I'm developing a !NotGreek fantasy setting. Any advice?

Togas

Gay sex

Some dirty old guy rambling about Knowledge

City states warring

If you are a wanderer you expect to be shown hospitality wherever you go.

Friendly reminder that Best Boy would've beaten Achilles if it wasn't for Athena fucking him over for exactly no reason whatsoever. Nice goddes of "justice" you got there.

Notice that among the Three Worthies of Medieval Europe, the Three Good Pagans include Hector but not Achilles. Really gets your noggin joggin'.

He begrudgingly agreed to that because Zeus said he'd fry Hades ass if he didn't let her go every now and then.

Prometheus wasn't a god, he was a titan.

It's kinda funny how we associate ancient Greece and Rome with the somber and austere because of all the white marble, when in reality they painted everything in clown colors and wrote raunchy graffiti on every wall they could find.

All that's been said plus you could talk to a king (of which there were a bunch) without saying your Magesty or your Grace or your Highness.

Let's not forget that the Romans LOVED festivals, and being the Aedile who organized them was not only a great honor but also a way to kickstart a political career (I think Caesar nearly bankrupted himself during his time as Aedile). Cicero's festivals were described as being very modest and restrained, which was an insult. The Romans loved their celebrations lavish as fuck.

We should get rid of that whitewashed, austere image. Rome is pretty much modern Italy if modern Italy was the world's greatest superpower. They'd still siesta and fiesta between curbstomping barbarians.

>I'm developing a !NotGreek fantasy setting. Any advice?
play up the fact that everyone of importance is more or less related to each other in some manner, so a being that might be considered a horrid monster by one area of the world might be considered the patron god of another region

like to give a good example, Hercules for his 12th Labor had to bring Cerberus, the watchdog of the Underworld to his cousin Eurystheus, in accomplishing this task wrestling either Cerberus into submission, or wrestling his uncle Hades for the right to borrow Cerberus(this depends on which version you read), however it's also worth noting that Cerberus is Hercules 2nd Cousin/1st Cousin Once Removed*, as Gaia was grandmother to both Cerberus and Zeus

*indeed of the monstrous foes Hercules fights over the course of his mortal life, it's easier to list the ones he fought that he wasn't related to in some fashion

as someone with Italian family members I do agree that it's hilarious that people would think of the Romans as somber, even in their moods of anger or sadness they are loud and proud most of the time(you know you've fucked up if you've got an Italian mad at you and they aren't yelling at you)

Humans are Athens.
Elves are amazons.
Orcs are spartans.
Dwarves are philosophers.

I'm pretty sure the unofficial title of the festivals they had of bacchus were "We drink and fuck and maybe people die".

It is not complete unless there is plenty of misogyny. "We hate women so much that we prefer to fuck each other rather than our women".

>Nice goddes of "justice" you got there.
She also told Odysseus to kill Hector's young son, though Neoptolemus did the deed. Athena was a genocidal bitch.

That's retarded, especially since ancient greeks already have their flavor of dwarves.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telchines

Include rape, lots of it, and unfair punishments to the victims for that authentic feel.

Include everyones magical realm.

>muh original race donut steel instead of a well-known staple

oh, fuck you. Nobody cares about your snowflakes.

"The strong do as the will, and the weak suffer what they must" was meant to be ironic.
Any Athenian that stirs shit is going to get a Spartan sandal up their ass quicker than they can say "muh phoros"

>>muh original race donut steel instead of a well-known staple
>ancient mythology is original donut steel

>well-known fantasy staple, fit in any setting

>versus some herpderp from hurrdurr religion literallynobody cares about

Most based god is Hermes.

>Not realizing Zeus is only a prodigious horndog because he needs to produce a child that can save the gods in the Gigantomachy.

Hades still cool, some myths have Persephone ultimately reciprocate.

Go to sleep Aussie.

Hey, retards.

Humans = Humans
Elves = Nymphs
Dwarves = Telchines
Orcs = Cyclopes

There you go, you have rough analogs from Greek mythology and not Tolkien-injected lazy races.

>I kidnapped a woman and locked her up in my basement to fuck whenever I want, but she seems to kinda like me now, so I'm still cool.

How would they be addressed?

>Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!

Graffiti found on a brothel wall in Pompeii.

Not an expert, but I always had the impression that they would be addressed just by name, but with a lot of respect and always acknowledge them as your superior. More ellaborate titles smell of roman tradition and, of course, of christianity.

Kings were different back then. I remember Odisseus working his fields; not sure if in the Illiad or a period novel, so take it with a grain of salt.

To wit: w w w dot quora dot com In-ancient-Greece-in-place-of-Sire-or-Your-Grace-how-were-people-of-stature-addressed-Is-there-a-gender-neutral-term

Garbled link, firgive this humble phonefag.

