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want to, and you have an advantage to doing so because you're coming from the blood of Thor, but if you want to be a withdrawn bookworm who likes hairdressing as a hobby and put all her points into powers over art and fire, nobody can tell you no.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.

Doing It Your Way

Question: Hello, I am new to this site and to the Scion game. But I must say your rules are amazing, and with your help my ST has allowed us to use some of your stuff for my character in our game. But my question is this: if one wants to play a Scion of one god but wants to be different than his divine parent - let's say with different purviews or Epic Attributes - how does one do that in your setting with having to purchase all boons in order? What if they dont want those boons because it doesnt fit them?

Hey, there, glad we're of help to your game! I hope we're enabling extra awesomeness. :)

In our setting, you must buy boons in order; they're all balanced for that and there is no way around it. We don't allow Scions to buy a level 5 boon if they don't already have a level 1, 2, 3 and 4, no exceptions or parole, and we don't allow cheats like getting a relic that just does what a boon normally does, either.

But the good news is that that won't stop your Scion from having totally different powers from her parent, if she really wants to! Any Scion can always have any purview, regardless of whether or not it's associated for their parent; all you need is a relic that channels that purview and a willingness to pay the 1 extra XP per level that a non-associated boon costs. And that's it! You can be a Scion of Apollo who specializes in Moon or a Scion of Thor who rocks Earth all day long, if that's what you want to do.

As far as avoiding boons that don't fit your character concept, we strive to give Scions at least two options at every level of a purview, so that there's a good chance you'll get something you can relate to your character instead of being stuck with only a single option. There are a few exceptions (about one level per purview), but filling in with more options is on our to-do list. If you find that there are two or three options at a particular level of a purview and you don't like any of them - which hopefully shouldn't be happening much, but we don't know what your particular character concept is - that's a moment when you'll have to suck it up and choose one anyway. We usually advise our players to choose a boon that they can make fit their character, even if it wasn't something they'd originally envisioned having, or try to help them come up with cool ways that the new power can help their character grow and evolve.

That rule's not there to be arbitrary and unfair, but rather to emphasize that there are levels of power among legendary creatures, and that a Scion can't skip ahead without mastering them. You can't get a level 3 boon without having a level 1 and 2 - not because we want to be jerks, but because if you haven't mastered the powers of the early levels, how could you be able to wield the energies of the third?

Now, I don't know what your Storyteller does, so I'm not sure how much of this is useful. The original Scion rules allow you to buy any boon at any level without prerequisites, and many games still play that way; we just don't happen to be one, and we feel strongly about doing it our way so that's very unlikely to change. If your game does decide to cherry-pick boons instead of buying them in order, your Storyteller will need to be aware that some of those boons are going to be overpowered since they were designed to be bought after a significant XP investment, and will have to make adjustments accordingly.

As for having purviews or Epics other than your parent's, that's something every Scion can always do without any special hoops to jump through. I know of a few games in which the Storyteller requires a player with a non-associated purview to justify who gave them a relic with that purview or why, but in most cases, the Storyteller will just grant it and only worry about its backstory if it's important to the story. If you've already started your game as a Hero and don't have access to any new relics, you won't be able to get any boons from purviews you don't already have until you're a Demigod, but at Legend 5 you can buy boons even without a relic that channels them, and Epic Attributes never need a relic so you can buy those any time you want.

If you look at our PCs, you'll see that almost all of them have invested in Epics or boons other than their parents'. The character who never branches out into anything else and only buys exactly what their parents do for the entire run is such a rare beast that to date I've actually never seen one.

Generations of Godliness

Question: Don't expect this one to get answered for a while, but have you ever had a character in one of your games whose grandparent was the god instead of their parent?

Aha, but it was quick to answer, so it gets to come out early anyway! Boom!

We've only had one Scion who had their grandparent as a patron instead of their direct patron, and it was Ahuiliztli Matheson, daughter of Geoff Matheson and Sangria Tecuhtli. Her parents were not high enough Legend to make her a Scion at the time, but her grandfather Huitzilopochtli invested her with power and sent her out to continue furthering the Aztec cause. She was played for a short period of time during the side game Children of the Revolution, along with other PC children Charlie Gozer, Chuklark Jr. and Magnus Magnusson. Those PCs were never on the website because their game was shortlived, although they remain NPCs now.

Maximus Giovanni VII comes from a family line that claims he is the seventh generation removed from Hades, the pater familius of their line. While the family firmly believes this, it's obvious that it's not actually true and that his divine blood must run in a closer generation. Since most of the Giovanni men are nearly identical looking and Hades is a master of stealth, it's anyone's guess whether he's Max's father or grandfather. Certainly no one has ever asked him.

It's always an option to play a character is the grandchild of a god, but it hasn't been very popular with our players to date. I'm not sure if that's because it's just more interesting to be more closely connected to the god in question, or it just doesn't often occur to players during character creation.

(It's also possible that there're some kind of generational shenanigans going on in Dierdre's background. But nobody knows if that's actually true.)

Stuff of Creation

We were slow and plodding, because Industry and fiction are eating our brains and time, but here's our long-awaited anniversary post reward: our character creation system for new Hero-level characters!

While not all of our characters were created this way, particularly the ones from back in ye olden days when we were first starting to tinker around with Scion, it is the system we've been using for the Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games (I just named the second one while I was writing this, but I'm totally going with it). Character creation is of course very personal for different games, but we feel after several years monkeying around with it that this gets us the best balance of character options, character balance and customization, along with a healthy helping of not being too complicated. Gone are the extra point-systems and equivalencies, replaced by simpler and clearer options.

