Culture: Ancient Olympic Games (776 BC)

When we think about the culture of Antiquity, there's one event that stands out so much that we brought it back in modern times, the Ancient Olympic Games:

Like they are today, the Ancient Olympic Games were the ultimate international athletic competition, as well as a religious celebration of and for the greek god Zeus.  For example, a grand sacrifice of 100 oxen was made to Zeus during the Games.

The first Olympics is traditionally dated to 776 BC and the games were thereafter held every four years.  This measure of time, an olympiad, which became the main unit of time in Greeks historical chronologies.  And, in fact, so important were the Olympics to the Greeks that an Olympic Truce was enacted so that athletes could travel from their cities to the games in safety!

Beginning with just the stade (στάδιον), a foot race, the Ancient Olympic Games became a series of athletic competitions among representatives of Greek city-states.  As noted above, prior to the start of the Olympics, priests of Zeus travelled the land to announce the Games and tell any warring factions to wrap things up.

As long as they met the entrance criteria, athletes from any Greek city-state and kingdom were allowed to participate, with some notable exceptions.  For example, in AD 67, the Roman emperor Nero participated in the Olympics. He bribed organizers to postpone the games for a year so he could participate, and artistic competitions were added to the athletic events.  Unsurprisingly, Nero won every contest in which he was a competitor.  After he died a year later, unsurprisingly, his name was removed from the list of winners.

The Ancient Olympic Games gradually increased to twenty-three contests, although no more than twenty featured at any one Olympiad.  Participation in most events was limited to male athletes except for women who were allowed to take part by entering horses in the equestrian events. 

Unlike today, in the ancient Olympic Games there were no gold, silver, or bronze medals and there was only one winner per event.  This winner was crowned with an olive wreath made of wild-olive leaves from a sacred tree near the temple of Zeus at Olympia. 

The victorious athletes were honoured, feted, and praised. Their deeds were heralded and chronicled so that future generations could appreciate their accomplishments.

Also unlike today, killing your opponent was not forbidden: a victory was only negated if the death was the consequence of breaking the rules (e.g., Kleomedes of Astypalia).

A victorious athlete brought great honour to his home city. The sixth-century BC Athenian statesman Solon promoted athletics by rewarding Athenian victors at the Games financially - an Olympic victor would receive 500 drachmae (for comparison, a sheep was worth one drachma).

As their importance increased, the Ancient Olympic Games became a political tool used by city-states to assert dominance over their rivals.  In this, the modern Games have followed suit (e.g., the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the USSR boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics).

The Ancient Olympic Games continued to be celebrated when Greece came under Roman rule, until the emperor Theodosius I suppressed them in AD 393 as part of the campaign to impose Christianity as the State religion of Rome... until the modern Olympic Games kicked off in AD 1896 in Athens, Greece!

Citius, Altius, Fortius!

RPG Game Play: Rules Lawyers

Last year, I discussed perhaps the important meta-rule in RPGs: Rule Zero.

This week, I wanted to talk about an issue that was driving factor in the creation of Rule Zero: Rules Lawyers.

"Rules Lawyer" is typically a pejorative term used to describe someone who attempts to use the letter of the rules of the game without reference to the spirit, usually in order to gain an advantage for themselves.  As this can be a literal form of "Gaming the system," with the attendant negative consequences, Rule Zero arose.  As I mentioned last year:

"For games where meta decision making is distributed along traditional lines, Rule Zero serves as a manual override to the rules set: in other words, it exists in case someone needs to override the rules when they result a nonsensical result.  Furthermore, it serves the underlying philosophy that the rules should take a back seat if they interfere with having fun."

As  "judge" and "referee," Rule Zero allows GMs to keep a game from slowing down too much or going off the rails for various reasons, Rules Lawyering included.

However, as you might expect, Rules Lawyering can be a problem for some New School games that reject traditional GM authority in favor of greater Player Narrative Fiat, such as GM-less games.

A softer and more proactive way to address Rules Lawyering is with the group's Social Contract.


In addition, in some cases Rules Lawyering and System Mastery (high knowledge of the rules) are just two sides of the same coin, even though the latter is generally viewed positively and encouraged.

Furthermore, a clever GM can sometimes recruit Rules Lawyers to assist in running games, such as serving as a rules reference, managing less focused or experienced players, etc.

