AEGEAN is a tabletop role-playing game about a group of mythic heroes building a new, free city on the shores of the Aegean Sea. There are neighbouring cities to trade or war with, monsters to kill, gods to appease, deceptions, negotiations and bloody skirmishes.

The Setting

The world of AEGEAN is an ancient Greece that never existed – a mix of mythology and classical history. The gods visit the earth and converse with mortals, granting gifts of magic and life to some and fear and terror to others. Fearsome monsters roam the lands and seas making every journey an adventure. Strange creatures, some mortal, others half-divine, can be found in the wilderness. These centaurs, nymphs and tritons teach, harass or ignore humans as their whim takes them.

The polis—the city and its surrounding lands—is your home and where your loyalties lie. Your polis is a recently founded colony on the coasts of the Aegean Sea. The leader is called an arkhon, a democratically elected ruler after the Athenian fashion, rather than the hereditary king that many cities still use. The polis sits in a precarious position, between many similar neighbouring states who may wish to trade, ally or make war.

Your character fits somewhere in this world, between the capricious force of the gods, the wilderness and the structure of the polis and its ambitions.

The Game

The core philosophy of AEGEAN is the characters are capable heroes who can always succeed at the task at hand. Sometimes there may be a cost involved and it’s up to the player to decide how much they’re willing to pay for success.

The resolution mechanic uses a familiar D10 dice pool. Each die which rolls an 8+ is a success and the more successes you roll the better your achievement. 10’s can add a success or be saved for later as Resolve and failure can be mitigated by gaining Risk.

Risk measures the danger a character is in. It’s a combination of small scrapes and stresses which build up during an adventure. It is gained when a character suffers harm, either physically or emotionally, but can be taken voluntarily to gain successes on a skill check. When a character’s Risk passes their Endurance threshold they are in trouble. Now when they would gain Risk they gain a Wound instead. Risk is easy to remove while Wounds are long-lasting.

A game of mythic heroes involving interactions with the gods wouldn’t be complete without some rules to manage those interactions.

A character’s fame throughout the world is represented by Glory. It is gained by performing heroic deeds and completing epic quests and can be used to purchase powerful talents. Spending Glory needs to be balanced with the character’s Hubris.

Hubris is a measure of a character’s contempt or disdain for the gods and their place in society. Characters gain Hubris by acting in ways which displease the gods, challenge the gods, or by acting above their station.

If a character’s Hubris is greater than their Glory then they have angered the gods and are Cursed. The form the gods’ anger takes depends on how much greater their Hubris is but, importantly, the gods are prepared to let a Cursed character die, if such is their fate.