Incidentally, because I know some people out there are going to flip out over it: seriously, guys, the Heroic Roles system is labeled "optional" for a reason. We think it has good, useful stuff in it and is a great tool for groups that have trouble balancing character effectiveness or need a little encouragement when it comes to figuring out who does what, but we're not going to kick down your door with our gestapo boots and demand you use it. Don't have a panic attack about how your creativity is being strangled.

Please, feel free to ask all the questions about the system here. We're going to sleep but we'll be back in a few hours, raring to go!

Living Above Their Means

Question: I was looking at Winona Nelson's character sheet and noticed she had level 2 Death at Legend 2. Is that a houserule/ because I don't see it listed on the houserules section? Thank you for you time.

Yeah, it is, but it's not in the house rules section because we're not sure we like it and may not be keeping it.

The still-unnamed Saturday game that stars Winona and her cronies is also something of an experimental proving ground for new rules and ideas; we throw stuff at them and see what sticks, and then either keep it and add it to the house rules or throw it away and never speak of it again. This particular rule is one of those.

The experimental rule was that, if you were creating a new PC at Legend 2, you could get second-level boons at character creation if you so chose. They would remain inactive and unusable until you achieved Legend 3, but you'd still have them ahead of time and would automatically get them as soon as you were powerful enough. The idea behind it was to allow Scions who wanted to specialize into a purview more to do so by "laying in" boons for the future if they wanted to, and to give Scions with purviews with only one first-level option something else to spend their character creation points on besides more abilities.

But now that we've tried it out, we're not sure we like it very much. It doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot for the game; sure, it's nice to just suddenly develop Euthanasia without spending XP as soon as you grow in power, but it may be solving a problem that isn't actually all that much of a problem at all, and in the meantime it encourages players to put things on their character sheets they can't use and neglect getting things that they can, which is not very exciting and definitely not helping them survive to even make it to that Legend 3 bump.

So we may or may not be keeping that rule for the next round of character creation (whenever that is), but you may still see a few characters floating around with a second-level boon for now who were created while we were testing it out. Incidentally, Winona is now Legend 3 and totally entitled to her Euthanasia, but she wasn't when you sent this question in, so the confusion is totally understandable.

Half-Breeds

Question: Do you think that non-human Scions are viable characters? As PCs or as NPCs?

We think it depends on the needs of your game. It's a neat concept, but we haven't ever met a player who actually did much with it that he wouldn't have been doing with a human Scion anyway.

First of all, let's get our usual disagreement out of the way: Scions must be half-mortal, period. It is a massively important part of their Legend and makeup as divine heroes, and we are never going to allow Scions who are half alfar or half troll or half tengu or whatever other craziness people sometimes try to pull off. Not only is there no reason for it - there are loads of ways to work those creatures or their imagery into your backstory and flavor if you want to without making yourself randomly of a magical race, and of all games, Scion hardly needs help special-snowflaking its characters up! - but it directly detracts from the core conceit of Scion, which is beginning as a mortal and progressing to divinity through your actions and deeds. If a being is half god and half something that's not mortal, it's not a Scion (although it might be some other kind of semi-divine hero or creature). It was never mortal and can't be part of that heroic progression.

However, it is theoretically possible to have Scions who are half-mortal but were never human, because the option of creating Scions with mortal animals exists. If a god happened to want to roll on down to earth in the form of an animal (well, or anything else - gods are weird) and impregnate a normal animal, that animal's offspring would technically also be half-god and possibly a candidate for Scionhood.

Different Storytellers run with this in different ways. Some just disallow the concept off the bat, saying that humanity and humanity alone has the potential to become Scions, and that's a position that makes sense; animals don't follow the same rules as humans, don't create mythologies, don't tell stories of heroic deeds, don't generate Fatebonds and so on, so they're already not part of the usual paradigm when it comes to human interaction with the divine. There are occasional tales of animals that become divine - Monkey, who becomes Sun Wukong, is the most obvious if you don't want to use Scion's claim that he was a Titanspawn creature to begin with - but even those are only told by humans, to humans and for humans. The ability to create religion, after all, is a uniquely human trait, and the gods themselves are part of those religions.

But some Storytellers do run with the possibility of half-animal, half-god Scions, so if yours is down with it, that might be an option. Of course, there are a lot more inherent problems and complications with playing a Scion that isn't human; can your bandmates talk to you? How are you supposed to function in this totally alien society? Do you become humanoid, and if not, what other challenges await you? Are the gods ever going to take you seriously? Do you have Human Ken instead of Animal Ken? Does the Animal purview sort of not work for you half the time, or does your ST need to write a whole new Human purview for you to be able to do things? Are you, the player, even going to be able to roleplay this in an interesting and effective way, or is it just going to be either annoying for everyone or forgotten and played mostly the same way you'd play a human-based character? And so on and so forth.

But hey, if you're game for all that and your Storyteller is, too, we don't see anything necessarily wrong with playing a half-animal Scion. We probably wouldn't do it in our games without a really great pitch from a player, but it's still in the realm of the reasonable. We think of it as a little bit like playing a lupus werewolf in White Wolf's old Werewolf: The Apocalypse: not many people really do it, and those who do usually end up just playing exactly the same as if they'd played homid anyway, but in rare cases it might turn out to be really neat. Not a perfect metaphor since Werewolf's premise certainly lends itself to playing animals better than Scion's, but not out of the ballpark, either.

