Post by korgoth on Mar 14, 2008 0:21:24 GMT -6
Has anybody played this one? It is from Task Force Games, and is a role playing game with strong board/war game elements. It is set in mythological Greece around the time of the voyage of the Argo (i.e. pre-Trojan War). I own it but haven't played it.
The game was designed by Dennis Sustare and is from 1981.
One of the fun things about it is a series of charts determining your parentage. You roll to estabish your father (could be commoner, a king or one of the gods) and your mother (could be a commoner, a queen or a goddess or muse or nymph). Then you pick one of your parents and roll a 1d6 to determine your "gift". A roll of 1 is always bad (like your children will all be monsters if you're descended from Poseiden, or you are limited to minimal skill with weapons if you are descended from a Muse); a roll of 6 lets you pick on the chart and roll again, and you don't stop until you have no more 6s. So you can end up pretty decked out, or not. You also get to find out where you are from, and what special quality you have (maybe you are a king in your own right, or maybe you have a terrible temper).
I rolled a test character. He is the son of Poseidon and Polyhymnia (Muse of heroic hymns) and is from Arcadia. His gift from Poseidon is +25 Great Strength (a good one!); his special status or flaw is that he is accompanied by a squire. To finish, I would alot 100 points among a variety of skills (minimum of 20 points; including further increasing my Great Strength), and then choosing another set of skills to have at a lower than heroic level (A, B and C level).
The game is interesting. There are no "attributes", only skills (but including heroic attributes like Great Strength, Great Vision, Great Beauty, etc.). There are mild potential disparities among characters in that one may end up hated by Artemis (unlucky roll on the Nymph gift table) while another may end up with a ship and slave crew, a fully furnished palace with lands, Great Beauty and Great Speed (a series of unlikely but very lucky rolls on the King/Queen parent gift table). One may end up favored by one of the gods, while another may end up a drunkard (status/flaw table). But they all get the 100 points to allot and the other skills to pick. So nobody is a total loser (unless maybe you get the limitation on weapon skills from a Muse - ouch!).
The combat system is fairly complex in that there is a points allocation system. See, if you have a 55% skill in Spear, what that really means is that when you fight with a spear you allocate 55 points in the categories of Attack, Defense, Initiative and Trickery. If your opponent put more in initiative than you, he goes first. If you put more into attack than he put in defense, you hit, etc. Trickery involves a complex table of special moves like Shield Bash, Damage Weapon, Major Impale, etc. I haven't read all of that stuff at this point. Some of it looks like it would put you on the outs in Greekville, like "Throw Sand in Eyes". But hey, I guess it's there for the barbarians, like those jerks in Colchis.
There are also rules for large skirmishes, and for naval combat. There are rules for magic (including Hermes wizards and Hecate witches), monsters and the gods. There are rules for moving the Argo (or some other ship) around on the big map of the Mythological Mediterranean, in case you want to keep track of that (includes weather). There are detailed random encounter sections for the different area types (mountains, wild vs. civilized coastal, etc.). There are stats for all the Argonauts. There are scenarios. There are a ton of different hex maps for various Argonautica locations and other mythological encounters (like the Labyrinth). There are paragraphs detailing what is special about each region (i.e. Aetolia vs. Epirus vs. Cappadocia, etc.).
There is a Zeus Retribution Table.
The game was designed by Dennis Sustare and is from 1981.
One of the fun things about it is a series of charts determining your parentage. You roll to estabish your father (could be commoner, a king or one of the gods) and your mother (could be a commoner, a queen or a goddess or muse or nymph). Then you pick one of your parents and roll a 1d6 to determine your "gift". A roll of 1 is always bad (like your children will all be monsters if you're descended from Poseiden, or you are limited to minimal skill with weapons if you are descended from a Muse); a roll of 6 lets you pick on the chart and roll again, and you don't stop until you have no more 6s. So you can end up pretty decked out, or not. You also get to find out where you are from, and what special quality you have (maybe you are a king in your own right, or maybe you have a terrible temper).
I rolled a test character. He is the son of Poseidon and Polyhymnia (Muse of heroic hymns) and is from Arcadia. His gift from Poseidon is +25 Great Strength (a good one!); his special status or flaw is that he is accompanied by a squire. To finish, I would alot 100 points among a variety of skills (minimum of 20 points; including further increasing my Great Strength), and then choosing another set of skills to have at a lower than heroic level (A, B and C level).
The game is interesting. There are no "attributes", only skills (but including heroic attributes like Great Strength, Great Vision, Great Beauty, etc.). There are mild potential disparities among characters in that one may end up hated by Artemis (unlucky roll on the Nymph gift table) while another may end up with a ship and slave crew, a fully furnished palace with lands, Great Beauty and Great Speed (a series of unlikely but very lucky rolls on the King/Queen parent gift table). One may end up favored by one of the gods, while another may end up a drunkard (status/flaw table). But they all get the 100 points to allot and the other skills to pick. So nobody is a total loser (unless maybe you get the limitation on weapon skills from a Muse - ouch!).
The combat system is fairly complex in that there is a points allocation system. See, if you have a 55% skill in Spear, what that really means is that when you fight with a spear you allocate 55 points in the categories of Attack, Defense, Initiative and Trickery. If your opponent put more in initiative than you, he goes first. If you put more into attack than he put in defense, you hit, etc. Trickery involves a complex table of special moves like Shield Bash, Damage Weapon, Major Impale, etc. I haven't read all of that stuff at this point. Some of it looks like it would put you on the outs in Greekville, like "Throw Sand in Eyes". But hey, I guess it's there for the barbarians, like those jerks in Colchis.
There are also rules for large skirmishes, and for naval combat. There are rules for magic (including Hermes wizards and Hecate witches), monsters and the gods. There are rules for moving the Argo (or some other ship) around on the big map of the Mythological Mediterranean, in case you want to keep track of that (includes weather). There are detailed random encounter sections for the different area types (mountains, wild vs. civilized coastal, etc.). There are stats for all the Argonauts. There are scenarios. There are a ton of different hex maps for various Argonautica locations and other mythological encounters (like the Labyrinth). There are paragraphs detailing what is special about each region (i.e. Aetolia vs. Epirus vs. Cappadocia, etc.).
There is a Zeus Retribution Table.
