Greek Mythological Settings

[Dean]

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

Then everyone get ready for the new good character that I made: Zeena, Warrior Princess.

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?

There is. It looks like this and it's awesome.

That's Herodotus' map of the world and its better than any campaign map ever made. It is chock full of all sorts of awesome places and people's. It's got normal cool stuff you'd want to have around like the Celts and Persians and Scythians (who are basically Mongolians) and then there's the awesome stuff that Herodotus reported like the Hyperboreans in the north who are immortal giants who live in a lost valley where the sun only sets every 1000 days, deserts to the east where giant ants make towers of gold, and the Macrobians to the south which are basically Wakandans in their perfect African city.

For most of the campaign you'd want to tighten up on the Mediterranean. Most of your adventures are going to happen around the coast and on all the crazy islands full of witches and cyclops and whatnot. Still, it's good to know that you have really concrete answers about what happens if you walk in any direction. Because the Persians actually existed it means you can have detailed and interesting answers to what happens if you're in Persian territory. You can even have the legendary figures of their cultures represented. So Cyrus the Great was a Persian King who was supposed to be part divine and in your setting that can be literally true. Cyrus can indeed be some kind of demigod as long as his lineage is traceable to some God or Titan it's all cool. In this setup the Greeks Gods are literally real and everyone else is worshipping various monster or giants or demigods or even just misunderstandings or alternate names of the greek gods. Olympus being a physical location in Greece means it's understandable that Egypt doesn't quite know what Hades looks like. The god of the underworld keeps a hound at the head of its entrance and that's become the literal hound headed underworld god Anubis after traveling over a thousand miles.

[shirak]

People, stop trying to shove monotheism down my ancestors' throats. The Greeks (and pretty much everybody in those days) were polytheistic. Who you pray to depends entirely on who you think might help you out in your current circumstances:

Lost at Sea? You pray to Poseidon (because he'll throw a tsunami at you if you don't) AND to Aiolus (god of winds) AND to Apollo (to maybe give your navigator a clue) AND Hermes (for a safe journey) and so on

In a fight? You pray to Ares to give you strength AND Athena to let you see your opponent's weakness AND Hephaestus that your arms and armor be strong and maybe even Aphrodite (Not the face! Not the face!)

Also, there are local gods. If your river is flooding you pray to the river's god.

Seriously, different people pray to different gods at different times and that's not only OK, it's expected.

[maglag]

People, stop trying to shove monotheism down my ancestors' throats. The Greeks (and pretty much everybody in those days) were polytheistic.

Ah, the old times when the monotheistics were the crazy cult.

Seriously, different people pray to different gods at different times and that's not only OK, it's expected.

To be fair, there were specialized temples and priests.

And then there were cities like Athens that considered Athena their main patrony deity, so people clearly favored some gods over others.

In particular Athenians kinda hating Sparta probably wouldn't pray to Ares much. I guess Ares always getting his ass kicked in the myths is what you get for many surviving records being from Athens while Spartans were too busy murdering their babies and slaves to write down their own version of the legends.

[OgreBattle]

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

Then everyone get ready for the new good character that I made: Zeena, Warrior Princess.

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?

There is. It looks like this and it's awesome.

That's Herodotus' map of the world and its better than any campaign map ever made. It is chock full of all sorts of awesome places and people's. It's got normal cool stuff you'd want to have around like the Celts and Persians and Scythians (who are basically Mongolians) and then there's the awesome stuff that Herodotus reported like the Hyperboreans in the north who are immortal giants who live in a lost valley where the sun only sets every 1000 days, deserts to the east where giant ants make towers of gold, and the Macrobians to the south which are basically Wakandans in their perfect African city.

For most of the campaign you'd want to tighten up on the Mediterranean. Most of your adventures are going to happen around the coast and on all the crazy islands full of witches and cyclops and whatnot. Still, it's good to know that you have really concrete answers about what happens if you walk in any direction. Because the Persians actually existed it means you can have detailed and interesting answers to what happens if you're in Persian territory. You can even have the legendary figures of their cultures represented. So Cyrus the Great was a Persian King who was supposed to be part divine and in your setting that can be literally true. Cyrus can indeed be some kind of demigod as long as his lineage is traceable to some God or Titan it's all cool. In this setup the Greeks Gods are literally real and everyone else is worshipping various monster or giants or demigods or even just misunderstandings or alternate names of the greek gods. Olympus being a physical location in Greece means it's understandable that Egypt doesn't quite know what Hades looks like. The god of the underworld keeps a hound at the head of its entrance and that's become the literal hound headed underworld god Anubis after traveling over a thousand miles.

I'm curious about all those little islands in the medditerranean, do some of t them stand out for historic significance? Fantasy mythological too like witches and cyclops

[Thaluikhain]

To be fair, there were specialized temples and priests.

And then there were cities like Athens that considered Athena their main patrony deity, so people clearly favored some gods over others.

In particular Athenians kinda hating Sparta probably wouldn't pray to Ares much. I guess Ares always getting his ass kicked in the myths is what you get for many surviving records being from Athens while Spartans were too busy murdering their babies and slaves to write down their own version of the legends.

