Burning Greece

[tj333]

To describe their character in a word, one might truly say
that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to
give none to others.

Such is Athens, your antagonist.

Wiki pages for the campaign.

We had our world and character burning for Burning Greece this weekend.

What's the Big Picture? What's going on in this setting that makes it ripe for adventure. What's changing, evolving, declining?
It is during the Pelopenesian War at the Peace of Nicea that was meant to last for 30 years but it only lasted for 3 years where both Athens and Sparta did everything to weaken the other while strengthening themselves.
Athens is badly hurt and in need of keeping everyone of its allies if not gaining more in order to maintain its safety. Sparta is trying to subvert and encourage Athen's allies to revolt to weaken Athens.

What's the world's culture? What are the cultural analogs? Analogs can be taken from historical earth, current events or fantasy works.
The culture is Ancient Greece with some mythological elements added to it.
The focus is on Athens Culture in particular.

What's the conflict in which the characters are involved? What are the sides? What's wrong?
The character's conflict is to try and bring foreign allies to Athens aid. In particular the distant nations from beyond the Straight of Hercules that they fought against Atlantis with prior to its sinking hundreds of years ago. The characters will have some beliefs related to this and the heros of that battle..

What physical place does this conflict take place in? What ecology, environment, place?
This is going to be a kind of traveling adventure starting in Athens as they try to get support for their mission and then focus mostly on ocean journey and the places they encounter along the way.

What's the name of the most important place in this setting? Not the capital or any dumb shit like that, but THE PLACE where all the action goes down?
To begin with the Assembly of Athens and later their boats.

What's the name of a faraway place that folks talk about, dream about or mutter under their breath about?
Folks mutter about Sparta.
Many dream of the glory they shall receive for bringing the foreign allies to fight along their side.

Who are the antagonists? Who is opposing the goals of the characters?
The antagonists are the spies and agents of Sparta. they oppose the characters openly and in secret.
Some of the citizens and allies of Athens are also their antagonists as they are against the expedition or want the glory for themselves.

Imagine all of the characters are standing a room/ruin/field with the antagonists or their minions. What do the antagonists want from that meeting? What do the characters want from that meeting?
Not sure yet.

Alternately, imagine the characters standing at the scene of some great disaster or calamity clearly caused by one of the antagonists. What's the disaster? How did it happen? What are the characters going to do about it right now?
Not sure yet.

What type of magic exists in this world?
Sorcery will be encountered in the hands of foreigners such as the Persians or people far distant from Athens and the other Greek cities.
The Greeks will have access to faith in the forms of blessings form the gods or just their own might and renown will push them to supernatural levels.

What character stocks are in play in this world? Which are restricted and why?
Human and some mythological monsters and beings.
The monsters and such will be Greek inspired but largely made up by the group.


What cultural traits apply to the characters of this game world? Pick three character traits for each culture.

Athenian: Philosophical, Ambitions, Arrogant
Spartan: Warriors, Disciplined, Complacent.

What's your Resources cycle? 1 month, seasonal, 6 months, annual? What's the game world's currency? Who collects the taxes? What do people do for work? What's the major economy?
Edit: We said the cycle was 6 months, emphasizing the delineation between summer and winter.
The major economy is trade and sale of the olives and wine. Food must be imported but Athens navy can safely do so even in the times of war.

Material world: What weapons and armor are available? Are some weapons and armor restricted to certain cultures or character stocks? What property is available? Are resources and gear otherwise restricted?
This is a bronze age setting so weapons and armour are not as advanced.
The main weapons are the short sword and spear.
Armor is restricted to 1D,3D, and 4D with most people only having partial armour.
Breastplates (4d chest), long swords, and axes are at +1 Ob resources to get in Athens and most other places.

[artellan]

Here's some more stuff from my notes (just what you didn't touch on):

What's the name of a faraway place that folks talk about, dream about or mutter under their breath about?
The muttering is for Sparta; Delphi gets a lot of talk (because of the Oracle, and also the Delian League's treasure there). And of course the Pillars of Heracles like you mentioned - what lies beyond is the province of myth and legend!

