Greek Mythological Settings

[shinimasu]

Not that these videos are a comprehensive list of stories about deities but Overly Sarcastic Productions has a pretty good compilation of greek/roman gods their origins and their most popular myths.

Hermes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg_Wi4RpKVY&t=713s

Aphrodite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIUq0pf ... C&index=40

[Grek]

While the Twelve Olympians is certainly an iconic list, I would honestly suggest going with a totally different organizational scheme that does not commit us to picking and choosing which gods we can afford to keep. Instead, how about:

The Olympian Deities are the sky, law and warfare gods who live on Olympus. Most of them are the children of Zeus and/or Hera. Not all of Zeus's children go into this grouping - those raised by Hades are Cthonic Deities instead. The proper method of sacrifice is through burning the fat and the bones of an animal, ideally during the day and ideally at a temple. Pure white animals are preferred.

Zeus is the capricious God of the Sky and the enforcer of sacred principles. The most important of these are promoting xenia (the guest-host relationship) and punishing hubris (shameful or delusional arrogance). Unfortunately, Zeus sees himself as being above the law in these regards, as nobody else is powerful enough to call him out. He frequently descends to earth in order to bait strangers into committing a violation worthy of punishment or to seduce mortals (of either sex) in disguise. Patron God of Olympia, where Mount Olympus lies.

Hera is the vengeful Goddess of Oaths and breaking an oath sworn to Hera is a surefire route to divine tribulations. She doesn't distinguish between oathbreakers and acomplices - if someone swears never to leave the Isle of Karos and you let them on your ship, you're just as much on the hook in Hera's opinion. This is especially bad for Zeus's lovers and bastards, who are all guilty by association in breaking Zeus's marriage vows, but who can't make Zeus behave himself. Patron Goddess of Argos and Samos.

Hestia is the virgin Goddess of the Hearth and (symbolically) of civilization in general. As the firstborn of the Titans, she receives the first burnt offering in every city-state temple or household shrine, and that the first fire lit in every hearth and pyre be lit from one of her sacred flames. Failure to do so means that the place isn't properly your home and that Xenia (the sacred host-guest relationship) does not apply. Patron Goddess of Eleia.

Apollo is the proud God of the Sun and bastard offspring of Zeus. He is a deity of healing, protection and invention, but is most famous as the god of oracular abilities. Patron God of Crete, Delphi, Delos, Thebes and Rhodes, making him one of the most popular patron deities for cities.

Artemis is the reclusive Goddess of the Hunt and twin sister of Apollo. Protector of women and hunter of giants, monsters and giant monsters. Well known for rejecting most amorous advances with incredible violence and for doting on the mortal Orion. Patron Goddess of Delos, Karyai, Ephesus and Brauron.

Ares is the asshole God of War. He's violent, savage and untamed, more focused on personal strength than on tactics. He doesn't care about right or wrong and attempts to seduce the married Goddesses in the pantheon - successfully in the case of Aphrodite and unsuccessfully in the case of Persephone. Patron God of Thrace and Sparta.

Athena is the cunning Goddess of Wisdom, and Zeus's child alone. While she is also a war goddess, she mostly focuses on strategy and preparation rather than on strength and bloodshed. Her powers aren't limited to war either - she can give good advice on any topic if you pray to her. Patron Goddess of Athens, Syracuse and Sparta.

Eris is the whimsical Goddess of Strife. This is very specifically not Discordian Eris (who isn't appropriate for a Greek Mythology setting) but the 'make two countries go to war out of spite' Eris from the Trojan War. Eris isn't the Patron Goddess of anywhere, because nobody would be that foolish.

---

The Chthonic Deities are the earth, fertility and underworld deities and are mostly composed of Hades, Demeter and their progeny, adopted or otherwise. The proper method of sacrifice to a cthonic deity is burial, ideally at night and especially inside of a cavern or at the crossroads. Pure black animals are preferred.

Hades is the responsible God of the Underworld and the oldest son in the family. While most famous as the home of the dead, the Underworld is also the place where you dig for mineral wealth - everything below the soil belongs to Hades. We're going with the non-rape version of the Hades/Persephone relationship, where Persephone willingly married Hades, but was accidentally trapped in the Underworld by eating the food of the dead. Patron God of Crete.

Demeter is the many-faced Goddess of Nature. We're going with the Mycenean version, where Demeter, Persephone, Kore and Cybele are all secret guises of the same cthonic Goddess, referred to euphemistically as 'Despoina' or the Mistress. This is not public knowledge - most people think that the others are her daughters by Zeus and/or Poseidon. She makes the crops grow in the spring and wither in the winter and is a goddess of medicine. Patron Goddess of Eleusis.

