[Codename: Sardonyx] Teaser the First

Scion, Trinity Continuum

Greetings, true believers! It’s been a long, hard path to Sardonyx.

The Genesis of a System

The Storyteller/Storytelling Systems are built towards a fairly specific end – that is, horror gaming. Many games using those systems do cinematic action (Exalted, for example), and do it very well, but the primary focus of the games is on the consequences and deadliness of violence (see the upcoming nWoD supplement Hurt Locker).

From the start, Rich – our fearless pioneer on the Onyx Path – realized that the Scion and Trinity lines had very similar needs. Both involved distinct “tiers” of PC power, both involved characters who were literally superhuman, and both needed a system capable of handling that involvement.

Furthermore, both games were fundamentally derived from a pulp or action-oriented origin: literal pulp, for Adventure!, but superheroics in Aberrant and high-octane space opera for Trinity (now Aeon once more). Scion, by contrast, called back to the cinematic action of high-budget movies and the mythic action of yore, the kind seen in the Twelve Labors of Hercules or the Kurukshetra War described in the Indian epic Mahabharata. (Also, one Scion book noted you could throw an aircraft carrier straight into orbit.) So rather than try to hack one system that was originally created for horror gaming into three separate tiers of power, Rich asked us to come up with something that scales properly to all three, and was built with an action focus in mind.

The History of a System

Those of you who’ve walked the Onyx Path with us since 2012 will recall references to early builds of the system at the beginning of the next year. Until the system was built, a lot of development for both games was necessarily put on hold. Sadly, we system writers repeatedly suffered financial and medical difficulties, and the system went through four iterations – far longer than anyone thought it would take – before three developers took over in September 2014, a triumvirate consisting of myself, Stew Wilson, and Dave Brookshaw.

Around the fourth iteration, I decided the system needed a better name than Onyx Path System, so we came up with Sardonyx. This isn’t the final name of the system, just a codename placeholder, though a remnant might remain in the red and black pools.

But, hey. Now it’s done. Right now, we’ve been getting feedback from various developers and doing internal playtesting, and we’re moving forward on system development for both Scion and Trinity. We’re almost – almost! – ready for full open development and open playtesting.

It’s worth talking about our system’s goals, though. We had a number of system goals set down from Rich, and from there I developed a number of playstyle goals. You might recall some of these elements from the Mage Chronicler’s Guide for Mage: the Awakening, and since it had one of the best summations of an action-oriented D10 system, I stole from it. Stole liberally!

System Goals:

Legacy: Evoke a legacy feeling in our fans and retaining attractive features of the prior systems used by Scion and Trinity – newbie-friendliness, ease-of-use, and a largely in-universe palette of traits.

Evoke a legacy feeling in our fans and retaining attractive features of the prior systems used by Scion and Trinity – newbie-friendliness, ease-of-use, and a largely in-universe palette of traits. Scaling: A clearly defined dice resolution system capable of handling man on the street to god in the sky. The system must be capable of handling mortals, demigods, and deity battles in a largely conceptual realm. More appropriately, the ability to tailor a large number of game and game styles off of this structure.

Playstyle Goals:

Bonding: Action is about bringing characters together in the face of danger. Others may fall apart, but the players’ band/team builds common morale with each challenge. Scions progress from bands of disparate heroes to godlings to potentially full pantheons. Scions have different Pantheons, Daredevils have social clubs, Psions have different Orders, Novas are all over the map in terms of interests and groups. There must be ties to keep the player troupe together and interested in one another as characters, and the system must aid in that (at the very least, not inhibit it, and make the GM and players’ job harder for them).

Action is about bringing characters together in the face of danger. Others may fall apart, but the players’ band/team builds common morale with each challenge. Scions progress from bands of disparate heroes to godlings to potentially full pantheons. Scions have different Pantheons, Daredevils have social clubs, Psions have different Orders, Novas are all over the map in terms of interests and groups. There must be ties to keep the player troupe together and interested in one another as characters, and the system must aid in that (at the very least, not inhibit it, and make the GM and players’ job harder for them). Competence: The characters are good fighters or clever enough to make their way through combat – or whatever challenge they’re forced into confronting. They’re also at little general risk of failing in their area of expertise without significant or equal opposition. Trinity daredevils and psions are tough and highly capable, while Scions and various other divine by-blows are (often literally) blessed by the gods.

The characters are good fighters or clever enough to make their way through combat – or whatever challenge they’re forced into confronting. They’re also at little general risk of failing in their area of expertise without significant or equal opposition. Trinity daredevils and psions are tough and highly capable, while Scions and various other divine by-blows are (often literally) blessed by the gods. Interesting Fights: Characters take advantage of their surroundings. Combat is tactically challenging, providing a high-action narrative-heavy focus for players.

Characters take advantage of their surroundings. Combat is tactically challenging, providing a high-action narrative-heavy focus for players. Pacing: Wall to wall violence and epic conflict gets pretty dull. Non-action events reinforce the establishment of the world setting, providing clues to the next action set piece, and tell the protagonists how to beat their enemies. This breaks up action scenes to keep them from getting boring; every scene is accompanied by dramatic justification.

Those were what we started with; however, as the system developed, our goals changed slightly. I’ll detail how in future teasers.

So in Sardonyx, you’ll see nine Attributes, and a number of accompanying Skills. You’ll see Edges – analogous to Merits in Storytelling – that define how characters are tied into the setting. You’ll see Paths, avenues of development in the character’s past and future that further define their ties into the setting, and can be improved via experience. You’ll see experience, at that: a linear cost to progressing the character’s capabilities.

Thanks, guys! See you next week!

…just kidding. Here’s a link to the Google Doc with a summation of the core mechanic, Consolation, and Momentum, written by White Wolf and OPP veteran Malcolm Sheppard.

Judge it kindly – it’s a piecemeal view of the system for now, but you’ve all waited long enough, so I thought I’d share the basic core mechanic of the game, without the bells and whistles of complex or multiple actions. Right now, I’ve restricted it to Mundane and Daredevil Tiers, until you see the full Scaling and Tier system; after that gets spoiled, I’ll add those elements back in.