Greek Mythological Settings

[Prak]

Cults and secret societies get in vogue in late greco mid roman period, from 5th BC onward. That's when mystery cults blossom and it is normal for a cobbler to be a secret christian and the lesser brother of the exalted no homers club.

Ah, but they weren't so much secret secret cults, but public secret cults. People knew that, say, the Eleusinian Mysteries were a thing, just not what the people there actually did. Well, excepting when someone gets drunk and parodies them before the Sicilian Expedition.

You absolutely could have a city-state rules by Queen Medusa (or a tyrant supported by Medusa), and there's a cult outsiders don't understand but do know about. Actually, I think I like that idea better.

Might be interesting to tie Medusa to the Amazon's, given a recent interpretation/understanding of the myth of Medusa being about Athena having her raped priestess the power to never be raped again, opposed to the classical, patriarchal interpretation of Athena punishing her priestess for getting raped.

[maglag]

Canon Ares is a shit who dicks on helpless people fr fun, that doesn't mean he can't be reasoned with if you're strong enough that he'd have to exert actual effort even if his victory wouldn't be in doubt.

There's a difference between "dick on people" (which all greek gods do pretty much) and "torture/kill first, never ask questions".

Since you're whining that no one would want to worship merciless dangerous Ares - why would anyone want to worship cowardly ineffectual Ares?

Because he'll teach you sneaky tricks to have good odds of winning even if you're weaker than the opponent, or even better, to win whitout fighting.

Basically Athena gets worshiped by those who believe in honor and fair challenges and related, while Ares is worshiped by those that would rather avoid any dangerous fighting, grab the real prize and make a run for it.

There's... kind of a few star systems between "murders helpless people for fun if there's nothing more interesting that month" and "mindless psycho constantly trying to kill everything". By your logic Zeus is a mindless psycho constantly trying to rape everything because he's so famous for getting his dick into mortals.

Zeus is even more famous for being the strongest god and playing mediator between the other gods before his raping hobby (also throwing lighting around for the lulz).

Do you think the average player gives a fuck about any of that shit? Besides, the point about glory works against your earlier whining about maintaining your profile - once you're Stavros the Hydra-Slayer you can skip maintaining the fame of Stavros the Gladiator between games and still attend all the games you care to until you're genuinely done with that part of your life (including if you're in Hades and thus done with all the other parts of your life too).

Thing is, after you've become Stavros the Hydra-Slayer, what's exactly the point of competing against normal smucks? It would be mostly bullying beating the crap out of all the other contestants at the Olympics that would've been eaten alive by the hydra.

Did Hercules pause his adventuring to go to the Olympics? Acquilles? Odysseus?

No, they kept aiming higher after each challenge (or just wanted to return home and rest on their wins for Odysseus).

I guess you could change the Oympics to be filled with only hydra-slaying badasses, but then that implies there's a lot of hydra-slaying badasses around at the same time, and that just doesn't seem much like classic Greece anymore.

Plus if Stavros the Hydra-Slayer shows up a normal gladiator match, then all bets are off basically. Any gladiator who values their life would be begging for mercy instantly and nobody would have fun. Kinda hard to keep a gladiator career going when the crowd doesn't get a show.

Might be interesting to tie Medusa to the Amazon's, given a recent interpretation/understanding of the myth of Medusa being about Athena having her raped priestess the power to never be raped again, opposed to the classical, patriarchal interpretation of Athena punishing her priestess for getting raped.

What's exactly wrong with the war-like Amazons being the daughters of the god of war Ares like in the original myth?

[deaddmwalking]

Because he'll teach you sneaky tricks to have good odds of winning even if you're weaker than the opponent, or even better, to win whitout fighting.

Basically Athena gets worshiped by those who believe in honor and fair challenges and related, while Ares is worshiped by those that would rather avoid any dangerous fighting, grab the real prize and make a run for it.

This is pretty close to a total reversal of how the characters are understood. Reversing character expectations is something you see in fiction so it isn't always bad, but if Ares is the god of winning without fighting you're definitely going in the wrong direction.

In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war, in contrast to his sister, the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and generalship.[2]

[Thaluikhain]

Did Hercules pause his adventuring to go to the Olympics?

One myth about the founding of the Olympics was that it was started by Heracles, so, yes.

I guess you could change the Oympics to be filled with only hydra-slaying badasses, but then that implies there's a lot of hydra-slaying badasses around at the same time, and that just doesn't seem much like classic Greece anymore.

Classical Greece, no. But in the mythology of Greece, there's loads and loads of heroes and demigods and whatnot. You don't have Zeus getting lots of women pregnant without Zeus having lots of offspring, and they are all demigods.

During the Trojan War, funeral games were held in honour of Patroclus, and the Greek heroes competed against each other.