Read Homer, Herodotus and Plutarch.
You will learn how the ancient greek think.

>this thread
>Roman = Greek
>you should use my meme/middle school knowledge of Greek history
Pls don't inflict this on your players OP

But how will I get my fix of brown amazones in that system?

They wouldn't be brown in the first place, much more likely that they would be paler than the average greek.

YOU HAD ONE JOB, LIBYA.
YOU HAD ONE. FUCKING. JOB.

>Ancient Greek setting
>Not having exotic Egyptians, Persians, Nubians, etc.

Yeah, that's a must. The mediterranean is to be travelled on.

So by !NotGreek you mean it won't be Greece, just something looking like it? What system are you using?
I started a small campaign with two other friends, it's some sort of road trip across Greece to gain favor from the god.
I advise you to document yourself a maximum about how religion worked at the time, the political shenanigans, and of course the Pantheon and some of the most interesting mythos to find inspiration, don't hesitate to search for the least known gods and story
>pic related is Silenus, mentor and surrogate father of Dionysus. He is often seen with his satyres servant. In a theatre play, he fuck over Ulysses and his crew by baiting them to Polyphemus lair

So what exactly is the association between Dionysus and the underworld? I see it brought up all the time.

>Apart from exceptions like Sparta, women in ancient Greece had few legal rights independant of their husbands and fathers. They had separate living quarters in the house, and upper class women wore veils when in public. In Athens, they were not allowed to have legal possessions in their own name.

>If an Athenian woman's father died without male heirs, she had to marry his closest living male relative, which was usually her uncle. If the woman - called an epikleros - was already married but had not given birth to a son, she was legally required to divorce her current husband and marry her relative.

He is Osiris, dying and ressurecting god of fertility

wow sexist much?

>Goes into thread about Greece
>Surprised by sexism

an hero plz

Make the city states (the polis) all important to those living in it and independant, with different cultures, like seperate countries nowadays. They were almost always fighting.

Remember only Athens tried democracy, and only the male citizens could vote anyway. And they made a mini 'empire' and took all of the tax money to build a sanctuary with ATHENS IS GREAT all over it.

The gods are all dicks, and the Heroes are related to the gods and are also dicks.

There were three tiers of prostitute, from lowest class and cheap to posh companions to bring to parties and expensive.

Wine was important, as were religious rituals. A sacrifice to the god ended in a massive barbeque for everyone.

There were lots of mystery religions, with odd rituals, and Bacchic worship, with odd dancing, and Sophistry and rhetoric were important.

Doric is best order. Dionysus is best god.

It was justice. Hector had chosen to defend his brother who had stolen another man's wife. While he was honorable he was standing in for his shit little brother. Also Achilles was a demigod, whereas Hector was only a man (I'm pretty sure at least it's been awhile since I've read it.)

That is not exactly accurate, Athens was far from the only polis with some kind of democratic system.

I don't know about Classical Athens as much, but in Rome upper-class women could definitely wield a lot of soft power if they were savvy.
See Terentia, Livia, Servilia, Clodia
I'd guess Athens wouldn't be too different. Or maybe it would be due to it being a democracy as opposed to an oligarchy?

So it's not *all* bad for women. I dare say higher-up priestesses probably have it good too

>Athens' patron god is Athena, a goddess of wisdom, justice, and war
>Athens is actually slightly more sexist than the other city states
Fucking Greeks.

The Gods operate differently.
In the Iliad, the pecking order is pretty much Male Gods>Female Gods>Male Mortals>Female Mortals.

So while Hera obviously has way more power than a mortal man, Zeus can and does slap her around when she annoys him.

This is of course a massive generalisation, with Athene being a bit of a special case, but it's jist of it

Romans were no where near as misogynistic as Greeks, particularly Athenian Greeks. The only city-state that treated their women in a reasonable manner was, of all places, Sparta.

Athena is afforded special privilege because she was born of a man, rather than a woman. She also strictly maintains her purity and virtue, and was known to be exceedingly harsh to women blasphemers.

Speaking of Spartan women, they were no less badass than their husbands.

penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/moralia/sayings_of_spartan_women*.html
>One woman sent forth her sons, five in number, to war, and, standing in the outskirts of the city, she awaited anxiously the outcome of the battle. And when someone arrived and, in answer to her inquiry, reported that all her sons had met death, she said, "I did not inquire about that, you vile varlet, but how fares our country?" And when he declared that it was victorious, "Then," she said, "I accept gladly also the death of my sons."

Our perception of ancient Greece is very much colored by Athenian records.

Yeah, olive trees are fucking awesome.

