Dedication: A lot of work has gone into this game. The development cycle for Pathways was approximately three months before initial release, and roughly two more months of heavy work afterwards. Scions is built on that work, and has the additional scope of almost nine months of constant work, making it by far the biggest project I've ever worked on in the LARP field. We didn't make Scions just to make a medieval LARP. There's already more than enough of them out there - Legacies, NERO, Amtgard to name a few. We definitely didn't want "medieval Pathways". With Scions we really wanted to do something different that hadn't been done before, break some new ground, and see what we could do to alter how LARPs are looked at. One of the earliest ground rules we laid out was to break some of the early ground rules. A lot of LARPs stay away from issues like religion and racism so their plotlines won't touch those topics. Scions is, at it's core, about Religion. It's about how different people interpret faith differently, and it's about how disagreements over "the right thing to do" can alter the reality of the entire world. Another was Death Mitigation. In most games, if you die it's no big deal - as long as it doesn't happen too often. In Scions, every death you take has the very real potential to not allow you to come back. In addition, rather than having odds based on the rolls of the dice your odds are almost entirely based on Roleplaying. Certain things in Pathways are still being used in Scions, and from a mechanics standpoint if you're a Pathways player you can switch to Scions with a minimal amount of learning curve with regards to the rules. Plot, however, is a different story. Probably the only consistency between the two games from a Plot perspective is the Religion system, although even that is dramatically different. In Pathways, the Gods are almost exclusively worshipped by the Rinn, other cultures virtually ignoring them completely. Even for the Rinn, they're more of an intangible presence and seldom if ever interact with the world. In Scions, the gods are (at least to the Player Characters) a very real presence who directly shape the day to day affairs of the mortal characters. "Shards", creatures with powers directly granted by their gods lead holy wars against the worshippers of other gods. Scions is not a game for the faint of heart. While Pathways was designed to appeal to a wide range of play styles, Scions is almost exclusively mission and RP based. Pathways supports a broad world with almost limitless possibilities where the Characters can make permanent marks on the world, Scions is a fight for survival where making your mark means living to fight the next encounter. Teamwork isn't just an option, it's a requirement if your character wants to see the next day. As the project lead for Scions, I've had the opportunity to work with the most amazing LARP development team around. I've personally worked with several LARP groups, and this team is by far the strongest group I've ever seen. Although everyone really helped with everything, some people really stand out in certain areas. So here's some thank-you's. Bryan "No timed effects" Gregory - Bryan didn't actually work on Scions. But the core mechanics from Pathways were largely developed from his work, and as such Scions gained a huge benefit from his wisdom. John "30 Effects" Pariury - JP has the amazing ability to pare down reams of concept work into a few concise paragraphs that are both amazingly complex and amazingly simple at the same time. I don't know how many people have played multiple systems and said that Pathways was the easiest to learn while still maintaining a variety of options for play. Most of that is directly attributed to JP's influences. Those influences guided the Scions team and even though JP wasn't involved with Scions his presence can still be felt in it. Tony "Packet Guy" Parisi - Tony has the amazing ability to take anything I assign and get it done right. The first time. With no complaining. In some cases with amazing turnaround time. Tony is my right-hand guy on the development team and it's very rare for me to make decisions without consulting him first. Marissa "Empress of World" Roush - If Religion is the core of the game, Riss is the core of the Religion. She's not a rules person, but she makes the game. She pretty much single-handedly developed the entire religion system and helped with numerous other plot related issues. Riss's work is what changes Scions from a medieval LARP with awesome rules into the unique game that it is. Paul "Band Geek" Iverson - Single handedly responsible for Bards. Along with a bunch of other stuff. But definitely Bards. I gotta admit I was against Bards for a number of reasons, but Paul stuck with it, pushed it, and figured out ways to make it work. Thanks for being pushy. Aaron "Web Monkey" Burke - Aka my secretary. Aaron is another one of those "just get it done" guys. He takes an insane amount of reference email and turns it into the rulebook that everyone sees. He's also the last line of defense against the evil typo and is personally responsible for saving us from some fairly major disasters. He's also the guy who tells me what to do, what we're missing, and we're finding he's got a groovy knack for rules too. Chris "who?" Fisher - The server admin, my right-hand guy in real life. Fisher keeps everything running, all the time. 2am and I don't have email? Guess who gets a call. And he doesn't even play. If he wasn't keeping our network functioning, we wouldn't have the resources we do to keep development moving as fast as it is.. I can't tell you what an incredible aid the forum software and email communications are to the development process. Just to give some perspective on things for non-developers out there, putting together a game is a LOT of work. Even though the core rules were fundamentally already good to go, an insane amount of time is required to go from core rules to playable game. This past two weeks has been the "rush" of making sure everything is as good as it can be - and while there are still some nagging typos I think we're in pretty good shape. This is in large part due to the 5+ hours a day the team has each been putting in on this project on top of their other responsibilities like jobs and families and stuff. Of course I'd also like to thank the players - we do this insane amount of work because we feel really strongly about putting out a game that people really WANT to play. We might turn a profit, but from an economic standpoint this really just isn't worth it - we don't do it for money, we do it so people can have a good time. Without the players there wouldn't be a game. Enjoy. Jim Flatmo |