It'd be interesting to have players of the same god, but one from a human base and one from an animal. Not that there aren't always vast gulfs of difference between each character, even if they have the same parent, but that would be even more of a culture shock barrier, wouldn't it?

Wikiedits

Question: So according to the White Wolf wiki: "A god may come before the Scion's mortal parent in any number of ways: as themselves, in the guise of a mortal, by possessing a mortal's body, or as another form." What's your rule about it here?

Um... it's the same as that one? We have no special rules about how gods get their freak on with mortals. They can do the wild thing however the spirit moves them.

In case there's some confusion here, that paragraph from the wiki is saying that gods don't have to look like themselves when coming among mortals for purposes of the banginating, but it's not granting them special magical powers outside of their usual ones. You don't suddenly gain shapeshifting or possession powers you didn't already have just because you need to go down to the World and start pumping out Scions; if you have those powers, sure, pretend to be a mortal, turn into an animal, show up in their swimming pool in liquid form or anything else you want, but if you don't, you're going as yourself. The paragraph's just trying to say that you can sleep with a mortal without them having any idea who or what you are if you so choose.

Incidentally, the "possessing a mortal's body" clause probably refers to Cheval, the old Loa PSP that we no longer use. Individual Storytellers will probably want to rule differently when it comes to whether or not that works; Cheval allows you to see through a mortal's eyes and direct their actions, but some Storytellers may rule that it's still a mortal's body and doesn't have any divine ichor to pass on to another mortal.

And, as always, remember that the wiki is public property and can be edited by anyone. Anything it says has been added by someone with their own interpretation or agenda, so never feel like you have to obey it.

Sticky Fingers

Question: Can you have a high Larceny score without having any kind of criminal record?

Yes, absolutely!

Larceny can be used in a lot of different ways for a lot of different purposes. The skill represents your understanding and skill when trying to crack safes, get through security systems, pick locks and case buildings and so on. Criminals often have Larceny, it's true, but so do those who fight them; a specialist in security, for example, must have a lot of Larceny in order to design things that can stop opportunistic criminals from trying to get past them, and most law enforcement officers and intelligence gatherers need a good amount of Larceny in order to go about their jobs. Magicians and other street performers who make a career out of escaping handcuffs or locked chests also probably have high Larceny scores. These are all career options that might lead to high Larceny scores with no criminal behavior that would end up on your record whatsoever.

It's also possible to be a criminal with lots of Larceny and just never have been caught. If you're so awesome at your burglaries or other shenanigans that police never catch you, then naturally you'll have no pre-existing criminal record. Granted, that's very difficult to do with modern forensics and information on the job, but if anyone can do it, it's a Scion-in-waiting. Things only go on your record if you get caught - and even then, if you happen to have parents or friends in high places, you might even get away with no criminal record even if you did get caught, if you've got enough hush-money or crooked friends to help you out.

It'll depend on what your character has done in her backstory and what she is and represents as a person, but there are plenty of ways to have a high Larceny score without having done hard time. Be creative and don't be afraid to ask the Storyteller for help if you're stumped on how to express your skills in your backstory.

Imagine There's No People

To make up for our lack of vlogging the past two weeks (and to celebrate the awesome marriage of two of our players - you go, Thomas and Amy!), here's a giant monster vlog full of random questions! We're like the Godzillas of vlogging, mowing down the Tokyo of YouTube!

Question: So when a Titan Avatar dies, things get bad fast, with whatever they were linked to going out of control. What about when a Titan Avatar steps down and becomes a god? Does everything still go nuts?

Question: Have you considered making Skadi a playable goddess? It's not like the Aesir don't have a history of allowing giants into their ranks. If not, what role do you think she could play in Scion?

Question: Which of your characters started out with all three Epics in one category?

Question: I know you won't tell us any plot points involving Alison Margaritas and how she affects the stories, but could you at least tell us what she is the god of and what her powers currently are? The same for Colin.

Question: Can you tell us what happens if someone gets so powerfully negatively Fatebound against Intelligence that his rolls automatically fail and his stat is effectively 0? I know the floor for actual stats is 1, but with modifiers, that can drop lower. Is he now incapable of speech, getting dressed, preparing human food? Does he basically have animal intelligence, or is there a hard floor for how bad an Attribute can get, even with Fatebinding modifiers?

Question: Can you explain the circumstances in your games that led to your enemy lists? I would like to know how Forseti and Nezha became enemies, among others.

Question: Do you think the Mongolian gods have any chance of being incorporated into scion someday?

Question: What do you dislike about the Celestial Bureaucracy? Is it the RAW or something else? Are there any quick fixes you have in mind? Why is a Water Titanrealm a good pick for them?

Question: Hey, John! This question is about Cernunnos. Why is he so powerful? He has like NINE PURVIEWS.

Question: Imagine a GBN without John. Imagine a GBN without Anne. What would either of them look like (besides nonexistent)?

In other news: sorry, eighth caller, we forgot to address your question about Water opposing the Shen. That possibility is mostly based on the fact that one of their biggest Titans, Gonggong, is a water dragon with a history of causing flooding across the countryside. We talk about him a bunch over here, so you can check that out if you'd like and make your own determinations.

Okay, let's clear some more of these posts out - we've got a blog to run here, god damn it!

Creative Juices

Question: How do you guys handle character creation? Do you use Scion RAW, or do you do something different?

