Scion 3rd Edition coming from Onyx Path

During Onyx Path's online convention recently, a 3rd edition of Scion, the game where you play divine heroes, was announced, powered by the Storypath Ultra system.

In Scion, you play demigods--along the lines of Achilles, children of gods from a wide array of mythologies including Egyptian, Greek, Norse, and even the Cthulhu mythos and American folklore. Originally released by White Wolf in 2007, the 2nd edition came out in 2012.

Storypath Ultra currently powers Scion 2E, and is a cleaned up of the Storypath System, itself a variant of White Wolf's Storytelling System, which was based on the Storyteller system which powered the World of Darkness. I think I got that right. It uses a d10 dice pool and a range of mental, physical, and social attributes.

The announcement contained little else by way of information, including a release date, although Onyx Path did hint at a 'black sheep' scion type, which is not related to a pantheon, and some overhauls of areas of the games such as the Relic system.

 

[Staffan]

I love Onyx Path's writing, honestly, but the only way I'm buying anything of them is when it is actually physically released and I doubt Scion 3E will be a non-KS product. I admire how much heart and soul they pour into their stuff, but their business model seems.. shaky.

Back when I was following them more actively, I remember being surprised at how they basically left everything to freelancers, including positions like "line developer". Among other things, that meant that once a crowdfunded product had left the backer preview stage, there was absolutely no errata being handled because no-one was getting paid for that part. It also meant that Exalted 3e was massively delayed because the line developer got seriously ill to the point where he had to run a GoFundMe for his medical costs.

 

[bergec]

Back when I was following them more actively, I remember being surprised at how they basically left everything to freelancers, including positions like "line developer". Among other things, that meant that once a crowdfunded product had left the backer preview stage, there was absolutely no errata being handled because no-one was getting paid for that part. It also meant that Exalted 3e was massively delayed because the line developer got seriously ill to the point where he had to run a GoFundMe for his medical costs.

A did a little freelance work with them and that's part of what soured me on it. The company gets the customers to pay for the books long before they get them and, similarly, the freelancers put it all their work and don't get paid until the book ships. They even stopped giving a free copy of the finished book to the contributors. Then they offload a lot of the editing to the fans with early releases, a process which isn't even handled well. I repeatedly pointed out errors that were cut-and-pasted from previous books and half the time they still wouldn't get fixed. This isn't how you run a business.

 

[Crusadius]

I loved Scion 1E despite the not so very good system and was excited for 2E but the setting changes dampened my enthusiasm. I'll be interested seeing what is done with 3E and maybe I'll get the first book.

 

[Afroconan]

I loved Scion 1E despite the not so very good system and was excited for 2E but the setting changes dampened my enthusiasm. I'll be interested seeing what is done with 3E and maybe I'll get the first book.

This! I liked the setting's original "American Gods-esque" vibe. With there being a secret mythological world with Gods walking secretly among us vs 2e's "Yeah, Thor lives next door... so that happened...".

I participated in the original 2E crowdfunding. It actually was my first Kickstarter. But after reading them they only gathered dust on my shelf and I ended up gifting them to a friend.

I heard the companion offered options to dial back the setting to 1e's style but that didn't help much with rekindling my enthusiasm.

I'm eager to see what they do with 3E and I'm also hoping they don't over extend the release timeline. It was like 8 years between Hero and God...

 

[Purplesnit]

As a backer of the KS for 2e; Scion 1e was based on Exalted's system, and was broken past Hero level. The intent was to balance 2e better, but part-way through development, someone came up with the beginnings of Storypath, and the game had to be rewritten to accommodate the new mechanics. This caused a huge delay in release. Then the errata that they gathered somehow ended up not being included in the printed books, so Origin and Hero were full of errors. Then it took 8 years to get God out so interest has probably waned, as others have noted. Meanwhile, Storypath Ultra became the "House System" for OP, but Scion was this weird not-quite-finished version of it, so it wasn't fully compatible with their other games. The whole things was kind of a mess, frankly. I don't blame them for wanting a new version that fits - I just don't think I care enough anymore to buy it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Storypath and Storypath Ultra have some non-trivial differences, especally in the focus the prior put of Approaches. I don't know what point in the progression of Storypath they did this, but there's some slow changes you see as the various games came out (even though I have doubts I'll ever use a one of them, I own a rather lot of the core books in PDF) but if you compare, Scion 2e to Curseborne, some of the differences can be pretty obvious.