What game incorporate a great deal of Greek Mythology, and how are these presented in the games?
I know there's Mazes & Minotaurs... is Scion another one?
Are there any others?
RPGPundit
Off the top of my head:
Mazes & Minotaurs
Arete
AGON
I honestly don't know much about the specific presentation though.
Edit: yeah, I meant AGON not Agone
Scion is more of a general mythological tour de force, not specifically Greek. Honestly, I'm surprised you'd even inquire after a WW game. In a similar vein is Godsend Agenda (http://www.godsendagenda.com/ga.html), which is mythological superpowers. To the point of your thread, though, is Hellas (http://www.hellasrpg.com/joomla/), which is Greek Legends in Space. I'm intrigued by the setting, but not the mechanics.
!i!
Quote from: Ian Absentia;360475Honestly, I'm surprised you'd even inquire after a WW game. In a similar vein is Godsend Agenda (http://www.godsendagenda.com/ga.html), which is mythological superpowers. To the point of your thread, though, is Hellas (http://www.hellasrpg.com/joomla/), which is Greek Legends in Space. I'm intrigued by the setting, but not the mechanics.
!i!
Thank you for the links; I'm inquiring in the sense of finding out what's out there, good bad or otherwise, not because I'm going to be pursuing any specific game.
RPGPundit
Quote from: ConanMK;360474Off the top of my head:
Mazes & Minotaurs
Arete
Agone
I honestly don't know much about the specific presentation though.
Give a summary of those last two, please.
RPGPundit
The New Argonauts by Sean K Reynolds is pretty good. It is a d20 game.
Wait, how about The Age of Heroes D&D 2E sourcebook ?
Regards,
David R
A not so good d20 rpg with an ancient Greece setting, is "OGL Ancients" published by Mongoose.
Quote from: David R;360481Wait, how about The Age of Heroes D&D 2E sourcebook ?
Regards,
David R
I've been running a Golden Age of Greece / Celts / Late Roman Republic game of Pathfinder for the last 6-7 months. The 2e reference books have been a major help in it.
I hardly use any of my other setting books, but I use all of the green and blue back 2e books I think.
GURPS Greece for me.
Quote from: ggroy;360484A not so good d20 rpg with an ancient Greece setting, is "OGL Ancients" published by Mongoose.
What was bad about it?
Quote from: Technomancer;360491What was bad about it?
Not so good proofreading. Words in the wrong place. Typical Mongoose product from that time period during the d20 glut.
With that being said, the combat system in "OGL Ancients" is actually similar to what I've used in houserules back in the day for 1E AD&D, with defense rolls instead of static AC. I haven't looked through it lately for things like broken mechanics, spells, etc ...
Quote from: ggroy;360499Not so good proofreading. Words in the wrong place. Typical Mongoose product from that time period during the d20 glut.With that being said, the combat system in "OGL Ancients" is actually similar to what I've used in houserules back in the day for 1E AD&D, with defense rolls instead of static AC. I haven't looked through it lately for things like broken mechanics, spells, etc ...
You got that right.
Working at my store I may not buy every product , but I do scan them and look them over. Mongoose had a long stretch where their formating, proffreading, and arrangemt inside books was total crap.
- Ed C.
Quote from: ggroy;360484A not so good d20 rpg with an ancient Greece setting, is "OGL Ancients" published by Mongoose.
Quote from: Technomancer;360491What was bad about it?
I don't know exactly, but a friend of mine owns it and says it's crap.
In every case, I feel there isn't a definitive Ancient Greek RPG yet.
Quote from: ConanMK;360474Agone
Er... That would presumably be
AGON (in which a group of heroes in the style of the Argonauts competes for glory as they battle against monsters and perform quests for the gods), not
Agone the French high fantasy RPG?
Another title that springs to mind is
Nine Worlds, in which the cosmology actually follows a geocentric model much like those of Aristotle or Ptolemy, and it all is still governed by the Greek gods. (The ninth world is Hades which surrounds everything else at the borders of existence.) Only the present-day Earth itself remains unaware of this because the well-meaning renegade titan Prometheus once forged an illusionary "shield of reason" around the world in order to protect humanity from the divine power struggles, and more recently the Second Titanomachy, that rage out there in the aether. The PCs are Archons, mortals who have awakened to the power of the Demiurge and discovered the truth about the universe, and ultimately can choose either to support or overthrow the gods of their choice. It's modern fantasy in the "hidden world" mold of
Mage: The Ascension, essentially.
WEG has done a licensed Xena game in the past, though I'm not really certain if that counts as "Ancient Greek".
Quote from: Koltar;360504Working at my store I may not buy every product , but I do scan them and look them over. Mongoose had a long stretch where their formating, proffreading, and arrangemt inside books was total crap.
It looked like a lot of the Mongoose titles during the d20 glut were rush jobs. They wanted to be the first to release a title, before everybody else. Perhaps they bought into the mantra that the first to market got most of the "easy cash", such as the first batch of Mongoose "Quintessential" titles.
There was Heroes of Olympus (http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7536) by B. Dennis Sustare. It was published by Task Force Games in 1981 and was a boxed set. You play an Argonaut, a member of Jason's crew on his famous voyage. It came with several maps and sheets of cardboard counters. I haven't looked at it in years. Here's a RPGNet review (http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_2038.html) of it.
I just remembered that I used to own Mythic Greece: The Age of Heroes, a supplement for Rolemaster. I recall being initially excited at the prospect, then disappointed that it was essentially a catalogue of stat write-ups for a game that I wasn't eager to play.