Question: What is your policy when an old character dies (or becomes unplayable) and a new one needs to be made, or a new player joins your group? How is character creation handled then in terms of allocating xp?

Lumping these into one post so we can all talk about character creation together! First, let me make an announcement.

Yesterday morning was our thousandth post here on the JSR blog! It's hard to believe we've spent that much time hanging out with you guys, answering questions, discussing world mythology and having a blast, but it's true. In celebration, we're going to do a bonus project this week and write up our character creation process to release on the website in the House Rules section. Since we're hard at work on that, I'm not going to go into detail here, but I'll give you the basics of the differences from the RAW as a teaser:

• No buying Legend. Ever. Seriously, stop.
• No bonus points. They make no sense and screw the non-mathemeticians at the table.
• Character balance requirements. Making sure starting PCs can function as mortals in their pre-divine lives, and that they aren't critically crippled at the beginning of the game.
• Better scaling costs for starting with higher-level powers. Five dots in one ability is more difficult to pull off than five one-dot abilities.
• Provisions for specialized abilities. We know you're out there, Science-specializers, and we're here to help.
• Separate pools of points for Epics and boons. Stop trying to buy all Epics and pretend you're not the children of gods, you fakers.
• Beginning character costs. Suggested starting points for characters created at all three levels of play.
• Band roles and requirements. For those whose groups have difficulty making viable bands with a good skill spread, an optional system for making sure everything is covered.
• Other awesome stuff.

Character creation's too big a subject to really tackle in a blog post anyway, so hopefully that'll give you something a little meatier to chew on, question-asker!

Now, on to the second question, which is a little more specific. New characters that have to come into the game mid-stream are challenging because you need them to balance and be able to handle what's going on, but also take into account where they came from and what's going on with them and the rest of the group.

For a new player entering a game in progress, the easiest thing to do is allow him to create a character as normal from the bottom, just the way the rest of the group did originally. Once he has, grant him the same amount of XP your PCs have gotten so far, and let him spend it wherever he'd like. If your PCs have gone through upgrades since then - became Demigods, for example, or Gods - then have the new player spend the XP they got pre-upgrade, go through the upgrade process with him, and then give himthe XP the other players have gotten since the upgrade to spend to bring him up to speed with everyone else. Finally, apply Fatebonds to the new character if he's Legend 5 or higher, and you should be good to go. It won't be a perfect portrait of what a PC that had actually been played would look like, but it'll be close.

Now, know your player: if he's never played before or isn't into math and crunch, this may be too much of a long and confusing process for him, so if that's the case be ready to help out. For players who weren't sure how to build characters but did know what they wanted them to be like, we've in the past done the basic building part, including template upgrades, for them, and then let them just spend the XP wherever they wanted to give it their own personal touch. Some players may not even want to do that much, and might find 150 XP (or whatever) too dauntingly high a number. You should never take character-building or XP-spending out of the hands of a player who wants them, but it's okay to help out if they're floundering. We have also, in rare cases, pre-built an entire character for a player coming into a game; we really only do that if it's a game that has a plot that requires very specific things to be true of new PCs, and we don't recommend it unless you don't have any choice, since players will always have more fun if they're in the driver's seat from the get-go.

Just as important as the numbers is the character himself; make sure your player knows what his backstory is, not just as a mortal but as a Scion, too. If he's joining a game anywhere above Legend 2, he must surely have already been on adventures and missions as a Scion and should know what he did and how his Legend increased by doing it. If there's a lot of stuff happening in your plot that might have affected him, work with him on it and be ready to provide suggestions, though as always avoid taking actual creative control away from him. Some Storytellers like to run little private "chronicles" as a single game session with a new player so they've had at least a cursory run through what they might have done before, while others are fine with just letting the player write it up and submit it for approval, or verbally narrate the general ideas. Whatever floats your boat should work here; just make sure the new PC isn't coming in as a nobody from nowhere.

Now, for PCs that join a game because the player's old PC died, we slightly modify that system; death is a serious consequence and we want it to mean more than just "Welp, I guess I get to reset with a character I can build from scratch who will be better suited for this," so that nobody thinks of it as a convenient way to start over with a better-built character. PCs that come in after their predecessor's death usually start one Legend lower than the dead PC (if the dead PC was already a Legend lower than most of the rest of the group, they might start the same, but the idea is that they're lower Legend than the average bear by a little), close to going up if they do enough awesome stuff but requiring a little time put in to make sure they're up to snuff. You want the player to be able to work up to everyone else and achieve awesomeness instead of just starting at the same level as those who have already put a lot of work into those characters; it makes them a little slower to get their superpowers, but in our experience doesn't prevent them from being important and effective and they generally catch up quickly.

That's about all there is to it, really; you want new characters to be the same level of effectiveness, or close to it, as the ones already in play, so allocate XP accordingly. The math's pretty quick and easy; it's making sure you have a good background on what a new PC has been doing prior to the game in which he's introduced that usually takes a little more work.

Plunging into the Pool

Question: Okay, I read through a good chunk of the blog to make sure I'm not reposting this question. How would you apply your Fatebond chart to Scions created at higher levels (a la the Scion:Companion's Manifestations of Ichor)? Would you have the Fatebindings applied at a higher level to start (4-5 or more), or would you just roll as normal to see where it takes you? (As a random aside, given the propensity for Anne to answer things, have you considered changing the title of the "Ask John Anything" section?)

Fatebonds! We haven't talked about mathy, mathy Fatebonds in a while!

