WELCOME TO THE STORYPATH SYSTEM Hello Onyx Path fans! The evolution of the Storypath system is tied to our work on the Trinity Continuum, a world of hope, heroism, and peril, and Scion, a world where the children of the old gods walk the earth. Early on, we found that both new editions of these games had similar system needs, because their characters are larger-than-life and fight in epic battles on a grand scale. We knew we needed a system that could accommodate everyday citizens on the street, superheroes soaring above skyscrapers, and gods of the sun and sky, but we also wanted rules to help facilitate the connection between the player-characters, their organizations (Allegiances for the Trinity Continuum and Pantheons for Scion), and their values. To move forward, however, we needed to take a step back, because the first editions of the Trinity Continuum and Scion used custom variants of the Storyteller System which powered Vampire: The Masquerade and other classic White Wolf games. Despite the differences between those variants, however, at its core the Storyteller System was designed chiefly as a horror game for creatures that could be effectively fought by human opponents. In other words, the Storyteller System is great for vampires, but it didn’t excel at portraying superheroes…or gods! To us, this meant that the stories of these action-adventure games were hindered by their original systems. The Storypath System was designed as a new set of rules, inspired by the legacy of the Storyteller and Storytelling Systems, in addition to other story-centric rules. The Storypath System keeps the focus on narrative, story-built play, and action-adventure. It also draws inspiration from a number of other influences that focus on a cinematic high-octane action and storytelling, as well, to create a streamlined experience for epic stories. Within these pages, you’ll find a preview of the rules and examples for both the Trinity Continuum and Scion. We hope you enjoy the new Storypath System and are inspired to roll the dice and tell great stories! Signed, The Design Team
STORYPATH SYSTEM OVERVIEW The Storypath System uses ten-sided dice, and is designed to be an action-heavy roleplaying game. The rules facilitate a number of playing styles and in game elements at the table including: • Action Gameplay: Storypath takes cues from action movies to keep scenes moving quickly and preventing them from getting bogged down. • Cinematic Pacing: Storypath divides sessions and scenes into different units of time that support a story moving at the speed of plot. Campaigns are modeled similarly to a long-running television series, using episodes, arcs, and seasons, to emphasize plot and characters over minutia or real time competency. • Scaling: Storypath uses a comparative chart to measure general degrees of power between opponents. Gods or superheroes can fight each other on mostly equal ground, while mere mortals can do the same to one another. It’s only when the psychic superhuman deals with your average beat cop that Scale comes into play! 2
• Bonding: Though the rules are designed to portray individual characters, Storypath also uses group mechanics to create a collaborative storytelling role-playing experience. The Bonds formed during character creation and sessions bring new overarching mechanics and collaborative themes into play based on character milestones. • Competence: The player-characters are assumed to be competent in their area of specialization be it research, combat, persuasion, or any other field of human endeavor. Dice rolls aren’t always meant to assume success or failure: they’re meant to determine influence over the story and the degree to which the character succeeds. • Enhanced Combat: Storypath combat uses ranged bands, fields with terrain features, and the tools for both active and supporting characters to contribute to a fight. Combined, these techniques will keep fights interesting — even in extended conflicts and battles.
MODE S OF PLAY Storypath actions belong to three general modes that roughly map to Attributes, or ways characters interact with the setting. Modes are schemas inspired by traits instead of rigid categories, and are not meant to be internalized as hard and
fast rules. By design, different settings will inspire new modes clustered around setting-specific special traits and systems. The following schemas apply to most games powered by the Storypath System, regardless of setting:
ACTION-ADVENTURE (PHYSICAL-INSPIRED MODE) Physical peril, violence, and round-by-round action. This is the realm of punch-ups, car chases, and defusing bombs with seconds to spare. These fast-paced scenes usually take place in real-time, with specialist rules covering combat and dramatic movement.
PROCEDURALS (MENTAL-INSPIRED MODE) Deductions, careful research, and cunning preparation. The focus is on solving problems by using information gathered through clues and evidence or formulated plans. These scenes take place as montages, skipping through long stretches of work, and include specialist rules for investigation and crafting.
