two flavors of epic

opening match #5: The One Ring vs Scion: Hero

the meanings of the word epic have evolved a fair bit, as meanings and words tend to do. this word gets used in all kinds of ways to evoke the scope of a thing itself, or the scope of our admiration for the thing, or a little bit of both. anything might be epic if it finds the right audience.

I see these two games as epic in more ways than one, but also in very different ways. different flavors, we might say. one is all about epic stories and songs recounted in verbose detail, with plenty of space for lightness and heaviness and realism. it tastes like rich dark chocolate. the other is all about epic stories told in punchy, extravagant colors, with larger-than-life characters and nobody looking too closely at any collateral damage. it tastes like extra-seasoned popcorn or chips. you can probably guess which one is which already. read on to allay what uncertainties may remain.

Scion: Hero takes as its foundation perhaps the most ancient source texts in existence (if we are allowed, out of convenience, to label such pre-textual constructs as texts) and drags their mythic elements into an unsuspecting contemporary setting.

conversely (and symmetrically?), The One Ring is based on one of the greatest fantasy epics of the 20th century, set in the glorious pre-industrial expanse that is Tolkein's Middle-earth, reveling in all the beautiful intricacies such a setting could possibly inspire.

sprawling mythoi and grand conflicts crisscross through both RPG books in exciting ways. neither of these systems is dealing in small, homey stories. whatever might begin as small or homey in them must be called into larger, higher, more treacherous territories-- the fate of the world may depend upon it.

but there is still room for small stories to matter within all the dire "fate of the world" context-- and indeed those stories may matter more poignantly as a result. personal character growth and interpersonal connections shine all the more brilliantly against the fire and ashes of Mount Doom.

in a roleplaying game, of course, the balance of broad-strokes grandeur and vivid vignette all depends on your storyteller and the players and all the variable dynamics of your game table. I think plenty of both is ideal. Samwise and/or Odysseus should have space to pine for their loved ones and all the normalcy they left at home so many months or years ago. and we should be able to squabble over rations even while we choose to sacrifice our entire futures in the struggle against evil, right?

for this most epic review, my formulaic outline continues to serve us decently well: a table of metadata, summaries of characters I've made in each system, then thoughts comparing the aesthetics, mechanics, and user-friendliness of each.

SYSTEM	The One Ring	Scion: Hero
back cover tagline =	"Enter the world of Middle-earth..."	"Find your Destiny."
publisher =	Free League Publishing	White Wolf / Onyx Path Publishing
pub. date =	2020	2007
original cost =	$49.85	$35.00
length =	10 chapters / 240 pages	12 chapters / 334 pages
my exp. level =	none prior	barely any

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previous characters

I often imagine myself as a hobbit, or at least a creature with plenty of hobbit DNA... but technically and copyrightedly, no other brand of rustic, laid-back, food-loving halfling character from any other system can actually count as a true hobbit. before this tournament adventure, I had zero experience with The One Ring system, and surprisingly enough once I picked it up I didn't make a hobbit character for myself. but I could have!

for Scion, once upon a time I created a hero from the Egyptian pantheon for a potential game we almost got going in Louisiana. her name was Yasmin, a scion of Bast-- she had bronze skin, straight black hair, and many golden bracelets, approaching the world all pantherlike and sneakily inquisitive. I think. those sketchy details and a vague sense of the interesting combat turn-taking system are pretty much everything I remembered about the game-- the one session we played was pretty neat, but it didn't go anywhere after that.

new characters + one-shots

for The One Ring, I created two new characters using the amazingly simple process outlined in the book: Fauna Briarhawk (a wandering woman from Bree, seeking treasure and hoping to prove herself more than a mere thief) and Moruthiel Gorlindir (an Elf of Lindor determined to protect those less fortunate after failing to save their best friend from an orc attack). 

we gathered a few friends (thank you, friends Jon and Jim and Angela, for joining) around our table one Friday afternoon to explore Middle-earth and do our part in the fight against the deepening shadow. in preparation for this one-shot, husband Jeremiah created three more character concepts to round out our potential party, and then, after a wonderful frame narrative introduction (in which a younger-ish Bilbo Baggins is having far too much fun telling stories to a much younger trio of Frodo, Merry, and Pippin), we chose our characters and settled into the world of the game: braving a cold winter, traveling north on Gandalf's directions, meeting around a campfire, fending off evil wolves, finding our way to a ranger's shelter to rest and feast before reaching our true destination and defending the Shire from beasts possessed by Sauron.

it was so, so much fun. a short and simple story arc, but so satisfying. I want to draw portraits of our little burgeoning fellowship: Halfred of the Shire, and Fauna of Bree, and Berúthiel of Rivendell, and Luindis of the North, and their mounts too. maybe we will all find time to continue the journey someday. after all... it did end with some mysterious clues and lingering questions of the sort that often seem to promise sequels.