We actually don't have a quick system answer for you on this one; we've only had to do this a few times (usually when someone's Scion dies midstream and they have to roll up a new one), and haven't written out a thorough official set of instructions for how to go about Fating up a new character who is too Legendary to have escaped the eyes of destiny (if the Scion in question is Legend 4 or lower, you can probably totally skip adding new Fatebonds and just let them gain them the normal way when they join play). But we have done it for PCs of Legend six to eight, so we've got some advice for you in lieu of specific guidelines!

First of all, this should always be done by the Storyteller, never the player, even if your player is awesome and means well. If you leave it up to a player to try to determine what Fatebonds he has, he'll naturally give himself all bonuses to things he wants to use and all negatives to things he doesn't care about; we all would, because bonuses are awesome and penalties suck. But the reality is that almost no Scion ever manages to pull that off without a crazy amount of luck and hefty help from the Magic purview, and a Scion who got to a higher Legend rating on his own would almost never have only good stuff and no irritating or disastrous Fatebonds to bother him. You don't want people to feel like it's a better idea to kill themselves and get a new character because they'll get to "reset" all their bad Fatebonds into new ones, and you want the new PC to have solid reasons why Fate enforces certain ideas about him beyond just "well, he wants to be a fire-god so we should give him a bonus to Fire".

Instead, sit down with the player who has created this new, higher-Legend Scion, preferably after she's already figured out what the Scion's all about, and have her tell you about the character's backstory. Who is she? Where did she come from? What is she about? But, most importantly of all, what awesome and Legendary things did she do that made her increase in Legend? How did she become a Demigod (or a God, if you're building all the way up that high)? What did she do that mortals remember her for, and what were her biggest moments of work for the gods and establishment of her own legends? What were her triumphs and tragedies that might live on in modern myth? Let her go nuts; as long as nothing she's choosing is obviously out of line or damaging to the gameworld ("I killed Apollo with my bare hands!" No.), she'll be painting you a great portrait of what kind of Legendary career she's had thus far.

Then, go sit down on your own with those stories and choose the Fatebonds based on them. If one of her big moments was saving a schoolbus full of children by lifting a mountainside off them, maybe she gained a bonus to Earth or Strength; if one of her stories involves her attempting to seduce a famously handsome god but ended up being seduced in turn, maybe she ended up with penalties to Manipulation or Integrity. A Scion who had been played through these stories would have gained her Fatebonds based on what she was doing and spending Legend on, so assign Fatebonds as if she had done that. As the Storyteller, you also get the unenviable (or fun?) duty of assigning at least a couple of what the player would think of as bad Fatebonds, which range from "what the hell, why are they buying me Moon" to "holy shit this negative to Fortitude is literally killing me". Again, draw those negatives from the stories they gave you; if there are no obvious penalties, turn to creative interpretation, which mortals sometimes fall prey to thanks to bad Fatebond rolls (i.e., "He blinded everyone around him with a giant sunflare! He must be a god of Darkness because he blinds people/a god of Fire because he creates so much heat/a god of Appearance because his hotness melted my eyes!").

As for how strong these Fatebonds should be and how many a character should start with, let the rest of the band be your guide. Average out how many Fatebonds they have each, and give the new character that many; if everyone else has about five, the new guy should, too. Average out how strong those Fatebonds are; if it looks like most people have two max-level, three or four mid-level and then a couple of lower-level ones, use that as your template. Also take a look at how many bad Fatebonds everyone else has, and make the new guy's comparable. I would say cheat him a little bit so that he isn't quite as brought down with bad ones as those who have been in play in order to give him room to make his own, but you still need enough that the other people in play don't feel like he's getting special treatment. If you're creating an entire band of higher-Legend PCs from scratch and have no other characters to compare to, consider looking at characters of similar Legend from other games you've run, or else choose a number (we're going with seven Fatebonds, two at max, three at middle and two at low, for everybody!) and run with it. Remember that the higher Legend a Scion gets, the more quickly they'll accumulate Fatebonds, so you'll need quite a few more for a Legend 8 Scion than you would for a Legend 5 one.

That's basically the way we do it, though we'll add a more concrete outline for that faraway day when we get around to our Fatebond slim-down and overhaul. The most important things are making sure that the Fatebonds fit the Scion's actions and that they're basically fair when compared to those their bandmates have; everything else is gravy.

As for the question box, it's true that I do most of the direct post-answering, but John's ghost is usually behind me helping out. This post, for example, was mostly me writing down his answer, because I'm more writey and he's more talky so we tend to divide labor that way a lot. Think of us more as a team rather than either one of us being fully in charge of the blog.

Also, John is a despotic tyrannical ruler and he will never, ever, ever change the name of the site or the wording of the question box.

Dots to Doing

Question: I was pondering the issue as to Scions of all ages starting with the same pool of points, which, to me, didn't make much sense. I don't know if you have your own fix for this, but as while I do homebrew Scion quite a bit, this still irks me. A 16-year-old girl can manage to have as many years of training as an old man? Doesn't make sense to me. How would you go about addressing this? I'm worried about keeping it balanced while making it feel more realistic. Well, as realistic as Scion gets.

Actually, no homebrew needed! Dots of abilities can mean a lot of different things, and there's no need for a system to work with them. A sixteen-year-old girl could indeed have as many dots of an ability as a forty-year-old man, and that's not only okay, it makes perfect sense.