Poseidon is the brooding God of the Sea and odd man out in the cthonic deities. He's just as much of a philanderer as Zeus is, but never got married - Hestia refused to marry him, having seen how awful things went for her sister Hera. Having Poseidon's favour is critical to getting anywhere via ship, which is a necessity for conducting both trade and warfare. Sacrifices to Poseidon are done at night and cast into the sea. Patron God of Cornith.

Dionysus is the wild God of Revelry and a child of Demeter raised by Hermes on the orders of Zeus. Beloved of satyrs, centaurs and nymphs, he is the inventor of wine and has special brews that make people variously go mad, fall asleep or receive visions. Co-Patron of Thebes, along with Apollo.

Hermes is the trickster God of Travel, Thieves and Trade. Although he's a bastard child of Zeus, he was born in the Underworld and serves as the psycopomp for Hades when he isn't carrying messages for the other gods. His most famous temple as founded by Lycans and to this day they revere him. Patron God of Arcadia and Cyllene.

Aphrodite is the beautiful Goddess of Love and the most promiscuous goddess. Alleged by Zeus to be the progeny of Uranus and the sea, but very few people actually believe this. She's famed for her generousity with gifts and for her sordid love affairs behind the back of Hephaestus. Patron Goddess Cyprus and Sparta.

Hecate is the triune Goddess of Witchcraft and, like her mother Demeter, assumes different guises in different places. She teaches people how to summon the dead, to craft poison, to turn people into animals, to send nightmares and to ward off curses. Fond of dogs, both as pets and as sacrifices. Patron Goddess of Lagina and Thrace.

Hephaestus is the industrious God of the Forge and Hera's child alone. He's famous for creating magic items and living statues, especially out of silver and gold. He famously has a crippled leg and travels in a 'wheeled chair' of his own making. He was cast out of Olympus for his deformity and now lives under a volcano at Lemnos, where he is the local Patron God.

Gaia is the Earth and the oldest living thing. She aided the Gods during the Titanomachy and remains free to this day, possibly as a result but probably because Zeus couldn't stop her. Her children, Typhon and Echidna, were defeated by Zeus and Hera respectively and bound under the volcanic isles of Etna and Ischia. There lie her greatest temples.

[Dean]

Grek you clearly put a lot of work in there and I'll respond to that later. But real quick I've been thinking about Roman stuff, particularly with regard to Gladiators. I'm well aware that Gladiators weren't really a thing in Greece but, again, it's that thing where if I grabbed six rando's and asked what thing they'd want to play in an ancient greek setting I think I would get at least one call for a gladiator. I'd rather provide that than give them a condescending history lesson. What's people's take on offering a Gladiator package and saying in its description that taking the package means you probably came from early Rome or one of the less developed cultures nearby.

[maglag]

Grek you clearly put a lot of work in there and I'll respond to that later. But real quick I've been thinking about Roman stuff, particularly with regard to Gladiators. I'm well aware that Gladiators weren't really a thing in Greece but, again, it's that thing where if I grabbed six rando's and asked what thing they'd want to play in an ancient greek setting I think I would get at least one call for a gladiator. I'd rather provide that than give them a condescending history lesson. What's people's take on offering a Gladiator package and saying in its description that taking the package means you probably came from early Rome or one of the less developed cultures nearby.

A gladiator is a slave that's only supposed to fight in the arena or maybe serve as a bodyguard to some rich dude inside the city, certainly not go in adventures of their own. If they are free to go where they choose, they're no longer a gladiator.

Can't you just have a mercenary class for those players? Those were a common thing in ancient Greece. Have an "ex-gladiator" background option if they really want to write gladiator in their character sheet.

Actually make "ex-gladiator" a background anybody can take.

[Omegonthesane]

inb4 "my adventurer PC concept is that I'm the slave bodyguard of my girlfriend's adventurer PC"

[angelfromanotherpin]

A gladiator is a slave that's only supposed to fight in the arena or maybe serve as a bodyguard to some rich dude inside the city, certainly not go in adventures of their own. If they are free to go where they choose, they're no longer a gladiator.

There were free gladiators. After a certain point it was like reality television, people from all walks of life wanted to show off their skillz and get famous and make money. If you weren't a condemned criminal the risk of death was fairly small, and you could die of some random infection anyway, so the risk of death relative to just living your life was even smaller.

Now, that is more of a Roman tradition, but the Greek tradition of 'games' is very similar. They didn't do armed combat, but they did boxing, wrestling, and chariot racing, so it's not a big stretch to declare that part of your alternate world is that the games include armed combat. Games were held on many occasions; there were the Olympics of course, but big state affairs like royal births, deaths, and weddings would include games, and so would appropriate holy days, and there would probably be minor events happening all the time to promote store-openings and shit.

