GMBC ep46 - Epic Quests & Curses: Crafting TTRPG Adventures from Felicia Day's Graphic Novel The Lost Daughter of Sparta
The Lost Daughter of Sparta
Felicia Day
Speaker A
00:00:00.560 - 00:00:05.440
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience.
Speaker B
00:00:06.240 - 00:00:07.200
Fela no way.
Speaker A
00:00:07.200 - 00:00:38.780
The youngest sister of Helen of Troy, whose story has been lost to time, has now been reimagined by none other than Felicia Day into a heroine's journey in graphic novel form.
The lost daughter of Sparta has feeling away on a quest from Aphrodite to escape her harsh political marriage, her magic curse and her own imposed identity to find her true self and maybe true love with a goddess.
Marshall Smith, Eric Frix and George Krubsky are the muses set to tell us of this Tal and how Feeling no Way's journey can make your next tabletop role playing experience a quest for the ages.
Let's get into the conversation.
Speaker C
00:00:40.860 - 00:02:30.330
Hey everyone.
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where we take great fiction and turn it into great tabletop roleplaying experiences.
I've got three returning game masters, George, Marshall and Eric, and we're going to be talking about a fabulous graphic novel which is called the Lost Daughter of Sparta and it is by Felicia Day.
And surprisingly Felicia Day was going to make a small guest appearance here on the show.
I know, I'm very excited about it myself.
It's just going to be a quick blurb and we're.
And something we recorded ahead of time, but super excited.
But we've already got a bunch of special people here, so let's hear about them.
Our game Masters today are going to take advantage of the same thing that Felicia Day did.
She based this particular.
And she goes, she tells us about this in her blurb.
She based this particular graphic novel along a single quote that she got from the pseudo Apollodorus which is a.
An ancient Greek mention of one character.
Tyndareus and Leda had daughters, to wit Tindra who Echemas married and Clytemnestra who Agamemnon married and also another daughter, Philone, whose Artemis made immortal.
And that's it.
That's all about Pylane.
That's it.
And she based an entire graphic novel on this character in a single particular mention.
So I'm betting that all of our Game masters here have done the same thing.
They've been reading through a book or seen a movie or experienced piece of media and said, oh yeah, I'm going to base something around that character that's awesome or that, that thing that happened in the book.
So that's how we're going to start off today.
George, we're going to lead off with you.
Give yourself a quick introduction and Tell everybody about that one minor character that became something bigger.
Speaker D
00:02:30.970 - 00:02:44.490
Hey, my name is George.
I've been aiming since the 70s or 80s.
I forget exactly which one.
Mostly running games rather than playing them.
But I play a lot as well.
I'm going to go with a concept if that's okay, rather than a character.
Speaker B
00:02:44.890 - 00:02:45.770
Perfectly fine.
Speaker D
00:02:46.090 - 00:03:25.890
I ran for numerous years a sort of Indiana Jones style game where the characters were treasure hunters for the Vatican.
And I really didn't want to make treasures up if I could avoid it.
But I also had a group of players who were very knowledgeable in the same types of things that I was.
So I would have to find obscure references, take a sentence from the Bible and spin it into three sessions.
Take a sentence from a history book about Genghis Khan and turn that into three sessions.
So it was a lot of treasure hunting or treasure hunting game.
Speaker C
00:03:26.130 - 00:03:32.770
Fantastic.
That sounds very much like the best possible version of Warehouse 13, but in.
Speaker B
00:03:32.770 - 00:03:34.130
Role playing game form.
Speaker E
00:03:35.250 - 00:03:36.610
If I may add one line.
Speaker D
00:03:36.850 - 00:03:57.310
My research led to probably the strangest sentence that was legitimately said to me in real life, which was by the former librarian at our university, our shared university, if you remember, Bruce was.
I believe the.
I believe the Masada books have fallen into the hands of Dr. Payne.
Speaker C
00:04:00.190 - 00:04:01.230
That's awesome.
Speaker E
00:04:01.550 - 00:04:02.030
Yeah.
Speaker F
00:04:02.190 - 00:04:02.670
Nice.
