Scion 2e is now on Kickstarter:

>Is there enough material yet to start homebrewing some pantheons?

Only what we have of the Theoi, as far as I know.

How the Theoi work is how the others work. They have their associated Asset skills, their two struggling virtues, and each god has three callings and whatever purviews you think encompass their focus.

Actually, how would that work? If two gods had children with the same mortal?

They don´t have to be twins, user.

Exactly as said. They'd be siblings, but aside from having the same mortal parent(and everything that goes with that), there'd be no difference between them and any other 2 Scions, probably.

And we have spoilers for all of their specific Purviews (in name, at least) and some of the Virtue pairs. The Netjer are Balance and Justice, the Orisha are Innovation and Tradition.

Yeah, you could probably do some preliminary work, but we still don't have all the available information.

I like how many pantheons we'll eventually have, too. May one day be able to start out a plot with, "The scions of Loki, Anansi, and Coyote walk into a bar..."

>Do you ignore or play up the fucked up stuff that gods have done in myths when you play?

Both, actually.

Well yeah but you don't need all the pantheons you'll ever have known to homebrew one. You just need the full list of callings and purviews. Though of course unique pantheons will need you to homebrew their PSP.

How? Take your (you) and give a substansive answer!

10 in Hero plus 2.5 as stretch goals, 5 each in Demigod and God plus further stretch goals. We know the Navajo, Mayan, Slavic, Mesopotamian, and Polynesian are in Demigod, and the Lakota, Guarani, Inuit, Welsh, Canaanite, Australian have all been mentioned. It would be easy to do regional variants on the Devas or add the Ainu to the Kami.

>How?
It's not that difficult.
In many mythologies the deities usually do both beneficial and fucked up things in turn depending on their mood and how obstinate they are.
I basically treat them like how younger folks see their parents and grandparents; as they get older you pick up on all their mistakes and problems they are 100% at fault for even if they didn't mean to actually be such pains in the ass all the time even as you become of aware of the ways they wanted to and tried to helo here and there.

The difference is the deities failings are writ large compared to mortal parents do their mistakes borne out of prejudice and "it was socially acceptable back then" and "seemed like a good idea at the time" excuses are that much crazier and problematic.

The Scions are reflective of this; like any children with flawed parents they can rebel against them, sympathize with them, learn from their mistakes or learn nothing at all and just make the same ones all over again.

The Visitations make all the difference, same as how it dictates when two Scions of two different pantheons breed a Scion of their own: negotiations begin immediately for which pantheon gets to make the Visitation to bring that new Scion into their fold as opposed to the other.

My group kind of has that now. We've got a Scion of Hermes, a Scion of Sun Wukung, and a Scion of Mannan mac Lir tagging along Fatebound to a Scion of Hel and a Scion of Apollo. It's pretty much a laugh riot.

>Loki calls Odin, God of Magic (and other things) gay because he practices women's magic
>Odin recalls that Loki once turned into a female horse and was impregnated, and carried the resulting monsterbaby to term
>Loki BTFO
Gets my sides ever time

Didn't that go the opposite way, with Odin ragging on Loki until Loki points out that he does girl magic?

As says, you have it exactly backwards; that argument ended in favor of Loki, not Odin.

The women's magic is MORE girly than literally being a mare and getting fucked and giving birth.

Truly it is worse than neon pink dresses and Barbie.

I just realized that the Theoi virtue set basically makes Kratos's insane rampage over the three God of War games into essentially an infinite Legend refill. If he were a Scion with the right boons and domains that completely contextualizes his endless series of heroic feats. Egotism is his Legendary virtue, it was constantly refreshing things.

...

...

That is creepily sexual.

You're welcome!

Out of curiousity, has there been any news of signing up for being a potential playtester? Or is OPP paranoid after Exalted?

I just know the dev, and he knew I was super excited for 2e so he asked if I was interested. I'm pretty sure most of the playtest groups are like that with people involved in the process. Game is pretty much done mechanically, we're mostly playtesting for confusing wording of rules and seeing how things shake out when more people who aren't the write staff who invented them handle in play.

I can't speak to the done status of the fluff, but I think the game shouldn't be that far out after the KS is done. Be strong, user.