So being a gladiator is just being a professional athlete whose event is swording. You could be state-sponsored or freelance. You could be a pro doing it for the cash, or a noble doing it for glory, or an amateur just trying to get noticed and signed to the royal guard. And literally anyone with fighting skills could have been a gladiator one time, or for a summer or something. You could even make a job of being a pro loser, who took convincing dives for a percentage to make other competitors look better.

[Thaluikhain]

There were free gladiators. After a certain point it was like reality television, people from all walks of life wanted to show off their skillz and get famous and make money. If you weren't a condemned criminal the risk of death was fairly small, and you could die of some random infection anyway, so the risk of death relative to just living your life was even smaller.

At some point the Romans passed a law banning anyone who'd been a gladiator from serving in the Senate.

Now, that is more of a Roman tradition, but the Greek tradition of 'games' is very similar. They didn't do armed combat, but they did boxing, wrestling, and chariot racing, so it's not a big stretch to declare that part of your alternate world is that the games include armed combat. Games were held on many occasions; there were the Olympics of course, but big state affairs like royal births, deaths, and weddings would include games, and so would appropriate holy days, and there would probably be minor events happening all the time to promote store-openings and shit.

To expand on that, you had stuff like pankration (literally "all power"), which was anything goes fighting (with the exception of gouging or biting, which was only allowed in Sparta). Sostratus of Sikyon was famous for breaking his opponents fingers, and won 3 times in a row. Scary bloke.

As an aside, even in ancient Greece, people complained that athletes were more interested in the money they'd get for winning than the sport.

[Iduno]

Ares is compressed toxic masculinity. He’s aggressive and spoiling for a fight all the time. He enjoys expressing power and that does include helping in battles where he is prayed to sometimes and just murdering people that cannot harm him like he’s in his own god-mode FPS. Ares is the most likely Olympian for PC’s to fight so we’re gonna cut out all the stuff of him actually being a little sniveling coward that would make him unsatisfying to beat and treat him like a proper threat. He’s basically like a Norse God who’s been put in the greek pantheon for some reason.

Yeah, I'd town down the "is actually weak and pathetic" to "he's a bully who only attacks when he knows he can't lose."

Hephaustus is the smith of heaven, his skill is peerless and his singular focus in existence is his craft. Hephaustus is importantly NOT an inventor. Hephaustus is basically Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Someone focused on endlessly perfecting his craft. If tasked to make a chariot Heph will make the finest one it is possible to make, a chariot that flies or one who’s rider can never be outraced. He can make a chariot that is conceptually incapable of being out-chariotted but he won’t ever end up making a steam boat for the same reason Jiro isn’t gonna start cooking up tex-mex. Heph also kind of sucks to hang out with because no one else in the fucking universe wants to hear about his new cyclonic bellows that raise his smithy’s maximum temperature by 3 degrees over what he was previously able to achieve.

I remember him more getting left out because of his...leg? that was crippled. Because as long as you're misogynist, you may as well be ableist.

Also, all of the women are "the protector of women" in your version of the pantheon. You might want to work on the portfolios a bit. To be fair, only the 3 brothers (Zeus, Poseiden, Hades) really had any power that got split up. And, as you pointed out, there's just in general a lot of overlap. Who do archer pray to? Warriors? People on a quest to find something?

[maglag]

So being a gladiator is just being a professional athlete whose event is swording. You could be state-sponsored or freelance. You could be a pro doing it for the cash, or a noble doing it for glory, or an amateur just trying to get noticed and signed to the royal guard. And literally anyone with fighting skills could have been a gladiator one time, or for a summer or something. You could even make a job of being a pro loser, who took convincing dives for a percentage to make other competitors look better.

Although that's quite interesting, it's still completely counter-productive for adventuring anywhere outside of a city. There's no public in the wilderness for your exploits, no camera crews to broadcast your fights, nobody to hire you, so what exactly are you doing out there?

So again a "I was a gladiator" background would work much better.

To expand on that, you had stuff like pankration (literally "all power"), which was anything goes fighting (with the exception of gouging or biting, which was only allowed in Sparta). Sostratus of Sikyon was famous for breaking his opponents fingers, and won 3 times in a row. Scary bloke.

As an aside, even in ancient Greece, people complained that athletes were more interested in the money they'd get for winning than the sport.

Also a common rule was that if you killed your opponent, you were automatically declared the loser, so the fighters would actually try to avoid lethality.