INTRIGUE (SOCIAL-INSPIRED MODE) Interpersonal ties, relationships, and social manipulation. These scenes include interrogations, infiltrating secret social circles, and pursuing romantic ties. They blend real-time conversation with stretches of “skipped” time, and include specialist rules for persuasion and representing different personalities.
STORYPATH SYSTEM BASICS ATT RIBUTE S A N D ABI LITIE S Attributes are divided into three Arenas: Mental, Physical, and Social — and three Approaches: Force, Finesse, and Resilience — for nine total Attributes. Attributes reflect a character’s most basic qualities to define who they are. They might be smart, strong, graceful, or self-assured. If other characters were asked to describe that person in a few words, their responses would likely be a reflection of their Attributes: they might say they’re clever or clumsy, or that they’re a brusque but effective leader. When paired with Skills, these traits determine the character’s ability to overcome specific obstacles. Dice pools are formed from pairing a Skill with an Attribute. Skills describe a character’s capabilities, either from formal training or refining raw talent.
DIFFICU LTY Any action that you actually roll for has a Difficulty, even if it’s 0. This is the number of successes that you must meet — including any Enhancements — to see if you succeed. If you don’t have successes left after meeting the Difficulty, you fail.
THE CORE MECHANIC You roll a dice pool of d10s: Skill + Attribute against a set Difficulty, which is the number of successes you must meet. Each die that rolls an 8 or above is a success. If your dice roll scores one or more successes, you add bonus successes from any Enhancements from equipment or powers. You succeed on your action if the successes meet or exceed the Difficulty, and fail if you don’t. More successes than you need allow benefits called Stunts, and failing gains you Consolation, a chance to affect the story anyway. If you score 0 successes rolling the dice and one or more of them show a 1, you botch and fail especially badly, but earn more Momentum (a kind of Consolation) than for a failure. Powerful entities, like demigods or superheroic novas, roll at a target number of 7 or above to get a success.
Example: You roll 6 dice as your pool against Difficulty 3
0 No Successes and if any die shows a 1, then a botch occurs.
1
2
Insufficient Successes with Consolation
3
4
Number of Successes needed. If you get this many, you succeed.
5
6
Extra Successes that add Stunts 3
ST UNTS
Stunts are a way of rewarding success beyond the basics, allowing you to spend your extra successes to produce additional effects, like creating useful Enhancements or Complications for other characters. They’re also used to narrate details to the scene that are beneficial to your characters and generated by your character’s action. Perhaps you successfully clamber over a wall and have time to create a handhold for the friend fleeing directly behind you, or confuse pursuit with a false trail. FAI LU RE & CONS OLATION
If a dice roll scores no successes, or the character cannot muster enough successes to overcome the difficulty even with Enhancements, the action fails. Simply put, you don’t achieve whatever you were hoping to. You swing and miss, your charm falls flat, you draw a blank. The specific results of failure depend on the context, but it never ends in nothing happening. Instead, the Storyguide (or GM) moves the story onward by offering a Consolation, a minor benefit that doesn’t exactly give them what they want, by advances the group’s interests somehow. If your character fails to earn enough successes to sneak into the white-collar criminal’s office after-hours, they might succeed at sneaking in, but accidentally trip the silent alarm…giving them only a few scant minutes to search. Consolations can’t substitute for actual success, but might include information leading the character to another avenue of assault or completely different aspect of the story, a minor Enhancement offering a success to a future action, or attracting a potentially-useful NPC. MOME NT UM
Perhaps the most common kind of Consolation is Momentum. This is a resource that players spend to control the story’s narrative pacing and help out their characters with direct dice-adders. By default, it is an “out of character” resource, though some settings may claim it’s the very real hand of destiny at work. The players can have up 4
to 12 shared Momentum at any one time, though their Momentum pool starts out empty, and empties out again at the end of each story Arc. You receive a point of Momentum whenever your character suffers a failure or setback as the result of a Challenge (a long-term condition on the character that provides difficulties in their narrative), or if your dice roll fails and accept Momentum as your Consolation. E D GE S
Edges are unique quirks that offer a character a constant, passive benefit. They often provide an Enhancement to certain actions, allow a character to bypass specific disadvantages, or represent access to abilities or resources the character would not otherwise have.