[Stahlseele]

but if Ares is the god of winning without fighting you're definitely going in the wrong direction

namely to china.

[Prak]

Might be interesting to tie Medusa to the Amazon's, given a recent interpretation/understanding of the myth of Medusa being about Athena having her raped priestess the power to never be raped again, opposed to the classical, patriarchal interpretation of Athena punishing her priestess for getting raped.

What's exactly wrong with the war-like Amazons being the daughters of the god of war Ares like in the original myth?

I was unaware of that mythical parentage and had another idea?

[Dean]

Here I want to talk about a bio for Gaia and the possible moralities for a Grecian RPG

Gaia has tried to kill or depose Zeus multiple times as she did his fathers before him. Seeing her children imprisoned in tartarus or ruled over and mistreated is said to offend her and I like that that means she is won't be satisfied with almost any order short of a socialist utopia. If Typhon beat and imprisoned Zeus and claimed rule of earth then Gaia would eventually turn on and depose him. I think it’s interesting to imagine her as being somewhat alien as she's a very unusual character. A being that has birthed and nurtured all living things. She is a mother to all and as far removed from the gods as they are from the world of men. She has only come to Mount Olympus a single time and that was for the wedding of Zeus and Hera. I imagine her presence is strange even to the Olympians. Gaia is literally the earth so beating or imprisoning her is conceptually impossible and I think that means she is the greatest threat to Zeus and his reign. At some point she will birth some new monster to topple the current order and there’s nothing anyone can do about it because as long as you live on her you have to accept her.

I think her art should reinforce her alien nature, perhaps something like this which would make her stand out as not quite like the olympians.

Now as far as the tone and morality for a game goes a Greek RPG has a range of three options that occur to me.

Grey
Some amount of barbarism is accepted by a grecian setting. The PC’s will be expected to be bathed in blood, most leaders will be expected to be tyrants, and slave owning (non chattel but still) is common. Even some of the gods suck pretty hard. There is a sense in which that makes the settings morality very grey, where Zeus is himself a tyrant and probable rapist but he’s also the thing which holds back the night. He’s like if Superman groped people, and there’s an interesting tension in the worlds greatest defender being personally detestable. It’s a surprisingly in genre choice to show Zeus respect but notice that you and everyone else you know seem to find him personally unpleasant. The downside of this model is I totally understand if people in the modern day are not interested in spending their free time playing a game where the most powerful person in the world is an unchecked detestable rapist. I get that.

Black and White
It would be totally possible to do a Hercules animated series thing where you make the gods glow and hand mortal hero’s gifts to slay monsters and never really interact with the many problematic parts of the greek mythos. The appeal of this is that you know no one at the table will be offended by it but the downside is there’s a lot less myths you could transcribe than in the grey model. It would be much harder to just google some greek myths and have your characters have a similar adventure if you cut out any story where a god is a perv, a king kills his kid, or some hero ends up banging their mom.

Black is White
It would be easy to imagine that your game could both include the unpleasant elements of the greek world and not accept them. In this model your characters could be met by Gaia and tasked to help her Tartarans bring about the world of her vision, a place with no tyrants, where all her children live together. Your PC’s could totally be a squad of superheroes righting the wrongs they see in the world and attempting to one day topple Zeus from Olympus themselves. The cool part about this is everyone loves playing the “Bad guys” and in this instance you get to both be on a team composed of medusa’s and hundred headed dragons and also feel like you’re in the right. The big negative of course is that the premise rejects the very setting you’re a part of. A greek setting where you want to upend the order of things is neccesarily attempting to make it less and less a grecian setting.

[Schleiermacher]

The nice thing about designing a setting and not just a single campaign is that the first and last option there are fully compatible.

[Lokathor]

I'm shocked that no one has yet mentioned Mazes and Minotaurs, or their "Revised Edition" of the game.

[saithorthepyro]

I'll throw out as far as the god characterization thing, that even the Greeks didn't have consistent characterizations, especially between the Mycenaean and Hellenic periods. Dionysus is probably the best example, having started out as a dark god known for driving people insane and associated with death and rebirth, before being transitioned into a party god known mostly for wine. So there is an in-built historical reason for the same god having differing interpretations, even if you don't want to use Rome for that purpose either.

[Dean]

The difference is a religion can have a bunch of internally contradictory nonsense but an RPG can't. When the characters interact with Demeter she either will be an Olympian or she won't, Artemis will either be in a loving relationship with Orion or a dedicated celibate. The challenge then is to decide the most interesting takes and options and then concrete those because players expect a consistent world.

