The Saga Of The Scions I

We finished the latest playtest of the current big thing I’ve been working on. I haven’t really written about it, so I figured it’d be fun to share the game diary to show what it’s about.

The Scions (working title) is basically uses the Paragon System (Agon, Deathmatch Island) to do a game inspired by the Horus Heresy from Warhammer 40k, with you playing knock-off Primarchs and wrestling over the fate of this empire, and how their hubris tears everything apart. Other influences include the Roman Republic, the war in heaven, Dune and so on.

There’s three core things which I think make it interesting. Firstly, it looks at Paragon, and realises you can use it to go even larger scale – so everything from an argument over dinner to winning an intergalactic war can be determined. In extreme cases, scenarios or even entire novels worth of fiction can be compressed. The inspiration is very much reading narrative histories of people like Julius Caesar where it can spend a paragraph on “Caesar went to the Mediterranean and cleared it all of pirates.” Secondly, it usually climaxes in a civil war where the players monstrous egos burn everything down. Thirdly, and most obviously, it uses some boardgame tech to integrate something akin to Blade in the Dark’s faction game (but more so), so the world has an unusual physicality. It models the political situation. It generates encounters. It does a bunch of stuff.

This was the first playtest after a really big rework, as I’d played Paragon enough to touch some stuff I was avoiding. The big thing is moving a lot of things which are traditionally on a character’s sheet and into the shared play space. A screenshot of Scions loos complicated, but that’s only because it is including a lot of stuff that’s normally buried on character sheets. This is actually a clarity tool. As well as mechanics stuff, there’s also a lot more content – this would be the first game I’d run with barely any winging it (or, rather, winging it which isn’t explicitly written into the system. It’s very much a game where players personalise their own sci-fi epic) However, at the same time, it’s also in the stage of the playtest where some stuff is entirely original and some stuff is me just using other stuff as placeholders. Names are often shamelessly lifted. The art certainly is.

Anyway – part of the game, I was writing a basic journal, which the players then edited to add more detail. Which died kind of become an edit war. In terms of “this is how the game works” a basic breakdown of the whole game seems fun. Also, it doubles as a design diary – at the end, I’ll be writing what I learned from this particular playtest and what I’ll be tweaking going forward. (Spoilers: lots.)

Notes on this specific game upfront – three Scion players, plus me as the Chaos Player. As part of the tonal discussion, you discuss where the game is on the scale of “Horror” to “Comedy.” We decided on comedy – Jim was a player, and this is very much like the comic we wrote, The Ludocrats. It is a black comedy, of course, but it’s very much comedy. But at the same time, this is very much what a game of Scions looks like.

THE SAGA OF THE SCIONS (I)

The Cast

The Emperor: an Emperor in pursuit of an eternal Dark Age
The Warmaster Saint: The greatest Scion in history and soon arch-betrayer
Ikarion Redblade: Murderous Leader of the Imperial Redblades, raised by the Solar Fleet
Nyxar the Damned: Stoic Leader of the Glacial Shields, raised by the Collegia Psi
Aurix Dawn: Swift Leader of the Peregrines, raised by the Church

The Supporting Cast

Admiral Raven: An elderly Garbo as a space-admiral
The Anchorite: Impossibly large figure embedded in a tracked shrine. Leader of the Church.
The Overmind: Twitchy Psychic construct made of dozens of minds. Leader of the Collegia Psi. 
The Wolfmarshall: Bluff and gruff and will blow your whole city down. Leader of the Imperial Army.
Mistress Knife: Silent assassin, communicates solely by inscribed weaponry. 
The Assembly: A hyper-connected robot, puppetted by all the Terran Lords.
Maxine Slaughter: A Demon Pirate.
Charles I & II: Cloned Terran Lord Golf Enthusiasts.
Livia: A connected matchmaker.
Joe, The Bullet God: Freelance murderer.
Talleyrand: Tired anti-golf diplomat.
Threenose the Mutilator: An orc gladiator turned galactic warlord.
Charles III: A further cloned Terran Lord Gold enthusiast.