One of the easiest ways to address this is just to talk to your players at character creation and ask them to have a backstory reason for their dots. If someone has five dots of Marksmanship, he should probably have some idea where that came from - is he Buffalo Bill? A special forces cop? Son of a family that has owned and sold rifles for generations? Whatever it is, as long as he knows what the dots of that ability mean, he's golden. It's perfectly legitimate for a seventy-year-old ex-soldier who was a sniper to have five dots of Marksmanship, and also perfectly legitimate for a fourteen-year-old Olympic archery champion to have five dots of Marksmanship. It's totally reasonable for a sixty-five-year-old professor to have five dots of Academics, and also totally reasonable for a teenage chess prodigy to have five dots of Academics. Age doesn't necessarily have to mean anything when it comes to ability dots; all that matters is that the player knows where those dots came from and what they represent.

Keep in mind, also, that these are Scions, and that means they don't play by the same rules as humanity normally does. They're naturally inclined to be better, faster, stronger and more skilled; a Scion who is a scientist is most likely automatically more brilliant than a normal human of the same age and training, because Scions are just inherently better thanks to being the children of gods, even before they've been tapped by their parents. Scions are likely to be child prodigies, unusual geniuses, genetically-blessed badasses and easily dominating their chosen professions and fields, even if they haven't yet had their divine blood awakened. And that's all Scions, not just the ones that are old enough to drink.

If you're still feeling worried about comparative ability totals, it's also totally reasonable to assume that some of that badass ability prowess for a starting Scion happens when he receives his Visitation. Scions gain a bunch of stuff at their Visitation that they didn't already have, including boons, Virtues and Epic Attributes, so if you'd like to say that some of their ability dots happened at that time instead of in their mortal life before, that's a workable flavor reason for an eleven-year-old Scion to turn up with five dots of Brawl. If you go with that idea, you can just say that the awakening of his divine blood caused some of his skills to shoot up and become awesome due to the godliness he was invested with, just as his Strength might have shot up thanks to gaining an Epic. It doesn't require any extra system and should be an easy answer for anyone who wants to ask about it.

But honestly, we wouldn't even bother with that too often. Scion's character creation is very freeform, with no restrictions on who you were, what you did, what kinds of resources you had or anything else before you became a god's child. That's a really great thing, because it gives players huge amounts of creativity in creating their characters' backgrounds, and there's no reason to rein that in. Scions are the children of the gods, and across mythology, children like that are awesome and badass at their areas of influence from early childhood, from Hercules brawling snakes to death in his crib to Adonis being so beautiful at birth that goddesses started fighting over him long before he was old enough to talk to Jesus schooling all the temple elders at religious theory while he was still a gangly kid. You don't need to stop them from being child prodigies or naturals who can do things others might have to spend decades mastering; Scions are supposed to be special snowflakes with starring roles in their own lives. Being awesome at stuff, regardless of age, is just part of that.

If a player says, "I want my Scion to have five dots of Occult at character creation," the answer from the Storyteller should never be, "You can't have that because your Scion's only fifteen." Rather, it should be some variation on, "Okay, how did your fifteen-year-old Scion get so amazing at Occult?", and then both you and the player will have the opportunity to come up with an awesome reason for his magical brains.

Anne Explains It All

This week, I'm doing a solo blog while John is out of town! If you only tune in to watch his gruff yet endearing rants against life the universe and everything, don't worry. He'll be back next week.

In the meantime, here are some questions and some answers!

Question: I'm curious: how do you handle "working the crowd" rules in your games? In general, the rules for it are lacking in comparison to the social combat rules from Exalted. I like the idea of Exalted's intimacies and D20's attitudes, but I don't have a clue about how to use them in Scion. Any ideas?

Question: In your Scion games, do you tell your players to do out-of-game research projects or write stories for the game? Like having a player who plays an Aztec have to read up on a lot of their myths, or when the group has some downtime to deal with stuff, do you have them write extensive stories? If so, do you reward the ones that do or punish the ones that don't?

Question: If a player chooses to take a disadvantage - say, blindness - while creating their character and keeps it as part of his or her Legend, what, if anything, would you give them in return for doing this?

Since I'm now posting this after the fact, you guys now definitely know I wasn't attacked by murderous ghosts living in my house. Unless I'm writing to you from beyond the grave.

Nature of the Beast

Hey, everyone!

I know we promised only one post a day during the holidays, but we thought we'd break the rule early to let you know that the new system for Natures is now up and ready for anyone who wants to take a look! As we discussed in this week's vlog, we know it probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, but Natures in the original Scion were pretty pointless and easily ignored, so this system will go a long way toward changing that.

We've added some new Natures, removed some old ones that didn't fit Scion's game style very well, and given more concrete outlines for what kinds of things Scions can to do fulfill (or fail to fulfill) their Nature. The new system of rewards doesn't make it easier to get things from playing your nature - in fact, it's probably harder - but it does make those rewards more meaningful and important, which will hopefully contribute to a better game.

We're happy to answer any and all questions here. Go forth and fulfill the dictates of the inner you!

Yule Vlog

Time for a vlog! Light on holiday cheer, but heavy on systems!

Question: How do you guys handle Calling and Nature?

Question: If you guys don't use Nature to regain Willpower, what do you use it for?

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing, but if it was, feel free to ask about it below or just wait until the written version comes up on the site (any minute this weekend!). In the meantime, we're off to celebrate the holidays with some mulled wine and arguments about Slavic religions.

