Heroes of Olympus (role-playing game)

Heroes of Olympus is a role-playing game first published by Task Force Games in 1981.

This article is about role-playing game. For the book series written by Rick Riordan, see The Heroes of Olympus.

Description

Heroes of Olympus is a fantasy system set in the heroic age of ancient Greece.[1] The player characters are Argonauts, adventurers in the crew of the hero Jason.[1] The rules cover the backgrounds and abilities of the Argonauts, character improvement, combat (including rules for trickery), sailing, magic, nonhuman races, the gods, and how to run a campaign.[1] The set comes with four scenarios (with a color map for each), including the Golden Fleece, and encounters with the Harpies and Clashing Rocks.[1]

Heroes of Olympus is based on Greek mythology and players either take on the roles of Argonauts in Jason's crew or else make their own heroes using point-based character creation.[2] The game includes two tactical combat systems for melee and a naval combat system, and was an attempt to bring together elements from roleplaying games, board games and wargames.[2]

The 2nd edition adds some sample miniatures and an article from Different Worlds for adapting the characters to Thieves' World.[1]

Publication history

Heroes of Olympus was written by B. Dennis Sustare, and published by Task Force Games in 1981.[2] It was a boxed set with an orange cover, containing a 56-page book, five maps, two cardboard counter sheets, and dice.[1] Heroes of Olympus was the first of a number of pseudo-RPGs that Task Force Games produced, of the sort that were also appearing at other wargaming companies such as SPI's DragonQuest and Metagaming Concepts's The Fantasy Trip.[2] Heroes of Olyumpus was supported by a pair of magazine articles, and did earn a second edition in 1983.[2] The second edition was a larger boxed set with a cover by Chris White, containing a 56-page book, a pamphlet, five maps, counters, metal miniatures, and dice.[1]

Reception

According to Shannon Appelcline, although the game had elements of roleplaying games, board games and wargames, "it was probably as much of a roleplaying game as other RPGs from the same time period," such as DragonQuest and The Fantasy Trip.[2]

Reviews
gollark: ```Features:- Fortunes/Dwarf Fortress output/Chuck Norris jokes on boot (wait, IS this a feature?)- (other) viruses (how do you get them in the first place? running random files like this?) cannot do anything particularly awful to your computer - uninterceptable (except by crashing the keyboard shortcut daemon, I guess) keyboard shortcuts allow easy wiping of the non-potatOS data so you can get back to whatever nonsense you do fast- Skynet (rednet-ish stuff over websocket to my server) and Lolcrypt (encoding data as lols and punctuation) built in for easy access!- Convenient OS-y APIs - add keyboard shortcuts, spawn background processes & do "multithreading"-ish stuff.- Great features for other idio- OS designers, like passwords and fake loading (set potatOS.stupidity.loading [time], set potatOS.stupidity.password [password]).- Digits of Tau available via a convenient command ("tau")- Potatoplex and Loading built in ("potatoplex"/"loading") (potatoplex has many undocumented options)!- Stack traces (yes, I did steal them from MBS)- Backdoors- er, remote debugging access (it's secured, via ECC signing on disks and websocket-only access requiring a key for the other one)- All this useless random junk can autoupdate (this is probably a backdoor)!- EZCopy allows you to easily install potatOS on another device, just by sticking it in the disk drive of another potatOS device!- fs.load and fs.dump - probably helpful somehow.```
gollark: ```PotatOS OS/Conveniently Self-Propagating System/Sandbox/Compilation of Useless Programs We are not responsible for- headaches- rashes- persistent/non-persistent coughs- virii- backdoors- spinal cord sclerosis- hypertension- cardiac arrest- regular arrest, by police or whatever- angry mobs with or without pitchforks- death- computronic discombobulation- loss of data- gain of data- frogsor any other issue caused directly or indirectly due to use of this product. Best viewed in Internet Explorer 6 running on a Difference Engine emulated under MacOS 7.```
gollark: Possibly...
gollark: Maybe...
gollark: Er... no.

References
  1. Schick, Lawrence (1991). Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games. Prometheus Books. p. 73. ISBN 0-87975-653-5.
  2. Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
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