Before going any further, I should probably point out Who Would Not Like This Book in the hopes of saving some people their time. People who actively dislike games without randomizers (e.g. dice, cards, etc.) can skip this game, as the entire system is built around the premise of not having any. Also, those who dislike the Greek mythos should probably stay away, as the book invests a good chunk of its pages into the figures and legends of Olympus exclusively. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the book openly takes a few liberties with the Greek myths. Nothing excessive from what I noticed (Zeus isn’t a paragon of chastity and virtue, for instance), but diehard fans of the myths may be disappointed. Finally, while the game acknowledges different scales of power, the emphasis is almost entirely on the divine levels of ability. You can play figures of a more heroic or mortal level, but the game doesn’t really focus on them as well as other games out there. None of these points should be considered as criticisms of course (I’ll get to those later), as they are clearly meant to be design goals. I merely mention them in the hopes of not “trying to delicious sell veal cutlets to an adamant vegan” as it were.

Character Abilities (12 pages) – In LoO, characters are measured by four ability traits:

• Ego (a kind of psychic/mental/intellect stat that measures one’s psyche)
• Might (a measure of the character’s physical strength)
• Prowess (a measure of the character’s martial skill at warfare)
• Fortitude (a measure of the character’s endurance)

But considering that several parts of the system favors those characters who spent any number of points over those with “mere” Olympic ratings (and there are several NPCs with only Olympic scores), and that even one point in an attribute raises the character to a Numbered rating and puts them over Olympic Class characters, I’d argue players should put at least 1 point in every ability just to have an edge over NPCs. Some would say this is “min-maxing” the system, but gaining a competitive edge is something the system tries to continually promote.

There are also five other options for character creation given out, including the classic one Amber used (and described as “simplistic and boring” in the text, in a rather needlessly insulting slip up) as well as a randomized method using cards that is a presented as more of an apathetic offering than something people are expected to want to use.

But what if the player has some points left over after the bidding war to further flesh out their character? One thing players can do is keep those points around as Luck. Luck isn’t quite an ability, but rather more of a general measure of… well… how lucky a character is. Have two characters tied in a match? Higher Luck wins. Need to know who in the party gets targeted by the clockwork robot? Compare Luck, with the higher Luck being safe. Need to know who’s just having a really nice day? Luck. And the listed NPCs don’t have Luck in their writeups, so it potentially gives the PCs a (small) edge. PCs can also take on negative amounts of Luck if they are a few points short to buy another power or boost an ability. A good GM should cackle evily at those with Bad Luck, and take advantage of the situation appropriately. What is there besides Luck to buy, you ask? Well….

Character Powers (32 pages) – Hope you saved some points from earlier, because now we get to the stuff that really separates the gods from the Gods: powers. And here we really see how putting just one point in an ability can make a difference; as an example, 1 point in Fortitude buys you a numbered Class in that ability and can make the difference between entering a coma or passing out when destroying a world when using your Advanced Olympian Magic power. And yes, you can destroy worlds. As for the powers themselves:

