/scg/ Scion General

>mfw pic related came out stateside on Tuesday and is basically one giant Scion plot

My intended character for Scion 2e is a young Mestizo man named Ahanu Descalzo.

He's the son of an Algonquin God, Jiibayaabooz—Ghost of Rabbit, trickster diety and patron of vision quests, ceremonies, and eventually Underworld.

Ahanu grew up in poverty and upon his Visitation (jargon for being visited by your Divine parent and discovery of your sacred lineage) was an athletic student enrolled in a business program at a university on the east coast; a long ways from his home in Phoenix and his doting and loving mother. He felt inexplicably drawn top the area every since he can remember and this was the best opportunity he had.

During his Visitation, his childhood dog (who he thought ran away before he graduated high school) was wandering around the city. It was very shocking seeing a very large Xoloitzcuintli darting in between alleys. Naturally he followed his dog, which was chasing a Rabbit. The chase lead him through twists and turns in the concrete labyrinth and the maze quickly became non euclidean until his father was impressed with Ahanu's athleticism and guile in navigating and dealing with obstacles.

Jiibayaabooz awakened the potential of Ahanu's dog, handed him a rabbit's foot necklace, a handful of extremely warm plant seeds, and left him with a bow coupled by an empty quiver without any instruction.

Basically, Ahanu will eventually turn in to a War god emulating a wolf. He will focus on the Purviews of Animal, Fire, and War. That's all I got so far.

Okay, thanks. I would have thought about American Gods as a more known influence.

American Gods is a huge influence on Scion, it's just also a decade and a half old by now. That's not as sexy as a still-running comic series.

Talk more about your Anubis carving

There's not to them yet, as I put most of my effort into my Incarnate of Azar/Osiris.

I'm still not decided on if the ushabti is a guy or a gal (or if they'll stay neither, or if they need to learn that because gender wasn't part of the "kill vampires for a dog-headed embalming god" lecture), though I like the idea of them having a 'cover' life with a mortal family. I'm really fond of the idea that duty is their central theme, but they have to find something for themselves rather than just obeying a creator's will.

They definitely have a friend/rival who is a Chosen of The Dagda, resurrected from the dead and ally to those gone before their time. Anubis obviously hates The Dagda and any other returning from the dead figures, though Azar/Osiris might be an exception as his boss.

I'd go with neither because it isn't important for a vampire killing rock. Cover family would be good for narrative reasons and for characterization

Any Birthrights planned?

Birthrights haven't been spoiled for 2e yet and I didn't play 1e, so none figured out yet. I figure some cool eye tattoos let them see the undead, and maybe they have a shotgun or khopesh that really hurts ghosts. It might be cool to have a fancy pet or a servant/handler to offer advice and orders.

You have any character ideas yet?

Yeah, Mr.Mestizo up there with his doge

I am almost positive Birthrights are more or less function the exact same just with some mechanically differences.

Shotgun AND khopesh! Trick weapons for all

Fuck you for trying to make me picture what a khopesh bayonet would look like. My brain isn't handling that well.

Like I said elsewhere, your guy is super neat but I know precisely nothing about that Pantheon. I'm a Netjer guy first and foremost with your usual Western background knowledge of Greco-Roman stuff.

Original naming schemes. Impressive.
>Aesir
>Gods
>Gods
>Spirits/Friendly
>Gods
>Gods
>Gods
>Gods
>Tuatha de Danann

I agree. If they're gonna be so anal about it they might as well just drop the pretense, the names are embarrassing. Just have them being called "Norse Gods", "Egyptian Gods", "Chinese Gods", whatever.

What's the problem with using proper names? They still sound appropriately exotic.

I hope there won't be too much pronouns fuckery, it's annoying as fuck when I have to translate it for my players.

Wouldn't the only pronoun fuckery invovled be with example characters that they wouldn't need to be involved in?

Or you could just ignore it and use common he or she

It's a weird combination of laziness and banality that's grating on the brain. Who're they afraid of offending here? The Aztecs? They threw those pretenses out the window when they decided to make their game about motorcycle gods shooting their god shotguns at the dragons, and any fan who doesn't realize this and throws a fit because it's less historically/linguistically accurate is a fucking moron.

The names serve only the purpose of sounding cool, so the change is weak and unneeded.

I mean, it's not even "historically/linguistically accurate" to call them by the new names, since none of those are actually the NAME of the grouping of gods, it's just a foreign word for "gods". The Japanese would've referred to Tezcatlipoca, Osiris or Thor as "Kami" as much as they would Amaterasu, because it's literally just a translated noun.

That's what I usually do, but it's annoying to have them use xe in a book, then xir, then singular they, etc.
I don't really care about the whole pronouns sensibilities, I'd just wish for some constancy in their use.