Well, sorta, favouring one god didn't mean you couldn't play nice with the others. Dramatic arts as we know them started as a Dionysian festival in Athens, and while Athena beat Poseidon in a competition to see who would be patron of the city (an olive tree is a better present than a saltwater spring), they stayed on good relations with Poseidon. Which was useful giving them being a seafaring nation.

[Blicero]

I'm curious about all those little islands in the medditerranean, do some of t them stand out for historic significance? Fantasy mythological too like witches and cyclops

If you read Herodotus, a lot of the smaller islands between Greece and Asia Minor get mentioned a fair amount -- Delos, Samos, Chios, etc. They play various roles in the Persian wars. (As a side note, anyone who hasn't read Herodotus should.)

[Thaluikhain]

Lesbos is an island famous for being where Sappho lived, and is thus where the word "lesbian" comes from. And from having an important navy during the time of the Delian League.

Delos was is an island that was important in the Delian League, which was named after it because they agreed on the league there, due to being unimportant in any real sense except for being a cult centre and important mythologically, being the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo.

The island of Naxos was the first to try to leave the league, and thus the first to get given a good kicking.

Thasos got in an argument with Athens over silver mines, left the league and went over to the Persians (tried to get Sparta to help, but Sparta was always busy with helots not wanting to be helots). Also given a good kicking.

Aegina was an island that Athens was always arguing with. It was due to this that Themistocles was able to get the Athenians to build up their fleet to fight the Persians, they didn't see Persia as a threat anymore, but he could point to Aegina.

[Dean]

People, stop trying to shove monotheism down my ancestors' throats.

No one is trying to do that. The proposition is that different gods have different miracles they can perform. So Poseiden can calm the seas and Athena can make your generals wiser on the battlefield. Characters have certain levels of favor with gods which, as it goes up, makes gods more likely to grant heroes requests and allows heroes to request their cooler miracles. Since the gods don't have strong opinions about most people the vast majority of the greek world prays to whoever is convenient. But some PC's are like Hercules who will not only be receiving no help from Hera but will actively have his life fucked up by her from time to time, and some PC's are like Odysseus who is a chosen of Athena's and someone she likes so much he is constantly receiving her personal guidance and magic. The only time Athena wouldn't help her chosen is when he has angered some other god like Poseiden and that seems fair play. So most people are fully Polytheist but some PC's will have gods they pray to more than others.

On the topic of magical islands it just occurred to me that a totally awesome character that would definitely be included in this setting book would be Diana of Themiscyra. An Amazon princess who's super strong and flies and has the "Bracers of Athena" that she uses to deflect arrows and is totally rad.

She is the daughter of both Hippolyta (like in the comics) and one of the wind gods like Boreas or Aeolus because theres a few children of wind gods who fly. Including a non-copyright wonder woman actually makes the setting feel more cohesive to me because having even one female hero who's on Hercules level feels in-genre and rounds out the setting nicely. If you want to play a mid tier Hero without making your own you can be Ajax or Atalanta or plenty of other people but a high tier party being able to start as Hercules and Circe and Diana and Achilles rules.

[Orca]

Any island large enough to have a permanent population has its own legend(s) or fairytales, though most surviving tales will postdate Herodotus by quite a lot.

Sicily was supposed to be the island of the cyclops. A quick google suggests Circe's island of Aeaea is fictional.

[maglag]

To be fair, there were specialized temples and priests.

And then there were cities like Athens that considered Athena their main patrony deity, so people clearly favored some gods over others.

In particular Athenians kinda hating Sparta probably wouldn't pray to Ares much. I guess Ares always getting his ass kicked in the myths is what you get for many surviving records being from Athens while Spartans were too busy murdering their babies and slaves to write down their own version of the legends.

Well, sorta, favouring one god didn't mean you couldn't play nice with the others. Dramatic arts as we know them started as a Dionysian festival in Athens, and while Athena beat Poseidon in a competition to see who would be patron of the city (an olive tree is a better present than a saltwater spring), they stayed on good relations with Poseidon. Which was useful giving them being a seafaring nation.

That's not much different from regular D&D. You may have, say, Boccob as your personal god, but that doesn't prevent you from asking for healing from a Pelor priest. Each big city has a bunch of temples each with their own god providing their own services like nowadays we have many different specialized shops in every big city, each providing their own service. Most people had no more loyalty/devotion to a god than modern people have to a particular brand of product.

Then as mentioned sometimes you got in a greek god's shit list and then praying to them would be pretty pointless, while if you managed to be picked as a chosen of a specific god, your chances of success for praying to them would be significantly bolstered.

[OgreBattle]

Apparently ancient Greeks had a lot of poisoned arrow and spears stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_poison

Got me thinking about poison use in tabletop RPG's. If they're "immediate affect within a turn" then you wonder "well why doesn't everyone just slather their arrows in this poison..."

Being a thing that affects you after the encounter to force expenditure of resources, or puts you on a time limit "Gotta fond the antidoe thingy within a week or..." seems more fitting.

Like the real world blue ring octopus, it seems like proper CPR and other first aid things can have a victim avoid a heart attack or suffocation. If they're heroic characters then they can recover to 100%.