• Immortality – You don’t get old or sick. A magical effect or a damaging enough attack can finish you though. But since you have to have at least Heroic Fortitude to purchase this, you’re already tougher to hurt than a normal Mortal. The rules suggest optionally making this a mandatory, free, power, and I agree.
• World-Walking – Allows characters to travel the cross-dimensional roads of Olympus, Atlantis, or Hades and the worlds these roads connect.
• World-Walking Mastery – Allows characters to create new branches off of the roads they walk, close branches on the roads, and see along the roads before they travel them.
• Promethean Road – A limited version of World-Walking along one road, for mortals and those Gods who are too weak to use World-Walking (i.e. their players didn’t put enough points into it) mainly.
• Promethean Road Mastery – Allows players to walk along all roads, but with restrictions.
• Olympian Magic – Allows players to manipulate chance in their favor and create coincidences. Also allows for curses and blessings.
• Advanced Olympian Magic – Change the laws of reality for a while, create worlds, and destroy worlds (not counting Olympus, Atlantis, or the Underworld). Fun godly stuff.
• Primordial Magic – A combination attack/summon/defend sort of power that works by manipulating the fundamental energy of chaos.
• Advanced Primordial Magic – While Advanced Olympian Magic allows for the creation of worlds and temporary alterations of the world, Advanced Primordial Magics allow for permanent alterations of things or worlds (with some restrictions). As well as destroying worlds of course.
• Scrying – Remote viewing, communication, and divinations.
• Advanced Scrying – Speaking with the dead, casting spells through scrying, blocking and forcing connections, and travel to places viewed are all covered.
• Metamorphosis – Taking on a multitude of forms (including elemental and “demonic”), adapting your form as needed for an environment, mimicking a specific individual or creature (on a cosmetic level, so that you might have wings but can’t actually fly), taking on a “Primordial Form” that would make Lovecraft proud, and using this ability to heal oneself.
• Advanced Metamorphosis – Perfectly change your essence and personality, take on natural abilities (now your wings let you fly), create a duplicate of yourself, and change others.
• Ineffable Names – Words of power that allow for (comparatively) minor changes and effects. They are presented as a form of “mortal magic.”
• Elementalism – Allows a character power over one or more of the four classic elements, allowing them to create and command whichever elements the character has power over.
• Enchantment – The ability to manipulate the personalities of people, implanting geis, and altering memories. (On a side note, while most other games spell it “geas”, LoO spells it “geis”, which is also a correct way to spell same concept. I only mention this because I can be terribly pedantic, and so people won’t think this was a typo on my (or the game’s) part. All the other typos in this review are another matter though.)
• Glamour – Illusions of sight and sound, with no actual substance to the images created. I will point out that Glamour covers invisibility, but it’s of the “if you hide your eyes you can’t see either” nature. For a game about gods who can turn into living fire or blow up worlds with a thought, this seems excessively slavish to the laws of physics. On the flipside, it’s specifically stated as “weaker magic”, so maybe it should work that way. Regardless, I’d houserule otherwise and let people be invisible yet still see things (besides, the book outright state other ways for spotting invisible characters, so whether or not the character’s eyes are visible is pretty much a non-issue).
• Olympian Artificing – An optional power covering the creation of magical artifacts (covered elsewhere in the book).

Character Extras (12 pages) – You want a Patron to help you out? How about an Enemy, to get some points back? What about a Daemonic Servant to call your own? Don’t worry, we’re talking a classical Greek Daemon here, but it could take just about any form you imagine, and a traditional demonic entity is certainly an option if you want. Or maybe you’d like your own private world to lord over, when Olympus is just too dull and demanding? It’s here, if you’ve got the points left that is. Traditional character creation questions are also covered: what do you look like, what do you want out of existence, favorite color, how often do you smile and what is your smile like, what is your perfect way to die, and so on. Okay, maybe the questions aren't all that traditional, and there’s a bit of stuff in there on considering the thematic nature of your godling that’s pretty specific as well as stuff worth asking when making a character in any game. Honestly, it’s one of the better sections on brainstorming a character I’ve seen. Rounding out the chapter is a detailed example of character creation.

Tasks and Combat (12 pages) – So how do you determine who wins when someone tries to do something? Well, GM fiat plays a role. Oh sure, if there’s a clear cut example (say a Might versus Might contest where there’s three Classes of difference between the two contestants), fiat isn’t needed. But if the two have evenly matched Might Classes, or there’s less than three levels of difference, then things get less clear. At two levels of difference, the higher Class wins but is likely to have a reduced win. At one Class difference or a tie “the success could go either way” (to quote the book). At that point the players would likely look to other Abilities, trying to justify how their other Abilities could impact the outcome. And finally those Luck scores could be used to make a call.

Anyway, the chapter also covers psychic Ego combat (making Ego even more versatile, but just barely escaping it being a trump ability), environmental factors, a rather odd but functional way to handle multiple opponents (i.e. the more Classes in the game, the more powerful those higher Classed characters are), the impact of weapons and armor, and healing.

Game Mastering (38 pages) – A hodge podge chapter of sorts, but a bit uncommon in that the great majority of the information is very specific to LoO. Yes, there’s talk of “theme” and “player contributions”, but (for example) in the section on “Handling Death” we learn that Zeus has passed an edict enforcing that no god can kill another and why deicide is a bad idea (as an aside: Hera only tries to openly kill Zeus’ bastards while they’re still mortal and thus exempt). There’s also a bit on heroic mortal and demigod campaigns, with such characters having Abilities that defaulted to a lower Class than Olympian characters do. The existence of “First Class + X” is also covered, and how PCs can move past this. This is basically how (for example) to stat out Ares and Athena with a higher Prowess than the First Class Prowess PC has at start, when the power levels of PCs vary from group to group. I know some groups will chafe at the idea of their super-warrior PC starting off weaker in combat than the actual God of War, but I saw this as less an exercise in “protecting pet NPCs” and more a matter of trying to give groups a faithful yet flexible way to stat out the “canonical NPCs” and then let groups blow it all up (or keep it intact) as they saw fit.