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since I barely remembered Yasmin in any useful way, I created another two new Scion characters as well-- one in the Japanese and one in the Aztec pantheon. 

Tamiko, a scion of the goddess Amaterasu, is an artistically talented and fiercely ambitious perfectionist. she aims to honor her mother with flawless performances in all aspects of her life, no matter how long it might take. 

and Carmen, scion of the Aztec water god Tlaloc, has a talent for teaching and storytelling, reeling listeners into the webs of her supernatural influence. I gave her a companion Coatl (a brilliant flying serpent creature) named Sammy and a tiara made of shark teeth with which to summon him.

for our Scion one shot, these two teamed up with one other fledgling hero to track down an ominous threat called "The Sword of Japan." there were high speed chase scenes, a battle atop the Statue of Liberty, and confrontations with ghosts in the shipping lanes of the Pacific. for much of the session we all rolled terribly, cursed our dice, and struggled to live up to our characters' truly epic potential, but in the end there was a sufficiently dramatic show-down with one giant kaiju beast in the middle of the ocean.
 

aesthetics

The Lord of the Rings, with its lovely, poignant blend of quaint + epic, has been an undeniable classic for ages now. the world that Tolkien built with such passion and detail seems practically real, and so much of it has bled into our cultural consciousness that it almost feels impossible to talk about it as a separate entity. thankfully, I don't really need to-- this charming RPG based in Tolkien's world is not meant to (and indeed cannot) stand in for the entirety of Tolkien's oeuvre.

yet it seems to me (not that I've even read more than three lines of The Silmarillion) that the spirit of Tolkien's stories is represented thoroughly and well in The One Ring. plenty of sprawling historical, geographical, linguistic, and cultural detail shows up here, distilled just so into potent but practical homage. the world and the vibe are evoked across every inch of in the game's materials-- from its serious, hefty hardcover and gorgeous maps down to the runic borders and faux-foxing at the edges of each page. there is a coziness to it all, tucked in just right amid all the grandeur and drama of dark lords looming over the world. in context of what you already know about The Lord of the Rings, everything in the RPG has as much depth as you could ask for-- the history of the setting, the complexity of the canonical NPCs, and the possibility for epic engagement with both. and there are custom dice, too (more on those later).

I sense so much simplicity and quality craftsmanship in it. the game carves out a sturdy, down-to-earth core of hope and bravery and love, all strong enough to outlast ages of darkness, conflict, or corruption. such an optimistic mythos if there ever was one.

I will gush even more than I gushed about the chapter spreads in Star Wars: Force and Destiny about those in The One Ring rulebook. the book design as a whole is just superb: lovely columns (especially for the table of contents!), nicely spaced lines and paragraphs, welcoming little text boxes here and there. most of it is simple, cream and sepia-tones with red for contrast. the chapter breaks stand out (as they should for wayfinding, but also for beauty) with richness and drama, their style somewhat ethereal. thirteen different artists are credited in the frontmatter, along with two graphic designers. to whichever of them worked in whatever ways on the chapter break art, thank you. it's gorgeous.

final design-nerd comment about The One Ring: that horizontal table of contents is undoubtedly some of the most satisfying book design ever. just look at it. thumbnails of each chapter spread design show up again at the head each column, with details and page numbers for every chapter, section, and subsection. I could very well gush even more about that than the chapter spread art itself, if you let me.