The only one I personally know is the Ogdoad shifting to the Netjer, and that's a welcome change because Ogdoad refers to specific gods within the Egyptian pantheon and is also a fucking Greek name.

They've literally never done that. One character used zhe/zer in a Hunter book and those were used for that character, and then one chapter in Promethean exclusively uses hir for all example pronouns. OPP usually just defaults to she or they.

To me, it's more the reasoning behind the changes that's annoying. I've been on the Scion forums on WW and OPP for long enough to see how the fans think, and it just feels like OPP went about designing elements of their new edition by lazily going over them and seeing what "wishes" would be the easiest to fulfill without giving it the slightest bit of thought. It's 7th Sea and the "Los Vagabundos" autists all over again.

Listening to the fans is never to be done lightly, especially when designing games. Fans are not game designers. They think they know what they want, but they seriously fucking don't. Enter the forums of any video game making company and stare in disbelief in the hordes of autists who really think it's a good idea if "to be more realistic" or "to be cooler" or something entire game mechanics were broken down or the game was made impossibly cumbersome with additional details which don't fit its atmosphere of the game in the first place.

In the case of names, it does almost no harm to anyone, but it sets a worrying precedent because it shows the kind of thought processes that went into designing this.

>Ogdoad
They were called Pesedjet in the previous edition.

And so fucking what, that's my point. "Dodekatheon" technically shouldn't include Hades and "Amatsukami" is a classification fitting MAYBE 5 Japanese gods. But at least they've got more soul than just calling them "the gods" through google translate. Who are they kidding here?

Ah, my bad. I always said Ogdoad when I mean to say Ennead.

I still don't know /why/ you're mad about less-inaccurate names being used. A vague "don't listen to the fans!" complaint doesn't really mean anything.

See, that's an argument I actually can get behind. If you're gonna call them all "gods in another language" under the logic that "this is how their native people would've called them", you're shooting yourself in the logical leg since the ancient Greeks would've called the Aesir "Theoi" all the same, and the ancient Chinese would've called the Devas "Shen"...

If you're going to call of them "Gods", just call them gods and differentiate them purely by culture rather than bothering the languages. You don't have the Shen call "Legend" Chouanshou and the Teotle call it Zazanilli, either. Arbitrariness is never elegant.

Because if they're going to thoughtlessly listen to the fans on something like that, it increases the chance that they'll do it with some other aspect of the game, and this is how you get new editions of D&D.

You're right, user. Things should be inaccurate. They're much better when they're stupidly wrong.

Exactly. It's campy, it's trashy, and it expresses the kind of mindset you're going for when you're making a game about motorcycle centaurs and mjolnir pistols. It shows that you put style and memorability over an autistic adherence to the cultures whose beliefs you're butchering anyway and a faith to your own creative vision.

Now, now, user. Shitting over ancient cultures' beliefs is never okay, unless it's so you can have black Muslim homosexual heores of cultures who'd have never allowed this. Then it's progress.

I can't wait for someone complaining in every thread about the pantheon names. It's going to be real enjoyable.

Anyways, I'll probably still want to make my Scion of Sobek, the gun-runner in the crocodile skin boots, trying to get weapons into the hands of those groups who seem like they'll do the most good with them.

Also an idea for a Scion of Bast who considers herself a cultural exchange student for the various pantheons, always trying to insinuate herself into groups of scions just to learn more about them.

Can you shitpost anywhere else? The least you could do is read this first.

Sobek was confirmed to be in, thankfully. Sekhmet got smooshed into Bast, which I understand but will still complain about.

>YORUBA

An interesting choice. Yoruba is pretty chill for an African religion, which is usually centered around how much god hates you and wants you to die. Yoruba has a very mellow Buddhist feel to it though

The other main reason it was picked was so we could see the traditional half of things when the other half is the zany voodoo Loa, I suspect.

He's right, though. You're gonna act like it's only natural that they'll aspire to the highest level of accurate representation in their "let's turn ancient gods into action movie heroes" game, you might as well get behind the idea that all scions of the Aesir be blonde, blue eyed men. It's every bit as accurate (actually more accurate, see ).

And because fans kept complaining that the Loa pantheon is too modern and didn't have enough mythological weight behind it.

>Sekhmet got smooshed into Bast, which I understand but will still complain about.

Eh, that doesn't bother me so much. One, many of the Egyptian gods are folded into each other throughout history anyways. Two, making up Gods to be Scions of was easy in 1e and it looks even easier in 2e. You can separate out Sekhmet if you want or fill in any gaps that you might think are missing for any pantheon.

I like it! One, it's a religion/mythology that might be unfamiliar to a lot of folks and two, it allows you to shoehorn in the "Loa" later as young, strange offshoots of that family tree.

