The year is 401 BC. The Persian prince Cyrus the Younger hires ten thousand Greek mercenaries to dispose of his brother Artaxerxes II., the Persian Great King, and take the throne for himself. Initially, all goes according to plan: The Persian rebels, assisted by the Greek mercenaries, march deep into the Persian heart land and defeat the army of Artaxerxes at the battle of Kunaxa. The coup seems to have succeeded. But Cyrus himself is killed in the battle, the rebels scatter to the four winds. The leaders of the Greek mercenaries are betrayed and killed by a local ruler.

The ten thousand Greek veterans are heavily armed and almost completely unharmed; but they are cut off from supplies, in a foreign country, surrounded by enemies, thousand miles away from home, demoralized, without leadership, without hope.

Now it's up to the player characters to take responsibility and put themselves in charge. Can they bring the ten thousand back home?

That's a hex crawl campaign I would play or run.

Things needed:
- Hex map of Persia and surroundings
- Details on cities and regions, resources
- Random tables with encounters and events
- Details on local rulers, their motivations, resources and relationships
- Details on the Greek mercenaries, the internal factions and relationships, some exceptional characters
- Rules for logistics, morale, and mass combat
-

Any thoughts?

Very similar to the Legion series of books by Harry Turtledove, except a Roman legion is transported to fantasy land.

Most important is probably a robust mass combat system. PCs are intelligence, spies, forward scouts, diplomats and special forces units, then break out the wargame stuff for the inevitable battles.

Just so folks know this situation really occurred. It was written in a book called the Anabapsis by Xenophon. The incident was one of the foundations of the idea that that Greece could take on the whole Persian Empire and win. Which culminated in the plans of Phillip of Macedon as executed by his son Alexander the Great.

That is a game I'd happily play in, I hope you get to run it.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/kobayashi/10000/paperback/product-4597925.html

Sounds very cool & fun.

I'm in!

Seriously that sounds cool.  

I am trying to find or canibalize of brew some rules for larger scale combat.  I don't want to go the war game route I want Theater of the mind but more realistic and grandular than "roll to see who win's" which I think that sounds like now.  

Let me know what you put together.

Xenophon's account is a great read and it's an amazing accomplishment.

The story transposes to other settings nicely as well, including the surreal movie The Warriors, which was directly inspired by it.

"Can you count, suckas?"

Quote from: AsenRG;957917http://www.lulu.com/shop/kobayashi/10000/paperback/product-4597925.html

Unfortunately, my French is not up to the task.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;957932Xenophon's account is a great read and it's an amazing accomplishment.

The story transposes to other settings nicely as well, including the surreal movie The Warriors, which was directly inspired by it.

"Can you count, suckas?"

Funny, I literally just finished watching that film.


My main tip for the GM? Watch it as well, and take the cue from it as well as 300, and don't be afraid to make the various lords of Persian area be extremely varied in both culture and tactics, as the region was very, very far from an unified culture, and consisted at that time of about 5 - 10 different kingdoms that sworn vassalage to King of Kings, rather than just one landmass under one ruler.

What a great idea if you can pull it off.

(Looks like I have some reading to do.)
=

Cunaxa was in modern Iraq, near Baghdad, on the banks of the Euphrates. Not Persia, strictly speaking, which would be in Iran and even further east.

There's a critical additional aspect you've left out of your brief: it wasn't just the mercenaries who were stranded, their camp followers and loot was as well. There were at least another 10,000 mouths to feed who couldn't fight for themselves; by all accounts they marched in a hollow square with the non-combatants protected inside against the swarms of Persian cavalry harassing them the whole way. That adds a whole level of additional complexity to it, since they have to be fed, most of them can't fight, and move slower than the mercs could unencumbered by them.

That aside, this is an awesome scenario, especially if the players get creative doing stuff like stealing horses along the way to form their own cavalry, or manage to convert a satrap or two to their cause along the way. It didn't happen in history, but these are PCs you're dealing with, anything's game.

Two recommended sources to aid you.
1) A podcast from the Radio 4 series, In Our Time on Xenophon. It isn't all about the Anabasis, but it's useful still, and only 45 minutes.
2) The Ten Thousand, by Michael Curtis Ford, which is a good fictionalisation of it.

You need a system which can do mass combat well, and particularly distinguish between heavy infantry and the power of formations, and light infantry and the massed (but mostly light) cavalry of the Persians. Actually, ACKS with Domains@War is well set up to handle all of that for you - as well as logistics, morale and so on - and including already being hex-map ready. If it's any help, my historical game Tyche's Favourites might have some useful ideas for tailoring ACKS for your needs.

I got the idea while listening to the Lesser Bonapartes:

http://thelesserbonapartes.libsyn.com/xenophons-anabasis-part-i-xenophon-warrior-princes  (you can skip the first 5:20)
http://thelesserbonapartes.libsyn.com/xenophons-anabasis-part-ii-billet-raise-cyrus
http://thelesserbonapartes.libsyn.com/xenophons-anabasis-part-iii-in-the-armenia-now
http://thelesserbonapartes.libsyn.com/xenophons-anabasis-part-iv-death-thrace-10000

Quote from: Pyromancer;957867

Things needed:
- Hex map of Persia and surroundings
- Details on cities and regions, resources
- Random tables with encounters and events
- Details on local rulers, their motivations, resources and relationships
- Details on the Greek mercenaries, the internal factions and relationships, some exceptional characters
- Rules for logistics, morale, and mass combat
-

Any thoughts?

Ancient Persia is not well covered in RPGs, for that matter neither is classical Greece, surprisingly.

For most of this, like  cities, regions, rulers etc. you are not likely to do better than going straight to the primary sources.  I recommend the Landmark editions of Herodotus and Xenophon, they have clear translations, *great maps* and commentary to explain some of the details that a modern reader wouldn't be familiar with.  They also have great indexes - very useful if you are trying to find specific types of info. They're not cheap (15-20 bucks used on Amazon).

Unless there is an obscure wargame out there that I am not aware of (Perhaps in Strategy and Tactics magazine or something), you'll probably have to build your own map - the Landmark books will give you a great starting point.
Encounter tables and such depend on if you are going historical or mythological - again not too many RPG resources out there so you may have to make your own.
What system are you running?
Tons of options out there for mass combat.  It really depends on how you want to approach it.

Quote from: Pyromancer;957934Unfortunately, my French is not up to the task.

I still can offer some help if needed.

To sum it up : the campaign is a point-crawl that starts in Babylon. At the end of each adventure, the PCs choose on that map where the 10000 go next. They start the campaign with 10000 men, if they reach Byzantium with less than 5000 men, bad shit happens to them.