Be Yourself

Question: When A PC creates a character from, for example, the Dodekatheon, and let's say he's the son of Poseidon but really doesnt use any of Poseidon's purviews, how do you feel about that character? If the character makes a good argument about why he is taking certain purviews, would they be accepted? For example, a son/daughter of Poseidon uses the Frost purview and perhaps War and very minimally uses Water, but wanted Arete, and explains that they want to personify the Wrath of Poseidon. What would you say?

We had another question like this recently, but I'm answering both because it seems like a fairly common place where new players and Storytellers get confused. We would feel just fine about that character, and we would accept whatever reasons he had for wanting particular power, and we would say go have a blast, do what you wanna do!

I recently had a conversation with someone who was turned off on even playing Scion because she was confused about this, so let me bold it and tell you the happy news: nobody ever has to do the same things their parents do. That means you don't have to be the same kind of character - not the same sex, the same profession, the same goals, the same personality, or the same powers - in any way if you don't want to. You could create any character you wanted completely in a vacuum, and then assign them to any divine parent in the entire game, and that would be completely fine.

That means that if you happen to be the daughter of Thor, you know what? You don't have to have any thunder powers. You also don't have to be strong, brave, or interested in fighting monsters. You can do those things if you want to, and you have an advantage to doing so because you're coming from the blood of Thor, but if you want to be a withdrawn bookworm who likes hairdressing as a hobby and put all her points into powers over art and fire, nobody can tell you no. You are free to take literally any powers from day one of creating a character.

So if your character wants to be a Scion of Poseidon with Frost and War instead of Earth and Water, my friend, you can do that! We don't even require you to come up with a reason you have those powers instead of the ones your dad has; "this is what I want to do with my character" is usually good enough for us. We like it if you come up with a backstory reason that this happened - for example, you could say that your War relic came from Ares, who was helping Poseidon gear you up - and this is something some Storytellers insist on, but in the end it's just window-dressing. If you don't tell us where those powers came from and we decide that it's important to the story for some reason, we'll figure it out as Storytellers and you may or may not discover it at a later date.

The only actual mechanical difference between wielding powers your parents use and wielding powers outside their wheelhouse is that you get an XP discount on your parent's powers, to represent that Fire or Charisma or Moon runs particularly strong in their veins and hence in yours. But, aside from the pantheon-specific powers of pantheons other than your own, there are no powers you aren't allowed to have, no areas of symbolism you aren't allowed to explore.

Nobody making new characters should ever feel like they have to be clones of their parents; in fact, we prefer it when Scions are their own individual personalities and don't necessarily conform to their parents' image or ideals. After all, until recently they were normal humans who had their own lives, thoughts and personalities, and it's totally up to you as the player how much they might have taken after their parents, from "all the way" to "not at all". You don't have to be just like your parent, and you don't have to use powers just like your parent; in fact, many children of gods in mythology don't. Heracles never shows the slightest inclination toward using Sky or Justice even though he's a son of Zeus, nor does Cu Chulainn turn up with any craftsmanship skills or bright lights despite being Lugh's spawn.

Of course, if you want to play a thundery archer-warrior son of Indra, that's totally awesome, too - you also should never feel like you're not allowed to do the same things as your parent! Scion is a game where you literally choose your path and powers almost completely freeform.

So play your Scion of Poseidon. He can be anything he wants, and if that's frostiness and fighting instead of dolphins and earthquakes, he should go forth and wrath all the way into the wintery sunset.