July Scion Update!
about 6 years ago – Sat, Jul 07, 2018 at 02:01:44 AM

Hello, Heroes!

This is Eddy, one of Onyx Path's in-house developers, and one of my jobs is to help Neall out on Scion. Since he's busy making gods in his basement (see below), I'm pitching in to offer you some updates on where things are at!

SCION: ORIGIN

This is the first Storypath System book that Onyx Path will be putting out, so we wanted to make sure it was right. As such, we took a more detailed review pass than we usually do. The good news is, the response from the team was very good! We did notice a few things we could tweak to make it even better, though, so I spent some time working with Mirthful Mike Chaney to adjust the layout. That means the Backer PDF should be out to you very soon! (Once you get it, you'll notice that page references aren't done yet, with our infamous "p. XX" placeholders. Don't worry -- we'll get all those in the errata pass but don't want to change them until after we input any errata as changes can move some text off the pages the p. XX's point to.)

SCION: HERO

Because of the nature of these books, we needed to nail down Origin before we really dove into Hero's layout, but that's coming right after we sort out Origin.

SCION COMPANION: MYSTERIES OF THE WORLD

The amazing and talented Meghan Fitzgerald is taking the dev chair on the Companion. Neall worked with her on the outline and the initial kick-off, but now she's flying solo as the writers are writing. Meghan is fantastic, and Neall and I both have faith she'll do a great job on this!

OTHER PROJECTS

Neall's hard at work on the Scion: Demigod outline, and he's been sitting in with the Trinity Continuum: Aberrant design group discussing ideas and brainstorming, since both games are Storypath-based and deal with protagonists of superhuman capacity. He's also working on outlines for the ready-made characters, the jumpstart, and Creatures of the World -- once he has those done, I'll work with him to find talented developers to shepherd them, so he can keep his focus on Demigod.

So there you have it! We're at that great stage where key pieces are finally clearing the process pipeline, so other parts can start moving. You'll start seeing a lot of momentum in the near future!

Meanwhile, At Our Current Kickstarter:

Last Monday, we started the Kickstarter for Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition for Chronicles of Darkness! It funded in under a day and is still rolling through Stretch Goals! If the very brief bit of info below sounds interesting, you can check it out here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/geist-the-sin-eaters-2nd-edition

In Geist: The Sin-Eaters, you play a person who died with a powerful burden on their soul — something they didn't accomplish in life, or something they never found. On the other side of the veil, they made a bargain with a powerful being called a geist, which returned them to the world of the living and to their own body, at the cost of a permanent bond between them and the geist. Now your character stands as a medium, with one foot in the world of the living and one in the world of the dead.

Scion June Update: Art and Scion Companion
over 6 years ago – Mon, Jun 04, 2018 at 11:10:02 PM

Greetings, true believers! I'm hard at work proofing Scion: Origin, which is in the very final stages before release. After me, it goes back to approvals at Onyx Path, and we make any final changes before it comes out to you, the backers.

But Scion: Hero is very close behind.

Other than that, we're currently hiring writers for the Scion Companion, which has a completed outline that's dropped off the back of a truck right here. One notable thing that we decided to put in last-minute (and isn't in the outline yet) is something I like to call the Myth Level. 

Scion has a number of setting dials one can turn. The default setting of Scion is one where the divine and the legendary are barely hidden from the World at large, where religions of the Gods are popular and accepted, where monotheism isn't often at odds with the Gods (or is co-opted in pantheon power plays), or where the genre of the game shifts as you go from Origin to Hero and then again when you get to Demigod and God. This is all intended, but there's a setting difference from First to Second Edition that have thrown some folks off, so we're dusting off an old idea and giving it new polish. 

The Myth Level is five options along four axes of design, meant to allow the Storyguide to choose and emulate how many of Scion’s setting “dials” they want to crank. The one we've discussed the most is the presence of the divine in everyday life, or how much Scion deals with, well, the Gods. Named after Hesiod's Five Ages of Man, these dials are:

• Iron: Perfectly mundane. Indeed, even a little shabby when it comes to creatures of Legend. Very similar in nature and tone to Gaiman's American Gods, where ifriti are cab drivers, Odin is a shiftless wandering con man, and Chernobog and the goddesses of dawn, midday, and evening are poor immigrants scraping by in a shitty apartment in Chicago. Most Knacks don't function fully, most Boons provide only weak "tricks". Gods communicate through Omens and small miracles when they're not embodied, and religion takes the place of most direct communications. The default genre setting of Origin.
• Heroic: Mostly mundane, but with room for great acts of heroism. Most Hero-level abilities work normally in this environment, though most abilities still seem either tremendously lucky or as a result of great skill, and Boons deliberately pass into the next level. Most supernatural creatures still have mundane manifestations here (that centaur might still just be a biker here), but Scions and gods may appear as impressive and tremendous - Aphrodite isn't some burnt out barfly here, she's drop-dead gorgeous and probably on fashion covers. This is the level of the Iliad and the Odyssey and Hero, though that game also heavily crosses into...
• Bronze: This is where the supernatural comes into play now. Creatures of Legend shed their mundane disguises in areas of Bronze Myth, and appear in their true nature. Magic becomes overt here, and Demigods wield their true power. This is Clash of the Titans territory, and there might just actually be dragons in that undetailed area of the map. This is where Hero truly lives.
• Silver: Past the threshold of urban myth and getting into epic fantasy, places of Silver Myth are deeply resonant with Myth. They are often fanciful places and hidden vales of magic technically found in the World, but not of it. Godly powers work at their full potency here, and the power of a creature of Legend is reflected in its appearance - the mightier the entity, the more impressive it appears. Zelazny's Lord of Light goes into this area of Myth in its narrative. Demigod exists in this space, dealing with the effects of myth on a culture.
• Gold: Flat-out mythological, where symbolism is the same as its reality. Places of Gold Myth are not even of this World, and all creatures of Legend may find their powers increased by the richness of the locale's potent Legend (in game terms, areas of Gold Myth actually have extra Effects that anyone can use if they meet the prerequisites). Lots of Scion 1e went into this territory, with its otherworldly locales, and lots of fantasy that touches on extradimensional areas and the like qualify. God works on this level.

We'll save the other dials, such as the presence of the Titanomachy or genre, for another update.

That's it for now! For the most up-to-date Scion information, keep checking back at theonyxpath.com every Monday evening for Rich's Monday Meeting notes.

Scion May Update!
over 6 years ago – Tue, May 08, 2018 at 07:04:58 PM

Greetings, true believers!

A short update this month. Origin and Hero are both in "layout", the phase of production where text is placed into books and arranged with the art. I don't have any part of that - I'm just a monkey at a typewriter - so that's in the hands of Onyx Path's art director.

If you want to stay up to date with all of our projects, go to theonyxpath.com every Monday for the Monday Meeting Notes and read Rich ramble about the weekly company tag-up and on various topics in the company and in the roleplaying industry. You'll see the week Scion moves closer to full production.

If you haven't engaged on forums.theonyxpath.com and visited the Scion forum, now's a great time to do so! There's an Ask Neall thread where you can directly ask me a question if you like, or just make a new thread and talk about the game. I've been a little busy these past few weeks*, but this week is my week to catch up!

*playing God of War. That's research, though! You can't hold that against me, right?

Just a few quick updates for you this month:

THE SCION HERO COMPANION One of my quiet objectives in pitching the stretch goals was to have every pantheon from First Edition represented, even the weird semi-canonical French pantheon that was only available from the French translation of the Storyteller's Screen. One of the most time-intensive elements of Scion has been doing our actual homework on pantheons rather than reading Wikipedia and calling it a day. We've been doing research on how to properly represent the Loa (really a half-pantheon expansion for the Orisha), the Yazata (deities of Persia), and the Nemetondevos (the aforementioned Gauls). These are fully canonical pantheons, with signature Scions and Pantheon Specific Purviews.

That leaves the fictional Atlantean pantheon, which we're using as a primer on how to add your own fictional pantheons to a game by taking some related myths and creating a culture. They're largely optional to a Scion game. In the "proper", canonical World, Atlantis is known to the Egyptian and Greco-Roman Gods as a ruined and lost Terra Incognita, but if you want to use the Atlanteans of Scion Second Edition, it's a Mediterranean island nation island shrouded in secrecy and largely hidden from the World with Gods who are mystics and technocrats. With a stagnant culture but highly-advanced technology, what happens when Atlantis returns to the World stage at last?

The two Pantheons were aren't using from First Edition are the American and Nationalist Pantheons, largely because we didn't really see a need. Figures like Johnny Appleseed are probably better represented as Scions of extant Gods (like Idunn, Goddess of Youth and Apples. Look him up - he was all about a Swedish Church, and his apples weren't for eating), other Gods will be covered in later supplements (like Baba Yaga, since we're aiming to cover the Slavic Pantheon around Demigod) while nations have their own independent deities now (something also covered in the Companion). Still, we cover how to make your own Purviews in the Companion and how to make Gods are covered by the Atlantean Pantheon, so recreating Uncle Sam and The Citizen is made easy for you.