I'm aiming for a charming Violinist Scion of Apollo myself. Travels from place to place, busking to get buy. Wants to see the world.

Is there anyone on these threads who isn't either a shill or a hater? Am I allowed to be interested if I will not suck OPP's cock and rush to defend their every retarded gesture? How's it that in every other company's threads fans have differing opinions, but the only way to be on OPP threads is to either slavishly agree that their every action is on The Glorious Path of Ultimate Truth or absolute tumblerite bullshittery?

>And because fans kept complaining that the Loa pantheon is too modern and didn't have enough mythological weight behind it.

Frankly, I think you need it. You need the young upstarts - that's what American Gods was all about - and the Voodoo pantheon was just fun for that.

Yeah, they're campy and cliche, but who doesn't want to summon Maitre Carrefour at the crossroads with a swig of rum and gunpowder, only to learn he's your Daddy and now you got this guitar you can play so damn good, and all your enemies seem to just have the worst luck when you're around...

And I wanted to make DJ Bromius, setting up last second parties, all thumping bass and EDM. God only knows what's being passed around in those little baggies, but the shit will get you so high. All you wanna do is let go and dance...

But user, everybody in the world is either a shill or a hater, it just depends on which side you happen to fall.

Sounds like the words of a skub-lover.

There is literally nothing wrong with skub.

Freenlance writers in the RPG industry get really, really shitty rates. Like, waiting in a restaurant would be a more efficient use of your time. I've only ever worked with super obscure companies, so maybe they couldn't afford it, but as far as I've been able to gather they're pretty standard.

>There are actual human beans
>In this thread
>That like Skub
>Unironically

Holy fucking SHIT, kill yourself.

I've got a bunch of character concepts desu, mostly stuff that I wanted to try out in 1e but never had a chance to because every game I was in died out after two sessions.

They're mostly pretty independent of mechanics though, which is nice, and means I can probably give them all a shot in 2e.

Any news on how the 2e purview/epic attribute system will work compared to 1e?

>Æsir
>Nornir

OPP fucking stop it.

Well for one, Æsir/Aesir isn't even remotely close to how norwegians, swedes, and danes pronounce it.

Looking through the preview pdf for the first time, and I really like the idea of Momentum. I've only ever seen an idea like that used in one other game before, but it works so well for high-powered games where the characters are supposed to be specially gifted or otherwise unusually cool motherfuckers.

The GM being able to bribe players with Momentum to voluntarily accept worse consequences is pretty great too. That mechanic alone is giving me some neat ideas for playing a Clouseau-type character who always succeeds through dumb luck rather than competence.

Now if only they named it something less retarded.

Seriously. Functionally, it's the EXACT OPPOSITE of what momentum should logically represent. Literally any other name they could've picked, including any amount of gibberish, would've been a more accurate representation of the concept than its complete opposite.

Momentum is what makes you keep going in the same direction. Its what you'd call a mechanic that makes you succeed harder once you've started to succeed. What they've got there is literal reverse momentum.

Huh.

Pantheon names got changed from what sounds good to what would be more accurate, making them samey and boring.

Game mechanics get named at random based on a cool sounding physics word at the cost of accuracy, making them stupid.

It's like OPP is deliberately doing their best to suck at naming...

Ironic that, considering how many of their gamelines incorperate the concept of True Names.

It's okay to butcher Norse Mythology though, because it's a white people's mythology.

Maybe the sucky names are meant to protect them from name wizards. Nobody with a high school level understanding of physics would think to refer to what they've named Momentum as momentum.

Ah, but user, the name is accurate, it just applies to the narrative rather than the characters. Momentum serves to keep the plot moving forward on the whole, even if the route taken has to deviate a little to accommodate it.

No, it doesn't. Momentum would pull the plot in the same direction it's been going. If a character began failing, "momentum" would make it fail even more. Horrible game mechanic, I agree, but that's what you get when you choose names for your mechanics based on how cool sounding the word is.

Or you can just go full retard and name things the opposite of what they are. Next: defense rolls are to be used to harm the enemy, attack rolls be used to prevent damage, and Non-Player Characters be what the players are portraying.

To be fair, everyone and their mother has been alternatingly butchering and fucking the husk-like corpses that are Greek and Norse mythology for decades now.

>Moving the plot forward isn't moving it in the same direction it's been going

I mean, I guess if you're used to playing with shit parties who meander all over the place, then your confusion is understandable.

Not forward, you illiterate buttfuck. In the same direction it was going. As per the meaning of the word momentum. Of course it's stupid, that's what I've been saying since the first post. It's a stupid, poorly fitting name.

Does the Norse gods include non-Aesir as well?

What? Shouldn't Sekhmet be smooshed into Hathor instead?

From what I remember, she turned into Sekhmet when drunk, or something...

