Help me decide when to set my Greek campaign!

Which makes a better setting?

  • Ancient Greece (see description below)

    Votes: 40 54.8%
  • Classical Greece (see description below)

    Votes: 33 45.2%

  • Poll closed .
I'd say Ancient Greece, as you defined it would be better. Greece is just starting to come out of the Greek Dark Ages, and so you get more opportunity for adventures.

It might be interesting to set things even earlier, maybe right after the Trojan War, as the Mycenaen culture is collapsing too.
 

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Ooh! The vote's nearly tied but no one that votes for Ancient is posting. So I shall play Hades' advocate.

I think that the Ancient setting had the most potential for a long, epic campaign. If you and your players were so interested, they could discover new things and spread the tales about them. They could be the first guys to meet the Amazons and live to kiss and tell. The PCs could become far more of an influence in the heroic aspect. Small acts and adventures would have a greater impact as Ancient Greece is a smaller environment.

Especially since this could spawn a second campaign set in a Classical Greece that is built on the first game's PCs actions.
 


I think the ancient period is better if you want to use the gods. But if you want mythic Greece, go for that... ignore the historical record.

If you want Classical, I'm going to be one of those guys being an annoying correctionist. ;) As in, 475 would be shortly after the Peloponnesian War, not 375, and at that point Pericles was about 20 and hardly leading Athens, so far as I can recall. Socrates (mentioned by a different poster) hadn't been born in 475, and by 375 he had been dead for a couple of decades.
 

~Johnny~ said:
Classical Greece: This setting would take place immediately after the Persian Wars, during the founding of the Delian League, around 375 B.C. Many of the Greek city-states are democracies, Pericles is the guiding hand of Athens, and culture is thriving.

If you were thinking of the Persian Wars that ended (and the Delian League that was founded) about 100 years earlier i would have two books to recommend very strongly:

Histories (Herodotus of Halicarnassus)
Soldier of the Mist (Gene Wolfe)

Either one (and expecially both) should give you a lot of ideas about how to works some mythological material into the very year you would be contemplating.

Regards,


Agback
 
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~Johnny~ said:
Classical Greece: This setting would take place immediately after the Persian Wars, during the founding of the Delian League, around 375 B.C. Many of the Greek city-states are democracies, Pericles is the guiding hand of Athens, and culture is thriving.

You have a timing problem. The Persian Wars ended in 479 BCE, and the Delian League was founded in 478 BCE. Pericles was born about 495 BCE, but did not rise to political pre-eminence until Cimon was ostracised in 461 BCE.

Immediately after the Persian Wars, while the Delian League was shaking down, Themistocles was the guiding hand in Athens. The Periclean golden age did not begin until the Delian League had already degenerated into an Athenian empire.

Regards,


Agback
 

AND, having just wrote a paper on the sophists (all of them), Socrates, and the fialure of Athens by it's own volition, I'm in the mood for some good Homeric hack-n-slash........

A setting that takes both, I could be involved in Athenian politics one day, and having Hermes take me to the land of dreams the next.....this is what I would think would make the ideal setting (because it would also allow DMs to go in their own directions with it....no reason you ever need to see a pegasus if the policies of early democracy and philosophy are more interesting to you).
 

Whilst I voted for classical Greece (I'm a sucker for big, political campaigns!) I would say that you need to sit down and work out how Ancient Greece segues into Classical Greece. Obviously I am thinking less here of actual historical events, and more of how those events (and others not recorded by history) relate to the divine, the supernatural and the extraordinary. Since you are wanting to include the influence of the divine (and who wouldn't in ancient Greek history?!), you need to know yourself why did the Gods' influence decline, why did society become more agnostic and rationalist? Because I reckon that right out of that you'll develop dozens of storylines and it will help you choose what you want to do.
 


I voted for ancient greek. IMO there's just much more freedom to create new challenges in that era. Of course you could introduce magic and mythic monsters into a classical setting, but it would lose uniqueness this way. Using the ancient setting you have all avenues of mythical events open, literally anything can happen. But this doesn't mean the human-human part has to come up short.

Ok, so the Troian War has been fought out, but there can always be some other conflict somewhere and wars CALL for heroes, the fighting (Achilleus: Fighter 23) and the less combat-oriented ones (Ulysses: Fighter/Rogue 10/9, Nestor: Fighter/Rogue/Aristocrat 13/2/1 but venerable age). Continuing the example we can say, that while Achilleus was the singlemost powerful character, it took much more than just his martial ability to win the war - in the end it was Ulysses sneakyness and the interventions of the gods (spells cast by clerics in a DnD conversion), that decided the war. And without characters with social abilities convincing the right people, commanders making decisions of tactic and strategy, they wouldn't have won either.

Imagine the possibilities: The party is the elite force hidden within the Troian Horse and has to break the resistance from within - challenges for all character classes. The rogues can sneak about, assassinating, opening the doors, etc. The cleric's invocations hide the party from the view of the opposing gods and the fighters can unleash hellish slaughter in the streets once they're found out.

This is of course only an example, but it shows the possibilities of the ancient era. Mix the Troian War with Ulysses adventures and a good deal of mythological creatures and a divine/titanic subplot and you have an excellent setting.

If you do this, I'd recommend put great emphasis on the intervention of the gods. In 'standard' DnD they have quite an influence, but in an ancient greek setting they (or the titans) would behind every major development (which doesn't take away from the human's ability to make differences and decisions with or against the will of the gods, although they have to face the consequences of course).
Magic items would either be created my legendary, half-divine mortals or directly by the gods or maybe titans on the other side. This could lead to interesting situations as these blessings could become stronger or be taken away depending on the wielder actions or simply not work in specific situations - A sword blessed by Aphrodite could refuse to attack a creature of the wielder sexually preferred gender or Ares could temporarily withdraw his blessings from a weapon used to attack a follower of an allied god.

Clerics would directly call to the gods and ask for blessings and miracles, which would of course have to be related to the gods domains and the god decide to grant or deny them on a case by case basis - another of these blasted titan-spawn! Here, I grant you the use of my own sword for a while. - asking for favors again? I'm not in the mood ... maybe, if you perform some more sacrifices. Faith would be much less required than obedience and sacrifices.


I hope, some of my ideas help you ;)
 

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