Ares is compressed toxic masculinity. He’s aggressive and spoiling for a fight all the time. He enjoys expressing power and that does include helping in battles where he is prayed to sometimes and just murdering people that cannot harm him like he’s in his own god-mode FPS. Ares is the most likely Olympian for PC’s to fight so we’re gonna cut out all the stuff of him actually being a little sniveling coward that would make him unsatisfying to beat and treat him like a proper threat. He’s basically like a Norse God who’s been put in the greek pantheon for some reason.

Yeah, I'd town down the "is actually weak and pathetic" to "he's a bully who only attacks when he knows he can't lose."

A good warrior will only fight a battle he's confident he can win. War isn't mindlessly charging ahead nor honorably taking all challengers, it's victory at any cost or surviving another day, "cowardly" ambushes, tactical retreats, dirty tactics, cunning brutality, brutal cunning, and if you're really good, winning whitout actually fighting at all.

So what's exactly wrong with facing a "weak, pathetic bully" that's nevertheless a genius tactician that will exploit your vulnerabilities, wear you down and never play fair? It'll be extra satisfying if when you actually beat him.

[Omegonthesane]

So being a gladiator is just being a professional athlete whose event is swording. You could be state-sponsored or freelance. You could be a pro doing it for the cash, or a noble doing it for glory, or an amateur just trying to get noticed and signed to the royal guard. And literally anyone with fighting skills could have been a gladiator one time, or for a summer or something. You could even make a job of being a pro loser, who took convincing dives for a percentage to make other competitors look better.

Although that's quite interesting, it's still completely counter-productive for adventuring anywhere outside of a city. There's no public in the wilderness for your exploits, no camera crews to broadcast your fights, nobody to hire you, so what exactly are you doing out there?

So again a "I was a gladiator" background would work much better.

Or "I work as a gladiator when I'm in cities, but occasionally my adventurer mates get me a lead that's so lucrative and/or interesting that I pursue it instead". Who says you have to be out of the game forever once you're out of it temporarily?

Ares is compressed toxic masculinity. He’s aggressive and spoiling for a fight all the time. He enjoys expressing power and that does include helping in battles where he is prayed to sometimes and just murdering people that cannot harm him like he’s in his own god-mode FPS. Ares is the most likely Olympian for PC’s to fight so we’re gonna cut out all the stuff of him actually being a little sniveling coward that would make him unsatisfying to beat and treat him like a proper threat. He’s basically like a Norse God who’s been put in the greek pantheon for some reason.

Yeah, I'd town down the "is actually weak and pathetic" to "he's a bully who only attacks when he knows he can't lose."

A good warrior will only fight a battle he's confident he can win. War isn't mindlessly charging ahead nor honorably taking all challengers, it's victory at any cost or surviving another day, "cowardly" ambushes, tactical retreats, dirty tactics, cunning brutality, brutal cunning, and if you're really good, winning whitout actually fighting at all.

So what's exactly wrong with facing a "weak, pathetic bully" that's nevertheless a genius tactician that will exploit your vulnerabilities, wear you down and never play fair? It'll be extra satisfying if when you actually beat him.

Most players will expect a physical fight in which they directly do actual battle with Ares himself rather than him just surrendering or fleeing. So it's not enough to characterise him as someone who will not enter a fair fight unless forced - once the players pin him down, he has to also be capable of winning a fair fight if it comes to that.

[maglag]

Or "I work as a gladiator when I'm in cities, but occasionally my adventurer mates get me a lead that's so lucrative and/or interesting that I pursue it instead". Who says you have to be out of the game forever once you're out of it temporarily?

Popularity is a fickle thing. If you're in the show business, you really can't afford to disappear for weeks/months/years unless you're planning to retire from said show business.

Yeah, I'd town down the "is actually weak and pathetic" to "he's a bully who only attacks when he knows he can't lose."

A good warrior will only fight a battle he's confident he can win. War isn't mindlessly charging ahead nor honorably taking all challengers, it's victory at any cost or surviving another day, "cowardly" ambushes, tactical retreats, dirty tactics, cunning brutality, brutal cunning, and if you're really good, winning whitout actually fighting at all.

So what's exactly wrong with facing a "weak, pathetic bully" that's nevertheless a genius tactician that will exploit your vulnerabilities, wear you down and never play fair? It'll be extra satisfying if when you actually beat him.

Most players will expect a physical fight in which they directly do actual battle with Ares himself rather than him just surrendering or fleeing. So it's not enough to characterise him as someone who will not enter a fair fight unless forced - once the players pin him down, he has to also be capable of winning a fair fight if it comes to that.

As they say, even a cornered rat will fight like a tiger.