Following on Claudius' post above, I have to agree that there hasn't been a definitive "Ancient Greek" RPG yet. Hellas, to which I linked earlier, has the right idea, but it's been transposed into a Sci-Fi fantasy. Mazes & Minotaurs comes closer to my mind, but has quite purposefully avoided a direct connection to real Greek history. Most everything else I've seen has been a supplement for an existing game, much like the Rolemaster supplement I mentioned above -- a catalogue without any real creative effort to make the game come alive.
!i!
I haven't played AGON but the rules look very evocatively Homeric through and through, from naming conventions of the characters (they must choose a Homeric-style adjective to their name, like "flashing-eyed" or "swift-footed") and the attributes, and the structure of the adventure (characters are given quests by their gods, usually involving defeating strange monsters). My friends who have played have told me that it's very important that the players buy into the competitive aspect of the game--players are encouraged to bet against each other for accomplishment of feats--or the game falls apart a little.
There's also John Wick's game, Enemy Gods, which has a neat conceit that players control both a hero and the god of another player's hero. It has a fun core mechanic that requires describing heroic deeds to get dice, but it suffers from being a little underdeveloped.
Quote from: two_fishes;360562There's also John Wick's game, Enemy Gods... [snip] ...but it suffers from being a little underdeveloped.
Say it ain't so. And why is it that every one of John's games sound like a game I played 10 or 15 years earlier?
!i!
Green Ronin's "Mythic Vistas" d20 line had "Trojan War." It's a pretty good supplement if you're looking for something that straddles the line between history and a Harryhausen movie.
I'll also second "Age of Heroes" from TSR's Historical Reference "Green Book" series for AD&D. That entire line, while I feel it errs too much on the side of sticking to history and "realism," produced some of the best D&D stuff out there. All of them are decent references for the average gamer who isn't too into history, but wants what might work well in a game distilled into one source.
Quote from: Skyrock;360519WEG has done a licensed Xena game in the past, though I'm not really certain if that counts as "Ancient Greek".
Dude, it totally does.
This brings me memories of Oraculo, a Spanish Mythic Greece game. Despite being the worst RPG I've ever tried in any conceivable sense, we managed to play a fun campaign of it for a bit more than a year. I attribute it to us being adolescent. There's no other conceivable explanation. Seriously, it was the worst.
Exalted was once pitched to me as a game that was good for running a mythic Greece campaign.
The guy was clearly paying his pusher way too much, or not nearly enough.
Quote from: The Shaman;360722Exalted was once pitched to me as a game that was good for running a mythic Greece campaign.
You know, I think that it
could do the job, but considering how many other systems I've looked at to better emulate the
Exalted setting, I wouldn't recommend it.
!i!
I think Amber could do a good job of it.
RPGPundit
Well, so could Nobilis, but, in point of fact, neither of them do so.
Oh, good heavens, I forgot Paul Elliott's (Mithras) Warlords of Alexander (http://www.balbinus.com/Warlords.pdf) -- historical roleplaying in the time of Alexander the Great. It's an unofficial supplement for BRP, and easily as good as any of the official monographs out there. It's worth downloading for the rules for noble Houses alone. Paul was also one of the seminal minds behind Mazes & Minotaurs, so you can get a sense of his love for the topic.
!i!
Quote from: Ian Absentia;360831Well, so could Nobilis, but, in point of fact, neither of them do so.
Nobilis does incorporate bits and pieces of Greek mythology, however, although in the setting it's assumed that the myths told by mortals tend to be distorted and misunderstood accounts about Nobles and what
really happened. But there are still hydras lurking in the alleyways, the last of the Gorgons continues to live alone on her island, the Muses on Mount Parnassus have been joined by a newcomer who looks after Pop; and one of the ancient gods is currently working undercover as a field agent for a secret UN task force that battles against supernatural menaces.
I like Agon, although I don't see it working well for long, intense campaigns. I've enjoyed playing it in small, concentrated bursts, though - it is a very focused game about beating up monsters and bragging about it before your time runs out.
Rules-wise it reminds me mostly of Savage Worlds, although Agon clearly also owes a lot to OD&D; beating up monsters is an important part given a lot of focus in these rules. It has a very nice abstract movement system slightly reminiscent of PIG's Treasure Awaits. That said, it's not really a rules-heavy game, more like a rules light-to-medium.
There's an informative review over at rpg.net (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13154.phtml).
Personally I think that Agon is a neat little game, although with the caveat that it's really more geared towards episodic campaigns. I believe that this was the intent of the designer, and if so, he did pretty well. :)
Quote from: Imperator;360692Dude, it totally does.
This brings me memories of Oraculo, a Spanish Mythic Greece game. Despite being the worst RPG I've ever tried in any conceivable sense, we managed to play a fun campaign of it for a bit more than a year. I attribute it to us being adolescent. There's no other conceivable explanation. Seriously, it was the worst.
Help me remember: Oraculo (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/encyclopedia/alphabetical/O.html) included a choose-your-own-adventure, right?
Quote from: JongWK;361037Help me remember: Oraculo (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/encyclopedia/alphabetical/O.html) included a choose-your-own-adventure, right?
Yes, oh my god how much did it stank.
What I said about OGL Ancients, can be said about Oráculo too:
Quote from: Claudius;360509a friend of mine owns it and says it's crap.
Only that Oráculo seems to be even crappier than OGL Ancients.
There's a list on a similar theme here:
http://rpg.geekdo.com/geeklist/44818/roleplaying-games-inspired-from-greece