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Ulysses 31, 30th Anniversary

Mark Cunningham — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:49:27 +0000

This bank holiday morning, myself and my kids sat and watched some episodes of Ulysses 31, an 80s sci-fi series. Despite the weaker animation than modern cartoons, the kids still love it. My daughter and myself can quote the opening sequence where Zeus curses Ulysses:

“Mortals, you defy the Gods? I sentence you to travel among unknown stars. Until you find the Kingdom of Hades, your bodies will stay as lifeless as stone.”

I wasn’t a huge fan of it as a kid, though when it was on I watched it. But since becoming an adult, probably fuelled by nostalgia, I’ve become a big fan. It was originally released in 1981 so this year, 2011, makes it is 30th anniversary. A French musician, a fan of the show, is re-mastering the soundtrack and has got permission to release a special edition (his website is in French but there are demos of the track there: www.parallax.fr).

I got the box set of the entire series just a few years ago, before I started Lost Heroes RPG. And it’s only in the last year I re-watched it with the kids. I’ve done a lot of reading of mythology including Greek myths for Lost Heroes and when I watched it with the kids recently, I had a new appreciation of the series. In fact I think subconsciously the genre mashup of far future fantasy plus Greek mythology probably did heavily influence the inception of Lost Heroes RPG (which could be described as a mashup of modern day fantasy plus ancient classic mythology).

Ulysses 31 is set in the 31st Century where a modern Ulysses is travelling on a large spaceship home where they encounter a planet that kidnaps his son Telemachus. Ulysses saves his son but kills the robotic Cyclops in his efforts and so the Olympian Gods curse Ulysses and his crew. It’s originally a French cartoon but done by a Japanese studio. (If you remember the Daft Punk music videos featuring blue humanoid aliens, then you’d have a good idea of the style of animation of Ulysses). Each of the episodes are inspired by Greek myths and stories.

I like the fact that the kids, Yumi and Telemachus act like kids in the show. Modern cartoons put the kids as the superheroes now (thinking Ben 10, Witch, etc.), giving them the power while a lot of the 80s cartoons, the kids are kids. They may be brave and smart and even the main protagonists but they don’t do the fighting or the heroics, that’s up to the adults.

While the main cast only features Yumi as a female character they do encounter a lot of strong female characters along the way from the Rebellion on Lemnos where the women revolt against the dominating men to The Magic Spells of Circe where a powerful sorceress is trying to defy the gods, but still it is quite atypical of the time, where the heroes are white males.

What is cool is their treatment of the classic myths. I love their take on Chronos in Chronos, Father of Time where he is exiled from Olympus so he captures Ulysses, hoping to use him to get back into Olympus. There these cool steampunk/clockwork like robots that serve Chronos and in the end Ulysses defeats Chronos by turning the clock of the Universe back! Or when Ulysses ventures to the centre of the universe in At the Heart of the Universe and is tricked into waking Atlas which causes the entire Universe to start to collapse.

I found many of the characters they met were more rounded out than the main cast, like the story of Sisyphus in The Eternal Punishment. They also managed to maintain the tragedy of Sisyphus in the episode, not something you’d find in many kids cartoons. In fact that is one of the qualities of the series, they really managed to keep the tragedy and sadness of many of the original myths, like the story of Orpheus in the final episode or the Minotaur in Lost in the Labyrinth.

I managed to find a video of the intro on youtube, embedded for your viewing pleasure:

For pure fandom, apparently there was a pilot episode created. It followed the same plot as the original first episode but all the character designs are different and it was never translated to English. It was online at some point, but when I found out about it, all the links were dead.

The daunting work of the gods

Mark Cunningham — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 22:36:27 +0000

Okay, taking a breather. 9500 words. I honestly don’t know if that’s a lot or not as I normally don’t track it as a measure of anything. I could write a 1000 words one night, only to cut half out the next day when I re-read it. But I’ve been spending the last few evenings since mid-January writing up a system for Lost Heroes and I’m really in the midst of it now.

