Drunken Review: Scion

[ishy]

I don't get it. There are people actually playing this 'game' right? How is that even possible?

[Nachtigallerator]

Massive amounts of houserules, some even unwittingly. I had a discussion about the Fertility purview (which I likened to giving XP to charity) on the Scion boards, and one of the posters told me how awesome it was to attack his enemies with massive vines and roots.

Except that you are explicitly not allowed to do that. He didn't know it and apparently, it worked in his game - with no mention that there was a houserule or anything, it just did. I have no idea what he's rolling to hit with a plant attack. Or for damage.

I don't know. It is as if the rules are just invisible sometimes. The consensus on the Scion board was that the game requires massive houseruling or an ironclad agreement to play nice, though, so they're not oblivious about the fact that it's bad. They just hesitate to call a game with incredibly bad rules bad, and ignore some of obviously crazy parts (buying legend at chargen, relic stealing).

[Whipstitch]

I don't get it. There are people actually playing this 'game' right? How is that even possible?

As Frank pointed out way back on page one, you basically can't. There's no difficulty charts or set thresholds except those that are derived from combat, since those are opposed tests that have clear results in the form of damage and wound levels. Everything else is pretty much MTP weighted towards "You succeed" because the game gives people big stupid piles of auto-successes. So when I say "Do something right", it should be implicitly understood that I don't mean anything to do with playing the game as enjoyably as possible. It means I'm talking about getting the most numbers out of the stupid arbitrage mini-game that is character advancement or winning combats, since those are the only things where it's really clear what anything even means.

Re:Fertility. Yeah, the only way you're using that shit to directly attack people is if you fire up the Avatar form. Which, isn't really helping that guy's argument in any meaningful way given that Avatar forms are ultimate abilities that you only get at God tier and are explicitly MTP powers that don't interact with the normal rules; You just succeed at whatever you want to do unless someone else opts to use their Avatar form, in which case you cancel eachother out. Notably, that isn't in anyway a benefit exclusive to the Fertility purview; every other purview has an equivalent Avatar form of their own plus some actual powers before that. If anything, they tend to be more impressive in the sense that their Avatars often represent more abstract concepts like Magic, the Way or Death and so it's easier to gin up a believable MTP method of punching the universe in the dick.

[hyzmarca]

I'm surprised and disappointed that the Fertility Purview doesn't give you any Mpreg powers. Sure fertility deities are often associated with agriculture, but they're also associated with human pregnancy. And it isn't like mythology isn't full of Mpreg, it totally is.

Something like

Cost: 1-5 Legend

You can impregnate anyone and anything via casual physical contact or via contact with your bodily fluids (blood, salivia, urine, etc). Spend one legend point when you make contact with the character or object whom you intend to impregnate. A simple handshake will suffice, or an that bump in the street. Golden Showers from the sky are also classic. The character will immediately become pregnant with your mutual child, even if the character or object is infertile.

If the impregnated character is female, the pregnancy proceeds normally for her species. If the impregnated character is male, the fetus attaches in such a way that the pregnancy causes no harm to the man, but the infant must be surgically removed when it reaches full term. There is no risk of death from this unless the surgeon botches. If the infant is not removed, it will continue growing inside its father until adulthood, at which point it bursts its way out. This can be life-threatening to a mortal.

If the impregnated character is genderless, treat as male. If Hermaphrodite, treat as female.

If the impregnanted character is a flowing plant, the child is born out of a giant flower when it next blooms. If it is fruit, bearing, it is born from a giant fruit when it becomes ripe. If a conifer, it is born from a cone.

If an inanimate object is impregnated this way, the child is born on the next solstice.

Impregnanting a living being costs 1 Legend.
Impregnating a small or medium object, such as a boulder or a grandfather clock, costs 2 Legend.
Impregnating a large object, such as a skyscraper, a football stadium, or a space shuttle costs 3 Legend
Impregnanting a massive object or geological feature, such as Mount Everest or The Moon, costs 5 Legend.

[Prak]

That's legend *points* right? Because I totally want to see Scions impregnating large numbers of people or things by splashing them with gallons of saved up fluids. Or running through a crowd.

[hyzmarca]

That's legend *points* right? Because I totally want to see Scions impregnating large numbers of people or things by splashing them with gallons of saved up fluids. Or running through a crowd.

I really have no idea how many legend points that its reasonably for a scion to have. I just think that Fertility Scions should be able to make large numbers of people pregnant, and should be able to accelerate pregnancies, and should be able to make it so that a person will become pregnant the next time they have sex no mater what type of protection they are using.
And, of course, impregnate inanimate objects.

It should probably be possible to spend some more stuff to accelerate an inanimate object pregnancy, too. So that you could have a grieving scion cry on a rock in the desert and then a baby immediately pops out of the rock, born from the tears and the stone.