And although you can force somebody to fight, you can't actually force them to fight fairly. Ares will poison his blades, he'll throw sand at your face, he'll inflict nasty debuffs, he'll kick you between the legs, he'll target your exposed ankles, he'll try to gouge your eyes and bite if you try to grapple him. That's Ares boss phase, and would make him unique in comparison to generic brute #1267.

[Dean]

Or "I work as a gladiator when I'm in cities, but occasionally my adventurer mates get me a lead that's so lucrative and/or interesting that I pursue it instead". Who says you have to be out of the game forever once you're out of it temporarily?

I think either of those options sound perfectly good. Mercenary who's done some arena fighting or professional Gladiator who's out of the game both sound workable enough to get that into the game without it groaning.

And although you can force somebody to fight, you can't actually force them to fight fairly. Ares will poison his blades, he'll throw sand at your face, he'll inflict nasty debuffs, he'll kick you between the legs, he'll target your exposed ankles, he'll try to gouge your eyes and bite if you try to grapple him. That's Ares boss phase, and would make him unique in comparison to generic brute #1267.

I like that but think you can have the best of both worlds. Instead of framing him as an ineffectual coward you frame him as putting nothing above winning. He's not a coward but if you battle him you'd best be prepared for total war because he will use every single tool at his disposal to beat you. The god you battle that bows down "defeated" then slits your femoral artery when you approach and stares down the rest of the party with a bloody grin really feels like a god of war.

Also, all of the women are "the protector of women" in your version of the pantheon.

I only mention Artemis and Hera doing so. Artemis because she does so in stories and Hera I meant in the god of marriage way rather than in general but I get your meaning.


As to the gods setup I might need to stew on Grek's olympic/cthonic model a bit longer. The current paradigm I was operating with for the gods was to have these 4 rough categories

The 12 Olympians: The 12 Olympians draw power from (and at least occasionally reside on) Mt Olympus: the joining point of earth, space, and sky where the world was first created. The result of this connection is an expansion of their divine power and they are considered the highest status Gods

Gods: The various powerful gods who are allowed to freely roam the earth. While powerful they don't have the status of Olympians. Gods like Hecate (god of witchcraft), Demeter (Nature), and Aeolus (The winds and air) belong here and can roam the earth and have their own objectives. We could get a lot of good material out of this level of god since we get to make their characters up basically whole cloth because they're often less explored.

Minor Gods: This category might not technically be different in the fiction of the world from the other gods but if Discord and Hypnos only get a one sentence description on a list somewhere that's definitely going to be different in game than your full column writeup of how Hecate is a dark goddess the other gods fear and keep at arms length. So in my mind it's a different category.

Tartarans: All monsters and imprisoned titans that collectively make up team bad-guy on a sort of universal scale. Typhan or Cronus are Tartarans and so too will be the next monster Gaia births to kill Zeus, even if they aren't currently in Tartarus.

[Omegonthesane]

And although you can force somebody to fight, you can't actually force them to fight fairly. Ares will poison his blades, he'll throw sand at your face, he'll inflict nasty debuffs, he'll kick you between the legs, he'll target your exposed ankles, he'll try to gouge your eyes and bite if you try to grapple him. That's Ares boss phase, and would make him unique in comparison to generic brute #1267.

I like that but think you can have the best of both worlds. Instead of framing him as an ineffectual coward you frame him as putting nothing above winning. He's not a coward but if you battle him you'd best be prepared for total war because he will use every single tool at his disposal to beat you. The god you battle that bows down "defeated" then slits your femoral artery when you approach and stares down the rest of the party with a bloody grin really feels like a god of war.

Also, not being an ineffectual coward and instead being already one of the strongest fighters ever before you account for any of his dirty tricks makes it more horrific when he goes and pillages helpless noncombatants, because he's not even compensating for something, he's just hurting people for fun.

[Thaluikhain]

Or "I work as a gladiator when I'm in cities, but occasionally my adventurer mates get me a lead that's so lucrative and/or interesting that I pursue it instead". Who says you have to be out of the game forever once you're out of it temporarily?

Popularity is a fickle thing. If you're in the show business, you really can't afford to disappear for weeks/months/years unless you're planning to retire from said show business.

What do you do when there isn't a game on? The big ones were only held every four years. There might be smaller local ones every so often, but you could easily have a glory hungry violent type in-between games looking for a glorious mess to get involved in.

OTOH, such a person is going to want to stop adventuring and go to the games every so often, and unless the rest of the party is going to the Olympics (which isn't that bad an idea), could cause issues.

[maglag]

Also, not being an ineffectual coward and instead being already one of the strongest fighters ever before you account for any of his dirty tricks makes it more horrific when he goes and pillages helpless noncombatants, because he's not even compensating for something, he's just hurting people for fun.