I was procrastinating a lot but now I understand why, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the task I’ve set myself. I had thought it’d be a matter of writing up a few notes about character creation, going through Book of the Gods and listing Gifts and Faults but I’ve been collecting ideas for Lost Heroes for years and I’m trying to bring it together as a cohesive whole. And it’s daunting. Not even that but I’m not including the combat system I had devised, as I want to get all the other elements like powers and character creation settled first.

And I’m not helping myself as I seem to be distilling everything I’ve learned about running and using Fudge into the text. But I think this piece of work will be much more accessible to players than Book of the Gods.

Daunting is the right word. I always viewed 0.19 as an iteration, not the final product. I’m still looking to a next version where I merge setting and rules in one (and possible across 5 “books”, one core book and four pantheon supplements). What am I setting myself up for?

My POD experiment for Book of the Gods

Mark Cunningham — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 06:10:54 +0000

I’m still a bit of a old curmudgeon with some new techs and I haven’t really got on the PDF/ebook reader train yet. I still prefer to read books in hard copy, as in on paper, bound. But here I am writing a free RPG but only giving it out in soft copy/digital format.

There is of course loads print-on-demand (POD) services. So I decided to try and print a copy of my Lost Heroes RPG: Book of the Gods. The idea would be that I could provide a link to the POD so that others get a paper copy, if they so wish.

So I logged on to lulu.com and starting making a project. It was pretty easy to create a PDF and upload it as the contents of the book. But you have to upload or create a book cover. I had already created a cover that I was proud of it (though probably anyone with a bit of skill do something much better), but I could not re-create it in the online editor. So with a bit of messing I created a PNG image to be used as the cover.

It all looked good online and so I ordered a copy.

This is what I got a few days later:

No cover!

It took a while to get support (several weeks), partly my fault in not reading the instructions correctly though. But once I was talking to someone, it got sorted quickly. As it turns out my PNG file had a transparent background, which didn’t show up on the online editor. The support guys admitted it was their problem, so they said upload a new cover, one that doesn’t have a transparent layer, and they’ll print a new copy for me.

And so I then received this:

I think it looks cool though there is some unexpected yellow fuzz on the front cover (may not be visible in the photo). The costs are actually on lulu.com if you want to check them, but it cost me about 18 euros, not including delivery charges. They do have a centre based in the UK so thankfully not ordering it from the US. Also the inside was all in black and white so that’s cheaper. Colour is much more expensive.

What I learned from flicking through my book in hard copy? Well I suck at layout, but I knew that already. Big pictures that fill the page work better than small pictures (I’m assuming if I used columns small pictures could work). More pictures, probably less text. Also, as my wife pointed out, my name isn’t on the cover anywhere and it’s not readable on the binding.

While it’s cool to hold an actual bound book in my hands, I don’t think it’s worth me offering it as an option, yet. I have much work today, but it was a useful learning experience and when I start doing play testing this year, it’ll be useful prop to show players.

Imagining Clash of the Titans movie if it happened in the world of Lost Heroes

Mark Cunningham — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:00:37 +0000

After my short review of the new (2010) Clash of the Titans movie, I started thinking about how this compares to the world of Lost Heroes and how you might use it as the basis of a roleplaying campaign or adventure.

Of course you could just take the setting and world of the movie and use Lost Heroes to flesh out some of the under used stuff, like the other Olympian Gods. But for the sake of this exercise, we want to stick as close to canon or at least the spirit of the Lost Heroes world as we can.

Lost Heroes is based on the modern world, not on the pseudo-ancient Greek setting the movie seems to inhabit. But that’s not a problem though. My second play test run of Lost Heroes was ran in a psuedo Celtic period instead of a modern day setting. So we have the same setup here. As long as we don’t worry about historical accuracy, we just assume it’s a mix of ancient Roman and Greek culture, society and history. We’re basically giving ourselves permission to be more loose with the history and make up stuff we don’t know.