Yeah, God of War was a prominent enough IP that I'm sure they considered it while designing this. That and Percy Jackson are the only really big Greek God IPs since Scion 1e came out.

Unless you're looking to count the Clash of the Titans remake and Wrath of the Titans as being inspirational.

tell me more about jiibayaabooz

I find his name hilarious. Not about to copy purviews/callings though. Anyway, good night Scion friends

I'm new to Scion, but not to OPP/WW games, and just started checking-out the Kickstarters.

How does Scion's setting deal with monotheistic religions and the Jewish/Christian/Muslim God?

Copypasting from other thread just to be sure:
>Generally it just ignores them.

>There was one blurb that monotheism is a plot by the Titan of Light to undermine the gods, but that's about it.

1e had monotheism as a ploy by the Egyptian Titan of Light to gather power for himself. I believe 2e has rightfully thrown that out and largely doesn't deal with it, and it seems likely that The World either has more henotheistic Abrahamic faiths (our god is the only god that matters) rather than strictly monotheistic or just more forgiving history. The writeup for the Greco-Roman pantheon mentions that the Eleusinian Mysteries are a millions-wide religion in the modern day.

That said, the Canaanite pantheon is slated for a later stretch goal, and they're the guys that give us the dude who eventually winds up as YHVH.

I wonder if they're still going to do the Titan thing like they did in 1e, given the huge number of Pantheons now...

Titans are still in, but not as explicit bad guys and somewhat redefined: while gods embody their Purviews, Titans /are/ their Purviews. Ra is the sun god, but Aten lacks the more human angle and can only exist as the sun and its fire.

I think some of the Pantheons get along pretty well with their Titans now, like the Netjer and the Orisha.

Or they'll finagle it so that YHVH is a God of no pantheon who doesn't produce Scions because he's not interested in warring against the Titans. His plan is to Axis Mundi all of Israel into his Overworld realm, then cut it off from everything else if the Titans manage to break through and wreck the World.

Alternatively, they can Ahura Mazda him and he's MIA.

Huh. Interesting. So they're not the be-all end-all ultimate antagonist, necessarily.

I always liked the idea of Jesus as a strangely non-confrontational plot device. Is he a Scion? A Scion who ascended? A shard of the God of Abraham? And why is he so fuckin' chill all the time?

Yeah. The Pantheon we get the Titans from, the Theoi, has them already beaten and either dead or imprisoned, and forcing the Titans onto other Pantheons was always dumb. Now it merely describes the less-human gods, rather than the bad guys.

As Tom Bombadil as that sounds, I'd almost prefer he gets treated like the Elene God in Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli: existing but refuses to get directly involved in any aspect of day to day living of his followers or in the affairs of other gods.

Alternatively, the Pantheon consists of Angels who serve YHVH but he isn't one of them. So you're a Scion of Gabriel or Uriel.

I'm a fan of both the Preacher and Unknown Armies versions of him

Preacher: He was actually given a bit of divine power by God, but he wasn't really anything special. The resurrection was just a very convoluted trick by him and some pals, but enough people believed in his divinity and worshiped him that an organization was set up, called the Grail, to keep him safe. When he died, they kept his kids safe, and decided to force his children to inter-breed, to keep the holy blood pure. Cut to ~1995, the Grail is still going, currently run by a fatass called Allfather D'Aronique, and they're still trying to keep the holy bloodline pure. The kids are as retarded as you would expect from ~1950 years of incest, and the youngest is decided to be the new Messiah after Y2K hits, since they plan to cause bad shit to happen in order to get people looking for God again.

Unknown Armies: There is no God. The closest there is to Jesus is a man called the Comte de Saint-Germain, the First and Last Man. Instead of a God, there are ascended Archetypes within the zeitgeist. The Comte was the first man born, and will be the last man to die. When 332 Archetypes have ascended, the world itself will fall apart, and he will ascend as the First and Last Man, kicking off a reboot of the world back to 0. And then he's born again. He remembers every instance of the world he's lived through, he's immortal, and he is a living plot device. He exists purely as a character for the GM to use however necessary, though there's an assumed agenda behind everything he does. The 3e playtest replaces him with the Human Eternal, an ascended version of another plot device from previous editions, who is more active in helping people, but has no idea what they're doing because they've only lived a single human life.

