Sandy's Soapbox
The backstory: my daughter and I decided to run a Percy Jackson game. The book series "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" by Rick Riordan is a pentalogy of modern awesomeness branded as juvenile fiction. The premise is that some ADHD, high energy kids are actually demi-gods, children of a Greek God and a mortal. Oh, and ancient forces are stirring that they need to battle. But their parents fear them and monsters want to kill them. Stir in hefty homages to greek myths and the Battle of Troy, and the series is a real treat.
To run a game in this, I need a rules system, a setting, and an adventure. The setting and adventure were the easy part. Fortunately, I'd written an earlier D20 'sneaker' (mischief & low-combat) adventure for the Harry-Potter-esque 'Redhurst Academy'. A quick rebranding as "the Redhurst Academy for Demigods" and we're set to go.
Of course little tweaks are needed. Gone are things like dwarves and elves-- just rename them children of Hephaestus and Artemis's Hunters. Change the 'Medusa' to one of the other two Gordon sisters. The training focus is for demi-gods, not mages. NPC names should be switched to be more Greek (or pseudo-greek). But such style tweaks are easy to do with a simple red pen, and then you have a fully Percy-versed romp to run.
One concept in the percyverse is that fledgling demi-gods start off without knowing their divine parentage. As they begin to have adventures, they get insight into whether they are likely a child of, oh, Athena, or Ares, or Zeus, or one of the other primary Greek gods and goddesses and their many minor godlings. So the campaign needs to allow for characters who are nominally human-norm at the start, when then enjoy a rapid power ramp-up once they discover their lineage and can tap into their demi-god nature.
For rules, I was going to go with D20 Modern, but the more I reread 'Over the Edge', the better that fits:
- characters are defined by a central trait
- they have 2 side traits-- which can be unknown powers that reveal during gameplay
- they must have a flaw
- all actions are either automatic, chancy, or impossible
- you roll multiple dice to beat a difficulty #, but even if you fail, if any of the dice rolled '6' you got _some_ kind of success
In short, it seems ideal for the Percyverse. So there you have it. I'm running a D20 scenario based on another company's Harry Potter clone that I've redone for Riordan half-bloods using Over the Edge.
A Percy Jackson Universe Adventure
In the US, center of Western Civilization, the War of the Titans has at last ended. Western Civilization is safe for a while longer. Half-breeds, children of a god and mortal, resume their training and studies at the wilderness Camp Half-Blood.
Back in England, of course, they do things with a bit more decorum. The Redhurst Academy for Demigods has existed for over ten centuries, teaching half-bloods from all over Europe how to survive in this modern age. Being farther from the US means their monster problems have been less severe, but they still face challenges and dangers.
And they do want their students to learn to harness their powers while learning about their ancient histories.
Along with this year's crop of new students, there's a new visiting professor. She has offered her students an extra-credit challenge: Figure out her name. The heroes have one day to ransack the school's records, inquire with the staff, or sneak into the visiting professor's quarters in search of the secret. Anyone caught breaking school policy in the course of their investigation will be punished appropriately.
At the same time, some members of the faculty are particularly eager to discover this mysterious teacher's name for their own reasons. Surely finding one little name can't be hard?
Well, our Percy-verse game hit its first snag-- character generation. One approach is to use the "Descriptive" systems of 'Over the Edge' (OtE). This is more story-like and let you describe your character, then what you can do follows from that.
For example, one potential OtE Percyverse char is a "girl next door" with the 2 traits "green thumb" and "likes crafting stuff" plus her flaw of "vengeful if slighted". So during play, she gets to roll 4d6 for crafting, 3d6 for anything involving plants or nature, and has all the social skills and reactions one would expect of a 'girl next door', and is obviously just an average fighter (because none of the traits are combat-relevant). As a plus, there's a couple of obvious hooks for Demigod powers and figuring out which Goddess is her mother.
In contrast, "Stat" systems like D20 give you a bundle of skills and levels, then you overlay what you are like on top of it. So to get the above, she'd buy individual crafting and 'know nature' skills. And I'll agree we have about as many hooks for figuring out Demigod powers.
My daughter wasn't happy with the OtE 'Descriptive' at all, it was an interesting block for her. She didn't want to say who she was, or what she looked like, or what she liked to do. She wanted is to be able to list skills and stats.
An alternative is to switch to D20 Modern. This has ideal character classes for a demi-god game, with choices like 'Strong Hero', 'Wise Hero' or 'Fast Hero' that can easily match to godly parentage like Ares, Athena, or Hermes.
It's given me interesting insight into kid gaming and ease of play, and a bit more appreciation for why D&D has lasted so long. It's not just that it defined the genre, there's some intrinsically engaging hooks in stat-based chargen.
For the whole kit-and-kaboodle to run it yourself, the piece are up at my ghostlibrary, including the OtE character sheet (with rules synopsis) and links to the adventure scenario and the Redhurst maps and books.
Until next month,Sand