Speaker C
00:04:04.270 - 00:04:11.310
All right, Eric, do you want to tell the folks a little bit about yourself and a little bit about.
About the tiny thing you made big in your campaign?
Speaker F
00:04:11.870 - 00:05:47.690
Me?
Sure.
My name's Eric Drix.
I'm from the Philadelphia area.
I have been doing game mastering reading science fiction fiction, fantasy for all my life, which has been going on for a while and excited to be here.
And I was running a.
Wanted to run a Weird west campaign where the players were sort of authorized to go around and research supernatural occurrences and take back supernatural items and things like that.
And I found out a little bit about James Smithson.
He was a British scientist who never visited the United States, who for some reason after his death, donated his entire fortune to the United States so that they could essentially what would become the Smithsonian Institute.
And just knowing that part, I went, okay, he traveled around a lot.
What if this guy was part of.
A.
Part of this group and wanted to establish something in the United States?
So that became the start of it.
And then of course I read in 1855, the official Smithsonian Institution building was called the Castle.
And I'm like, okay, how cool would it be for the players in this old Weird west style campaign to be federal agents working for the Smithsonian out of the Castle?
And that just springboarded an entire Weird West Zombie west campaign.
Speaker B
00:05:49.080 - 00:05:49.800
That's awesome.
Speaker C
00:05:49.880 - 00:05:56.760
That's so awesome.
Marshall, you want to tell the folks about yourself and the little idea that could and became something bigger?
Speaker E
00:05:57.240 - 00:06:38.080
Absolutely.
So my name is Marshall Smith.
As with the rest of the guys I've been playing since Redbox D and D way, way back.
I have a couple of different publishing credits in the industry, primarily with 7C and a couple other aggressive and AEG adjacent games.
My thing that grew there was a Tumblr post that went around several years ago and it was about, so what if you had this archeology show and the host of the show was named Misty Sands because the show was the Misty Sands of time.
Speaker B
00:06:38.240 - 00:06:39.360
Oh, that's nice.
Speaker E
00:06:39.440 - 00:07:37.050
She was this clueless blonde kind of bimbo ish, but actually really into the archeology.
She also was constantly opening the wrong crypt, reading the wrong book, picking up the wrong cursed object.
And so things were just constantly going out of control.
And so I took that.
And my wife and I are also huge fans of Josh Gates, who does Expedition Unknown and Destination Truth, et cetera.
And so we did this whole campaign where her character was in charge of a security company that provided paranormal security for TV shows that went and dealt with Cryptids and haunted asylums and all kinds of things like that.
And it was a blast.
Speaker C
00:07:37.050 - 00:07:38.850
That is so cool.
I love that.
Speaker F
00:07:38.930 - 00:07:39.970
That's a lot of fun.
Speaker C
00:07:40.290 - 00:08:19.600
I'm Eric Jackson and I built a whole show around the idea that I absolutely, positively wanted to steal stuff from books and put them into my games.
So the number of things that I have stolen are legion.
The character that I have stolen the most often and put in the most games is from the Paksenarian series.
There is an arms master who trains the young recruits, and he is Arms Master Seeger.
And he is the.
He is tough as leather and old as dirt and blah, blah.
And I put Arm Master Seeger, and I just call him that.
And every, every time I meet an arms master, it's in any campaign.
Oh yeah, Arm Master Seeger.
Speaker B
00:08:19.760 - 00:09:20.340
I actually wanted to spend a second, though, to point out something cooler than what I did, which is based off of a book that we covered already in this, in our series on the podcast, which is river of Teeth, which is written by Sarah Gailey, and that is based upon a real life 1910 proposal by the Louisiana congressman, Robert F. Broussard, to import hippopotamuses into the Louisiana marshlands to alleviate a national meat shortage.
And this, this proposal, which is a real proposal, the American Hippo bill, which failed to pass, unfortunately, would have introduced hippos into the United States.
And this and the story that Sarah Gailey wrote was like, what if that really happened?
And we had hippo cowboys?
And then the rest of that story is hippo is cowboys on hippos doing a heist on a riverboat.
So I, no matter what I do, nothing will ever be better than that.
