I've done it with GURPS and BRP, both worked fine.

Quote from: Madprofessor;978508How do you like Mazes and Minotaurs? Would it handle the type of game we are discussing here?  The reviews I read made it out to be needlessly old school and purposefully outdated (I'll probably catch hell for that one), like it was some kind of weird thought experiment of "what if this was written in 1972 and it really was the first RPG?  What would that look like?" It seemed like making a functional rpg about mythic Greece was a secondary consideration... but I may be totally wrong.

Mazes & Minotaurs is a fully functional RPG, especially the "revised" edition. The conceit that it was the first RPG published and the RPG history in jokes get a bit tiresome after a while and I would love aversion edited to be just an RPG.  It is definitely on the Mythic rather than realistic end of the spectrum.

RuneQuest was originally written for a Bronze Age world and would be my choice for a more realistic game of the period.

Quote from: DavetheLost;978569The conceit that it was the first RPG published and the RPG history in jokes get a bit tiresome after a while...

I'm tired of it already.

There was an interesting campaign premise in GURPS All-Stars -- Sparta has just fallen, and you're survivors. So now you have to make your way and find your purpose in a world where your training (and reputation) have made you the ultimate Bronze Age badasses.

I'm not actually recommending the book, though. The article is short (it's 1/10th the book), and spends far too much time briefly listing all the different locations scattered around the Mediterranean, instead of actually developing anything in usable depth. It's just a good idea.

Agon could be a pretty good fit. It's got Jason and the Argonauts and Homer written all over it.

And at one point I was working on Adventurer, a fantasy version of Traveller.

Quote from: Eisenmann;978581Agon could be a pretty good fit. It's got Jason and the Argonauts and Homer written all over it.

And at one point I was working on Adventurer, a fantasy version of Traveller.

Oh, I checked out Agon a while back...let's say it's very stylized and narrative from what I could tell. What was your experience?

Quote from: Dumarest;978585Oh, I checked out Agon a while back...let's say it's very stylized and narrative from what I could tell. What was your experience?

It was absolutely excellent. I once ran a 10 hour game with 7 players and it was the easiest game I ever ran at that scale. The lead up session to that marathon was just two PCs.  

Agon is indeed stylized, the player characters are powerful, but with things like positioning in combat it's got some grit. It's one of my favorite games of all time to run. The Strife system helps keep the wheels of the game turning and I found myself riffing along in no time. If you run it, you will cover a lot of territory in a session, which really helps make the game feel epic. it doesn't hurt that the players hold the defense dice in their left hand and their defense in the right. Oh, and oaths. Instant story hooks and fuel for glory.

Edit:

I found my play report over at rpg.net.

Quote from: Pat;978441Yes

More seriously, Mercator (PDF) might be worth a glance.

I read part of that once...if I remember, doesn't it assume the PCs will be Romans? Still, probably could be adapted to Greek without too much work. I do wish Wanderer were real, though, although I'm sure that's just nostalgia and love for 1977 Traveller in the little box full of little books. I'm also sure if Wanderer were real it would never measure up to what my imagination would want it to be. Would still be cool. I think I may have to print out Mercator Traveller at work and put it in a binder with sheet protectors and try to run it sometime.

Quote from: Eisenmann;978588It was absolutely excellent. I once ran a 10 hour game with 7 players and it was the easiest game I ever ran at that scale. The lead up session to that marathon was just two PCs.  

Agon is indeed stylized, the player characters are powerful, but with things like positioning in combat it's got some grit. It's one of my favorite games of all time to run. The Strife system helps keep the wheels of the game turning and I found myself riffing along in no time. If you run it, you will cover a lot of territory in a session, which really helps make the game feel epic. it doesn't hurt that the players hold the defense dice in their left hand and their defense in the right. Oh, and oaths. Instant story hooks and fuel for glory.

Edit:

I found my play report over at rpg.net.

Gotta say, the different dice in different hands is cool. I also came across a left-handed character sheet, which is doubly cool.

I'll have to read your play report to understand the game better. Somebody remind me tomorrow while I'm on a work break.

Quote from: Dumarest;978469Got links?

Are these D&D derivatives or original systems made for the setting?

Blood & Bronze is set in Mesopotamia. from my limited read through, it's OSR ish.

Pax Gladius uses Deep 7's 1PG system (the base rules fit on one page). It's designed to emulate the old Italian Sword & Sandal flicks of the 60's

Heroes of Hellas is a supplement for Barbarians of Lemuria set in Mythic Greece

Do you mean actual, historical bronze age (cultures based upon the palace economy and so on) or a pastiche that's close enough for the swords and sandals genre?