But then you don't have a god of war, you just have some random boring psycho that cannot be reasoned with and nobody would want to worship. It's just another wandering mindless monster.

Coward innefectual Ares will try to parley and strike a deal when cornered before resorting to dirty fighting, he's somebody you can interact with besides "stab him in the face as soon as you see him".

In particular since the greek gods are supposed to be a pantheon and hold councils and stuff, and there's zero reason why they would tolerate a mindless psycho that's constantly trying to stab everybody else in their midst. Ares needs to be somebody who knows to keep his head low around the likes of Zeus, otherwise either he's dead or there's no longer a greek pantheon around because they got murdered by the mindless psycho.

Or "I work as a gladiator when I'm in cities, but occasionally my adventurer mates get me a lead that's so lucrative and/or interesting that I pursue it instead". Who says you have to be out of the game forever once you're out of it temporarily?

Popularity is a fickle thing. If you're in the show business, you really can't afford to disappear for weeks/months/years unless you're planning to retire from said show business.

What do you do when there isn't a game on? The big ones were only held every four years. There might be smaller local ones every so often, but you could easily have a glory hungry violent type in-between games looking for a glorious mess to get involved in.

OTOH, such a person is going to want to stop adventuring and go to the games every so often, and unless the rest of the party is going to the Olympics (which isn't that bad an idea), could cause issues.

If you do something only once every 4 years and earn your main income from other stuff in between, then it's not their main job.

A professional atlhete will indeed spend the time between the major games looking for and participating in lesser games, checking out the competition, keeping up their reputation, or just training at the gym.

But if you spend most of your time going in adventuring and/or joining wars, then you're primarly an adventurer/mercenary, that may want to take a shot at the big games when the time comes, but everybody will still consider them an adventurer/mercenary, because that's what their actual primary activity is.

EDIT: Plus think of it this way. Which one of the following do you think will bring greater glory:
-Assaulting an enemy city, cutting a path through enemy soldiers then slaying their champion in a bloody duel to the death.
-Braving the dungeon filled with traps and coming out with the head of the legendary monster that had terrorrized the area for centuries.
-Winning an organized low lethality sports events.

So if you already won a war or slayed the mythic beast, you pretty much already have all the glory you could ever want, going to the olympics will be small potatoes compared to that, and even if you win that history will still remember you mostly as a war hero and vanquisher of abominations, not as a tournament player.

[deaddmwalking]

maglag is trying very hard to be always wrong.

Ares as badass warrior that wants to kill you to prove his toxic masculinity is both interesting and what people expect.

Diplomatic Ares is absolutely the worst thing in Wonder Woman.

[Grek]

Ares is a God. You can't kill Ares and you shouldn't be encouraging the players to even try. More broadly, the core pantheon exists as a mythic power source ("I'm the son of Hera, so I have the strength of a hundred men!") and as a source of conflict ("Poseidon is pissed off at you, so he's diverted your ship to the island of..." <rolls on random encounter chart>) - not as a list of monsters to stab. Ares isn't on the list of possible enemies any more than Pelor is and for the same reasons Pelor isn't.

The Doylist role of Ares is Murder Shipper on Deck. His existence in the setting lets the DM pick out a badass NPC that she wants the PCs to get into a fight with and then announce that Ares is interfering to get that NPC murderously pissed off at the PCs for something that isn't really their fault. Or to let the DM pick a previously defeated NPC and let them make a comeback through extensive offerings to the God of War, earning them divine strength and the chance to make one more go at defeating their enemies. Or to announce that Syracuse and Thrace are now at war, because Ares gave the king of Syracuse a vision of the Thracian King in bed with both of his daughters.

[maglag]

Ares is a God. You can't kill Ares and you shouldn't be encouraging the players to even try. More broadly, the core pantheon exists as a mythic power source ("I'm the son of Hera, so I have the strength of a hundred men!") and as a source of conflict ("Poseidon is pissed off at you, so he's diverted your ship to the island of..." <rolls on random encounter chart>) - not as a list of monsters to stab. Ares isn't on the list of possible enemies any more than Pelor is and for the same reasons Pelor isn't.

Maybe Ares can't be killed, but he sure can be used as a punching bag, which several heroes did (Hercules twice even).

The Doylist role of Ares is Murder Shipper on Deck. His existence in the setting lets the DM pick out a badass NPC that she wants the PCs to get into a fight with and then announce that Ares is interfering to get that NPC murderously pissed off at the PCs for something that isn't really their fault. Or to let the DM pick a previously defeated NPC and let them make a comeback through extensive offerings to the God of War, earning them divine strength and the chance to make one more go at defeating their enemies. Or to announce that Syracuse and Thrace are now at war, because Ares gave the king of Syracuse a vision of the Thracian King in bed with both of his daughters.