That's just amazing.
Speaker F
00:09:22.020 - 00:09:24.160
That's awesome.
Speaker E
00:09:25.680 - 00:09:32.640
I, oddly enough, just learned about that hippo fact last week.
I think I saw a video about,.
Speaker B
00:09:32.800 - 00:09:55.720
Obviously, Felicia Day and us.
We're all hanging out.
We're having a great time.
We are on the same page.
If that's not totally true, we at least have her here for now or at least in virtual spirit.
Okay, guys, since we're talking about the Lost Daughter of Sparta, I thought it would be really great to have the author tell us a little bit about it.
So I'm going to have that happen hopefully right now.
Speaker G
00:09:57.400 - 00:11:23.780
The Lost Daughter of Sparta is a hero's journey that I crafted around Filonoe, the youngest daughter or the youngest sister of Helen of Troy, the very famous Helen of Troy, who has been lost to time.
Filonoe is only mentioned once in ancient text from like 300 BC, and I stumbled across it and the piece of text is that Filonoae was made immortal by Artemis, the goddess Artemis.
And so I was so intrigued by this one little fragment that I decided to craft a story for her because I loved reading and I love reading mythology, especially to my daughter and fairy tales.
And I wanted to craft a hero's journey for a girl character set in this time that would be inspirational and something that would teach my daughter some things that I think will do her good in her life.
That mainly that she deserves to be loved for who she is.
And that is the pitch.
It is a graphic novel and I have a wonderful illustrator, Rowan McCall, who I found to illustrate.
It's three color, which is kind of unusual, but we wanted to evoke the sort of three color pots that were made in ancient Greece where we get a lot of information about how they lived and what they thought about things.
So it's very personal.
It took six years to make for me.
I started it just when Covid hit, and it's finally coming out now, and I just really love it.
And I hope anybody who picks it up loves it too.
Speaker B
00:11:24.260 - 00:11:39.270
So you've heard the pitch from our very good friend Felicia Day, who was very kind to come to record that with me earlier.
Gentlemen, what were your feelings about this particular book, the Lost Daughter of Sparta.
Eric, you want to start?
Speaker F
00:11:39.270 - 00:12:15.520
I love the book.
I loved the play on the curse.
I loved how interactive the gods were.
The art was really supportive of the narrative and did a great job conveying the, you know, good actors conveying the script, Good artists convey the story and yeah, they did a fantastic job.
So, yeah, I devoured it, handed it off to my wife who devoured it, who handed it off to my eldest daughter who devoured it.
Speaker B
00:12:15.520 - 00:12:19.800
All right, fantastic.
George, anything about the book that you want to add to that?
Speaker D
00:12:20.120 - 00:12:40.300
I mean, I would agree with everything that Eric said.
It's a nice smooth read, it's quick read.
I actually, I reread it this afternoon right before we recorded.
I have not handed it off to as many people, but I have told my daughter as soon as we're done recording, I'm leaving it on the.
On the shelf for her to read.
Speaker A
00:12:40.300 - 00:12:40.620
Next.
Speaker B
00:12:40.860 - 00:12:42.300
Excellent, Marshall.
Speaker E
00:12:42.460 - 00:13:16.080
I also loved it.
I am a big fan of Greek myths, same as Felicia Day.
I started with Dollars, so that was awfully nice to see in her notes.
And I've been a fan ever since.
This had both the great feeling of an actual mythic story like you would get from Ovid or whatnot, but also felt modern in a lot of the.
The themes and whatnot.
So it was a.
She did a really great job of blending those two together.
Speaker B
00:13:16.560 - 00:13:27.480
Yeah, all the same.
All the same.
I agree with everybody.
I've recommended to tons of people.
I. I think it's.
I think it's a modern take while so maintaining a classics feel.
So.
Speaker D
00:13:27.480 - 00:13:27.880
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:13:27.880 - 00:13:45.840
All right, now we've got this great book in front of us and we're ready to go.
So the next question is, how do we put it into a tabletop role playing game?
Marshall, do you want to get started and talk about the possible mechanics that you would use in order to take the lost honor of squadron and put it into something on your tabletop?