The last big section of the Companion is cults. Scion Second Edition has a feeling more deeply-rooted in faith and interactions with mortals, which is a primary task of Heroes. Expect this section to have mechanics on how to use and apply cults to do stuff for you, give you Deeds to perform, and Storyguiding advice on how comfortable (or uncomfortable) being an intermediary for the Gods can be. Having famous parents can really suck.

THE SCION BESTIARY We've been looking over how to make those descended from Creatures of Legend ("Denizens of the World") more viable as player character options. Being a full giant in a game of Scion is just as viable as playing a half-giant son of Loki (who is a full giant and causes earthquakes when he writhes in pain, for everyone wondering why he's got Epic Strength). While you'll usually never equal the versatility or power of a full Scion, being "just" a Denizen should give you unique options and an interesting playstyle. Centaurs and Satyrs are interesting on the Hero level, Kitsune can eventually grow nine tails and stand toe-to-toe with Demigods, while certain Strange Folk can reach the levels of divinity, or even beyond that...

SCION JUMPSTART Part of our goal here is to provide not just an example of how to use the system and easy new players into it, but to provide a roadmap to Storyguides on how a tale of Scion usually progresses. We're tailoring a murder mystery from the Gen Con test scenario we've been using since the beta and stretching it out to show off tactical options, Storyguiding advice, and different options for individual Scions. One really memorable example from the scenario I ran involved a player trying to use Death to simply summon the ghost of the deceased to ask who killed her, only for it to not work because the deceased was of the Egyptian pantheon and her soul was currently split into multiple parts. No matter, the player said - I'll summon other nearby ghosts who aren't split into fives and ask them what happened. It was clever, and I'm never going to say no to clever at the table, so it's getting a sidebar.

Next month we're hoping to have a few more substantive (and colorful) updates. Stay tunes, keep believing, and post on the forums!

Hero text in your BackerKit!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 12:24:45 AM

Greetings, true believers! Email links to the Hero text pre-layout have been sent. Check your spam folders or just log in to BackerKit if you don’t see them.

Feel free to discuss the book on our Scion forums! Ask for clarification and discuss errata if you like, or ask me questions. Next update I’ll talk about book progress and future products.

Thanks!

Link to forums: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/scion

-Neall

Text Updates, Manitou, and Trinity
over 6 years ago – Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 06:42:01 PM

Greetings, true believers!

Thanks to everyone who downloaded and has read through the Origin core rules. Hero is now pretty deep in editing, and it looks like our intrepid editor, Dixie Cochran, is making tremendous progress. I'm hoping to have the complete text of Hero in your hands long before the month is out! 

I've been seeing a lot of people comment on accidental text artifacts and some things that need clarification (Defense, etc.), with Trinity's text coming out in that separate Kickstarter. In general, what happened was this: Scion's system and text was built from the original Storypath system (Codename: Sardonyx, if you've been following the blog posts on theonyxpath.com for a while). The Trinity authors took that original text - a Frankenstein-ish monster of playtest documents and different resources - and created a holistic draft out of it. Scion's own text was re-adapted from that one after I saw the mechanical improvements that Team Trinity had made (and there were a lot), and we refined that with further playtest feedback from both Scion and Trinity running concurrently. 

So if there's an errant Skill in there or an old Attribute name or you're not sure how many dots Connections get when you invoke them, that's why. However, let me assure you all: we read every thread and every comment even if we're not replying, and I've gone back over the document for the most egregious errors and clarifications and corrected them before it heads off to layout (...today, in fact). Thanks to everyone who has pointed something out, but that's the way of these things - a few thousand eyes are always going to see more things than my two.

It's a systemic process, and we're about transparency here. The only other alternative explanation would require me to admit that Danielle Lauzon, the Trinity mechanical developer, is a superior developer to me. And, as that is manifestly untrue, I cannot admit it. I will not admit it. Nope.

This month we're previewing the Manitou, number nine of the pantheons. They were extremely tricky, and we worked pretty hard to come up with a version we think everyone will enjoy. Here's the link: 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OZVH8RPYdd-gFnheKHyM6LYt2cix2tHt

And speaking of Trinity, that Kickstarter is going on now, and you can see what the Storypath System looks like in a different action-adventure and sci-fi lens! The Trinity Continuum is a vast timeline of adventure, speckled with dramatic points across the past, present, and future, where heroes - or villains - arise. Our modern world is fraught with danger, from the products of mad science and corporate greed to the perils of lost civilizations. Fortunately, as many of the Talented will tell you, danger is their middle name, and the Æon Society is here to help them put things to right. The only constant in the world is change, and that's where you come in. Here's the link to that:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/trinity-continuum-aeon-rpg/description

Until next time! Next update will be Hero's text and a general book update.

-Neall