You know that the famous Trojan war basically started by Aphrodite, right? And just for a beauty contest?

So basically any and all of the gods and goddesses should be a valid excuse to start a war between mortals on their whims.

Heck, Ares himself didn't even start any famous war, he was usually too busy aiming at the real prize, aka bedding all the hot goddesses while their husbands were doing something else and producing lots of powerful children to support him.

That's how Ares fathered fear itself!

[Omegonthesane]

Also, not being an ineffectual coward and instead being already one of the strongest fighters ever before you account for any of his dirty tricks makes it more horrific when he goes and pillages helpless noncombatants, because he's not even compensating for something, he's just hurting people for fun.

But then you don't have a god of war, you just have some random boring psycho that cannot be reasoned with and nobody would want to worship. It's just another wandering mindless monster.

Coward innefectual Ares will try to parley and strike a deal when cornered before resorting to dirty fighting, he's somebody you can interact with besides "stab him in the face as soon as you see him".

Wrong to the hilt I see. 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.

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

In particular since the greek gods are supposed to be a pantheon and hold councils and stuff, and there's zero reason why they would tolerate a mindless psycho that's constantly trying to stab everybody else in their midst. Ares needs to be somebody who knows to keep his head low around the likes of Zeus, otherwise either he's dead or there's no longer a greek pantheon around because they got murdered by the mindless psycho.

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.

Popularity is a fickle thing. If you're in the show business, you really can't afford to disappear for weeks/months/years unless you're planning to retire from said show business.

What do you do when there isn't a game on? The big ones were only held every four years. There might be smaller local ones every so often, but you could easily have a glory hungry violent type in-between games looking for a glorious mess to get involved in.

OTOH, such a person is going to want to stop adventuring and go to the games every so often, and unless the rest of the party is going to the Olympics (which isn't that bad an idea), could cause issues.

"Waah stop trying to call your adventurer a gladiator" (paraphrased)

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).

Ares is a God. You can't kill Ares and you shouldn't be encouraging the players to even try. More broadly, the core pantheon exists as a mythic power source ("I'm the son of Hera, so I have the strength of a hundred men!") and as a source of conflict ("Poseidon is pissed off at you, so he's diverted your ship to the island of..." <rolls on random encounter chart>) - not as a list of monsters to stab. Ares isn't on the list of possible enemies any more than Pelor is and for the same reasons Pelor isn't.

Pelor should be on the list of possible enemies to stab if you're serious about running a high level D&D campaign, even if he's expected to survive the stabbing and escape the encounter.

Lolth was on the list of possible enemies to stab back in the day, before they decided to disavow how drastic your power growth in D&D is meant to be.

And credit where credit's due, maglag is correct to say that there is no need for a specific "murder shipper on deck" god with how petty and capricious all the gods are.

[Dean]

Ares is a God. You can't kill Ares and you shouldn't be encouraging the players to even try.

Ares is a God and the greek gods don't seem to be able to be killed by any means, but him being immortal doesn't mean you can't beat or depose him. Gods totally do lose fights and get their jobs taken. They're often thrown into exile or chained to a rock or thrown into Tartarus or something like that. Becoming the new god of war should absolutely on the table as an acceptable end goal for people. All you gotta do is thrash Ares, probably shackle him somewhere, then convince Zeus that you being given Ares' old job reflects well on Zeus in some way.

I actually think it's a cool setting conceit that basically no one can ever die. Gods just keep being deposed or imprisoned but they're never totally out of the picture. And that's good, it gives us a comic book like environment where Typhon can always come back no matter how many times they're beaten. Hell even mortals don't really die, you can probably go talk to anyone you want to if you work hard enough.

unless the rest of the party is going to the Olympics (which isn't that bad an idea)

The olympics could have whole campaigns centered around them. They're such fertile soil for adventures. First of all the whole world agrees to a temporary truce. There’s tons of events and many are pretty lethal to participate in but if you win you can gain money, worldwide acclaim and prestige, and even political power. There’s tons of backroom dealing and bribes to try to steal athletes away from their home countries, attempts to poison or curse people. There’s gambling at crazy high stakes as different polis’ make wagers on their athletes. Finally the coming together of so many representatives and power players from all over the world meant the olympics were also a time for real political machinations to go down. Over just 5 days of competition deals and treaties are struck and the whole thing could play out like a political intrigue novel with a built in ticking clock.

And all that was before we add in that our version of this has monsters and actual gods that can get involved and stuff. The games you could stage around the olympics would be one of the best things about the setting.