>get around to reading the preview
The shit? Did they actually go making the new setting into an open for all fantasy bullshit one with gods and monsters being well known and temples in the streets? This all better be some kind of creative hyperbole, or my group and I are all pulling our pledges. What kind of clown completely changes the basic concept of their game between editions?

Scion has never has a masquerade, user.

>the Pantheon consists of Angels who serve YHVH but he isn't one of them. So you're a Scion of Gabriel or Uriel

Or a Scion of Lucifer...

Are the existence of gods and such open and obvious in the default setting?

Yet it was very strongly implied in the books that the world is still the way it is today except in any way the players choose to change it. NPCs aren't aware of any divine bullshit by default, there aren't freaking troll preserves in Norway and nobody worships any pantheon who isn't in New Orleans or a Nazi.

I came to play American Gods, not some wacky modern version of Exalted. This change in tone is just waaaaaay too drastic. Like if on the way from WoD to CofD they'd made Monte Cook's post apocalyptic setting the default one. Players are literally signing up for something completely different.

The previous edition was American Gods, this one's the Wicked and the Divine. A black protagonist and the gay efreet scene just weren't inclusive enough for OPP.

My 1e Scion came from a homebrew Abrahmic pantheon that was entirely Archangels and he was a son of Lucifer.

Pretty neat stuff.

So play American Gods? There's nothing telling you that you are legally required to play the game without a Masquerade.

What's stopping you from STing a Scion 2e game where mortals don't know about all the divine stuff going on?

Yep, that's right, and when you pledge to their "Kikestarter" you have to get an SJW barcode tattooed on your forehead so that black men know who to cuck.

The problem with the previous edition's setting was that it was internally inconsistent. They TRIED to make it an American Gods-esque setting where all the mythical stuff happens in complete secret, but instead of American Gods-esque mythological figures with a focus on surrealism, subtle nods to literature and very poetic powers, they went with a comicbook superhero style "TODAY THOR PUNCHES A DRAGON THROUGH THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING". All they achieved was giving GMs a lot of headache trying to figure out how those two elements combine.

The new setting is meant to be more "logical", basically.

I do agree that it's a problem, though, because "American Gods: The RPG" has always been one of Scion's main appeals to people. With the setting changed to this degree, you can't really make the claim anymore.

>So play American Gods?
This is a stupid ass fucking argument.

>Don't like the new mechanics? WELL JUST PLAY WITH YOUR FAVORITE MECHANICS THEN
>Oh, don't like the new setting? WELL NOBODY'S STOPPING YOU FROM CHANGING IT
>Still buy the book though, even though all you'll have left is the pictures to look at, we could really use the money

It's like the guys on GURPS threads telling you that you're really intended to ignore everything in the books. If you're going to be doing that anyway, you might as well save your money.

You're retarded. Throwing out the fluff takes zero effort at all, while throwing out the mechanics involves playing a whole other game.

Chill out. We've seen fifty pages of about 600.

>NPCs aren't aware of any divine bullshit by default, there aren't freaking troll preserves in Norway and nobody worships any pantheon who isn't in New Orleans or a Nazi.

Damn, I hate Norwegian trolls.

Not , but I am . As it happens, I actually don't like the mechanics. I was willing to accommodate them for a new edition of Scion, but it's pretty much like says. If the setting's changed to this degree, the book can offer me nothing. I'll see where this goes, but if this is confirmed we're cancelling our pledges.

>We've seen fifty pages of about 600

However, in the little we've seen, it's certainly implied that the pantheons are a very open and integrated component of the world in the default setting.

If you're looking for a real world analog with secret gods, Scion 2e probably will not be to your liking. Suggesting that people just ignore the setting is not particularly helpful or productive.

The basic setting is definitely something that OPP should discuss or preview sooner rather than later.

>I hate Norwegian trolls

They're at least better than the smaller and stinkier Canadian trolls.

Which is some bullshit. It's like if they'd made the new edition of Shadowrun take place in a steampunk setting. Who gets into Shadowrun to play steampunk? Shit, it's practically dishonest of them. I guarantee you that a lot of people pledged to that kickstarter who aren't even aware of the magnitude of the change because they naturally assumed changes like that won't be made between editions of a game.