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it may be a bit unfair to describe the aesthetics of Scion as collage-like or patchwork, but the way it draws on all these well-worn mythologies and mashes them together seems to warrant the labels. thankfully the introductions to and distinctions between pantheons are more than cosmetic-- each family of gods is considered and described in depth, each given a bit of ideological grounding and various unique approaches to the timeless war against the recently-escaped Titans. we get chains and webs of symbolism, icons from classical-ish mythologies imbued with extra power because they feature in so many tales. a scion of the Greek pantheon might carry with them the actual Golden Fleece of legend, using it to access powerful birthrights with which to re-twist the very threads of Fate.

in this game, villains and heroes come at each other like magnets, almost without agency of their own-- Fate (or we could call it narrativium, if you like) pulls at them like a tidal force, catalyzing the kinds of epic battles that spawned the old myths in the first place. Scion wants to deal in sets and scenarios that feel huge and expensive-- like an Avengers movie on steroids. it's a splashy system, with mechanics to incentivize the splashiest of character actions. you are a divine being, chosen by gods to fight for all of reality, after all. you'd better act like it.

with all this talk of Fate and birthright, Scion seems more urban high fantasy as opposed to the grittier, darker, low fantasies of World of Darkness games. the urban darkness and tragedy in the world of Scion feels less shadowy, like the dial was turned way up on romance and drama, but way down on most of the angsty noir elements. the line art is cleaner, clearer, like polished china on display. husband Jeremiah likened its vibe to that of many golden age comicbooks, which makes sense to me (not that I've read more than 3 pages of any of those particular early 20th-century texts either). in this world, scions cannot escape their divine identities. once we're past the prologue, they know where they came from and must confront the burden of that legacy. it's very "with great power comes great responsibility," at its core.

mechanics

to play The One Ring, you'll create a character from one of 6 Heroic Cultures, give them one of 6 adventurer's Callings, then choose a few other features, useful items, and weapons. each choice begets a small handful of other choices and a very small handful of calculations for attribute ratings, target numbers, and the load you're carrying. there are just three main attributes-- Strength, Heart, and Wits-- with nine skills under each of those classic physical, social, and mental categories. your Culture will give a range of possible stats to choose from for all of these values-- no math or point-buy-ing needed. Hobbits of the Shire will typically have plenty of Heart and Wits, but lower stats in Strength; Rangers of the North will be strong and full of heart, with medium Wits. from your Culture you'll also get one "favoured" skill, and two more from your Calling-- these are skills that you'll always get to roll twice for and take the better result. 

but not everything comes with a numerical stats value-- some features are just listed, almost as mere flavor, and whether the dice get involved for those things is purely a matter of narrative justification. 

for example, a Hobbit may be Eager, Fair-spoken, Faithful, Honourable, Inquisitive, Keen-eyed, Merry, or Rustic. during character creation you'll pick two features from this list, and then, during gameplay if your character being Fair-spoken or Keen-eyed becomes relevant to any skill check, then you'd add another d6 to the roll.

the dice for this system are simple but unique-- you can get away with using any old d6s and one d12, but it might be more fun to get the custom LotR-themed dice, might it not? the only differences are that the sixes on the d6s (Success Dice) include an Elvish success symbol, and that instead of an 11 and 12, the custom d12 (the Feat die) displays the eye of Sauron, to signify automatic failure, and a glyph of Gandalf, to signify automatic success. we used mostly regular dice for our one-shot, but Jeremiah did paint two sides of a spare d12 red and white with the corresponding eye and glyph designs, so we had that extra special touch.

for each skill test, players will roll the custom d12 and a number of d6s equal to your skill ranks and any bonuses, add all the results together and if it beats your target number for that skill category, that means success. a successful roll that includes one or more sixes is an extraordinary success in some way.

the action of The One Ring is organized into alternating Adventuring phases and Fellowship phases. during the former, all the exciting journeying and decisions and combat happens. during the latter there is time for recovery, healing, character advancement, and various other downtime activities. there are structured systems in place for how the Company of player characters will Journey (everyone will share the various responsibilities involved in traveling), Council (some characters may be more skilled at influencing how NPCs will respond with regard to highly important matters), and of course, Combat.