Prologue

The Emperor called the Scions together to commence the campaign to reclaim the galaxy. The Saint arrived last, decried the Emperor, assassinated him with an Orbital cannon and declared themselves Emperor. Aurix Dawn murdered him to discover this Pretender to the throne is a pretend Saint – cloned, sent out to die. The real one is out there, planning to conquer the Empire.

The Lords of Terra declare whichever of the Scions proves themselves best will be the new Emperor.

[IKARION IS SAD ABOUT THE EMPEROR, BUT HAPPY THAT THE BEST ONE IS HIM.]

SOLAR YEAR ONE

The Spring Season of War, Year One

Ikarion Redblade answers the call of a pair of buffoonish Terra Lords, who had orc raiders devastating their planetary low-gravity golf course. Redblade eviscerates them, and much of the putting surface.

[FORESHADOWING IKARION’S INEVITABLE RULE AS WARMASTER, IKARION THINKS]

Aurix and Nyxar explore a damned hellish Space Hulk, but Aurix pushes past Nyxar in his greedy attempt to access its riches first and HE unwittingly unleashed a Demon Pirate and their fleet into the galaxy — is how a quisling traitor to the Emperor’s loins would put it. A balanced and accurate observer, however, would note that Aurix’s quick actions seized the hulk with the blistering efficiency for which he is known. The presence of a demon pirate was thereby revealed before its pernicious ambush could be executed, and it fled before Aurix’s wrath. Nyxar was there, too – LUCKILY. For it would be HE who eventually captures the fell pirate alone, with Aurix NOWHERE in sight (busy LOSING against some ADMINISTRATORS over a GOLF COURSE.

The Summer of War, Year One

The Tyrant rebels in the Maelstrom and the three Scions move to destroy his rebellion. The affair was hard fought – radio signals in the Maelstrom became physical, making transmissions difficult. The Tyrant’s forces were defeated, but the Tyrant himself escaped to plot further malice.

Maxine Slaughter, the Demon Pirate, ravaged the Golf world, causing fury in clone Teran lords Charles I and Charles II. 

The Fall of War, Year One

Charles I and Charles II lead a rebellion against the Scions, declaring they should be executed for crimes against many things, but certainly including golf. Despite Ikarion and Aurix’s best efforts, the motion passes. The Imperial Army are to execute them.

Nyxar, in transit to deal with Maxine Slaughter, gets a message from Grandmarshall Wolf, noting the order has come through – but if he captures the Demon Pirate alive, he’ll be able to perhaps slow it down. Nyxar locates Maxine and captures her. Are there sparks of something more than Hellfire as she is taken away?

Chronica Pertubia, chapter XXXVI: Nyxar the Damned tracked down Maxine Carnage, the demon pirate who ignobly fled before, and brought her to justice before she could ravage the army’s supply lines. Of course it would have been more useful if he was helping quash the Tyrant’s rebellion, and he had to be cajoled and enticed with promises of glory and reward to even intervene against the pirate, when he had previously planned to hide in an unpopulated corner of space, but the mercy of the Emperor (may his soul reside) says that we should reward even faltering steps towards rightness as if they were great strides. Which means Nyxar’s actions were VERY HONOURABLE.  

The Season of Rest, Year One

On Terra, the Terran Lords have arranged a parade to mock each of the Scions, with floats mocking these incompetent leaders. 

With the death sentence, the Scions retreat to a distant chunk of planet called The Anchorage – an isolated, deep space base. There, they talk about their fears and hopes – including Aurix letting Nyxar deeply explore his mind, revealing his secrets, in fear that his failure to defeat the Terran Lords had some weakness. It was weird in there.  

Nyxar finds the psychic fingerprints of the Warmaster – it seems the Golf uprising may be more than it seems.

