LogFAQs > #890136647

shadowsword87 posted...

I realize I'm focusing a lot on "barbarians", but PCs gotta fight something.

If you're setting a game in ancient Greece, odds are most of what the PCs are going to be fighting is each other.

Keep in mind, "Greece" didn't really exist as a nation, or even as a realistic coalition of allied states (a la the EU). Most of the city-states were in direct competition with each other, and the instances of one city fighting another (or a loose coalition of cities fighting a different loose coalition of other cities) happen far more frequently in Greek history than examples of them interacting with peace and friendship (the original Olympics were established as a means of trying to reduce that sort of tension). The Peloponnesian War was the most dramatic example, but in any given Greek campaign it would be entirely appropriate for Athenian heroes to wind up fighting Spartan raiders, Corinthian bandits, Argive pirates, or Thracian invaders.

Outside of the Greeks, there are always tons of threats. The Mediterranean is usually full of pirates regardless of the era (the names and faces change, piracy itself doesn't) - from the Sea Peoples to the Illyrians, the Moors, and eventually the Barbary corsairs (and even present day "terrorists"), there are always threats on the wine-dark sea. Thracians and Macedonians to the north were always considered to be "barbarians" in the usual sense of being backward thugs and uncouth savages. Farther to the north you've got steppe barbarian tribes like the Scythians. Rome and Carthage are growing threats to the west, Persia and other lands to the east and south offer challenges of their own, and so on.

Though keep in mind the Classical Age really ISN'T the "Age of Heroes" - that was about 800 years earlier. Greeks wandering the lands fighting monsters or villains is kind of inappropriate, and would-be heroes would probably be looked down on as shiftless vagabonds, criminals, untrustworthy mercenaries, delusional madmen lost in an ancient past, or just irresponsible fools. Major movers and shakers in this culture are probably politicians or established military, and are more respected for working within existing systems, with individuality being less valued than being "civilized". At best, you might be able to cast them as a military scout group attached to a larger force.

So you might want to start by defining where the characters are going to be mainly based (because say, an "Athenian" campaign is going to be a lot different from a "Spartan" one), then doing research about that specific region, planning how the players are expected to do business there, and then deciding on who their enemies are going to be.


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