What's your Resources cycle? 1 month, seasonal, 6 months, annual? What's the game world's currency?
We said the cycle was 6 months, emphasizing the delineation between summer and winter. The currency of the time period was Drachma right? We should get a handle on how much coins were worth for RPing purposes.

Other notes

• We said that we would use the historical record as background to the campaign, but things might change as we go forward from 421 BC. We can use events from after that period, but also have the freedom to change them too.
• As to the mythology, most everyone believes in the gods and myths but they don't expect it to happen to them.
• There may eventually be a conflict over Athens' government, switching away from democracy to oligarchy or whatever.

Some thoughts
The conflict exists on several levels here. At the large scale there is the war between Athens and Sparta, which is magnified by the Peace that everyone knows is doomed to fail. Then within Athens there are the wealty families and factions vying for power in the Assembly (too bad we didn't get more time to define these factions - oh well the GM has to do something!). The immediate conflict we begin with will be over the expedition itself, will it be sent, with what resources, who will lead it, what complications will be added to the mission, etc. We have to make sure each character has a stake in this immediate conflict (i.e. belief related to it), but I think you said that somewhere already. These conflicts will lead into the other conflicts once (if?) the sea voyage begins.

I was reading today about Wises and got linked to the BWHQ thread about their Tales of Ya Gahn game. They have a few neat ideas in their we might consider appropriating, like a Resources test at the end of the year to determine the fate of their homeland, whether they can pay the Pirate Lord's tribute. We might want to try something similar, maybe not a Resources test but some kind of deadline and a roll about it. Or maybe that's too BE Infection-mechanic-ish?

One thing I really want to see is a stronger justification for wherever we head, i.e. if it is to go beyond the Pillars of Heracles it should be more than just vague rumours and legend that sends us there. But I guess we can work that out in play!

I really wish we'd had more time to hammer out Beliefs together, and hash out some Relationship NPCs, but hopefully we'll get a fair way on the forum here.

- Mike

P.S. I think it's funny TJ how you mispelled campaign as 'champaign', since you just told us how there's "no drinking at your table". Freudian slip?

[tj333]

The Athenians have allies as numerous as our own, and allies that pay tribute, and war is a matter not so much of arms as of money, which makes arms of use.

I like the idea of doing a resources test or something like that occasionally to see if any additional problems come up or overall problems are solved. I can't access the wiki from work it seems so I'll have to take a look at it once I get home.
Or perhaps Athens has taxed the Delian League's resources and now it’s up to you to help build them back up again.




One thing I want to look into for the game is the use of wises to create things. War-wise, Sparta-wise, Egypt-wise (we might be sailing past them), storm-wise, boat-wise, sailor-wise, trade-wise, Posiden-wise, and hero-wise are all things that I think could influence our game.
One question is should there be things like myth-wise or would cyclops-wise and saytr-wise be more appropriate? I suppose it could depend on how much you want to see of something for how large you want the wise to be.

[artellan]

Yeah, I totally agree about the Wises, we can make heavy use of them to add to the game world / story (and having that expectation up front frees you as GM from having to prepare everything). I think you've already seen it but the wiki page on Wises has a really good breakdown of how to handle Wise rolls, depending on whether it falls under the purview of the GM's notes or not.

As for the difference between Myth-Wise and Cyclops-Wise, they could both have their places and would have different uses depending on the situation. Cyclops-Wise would let you descend beyond the mythological to really understand details of Cyclops actual life, what they eat for breakfast, that kind of thing.

The best advice I heard was to create Wises up as you need them and roll Beginner's Luck tests, eventually you will be able to open the skill! This is cool because it allows for really spur-of-the-moment ideas. (Speaking of which, remind me to lend you that Impro book.)

