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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero $19.95
Average Rating:4.4 / 5
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by SJ [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/11/2024 09:38:44

One of the two must-have core rulebooks for the Scion game, Scion: Hero introduces details on the pantheons (Scion: Origin only gave you a list of abilities and Purviews with the latter pretty much unexplained), additional powers (including miracles) and resources for Hero-level characters (still mortal but more powerful than the divinely inspired noobs of Scion: Origin), and more challenging Antagonists for them to battle. I found the Pantheons chapter the most interesting, even if I disagreed with the accuracy of some of the background content. I don't mind, though, since this system explicitly pushes a "use what you like, discard what you don't" approach. This flexibility may frustrate some players, but I found it refreshing. Some of the nit-picky rules in Origin go counter to this style, but I found fewer such rules in Hero. In any case, I hope to read more about other Pantheons as well as other gods in the standard range in future books.

Despite the overall design philosophy to de-emphasize stats, complex dice rolls (only d10s, static difficulty number, etc.), and detailed rules (vs. D&D), I agree with some reviewers that the rules still tend to be overly complicated compared to the WoD system, for example. Maybe it's just because I've been exposed to WoD for longer...

The other flaw is the organization of the books so far. Origin and Hero should've been combined into one core rulebook to minimize switching between the two constantly throughout a session. There's a lot of cross-referencing, and you can't really play the game without both. At the same time, Hero included some duplicate info (e.g., the Knacks and Boons sections both cut-and-pasted text on Hero-level abilities into the Hero book rather than just describing new Immortal-level ones, but other sections required you to consult Origin for required info). I don't know why some sections were duplicated but others were not. If you got rid of the duplicates and some of the fluff, then the two books could've easily been collapsed into one.

As for reviewers complaining about the world-building, it's just a different genre than WoD. It's more like the comics where you have superhuman characters and yet we still end up fighting the same world wars. Either the comparative edge to the mortal "good guys" provided by superhuman heroes are canceled out by superhuman villains on the other side, or the standard history was the result of divine manipulation, and hence history in the World ends up looking the same as ours. Also, while the gods' agents in the World are powerful, so are governments and the collective efforts of millions of mortals. My only conflict is how to deal with the major monotheistic religions that dominate our world...do fervent believers gain powers too or are they treated the same as atheists in that they don't get access to Knacks, Boons, etc.?



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by José M. S. A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/13/2023 07:37:21

Overall, is a good rethinking of the first game, but there are some things that make me stuck to a setting more akin to the first edition than this. I mean, almost every Pantheon fights a significant Titan and have epic adversaries, but the Orisha and Loa fight against racism and some evil sorcerers? That sounds condescending, and a deterrent to play as one of their Scions; in the first edition, they fought a water Titan that had strong ties to slavery and racism, and the mix between mythical threat and cultural conflict was quite cool; why eschew that?. And in a world in which ancient gods are real and active and everyone knows about it, humanity had to endure the same hardships and mistakes? That doesn´t make sense to me. Also, the differences between God, Titan and Primordial sometimes are really confusing; one time they say that Primordials are entire worlds similar to the Greater Titans of the first edition, next time they present you a creator God with his role and avatar as a Primordial (like Izanami and Izanagi). Or they say "the difference between Gods and Titans is Titans don´t care about humanity", and then they describe a guy who doesn´t care about humanity and call him God. So I take the rules, cultural information and some other improvements, and adapt them to the setting of the first edition, thanks. I know that one of the good things of roleplaying games is that you don´t have to follow the book to the last letter and you can adapt it to a setting and rules more fitting to your and your players' tastes, but this edition seems to force you to do that, due to the confusing and contradictory information.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Lissa O. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/11/2023 18:25:26

I love the Scion world and the system that White Wolf created was wonderful. However, 2nd Edition feels like it was rushed and incomplete. There are a lack of sufficient explanations to make the system at all friendly to new gamers and even as someone having been gaming for 20 years I still found myself frustrated to no end. There is too many parts that only try to move but never actually get moving. I found that there was no reason to use many of their new rules and aspects. With saying that, I do feel that they remained true storywise to the Scion world that White Wolf created. Many of the abilities are great. Mostly my disappointment is with the execution of the mechanics and how complicated the system turned out to be. Not a system I specifically will aim to use again... and I'm disappointed that in the end I spent hundreds of dollars buying all the books.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Yancey L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/26/2022 00:35:04

There's a massive lack of cohesion that seems apparent when you try to play the game RAW or even RAI, and while it is possible to cobble the rules together from multiple places simultaneously (the Discord is the best place to start) - it can be frustrating for a player and an ST when they need to make a decision in real time.

