Bright Future

Question: I remember reading about a Scion game idea involving the second Titan War taking place one hundred years from now. In your opinion, is that a time period that would make for an interesting game?

Well, that really depends. A hundred years from now is in The Future, which means we actually have no idea what things will be like then. We can guess, of course, but every person comes up with a different vision of the coming century, which means that inevitably every forward-looking Scion game will take place in a totally different future setting.

What would you assume the world is like a hundred years from now? Is it basically the same as now, but with better networks and social programs? Is space travel commonplace or still something that is barely dabbled in? Have aliens landed? What social problems, like racism and classism, is humanity still grappling with? Is this a utopian future where everything is perfect and people are free to pursue their passions without worrying about everyday survival, or a dystopian future where society has fallen apart and only the strong can survive? Is it some of both, maybe, with enclaves of perfection surrounded by seas of misery? Do we have sentient androids? Is there a world government or do we still have local governments, and have those local governments remained the same? Do we still have the same standards of beauty? Have our collective views on ethics and morality changed? How many humans are left, especially if something apocalyptic might have happened?

And that's just the mortal world. The world of the gods will have marched on, too, leading to questions about whether or not monotheism has gained even more control or receded into the background, whether any new pantheons or religions might have risen up to throw their hats into the ring, whether older, more obscure pantheons have become better known through subsequent discoveries or worse known when their materials or temples are destroyed, and so on. When you're talking about setting a game in the future, you're really talking about building an entire massive universe setting basically from scratch; there's no commonly agreed-upon future to draw from and the visions of science fiction authors are as wild and varied as the gods themselves.

Worldbuilding is a ton of work. One of Scion's draws is that, at least in the default setting, it's just set here and now so you don't have to do that work since you can just sub in what you already know about your present society and world. But if you do want to do all that work, then sure, it could be a good Scion setting... but we don't know what kind of future you have in mind, so we can't approve or disapprove, really. A Scion story set in a dystopian, post-nuclear ruin would be massively different from one set in a galactic spacefaring future and still different from one set in an idyllic, paradisaical human-made utopia.

If you're looking for a few possible future universes to use (aside from just assuming "basically the same, but maybe with flying cars"), science fiction is a motherlode of possible settings and adventure hooks. There are the big universes, of course, especially for spacefaring - Star Trek's benevolent Federation or Star Wars' defiant Rebel Alliance and crushing Empire are obvious ways you can handle the idea of a future in which the stars are humanity's to command as well as the World. A great setting for a seriously dark and moody dystopian future might be the Junkyard of Battle Angel Alita (the new movie Elysium is almost the same exact thing); a less extreme version could be the technology-obsessed society of Fahrenheit 451, which has the added bonus of being a great environment for plots concerning the loss or preservation of knowledge about the ancient gods, or the seedy world of Blade Runner. Post-apocalyptic settings are all over the place, from the divided future societies of The Time Machine (which raises great questions about which gods control which groups of beings!) to the wasteland of Mad Max.

But really, there are few settings we would say are bad for a Scion game; it's all in how you run it, what you do with your characters and how good a story you tell. If you want to go for the future, go for it, we say; just be aware that there's a lot more your players (and you) will need to know, and a lot fewer easy answers for you to rely on.