S KI LL T RICKS Skill Tricks are applications of human ability that verge on the superhuman — or, at least, the superhumanly reliable. It’s certainly possible to drive backwards at top speed through raging traffic without so much as denting a wing-mirror, but it’s not something even an expert can just accomplish on command…unless they’ve got a Skill Trick. Unlike Edges, Skill Tricks cost Momentum to activate, and cover specific feats or sequences — the sort of cool moments that make you go “wow” (or “bullshit”) when you see them pulled off in an action movie. As such, Skill Tricks don’t normally provide an Enhancement that can be spent on anything — instead, they offer a “free” Stunt when used, representing the specific trick in question.
SCALE Storypath games span back-alley brawls to dragon-riding dogfights, often in the same adventure. Scale exists to handle these extreme circumstances, representing entities or effects on a different level than normal humans. A Might (Physical Force Attribute) 1 weakling can struggle against a Might 5 bodybuilder, but they’re both ants in front of a T-Rex. However, they are also exciting adventures where heroes overcome impossible odds. Scale is therefore kind to important characters; a raging giant easily crushes buildings and faceless crowds, but our heroes can dart through the chaos and face him on more even ground.
I N ITIATIVE In action-adventure round-by-round conflicts, the action can get pretty chaotic. Storypath uses an initiative system that’s a mix of traditional and collaborative means to make sure everyone gets their chance in the spotlight. At the start of the scene, you roll a dice pool of d10s with the Skills and Attributes your character is using to react to the situation. Each roll generates a turn slot for either a player or Storyguide character, with the slots placed in order of which achieved the most successes — traits (and then Storyguide’s preference) break the tie if there’s a draw. This is the initiative order. The player character who achieved the most successes occupies the first player turn slot, and acts within it. Once the next slot comes up, the first player decides which of their group-mates takes their turn, out of those who have yet to act this round. And so on, with each player picking the next to go after his or her turn is finished. The Storyguide does the same with their characters. This cycle continues every round until no characters or turns remain, at which point it resets and the player character whose turn was last picks the next player to start the next round.
H EALT H Damage in the Storypath System is represented by two separate but related concepts: stress boxes, which measure accumulated strain from the conflict, and Injury Complications, which represent actual injuries. Once all a character’s stress boxes are filled by damage, they are Taken Out (maybe killed, maybe not), but a player can stop damage from affecting their stress boxes by accepting Injury Complications instead. These are effectively extra successes added to the Difficulty; without buying off these Injury Complications, the character can’t attempt the action.
PAT H S
place they came from, or even a concept or setting topic that relates to their character. Each Path is important not only to a single character, but are built to give substance and meaning to the entire chronicle, as well as a holistic sense to the character’s history beyond Edges, Skills, and Attributes. In some cases, these are setting specific groups and organizations a character can be a part of; in others, these are specific to a certain chronicle or group. Characters relate to a Path through a short sentence or descriptive phrase, which defines a fact and a relationship to the setting, like “Three-time Bare-Knuckle Boxing Champion” or “Biotech Researcher for Orgotek”. Paths contain a number of standard elements: • Asset Skills/Specialties: When a character takes this Path at character creation, they receive Specialties of the player’s choice in the two listed Asset Skills. More specific Paths (such as Allegiances) grant listed Specialties particularly relevant to their groups. • Contacts, Mentors, and Allies: Characters on a Path will have other characters who are useful acquaintances, acquired over the course of her life and work: a colleague, a lover, or just someone to trade favors with. • Equipment: The character can gain access to any equipment relevant to the Path (normally restricted to common items; high-cost items or mean the character has to take a Challenge, as described below). • Access: Some locations in the setting might be restricted for most characters, but if the character’s Path would grant them access — such as someone with “A legacy New York’s Finest” as their Path — they’d be able to walk into the police station or a cop bar anywhere in NYC with no questions asked or alarms raised. • Narrative Advantage/Disadvantage: On a Stunt or once per session, the player group can collaboratively bring in an advantage that relates to a character’s Path, or bring in a disadvantage that will challenge the group (but will provide Momentum and challenges to overcome).