The rules for games in Hero are even more confusing than they were in Origin and it seems that the development history of this game has it sharing systems with Trinity Continuum, which got the rest of the rules that should have been included in Origin (so, you probably should buy that system to really understand how tags and contacts were intended to work)? Overall, I want to love the game for its setting (and MAN does that POP!), but the core rules, layout and systems all seem like a pretty large step back from Scion 1st Ed, even with its broken and missing rules. Definitely feels like a game written by authors and not by game designers, which has its advantages and disadvantages.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Andrew S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/20/2020 02:02:55

I really liked Scion 1st Edition so I was really excited by a second edition to clean up some of the glaring flaws 1e had. Unfortunately this book doesn't really do that. it bolts a scion framework onto the Storypath system, which doesn't really work well. (You are mythically fast, well too bad this system uses Stamina to dodge!) It also changes the setting which was the part of Scion I loved so much into a world that I have trouble beiving in. I can (for a game) accept that the gods are real and grant power tot heir progeny, I can accept that the forces of evil rise up to attack mortals, but I really just can't belive that everyone on earth is aware of the truth of the exsistance of the old gods...and it didn't change any of human history. The setting completely losses me at that. I know that they wanted the modern setting to be close enough to our world to be relatable, but it ends up being more suspension of disbelief in human actions than I can muster.

All in all a not very good mechanical system paired with a setting that isn't logically consistant ends up with a product I just can't recomend.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Costan S. B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/10/2019 00:20:58

Scion: Hero is a book with serious lights and darks, and in a sense it never really reaches its full potential. For one thing, it keeps the lore of the second edition, which makes no sense in any way, as I commented on Origin. But also, a lot of its pages aren't really well used, as it seems like most of it is redundant. A full character creation chapter, for example, was unnecessary, given one was already in Origin, and it could be summed to the part where you update from pre to post-visitation characters. The fact that ten pantheons are added in this book is good gameplay wise, but also means that a lot of pages are spent on very basic depictions of the pantheons and, thus, information that is more or less easily accesible with any quick online search.

The gaming system also has lights and shadows, though in this case lights may be a bit stronger. Some ideas are better than those in first edition, some are very different and I'm not able to judge them right now, and some are worse. Birthrights have been improved a lot with much more flexibility. Purviews and Knacks work in different ways but it seems like they should be better now. But Paths bring character Classes (like those of D&D) to a game which is something some of us don't like, and the new virtue system is highly debatable. A lot of other things, I'd need to run a game to test and see how it all turns out.

As a result of all this, I can't say the book is worthless but the fact that the background is so much worse than in first edition means that the game suffers a lot.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Kyle N. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/10/2019 03:47:17

Origin is a solid (though mayhaps a bit flawed) system. But THIS is where Scion shines. Views of divinity! Showing the relationship between the Mortal and the Divine in the World of Scion! A grand and unique view of the setting.

The biggest one for me? There is not masquerade, like there was in 1e. That's right. The Gods are real... And they don't hide this. Nobody in the World doubts that the Gods exist, and that their champions walk the World. It's like a superhero setting, only the heroes are Heroes of Divinity.

Also, while I enjoyed Scion 1e, the more I learned about the actual stories of the Gods that were written for the line, the more I realized that oh, liberties were taken. Very unfortunate ones. Not so here, where the Pantheon writeups are MUCH closer to the source material. (No citing of Marvel Comics for the Nordic gods, for one). In particular, the Hindu Gods (the Deva) have one of the best writeups in the entire book. And the Aztec Gods (the Teotl) are very different from their 1e writeup of "The Designated Nominal Heroes", explaining much more about their nature.

I honestly wish I could rate this higher than just 5 stars. I'd recommend Scion 2e to anybody who likes adventure, anybody who likes over the top heroics, and people who are Mythology Nerds.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Scion Second Edition Book Two: Hero
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Chazz K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/06/2019 12:04:43

Scion Hero takes what was great about the original game and updates in with more cultural awareness and modern gaming sensabilities. To check out our complte thoughts, check out our review episode: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-17-scion-hero-overview



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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