Scion: Gods Book

I feel like this actually sort of addressed some of the issues I have with Demigod. Admittedly, the mechanical issues get even worse in certain ways. I mean, granting 50 automatic successes is absolutely ridiculous. However, players and Storytellers are encouraged to handwave the eleventh level of Boons and epic attributes, basically using them as storytelling tools with narrative power rather than complex mechanical concepts. This would've been better if the idea was present from Hero level, but at least it's a start. (And it makes me feel slightly more positive about the plan to use a more narrative system for Scion 2E, even if I'm not a fan of the clear Fate influence.) The biggest thing for me is in regards to the new setting and plot stuff, though. Finally the realms of the various gods and titans are revealed, and they're suitably epic. It was fun to see Scion's versions of Asgard and Olympus as well as to learn a bit about the Overworld lairs of the pantheons I'm less familiar with. The titans are quite cool - each is actually an entire world sized sentient realm occupied by a variety of monsters and ruled by one or more avatars. So the titan of light is a twisted mirror of Christianity with a blindingly bright realm of angels ruled over by a single avatar of the sun, while Muspelheim sees Surtr and Prometheus colluding to arm the fire giant armies with tanks and guns. I almost feel like there's too much material here - I can't imagine doing things justice with a campaign, though maybe that's just me. The third and final chapter of Scion's included adventure series actually seems pretty fun. It starts with a series of vignettes to highlight the powers of each newly ascended God, followed by a romp across the Overworld to fight all six Titans and imprison them. Of course, Loki comes along to hijack things at the last minute, which brings up my constant annoyance with making him the big bad of everything, but at least here he has an interesting motivation, and there's some nicely open ended advice about where to take the chronicle after the climax of the adventure. Finally, there's an extensive selection of monsters, mostly statting up the titans and their servants. However, there's also a band of gods that want to rip the World away from the mystical parts of things in hopes of ending the interference of the gods. This is a cool idea, but by putting it in God rather than Hero, it removes a lot of the neat potential there would be for including these gods as a third faction in the Titan War. All in all, Scion God is a pretty good conclusion to the trilogy that makes me actually want to play the game, as well as delve into the two companion volumes sooner rather than later.