Stealing Ideas: Percy Jackson & The Olympians
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I just finished reading the Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan. I didn’t even know these books existed until I saw a preview for the first movie. I greatly enjoy “children’s” series; especially fantasy/magically based ones. Therefore, I decided to give Percy Jackson a shot.
At first glance it feels like you’re reading a take-off of a Harry Potter like story; however, once you get into them you find they are pretty cleaver, witty and ripe for the harvesting of game ideas!
Click on the image for the link to the official Percy Jackson website
As you can guess by the title, the books are based around Greek Mythology. In fact as you quickly discover in the books, the gods of Olympus are real. And in the books those real gods have real demi-god children who battle real monsters. If you ask me this is real cool 
Greek mythology, in its own right, is full of possible adventures. In the book there is much discussion over the children of the Big Three: Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Their children are thought to be more powerful than the children of the other Olympians i.e. Aphrodite, the goddess of love and Apollo, the god of the sun, poetry and prophecy. Monsters are also plentiful in the Greek mythos. There are Cyclopes, Minotaurs, mazes and dungeons including the Great Labyrinth.
After spending some time looking through our gaming shelf, I think that the Scion system would be perfect for playing a game of demi-god adventurers. The system is light on rules and is heavily influenced by story-telling. The first level of the Scion system is Hero, which would be a great place for young inexperienced demi-gods to start their adventures. As the players progress in the adventure they could easily expand their character’s development by incorporating the Scion: Demi-God and Scion: God books as well.
And I wouldn’t be a good fan of D&D 4e if I didn’t at least try to figure out a way to create a demi-god game here too! Given that their are so many powers and characters are so powerful from even 1st level you could easily have all the characters be the children of one of the gods from the Players Handbook. You would then give your character traits of their parent god.
I run an occasional Dads & Kids game with 10-year-olds. My son especially is a huge Percy fan, and so when I started hinting (not very subtly) that ‘more than one’ of the party might be demi-gods, it really got them fired up.
Once I started trying to map the PATO mythology onto the D&D mythology, it wasn’t hard to find parallels. As the Dawn War story is largely based on the Greek story, it’s basically all there anyway, so I just added a few embellishments. Instead of the Olympians vs. the Titans, I started with the 12 ‘Celestians’ vs. the Primordials, and it all follows pretty logically from there.
The 12 Celestians are the 11 deities from the PHB, more or less. Io was the original king of the gods, and now Bahamut holds Io’s seat on the council, but doesn’t claim the title (Tiamat rejects the council altogether). Tharizdun was the 12th member, but after the war, he was replaced with Asmodeus, who is tolerated because of his enmity with the demon lords (ex-Primordials). Roughly, most immortals and their servants line up on this side of the conflict. Emphasizing a strong fey connection can give you an excuse to have centaur or satyr NPCs show up as mentors/allies. Obviously the Shadowfell is a great ‘Land of the Dead’.
On the other side of the conflict are the primordials, including those who have become demon lords (such as Orcus). Demons then serve the role of the PATO monsters, by being able to smell demi-gods, and disappearing in flames when they are killed (possibly returning), etc. Giants and other one-time servants of the primordials also line up on this side. PCs who find out they are demi-gods can’t trumpet the relationship, or every demon and giant around will be gunning for them.
Mechanically, it can be as simple as using power flavours to make the characters fit, and then choosing Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies that make sense (heck, there’s an ED called ‘demi-god’). If necessary, go as far as house-ruling racial powers from other races. For example, a human child of Bahamut might replace a first-level attack with the dragonborn breath weapon. A child of Melora might have the Genasi’s SwiftCurrent or Windwalker powers, no matter what their actual race.
Anyway, I am just at the beginning stages of introducing this to the kids, but so far they are going crazy for it. I would be interested in feedback.