>Orisha
>Titans
What? Maybe because I'm mostly familiar with them from the syncretic perspective, but what titans do they have?

Putting Buddha into the cosmology would be a better "here's this thing that doesn't make sense" though.

Did Scion 1e ever say the magical and mythical were hidden, though? From what I remember it barely had a setting at all beyond the Pantheons and "go fight the Titans."

Yes. It was super hidden. You had fire giants and ice giants looking like dudes dressed inappropriately for the weather, and that kind of shit, by the magic keeping them hidden.

Do we know yet if the mechanics are solid? Trying to get 1e rules to be engaging instead of a fucking chore was practically impossible.

Depends on if you like storygame stuff or not. It's right between nWoD/CofD and FATE, with some PbtA stuff tossed in there.

I like it, but the grognards don't.

Which is a bit ironic since when Scion 1e came out, people were upset that it wasn't more like Exalted or Aberrant.

Arguing over whether in Scion 1e the supernatural was explicitly "hidden" misses the point.

There's a very big difference between a setting that is basically still our own world versus a alternative world setting where the pantheons are openly incorporated into popular culture, politics, economics, etc.

OPP should clearly indicate which type of setting is the default in order that people can intelligently choose whether they want to pledge.

In fact, the basic setting was arguably far more important a preview than the mechanics.

If the setting is not previewed soon, and people believe they've pledged under false or deceptive presumptions, it will cause a lot of unnecessary discontent or even a backlash.

>if the setting is not previewed soon

Five months ago?

theonyxpath.com/the-world-scion-second-edition-open-development/

>the basic setting was arguably far more important than mechanics

Setting is easy as shit to change at your own table, and they fully intend to publish alternate setting Shards... all of which will use the same rules.

Mostly, like , it was internally inconsistent. White Wolf tried to have its masquerade cake and eat it, and they clearly didn't think too deeply about it. On the one hand, you had stuff like "Mortals see giants as just irregularly large, intimidating looking people" and the setting descriptions made every implication that the world was not any different than ours on the surface. At the same time, between the Knacks, Purviews and creatures depicted even in Scion: Hero it was ludicrous to assume that people wouldn't notice. Yeah, the starting fiction was written in such a way as to make it feasible that all of Eric's adventure happened in secret (he only ever interacted with dwarfs, etc.), but for the ongoing campaign? The moment "Thor punches a dragon through the empire state building" the whole charade is off.

Well 1e Scion was unbalanced to the point of unplayable, so it'd need a significant degree of improvement to be fun. If you've got to throw out the mechanics of the game you might as well be playing freeform.

In the original, specializations were so absurdly strong that anything you were specialized for was no challenge whatsoever, and everything you weren't specialized for was TPK-tier deadly. If the Scooby Gang ever split up for any reason, everybody was immediately and irrevocably screwed.

That portrayal seems like it's intentionally shit, since it you take everything they say literally, it could be very inoffensive.

Pretty much. All the 1st ed books were clearly written under the assumption that the supernatural remains secret, but didn't actually include any information on how this could possibly happen considering the power put in the hands of the players.

The new OPP system seems to be very narrative based, and far closer to FATE than even the "rules medium" that characterizes the CofD.

RPG fans tend to like or hate such systems, and it's impossible to please everyone.

I personally prefer crunchier systems, and the setting would need to be fantastic to compensate. Time will tell as more previews are released. However, I want a real world with secret supernaturals setting rather than an alternative world gods are among us setting. A FATE-like system with a gods among us setting means I will not pledge. YMMV.

This is bordering on a scam. If you change both the mechanics and the fluff so much, continuing to call it "Scion" just reeks of hoping people won't realize and buy it expecting something completely different.

>I want a real world with secret supernaturals setting

White Wolf/Onyx Path already has two of those in the World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness settings. Rather than say "hey, what if WoD with a thin coat of mythology paint!" they've elected to make a different setting.

>Setting is easy as shit to change at your own table, and they fully intend to publish alternate setting Shards... all of which will use the same rules.

