witch's cauldron for instance). If the only book you own is the Monster of the Week corebook (I suggest the Hardcover edition as it includes some optional rules from Tome of Mysteries) you have everything you need for an excellent game.

I highly recommend each of the supplements but even once you have them, you won't always need Team playbooks and you won't always want to be playing in one of the other world settings of Codex of Worlds. If you get the Hardcover edition of the Corebook you'll already have a lot of the optional rules from Tome of Mysteries, but that book will still benefit you in the form of its more than 20 pre-made mysteries, several advice essays on running the game, and four hunter playbooks: The Searcher, The Hex, The Gumshoe, and The Pararomantic.

The downside of this game is that you're not always going to want to do investigative action horror as a game premise. If I want something that allows for slice of life, then Fate would be the best followed by Scion 2e and City of Mist. Similarly if I want the game to be more about supernatural politics than fighting monsters. The game CAN do politics and slice of life well, but once those become the central focus of a campaign you may want to switch to a different system.

Low to Average financial buy-in

Lots of support

Excellent supplements

Accessible rules

Are we going to roll with what is trending? Yes. Yes we are. Let's watch the trailer.

Games covered in this post: Geist: the Sin-Eaters, Pathfinder 1e & 2e, Planescape, Scion (after the break). 

**HADES 2 spoilers incoming**

Supergiant games has revealed that the protagonist of Hades 2 will be Melinoe. Zagreus was an obscure deity from the Orphic Hymns and Milone is very much the same… except even more so. We at least have multiple sources on Zag, but as far as I can tell, we only have one text on Melione, which is short enough I’ll quote it in full: 

I call upon Melinoe, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth, whom revered Persephone bore by the mouth of the Kokytos river upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus. In the guise of Plouton Zeus tricked Persephone and through wiley plots bedded her; a two-bodied spectre sprang forth from Persephone's fury. This spectre drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms, now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness — all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night. O goddess, O queen of those below, I beseech you to banish the soul's frenzy to the ends of the earth, show to the initiates a kindly and holy face."

This is complicated and I’m just doing a quick read, so fellow academics please forgive and correct me if I get something wrong. 

It is absolutely clear from this passage that Melione is the daughter of Persephone, but who her father is is a bit more debatable. While the text specifies Zeus, lots of chthonic imagery is involved and Hades/Pluto is mentioned. Different groups of Greeks syncretized Zeus and Hades at different times to different degrees. While most modern people know them as separate gods, some groups (like the Orphics who wrote this hymn) viewed them as aspects of one deity. Others gave Hades a “Zeus'' alias because he was ruler of the Underworld. So depending on the story you want to tell, Melinoe's father could be Zeus, Zeus pretending to be Hades, Hades, or both as a single deity.

The other non-obvious bit from my readings is that the “saffron-cloaked” reference indicates Melinoe is a Moon Goddess. If you watched the Hades 2 trailer, you probably noticed she wears a crescent moon diadem and is trained by a Goddess who is most definitely Hecate, the only other saffron-cloaked deity in the Orphic Hymns (although the epitaph is associated with other deities elsewhere).

 As a chthonic deity, Melinoe also gets associated with the dead, in particular ghosts. She has a terrible and fearful appearance from being the embodiment of Persephone’s, which combined with the darkness motif, makes Melinoe a goddess of nightmares as well. Again, all this is seen in the trailer with Melinoe’s ghostly arm and eyes.

So while we don’t have a huge number of sources to play with, there is still enough for Supergiant to bring Melinoe into their game. And if they can do it, so can you!

Okay, so, before we begin let's go ahead set some basic information here first.

Who is Tendou Kasumi?

Kasumi is a supporting character from the 80s manga Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi and the anime it is based on. She is a character who exhibits several traits of the yamato nadeshiko trope which represents an idealized Japanese housewife. In the manga, she can be witnessed to have tendency toward biting sarcasm when responding to other characters, but this was mostly lost in the anime where she is the perpetually kind and calm woman who acts as a surrogate mother for her sisters and father.

She is one of the only characters without any hint of martial arts prowess or observable supernatural trait save in just how kind and patient she is.

What is the premise of Ranma 1/2?