EXAMPLE HEALTH TRACK
•••
Vitality: 3
-1 -1 -2 -2 -4
Paths represent pieces of a chronicle setting which characters can interact with and be a part of. Paths are the organizations characters belong to, the societies they join, the 5
ACTION-ADVENTURE EXTEN DED EXAMPLE A pair of psions (Alexis, a psychokinetic Legionnaire, and Javier, a Norçan biokinetic), having been alerted of an incursion of Chromatic vessels in the woods outside their colony, arrive on the scene. Between the densely-packed woods in the early-morning fog, they see the bright flashes of light from a mob of Chromatics preparing to march on the unsuspecting colony. Once they spot the presence of the psions, the Chromatics quicken and charge menacingly. Since none of the characters are using stealth to approach, they don’t need to beat the perception rolls of the frog-like alien figures. The psions exchange looks, knowing the threat they face could have serious repercussions. The Storyguide asks her players to roll for initiative. Alexis’ player gets four successes and Javier’s rolls three. The Storyguide rolls one pool for the horde of Chromatics and only gets one success. The players decide to go in the order the dice fell. Alexis wastes no time and charges in first. The mob is in Close Range already, so she moves to Engaged on her action without requiring a movement roll. She rolls Close Combat + Might (8 dice). She rolls 4 successes against the mob’s Defense (a type of Difficulty) of 1. Since the mob is treated as one single group, Alexis’ player decides to put all of her successes into damage, as mobs have a much higher stress track than players but don’t usually take Injury Complications. Javier shouts that he’ll try to gain ground and uses one of his noetic powers to grow wings and talons, then his player rolls his movement dice (a pool of Athletics + Dexterity) to move past the Chromatic mob in a swoop. His player rolls a Close Combat + Might to attack with a dice pool of 6. He rolls 3 successes. The mob takes the damage once again as Javier slashes with his talons and soars past. Then, the alien mass surges forward and threatens to consume both psions under its writhing, glowing mass. The Storyguide rolls for the horde; it’s fairly dangerous, so the pool is 8 dice. It’s a good roll, turning up 5 successes, which she splits between the two player characters. They each compare their Defenses the higher of Close Combat or Dodge Defenses, respectively. Alexis’ player has Defense 3; this is high enough to avoid being hit, while Javier’s player only has a Defense 1, missing the Difficulty of 2 by 1. The Chromatics pile onto Alexis and try to pin her beneath their slick, slashing weight, but she punches her way out of the dogpile and leaps away from the attack, dazzled by their holographic displays but otherwise unharmed. Some Chromatics manage to focus their displays into low-power lasers and fire at Javier’s wings, slowing his rapid approach — but not enough to stop it. (Minion enemies like this do not typically cause injury to Hero-tier player characters unless they grossly exceed their Defense, instead causing a Complication. In this case, Javier is slowed down by singed feathers.) 6
The players decide that Alexis will go first again the next round. The psions mount their second assault; Alexis recklessly rapid-fires her gun. She chooses to Empty the Clip while making an Aim attack action, which adds 2 extra successes to her roll — giving her a total of 5 successes against the Defense of 1. The hail of shots tears through the Chromatics’ bodies. Meanwhile, Javier decides to snatch one of these creatures and drops it on its remaining fellows. Javier’s player asks the Storyguide how heavy the Chromatics are, and together they determine that the aliens — about the size of a large dog — are light enough for him to pick up. His player rolls Close Combat + Might and turns up 2 successes, which gets +2 successes due to Scale — amplified by her noetics to be enough to take out the mob facing her as well. The Chromatic drops like a stone, and they all collapse with a satisfying thud. For a moment all is silent. The Storyguide tells the players the way is clear, and the psions rush forward to see what other surprises the Chromatic ships may hold.