But this is also where Lost Heroes starts to diverge from the God-happy world of Clash of the Titans. Lost Heroes is about mythic heroes, but they are lost to the mundane world. Assuming the people of this time believe and worship Olympian Gods (or at least they did before they started revolting), they may be more favourable to Chosen of the Olympians than other Chosen. But still normal mortals, who hold all the social power, such as the King and Queen of Argos, will still see them as freaks and outsiders. (Maybe this explains why Perseus has a shaved head and no beard, a mark of shame?). You could argue that Clash of the Titans is set in the Golden Age of heroes, the time of Aeon according to the Greeks when Zeus created the Golden Race of men. But that time, a fragile time, would eventually disappear, replaced by a more real history without the overt footprints of the gods. Stating it starts in a “Golden Age” changes the expectations of the setting. The movie, at least visually, attempts to be more gritty and dark and that would be easier to establish with the default world rules of Lost Heroes with it’s binding Veil and Passion Bleed. The Chosen, despite being recognised as the warriors of the gods, would live with a burden on their shoulders and ordinary mortals would not trust them and probably try to drive them away.

The gods would not just sit idly!

We need to also shake up the Olympian Gods themselves to align them with the Lost Heroes versions. While Zeus does rule the council, he is not the dictator as presented in the movie. He is stern but a good leader. Certainly the other Gods would have more say in what happens and would be more involved in the action to come. For the Olympians, the Game of the Gods involves causing a situation to occur when reserved Zeus is impelled to act to keep the balance.

The relationship between the mortals and the gods would be more mysterious too. The gods do not depend on the prayers of mortals to survive, but events in the mundane sphere have some sort of casual affect on the divine sphere (and seemingly vice-versa), not easily interrupted by us humans (ah the Enigma of the Gods!). The Olympians themselves would try to manipulate the actions of mortals subtle to generate political situations in Olympus. The revolt of the mortals against the Olympians may have been instigated by a god or if it wasn’t, some of the gods would encourage it to their own ends. Hera, wife of Zeus, Queen of the Olympian Gods, has been known to put all of Olympus in danger to get at Zeus in any way.

It’s questionable if we should keep the good-evil dynamic of Zeus and Hades. It’s quite Christian, liking Zeus to the Christian God and Hades to the Devil. In Lost Heroes, we already have the Angelic Choirs fighting the Great War with the Devil and his legions. The actual relationship between Hades and Zeus is more complex. Hades rules the dead and all that the ground contains and is pretty strict on what’s his and what’s not. He rarely if ever interferes in the world above and when he feels the need, he goes to Zeus to do so (normally when someone steals his property, i.e. raising the dead). He doesn’t hate his brother Zeus but Hades motives are strange. Death is a dark mystery no-one wants to probe too deeply and so Hades is a mystery the other gods barely understand or want to. We’d need a stronger explanation for Hades to want to strike out at Zeus or the other Olympians. Perhaps Persephone, the wife of Hades, is kidnapped by some wily mortals (with the secret help of some of the others gods) as she was leaving the Underworld to return to Olympus (she normally spends half her time in the Underworld and the other half in Olympus with her mother Demeter). Hades would demand Zeus to strike the mortals down and return Persephone, but for some reason Zeus can’t or refuses to (perhaps they are too well hidden). Hades is the one Olympian who is actually loyal to his wife and that could drive him to anger. While there is no Kraken mentioned in Lost Heroes, Hades would certainly have his share of monsters in the Underworld. The most terrifying would be Thanatos, a shapeless abstract monster that is trapped in the Underworld, i.e. Death itself. Indeed the Underworld is actually a prison, holding the defeated Titans imprisoned. Imagine Hades threatening to unlock Tartarus!

Once Hades stated his intentions, some gods would take sides. Athena would stand by Zeus, Hera might side with Hades, continuing her vengeance against Zeus. Poseidon might take the opportunity to take Zeus’ place by siding with Hades. The politics of a potential divine civil war in Olympus would give many story-adventure seeds and provide a wonderfully dramatic backdrop to the campaign.

