Has anybody ever played Scion?

Has anybody ever played Scion?

Has anybody ever played Scion? It was once a White Wolf game and now it;s Onyx Path, and it was the game that got me into tabletop games — but it was a hot mess, mechanically, and playing it was a chore. Happily, PbtA games do what I’d always wished other tabletops would. Urban Shadows, specifically, scratches the Scion itch pretty well for myself and my group.

But not all the way, all the time. Sometimes we find ourselves missing playing the children of gods, pawns in a great war between pantheons. But not enough to go back, or to attempt to learn the new 2.0 which looks hardly any better.

So, has anybody ever tried adapting Urban Shadows to fit Scion, to bring some Scion material into Urban Shadows, or anything else similar? My table is interested in seeing if we can recapture some of that old magic with a system here that’s so well done. Would it maybe be as simple as making a Scion playbook?

10 thoughts on “Has anybody ever played Scion?”

  1. Of course right after I posted I scrounged around and discovered there’s an Immortal archetype, and also an Angel, and a Dragon, and some kind of mage too? Is all that right?

    I only have the base game. Where can I purchase these additional archetypes? Because I feel like they might do exactly what my table has a desire to do, no hacking needed.

  2. Just use the Tainted and replace the demon form with some kind of godly temporary powerup, or the Fae and replace all instances of court with pantheon.

  3. Scion got nice ideas for a setting, but was a complete chaos of rules. The white wolf system is everything but narrative >.<

    Urban shadows can be adapted very easily to Scion. Just look for the archetype that better suits the kind of scion you want to play and start playing. Some tweaks may be required, but you can go easy with anything like the mage or the ones previously apointed

  4. Oscar Iglesias You ain’t kidding, friend. If I remember it right, there’s something like five pages dedicated to how to handle a car chase/shootout (as just one example of insanely specific combat resolution), but one paragraph on handling negotiation and stuff. The rules are so inconsistent and it’s a dang mess.

    It’s telling that our table had to house rule everything into the dirt to even play the thing. Shame, too, because they really did their homework with the lore, and the basic concept seems like a lovely no-brainer for a setting.

  5. Scion is getting a new edition later this year.

    If you want PbtA Scion, Urban Shadows seems a poor fit; the free starter rules for City of Mist feel much closer.

  6. You want epic strength? Sure no problem you can take 3 dots for potence, etc… What I have done is taken some of the Urban Shadows aspects (which I love) and made house rules for V20, so it’s kind of a cross between white-wolf and urban shadows…

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