Zeus: Probably Claiming He Got Laid Because He Saw It in a Prophecy

Question: How do you view the creation of Scions? In my mind, the war has forced gods to admit their infidelities and start visiting the lovechildren they have created to protect the world, but I see a lot of other people portraying it as a divine breeding program to create soldiers. How do these two ideas gel with myth?

Honestly, they don't. Scion's setting, in which the Titans have escaped from Tartarus to wreak havoc on the world, is a fictional invention that doesn't follow mythic patterns too closely, which means that a lot of the basics that follow it are also game conventions instead of mythological ones. We stress accuracy to ancient myth in our games a lot, but even so there are things that are obviously modern fiction that there's no way around - the pantheons of different cultures hanging out and cooperating, for example, despite the fact that there is no ancient mythic precedent for Amaterasu having tea with Ptah.

The existence of modern Scions is also one of these game-setting creations; for most mythologies, demigods are a long-ago and faraway phenomenon, hardly something you'd expect to see today. Some have an entire ancient age dedicated to them, like Greece's Age of Heroes; others simply consider them relics of a more devout time, while still others believe in one or two to come but certainly not in a whole avalanche of them. Scions have a lot of rich tradition of ancient predecessors to draw on, but their existence right here, right now is part of the game's universe, not mythology's (though of course it draws on every mythic trope out there).

We've blogged about this before, but basically we think that the two approaches you refer to are probably both represented. There are likely to be some gods who have been horsing around with mortals all along and therefore had Scions ready to be tapped; Zeus and Cernunnos and their ilk have always been all about a little Spring Break action in the World, so there's little reason they would have stopped just because they weren't making Scions anymore for the past few centuries. The dudes and ladies of the World haven't gotten any less hot, amirite?

For most gods who aren't famous philanderers, however, it's probably closer to the second case, where they've begun creating Scions now in response to the Titanic crisis looming before them. The majority of them have probably been staying out of the World to avoid Fatebonds, and many deities have no mythic or historic interest in shenanigans with mortals at all and would need a very good reason to go start messing around. There are many more gods who don't mess around with mortals than who do, so the Scions of those gods literally would not exist without the threat of the escaped Titans to force their parents to create them.

It's much more likely that the majority of Scions are divine shock troops, specifically created in order to help their divine parents in the Titanic struggle unfolding in the Overworlds. But there are probably a few gods who, having always been happily canoodling with mortals over the years, had a few options ready to go as soon as they realized they needed them.

Winter Fur Coat

Question: I am a huge fan of the Animal purview and the Aesir pantheon, and in my newest game, I will be playing a Son of Uller (favorite god!). I want him to eventually have the Animal purview and I'm trying to decide between Animal (Reindeer) and Animal (Arctic Fox). Which do you think might be more mythically appropriate or better linked to the Aesir?

Well, the Aesir really aren't big on animal totems, so either is a possibility for a new Scion to start introducing the concept. However, I'd probably lean toward the arctic fox; while there are reindeer in Aesir territories, foxes are much more widespread, and while neither animal appears in Norse myth proper, I have read Norse folktales about foxes but never any about reindeer.

Also, they are adorable.

But the choice is yours! The Aesir don't have a strong inclination one way or the other, so I'd say choose the one that best fits your Scion's personality and enjoy your oh-so-necessary layer of winter fur!

Badass Baby

Question: What is the age limit you set on your Scions? I know myths have many Scions who start out as teenagers and young children (Heracles being the most notable among them), but how young is too young, in your opinion and position as Storytellers?

It depends a little bit on the style and flavor of the game you're running, but in most cases, we suggest no younger than mid-teenager as the best choice for most players. Younger than that enters the territory of "advanced PCs" that may or may not be easy for some people to play; it can certainly be done, but probably isn't a good choice for everyone.

The major problems with playing child Scions is that they are annoying and inconvenient, so if you'd rather not deal with either of those issues, you probably want to stick with teens on up. Child Scions have the mentality and problems of children; they don't know what's going on, have different priorities from everyone else, and if roleplayed well as actual children usually irritate the stuffing out of their older bandmates. Nobody wants to constantly deal with one bandmate who's still potty-training or doesn't know better than to accept candy from strangers in vans; it'll be funny the first few times, but eventually just becomes a drag on the group. Child Scions often understandably lack maturity, and it can also be a pretty big fun-suck if one character is constantly forcing everyone to deal with their bad decisions, naive mistakes and refusal to share. (Not that these problems don't come up with adult Scions, because they do. But it tends to be more pronounced with children.)

There are also problems with child Scions operating in mortal society, particularly at early Hero levels; children are heavily controlled, protected and watched over, which makes it hard for them to go running around trying to save the world. They have to escape their parents, dodge the police, deal with well-meaning adults trying to rescue them or evil-meaning adults trying to take advantage of them, and probably get the other members of their bands on a watchlist for kidnapping. They can't get jobs or enter adult areas, have trouble getting anyone to take them seriously, and aren't yet powerful enough to just blow through mortal society instead of dealing with its problems. These issues will clear up as the Scion ages and/or grows in Legend, of course, but especially at the beginning it can be very rocky.

If the player interested in playing a child can deal with those issues, however, then as a Storyteller I don't think there's any reason to stop them; just remind them that there will be consequences to that choice and make sure to enforce them. Don't let a six-year-old Scion run around without anyone caring; his parents should be worried, CPS should be on the lookout, he may have trouble sneaking out to help with missions or if he leaves home completely become the subject of a manhunt, at some point on his adventures puberty might hit, and so on and so forth.