But the Olympians do have existing external enemies that could also be used. The Giants once fought a war with the Olympians and nearly won, now they are spread across the world in hiding, planning their vengeance. What about the Titans? The Titans that remain on Olympus and Earth and fallen gods, their light dimmed. But the ones trapped in Tartarus raging against their shackles scare the Olympians even now and there is Typhon, a god more powerful that all the Olympians, created by Gaia in vengeance, waiting in the Void for his time to return. I think any of these would make a more scary enemy than a single giant Kraken. And that’s not without looking to other pantheons, something which the Clash of the Titans movie didn’t seem to have a problem with.

Is Argos the only mortal city in Clash of the Titans?

In the movie there is really only the city of Argos, ruled by King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia. This would have to be the starting point of the game. It’s appears to be totally dominated by mortals, no Community (no supernatural creatures living among the populace) except for the beautiful Io, no Divine Family. Even the mad guy who riles up the starving public to return to the worship of the gods is mortal, his power is his madness and obsession.

The movie is wholly centred on Argos, if Argos fell the gods in the movie would lose all their prayers/powers. That wouldn’t be the case in Lost Heroes though, but certainly Argos is important. Also, in the movie, it says that you can travel to Mount Olympus and even the Underworld from Argos. This would not be the case in Lost Heroes. One must enter the Sea of Dreams first and from there enter the Lands of the Dead to find Hades’ Underworld. Though possibly the Sea of Dreams might appear as desert that they had to cross (and where they fought giant scorpions). Is it possible that Argos is not a real city at all, but a Island on the Sea Dreams or a Fairy Realm (a realm that cross both the mundane world and the Sea of Dreams)?

We are lead to believe in the movie that the actions of the gods are driving people from their homes to Argos. So which came first? Did the humans start revolting first or were they driven to it by the gods indifference or Hades interferences?

I suspect that many of the soldiers, after battling harpies and even Hades at one point, could be considered Valiant Mortals. After Hades appearance in the castle, possible the trauma of the Queen’s death, the King may even be a Valiant Mortal. Certainly it feels like the Veil is getting a bit raggy in Argos. Which is dangerous for all, because Darklings might push through and Nightmares might have a look around. The angry reaction of the populace to the solders going on this quest to find the Stygian Witches (the Graece in Lost Heroes), could be exaggerated by the effect of the Veil.

Bloodlines, the Cursed, Valiant Mortals, Magic Practitioners and True Chosen, what a cast!

Putting aside the original myth of Perseus, Perseus is a classic Chosen. His mother was raped by Zeus (Zeus does that a lot) and so Perseus is a Bloodline (or a Demigod in the movie). He doesn’t know this, nor even realises it until he faces Hades in Argos for the first time. This would be his awakening. But once it’s revealed Zeus and the other gods feel him too. The reaction of Perseus is also classic Bloodline. Most Bloodlines despise their divine parents. Their mortal families become targets to the gods and Perseus case, they were killed by Hades. Despite this, the gods continue to give Perseus gifts, such as the magic sword, the winged horse and coinage to get across the river Styx. Zeus even lends him lightning at one point. Zeus also tries to convince Perseus to come to Mount Olympus. This is very much how the relationship a Bloodline might have with their Patron. The King’s reaction to Perseus would also be expected, throwing Perseus in a cell.

But it would seem that Perseus’ awakening is the forming of the Divine Family. Io appears, a cursed mortal. She claims to have watched over him all his life. The Cursed are normally not used as player-characters and her standoff-ish nature would be quite indicative of being just an non-player-character. (FYI there are a few flavours of the Immortality curse in Lost Heroes, and Io seemed to have the better one).

Then the soldiers, who are all probably Valiant Mortals, follow Perseus on this mad quest. So the initial Divine Family is formed, tasked with stopping the Kraken (or perhaps some other monster or threat). Later, we have a “Jinn” join the family. These Jinn are nothing like the Angelic Jinn in Lost Heroes though and I’m not sure how to work that in. It might be best to think of these Jinn as being simply Magic Practitioners who have, over the years, become cursed and have bodies of rock and stone rather than fallen Angels.

There is also the underused characters of Ozal and Kucuk, two guys who at the last minute decide to join the soldiers as hunters and who claim to know how to fight monsters. I suspect they may be Travellers, mortals who can travel between Shard Worlds and these two seem drawn to party but refuse to enter the Underworld.

Then there is Acrisius/Calibos, father of Perseus. We see Hades offer power to Calibos to kill his son. Calibos accepts and so he is a True Chosen of Hades. Despite the horrible disfiguration and his deadly task, Calibos is definitely not a Soulless. He accepted a choice, it was not forced on him by Hades. Also the giant Scorpions that rise from his blood, that’s a nifty power. He would certainly make a good regularly returning bad guy in a game.

A quest!

With a city under threat, a beautiful princess (Andromeda) to save and a quest to be made, sounds like we have an excellent starting point for a campaign! There are some excellent story-seeds along the way, many secrets to reveal and some wonderful monsters to fight!

Clash of the Titans, a missed opportunity? (a short movie review)

Mark Cunningham — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:14:00 +0000

Warning, I paid no thinking if this post contains spoilers, so read ahead at your own risk!

I don’t get out to the cinema as much as I did before we had kids, so I generally catch up on movies on my birthday and Christmas, by giving my family a list of movies, available on DVD, from the year I haven’t seen. Easy presents. And so I finally got to see Clash of the Titans last week, one of my Christmas presents.

First off, I will say that this is a bad movie. There is no getting away from it. I didn’t really expect anything else. But it’s about mythic heroes and Greek Gods! I’ve got to find something in this movie I like, right?

Well my own Lost Heroes is about mixing up different mythologies, with Odin’s warriors fighting Olympian monsters or along side Ares’ centaurs. But I still found it jarring within the first few minutes of this movie, a Kraken (a Norse monster) is claimed to come from Hades, though I’ve been informed since that this is in the original movies. I put that aside while watching, giving it a chance.

What I did like was the monsters: the harpies, the kraken itself, the witches, the giant scorpions, Charon, the Jinn and the Medusa and the ensuing battles between the heroes and the monsters. (FYI, the witches, harpies, Charon, Jinn and Gorgons are all in Lost Heroes!).

But everything else felt like a missed opportunity. Take the Olympian Gods themselves. Why are they all wearing armour, though none of them ever take to battle? It felt like the Gods had been made more masculine. Why does the whole plot resolve around just Hades and Zeus? Apollo is featured in the deleted scenes, but he just comes off as a brat (rather than the beautiful youth I’d imagine him to be). Poseidon seems sheepish, despite being the God of Earthquakes. And where was the intrigue between the other Gods? Surely Hera might align herself with Hades to bring down Zeus? Why doesn’t Athena don her armour and go to battle against Hades to protect her father?

On a side note, why does Perseus have a shaved head? He looks like a US marine in roman armour. All the other male characters have long hair and fancy beards. Couldn’t figure that out. I’d imagine in that sort of culture, having your head shaved and beard cut would be a mark of shame. Fun fact, Spartan men would have half their beards shaved off as a punishment.

And all the characters were moaning about how awful and unfair the gods were, blaming them for the lack of fish, the plague, poverty, etc. and how they should revolt against the bad gods. I kept thinking is that these problems are not the Gods fault, but are social and technical problems. We, the audience, were never shown the tyranny of the Gods, except that life was hard back then. Not that I had a problem with a humanity battles gods theme. In fact, it appeared to be the opposite as half-way through the movie, Zeus refused to destroy the human army that had laid siege to Olympus, because he loved them too much! Zeus got off on their love, not their torment.