I really like the combat system in The One Ring, though it did seem strange at first. each battle begins with "opening volleys"-- at least one round where all combatants may employ a thrown or ranged weapon as each party approaches the central field of combat. after that, everyone moves to "close quarters" fighting. during these rounds, each player chooses a Stance, engages with (or is engaged with by) at least one opponent, and then resolves their actions accordingly. we have four Stances to choose from: Forward, the most aggressive; Open, the most balanced; Defensive, the most careful; or Rearward, for ranged attacks. the Stance you choose will dictate the order in which you'll resolve your actions and whether you (or your opponents) get bonuses to offense or defense. all player characters act, those in Forward stance first, then Open, etc., and then all enemies will act, in similar sequence. 

in between combat scenes, our one-shot did include a very short Fellowship phase in which we recovered Hope points (very useful for adding dice to skill test rolls or for aiding your fellow players), but we did not touch on character advancement. for each game session you attend, you'll earn 3 Skill points and 3 Adventure points-- the two flavors of XP. you'll also earn 3 more Skill points at the end of every Yule Fellowship phase. Skill points are used for increasing skill ranks, naturally, and Adventure points can purchase new ranks in Valour or Wisdom. starting characters begin with 1 point each of Valour and Wisdom, with an associated Reward and Virtue for each. increased Valour leads to added Rewards (upgrades to equipment) and increased Wisdom grants new Virtues (increased abilities or proficiency).

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Scion shares a few of the same underlying mechanics as other White Wolf RPGs-- we're using d10s again, rolling however many dice our Attribute + Ability stats dictate for each risky action within the game, but this time, because we are descendants of mythic, godly beings, results of 7 and higher will mean success.

much of your character is shaped according to the pantheon and patron parent you choose to be descended from. there are six pantheon options in our edition of Scion: Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Aztec, Japanese, and Voodoo. in line with whichever backstory stems from your character's parentage and divine Visitation, you get to choose a range of favored abilities, epic attributes, birthrights, knacks, and boons to enhance your godly powers even further.

you'll start the game with a certain number of Willpower and Legend points. Willpower measures the character's discipline and determination, but in Scion it works a bit differently than in the Word of Darkness games I've written about so far. rather than using it to buy more dice for your rolls, you'll trade Willpower to gain automatic success, resist mind-control if needed, or manage your actions with regard to your character's Virtues.

each pantheon comes with a set of associated Virtues (no vices this time, although each virtue does come with a downside when taken to extremes). channeling your virtue and spending one Willpower point during gameplay lets you add dice equal to your virtue rating to the roll, which is pretty cool.

speaking of cool, there is a mechanic for gaining extra dice on any given roll if you can describe your character's actions in an impressively cinematic way. this is called "stunting," and at the storyteller's discretion you might earn 1-3 extra dice depending on the epic-ness of the stunt you describe. I'm not always good at this sort of thing in the moment during roleplaying, but I think the idea of it is very fun.

the most different thing in Scion is the combat system. it's somewhat more complex while still using a familiar-enough turn-taking system. however, instead following an initiative order or more abstractly sorting out phases of simultaneous action (as with stances in The One Ring), combat scenes use "ticks" to measure the passage of time, and characters or NPCs spend some number of ticks performing their actions. the speed rating of your chosen action dictates how soon you may act again-- a speed of 2 means you'll act again after 2 ticks; a speed of 5 means waiting 5 ticks. (that this value is called "speed" even though higher numbers mean slower/more spread-out action does throw my inner pedant into a small fit, thanks for asking, but so it goes.) add all the math and dice-counting of dodge values, parry values, armor, soak, health penalties, etc., and combat scenes can get pretty involved. 

and did I mention that Scion: Hero is the first book in a trilogy? character progression in this game is mainly measured in Legend points. Legend increases for every epic deed your character does, causing Fate to swirl magnetically around them more and more strongly. and once your Legend exceeds a certain number, you're not just a hero anymore, but a Demigod. Scion: Demigod and Scion: God are the next steps in the epic journey. I've referenced the lore of those books very briefly as context for this review, and I imagine the system isn't different other than in epic scope, but I don't know for sure.
 

approachability

these books frame themselves very differently to their readers. The One Ring leans on its original source material a fair bit: copious quotes and epigraphs litter its pages-- at least I assume they are Tolkien quotes-- if they aren't, then they are rather wonderful homages. when they're attributed, if they are at all, it is to their in-world speakers rather than to whichever book, hence my uncertainty. in any case, the book trusts its audience to follow cheerfully along with this subtly immersive tactic. I think it works. 