More notes on a few of the powers are providing. We now get some guidelines for Olympian Artificing for example, but also more detail on World-Walking and Scrying, and how lesser magics lose out to greater. Some rough guidelines for players creating their own powers is also provided, but I suspect people will see them as being too sparse and limiting. General character advancement is also covered, and it’s pretty straightforward with one twist. The system used has players write up a list of the advancements they want, and then present to the GM and ask if they can have them. The GM then chooses which advancements the player purchases, ideally based on the player’s desires. Normally this wouldn’t make much sense, seeming like an overly complicated and controlling way to handle advancement, except in one case. In a highly competitive group, where the ratings of Classes is kept secret due to the secret bidding war mentioned earlier (e.g. only one player knows First Class Ego costs 38 points, while only another knows Second Class Ego costs 25), it would be necessary for the GM to approve or deny Ability increases with players secretly petitioning the GM independent of the rest of the group. The text doesn’t mention it, but this would also be a good reason for players to spend points on Abilities to help maintain any lead they might have over the others. Ironically, due to the way Classes work it could also mean that the once great Hercules could actually lose strength should any PC overtake the God of Strength’s Might Class; likewise, PCs could also see their power drop should another take over one or more of their Ability Classes. Who woulda’ thunk that being God meant you had to always keep up with the Joneses?

Anyways, some of the creatures and locales of classical Greek make an appearance in this chapter. The creatures don’t receive stat blocks as such (defaulting to Heroic Abilities, unless the GM wants a divinely blooded creature) but there’s a good spread, and players should be more concerned with their fellow gods anyway. As for locales, it’s kinda’ odd. See, classic standbys like the Oracle of Delphi and Charybdis make an appearance and get attention, as does the concept of alternate earths (if minimally) and the Realm of Pan. But when the book goes to detail Olympus, it gets half-a-page of text. By comparison, Atlantis gets maybe 50% more, and the Underworld gets more than Atlantis and Olympus combined. It’s not bad, just odd to me that what is usually considered the focal point of the Greek Pantheon gets as much attention as Hera’s personal Realm.

The Divine Family (120 pages) – Yeah, you read that right. One hundred and twenty pages. And with minimal stat blocks and art to fill those pages, this is possibly the most comprehensive overview of the Greek mythos ever published as support for a role-playing game. Each entry covers the being’s history, abilities and powers, personality, location in the multiverse, closest relations and allies, and how they might act as a parent for any PCs. And while heroes like Perseus don’t get entries (because they aren’t part of the Divine Family I’d assume), the text covers more obscure deities like Pasithea. Now the text acknowledged at the start that it took some liberties with the myths and I wouldn’t recommend players use this for a doctoral thesis or anything, but from a gaming stance it’s much more than adequate. LoO also doesn’t flinch away from the more risqué elements of the myths; all the pedophilia and incest you remember is there and Zeus isn’t ashamed of it. Seriously, this is an excellent resource for people wanting to play with the Greek gods in their games. I should point out however, that the game doesn’t really distinguish between Titans and Olympians, except as political or generational factions perhaps. I mention this because some games like to distinguish them as being separate types of entities, but LoO presents them as being on much more even footing. The Primordials however are essentially plot devices who are beyond stats.

About the only problem I had with this chapter is that it’s not easily navigated. By this I mean that the entries are broken down by faction (Primordial, Titan, or Olympian), family relation (an entity is followed by entries for their children), and relevance or power (more important beings are listed before lesser ones, as deemed by the author). For example, in the section on Primordials, Hypnos is listed after Thanatos (both of whom are considered Primordials). Following the entry for Hypnos are entries for Hypnos children; in the order presented in the book they are Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos. Similar choices of order are found throughout the chapter, with the Titan Styx coming before Oceanus, and Styx’s son Kratos coming before her daughter Bia. Fortunately, there is an index of the deities, provided at the end of the chapter, that makes it much easier to find a specific entry.

