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.