Who's the Fool?

Question: What did y'all think of the Scion April Fools Supplement? Anything salvageable?

Question: So have you guys seen the new Scion Extras (tedious sub-titlename here) expansion, and what are your thoughts on it?

Question: I realise that I have been April Fooled by Onyx Path Publishing with their new Scion 'expansion' - I'll blame not seeing it till the 5th, but did anyone else see this?

Question: I don't know if you guys have been asked this and just not got around to answering it, but have you guys checked out Scion: Extras yet, and if so, which, if any, of the gods in it should be playable?

Jeez, you guys - yes, we saw it. :)

We were actually all on our toes back when Onyx Path announced a Scion bonus product, ready to bring you our pithy pronouncements and thoughtful reviews, but as soon as we saw that it came out on the first, we realized our error. Nothing in-depth to talk about here; it's an April Fool's joke release, which pretty much says it all. It's utterly silly, so we don't have anything wise to say about it, and we figure you can enjoy the silliness without any help from us.

Also, it's quite clear that the supplement is absolutely making fun at those of us who take The All-Holy Mythological Accuracy seriously in our games, and we definitely fall under that umbrella. There are many different kinds of Scion players out there, and the supplement takes shots at all of them - those who are more concerned with tiny nitty gritty combat details than with everything else in the game, those who turn purple whenever someone puts an accent mark on a god's name wrong, those who don't understand why this game doesn't include rules for playing a space cowboy bride of Cthulhu, and everybody in between. They're teasing us - all of us, you, me, the whole kit and kaboodle - so shoot, what do you say about that?

To the fourth questioner, we've already statted Xochiquetzal as playable for our games, and we're considering Tenjin for when we do our Amatsukami rewrite, while Cocamama is currently set up by us as a Titan Avatar in the Apu supplement. The rest of the provided gods we probably wouldn't consider Legend 12.

For the first questioner up there - no, not really. The supplement's obviously not intended to be serious (and you can see the writer talking about how she presented it as deadpan to play up the humor over here!) and, unsurprisingly, that means most of it is pretty much bogus for our usual hack-it-up, make-it-accurate purposes. Shit is insane - nobody's associations make sense, Scions are obviously statted for shits and giggles (and by the way, anybody recognize that suspiciously familiar game designer?), and the whole thing hangs on the ridiculous premise that Scions of gods who aren't Legend 12 or of front-and-center importance are some kind of second-string beings who are vaguely effective at best and sad jokes at worst. Even the title's a joke, referring to that concept of Extras in Scion: Hero that we hated and jettisoned back in the dark ages.

These are all things that we would abhor in a regular supplement, but since this ain't one, just enjoy the satire and move on. We ought to have known, really - we all know Scion's second edition is in the works and that it's never been one of their top sellers, so it wouldn't make sense to put out a serious supplement for the old, ending game line at this juncture. But you know us Scion fans - we're all so starved for content that we tend to get excited whenever a dev puts a whisker out of his or her cave.

And hey, of course, if you love the offbeat humor and it's the sort of flavor and style you already enjoy in your Scion games, you can use whatever, whomever and whichever out of the Extras that you want to! Go nuts. Ain't nobody the boss of your games, and especially if you're looking for something a little more goofy, over-the-top or all-inclusive, there's no reason not to. Sing "Scion Style" to your heart's content.

To be honest, John and I disagree about the supplement to a certain extent. I think it was probably meant to be all in good fun; it looks like it was intended for a quick laugh, that its pokes at the Scion community were meant to be gentle teasing and that the writer, who was briefly active on the forums after it came out, had no intention but to bring us some wacky joy. In light of all that, I'm in favor of letting it float on by as the piece of whimsy it is and not worry about it further. John, on the other hand, was a little more upset; he pointed out that, when you have a loyal community of players who wait literally years between releases and have kept the game alive for a long time on the strength of their love for it, telling them they're getting new content and then giving them an April Fool's release instead is a bit like promising a hungry child some food and then handing him a wax apple. There's no denying that we were disappointed, and the needling of the fans on top of that, lighthearted though it might have been intended to be, seemed more like taunting to him as a result. His exact phrasing was something along the lines of "like jocks making fun of D&D players in the cafeteria", by which I think he meant that the teasing tone didn't come through and it instead came off feeling like mean-spirited mockery of players who feel strongly about elements in their games.

But, whatever your feelings on it, it's out there and you can love it or leave it however you want to! As of this writing, it's still free on DTRPG, although I believe I saw someone mention that it might not be forever so you should grab it while it's hot.

All we ask is that you guys not come to us yelling about how it's canon that Xochiquetzal has Fire and is married to Mictlantecuhtli. Because we will laugh at you.