Why would I pledge for a rpg if I don't like the basic setting? There are more than enough games where I like the setting and mechanics to occupy my time and limited resources.

If and when an alternative setting book is then released, and it suits my tastes and preference, I will be happy to reconsider the game. Until such time, I hope the people who buy the book enjoy their purchase.

Nevertheless, I will wait for further setting previews before making a final decision, but I'm not optimistic.

cool blog post

The thing is, you don't need a book for "it's just like real life but secretly there's gods" because that kind of thing is pretty intuitive to run.

You're missing the point.

You're arguing the value of an alternative world setting for Scion. You are entitled to your own preference, but that's not what I want or wish to spend my money on.

The issue is whether OPP is clearly previewing the setting so people can make an informed choice to pledge or not. Effectively demanding that people like your setting preference is not helpful.

>The thing is, you don't need a book for "it's just like real life but secretly there's gods" because that kind of thing is pretty intuitive to run.

Hundreds of books and decades of CofD and WoD marketing and sales would beg to differ.

Again, each person has their own setting and rules preferences in rpgs. I'm only suggesting that OPP clearly preview the Scion setting so people can intelligently choose if they want to pledge.

Buzz off. He's being perfectly reasonable, and even polite. You're the one who acts like a turd here. People are not liking what you like. Deal with it.

The stuff that's in those books is the stuff that's the same if there's a masquerade or not, though. Having two separate worlds, one of which is the one we live in in real life, is easy. The hard part is fusing them, not separating them.

Are you fucking retarded? Would you say that Men in Black is just World of Darkness with aliens because they both have the paranormal being hidden? How about American Dragon: Jake Long? The Dresden Files? The Percy Jackson series?

There's more to the definition of a setting than whether or not that supernatural is revealed and the old Scion setting had plenty of appeal as it was.

Ignore him, it's probably Atamajakki going off again. He's notorious for making every possible argument, no matter how poorly constructed or out of context, in order to defend OPP products. Apparently he believes that if he worships them zealously enough one day they'll give him a job.

>My 1e Scion came from a homebrew Abrahmic pantheon that was entirely Archangels and he was a son of Lucifer.

I'd have loved to have figured out a way to port In Nominae's factions into Scion as two opposing pantheons of sorts.

I'm a big fan of redundancy in parties for that very reason.

>The shit? Did they actually go making the new setting into an open for all fantasy bullshit one with gods and monsters being well known and temples in the streets

Where are you reading this?

I always used the logic that since Yhwh was originally worshipped as a different god, a Mesopotamian war god for a region home to proto-Israelites, and was bastardized into an all encompassing monotheistic God by his followers as time passed and they basically made him into whatever they wanted that Yhwh is basically a mirror now. Not a god, the shadow of a god. It reflects the needs and wants and beliefs of its people, provided that their desires and beliefs are clear enough. Since no one can quite agree on what the nature of God truly is, the net output of the God-mirror is effectively zero.

It's in the Kickstarter previews and the "The World" open development post on the OPP blog.

There's a line in the Google Doc linked to the Kickstarter page that describes Icelandic troll reserves, which seems to be causing all the moaning. The OPP blog post basically just says that the old religions didn't die out in Scion, and the Theoi preview mentions that the Eleusinian Mysteries are a millions-strong religion known to The World.

What seems like a bigger problem to me is that they imply that history saw really big differences (Julius Caesar being a Scion going to a Scionwar in Gaul and the Emperor of Japan being an actual son of Amaterasu) WHICH ARE IMPLIED TO BE COMMON KNOWLEDGE.

I don't think these guys understand how alternate histories work. The amount of writer's fiat that's gonna have to go into "gods and monsters were always known and influential, but the world basically looks the same today" is flabbergasting, and bound to take any shred of believability out of the setting.

^

One of the biggest reasons the idea of a "masquerade" being invented in fantasy literature was in order to make it possible to have stories take place somewhere which is recognizable to us as the modern world, except with supernatural elements in it. Even Anne Rice understood way back then that if all the vampire shenanigans were well known, there would be no way to make things look remotely like they're now.

There are a lot of references to links between popular culture and business and pantheons in the Greek/Roman gods preview.