As for players, there are plenty of ways to go about playing children that also get around these problems. Giving a child Scion some Epic Intelligence will allow you to play a seven-year-old who can mentally operate right along with the adults (although it may not come with much emotional maturity attached); and the child Scion, or anyone else in the band, can get around many of the mortal-society problems attached with a little Epic Manipulation massaging (for example, when Saki needed to leave the country to go help with Super Secret Amatsukami Missions, Hachiro just impersonated her guardian for the school and got her a leave of absence so they wouldn't have to deal with it). Child Scions with some Illusion or Epic Appearance can make themselves look older if they want to, and so on and so forth. There are plenty of ways to mess around with the concept.

I'd say to just make sure the player's aware that there may be more inconveniences in their life, at least at mortal levels, if they play a young child than if they just went with a teenager or adult, and if they're down with that, let them go for it. We've never had any PCs younger than fourteen years old (Yadi, although in a period setting that's a lot closer to the threshold of adulthood than it would be in a modern one), but we've had Kettila reverting herself to childhood on purpose, Dierdre and Colin remaining at the mental level of children despite their adult bodies, and so on and so forth. There are a lot of ways to explore the idea of relative maturity in the game.

Do make sure, however, that the PC can do basic things by himself, like walking and eating, or he's not going to be realistically playable. I can't imagine too many scenarios in which the other players want to deal with having to transport, feed and otherwise manage a one-year-old, so don't try to spring it on them, even if it seems hilarious. Heracles is cool and all, but your baby Scion is likely to end up left with a nanny somewhere while everyone else goes on adventures.

Points! All the Points!

Today, the Vlog of Unanswered Questions. A big fat grab-bag of stat- and point-oriented questions that may or may not be answerable in a vlog format.

Question: How do you guys develop NPC/antagonist stats from scratch at different levels?

Question: You’ve made it clear that you don’t like the way that antagonists are statted in the books. How do you stat your antagonists?

Question: When increasing the Legend of a Creature or Follower, how do you determine what bonuses are given? I just got done looking through the Reliquary and I couldn’t really figure out if there was a pattern.

Question: Did you rework the point distribution system for character creation? Because the low points for Hero-level Birthrights makes it seem like you would have to give every beginning Scion at least three Hero-level Birthrights to use the five points.

Question: What changes in your character generation rules do you implement in light of the escalating cost and dependencies of various knacks and boons?

Also, hey, have you guys been to Better Myths? Because you should go. It's awesome. He will yell myths at you until your ears bleed.

Edit: We now think we might have figured out question number four up there after the fact. Were you saying that Hero-level Birthrights only cost a few points, so Scions would need to have several of them to use up their starting 5 Birthright points? If so, we'd like to point out that Hero-level Birthrights can go up to 5 dots, so you should have no trouble simply having a single, more powerful Birthright instead of several smaller ones.

A for Average

Question: About the ambiguity of a score of 2 in an Attribute: in mental Attributes, does 2 mean that a person is relatively smart (not a dumb as a level one, and not as brilliant as a level three?), and how does the 2 translate in the other attributes?

According to Scion's system, an Attribute score of 2 is the human average. That means that a Scion with 2 in an Attribute is about at the level of a normal human; if he has Intelligence 2, he probably graduated from high school or even college and can complete a crossword puzzle if he wants to, but has no grasp of high-level physics and doesn't speak more than a language or two. A Charisma score of 2 means he can make friends normally and people generally listen when he's talking about something they're interested in, but he can't snap an entire room full of people to attention and probably has to date someone for a bit before they might fall in love with him. A Strength score of 2 means he can move his couch and TV into a new apartment with the help of a friend, but he can't bench-press his own weight, and so on.

It looks a little counterintuitive for the 2 to be the average instead of the 3, but keep in mind that you're playing a Scion, not a normal human, so what's "average" for you quickly leaves what's average for humanity behind. Most Scions are generally above average in at least some areas just thanks to their divine blood, even if they haven't been Visited yet.

A useful chart, for those that like useful charts:

Attribute Score	Approximate Skill Level
1	Poor. For physical stats, relatively frail, weak or slow. For social stats, generally ignorable, unnoticeable and unconvincing. For mental stats, dense, slow-witted and unobservant.
2	Average. For physical stats, can perform normal tasks. For social stats, can function in human society. For mental stats, able to grasp basic concepts and normal ideas easily.
3	Above average. For physical stats, athletic or physically fit. For social stats, noticeable, convincing and handsome. For mental stats, agile, bright and observant.
4	Exceptional. For physical stats, a bodybuilder, professional athlete or wilderness survivalist. For social stats, a powerful public speaker, famous model or successful politican. For mental stats, a genius scientist, professional guru or FBI profiler.
5	Absolute maximum human capability. For physical stats, Arnold Schwarzenegger/Anna Pavlova/Michael Phelps. For social stats, Brad Pitt/Adolf Hitler/Marilyn Monroe/Lord Varys. For mental stats, Albert Einstein/Sherlock Holmes/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Once you get to six regular dots, you've passed the point where even the most incredibly talented humans could compare to you and have moved on into the realm of the supernatural and the divine. And, of course, Epic Attributes speed that up; the usual rule of thumb is that a single success from Epic Attribute is equivalent to two dots of a regular Attribute, so someone with three regular Charisma and one Epic is already at the pinnacle any human could possibly achieve, and if they get a second Epic have left humanity in the dust just as if they had 7 regular dots.