Style: In terms of presentation it’s nice enough. The layout is clean, typos are minimal, and given the light nature of the rules it’s easy enough to figure out what the text means on those rare occasions when errors creep into the mechanics (a huge peeve of mine, so my shrugging it off will hopefully indicate how trivial the errors really are). The art ranges from some nice pieces by Scott Harshbarger, to stock art and photos of Greek-inspired imagery (e.g. Raphael’s “The Three Graces” is reproduced in the relevant section of the book). While I’m kind of against stock art in games (and even more so stock photography), it is good and works well. As for the text…. If I’m feeling critical, I’d say it’s dry. If I were feeling generous, I’d say it’s utilitarian. For a game that admits its inspiration from the Amber Diceless Role Playing game, the text lacks a lot of the fun “pop” of its predecessor. Which isn’t the same thing as saying it’s bad. As is, the book is easy to understand, and fairly quick to read. While I may have had some problems with the rules, I didn’t feel confusion on my part was one of them. I should also mention that there are several detailed examples to help understand most parts of the game. And there are quick summaries of the rules at the end of each chapter, which are nice (although it might have been better to collect them all at the end of the book instead, for quick reference). So if we consider 3 to be an average presentation, I’ll give it a high 3. Nothing in the presentation grabs me and says “wow”, or makes me rethink the whole medium of RPG production and/or want to loan it out to a friend based on presentation alone (my benchmarks for a 4 or 5, respectively).

Substance: I’m going to consider LoO in two ways: as a system and as a sourcebook. As a system, it basically just copies and builds upon that found in Amber Diceless Role Playing. It doesn’t try to pretend otherwise, and it does a good job tweaking the system to reflect a certain kind of “god gaming” (as some would put it). I do have problems with the system, like how my character’s advancement can weaken your character (and vice versa), but I’m not sure how much that was a design oversight or a design goal (the system is intended for competitive play between the players after all). As a system, I’d give the game a barely over the line 4. It’s most definitely not going to be for everyone, and I think it works better for larger competitive groups than small cooperative ones, but it works well for what it is.

As a sourcebook on Greek deities for gaming purposes, I’ll give it a solid 5. Heck, I found it to have more detail than Wikipedia for a lot of its entries. Really, the only thing holding me back from going any higher (if I could that is) would be that I wish the text showed where it took liberties with the myths. At which point the thing would probably make a superb reference book for general use outside of gaming. So a solid 5 feels good to me.

Overall, I’m giving the game a solid 5 for Substance as well. It’s not an average or anything, it just feels right.

How Could You Use it With Other Games? I’ll look at four: Scion, New Gods of Mankind, Dogs of Hades, and Hellas.

While both Scion and LoO allow for characters to progress from mortal heroics to divinity, LoO is pretty firmly a game about gods who automatically defeat anything that isn’t a god while Scion focuses on the climb to power and the intensity of tactical battle and randomized dice rolls. It’s like comparing apple pies to apple scented candles; there’s some shared commonality, but both fill very different roles. I wouldn’t hesitate however to recommend LoO to anyone wanted more info on the Greek gods for their games.

New Gods of Mankind and LoO both emphasize the role gods play in meddling with things and one another, but they target different approaches to the “god game” genre. New Gods is focused on the activities of a fledgeling pantheon trying to harvest faith from a bronze age race of humans stuck in a hostile fantasy world. LoO meanwhile deals with new godlings trying to carve a place among an established multiversal pantheon, independent of the vagaries of faith and disbelief. There’s not a lot of immediate common ground, although the section on deities in LoO may provide inspiration for players of New Gods.

Hellas and Dogs of Hades are two variants on “Greeks in Space”, with Hellas looking more like the exotic Star Wars and Dogs looking like the humancentric and “down to earth” Dune. That said, while Hellas has a lot of action by the gods, its take is a bit more unique than classic myth, changing up things like the number of gods recognized or the nature of dryads for instance. As such, it’s hard to drop a lot of LoO’s material into Hellas without a lot of work and revisions. Dogs of Hades meanwhile would be easier to drop the full pantheon of LoO into, but that’s because the gods don’t actually do anything in the Dogs of Hades default setting (as far as the players are concerned). It’d probably be better to drop Hellas or Dogs into LoO than the other way around.

Conclusion: LoO is an interesting system married to an excellent sourcebook on Greek myth. If you missed Amber Diceless Role Playing, you should probably pick it up just to see how the system works. If you want a book on ancient Greek gods that targets gamers, you should immediately pick it up. It’s certainly not for everyone, but those who like it will probably love it.

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