Ranma 1/2 is about a teenaged martial artist named Ranma Saotome who has received a curse where they change gender when they get wet. Cold water turns them into a girl and hot water turns them into a boy. Through the machinations of his absolutely terrible father, Ranma has at least two fiancees: the daughter of his father's longtime friend and the friend he had as a child while they were starting their training trip.

Kasumi is the eldest of the friend's daughters and her youngest sister, Akane, is the usual fiancee of the agreement. The middle sister Nabiki has occasionally claimed the role as part of some scheme to her advantage. Ranma has another fiancee due to getting tangled up in the laws of another culture and has a fourth admirer in the form of a mentally ill rich girl. In addition Ranma's girl side is desired by the mentally ill brother of said rich girl. A long time rival of Ranma's has a crush on Akane, and a childhood acquaintance has a crush on the foreign girl pursuing Ranma.

The manga is a satire poking fun at the standard tropes of teenage romances as well as martial arts stories. It blows a lot of these things out of proportion. The anime loses a lot of the satire and mostly focuses on the immediate humor, romance subplots, and fight scenes directly. The success of Ranma is at least one reason for the emergence of the Harem genre where the convoluted romance subplots are done unironically.

What is Late Start?

Late Start is a fanfic I wrote to get myself back into writing a bit after some burnout. It is currently unfinished, but the premise was that instead of coming to the Tendou dojo at age 16, that Ranma instead doesn't learn about the Tendous or the marriage agreements until he's 20. And indeed, Akane and Ranma first meet at a martial arts tournament and hit it off.

The idea was to do the characters without a lot of the teenage confusion. Where they're on more equal footing power-wise, more mature, and have had more time to settle their own issues.

Among other things, each of the Tendou sisters has their own curse. Akane is bound up with a lightning spirit, Nabiki is a vampire, and Kasumi is an oni. While two of those are just made up, Kasumi really did spend some time during the manga and anime possessed by an oni. It operated by trying to draw out and feed on the evil of the people it possessed, and in Kasumi's case that meant doing things that would be considered cruel "pranks" but not nearly to the level of evil one would expect from an oni.

Spoiler for the fanfic necessary to understand the build:

In Late Start, when the oni tried to finally consume her she managed to fight back, but in the process she became an oni. She's convinced her family that she's human and the horns are just a remnant of the possession. However, she is in truth a being of darkness and chaos. Unlike the prior oni, however, compassion is at her core rather than cruelty. This kind of passes since her vampire sister Nabiki is largely just a civilian so not really anybody dangerous.

Kasumi has also joined the Templars (Secret World rather than Assassin's Creed) and secretly investigates and prevents occult disasters while telling her family she goes to a LARP society that copies the MMO "The Secret World" which includes the Templars, Illuminati, and Dragons (I think a made up secret society for the game). So, when Kasumi is not keeping the home, she's basically dressing like this and hunting bad guys. (pictures that follow are a screencap from City of Heroes: Homecoming, a commissioned piece of art by Silky Noire, and a screencap from Secret World Legends, the free-to-play version of the original MMO)

So... I'm going to go ahead and build a version of Late Start Kasumi for Scion as an Origin but give her a quick simulated shift to her visitation and a Hero when she joins the Templars. She's not going to have a Pantheon, instead having a Covenant with the Templars.

The Build

Step One: Concept

Kasumi Tendou is a human woman who turned the tables on a possessing entity that had sought to claim a physical body all of its own. She was willing to share, but the entity only played along with that until it felt strong enough to consume her. Along the way it taught her some conceptual magic. She failed to convince it to share, and she realized she couldn't keep both herself alive and prevent the transformation of her body, so she conceded the change and sneakily focused on being the sole survivor. Leaving her a physically embodied oni with a soul that still possesses primarily human experiences.

She draws sustenance from the friendliness and good will surrounding her as she refuses to take in hate, anger, or fear to sustain herself and risk becoming another evil. Eventually, she comes to the attention of the Templars and joins them. Since then she's been able to receive holy water and blessed rice and draws sustenance from the blessings imparted to the food.

Step Two: Paths

Primary Path: A Creature of Chaos and Compassion Skills: Occult, Subterfuge, Empathy

Secondary Path: Eldest Sister of the Tendou Family Skills: Culture, Integrity, Persuasion

Tertiary Path: Lost Two Battles to win the War Skills: Integrity, Occult, Subterfuge

Step Three: Skills

Based on the Paths and which we assigned as Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. Primary skills get 3 dots, Secondary 2, Tertiary 1. Any skill that has 3 or higher gets a specialty. This by RAW is only at character creation, but we've generally played that getting to 3 comes with a free specialty as well, rather than making people pay for it.

