Of Gods & Heroes - Notes, Actual Play, Comments

So, I'm doing this thing now where I run a one-shot a month for the good folks in the IGDN, and then review the games over on RPG.Net. This month's offering is Of Gods & Heroes, for which I made a character recently. So I am going to take some notes, and then kinda "live blog" the game (really just make any notes that I think might be relevant for the review) and then tomorrow I'll do a proper game write-up.

Opening up Eureka!, I find a plot called "In the Kingdom of the Blind," which, with some tweaking, has the feel I want. The characters will crash with their ship near a village in which 90% of the people have been blinded by evil spirits. This is all due to Amenides, an evil man who desired to see what the winds so, so he caught one of the children of Boreas, the North Wind, and cut out his eyes. Boreas flew down and drew Amenides up and dropped him, killing him, but he tricked his way out of Hades' realm using his superior sight, and came back to his village. He murdered the priests of Athena, Zeus, Ares, Artemis, and Apollo, but bartered with Hecate, giving her one of each of the eyes. Hecate then cloaked the village from the sight of Olympus - only someone who can't see can find the place.

The characters' ship gets blown off course by the blind wind child, who wants his fucking eyes back. To the characters, this is going to look like he's fucking with them. But then they get there, and the people tell them about the nightly wind-demons. A blessing from the priestess of Hecate can keep them from getting blinded, if they can convince her.

And then it's just a matter of finding Amenides, for which they need a blind person (Follower or someone can get blinded, which would be more badass). Let's find some creatures!

OK, so let's use the Harpies for the spirits, aaaaaand...Oni, I guess, for Amenides? (I would normally just stat him up myself, but I'm out of time.) I think that'll work.

And I think my first player is here, so the next thing will be PCs.

• Balendin the Smith: Descendant of Hephaestus. Prowess: Beloved of Hephaestus. Fatal Flaw: Trusting. 
• Aedeleus the Deadly: Former solider in the Peloponnesian War. Prowess: Deadly. Fatal Flaw: Red Rage.
• Tellus the Skein: Blind oracle (which the player came up with entirely independently, it was just really serendipitous). Prowess: Wise. Fatal Flaw: Trickster.
• Zetis the Hunter: Child of Zeus and the Golden Hind, hunted by the gods and goddesses forever. Prowess: Fast. Fatal Flaw: Sacrilegious.
• Dolophous Kouneli the Assassin Rabbit: Another child of a god whose mother was in animal form, this one is a child of Hades after he sent a rabbit to retrieve the Golden Apple for Persephone. Prowess: Beloved of Hades. Fatal Flaw: Proud.  

Our story begins at sea. The characters are sailing back from an adventure, when a thick fog blows up and a strong wind takes the sails. Tellus is at the wheel, until Dolophous takes it, reasoning that he can do better. He is wrong, however, as he fights the wind and wrecks the ship up on the rocks (and gains a Legend Point for being proud). Tellus and Balendin are thrown into the water, but the others rescue them, and with their surviving sailors they head inland.

Led by Tellus (who can find his way unerringly, which is strange), they find a village. But most of the villagers are blind - their eyes sucked out by some horrible force. Looking around, they find that the temples are largely abandoned, and the priest of Poseidon is dead. It seems as though the gods have forsaken this village.

Villagers speak of horrible demons that fly at night and suck out the eyes of those they catch. Dolophous orders the soldiers to gather the dead and bring them to the temple of Hades for burial (there's a hole in the temple floor leading to the sea, which is where this village disposes of their dead). Aedelphus finds one temple that remains intact - a temple to Hecate, the goddess of magic.

Tellus speaks with the wind, and learns that the man responsible for this is Amenides, the Cruel. The heroes learn from the priestess of Hecate that Amenides stole the eyes from a son of Boreas, the north wind, and then after Boreas killed him, used those eyes to find a way back to the land of the living. He then made an agreement with Hecate to blind the gods to the village, and lives like a dictator. The heroes offer a sacrifice to Hecate (and Dolophous uses the ram's blood to cast a ritual making his eyes appear already gone). Hecate's priestess, sensing her goddess is pleased, casts a similar ritual on the heroes, protecting their eyes. And then night falls, and the demons come.

They attack, but Dolophous fires an arrow over their heads and grounds them, making them corporeal (using a Legendary Feat). The others best the demons with nary a wound taken, and then the Heroes wait for morning.

Come morning, the priestess shows them Amenides home - on a mountaintop. They climb the cliffs (Balendin making a pulley system for Tellus to use, since he's not much of a climber), and they come to the home of Amenides the Cruel.

He steps out of his hut, and Aedelphus attacks (Legend Point for Red Rage). Amenides, though, wears the eyes of the priests on a necklace of sinew, and grabs an eye, becoming muscular and fast, and backhands Aedelphus away. But then Tellus slips in unseen, and cuts the sinew with his blade (Legendary Feat). Zetis runs and grabs the necklace. Amenides grabs the other end, but Dolophus shoots his thumb off. Aedelphus lunges in and runs Amenides through with his spear.

The Heroes take the eyes back to the village, and restore everyone's sight. Dolophus carries the head of Amenides, and Boreas and his son arrive to reclaim the wind-boy's eyes. Tellus takes the eyes of the dead priest of Poseidon, restoring his sight, and the Heroes set to work rebuilding the village and getting a ship together, to take them on to their next adventure.

Character Creation: Of Gods and Heroes

I wanted to do two characters this weekend, but then I got busy yesterday and had to run Chill (which became an object lesson in "why it's important to do the investigation before the combat"). So I might still do two, if I find the time, but for now:

The Game: Of Gods & Heroes
The Publisher: Green Fairy Games
Degree of Familiarity: Not much. I've read it, and I've got a one-shot scheduled.
Books Required: Just the one.

 
So, Of Gods & Heroes is an RPG inspired by the big, larger-than-life, heroes of myth. The tagline for the game includes the phrase "punch monsters in the face," which, I discovered, is a good way to sell people on the game. The author, my fellow IGDN member Justin Bow, was selling it at GenCon (not to me, because I backed the Kickstarter), and his pitch involved asking people their favorite mythological hero and helping them make a character based on that. I tried to stump him by giving him Orpheus, but that didn't work. Turns out you can make a character like Orpheus in this game just fine. I'm not going to, however.

There's a certain degree of player-involved setup that goes into the game; you need to decide the influences on your culture and what kinds of gods you've got going on and so on. The default assumes a sea-faring, iron age culture, and that's fine with me.

Step One: Conceptualize All Over the Place. Sounds messy. Anyway, as there's not a default setting for this game (rather, the default setting is "mythology"), I don't have anything in particular in mind, so I'll go for a kind of stealthy, night-hunting, Artemis-only-male-and-not-quite-so-angry thing. I'll call him Ardhem. Just sounds good to me.

Step Two: Fatal Flaw. Every myth-sized hero needs a fatal flaw, of course. Ardhem's, I think, should be tied to being hesitant...oh, wait, "Merciful" is one of the examples. I kind of like that. I get a Legend Point when I let someone live and they try to kill me later (which, holy shit, that would require the right group).

Step Three: What Makes You a Hero? I need a Prowess and an Epithet (much like another mythology-inspired game, this asks for a cool-sounding title, which I like).

There's a list of Prowesses, and I'm having trouble deciding. I want "Stealthy," but that's not a choice...oh, wait, "Dexterous" works on stealth. OK, fine, I'll make another jumpy-flippy-sneaky-throwy charcter. Twist my arm. I'll take "the Silent" as my epithet.

Step Four: What Are Your Skills? What, indeed? I have 25 points to divvy up. Everything's 1-for-1 except Rhyme, which is 2-for-1, and I can't go over 4 in anything.

Well, the Skill chapter tells me that some combat skill is a good thing, that the Resistances should get 2 each, and that Perception is a good choice in general. You know what I think; If it's important enough that everyone should have it, then either fold it into the rules so you don't have to fuck with it at chargen or give it to everyone by default. But whatevs. I have 25 points. I want:

Intimidation (being all scary while hiding)
Throwing Weapons
Mental Resistance
Physical Resistance
Social Resistance
Athletics
Sneaking
Tumbling
Knowing
Perception
Hunting

I would take Rhyme (which allows for magic) but I can't figure out the system. The Rhyme Skill seems to indicate that I can only take points in Rhyme if my Prowess allows it, and then I have to take Specializations in magic before I can use it...eh. I can't grok it; I'll have to get Justin to explain it before I run this game. I could take Rituals, I suppose, but screw it, I'll just assume Ardhem makes do without magic (how sad).

So, plugging some points into these Skills, I wind up with:

Intimidation 3
Throwing Weapons 3
Mental Resistance 2
Physical Resistance 2
Social Resistance 2
Athletics 3
Sneaking 4
Tumbling 2
Perception 2
Hunting 2

Step Five: What Is Your Fate? I actually tinkered with an idea like this a long time ago, but never really made it work - you know your character's Fate going in. It's "fate" in a very broad sense; "betrayed and murdered" is good, but specifying who is doing the betraying and murdering isn't.

Well, Ardhem's Fatal Flaw is that he's Merciful, so obviously that should get him killed. I think he intervenes in a fight without understanding what's happening, misunderstanding the situation in such a serious way that the aftermath gets him killed (like maybe the guy he saves is a blasphemer and the God of "Mind Your Fucking Business" takes it out on Ardhem later).

And that's it. Well, I'll say this, chargen is nice and simple. Gotta get this magic thing sorted, though.