Meleager Beleaguered
By Mick Bradley on Mar 26, 2009 in Mick's Journal
Crossposted from The Harping Monkey
Rich, Norwood and I are about to begin a new rpg mini-campaign. It’s an epic Greek heroes pastiche that will use Chad Underkoffler’s PDQ – Zorcerer of Zo as its base system. The premise we’ve settled upon is that we will each play one of the Argonauts in the time shortly after their return from the quest for the Golden Fleece.
We considered the option of playing an entirely made-up characters who happened to have been Argonauts, but what we ended up deciding was that it would be cooler to play one of the actual Argonauts, with the stipulation that although everything up to the end of the golden fleece quest happened according to the mythic storyline, that history from the point of our first session onward was free to develop in whatever ways our choices took it. No doubt we will use the stories-as-written as a loose guideline to frame our campaign and provide lots of potential situation and conflict – but the main idea is that things don’t have to end up the way that Homer, Ovid, and Bullfinch have established. Read the rest
(crossposted from Harping Monkey)
This? This excites me and makes me jealous I’m not playing. Teh Aweusume.
Why ZoZ as the game of choice, out of curiosity?
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler | Mar 26, 2009 | Reply
Norwood and I were rapping about playing something fun and epic. Norwood threw out that he’d like to play something PDQ because he’s a big fan of the system. I’m huge on Greek myths, so I started poring over some myths looking for a good foothold. On Wikipedia I found the list of the Argonauts and started click through to read about them and I was awestruck by the cool mythical mortals. I’d never studied the Golden Fleece past the movie and I was hooked. The tie to Medea was unresistable for me as I adore the play.
The pitch of former Argonauts adventuring together and that only the myths leading up to the game developed through conversation between us all. At first, Mick and Norwood acted uninterested until we agreed that this was a mythic age and that the myths themselves were what was popularized amongst the people and didn’t have to be dogma. We also agreed that anything going forward was free game.
Will I look to the myths to build some plots? Absolutely. But only to create situation. Once they get in and muck with that situation, it is all fair game.
Rich | Mar 27, 2009 | Reply
I neglected the bit about using ZoZ, sorry Daniel.
We decided on PDQ. Dead Inside doesn’t have Story Hooks, a fantastic addition to the ruleset that came along in Truth and Justice. T&J is a superhero game, so I didn’t want to use it for fear of game examples taking us out of the feel of Greek epic. The PDQ freebie version just didn’t read well. PDQ# is very swashbuckler focused and gave me the same concern as T&J. Questers of the Middle Realm was a close fit, but tonally, it is a silly romp of a game and didn’t feel right, either.
Zorceror of Zo had a more magical feel and while it involved folklore fantasy, it synched better with my ideas for Greek Myths. The only tweak is to remove Magic Star Qualities and severely limit Gifts.
And lastly, I bought ZoZ when it was first released and it has been gathering dust on my shelf which makes me cross.
Orklord | Mar 27, 2009 | Reply