Culture 2

Empathy 3 (Toxic Beliefs)

Integrity 3 (Kindness)

Occult 4 (Conceptual Magic)

Persuasion 2

Subterfuge 4 (Overlooked)

Step Four: Attributes

Kasumi's Favored approach is going to be Resilience. Primary will be social (6 dots), secondary Mental (3 dots), and tertiary Physical (2 dots). These each get one free dot, and the three Resilience attributes (Resolve, Composure, Stamina) get two free dots as the Favored approach.

Mental

Intellect 2

Cunning 3

Resolve 3

Physical

Might 2

Dexterity 2

Stamina 3

Social

Presence 3

Manipulation 4

Composure 4

Step Five: Calling and Knacks

At Origin she is going to have a single Calling typically if we were building her as a denizen she wouldn't get her Denizen trait and that's it. But we're building her as a scion with a Denizen origin. As for Pantheon... she's going to be a tutelary goddess. IE she's associated with a specific group of people rather than a pantheon. In this case the largely more benevolent version of the Templars that appears in the fanfic.

That said, I want to nod at her being both a denizen and a scion. So I'm giving her a Persistent Condition that causes her trouble. And I'm going to base this a bit on her hunger. She doesn't need food in the same way as humans do, but she still needs to feed.

Persistent Condition: Emotional Hunger: Kasumi must feed on the emotions and spirit of other beings. By preference she only feeds on kindness or other such emotions freely given to avoid taking more negative attitudes into herself. However, if isolated or among hostile beings for long, she may grow hungry and desperate. She can also feed on blessed food (such as holy water, blessed rice, or edible blessings) but it is possible to poison her with cursed food instead, possibly affecting her personality while digesting it. Add Momentum whenever her hunger causes her a problem.

I'm also giving her a second Persistent Condition. As these are a way to produce momentum at the "cost" of drama (oh no, something interesting happens), a second Persistent Condition is something you can only get with GM approval, but this is a theoretical, so let's go with it.

Persistent Condition: Oni Horns: Kasumi has oni horns. She can't hide them. They're always there. They're pointy. When they cause her trouble, add Momentum.

So, now, her Calling. Given the fact that she perceives the world as bundles of concepts and interacts solely on that level. Like she doesn't see with her eyes so much as she is aware of the concept of light and darkness or people walking through it. That feels very much like Sage. So that's what she's starting with. For her Knack, she's getting "Master of the World" to represent the already discussed perceptions.

Step Six: Finishing Touches

This is the end of the Origin character creation. So we do some figured characteristics.

Defense: relates to whichever Resilience attribute she is using to defend with and will thus be either 3 (Stamina or Resolve) or 4 (Composure)

Health: She has the basic Bruised, Injured, Maimed, and Taken Out health statuses. Due to having 3 Stamina, she has a second Bruised status.

And she gains the following:

Five Extra Skill dice: 1 to Empathy, 1 to Integrity, 1 to Culture, 1 to Persuasion, 1 to Athletics

One Extra Attribute die: to Presence

Either two more knacks or four points of Birthrights.

As she cannot use more than a single knack at the moment, but also I can't think of a particular birthright she has from the start. The prequel story I did of her implicated that she had to rebuild her place with her neighbors due to the horns, so the Cult feels like something that came later. Covenant feels like a Legend 1+ thing. Joining the Templars came later at her visitation. So, I'm giving her two more Sage knacks: Presence of Magic and Scent the Divine (available to all Scions) as further representations of how she perceives the world.