INTRIGUE AN D PROCEDURAL EXAMPLES S O CIAL Anaya is a special operative working for the Lightkeepers tasked with stealing the explosive cores from bizarre new Z-wave bombs being used by a mysterious new group of terrorists. Unfortunately, they’re the terrorists’ well-kept secret; only the inner circle seems to have any idea how they function. Resolved to find one, Anaya masquerades as a specialist demolitions engineer and arranges a meeting with a prominent cell leader who goes by the code name Twentynine Eleven. With some luck and fast talking, soon she’s taken by Eleven to the makeshift lab where the Z-wave cores are stored. Anaya assesses Eleven over some small talk, so her player makes a Empathy + Manipulation roll. She hopes he’ll give her a moment alone, but if his Attitude (how he feels about her) toward her is lower than Scope (how big a favor she’s asking) of that task, her suggestion will fail. The Storyguide decides that Eleven considers leaving the cores unguarded to be a Significant request, a Scope of 3 — which means it’s pretty difficult. Unfortunately, Anaya’s Empathy + Manipulation roll assessment roll gets 2 successes, and since Eleven isn’t trying to hide his feelings there’s no contested roll. While he’s pleased with her skills and offer to assist, his Attitude (Trivial, or an Attitude of 1) isn’t quite good enough. Since it won’t be easy to improve his Attitude further, she decides to reduce the apparent Scope of the task, making it seem like not such a big deal that the dangerous bomb cores be left unguarded.
Anaya’s player makes a contested Persuasion + Presence roll beats the Storyguide’s Empathy + Resolve, and he lends an ear. She scores 4 successes to his 1, and by spending extra successes equal to his Composure, she pulls off a Stunt to reduce the Scope of the task. The player describes the countless other dangerous and powerful Z-wave devices she’s been privileged to create and study. Soon he’s flattered into adding his own cores to that list and leaves her alone to study. Or so he thinks…!
I NT RIGU E Last night, Donatello’s David bronze sculpture was stolen from its place in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence. Unfortunately, it’s desperately needed by Piotr Dorokin of the Global Cartography Initiative to help locate a Renaissance doomsday device. The device is set to go off during a solar eclipse in two days, so time is of the essence. Piotr is able to recruit a colleague, Allison Carbine, a little-known agent of Les Fantômes. This investigation is a Complex Action, which means that overall success depends on multiple rolls to represent different intervals of the investigation. The Storyguide decides that two core Clues (discrete information that drives story progress) are needed to crack the case. The time limit leaves only two intervals before the eclipse, so our heroes split up. Allison uses her Path Contacts as a thief to declare she knows a black-market antiquities dealer who will talk, and interrogates him. He reveals the black market’s abuzz with stories about a rare bronze statuette — the first Clue. Since she uses her Contacts for this, it doesn’t require a roll, but Allison’s player decides to roll Persuasion + Presence anyway, in the hopes of getting an extra success against a Difficulty of 2. Her player scores three successes, and her player uses the third success to get an alternative clue — the dealer knows where a black-market auction is being held in several days. Putting two and two together, she deduces David may be at that auction. During the same interval, Piotr hits the books and his player makes a Humanities + Intellect roll. Unfortunately, his library is thin on Renaissance secret societies, so he lacks an Enhancement and 2 successes doesn’t beat the Difficulty of 3. He hasn’t found a Clue, but as a Consolation the Storyguide offers a 3D view of the statue from a museum website — this info won’t help track the sculpture down, but could provide an Enhancement later. For their second interval, the team sneaks into the auction house. Machado’s player makes a Subterfuge + Cunning roll with a teamwork bonus. Four successes beats the Difficulty of 3, and discovers the address of the person trying to auction David, the second Clue, which concludes the investigation. A spare success fuels a Stunt to notice another detail — the David thief was also going to auction a signet ring owned by Donatello. The thief’s door bursts open before the two can knock on their approach, revealing him to be a Camparelli thug Piotr has tangled with before. Perhaps they’re not the only ones looking for the doomsday device...
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The Trinity Continuum is an action-adventure game of heroes of all kinds and every time period imaginable. It’s a game about seeing something that needs doing and doing it — because if you don’t do it, who will? The titular Continuum is a collection of timestreams and alternate universes stretching back into the barely-remembered past, and flowing far into the distant future.
• Allegiances: A heaping handful of modern-day organizations to which a Talent may belong, from the troubleshooters of 9, to the explorers of the Global Cartography Initiative, to the virtuous thieves of Les Fantômes. Æon’s Allegiances are headlined by seven Psi Orders, each specializing in a different Aptitude of psychic power.