mythology being the stringy mess of oral history and creative retelling that it is, Scion has no actual source texts, which means it can make its own. within this system, we are invited to remake and retell our own versions of the myths. the book spends plenty of time providing vivid, extended examples. before we can even turn to the table of contents for this rulebook, there are 40+ pages of an opening adventure-- a full-on short story-- following the sample character Eric Donner, a young scion of Thor. that's either really cool for setting the stage and illustrating character possibilities, or it's in the way of us figuring out the actual game.

character creation (and practically everything else) for The One Ring was almost dazzlingly simple-- an elegant flow chart of options without too many nooks and corners to get lost in. once I'd filled out everything on the character sheets for Fauna and for Melenthiel I just kept thinking to myself, "is that everything? it seems like there should be more."

even so, the process is a flexible one and the gameplay similarly flexible. that's the power of "limits are possibilities" at work, I suppose. the details for each Heroic Culture are described in exactly 2 pages. the list of Callings takes up less than 3 altogether. is that not impressive? 

I like that this book is organized with the specifics of gameplay before the step-by-step of creating an adventurer. that seems atypical for an RPG book, but for this it works quite nicely. character creation is still early in the book (starting on p. 27), so it all seems very simple and straightforward to get started.  even the parts that on paper look like they could get unwieldy, like the rules for Journeys and Councils, felt very smooth and easy during the game itself. I credit our Loremaster, Jeremiah, for a large part of this smoothness, along with the game's design. 

overall the cultural ubiquity of The Lord of the Rings + the beautiful, usable design of the book and the system itself makes The One Ring something I'd enthusiastically recommend as a marvelous place to start for new roleplayers. the flow-chart-esque processes of character creation might not be everyone's cup of tea, and I imagine not all GMs will be totally happy in a pre-made, relatively constrained setting, but that's okay-- you can't please everyone all the time. GMs and players who want something more home-brewed have plenty of options to choose from.

despite its pages of scene-setting narrative and its very cool example characters from each pantheon, Scion is less simple both mechanically and storywise. the terminology alone (we have boons and epic abilities, which are purchased with the same pool of starting points you can spend on boons, but aren't boons themselves, and also birthrights and knacks and virtues and what else is there?) and the rules for which particular relics unlock access to which awesome birthright abilities under which particular purview were not easy to suss out during my character creation processes. I found it somewhat fiddly.

and maybe it's that I wanted more and broader context for my own brain to put it all in, but I also had a hard time settling into the game's core conflict in a meaningful way. we get exactly 8 paragraphs introducing us to the world of Scion, the history of gods mingling with humans, warring against the Titans, "the progenitors and ancient foes of the gods" (p. 44). I found myself wanting more about just how the stated threat of Titanspawn might actually manifest in this setting.

but perhaps it can be enough, sometimes, to label one side productive and good and the other side destructive and evil and just go from there. plenty of stories come with vaguely-defined antagonists.

preliminary verdicts

these two are both competing on basically first impressions. does that make it more fair than some of the prior opening rounds?

I'm into mythology as much as any nerdy millennial who may or may not have prided themselves on identifying all the background extras hanging around Mount Olympus in Disney's Hercules. and the prospect of fighting insanely far-reaching battles with monumentally high stakes using epic, flashy powers is, on paper, pretty thrilling. but in practice, I find it intimidating to roleplay such thrilling stuff. Scion players need to be in a fearless and collosal frame of mind to do this game justice, and being improvisationally epic doesn't often come easily to me. describing stunts in writing after I've had some hours/days to think and carve out just the right words for it = yep, no problem, I can do that. describing stunts in 20 seconds or less, on the spot, while three or four other humans listen and wait for their turns? well, um, I probably need more practice with that one.

against any other RPG, Scion may have had a stronger chance. mythology is always pretty cool, and Scion does plenty of fun and awesome things with it. it's got potential.

but I'll be honest, The One Ring has pretty much swept me off my feet. it's not just the book design, I promise-- the charm and simplicity of it was just so delightful to interact with, from beginning to end. I want to play it again as soon as possible.

next new one-shot (and which William-Gibson-nerd friend would perhaps want to join in for this one, I wonder?): Cyberpunk RED

next match-up review: Exalted vs. Vampire: the Masquerade (5e)