[maglag]

The difference is a religion can have a bunch of internally contradictory nonsense but an RPG can't. When the characters interact with Demeter she either will be an Olympian or she won't, Artemis will either be in a loving relationship with Orion or a dedicated celibate. The challenge then is to decide the most interesting takes and options and then concrete those because players expect a consistent world.

Whynotboth.jpg?

One of the main (and few )advantages of paper rpg is the DM and player being able to fill in details of their own, so it's important to leave some areas not completely detailed and/or optional.

And in the case of big characters, they may just have mood swings like normal people do. So Dionysus in a good day is the wine god of party, but if something gets him in a bad mood he'll turn to dark god of insanity, death and rebirth. Maybe the adventure is precisely that Dionysius is having a bad day/year/decade/century and so the party needs to get him in a good mood again, or getting Artemis to break up with Orion and go celibate for some decades/centuries (which is recorded as having happened in the past). Greek gods are particularly emotional and moody and everything.

[shinimasu]

The difference is a religion can have a bunch of internally contradictory nonsense but an RPG can't. When the characters interact with Demeter she either will be an Olympian or she won't, Artemis will either be in a loving relationship with Orion or a dedicated celibate. The challenge then is to decide the most interesting takes and options and then concrete those because players expect a consistent world.

I mean it can though. In Pathfinder and D&D and all their derivatives that got large enough to have multiple setting books, the ones that share gods will often use vastly different interpretations of those gods in order to give the PCs more roleplaying fodder. See: Pelor The Burning Hate vs Pelor the World Axis vs Pelor of the Great Wheel.

Alternate interpretation mystery cults in the setting inspired by the place known for its alternate interpretation mystery cults should be encouraged. And how the god acts varying depending on where they interact with that god could be a baked in mechanic. When you talk to Aries in Sparta vs when you talk to him in Athens gets you two very different versions of Aries who are also somehow the same guy.

[OgreBattle]

If gods are like Conan where it’s vague then different takes fit in the big mystery

[Foxwarrior]

And how the god acts varying depending on where they interact with that god could be a baked in mechanic.

In the city of min-maxers, they believe that all gods want to give them lots of gifts for no reason, and protect them from bad things happening.

[shinimasu]

And how the god acts varying depending on where they interact with that god could be a baked in mechanic.

In the city of min-maxers, they believe that all gods want to give them lots of gifts for no reason, and protect them from bad things happening.

Well then it's a good thing players won't generally have much input on a town's demographic's and culture then?

[OgreBattle]

That town is called America

[Foxwarrior]

And how the god acts varying depending on where they interact with that god could be a baked in mechanic.

In the city of min-maxers, they believe that all gods want to give them lots of gifts for no reason, and protect them from bad things happening.

Well then it's a good thing players won't generally have much input on a town's demographic's and culture then?

Sounds like a bad thing to me. Why even bother having a mechanic if the players can't abuse it?

[shinimasu]

I mean they probably could it just involves more overland travel to reach specific places on the map and less founding their own town of NPCs who all somehow agree to go along with this.

[OgreBattle]

So how big is a centaur

[Dean]

Large. I also think the various kinds of Demi-humans should be classes kind of like the paragon classes in unearthed arcana. There's a fair amount of the games power level where I think people would be happy just being a centaur or a harpy to an extreme degree. You could also obviously just be a Siren who's an Oracle as her main thing and just have some basic Siren racial abilities but I think there's a fair amount of length in the game where you could just describe yourself as "Minotaur" and have people understand that means your career choice revolves around running people down and goring them with axes and horns really really intensely.

[OgreBattle]

Ian a dnd 3e system best For this or does something else work like say SR skills and karma

[Dean]

A Greek mythological setting should include a deep character roster with bio's and stats of the characters people care about like Hercules, Achilles, and so on. I think these should be made by these same rules as the rest of the PC's allowing first time players to jump in and explicitly play Odysseus if they want to. Even if there's some special rules or equipment like having Atalanta start with impenetrable Caledonian boar armor that shouldn't be out of line with potential starting options. There could be some simple tiering so you have to be playing a "Great Heroes" tier game to pick Hercules to start but that should be the only restriction in play. This gives you all the benefits of archetypes letting people jump immediately into play and also gives people actual character concepts rather than telling them their character is "Corporate Mage" or "Random-name the Wizard".

On that note does anyone know what the legality of having one of those characters be "Xena"? Obviously you couldn't just write the wikipedia description of Xena Warrior Princess but how close a knock off can you get. Is having a character named Xena who wears leather armor and has a story that she's both a warrior and a princess verboten?

[OgreBattle]

What does a Greek Fantasy World Map look like,

has there ever been a map made of where the golden fleece is and so on?

[Chamomile]

Xena is an original character and her name is protected by copyright. You can't copyright leather armor, warriors, or princesses, though.