Tendou Kasumi - Possession Survivor

Primary Path: A Creature of Chaos and Compassion Skills: Occult, Subterfuge, Empathy

Secondary Path: Eldest Sister of the Tendou Family Skills: Culture, Integrity, Persuasion

Tertiary Path: Lost Two Battles to win the War Skills: Integrity, Occult, Subterfuge

Athletics 1

Culture 3 (Suburbs)

Empathy 4 (Toxic Concepts)

Integrity 4 (Kindness)

Occult 4 (Conceptual Magic)

Persuasion 3 (Gentle Nudge)

Subterfuge 4 (Overlooked)

Mental

Intellect 2

Cunning 3

Resolve 3

Physical

Might 2

Dexterity 2

Stamina 3

Social

Presence 4

Manipulation 4

Composure 4

Calling: Sage 1

General Knacks: Scent of the Divine

Sage Knacks: Master of the World, Presence of Magic

Now, on to Hero

Her visitation comes when she visits a Shinto shrine that is a front for the Templars and receives the invitation to join them. Her route toward that event did involve her instinctively closing a rift that something terrible was trying to slip in through, but mostly it was a social adventure. She spent a while making sure everyone in her neighborhood trusted her despite the clear oni horns on her head and working to break down some of the harmful traditions and concepts that had calcified around people in the area.

I'm going to say this was five sessions worth of game play and say she achieved:

Three short term deeds

One long term deed

One story milestone

Spent half or more the momentum pool five times

But no group experience rewards since it implies she didn't share her true nature with anybody and so I'm saying she did this solo.

Still that's 16 xp before reaching her visitation.

For the sake of humor, I'm going to say the Band deed was helping Nerima to become a healthier community and the Long-term deed was "face another supernatural creature". So she achieved her Band-term before the Long-term... which is a bit funny since Band-terms usually take longer.

Spending that Experience I'm doing the following:

Cult Birthright - 2 dots (10 experience)

Specialty - Empathy: Desires (3 experience)

Specialty - Integrity: Temptation (3 experience)

For the Cult Birthright I'm building it as follows:

Nerima Ward: Community

Light 2, Shadow: 1

Path Skills: Athletics, Culture, Occult (Nerima's a weird place y'all)

Tag: Temple (letting her get access easier to places around the neighborhood)

Responsibilities: Converse with residents and help their mental health.

Light Access Connection: Community center

Light Contact Connection: Shopkeepers

Shadow Contact Connection: The women of Nerima

Visitation

She gains the following from her visitation:

Two additional Callings and 4 Calling dots.

Additional Knacks up to 5 total. Plus any you gained from Finishing Touches. (So 7 total in this case)

Seven dots of birthrights

An Innate Purview

Assign Boons

Legend 1

Calling Keywords

Legendary Title

For her two additional Callings and Calling dots, I'm going with:

Liminal 1

Psychopomp 2

Sage 2

For the Knacks I'm going with (including Origin knacks):

General Knacks: Aura of Greatness (Empathy), Scent of the Divine

Liminal Knacks: Flatlander (to represent how she can bend the concepts of space time)

Psychopomp Knacks: Tending the Egg, This isn't Everything You Are (for how she recognizes where people have harmful preconceptions and tries to help them break past those.)

Sage Knacks: Presence of Magic, Master of the World

For the Seven Dots of Birthrights

Covenant 2 - Templars, Physical Representation: Hakuba Shrine, Enhancement two when dealing with Templars. Access to Covenant boons. Motif: Ancient Occult Knowledge

Relic 3 - Horns (Innate, Chaos and Darkness purviews) Motif: Whispers in to the Soul

Cult 2 - Templars (Conspiracy, Shadow 3, Mystery Society, Coven, Contact: Master Hakuba, Access: Hakuba Shrine)

Note these birthrights come with her first Motifs, these are the ways that Kasumi uses her purviews and magic. So, she can either apply the invocations and incantations taught to her by the Templars... or she can engage in intimate conversation where she encourages the other person to bare their soul.

For the Innate Purview

Passion (Compassion)

For Boons:

Chaos: Loosen Chains - Allows her to Imbue 1 Legend to clear a person's mind or soul from an unnatural corrupting influence. To make it permanent she must interrupt the source of the influence (by defeating the sorcerer, ghost, demon, talisman, etc) A possessing entity is forced out of the victim's body as long as this is sustained. (A variation of the Marvel to clear a Condition where she can imbue instead of spend Legend. Which means I had to make sustaining it necessary)

Passion Boon: Tugging at Heartstrings

Legend becomes one and now I am going to do Calling Keywords and her Legendary Title:

Liminal Keyward: Oni

Sage Keyword: Concept, Soul

Psychopomp: Guide, Kindness

And for her first Legendary Title: The Nerima Oni.

That gives us the following version of Kasumi as a newly recruited Templar agent of extreme potential. Now, the version of Kasumi that is in the fanfic is probably Legend 2 or 3, has learned to use a shotgun, has acquired a Mutation ability similar to a titanspawn, and is generally more powerful. But this would represent the start of her Templar career when she was more support than badass.