Talents are daredevils of extraordinary luck or skill, the Indiana Jones or James Bonds of the world. Psions are those gifted with the psychic aptitude to manipulate the world to a precise degree. Novas are the stalwart few who can control the very fundamental forces of nature — a power which, if they’re not careful, will drive them mad with aberrant lusts. These Inspired individuals, and more, rise to the fore whenever heroes are in need. And the world is always in need of heroes.
• Gifts: Can you shoot a target from a mile away while skydiving? Does traffic always tend to work in your favor, but stymie your foes? Have your companions thought you dead on more than one occasion only to see you stumble home the next day with a great story to tell? Gifts are the inexplicable abilities possessed by Talents which manifest as extreme skill or incredible luck.
Every age has its heroes. Which will you be? The Trinity Continuum consists of one central rulebook — which includes all the core rules, a modern day setting, and rules for Talents — and three main major era books detailing important flashpoints in the Continuum. Trinity Continuum: Æon describes a science-fiction setting in 2122, where psions are on the rise to help lift humanity to the stars and protect them from the return of the Aberrants. Trinity Continuum: Aberrant contains a more immediate near future superpowers setting in 2028 where novas have begun to appear all over the world. Trinity Continuum: Adventure! uses low-powered versions of the three Inspired types to fulfill pulp archetypes in an action-packed 1924. These aren’t the only eras that will be explored; other eras along the Continuum will be forthcoming. The Trinity Continuum uses the Storypath System. Additionally, this game’s rules will include:
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• Dramatic Editing: Sometimes, even when the odds are stacked to your advantage, things just refuse to go your way. Maybe the guards are doing their rounds early and are about to catch you breaking into a safe. Maybe you’ve just fumbled and fallen off a cliff. Dramatic Editing is what allows you, the player, to briefly grab the reins from the Storyguide to explain how you’re going to get out of a jam. Suddenly a convenient vent above the safe door lets you quickly hide from the guards, or an errant tree branch growing out of the cliff grants you the means to save yourself. • Aptitudes: One of eight fields of Psi ability possessed by psions, such as psychokinesis (remote movement), telepathy (remote communication), biokinesis (reshaping your own body), electrokinesis (technology and the electromagnetic spectrum), vitakinesis (healing your body, or someone else’s), teleportation (remote movement, even across the galaxy), clairsentience (remote sight and vision), and quantakinesis (command of subtle quantum forces and probability).
Scion is a game about gods, humanity, and everything in between. It’s a game about mythic deeds and the reasons why people talk about those mythic deeds. It’s also about modernity - the World today is a very different place than the anything our ancestors could’ve conceived. The ancient powers never fully went away. They wander our roads and cities, mingling with the teeming masses of humanity. You are one of their children, born to the magic of yesterday and the promise of tomorrow. The Primordial deities and savage Titans, dread forebears of the gods, have escaped their eternal prisons to wage war with the gods once more. Those battles in the heavenly Overworlds of the gods have spilled over into our World. Armed with weapons possessed of mighty powers, the Scions, divine offspring of both god and man, stand as humanity’s only defense. But even the gods themselves cannot stand united, as ancient rivalries spring forth once more. Will you rise to the heights of power through your heroism? Will you become more than just a pawn in a spiteful divine game? What great events will mark your ascent to godhood? Scion Second Edition consists of four books which define and expand the game’s setting, called the World, and some of the godly pantheons defining that World. The Scions — children of the gods — are granted a spark of divinity from their parents, allowing them to climb in power until they take their seats at the right hand of their parents, the gods. The first two, Scion: Origin and Scion:
Hero, are corebooks containing the Storypath System, the setting of the World, and how to make characters in the World of Scion. Scion Second Edition uses the Storypath System, and Hero contains a number of additional mechanical elements: • Divine Pantheons: Ten global pantheons, cultural groupings of gods that act as parents and patrons for Scions: the gods of the Algonquian, Aztec, Chinese, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Hindu, Irish, Japanese, Norse, and Yoruba. • Supernatural Paths: Genesis, Calling, and Pantheon. Scions are born, are created, are chosen by the gods, and this Genesis act colors their entire life. They’ve also got Callings, or aspirations towards the kind of god they want to be — such as a Warrior, a Lover, a Healer — that determine the supernatural gifts they receive. Lastly, they’re born into or join a Pantheon, the grand collection of gods with their own rivalries and politics. • Purviews and Boons: Discrete elemental miracles tied into the powers of the World, granting Scions influence over their powers of their parents: fire, the sea, the forge, thunder and the sky, and many others. • Knacks: An upgrade to the Skill Tricks of Mortals, these allow Scions truly superhuman action hero moves or suave dramatic powers that defy belief.