[shinimasu]

Is beating up a god really that on brand for greek mythology though? I know it is for your God of War style modern interpretations but I remember a lot of the OG myths as being summed up by "And hubris was the real enemy all along."

Like sure Hercules managed to win against Ares once but he specifically had Athena protecting him from harm. The idea that the chuck norris of ancient greece could win a god fight when another god is giving him infinity+1 armor isn't exactly solid ground work for "anyone could fight a god and win if they try really really hard."

The list of heroes who try to best or trick a god and lose is much much longer than the list of heroes who punch poseidon in the nose and get promoted for their gumption.

[Thaluikhain]

There are legends where gods fought various monsters and mortals played a key part.

Cadmus (in some accounts, sometimes it's lesser gods) got Zeus's sinews back from Typhon, and Heracles helped the gods fight titans.

But depends on your interpretation. Are the gods special, or are they just at the top tier of monsters? Likewise, are the gods moral and respectable (Zeus preserves dike and order and stuff) or are they as depicted in any depiction of them. Both because doublethink, I guess.

[shinimasu]

Well if we're looking from a scholarly standpoint the gods are one part morality tale and one part 'why does life suck and how can we make it suck less.'

The gods reward ideal greek behavior (which is different from modern standards, see all the rape), and they punish hubris, vanity, greed, and inhospitable behavior. It's important to remember too that the greek people saw themselves as largely beholden to forces outside of their control. Stories about trying to fight fate, change a cruel destiny, or rebel against the cosmic order all end in tragedy. This is hard to reconcile with a table top game which tends to be exclusively about thwarting those things so maybe god of war is the way to go after all.

The gods characterization is also determined largely by where they were worshiped. One of the videos I linked above for example details how Aphrodite was worshiped in Sparta as a war goddess (because of course she was) because Astarte, the goddess she's derived from was a war goddess and the spartans are all about those. She was also distinct from other depictions of Aphrodite and given her own epithete "Aphrodite Areia" or The Warlike Aphrodite.

Which is to say when dumpster diving for divine character traits, writers are kind of spoiled for choice. Do you want your Aphrodite to be a sexy war goddess who takes her romantic conquests as forcefully as she takes her military ones? There's precedent for that. Do you want her to be the fun flighty party girl? There's precedent for that. Do you want her compassionate and motherly? Precedent for that too. Some amalgam of all of them based on the writer's personal and political preferences? Well friend do I have some precedent for you.

[Omegonthesane]

Since we got all so caught up on the expectation that you get to beat up Ares - that'd actually slot in fine with him being "weak and ineffectual" for a god, if he's the only god that even heroic mortals are expected to dunk on as much as once per universe.

More than once I've contemplated going a bit meta with the metaphysics and outright stating that there are in-universe things to the effect of "the PCs are operated by different authors to everyone else" which mean that anyone who is currently a PC is literally an outright exception to destiny and a thing that can fuck up destiny unilaterally. Like, "your future vision can only tell what will happen if the PCs do nothing". So past a certain level it'd potentially be on brand for you to explicitly be able to defy fate itself where the gods themselves could not.

[Dean]

So the one character I wrote before that I was unsatisfied with was Dionysus. I want to make sure each god has viable paths to interact with the party and I don't think I did great at that. My goal with the last writeup was to frame Dionysus as able to fill some drunken advisor role but instead... what about a Dionysus more likely to be an antagonist.

New Take:
Dionysus is a wild man and if he's famous for anything it's for taking things too far. A perfect example would be when he put all the women in an entire palace under his spell. Completely uninhibited they cast off their clothes, made love to whoever they pleased, and ran off into the woods. And while it made an amazing party it did cause the kingdom to go to war over the Queen being found in bed with a visiting lord. Dionysus is the friend who brings the coke to the party but he's also the friend who reveals he's been secretly dosing everyone and it will be kicking in any minute. He tends to leave behind disasters but he doesn't do it out of an inherent malice he just doesn't really respect the limits of mortals and the fact that they have to deal with things like suffering consequences and dying.

I'm basically thinking of making him Sheogorath from Oblivion but saying that he's not a purely negative entity. His parties are usually fine, even awesome. It's just that there are those times where, yes, he'll make you wake up trapped inside a painting as a goof. When Dionysus shows up and does his mischief it should be like one of the Buffy episodes where everyone's singing or all the adults are horny teens. You know something's up and you need to figure out how to unfuck everything. In this setup you could sometimes even fight mischievous Dionysus and it'd even be fine because he's wasted and he won't remember and you basically need to be his disciplinarian and tell him to stop making all the Athenians beastmen.