No, but it is close to how it was pronounced when Danes settled in England, and the locals learned the names of the gods and so on.

It's just another level of language drift. English is more correct in a few levels, such as the name of Thor. After the Scandinavian languages discarded the Th-sound, his name drifted over to Tor.

Technically speaking, Njord, Freya, and Frey, are not native Aesir, but adopted from a rival pantheon.

Technically speaking, most of the Aesir are just Jotun who put on airs. Odin, and by extension his entire brood, Heimdall, and Loki were all born to Jotun mothers(in Heimdall's case nine of them).

Yeah, it's split over Aesir, Vanir, and Jotnar.

It is more akin to families than species. And back in the old days, you could be adopted into families.
Loki, Skadi, and probably a whole bunch other I can't recall at the moment, were born Jotunn, but got adopted into the Aesir.
Whereas the Aesir and the Vanir were fused as part of a peace agreement. (And I think sealed with a marriage. Is Frigga one of the Vanir?)

Make sure you get a real contract out of onyx path, they have a tendency to forget to do those

No marriage, just an exchange of hostages. Njord and his children were the Vanir's, Mimir and, I think it was Hoder, were the Aesir's.

I'm pretty certain Mimir was a Jotun...

Quite possible, since Mimir's origins are never detailed in any of the storkes. Never the less, the reason Mimir ended up a disembodied head is how the whole Aesir/Vanir hostage exchange worked out(which is to say, shit for him, okay for everyone else).

Damn, you guys are right!

WELL, NO CHOICE NOW. The name of the Norse pantheon must be changed to "Gudomar".

For authenticity!

Nah. Too modern. The word "Gud" isn't a native word up here. It'd probably be something based on Tyr.

Nah mang, these are white people gods. No need to be so serious with them. Just make sure their Scions are a reasonable combination of blacks, Muslims, genderqueers and cripples. And none of those one-eyed or one-armed dudes that might be thematically fitting, either. No whitewashing! If a guy in a wheelchair who is physically incapable of performing as a mythical hero can't be a mythical hero, that's just being a shitlord!

I'm pretty sure he's referring to how all of the pantheon names were changed to the word "gods" in whatever the language is. No need to be ACTUALLY true to the sources - just satisfy the foreign fans who throw hissy fits because you got the language wrong!

Actually, there is a semi-mythical viking hero who couldn't walk...

Filthy buskers get out

Epic Attributes are purviews in and of themselves, providing access to an innate power and boons that fit within its miraculous paradigm. This does mean you can be strength 2 and get epic strength if you wanted but you're not going to get the mileage out of it that someone more swole could. Though a low strength person getting epic strength and using it as a drive to get jacked would be perfectly logical in character.

>Greco-Roman pantheon preview
Why this one? Isn't it pretty much the least interesting? Do people actually like that mythology more than other options?

I like the greeks gods. Why the hate?

Its the one people are generally the most familiar with, so putting it out first means the focus is more on how things have changed since 1st edition than the pantheon itself.

>Created
Can anyone tell me how this isn't the best option (thematically speaking) by a fucking mile? The only way it could be better would be it'd you were created but two gods from different pantheons conspiring together in secret.

>Aesir are völva and runes, no poetry and flyting
Hell of a shame, really. I guess they figured their audience just couldn't handle rap battles.

>Greeks don't get arete
It's an obviously good change from a design perspective, but I feel like the thematics suffer.

Aren't ushabti normally male?

The other options mean you have a working knowledge of the mortal world already.

Plus personally I find being Born the most interesting option, as you dont have to be really good at something like Chosen or created for a specific purpose like created, you're just a regular joe until you find out about your heritage.

Because some people might want to be herakles or a reincarnating god rather than wonder woman? Different strokes for different folks

So far the example non-Nordic scion of the Norse is a son of Loki, who besides fucking an Arab has also fucked a horse, and is the result of one of the Aesir fucking one of the Jotnar. They're ethnic and tribal gods, but the legends do support this behavior just damn fine.

At least he's not a slick and tricky white guy with flamin' red hair called "Sly Guiler." Talk about creatively bankrupt and on the nose.

If he's able to accomplish things despite being cripple, than clearly he's not a true cripple, meaning he's whitewashed.

Of course, if he can't, he's depicted as handicapped where clearly he should not, because why would missing two of your four limbs ever make someone less capable at anything at all than someone who isn't other than because of shitlords?

You can't win with SJWs.

They're emulating American Gods. You know, the book which has a dude named "Low-Key Lysmith" with scars on his lips who is shifty and evil, and a one eyed mysterious leader guy called "Mr. Wednesday".

I hated that shit in 1e, how all scions were mini versions of their parents. 2e callings are a nice way to differentiate your burgeoning divine identity from theirs while still having a bit inherited.

So, this is just a Pathfinder class, right?