Quote from: Pat;978579There was an interesting campaign premise in GURPS All-Stars -- Sparta has just fallen, and you're survivors. So now you have to make your way and find your purpose in a world where your training (and reputation) have made you the ultimate Bronze Age badasses.

Nitpick, but Sparta's reputation as a military society is from historical, Iron Age times.

Quote from: Kiero;978672Do you mean actual, historical bronze age (cultures based upon the palace economy and so on) or a pastiche that's close enough for the swords and sandals genre?

Sure why not? I like the idea of having a hard (and unrealistically fast) assimilation of the use of iron too. So iron becomes the "mithril" of the game world. Few people know how to forge it. Then it becomes a campaign secret worthy of attaining.

Plus you can always have those gifts of the Gods bestowed you and your people. The Secret of Iron!

When I run my version - it'll be late-Bronze, early Iron with lots of stuff tossed in. Cultures, not races. Monsters are the cursed of the Gods or their minions. I'll have politics in different forms depending on the culture. I'll have Roman, Egyptian, Hittite, Mycenaean, Greek, Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian analog elements, with some sub-Saharan Nok-culture stuff being represented. Maybe proto-Empires, leagues and alliances barely holding on against rivals, where the Gods hold influence of a given culture or city-state as setting material.

Everything is on the table for me.

Runequest I guess (even though the artwork inspiration isn't technically bronze age, but iron age). OR: I have had some success with modifying Stormbringer 5th ed in the past, so I think I'd try that first. But Runequest might give some ideas on how to run different religions and cults.

Historically, there are many unknowns about bronze age Europe, so that could easily be used to an advantage in an RPG. The Middle-East is a bit better known, particularly Egypt and Mesopotamia (there are also some decent books on the Hittites, and China)

Quote from: Dumarest;978526Yeah, that is exactly what I like.

Again, this is my preference. Some the heroes may be the son of a god or a goddess, as Heroes of Olympus allows for this to happen with random rolls at character generation, but basically they are humans vying against other humans.

More often than not, they don't care unless it's a favored child in extreme circumstances. But fail to pay homage or make your hecatomb and you may get some punishment to teach you the error of your ways.

Yes. Heroes of Olympus has rules for this, too, if I remember right. And sometimes you can get a special item or talent due to your divine parent (if you rolled that).

They will be few and far between, and their magic will be generally time- and effort-consuming if it is powerful, and the heroes will probably need to go on a quest to get the knowledge or item needed to counteract them.

For me, the only access the heroes would have to magic would be acquiring some item, like Perseus's sword and shield in the Harryhausen Jason and the Argonauts film, or by consulting an oracle or finding a mad hermit or witch of Hecate and persuading him or her to help in some way (going on a quest, making a sacrifice, rescuing from harpies, whatever). I wouldn't allow PC wizards in my game as it would make magic no longer wonderful and frightening but instead rather ordinary and a common recourse to problem-solving. But I'm picturing a group of macho Greek heroes gallivanting about on quests and adventures in the Mediterranean and environs (which is pretty much what Heroes of Olympus was made for) and I don't see a place for D&D-style "magic is readily available for PCs" in that. But my players have always been good with accepting restrictions like "no PC wizards" or "no elves." All this talk is making me want to scrap my current game and play this instead.

Oh, and another cool thing about Heroes of Olympus is every PC will be unique in his talents and background due to the way characters are rolled up. There are no classes or types.

So we're pretty much in agreement over the course of our conversation about defining the genre (with the slight exception of whether PCs can use magic), the result of which, I think, is that we are really talking about Sword and Sorcery using Heroic Age Greece as a setting.

It seems a pretty fine hair to split between Swords and Sorcery (Hyborian Age) and Swords and Sandals (Jason and the Agonauts or 300) I think.  The main difference that I can tell is that Swords and Sandals uses a setting based on history and myth that uses real-earth geography, cultures, and legends, while swords and sorcery creates these things from whole fantasy-cloth. Sandals style is also firmly rooted in the ancient world where there is more flexibility with sword and sorcery (like including medieval or even sci-fi elements. Troy (the movie) is swords and sandals, Elric is sword and sorcery.  The Hyborian Age is a bit of both, but it leans toward sword and sorcery because of the wholesale creation.  Harryhousen's Sinbad's are closer to sword and sandal.  Thundar and Game of thrones are sword and sorcery.

Maybe none of that matters and its just semantics.  Point is, I am glad to see that we are pretty much in agreement about the roles of mortals, gods, monsters, and magic in such a setting.  That helps me get down to the nitty gritty of defining system and setting specifics.