Scion

White Wolf’s new tabletop Scion Hero breaks the mold. It is a perfect mixture of Exalted and the World of Darkness’s system. But Scion Hero is its own game. It fixes some of the problems inherent in the previous systems.

In exalted, the player characters are quite over powered. Beginning Exalts are able to do anything short of rearranging space-time, (and if they practice sorcery they can even do that). In World of Darkness, you hesitate to try anything; most of the time, doing anything dangerous is a great way for your character to end up dead. The way they got around this problem is by adding in a system of “epic attributes” giving the characters auto successes on roles that involve the attribute.

It is based in a modern setting so fans of traditional medieval fantasy or futuristic laser rifle battles may not find it appealing. White Wolf brings us into a world of gods, magic and shootouts. Players control the children of the gods, modern day Hercules’s fighting against the spawn of the titans. The gods of Scion aren’t some contrived new idea; they are the pantheons of old. Play as children of the Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Japanese or Voodoo gods.

The book itself is well made. White Wolf has fixed the problems with binding that they made on the Exalted core book. With over 300 pages of easy to understand text, this game knocked me off my feet. Not to mention the incredible illustrations. White Wolf has outdone itself.

Scion is a breath of fresh air to the world of tabletop gaming and worth the retail price of $34.99. Any role player should pick up his or her own copy.