Tendou Kasumi - The Nerima Oni

Primary Path: A Creature of Chaos and Compassion Skills: Occult, Subterfuge, Empathy

Secondary Path: Eldest Sister of the Tendou Family Skills: Culture, Integrity, Persuasion

Tertiary Path: Lost Two Battles to win the War Skills: Integrity, Occult, Subterfuge

Legend 1

Title: The Nerima Oni

Keywords:

Liminal: Oni

Psychopomp: Guide, Kindness

Sage: Concept, Soul

Skills

Athletics 1

Culture 3 (Suburbs)

Empathy 4 (Toxic Concepts, Desires)

Integrity 4 (Kindness, Temptation)

Occult 4 (Conceptual Magic)

Persuasion 3 (Gentle Nudge)

Subterfuge 4 (Overlooked)

Attributes

Mental

Intellect 2

Cunning 3

Resolve 3

Physical

Might 2

Dexterity 2

Stamina 3

Social

Presence 4

Manipulation 4

Composure 4

Callings

Liminal 1

Psychopomp 2

Sage 2

Knacks

General Knacks: Aura of Greatness, Scent of the Divine

Liminal Knacks: Flatlander

Psychopomp Knacks: Tending the Egg, This isn't everything you are

Sage Knacks: Master of the World, Presence of Magic

Purviews

Covenant (Birthright)

Passion (Compasison) - Innate

Chaos (Horns Birthright)

Darkness (Horns Birthright)

Boons

Chaos Boons: Loosen Chains

Passion Boons: Tugging the Heart Strings

Birthrights

Nerima Ward - Cult 2

Foundation: Community

Tags: Temple

Light 2, Shadow 1

Light Contact Connection: Shopkeepers

Light Access Connection: Community Center

Shadow Contact Connection: The Women of Nerima

Templars - Covenant 2

Physical Representation of Oath: Hakuba Shrine

Enhancement +2 dealing with Templars

Access to Covenant Purview

Motif: Ancient Occult Knowledge

Templars - Cult 2

Foundation: Conspiracy

Tags: Mystery Society, Coven

Shadow 3

Shadow Access Connection: Hakuba Shrine

Shadow Contact Connection: Master Hakuba

Oni Horns - Relic 3

Part of her body

Motif: Whispers to the Soul

Chaos Purview

World of Darkness: Vampire the Masquerade V20 Dark Ages, V20 Dark Ages Jumpstart

Chronicles of Darkness: Changeling 2e, Hurt Locker, Demon the Fallen Players Guide, Vampire the Requiem - Guide to the Night, Deviant: the Renegades, Deviant Clades Companion, Contagion Chronicle Players Guide, Hunter the Vigil 2e, Dark Eras 2

Exalted 3e: Arms of the Chosen, What Fire Has Wrought, Fangs at the Gate, Many-Faced Strangers, Out of the Ashes, Hundred Devils Night Parade and, as the bio says, Exalted Essence

Scion 2e: Origin, Hero, Demigod, Dragon, Titanomachy, Saints & Monsters, Heroes of the World, A Light Extinguished, Scion Fiction Anthology

Trinity Continuum: Assassins, Core Rulebook, Adventure!

Stuff flanked by * * is a link to my main blog, which has a lot of real world stuff and if you're trying to avoid doom scrolling, be aware that drifting from that post may lead to that.

The Gorgon Archer and Character Creation

Monster of the Week Stuff

Personal Stories and Such

Divine Blood Stuff

Sentinels of the Mulitverse stuff

Other RPG Systems

Video Game Pondering

Board Game Play Reports

It has been a long ass time since I’ve written one of these types of posts. Today I am presenting you with a list of resource meant to help you build characters and adventures for Scion. The big draw here (hopefully) is that I’m providing information for each of Scion’s pantheons, which should help people learn about Gods they are less familiar with. Unlike last time I made one of these non-fiction resource posts, I’ve made this one in Google Docs so I can put as many links in it as I want. 