The Scions rebuilding their bonds with their allies, and old friends arrive to offer aid – Talleyrand the tired anti-golf diplomat and Joe the Gun God, plus a message from Livia the Connected, Aurix’ sometime flirtation and friend.

The Spring Season of War, Year Two

While the Terran Lords are trying to spread their influence to further damage the Scions, the Scions move to cut off all the supply routes of the empire, and stop them acting. With The Warmaster’s evident help in planning, the Terran Lords slip that trap – but not before the Scion’s fleets converge on the Parliament System for a final confrontation, climaxing in a battle against the city-sized parliament building that has grown legs and is moving like a literal arsenal of democracy.

Inside, Aurix’s contracts with the assassin’s guild takes Charles I & II, and he manages to defeat a clone of the warmaster (disguised as their caddy) in battle, so ending The First Golf War. The anti-Scion members are purged and a Matriarchy of the wives of the Lords seize control of the Parliament Planetary system, and the reigns of the Government.

[IKARION WAS ALSO INVOLVED IN A POSITIVE WAY.]

The Summer  of War, Year Two

Nyxar the Damned returns to the Collegia Psi on his own business, causing chin-stroking by the remaining Scions.

Joe The Bullet God brings word of an orc gladiator, Threenose the Slaughter,  who is devastating the Terran Ladies’ carefully trained sportspeople in a deathmatch planetoid. Aurix Dawn enters the competition, planning on poisoning him, but this magnificent example of Orcdom resists the toxins and sends Aurix flying into deep space.

Pleasing the Collegia Psi, Ikarion travels across the void to discover the source of signal – defeating an assassination attempt from a rogue Blade Guild Assassin in the way. Contact is remade with an Agriworld, Verdus II, home of Verdian Delight and giant cows.

[IKARION IS A PLEASANT OVERLORD FOR THE NEW PLANET. THEY ALL LIKE HIM VERY MUCH.]

The Fall of War, Year Two

The situation suddenly worsens. The success of Threenose the Slaughter precipitates a huge orc uprising, across the whole galaxy, gathering around this murderous monster. The Solar Fleet is going to be overwhelmed trying to contain it. Simultaneously, the defeated Terran Lords gather around a new Charles clone, and ally with the Tyrant. The Maelstrom is re-taken, as a stronghold. Simultaneously, a coup inside the Army leads to the assassination of the Wolfmarshall – The Scion’s protectors. All these forces are all aimed at the Parliament System, and crushing their rivals.

What to do? Protect the fleet and face the orcs, or fight the army uprising and save the Terran Ladies?

In the end, the Terran Ladies’ situation seems untenable. The Scions decide to concentrate on the orcs, leaving the Parliament system to its fate. Coldly, Aurix burns a message from Livia the Connected and sets forth.

The War is fought against the orcs, with the Scions unable to prevent the orcs from boarding the fleets across the galaxy. They of course would of definitely succeeded if Nyxar was there. However, Ikarion is able to lead the resistance, and Aurix efficiently cuts off their retreat, setting up for a final battle. Aurix and (having smuggled herself aboard a wax seal out of the Parliament System) Livia try to take down Threenose in his huge space hulk battleground, but set the stage for Ikarion to arrive, with antimatter/matter weaponry, climaxing in a battle in the psychic realm where with a well-placed anti-orkishness railgun he annihilates the concept of “Orc” from reality. A TYPICALLY crude solution which Nyxar would of made way cooler.

[IKARION DISAGREES. THIS WAS A COOL WAY.]

The Season of Rest, Year Two

On Terra, Ikarion is given a triumph against a foe that no-one quite remembers due to them being destroyed at a conceptual level, with huge floats adorned with empty banners. He is declared Warmaster for his achievements.

