Aegean — The Ancient Greek Roleplaying Game

Description

Aegean — The Ancient Greek Roleplaying Game

AEGEAN is a tabletop role-playing game about a group of mythic heroes building a new, free city on the shores of the Aegean Sea. There are neighbouring cities to trade or war with, monsters to kill, gods to appease, deceptions, negotiations and bloody skirmishes.

The Setting

The world of AEGEAN is an ancient Greece that never existed – a mix of mythology and classical history. The gods visit the earth and converse with mortals, granting gifts of magic and life to some and fear and terror to others. Fearsome monsters roam the lands and seas making every journey an adventure. The Wilderness is home to strange creatures, some mortal, others half-divine. These centaurs, nymphs and tritons teach, harass or ignore humans as their whim takes them.

The polis—the city and its surrounding lands—is your home and where your loyalties lie. You have recently founded your polis on the coast of the Aegean Sea. The people elect the Arkhon, your leader, through a democratic process inspired by the Athenian model, instead of following the tradition of a hereditary king that many other cities still uphold. The polis sits in a precarious position, between many similar neighbouring states who may wish to trade, ally, or make war.

Your character fits somewhere in this world, between the capricious force of the gods, the wilderness and the structure of the polis and its ambitions.

The Game

The core philosophy of AEGEAN is the characters are capable heroes who can always succeed at the task at hand. Sometimes there may be a cost involved and it’s up to the player to decide how much they’re willing to pay for success.

The resolution mechanic uses a familiar D10 dice pool. Each die which rolls an 8+ is a success and the more successes you roll the better your achievement. 10’s can add a success, or be saved for later as Resolve and failure can be mitigated by gaining Risk.

Risk measures the danger a character is in. It’s a combination of small scrapes and stresses which build up during an adventure. It is gained when a character suffers harm, either physically or emotionally, but can be taken voluntarily to gain successes on a skill check. When a character’s Risk passes their Endurance threshold they are in trouble. Now when they would gain Risk they gain a Wound instead. Risk is easy to remove while Wounds are long-lasting.

A game of mythic heroes involving interactions with the gods wouldn’t be complete without some rules to manage those interactions.

Glory represents a character’s fame throughout the world. They gain it by performing heroic deeds and completing epic quests, and they can use it to purchase powerful talents. However, they must balance spending Glory with managing their Hubris.

Hubris

is a measure of a character’s contempt or disdain for the gods and their place in society. Characters gain Hubris by acting in ways which displease the gods, challenge the gods, or by acting above their station.

When a character’s Hubris exceeds their Glory, they anger the gods and become Cursed. The gods express their anger based on how much greater the Hubris is, and crucially, they willingly allow a Cursed character to die if fate demands it.

The Product

The creators produced Aegean to a very high standard and presented it beautifully in a 300-page hardback book. The following Source Books are also available: