Olympian Breed
Olympian Breed is an adventure series for Savage Worlds published by Palewolf Publishing.
By Vikki Felde
Welcome to the thirtieth Designer’s Diary, a regular column where designers are given the opportunity to take readers on an in-depth ride through the design and development process of their system, setting, or product. If you’d like to share your product in the Designer’s Diary column, send a message to aaron@roleplayerschronicle.com.
Designer’s Description
Olympian Breed is a table top role-playing adventure series set in the Greek heroic age. This game uses the core rules set of the Savage Worlds, Deluxe Edition, the Super Power Companion, and the Fantasy Companion. You bring your players into an epic tale of high adventure in ancient Greece and beyond. Each release is a complete game session with story elements, plot hooks, detailed NPC’s and Game Master tips. The stories can be presented to players as “one-shot episodes” or as part of a whole campaign with story threads to tie it all together.
These adventures take place in the age of heroes before Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. You are transported to a fantastic era when demigods roamed the world slaying horrifying titans and fulfilling ominous prophecies. Within these tales, you explore all the classic themes that are prevalent in Greek mythology such as, heroism, faith, love, tragedy, generosity, and sacrifice. This is an age of myth, before the beginning of recorded Greek history, where great heroes clashed against the darkest of terrors. Throughout the game, the players fight to overcome their own human trappings and prove to be more than just mere mortals. They also discover that their Godly parents are far more human than they were lead to believe.
In this game, YOU play one of these great demigod heroes, born half human and half God. Will your demigod seek immortality through brave deeds or through guile? Will you choose to embrace your destiny or let the Gods push you to your fate? And when your time is done, will you have left your mark on the world and risen above your mortal station? Will your name be remembered and as everlasting as the Olympians themselves?
Purpose
We had been talking about putting our own games on paper for a long time, but it took a bit of adversity to really push us to finally do it. I got laid off from my job of 7 years and shortly thereafter my husband, Shawn, was also downsized. We were collecting unemployment, but neither one of us could find a job. Frustrated and bored from being home too long, we started to put the ideas to paper. At first, we dreamed of putting out our own home brewed setting in a shiny hardcover book for print, but that was going to take a lot of time. Having been long-time fans of Savage Worlds, we put the big project on hold and started producing Olympian Breed. We got our licensing from Pinnacle Entertainment Group and hit the ground running. We already knew there wasn’t a game set in ancient Greece for SWD (Savage Worlds Deluxe), so we thought this could be a good opportunity for us to get our feet wet and begin publishing. We still fully intend to work on our complete setting, but it’s going to simmer on the back burner for a while. Act One: A Gathering of Heroes is the first in the series of adventures which is available now. Act Two: The Island of Love is going to be available the week of Jan. 23rd, 2012.
Influences
We got inspired by the new Clash of the Titans movie, but we have been loyal fans of the original from 1981 for a long time. Watching the original now with its cheesy claymation action makes it seem so very dated, but it was so cool in its time. The reason we both liked it so much was because the story was good. The new movie had amazing eye candy but we felt it lacked in the story side of things. We also enjoyed Jason and the Argonauts, especially the new series done in 2000. My husband and I both love Greek mythology because of all the bizarre stories and frightening tales, so we thought it could be a lot of fun to write some adventures in that world. I remember reading Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey as a teenager and how it stirred so many thoughts and dreams about being more than just human. The works by Rick Riordan such as Percy Jackson and the Olympians definitely had an influence on the stories we put together as well. In the end, we felt that many people would be interested in playing a demigod in ancient Greece so that is where we turned our focus.
Research
Olympian Breed was designed as a series of adventures to be run in an ancient Greek setting. Obviously, the more you know about Greek Mythology the better, but we wanted to leave the setting very minimal to allow flexibility in the world. Both Shawn and I know quite a bit about ancient Greece, but we did do some additional research to make sure we knew our stuff well enough before we started writing about it. In our adventures we focus on the main 12 Olympian Gods, but there are so many more that could be used. With there being so much information available through the Internet, movies, books and videos, we encourage our customers to learn as little or as much as they want of the mythology to tell their games.
Art Direction
The plan for art was always very minimalist. This wasn’t a decision made because we couldn’t find good artists, quite the contrary, we know some fantastic artists. Tiara Lynn Agresta is an amazing Graphic Designer whose portfolio includes many projects including several gaming books. Didn’t anyone ever tell you Tiara rocks? Kerri Barber is a multi-faceted artist whose body of works includes drawings, oil paintings, murals and monster making and she is currently working with an art gallery in Barrington, IL to display her collections. Paul London has drawn some stunning pieces in the comic and super hero genre and now is expanding his experience with fantasy and sci-fi. We decided to keep the art light so that we could focus on the story elements and use the art to enhance the words on the pages without overwhelming the short documents. The graphic design was also crafted with the same theme in mind. We wanted our stuff to be printer-friendly and not eat up a ton of ink; and that’s exactly what we were able to accomplish. We feel that the graphic design and the art really enhance the look of the adventures and give them a professional, polished appearance.
Gaming Experience
Olympian Breed was designed to be relatively easy for the GM to run and a heck of a lot of fun to play. Excluding the initial setup for the game, which might involve some reading on the part of the GM (depending on the GM’s personal knowledge of Greek mythology and history), the adventures are complete. We included detailed NPCs, GM notes, story background and fully developed monsters and bad guys. The adventures contain everything the GM should need for a fulfilling night of game play. The best part is that these stories are designed to create heroes out of your player characters. They will perform great deeds, make impossible sacrifices and shape their own destinies as well as the fate of the very world they live in. Most importantly, we wanted our customers to enjoy the adventures and have fun.
Comparison
I’m not really sure if there is anything out there right now that is comparable to Olympian Breed. While it has some fantasy elements, it’s definitely not a fantasy game per se. And by the same token, it does have some super hero flavor but it’s decidedly not a super hero game. Olympian Breed is set in ancient Greece, so games like Part-time Gods or Scion which use a modern day setting, really don’t compare well. Plus, our game focuses on being a hero in a time when people really believed in Gods and demigods so there is a whole different feel. Think about the way Hercules or Perseus must have been respected and feared by all those around them? When you know that Poseidon is real and lives in the sea controlling its violent waves, you might think twice about getting on a boat. Like I said, it’s a whole different feel.
Development Process
Because of the considerable amount of information about ancient Greece and Greek Mythology, we took the minimalist’s approach in our setting primer. Some people might say it was too minimal, but we intentionally left the details kind of blurry so that each GM could set the tone and feel for their game. If you wanted to do a Homer-esque style game grounded in ancient history, you could definitely do that. But, if you wanted a more exciting epic tale like Clash of the Titans, you could do that as well. The setup is flexible enough to allow the GM to decide what path the game will take. Knowing that we might leave some people wanting more crunchy bits for their setting, we decided to make it available for FREE so that no one would feel like they didn’t get their money’s worth. I mean, how can you really argue with free? The truth is, our setting primer contains just enough information you need to run our adventures, which is the main focus. Since the adventures are going to take the players to a variety of different locations in ancient Greece, we didn’t want to spend too much time detailing a certain place when your players might not spend more than a few game hours in it. It is our belief that the adventures will be exciting enough and described well enough to keep your players entertained throughout the series.
Olympian Breed is the first of many products that Palewolf Publishing has planned. Step off the beaten path and go on a journey with us. 2012 is going to be an exciting year!
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