However, Ikarion is a long way away from there – holed up in the The Anchorage with the confused and desperate survivors of the destruction of the Parliamentary system, adorned in jewels, being exchanged for food. Nyx returns from his sabbatical, oddly tanned and full of psychic potency. And they wonder about the absence of Aurix.

Aurix arrives, carried by Livia the Connected. He’s dead. He has been murdered by the Saint Warmaster out of rage for Ikarion’s new position. The universe cannot have two Warmasters. The Saint says he’ll kill anything dear to Ikarion.

[IKARION WEEPS FOR HIS LOST BROTHER, BUT THEN: FIGHTS!]

The Spring Season of War, Year Three

Meeting at the funeral of their dead comrade, sending his body to the event horizon of a black hole, they make plans. They have to concentrate on the Warmaster, and ignore news of a archeology discovery on the Agriworld and the Tyrant’s continuing blockade of the Maelstrom, to the frustration of the Solar Fleet.

The Warmaster’s plan is to take over the Faith from the Anchorite, seizing holy shrines across the galaxy, and making a new religion based upon him – and sending subverted Blade Guild Assassins to kill Joe the Bullet God. Both succeed.  Ikarion’s planned final space Battle with the Warmaster fails when the Bullet God returns, subverted, furious that Ikarion abandoned him to die. Ikarion kills him, even as the Warmaster escapes, to move to the next step of their plan – with the kidnapped Tallyrand the diplomat. The Warmaster has no idea that the old diplomat is in constant psychic contact with Nyx, which Nyxar planned ALL ALONG and when he lost it was on purpose because of this plan.

The Summer of War, Year Three

News from Talleyrand explains the next step. The Warmaster has located the hidden death world of the Blade Guild, and plans to destroy the league of assassins. The Scions manage to get there in time – Nyx by tricking the Warmaster’s legionaries that he had turned traitor. When aboard this world-sized-deathmatch-island, Nyx tries to fight his way through the place to save Mistress Blade from the poison she’s already taken. He makes it, only to be shot by her with a needler. He awakes to find her dead – with a final engraved weapon with the legend “I WAS WRONG” written on it.

Meanwhile, Ikarion is a monster, stomping through this hidden world. While the Saints’ Legion burns assassins, he hunts for his Rival Warmaster – finally confronting him, and sending the pair of them falling, ever fighting, in a duel down the side of this huge structure.

After an exchange of blows, Ikarion is sent flying off into space, his magma-blood venting until he’s lost forever. Nyx hears the psychic anguish, and reaches out with his senses… allowing the Warmaster to locate him, and open a portal to reach through to strangle him. Nyx takes control of a dead Leionaire corpse nearby to shoot the forearm off – but the Saint wrestles control of the corpse, and uses it to unload into Nyx until he too is gone.

[IKARION IS SURPRISED TO BE DEAD. AND DISAPPOINTED.]

The Saint Warmaster rules the galaxy.

Epilogue

The corpse of Nyx is returned to the Collegia Psi. They saw futures where he won. It was not this one. He is sent off, uncannily preserved, in a barge into space.

Ikarion’s beloved Solar Fleet fought on, pushed increasingly to the frontiers. In thousands of years time, the last wizened marine dies on an asteroid, and the memory of Ikarion the Warmaster passed from the galaxy. 

The future was a dark age. Just not their dark age.

PLAYTEST NOTES

This was an interesting one. In that it absolutely everything new worked mostly as I hoped it would, while also being the playtest which most highlighted how much work remains. Which it did by (basically) going wrong.

It didn’t go mechanically wrong. All the stuff I tried to execute worked. Having less stuff on the character sheets made the sheets easier to use, and all players keep track of their resources (including the GM). Everyone can see clearly what’s going on, and where the trouble are. The various tweaks to Paragon seem to work – I simplified the language around all the games’ assets hugely, so now all resources are just “bonds” which you spend, rather than each sort having their own terminology. I brought a lot of stuff inspired by Deathmatch Island’s execution over, and worked as well as it does in Deathmatch Island, because Deathmatch Island is well good.