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RPG Design: Non-Human PCs

This week, I wanted to touch on an important related design issue that is very hard to do well, Non-Human PCs:

This isn't really a concern for my rule set, being Swords & Sorcery-themed and, unsurprisingly, humanocentric.  However, Non-Human PCs being believable are a concern for any RPG that incorporates High Fantasy and/or Science Fiction elements, which is a whole boatload of them- everything from D&D to Shadowrun to Star Wars.

Of course, what constitutes "believable" depends upon the level of immersion that the RPG purports to have.  For example, for B/X D&D's simplified rules set, where Demi-Humans are effectively the "multi-class option," as Race-as-Class mostly works.

However, for deeper levels of immersion, a lack of believability can be a problem for those who value verisimilitude.  As a world building task, it's quite hard work to develop a truly alien mind set, belief system, culture, history, etc.

Consequently, most RPGs (and other media) cut corners.  In High Fantasy, Non-Human species are typically the Tolkien standards, blatant Tolkien ripoffs or weird monocultures such as Scottish Dwarves.  Science Fiction is even worse, where most aliens are just Aliens with Forehead Ridges.

One of the few RPGs to do Non-Humans right is 2300 AD (originally titled Traveller: 2300, as the game as supposed to be a prequel to Traveller), from the genetically-engineered Pentapod to the vicious Kafers (a name based on the German word Käfer, meaning "beetle").  Culture, motivations and otherness are all done well and add to the aliens' strangeness.

The game is definitely worth a look to see how GDW handled the Non-Humans, as well as interesting relatively hard Science Fiction world building in general.  Except for having France be the reigning superpower, which shatters suspension of disbelief.

Being creative is hard, so the state of Non-Human PCs in RPGs is somewhat understandable.  However, sometimes avoidance is the best strategy (*cough*Swords & Sorcery*cough*).

Movie Review: Cleopatra (1963)

This week, I wanted to take a look at the movie that has the dubious distinction of being the only film ever to be the top-grossing film of the year to lose money at the box office, "Cleopatra":

An epic historical drama focusing on the famous Queen Cleopatra, the film focuses on her machinations to maintain her power and position in the face of the imperial ambitions of Rome.   But how is she supposed to do so, with Egypt hobbled by generations of corruption and incompetence?  The young queen must rely on her personal assets...

Loosely based on history, the film begins shortly after Caesar defeats Pompey Magnus at the Battle of Pharsalus to end Caesar's Civil War.  Pompey flees to Egypt and Caesar pursues, only to find his frenemy assassinated by the Egyptians.

Thereafter, Caesar is quickly involved (in several senses of the word) in the power struggle between Cleopatra and her brother/husband/co-ruler Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator.  Cleopatra seduces the new leader of the Roman world and, after Caesar defeats her brother, bears him a son, Caesarion.

"A woman too must make the barren land fruitful. She must make life grow where there was no life. Just as the Mother Nile feeds and replenishes the Earth, I am the Nile. I will bear many sons. Isis has told me. My breasts are full of love and life. My hips are rounded and well apart. Such women, they say, have sons."

However, after the would-be king kicks the bucket (Et tu, Brute?), Cleopatra then seduces his old friend, Mark Anthony, who has formed the Second Triumvirate with Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another of Caesar's generals.

Like the First Triumvirate, the Second Triumvirate, is an alliance of convenience that breaks down and leads to a showdown between Mark Anthony, with Cleopatra as ally, and Octavian.  At the Battle of Actium, Cleopatra inexplicably chickens out and flees, causing by her doomed lover to follow and abandoned his troops.

With a run time of over 4 hours, "Cleopatra" was an epic (in several senses of the word) mess.  Originally budgeted at $2 million, the film rapidly ballooned out of control.  20th Century Fox fired original director Rouben Mamoulian after 2 years, $7 million, and only 10 minutes of film!  Replacement director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was able to complete the film, sort of.

Mankiewicz worked to sheer exhaustion directing by day and writing by night, with little sleep.  The resulting movie is a mish-mash of love triangle, battle scenes and over the top grandeur.  "Cleopatra" has a stellar cast but Elizabeth Taylor isn't able to carry the lead.  For example, Queen Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, was one of the most interesting figures of Anquity, a diplomat, naval commander, polyglot, and medical author.  However, not much of that background makes it to the silver screen.

So, if you want to see sparks fly between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton (they had a scandalous affair during production) or if you like old Hollywood Epics, this is an okay film.  Otherwise, check out a better and more accurate take of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony in Season 2 of Rome!

Design Philosophy, Revisited

So, it's been a couple years since I started this blog, and with the first public playtest of my rules set, Sorcery & Steel, under my belt, I thought it would be a good time to look back and see how S&S matches up thus far to my stated Design Philosophy.

