Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3367930" data-attributes="member: 4937">Learn as much as you can about the US Marine Corp.  Then roll back that warrior culture to a world that is largely misogynist, tribal, heirarchial, superstitious, slaveholding, and brutal and which has largely as its standard of what is virtuous that that is successful.No, but he does basically have to be martial.  The problem with playing a Spartan is that Sparta is a true lawful culture, and no living American (at least no American that plays roleplaying games) comes from a true lawful culture.  There is no such thing as a Spartan in isolation.  You are a Spartan because you belong to Sparta and are subject to the Spartan law.  And that law pretty much prevents you from being anything but a Spartan.  The closest you can come to in the modern US is to be a member of a brainwashing cult - only its not a cult of personality, its a cult of tradition.  Do you understand the problem?  In playing a Spartan, the PC is agreeing to give up all his freedom of action.  You the DM will tell them what to do, and he is expected by Spartan law to it.  And what you will tell the Spartan is not, go out independently with some comrades and without supervision do deeds of daring, accumulate possessions, and so forth.  What you will tell the Spartan is to march in formation, to always march in formation, to hold your shield across the Spartan to left, and that's it.Let's put it this way.  What was Sparta's contribution to the arts?  Puritans did not despise ornementation as much as the Spartans.Druid as a concept is utterly alien to the Greeks.  As for bards and clerics, they might have had them, but just as the Marines have the concept 'every marine is first a rifleman', no matter what other job they might have, so the Spartans would have had the concept 'every Spartan is first a hoplite'.  For other jobs, the Spartans relied on second (and third) class citizens, and slaves.Yes. Sparta was a region.  It was effectively an Empire.  Read the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Fire-Novel-Battle-Thermopylae/dp/0553580531" target="_blank">Gates of Fire</a>, but Steven Pressfield.</blockquote>

Verification