That the chassis felt stable made me feel confident to do some fairly big changes along the way. Hell, I changed the domains (“stats”) when I realised that “CUNNING” was getting a lot more than one would think. I dropped TECHNOLOGY and split CUNNING into RHETORIC and CUNNING (and tests that would have been Technology became Cunning). I realised the XP system (which mirrored Agon’s) could be deeply simplified and serve my purpose. A bunch of that stuff – which feels big, but is actually less so.

I also executed a bunch of other changes, because the game had set itself on fire and was as going as badly as any of the playtests has. Which speaks to how well most the playtests went, but I was aware that something had gone amiss.

Don’t get me wrong. I was enjoying it. Fun stuff was happening at the table… but between sessions, players weren’t really talking about it. The moment I realised something had gone deeply amiss was when the Scions had their death warrants signed and were officially criminals who were going to be executed, and despite scenes being called, the Scions just wanted to do their next mission.

So – what went wrong?

Basically, I fucked up the set up and it cascaded from there.

The game is meant to have 3 relatively easy teach-the-game first encounters – two of which leads to players gaining assets, and the encounters “attack” the empire Factions in a low-level way (to introduce the threat system). Basically “Here’s a Space Hulk – and has a weird explorer trapped inside who you can rescue” and “Here’s a distant signal – which if you explore is a weird world you now control” and “Here are space orks – they’re attacking a faction. If you don’t stop ’em, that faction will be miffed.”

I’d added the wrong Space Hulk card, and rather than the “here’s a new friend” it was the “oh now, evil Demon Pirate is released”. The Scions were immediately on the back foot, with an actual real problem rather than the space orks’ minor one. This perhaps would have been fine, if the players had rolled well – or even averagely, but they didn’t.

Then 1/6 chances turned up a lot meaning what full on open rebellion of major factions happened very early. Each problem took two “seasons” to deal, meaning there was a limitation to what else they could do, except deal with the huge immediate problem.

Part of this is great – it’s big drama, big moves, big thematic stuff. However, things getting rough early meant that none of the Scions had imprinted on the fiction sufficiently. What The Scions is trying to do is present a Commander-eye view of an Empire. Yes, you do all your big Caeser and Pompey meetings and have your Cleopatra moments, but it is a game which models the political situation, and builds hard consequences from it. As such, it has more boardgame DNA than most, because that awful alienation from slaughter is what it’s in some ways about.

The game gets interesting when what you see is perfect play has a narrative push against it. The right tactical thing to do is this – but that would involve abandoning the person you like to an awful fate. However, due to dropping them in the deep end, they hadn’t had enough time to generate those emotional attachments. I think folks had fun, but it often felt like an elaborate fictional wrapper on top of a boardgame. This is always a bit of that there with Paragon games, but more so with Scions, for obvious it-looks-like-a-boardgame reasons. While the amount of information on the board is ibkt what’s on your sheet, it’s more present, and can led at least one player to staring at the board rather than the game, if you see what I mean.

The second problem was how bad the Scions rolls were, which revealed areas where the game didn’t give players enough chances to modify risk. The game is exciting because the 1 in 6 chance is real. When players roll a lot of 1 in 6, and there’s no way back from the death spiral? That’s a clear problem.

But, as I said, seeing that things go awry in ways I think I recognised, let me start hacking. In the first season of rest (downtime) I made that every Scion who didn’t have a character asset (i.e. friend) got one. As in, everyone due to the messed up start. There was already a rule which gave anyone with an asset a chance to refresh one, so this is actually just an extension of that (and replacing the “gain a reputation/memory” bonus from Agon/Deathmacth Island, math fans).