[Whipstitch]

Thematically, they didn't dodge the concepts of pregnancy and sexuality entirely--4 fertility themed titans are characterized in large part by their relationship to their offspring. I figure the lack of mechanics is one part uncharacteristic moment of restraint--such powers aren't good for much aside from knocking people up without their consent, after all--coupled with the fact that WW is way fond of taking themes like "Necromancer" and then scattering tons of filler powers among multiple purviews, ensuring that nobody ever ends up with enough experience to be able to do even a third of what they wanted to do. In Scion, this manifested in the Fertility God shtick being split into two rather useless growth shticks called Fertility and Health.

With that said, I do find it funny that the deities that are 100% about bearing children are all baddies, so one could probably write a fun community college level essay on White Wolf vag terror if they wanted to.

[Prak]

So, looking at Hero, I think the best use of your Birthright points is a Stymphallion Bird and Amazons, which you can summon by tapping the metal plate in your head forged by Hepheastus that you buy with the freebie point left after you raise your Legend to 4.

I think Amazons are technically mortal, so you'll want to get your Aesir Scion buddy to use Jotunblutt on them for you, and tell them to follow your orders.

When you have a few more points to spend, you might want to get your Aesir Scion buddy to give you some Valkyries to replace your amazons with.

[Koumei]

If you're allowed to actually have that beast of a bird, which is not something to just take for granted, then you should summon it by throwing a containment sphere, obviously.

Now, just need a way for it to learn Spikes, Roost and Whirlwind.

[Prak]

Yeah, if you can get it by the ST.

The problem with a containment sphere is that it can be 1) taken away from you by team rocket and 2) even if it's not taken away from you, if you can't reach it and throw it (say, if you're tied up, or you're in a tiny cell), you can't summon your bird. The idea with the metal plate in your head is that it can't be taken, and you activate it by tapping it.

[Koumei]

This is White Wolf, if Mister Cavern wants to screw you, then you are getting screwed. It just means you'll have a hideous scar from where they tear your face open to steal the plate, giving you -ARBITRARY to Appearance. And Intelligence because they take out part of your brain with it. And somehow it also damages your Strength or something. Because this is White Wolf, and rule 1 is "fuck you".

[Seramus]

With that extremely low standard thoroughly established, it is virtually inconceivable that Scion 2 won't get "released". But if you held as your personal standard for calling a game "released" was that "actual copies of it appeared on shelves in game stores, then Scion 2 will probably never get "released".

The good news is that they are talking to the people at http://www.gothambynight.com/scion/, so there is some hope that the 2nd Edition rules will turn out good.

I don't get it. There are people actually playing this 'game' right? How is that even possible?

While the rules are terrible, the core concept of the game is very enjoyable for a lot of people. Those who stick around and heavily house rule the game tend to get a lot of fun out of it. The link I provided above is a great place to start.[/b]

[Username17]

Scion can only be played at all because it doesn't have any rules for doing things. Let's consider a non-combat task like Science or Stealth for a moment. If your character is "good" at that task, they roll 6 dice apparently. That averages 3 successes but the min is 0 and the max is 12 so it's weighted towards the low numbers. But if you're a specialist in that field (whatever it is), you have Stat and Skill of 5, you have a specialization, you have the appropriate Epic stat of 3 and a knack that doubles your Epic contribution to that task. And your average roll is 14 successes. Your average is better than the theoretical maximum of the guy who is merely "good" at the task in question.

The RNG on "doing stuff" is so hopelessly broken that if you actually did write a difficulty chart it would have to make things impossible for the non-specialists or allow the specialists to cock slap the world. Even without specialization or an appropriate knack, a character who simply maxes out the relevant attribute/skill/epic attribute combo at character generation has an average result of 9 successes, which is a level of ultimate success that our character who is supposedly "Good" at the task achieves less than one in a thousand throws of the dice. What possible difficulty chart could you make that wouldn't be insulting?

The combat system is nailed down to an extent, but holy ballz is it offensive and bad. A character who simply raises up their Dexterity to superhuman levels and bothers to take Untouchable Opponent can't be hit. I mean they are actually stuck in combat by the strongest enemies in the book less than one time in ten thousand. The only way anyone ever hits anyone is by doing "stunts" that allow them to magical teaparty away their opponent's dodge. At which point, even have numbers in combat is just holding the system back.

The good news is that they are talking to the people at http://www.gothambynight.com/scion/, so there is some hope that the 2nd Edition rules will turn out good.