What it felt like was a pilot to a really cool fantasy-hero TV series, a gritty and darker Hercules or Xena. Or rather what those two series would look like if they had been created after the movie 300. Because in a TV series, the different gods could be explored and their complex relationships and politics exposed a bit more.

And I’ve just read a sequel is in the works: Wrath of the Titans. Might be fun.

Book of the Gods v0.19 is unleashed!

Mark Cunningham — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:30:00 +0000

What we need right now is the sound of Angels or the bellowing of Giants, maybe some bewitching music of the Gentry or the battle cries of Valkyries. You’ll have to use you’re imagination I’m afraid.

I’m please to announce that I’ve put the first public release of Lost Heroes RPG: Book of the Gods online. You can download it from here.

“Lost Heroes RPG: Book of the Gods” is the setting of Lost Heroes. I made the decision a long time back to split up the writing of the setting from the design and implementation of the rules (have a gander over past blog entries for more info). Though once the two are done to some satisfactory level I’ll probably bring back together in one. This version, v0.19, is not as good as it could be, but I’m hoping by putting it online, I can kick myself to up the game.

Lost Heroes RPG is a free roleplaying game. It’s set in the modern day but the players take on the characters of the Chosen who are the champions, lovers and children of the Gods. Book of the Gods, contains six unique pantheons of Gods which include Angels and Demons, Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorii, the Greek Olympian Gods and the Norse Aesir Gods.

Your comments and criticisms are welcome.

The text is 100% written, but it’s only 68% complete

Mark Cunningham — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:33:06 +0000

I managed to finish the re-reading/editing the text of Lost Heroes RPG’s setting: “Book of the Gods” last week. My feeling is that’s mostly complete. The writing is spot-on in some places and others it’s terrible weak, hence why I say it’s only 68% complete.

But I figure, that’s okay. This setting I’m putting together is basically a baseline of all my ideas and the previous versions brought together in some sort of coherent draft. Using this text, I can start to playtest it (using any system) to get a feel for how the setting (as opposed to the system) works and feels in-game.

I may make this raw text available to the few who have expressed an interest in reading it (ask if you want it). But my plan next is to put it together as a single PDF. The advantage of a single PDF is that it is a binary blob, one that can be download to be read offline, converted to ebook and uploaded to various online sites for further distribution. I will put the text online in HTML format but I’m not sure yet how this will happen.

The other thing I’ve learned from reading though the text is that, I need to split it up. There should be a core text, the basic setting plus the Mad/Dark Gods and Dreamlands and then a separate supplement/book for each of the four groups of pantheons: Tuatha De Dannan/Fomorri, Angels/Demons, Olympians and Norse (Aesir/Vanir). Having these four large groups embedded in the same work means I don’t give them the treatment they need to come alive. Don’t get me wrong, the basic facts and info is there to use and play them, but it’s compressed and thusly very dry to read.

It also makes it difficult to approach as a written project as each of these pantheons needs it’s own flavour and should have it’s only feel (I know what that feel should be too, as I’ve hinted at it before).

My work rate is slow I have to admit. This is a labour of love for me, but must fit in-between all the other must-do stuff and doing 32% more work is a daunting task.

The Norse gods family tree: the Aesir, Vanir and Frost Giants!

Mark Cunningham — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:46:47 +0000

I’m finally finishing up the editing part of the setting for Lost Heroes and I discovered I hadn’t done up the family tree for the Norse Gods, the Aesir. I’ve already done the other family trees (and organisation charts) for the other Pantheons in Lost Heroes. So this Easter weekend I put together this. It includes only the gods and characters mentioned within the Lost Heroes RPG setting, so don’t consider it academically correct. Enjoy!

Update: It seems that the full image I uploaded was shrunk by the upload process. Which meant you couldn’t actually read any of the names in the bubbles. I’ve now uploaded the full version again. Enjoy.

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Ulysses 31, 30th Anniversary

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