------
My "politically active priest" character is partially burned up but since I'm missing the Character Burner (skill roots, Health & Steel questionnaires, relationship & property costs) those'll have to wait. I am thinking of switching my Student lifepath for Eromenos though: it might make sense to have a religious mentor (perhaps along the lines of Archpriest lifepath from CB Religious setting?). On the other hand, if/when I had a scene with my Erastes I'd be worried that Iain might explode with the potential for homoerotic jokes. Question: When you said you get 1/4 of the Erastes Resources you mean their Resources attribute, not resource points right? And this represents the gifts and support the mentor has given and continues to give you? But if you needed even more of a favour you could still ask them for a Loan too I guess.

As for Beliefs I've only just started thinking of them, but:

1. A belief about the Gods and how I can best serve them (extra belief as per the "Initiate of the Mysteries" [modified Sword to the Order] trait).
2. Loyalty to Athens and a goal about that. (I think all the PCs should have a belief about Athens, whether loyalty, love, bitterness, etc.)
3. ?? Something that compliments but could come into conflict with the above.
4. ?? Something that compliments / could come into conflict with the other PCs' beliefs.

I haven't totally given up on the Slave Merchant concept, I might burn him up anyway and see which looks more fun to play. (and whichever one I don't play could be available for Circling up!) I'll probably stick with the priest but I'm definitely still open to suggestions from others about which concept fits with their characters / ideas better.

That's all for now,
Mike

[tj333]

I had meant that the that when you pick the Eromenos you also pick the lifepath that your erastes was on at that time. Its from that life path you recieve 1/4 of his resource points and 2 of his skills. That is in all truth the least thought out part of that LP.
My inspiration for this was the Country Wife (I think) lifepath that did some simular things.



An intersting effect of useing Beginners Luck on the wises would be that things would get more fantastic as the wises leveled up.



For the relegious belief I might suggest wikipediaing the goddess Athena (patron of Athens) and looking at the various aspect the god had. Something intersting could come from there.

[artellan]

Here are some ideas I had on tying everything together. They mostly sprung from me trying to imagine why we'd be so serious about pursuing this rumour about a distant nation that might offer help to Athens, and why now.
I will use player names in place of PC names since I don't remember them all.

1) my brother Lycades, a sailor and an old friend of Mark's, is the only survivor of a voyage beyond the Straits of Heracles that set out over two years ago. He arrived back in Athens aboard a slave ship last year, but without all of his faculties intact: most of the time he is a babbling madman. But in one of his more lucid moments he managed to convince me that he had his crew had found evidence of the distant tribe/nation the Athenians fought alongside two hundred years ago, that they are still alive and strong, and they remember their debt to Athens.

2) Due to the healing nature of the salt springs (lithium - thanks Mark M), my brother Lycades is currently staying at the temple of Poseidon, recuperating there. This puts him under the influence of the priestess of Poseidon (who is not yet our enemy, so I'm not aware of the danger).

3) Perhaps Lycades also told Mark about his voyage (maybe even told him things that he didn't tell me). Perhaps he's asked Mark to go back beyond the Straits to do something - either the same mission as the rest of us, to win the support of that distant tribe, or maybe something else! (e.g. buried treasure, beautiful women, a bastard child).
Of course this is all up to Mark but something along these lines could really tie our characters together.

4) Due to the signs and portents on the day Lycades told me of the existence of the distant tribe, I believe Athena wants this mission to take place. She guided my brother home to tell his tale, and she wants me to help ensure the future of Athens by making this mission a success!!

5) Not sure how Iain wants to tie into this; he could be either a friend/acquaintance of mine, Mark's, or my brother's. Or I might have met him for the first time when I asked for his support & participation in the voyage. Or maybe Iain was the one who found my brother in some other port, they were trying to sell him as a slave and Iain rescued him.

6) It's in our best interest to keep my brother's condition secret from the Council/Assembly - just tell them he can't speak in person because he's "taken ill".

7) We need to name the distant tribe/nation/people that we're talking about. Not sure if it should be from history or if we can just make it up. Something that sounds cool though, like Carthaginians or Abyssinians.


- Mike