The harsh reality is that Scion is the pile of hot garbage it is because they had too many cooks to begin with. 17 people with slightly different ideas of what collection of White Wolf mechanics were being used all writing incompatible statements and expansions into a tapestry of fail. Turning it over to crowdsourcing is not going to solve that problem. Once you get a White Wolf forum together, you go what? Fifty people sticking their dick in? How is that supposed to address the "too many cooks" problem?

Secondly, I don't know if you've looked at John's House Rules from the site you linked, but they sure as fuck don't solve any problems that I can see. Let's just narrow focus in on their Virtues house rule that characters at demigod tier can spend a willpower to get a number of bonus Successes on a task as if their relevant Virtue was an Epic Attribute (1, 2, 4, 7, etc.). That shifts the number of automatic successes a character can buy from 1 to 7 depending on whether they have an appropriate virtue or not (and without min/maxing any of the virtues). The game's core problem is a broken RNG, and now they want to expand it by six? WTF?

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

I'll cop to not having looked at that site very hard, but my first impression is that it's a bunch of homebrew additions to the game rather than a coordinated attempt to actually fix anything given that I didn't see anything that appeared to address core issues like Epic Attributes shoving people off the RNG willy-nilly and the way that magnifies the usual order-of-operations & arbitrage issues common to character creation and advancement in WW games. Until you start addressing critical shit like that I must say that I honestly don't really care about whether you spot nerfed Untouchable Opponent or Serpent's Gaze.

[Seramus]

The RNG on "doing stuff" is so hopelessly broken that if you actually did write a difficulty chart it would have to make things impossible for the non-specialists or allow the specialists to cock slap the world. Even without specialization or an appropriate knack, a character who simply maxes out the relevant attribute/skill/epic attribute combo at character generation has an average result of 9 successes, which is a level of ultimate success that our character who is supposedly "Good" at the task achieves less than one in a thousand throws of the dice. What possible difficulty chart could you make that wouldn't be insulting?

Not really. The biggest offender is the part in the book that discusses how good you are if you have 1, 3 or 5 dots in an ability. That is complete rubbish and mostly irrelevant because of Epic Attributes. Most of the difficulty charts house rulers assemble range upwards of 80+ by the time you hit God.

And cock slapping the world is exactly what you should expect out of a god. The biggest concerns at that point are the politics of other gods and the titan avatars that are also trying to cock slap you and the world too.

[squirrelloid]

The RNG on "doing stuff" is so hopelessly broken that if you actually did write a difficulty chart it would have to make things impossible for the non-specialists or allow the specialists to cock slap the world. Even without specialization or an appropriate knack, a character who simply maxes out the relevant attribute/skill/epic attribute combo at character generation has an average result of 9 successes, which is a level of ultimate success that our character who is supposedly "Good" at the task achieves less than one in a thousand throws of the dice. What possible difficulty chart could you make that wouldn't be insulting?

Not really. The biggest offender is the part in the book that discusses how good you are if you have 1, 3 or 5 dots in an ability. That is complete rubbish and mostly irrelevant because of Epic Attributes. Most of the difficulty charts house rulers assemble range upwards of 80+ by the time you hit God.

And cock slapping the world is exactly what you should expect out of a god. The biggest concerns at that point are the politics of other gods and the titan avatars that are also trying to cock slap you and the world too.

...

Do you have reading comprehension problems or something? The RNG is so fucking broken that no two characters are ever going to be on the same one, and your answer to that is 'don't worry, the difficulty chart should go up to 80+'. What the fuck is wrong with you? That's not even in the possible solution space because it doesn't answer the fucking problem.

[Whipstitch]

The whole "You succeed at every unopposed test, forever" bit is extra amusing given that relevant Arete dots still ask you to throw fuck off huge piles of dice and tally up hits. I can't come up with a reasoning behind that aside from a desire to make SR4 dice pools look tiny and flaccid. It's certainly not because such things are convenient.

[Username17]

I'll cop to not having looked at that site very hard, but my first impression is that it's a bunch of homebrew additions to the game rather than a coordinated attempt to actually fix anything given that I didn't see anything that appeared to address core issues like Epic Attributes shoving people off the RNG willy-nilly and the way that magnifies the usual order-of-operations & arbitrage issues common to character creation and advancement in WW games. Until you start addressing critical shit like that I must say that I honestly don't really care about whether you spot nerfed Untouchable Opponent or Serpent's Gaze.

Pretty much this. You don't necessarily have to put the kibosh on immovable objects and unstoppable forces, but you do have to create some sort of tactical space that isn't monopolar.

Right now Dexterity is the super stat and people who don't have it don't matter. It would be possible to construct some sort of Rock-Paper-Scissors scenario which simply accepted the broken RNG and gave tactical depth by having hard counters and GTFO abilities. Where you might say "That's a Plants and Fear Scion, I'm fucked" or whatever. But if you were going to go in that direction, I would expect to see balance diagrams like at Smogon or Sirlin.