As I mentioned earlier, with Sorcery & Steel, I want to create an "Old School" (e.g., traditional GM authority, player skill over character skill, Combat as War, etc.) rules set that combines "enough" interesting tactical options with also "reasonably" fast speed of play (i.e., a rules set that achieves Old School-style Tactical Depth at relatively low cost in terms of Complexity).  Here, "enough" and "reasonably" reflect my opinion and YMMV.

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with how Sorcery & Steel is coming along.  In order to be an Old School game with both tactical depth and streamlined gameplay, I front-loaded a lot of the mechanical crunch, especially into Character Creation/Character Advancement.  However, as one of my players put it, once you finish making a PC and understand the basic gist of the game, it generally runs very smoothly.

Also, speaking of Character Creation/Character Advancement, I adopted both random roll and point buy elements, since I believe that Character Classes are good from a design POV in that they provide players with an easy guide to how to conceptualize and to how play their PC, but I wanted a bit more flexibility.  The end result is more of Archetype-style PCs, where the player has an overall direction for the character but still has plenty of room to customize to suit.

In addition to the above design goals, I want S&S to able to handle Swords & Sorcery-flavored adventures and adventures where Investigation is a key component.  In terms of the former, I think S&S is okay at Swords & Sorcery in terms of gritty, lower-powered fantasy (e.g., I lowered and flattered the power curve) but I did stay away from some classic Swords & Sorcery tropes (e.g., all sorcerers are evil).

In terms of the latter, S&S is inspired, in part, by the seminal work in the field of Investigation-based RPGs, Call of Cthulhu.  CoC's mechanics are rock solid, remaining largely unchanged through seven editions and nearly four decades.  Unsurprisingly, given the CoC inspiration, Horror, particularly Lovecraftian Horror, also provides a good deal of flavor to my rules set and has worked out pretty well in actual play.


However, while the basic building blocks seem to be in place, there's still plenty of tweaking and refining to do.  For example, I just completed the first major overhaul to Character Creation/Character Advancement, boosting a bit the power of starting characters.

加油!

Literature Review: "Shadows in Zamboula" (1935)

It's been a while since I've covered anything Swords & Sorcery.  So, this week, I wanted to discuss another one of best Conan the Barbarian yarns, wherein Messr Howard skillfully blends both Swords & Sorcery and straight Horror elements, the classic tale "Shadows in Zamboula":

"PERIL hides in the house of Aram Baksh!"

So exhorts an elderly desert nomad to Conan, trying to warn the barbarian against staying in a suspiciously cut rate tavern in Zamboula, run by the aforementioned Aram Baksh.  However, Conan  is almost broke, having already sold his horse, and has already prepaid for the room so...

I typically prefer the Conan stories with everyone's favorite Cimmerian as a wandering adventurer rather than as a king/general.  "Shadows in Zamboula" falls into the former category, which finds our protagonist once again somewhat down on his luck in Zamboula, a melting pot of different peoples:

"Here, centuries ago, the armies of Stygia had come, carving an empire out of the eastern desert. Zamboula was but a small trading town then, lying amidst a ring of oases, and inhabited by descendants of nomads. The Stygians built it into a city and settled it with their own people, and with Shemite and Kushite slaves. The ceaseless caravans, threading the desert from east to west and back again, brought riches and more mingling of races. Then came the conquering Turanians, riding out of the East to thrust back the boundaries of Stygia, and now for a generation Zamboula had been Turan's westernmost outpost, ruled by a Turanian satrap."

Conan doesn't have to wait long for his next plot coupon as that very night, the local cannibals attempt to ambush the Cimmerian in the room that Aram Baksh cunningly trapped to assist the cannibals but the maneaters end up on the wrong side of a broadsword.  However, before the barbarian can even the score with the innkeeper he has to save a damsel in distress and then open up a big can of whoop ass on some evil cultists.

He also dispenses some frontier justice on Aram Baksh before leaving town.

As befits a ripping S&S yarn, "Shadows in Zamboula" features Howard's vigorous and imaginative writing.  The story leaps from the page with only an economy of words.  Conan murders a bunch of evil doers and also proves to be cleverer than he looks: throughout much of the novelette, the barbarian is seemingly led around by his penis, but in fact is nobody's fool, which leads to a nice twist ending.

A fun, fast pulp fiction romp, "Shadows in Zamboula" is filled with action and has a nice blend of mystery, horror, dark sorcery and a bit of nudity.  A must read for fans of Swords & Sorcery!