Love Triumphant

Question: I'm considering creating a Love purview. Do you think it's a good idea or have any ideas? It just seems to me that many gods, from Aphrodite to Ishtar to Aengus, could have that purview. It came after a friend wanted to be a Scion of Eros in our game, and we realized it really wasn't possible, since all he has going for him right now would be Epic Appearance.

Well, he could still be a Scion of Eros, he just wouldn't have as many XP discounts as Scions of less specialized gods; the usual Dodekatheon conundrum. Incidentally, I'd say Eros probably could have Epic Manipulation associated, as he's all about some shenanigans to get people into and out of love while giggling behind the shrubbery, plus there's all his behind-the-scenes string-pulling when it comes to the story with Psyche. But that still leaves you with only two, and most players usually end up not wanting to do that, so I feel your pain.

There aren't a lot of places in Scion that I think are really left for all-purpose purviews to cover, but Love might be one of them. Certainly there are many love-gods and -goddesses out there, from Aphrodite to Ishtar to Aengus to Freya to Anat to Xochiquetzal and on ad infinitum, and they often end up looking a bit pale next to their divine brethren because of the lack of a dedicated power that covers their strongest area of influence. You're far from the first person to look into building a Love purview; it's one of the few at the top of our list if we ever take a crack at new APPs again, and many more Scion-players across the interwebs have been involved in projects to build one as well.

The major problem that most versions of a Love purview run into is that there isn't enough for it to do that isn't being covered by other things already. Social knacks are the biggest culprit; Charisma and Manipulation (with occasional incursions by Appearance) tend to cover a lot of this ground already, but unfortunately just giving love gods those Attributes usually isn't a satisfactory solution (sure, Aengus can have them, but Aphrodite's Manipulation is generally abysmal and I don't think anyone's going to try to claim that Charisma is one of Anat's selling points). A Love purview has to come up with a lot of different powers that are unique and varied enough to make it competitive with other purviews, individual enough that they don't overlap too much with the social powers and interesting enough that the entire purview doesn't feel boringly one-note, and that's a tall order to achieve.

But I don't think it's a bad idea (call it one more of the millions of things I want to get a chance to work on someday), and lots of others don't, either. If you'd like to see what others have done or are just looking for some inspiration, there are plenty of fan-made Love purviews already out there: the Scion wiki features an Emotion purview, Heart purview and beginning of a Love purview, while Modern Mythos has a very popular Emotion purview as well. Give some of them a look and see if you like what you see; even if you don't, they'll give you a good idea of what this kind of project might be about.