Scion (specifically Scion 2nd edition) is wonderful. It's got magic and fantasy. It's got guns and modern action. It's got combat mechanics that encourage you to do things besides "hit points go down". It's got mechanics that turn player goals into roleplaying incentives, and turn roleplaying incentives into a web of Fate and Legend that catapults everything into being larger than life. It isn't just killing monsters, but its monster-killing is more exciting than any D&D-alike. It isn't dungeon-crawling. It can do intrigue, mysteries, quests and battles.

Play Scion.

Could be mistaken for 21st century earth.

Slight differences in traditional colors (stop sign red with seafoam lettering, unknown shape)

southern-hemisphere nation, temperate/cold climate, culture mildly-themed on Slavic myths, south of a nation where an expensive, ill-researched dam ruined several economies and ecologies... still stated as a triumph, strong rural tradition. Was used as a pawn in a now past cold war, implied to be a small country without much influence. North of several ice-cap adjacent mining operations. Used as a vacation spot for the miners

unknown nation, site focus a tourist resort for ski, heavy spider population, in summers, webs everywhere, locals dismiss it, so spiders probably not naturally dangerous. pale-skinned locals, different hemisphere from prior nation

unknown nation with no real discussion aside from religion

unknown nation with no characterization at all, home to a soldier

"Noel" - mobile video game console, analogous to a Switch. Misa has one.

"Ophilia" - music streaming website. Willow has a "sorting playlist" for when she's arranging her occult tools and other such things.

Board games, one with a four-color comic book style and superheroes. One with woodcut styled cards and figures based around folktales. Misa owns both. They are co-op with a solo play mode. The superhero one has a number of different scenarios to play through and may have a legacy-ish campaign.

LGBTQ+ positive, neither of the focus settings have had anybody remark on either Misa (Modern Red) being Pan/Poly or Willow (Web, Wood, and Water) being lesbian.

Sex Worker positive, at least Willow's culture and Quartz's. Willow's nervousness of interaction is just how she is when trying to socialize and more so when intimacy is involved. Quartz mentions testing for her therapeutic license in a month.

three known faiths, mention of at least a dozen, probably many more. Faiths aren't named but some terms have been used.

Knowers and Speakers... Knowers are witches who know tricks about doing magic and how the supernatural functions. Can be good or evil. Speakers are rarer and not common knowledge. They're people on the path to becoming gods themselves. Scions, basically. Speakers understand and can speak all languages, whether mortal, spirit, animal, plant, virus or object. Within their framework, all things have some degree of sentience.

Heralds, any person or anything can become a herald given proper circumstances, but it's rare. Buildings included. Heralds are "not gods" and "angels is the wrong word". Heralds can bring word of either truth or falsehood. So, same basic type of being but could be evil or good. Sort of mixing ideas of Judeo-Christian angels and saints, Zoroastrian or Netjer truth, with some Shinto-style animism. Some Heralds have a sense of humor.

Divine Beasts and Shepherds. Shepherds might be the priests. Faith does use the term gods. Divine Beasts can become the patrons of witches. In thoughts (not written yet) Divine Beasts' role is to test and bedevil humanity, but Willow is not concerned when Quartz says her patron is "one of the Divine Beasts", and Willow is conversant in multiple cultures' occult matters as a trained exorcist. So the Divine Beasts are probably range from mischievous to benevolent.

Witch is a term used applied to occultists who work with magic but aren't magical themselves. Analogous to "Sorcerer" in Scion. Prohibitions, Patrons, and Talismans demonstrated so far. Talisman is only mentioned. Willow works on a Prohibition (can't sleep alone) and Quartz has a Patron (unnamed butterfly Divine Beast).

"Things from Outside" come from worlds that (unlike the pantheons) do not overlap naturally with The World. They have no context for good or bad, friend or foe in the world. Their natural physics is alien. This makes them extremely dangerous, especially as they only come into The World when something brings them in.

Undead, there is a type of undead known as an "Olga" she was resurrected by a Knower from Misa's faith by their metaphysical rules. She exists in a transient state having never been truly claimed by her faith's afterlife or any other but also the gods of the Knowers and Speakers can't just remove the life she has. So she exists in a state of dwindling sensation and emotion that becomes increasingly worrisome to maintain. By drinking blood the Olga regains the ability to feel and have motivation, but this normally wears off. The olga in the story subsists on voluntary "tips" earned while bartendering.

Two divine entities for sure.

Some sort of Butterfly related "Divine Beast", Quartz's patron, never met, just implied by the visual aspects of her magic.