If you don't at least have an RPS diagram of what you want to accomplish:


Then I can't take you seriously in being able to make any steps at all if you aren't going to fix the RNG. Throwing your hands up and saying "The RNG is totally busted, if you don't have a hard counter to their GTFO ability, you can GTFO" is only acceptable if you do in fact have a counter map so that you can back that shit up.

If you don't have that, and these people have made no efforts to even move in that direction that I can see, then you have to put everything onto the same RNG, at least in "combat mode". But they haven't done that. In fact, they've gone the opposite direction and made the RNG even more busted for some reason.

Ideally, of course, the balance diagram would have more on it than just Rocks, Papers, and Scissors.

-Username17

[Seramus]

Then I can't take you seriously in being able to make any steps at all if you aren't going to fix the RNG. Throwing your hands up and saying "The RNG is totally busted, if you don't have a hard counter to their GTFO ability, you can GTFO" is only acceptable if you do in fact have a counter map so that you can back that shit up.

Luckily you do! If the enemy has too much dexterity then you grapple them with strength if they even dare to get close. Or you convince them to work for you if you have charisma, or you order them to stand still if you have manipulation, or you transfix them with serpent's eye or inescapable visage with appearance, or you fight with your head and negate the bonuses from their epic dexterity. That's five different hard counters for dexterity just off the top of my head, and there are a whole lot more once you get into house rules.

None of that even includes all the dice adders you can pile on. The game has a massive amount of paper/rock/scissors.

[squirrelloid]

Then I can't take you seriously in being able to make any steps at all if you aren't going to fix the RNG. Throwing your hands up and saying "The RNG is totally busted, if you don't have a hard counter to their GTFO ability, you can GTFO" is only acceptable if you do in fact have a counter map so that you can back that shit up.

Luckily you do! If the enemy has too much dexterity then you grapple them with strength if they even dare to get close. Or you convince them to work for you if you have charisma, or you order them to stand still if you have manipulation, or you transfix them with serpent's eye or inescapable visage with appearance, or you fight with your head and negate the bonuses from their epic dexterity. That's five different hard counters for dexterity just off the top of my head, and there are a whole lot more once you get into house rules.

None of that even includes all the dice adders you can pile on. The game has a massive amount of paper/rock/scissors.

And most of that you can counter just by spending a legend point, right? I seem to recall that somewhere in Frank's ranting that legend points were a get-out-of-mind-control free.

[John Magnum]

Why would a Dexterity user "dare to get close"? If your hard counter is "Hope they walk into your haymakers", that's, uh, that's pretty far from a hard counter.

[Seramus]

And most of that you can counter just by spending a legend point, right? I seem to recall that somewhere in Frank's ranting that legend points were a get-out-of-mind-control free.

You can spend a willpower to resist the social influences I mentioned, but there are many ways to completely destroy the willpower of your opponent.

It's all terribly unbalanced, but in an 'Almost everyone can screw up almost everyone' kind of way. There are just so many directions you can attack from.

Why would a Dexterity user "dare to get close"? If your hard counter is "Hope they walk into your haymakers", that's, uh, that's pretty far from a hard counter.

Depends on the weapon the dexterity character is using, what weapons the strength character is using, and what relics and knacks they might both be using. Dexterity definitely has the advantage in that particular match up, but the odds are not insurmountable.

[John Magnum]

A situation in which Dexterity has a definite advantage is not a fucking hard counter to a Dexterity character, you tool.

[squirrelloid]

And most of that you can counter just by spending a legend point, right? I seem to recall that somewhere in Frank's ranting that legend points were a get-out-of-mind-control free.

You can spend a willpower to resist the social influences I mentioned, but there are many ways to completely destroy the willpower of your opponent.

It's all terribly unbalanced, but in an 'Almost everyone can screw up almost everyone' kind of way. There are just so many directions you can attack from.

Character A *does something other than attack with dexterity*.
Character B *spends a willpower point*, ignores it.
Character B kills A with dexterity attack.
Character A *tries to spend willpower point to negate dexterity attack*, *fails*.

Yep, that sounds like a great system of hard counters.. oh wait.

[Whipstitch]

Legend still tends to hose a lot of boons, however, it just does so on a case-by-case basis. If you're familiar with Vampire, then it may be helpful to think of Legend as the Scion equivalent of Generation, only better. The points you use to fire up your magical powers are derived from your Legend rating and many boons--mind-affecting ones are particularly prone to this--are nerfed or outright ineffective when used against someone with a Legend superior to your own. It'd actually be a pretty decent thing to invest in even before you get to the part where hitting various Legend thresholds gives you great big piles of everything else in the game you might want.