The apocalypse happened like 600 years ago, there's still ruins all over the place from ancient civilizations that are kind of precursors.

People forgot how to read then too, so nothing is really known about that time period anymore.

That's the point, user.

Not the "who would win", I've seen translations where Athena only tells Hector to stop running, but I mean who's a better person thing.

Hector WAS a better man than Achilles, he's always shown to be one of the best and most decent people in the story. It's just that it's more of Achilles story and we need a frame of reference for what Achilles should be.

Minotaur rape

If I was gonna do a mythic Greece campaign I think I'd anthropomorphize the spread of the Olympian pantheon so you quite literally have Zeus & co spreading their influence across Greece and trying to overthrow or incorporate the older, regional gods (who were less patriarchal on the whole). This could be in preparation for a Gigantomachy still-to-happen. not!Crete would be your ruined, ancient empire; not!Macedon your rising minor power; not!Athens, not!Sparta and not!Thebes your major domestic power players. You can have not!India, not!North Africa, not!Persia, not!Illyria/Scythia/Thracia on the fringes. I wouldn't include a Rome analogue because I think that overpowers that it's a Greek setting.

That gives you a lot of disparate groups drawn from across ancient history and both fantastical and mundane levels to play with them on. I think it's pretty critical if you're gonna do a campaign like this you decide how literally and how much you want the gods to be a part of it. I think Robert Graves' take on the Argonauts would be a good guide for how to stay with the theme while reducing the literal divine. I would personally go the other way.

>Hector WAS a better man than Achilles
lol

bet you think Turnus was a better man than Aeneas too

Complaining about sexism is a modern luxury we can afford ourselves. It may surprise you, but back in the days the Greeks had no iPhones or refrigerators or even a police organ that functioned as well as our own. The father was the despot of the household, required to protect his family against pretty much everything the state couldn't protect him from (A LOT!), and in return had the obedience and subservience of his wife and children [because expecting men to put their lives on the line for nothing, THERE's sexism!].

As for that second part, it's little more than common sense in the Mediterranean cultures of the time (as evidenced by the fact that Deuteronomy had comparable laws for the Jews). If a man dies without sons, he effectively dies without a legal heir. The daughter marrying the closest living relative of the father ensured that the father's legacy remained within the family. Given the collectivist nature of the cultures of the Ancient world as well as the fact that until about 200 years ago marriage wasn't about love but facilitating childrearing and inheritance, this makes perfect sense.

Your problem is that you look at some select ancient customs through modern eyes and make an incredibly modern value judgement: sexism.
>Inb4 "hurr durr you're a moral relativist"
Far from it, but I'm also not a moral absolutist. Nor an idiot who thinks feminism is anything but a luxury of the modern era for that matter.

Cyclopses are closer to mythical dwarves than orcs.

I've studied both the Aeneid and the Iliad as part of a course a couple of years ago.
Generally, the difference between Achilles vs Hector and Turnus vs Aeneas is more to do with how those cultures saw heroism.

Turnus has obvious intentional parallels to Achilles, he's driven by passion and his own desires (to avenge Patroclus/reclaim Lavinia), whereas Aeneas and Hector are fighting because of their sense of duty to their people.

So from the Roman perspective where one is supposed to give ones all for the greater good an idea that Augustus was pushing really hard, Hector is the better man, so Aeneas is related to and patterned on Hector rather than Achilles.
Achilles and Turnus represent the Homeric view of heroism, which is much more ambiguous and is harder to pin down. More about gaining honour and being remembered or something. It's been a while.

It should also be noted that modern western society and values probably take more from Roman ideas than Greek, which is why Aeneas seems like more of a hero than Achilles

>Complaining about sexism is a modern luxury we can afford ourselves.
>Treating half the world's population as equals to the other half is a luxury

Now, anyone with half a brain knows one shouldn't apply modern ethics to ancient societies retroactively. It's pointless and just distracts from actually studying the history.

But still, come on.

>Treating half the world's population as equals to the other half is a luxury
If they are biologically and demonstrably unequel then yes, treating the unequal as equals IS a luxury.

>Now, anyone with half a brain knows one shouldn't apply modern ethics to ancient societies retroactively
Unless that person believes in objective morality (as opposed to absolute morality). Given the circumstances at the time there was little wrong with this system, and if in THE CURRENT YEAR society were to collapse to the same level as the Ancient Mediterranean then reverting to such a system would not only not be evil, it would be common sense (except the Carthaginians and their human sacrifices, fuck them).

There's a difference between acknowledging the mechanical differences between men and women, and having their roles in society adjusted accordingly, and outright saying women are worth less than men and that they should be ashamed of their gender.