As such, everyone soon had at least a friend – Livia the Matchmaker being the one who seemed to make the biggest difference. When Aurix had to make the call to abadon Livia’s Terran Ladies to their fate to fight an Ork invasion – that was probably the best example of the big epic storytelling I want Scion to generate, and has turned up in other playtests. Lifting another element from Deathmatch Island helped too – rather than an asset’s dice being a set size, it can increase if it’s especially relevant to a problem they face, so tying the fiction back to the mechanics. They’re more than a dice. They’re the Bullet God. Making them more and more fiction.

It ended up fine, I think. There’s big, brassy, ludicrous fiction generated, with the scale Paragon lets you do really in full effect – all the Scions had something suitably berserk. “The assassination of the conception of orkisnhness with a psychic railgun” is the sort of thing which Scions lives for, at least in a certain mode. It’s a shame we had to play without the third Scion for the final session, but it hung together. It was also interesting for other reasons – it was the first game where the end was “Scions lose” rather than “Scions turn on one another and have a civil war, where they kill each other, and lose” That’s useful, if only to see it actually does work.

These are the areas this playtest is pushing me towards tweaking.

Balance: A big hard look at the math, and more attention on the economy of when things go wrong (or right). I suspect this will lead to deleting some keywords, and slightly easier access to Faction Bonds.
Gamesmaster tools: This is the bigger one, actually. Part of it is just nailing down principles of what “good GMing” looks like in this game… but it’s also me abandoning part of the fantasy of the game, which was creating a machine which generates consequences and problems, and all the players (including the GM) wrestle with them. The For The Queen meets the Blades Faction Game. But for the game to work, the GM-role (the Chaos Player) needs more authority and tools to question what the game “map” is saying. Because it’s a map, not the terrain – a representation rather than the whole fiction. By the end of the game, I was explicitly doing thing with the mission cards and factions I wouldn’t have at the start. “Do you think this is a good way to represent what’s happening in games?” became a key question, as I used the cards as material.
Player Agency: Paragon games are interesting, in players have huge narrative authority. They really can do whatever they wish, and win (or fail) however they want, after they roll the dice. That’s extreme narrative authority. However, the set-challenge structure is one thing which makes it feel like a boardgame – you see the challenges on the board, and pick one. As such, I finally added rules for how players can do things which explicitly aren’t missions in play, and how that would work. Perhaps ironically, this is bringing in things akin to downtown in Blades – long term projects, etc. Basically, ensuring while there are core ways to interact with the playspace, the game gives all the players ways to interact it in other ways, while also giving the tools so those choices can also interact in the world and change the play state. If a player thinks their Scion could try something, the game should support it. “Hey – I hate Mistress Knife. I want to assassinate her.”
Earlier Player Buy-In: The change to ensure they always have a character asset was good, but I will go further. In the prologue, the players get to chat with a Faction lead. In the present draft, it’s mainly a chance to introduce players to the world and get the first chance of what it’s like to be treated as a god everyone looks up to – play to the ego, set up scale. I’m going to be adding some questions where the players get to define specific natures of these faction leads, their goals, their relationships to you and each other (“Who does Mistress Knife hate?” “What lesson do you always remember from Mistress Knife?” “Why am I just using Mistress Knife as an example?”). That hopefully means that even from the first season, these will feel like actually lead to some imprinting, either for better or worse. “I hate the NPC” is almost as good as “I love the NPC.” It also gives GM even more stuff to make the person live, generate sub-missions and so on.

Anyway – a successful playtest, in terms of taking a lot from it. It’s one of the ones which remind you “everything going great” isn’t actually that great for a playtest, at least early on. That means you didn’t hit any stress points in your design. Me fucking up the set up and the series of unlikely rolls revealed problems which I need to chew over. I do smile that I spent significant effort trying to make it a game which almost GMs itself, and am now working on putting more GMing back in. That’ll teach me.

Actually, the real next step is making a physical set of cards, so I can do a game in person. I think I have a way to run it in 3-4 hours as a one-shot, so maybe I’ll see if I can find folks to run at UKGE or something.

Oh, look, I did it.