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TRINITY CONTINUUM AN D SCION SYSTEM VARIANTS While the Trinity Continuum and Scion both use the Storypath System, they each have their own proprietary systems to interact with the setting. Featured here is a sneak preview of two systems, the Dramatic Editing used by the Talents of the Trinity Continuum and Relic Birthrights for Scion.
DRAMATIC E DITI NG I N T H E T RI N ITY CONTI N U UM Whether it’s uncanny planning, tremendous luck, or the hand of fate, characters with Inspiration have the ability to anticipate and seize opportunities that come their way. This is, in part, because they create these opportunities. This system is meant to replicate the contrivance of coincidence inherent to the heroic universe that lies at the heart of the Trinity Continuum. It allows for the editing of a scene in a dramatically relevant manner, so long as the result doesn’t contradict previously established details. T H E TWIST
Dramatic Editing allows for the retconning of events that have already transpired in the chronicle, casting them in a new light and revealing actions or preparations taken in a brief descriptive flashback. Most often, this comes in the form of a twist or dramatic shift — an appropriate moment where the character reveals their gun hidden under the table, the small cache of passports for when their buddy needs a quick exit, or the fact that the drunk they just rolled for petty cash was in on the scam. PARAMETE RS
Believability: Dramatic Editing can be used to generate a plausible advantage within the scene, but it can’t strain the suspension of disbelief (at least, not without sufficient expenditure of Inspiration). It’s quite possible that the mafioso duct taped two guns to the bottom of his favorite table in his favorite restaurant; it’s equally unlikely he did the same to office desk of a CEO in Mumbai. Consistency: The edit can’t overrule facts that have been previously established in the setting or override the effects of a dice roll that have already occurred. If the Storyguide states that a supply locker is empty, the
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character can’t dramatically edit the scene to find a supply of ammunition. Dramatic editing also can’t be used to contradict or override anyone else’s use of editing within the scene. Timeframe: Some edits have time limits to them, according to the episodic nature of the series. These must be adhered to! Dramatic Shift: The edit must come at a moment of need or appropriately dramatic moment (the twist), as detailed above. For more about the Storypath System, the Trinity Continuum, and Scion, please visit www.theonyxpath. com.
RELICS OF SCION A revolver called Giantsbane, whose hammer is a small fragment of Mjolnir. A classic GTO “goat” muscle car. A ring with the algiz rune on it. The tools of the gods that allow a Scion to access and channel their otherworldly abilities are called relics. They provide their own motifs, or methods of use, that allow a Scion to work miracles through them. Relics can: • Channel a Purview for the Scion, allowing them to express miracles through the relic’s motifs (see Purviews) rather than their parent’s. It might also provide a small bonus to doing so. Giantsbane, being a massive gun, can only use Sky in the form of shooting lightning, huge gusts of wind, and similarly forceful exhalations, but it does these things especially well. • Provide special Boons all their own, based on the motifs of the relic. These Boons can be bought more cheaply than the Scion’s own Boons, but only work when they have the relic in their possession. • Remove the cost of an associated set of Knacks or Boons. Alternately, they might allow the use of a Knack with a different Ability or Calling. • Allow a special power, such as an enchanted gun providing infinite ammunition, a pair of headphones allowing the Scion to remotely hear conversations, or a tuning fork allowing the Scion to effortlessly mimic any sound she hears. This might even be fairly mundane, such as doubling the range on a bow, but in the hands of a demigod they become even more mighty.
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