A woman takes care of the home and children and is a secondary breadwinner, a man protects the home and is the primary breadwinner. That's all fine. A woman having less legal rights than a man, or functionally being his property? That's significantly less fine, and not necessary even in a literal caveman society.

Spartan women weren't exactly powerful anyway. But yeah, they had to be strong mentally and physically to turn those damn literal faggots into fathers.

>it's funny how basically ANYONE was more liberal with women, execpt maybe the Jews

Anyway OP check out Agon. Sadly the game doesn't work all that good but the idea is there

>glory for anything, even PCs vs PCs (it's the only game I know in which the greatest achievement is immortality for your deeds)
>gods giving quests and generally expecting the heroes to do their bidding in any circumstance
>a pretty dreamy landscape so to speak, full of iconic communities and biomes

I'm sure this thread is going great places now. This all seems totally besides the point in a game where anyone playing a female character will be exceptional, like Atalanta or the Amazons, anyway.

Is it just me, or does Diomedes seem like a fanwank Mary Sue that was added to the Illiad after the fact?

This is such a weird mix of "you can't view the ancient world through modern opinions but I can view it through MY modern opinions"
>the Carthiginians were unilaterally (not objectively tho) bad bcos humam sacrifice
>pharmakos? what does that mean

If pastebin wasn't down, I would send a link full of tips.

Does anyone know what's the issue with it?

IT'S FUCKING TRUE

Most of his shit is in the non-mainplot books isn't it? If so, he probably is someone's fanfic that got made canon

Wait really? I just finished reading the Iliad recently and he really stuck out, but I haven't read into the history of the text itself.

People gained power in one of three ways back then.

Way one was bloodline: you were born a god, born the kid of a god and a mortsl, or you were born a monster.
Way two was being cursed: if you were a normal person and you pissed off a god or other powerful being, they sometimes up.and twisted your sorry ass into something else. For example, Medusa wad a beautiful woman once before she had the snakes and the stone gaze.
Way three was just being a kissass so the gods gave you shit.

It's only a mix because you want to see it, even though I clearly explained my position: I'm a moral objectivist, but not a moral absolutist. This means that certain deeds that are generally evil can be justified (most simple example: cutting open someone's belly to remove a tumor). This is entirely unrelated to moral relativism, which I attempted to clear myself of before I had accusations of it hurled my way (but as you've demonstrated that helped very little).

>B-But the Greeks did it too sort of
Yes, and? Or are you arguing that I think it's acceptable when the Greeks do it?

To be fair Achilles comes straight of the Hellenic Middle Ages. He was... well, if you want to do a good barbarian, here, Achilles is an awesome role model.

A lot of the things Greeks did was unacceptable. Including flagrant, and non-utilitarian, sexism.

Why are you posting in this thread?

It depends. I think it was only Callimachus with the "working with Hephaestus" thing.

The joke went over both of your heads

No magic distinguished clearly from religion. Aside perhaps from old women being "witches" innamountains.

Research the goddamn mythology.
Prepare for the party's first move to be "Where's Mount Olympus and we're now climbing it"
Include multiple cities. Remember, Greece was practically never united, except for when the Persians attacked (include those fuckos, they made a big impact).
Aristotle is awesome, and made awesome things, and technology can be surprisingly advanced at certain points, so don't limit your players creativity. Most ideas were actually built.
Also, brace for Alexander the Great.
And don't you goddamn forget. If there is a female character with high charisma, there is a solid chance Zeus will show up for fun sexy times.
Which can easily become the basis of an entire adventure.

And one final note. Greek mythology hits epic level really quickly. Armies sown from dragon's teeth, fleece which created phenomena of mythic levels, diverting the course of rivers, journeying INTO THE GODDAMN LAND OF THE DEAD. Epic scale is hit reaaaaally quickly. Be prepped for rules on that, and don't even bother holding back players. Anything can and will be accomplished.

muddle together troy, the sea peoples, atlantis and the bronze age collapse

>That guy is wearing the equivalent of a battleship. Both in protection and cost.

Fucking awesome.

When you say that, and I am aware their presence is actually at acceptable levels.....but
>pauldrons

>fit in any setting

A thing no one mentioned is colonies.

I think in fantasy setting it might REALLY be interesting, as you could up the ante of the indigenous people basically as much fantastic as you'd like it to be.

I am pretty sure its never been proven that the Iliad is a compilation, the general view is that it was put together by a single poet.

Whether he chose to emphasise certain stories or characters from the myths and legends he was working from is another matter.

Darker skin tones denote male figures

Heh, I remember reading somewhere about how during some kind of festival one of the Athenians is grumpy because Spartan women are walking in short chitons reaching only to their knees. Very colourfully grumpy.

I believe he was just making a joke

Im Greek, ask me any questions you want.

How's the economy.

Still boned.