Speaker E
00:13:45.840 - 00:14:21.140
What I got the feeling of with all of this is very much a micro rpg.
In particular, looking around in the ultimate book of micro RPGs is specifically a mythology micro RPG, which is about going on this kind of journey, facing these kind of tasks.
I'm not really a micro RPG guy.
I don't play them as a rule.
But this, the very specific structure of this book really made me feel that it was much more suited to micro RPG than a campaign.
Speaker B
00:14:22.500 - 00:14:38.900
It is definitely a very specific story that is being told, and a micro RPG is a great way to go about that.
What is it that you think would be the best way to mechanicized the ideas here in the Lost Daughter of Sparta.
Speaker F
00:14:38.980 - 00:15:21.810
In terms of the mechanics, there's less combat and there's more conversation that occurs in the overall book.
So there's conflict, there's emotion.
So you want a system that can be very flexible, you want a system that can be very character driven and you want a system that, you know, there's combat, there's combat, there's chases, but you want to be able to provide essentially this quote unquote weaker character having to deal with and find ways of overcoming those more powerful entities and beings that they come in contact with.
So you need systems that are more flexible for that.
Speaker B
00:15:21.970 - 00:15:30.009
Agreed.
George, how about you?
When we were in the pre game, you had a couple of choices.
Are you.
You get it?
Let's hear them all.
Speaker D
00:15:30.009 - 00:17:38.480
I would agree with Eric that I don't know that you're gonna.
This, this doesn't feel like something that benefits from a conventional role playing game.
At least, you know, not if you want to keep it to the.
The type of story that the.
That the graphic novel is.
I have a couple ideas.
I have not played any of these, so I don't know how well they would match up, but Robin Laws has a.
Has a game, has a system called the Drama System that is designed to emulate dramatic situations in TV shows.
So it's more about multiple characters interacting and creating sort of a network of characters.
You set up scenes in every scene, one character wants something from another character.
I thought that a version of that might be interesting here.
There's a game that I, when I referenced it previously, I know you mentioned that it come up on an earlier episode, Girl Underground, which is intended to emulate a Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland, like story centered around a female protagonist where the players actually take turns controlling the protagonist.
And when they're not playing that protagonist, they play companions.
So that's sort of getting a little closer.
The closest that I found to the feel of this was a powered by the apocalypse variant called Bluebeard's Bride where players play different aspects of the same person who is Bluebeard's new bride, who is traveling through Bluebeard's mansion.
She just married an evil pirate named Bluebeard and she's traveling through his mansion learning things about him, I guess in, I believe in each room and the players collectively sort of decide what her level of loyalty or disloyalty to Bluebeard will be.
Which I think you could sort of take that structure and very Easily adapt it to.
To this.
If you wanted to do the Lost Daughter of Sparta as an rpg.
Speaker B
00:17:38.800 - 00:18:59.670
Those are all great.
Those are all fantastic.
I'm gonna step in and talk about Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
Thirsty Sword Lesbians is very much about centering marginalized people in real world societies.
That's.
They have a whole.
They have a whole section on how to best portray those types of experiences.
And I think that this character totally works well within that space.
If you are looking at the Thirsty Sword Lesbian character, there's a playbook that's called the Seeker that represents a different kind of newness to the society you figured out.
The things that you've internalized and how to behave aren't right, but they still hold sway in who you are.
And you have to sort of figure out how to deal with that sort of toxic authority that lives with inside of you.
And that is pretty much what most of this book is.
So.
And I had read that when I was reading through Thirsty Sword Lesbians and that's why I was like, oh yeah, absolutely.
That's our main character right there.
So.
And I also find Thirsty Sword Lesbian to be a good system overall for telling lots of dramatic interpersonal stories as opposed to whacking things with swords.
Which we.
I think we've all agreed at this point, maybe not 100% where this book really finds its stride.
Speaker F
00:18:59.670 - 00:20:01.840
It occurs to me I didn't mention the actual systems I would use which would be.
Even though I did say like, yeah, knock knock the whack a creature, get a prize type of system.
My mind immediately did go to Dungeons and Dragons for this.
Just because you can adapt it based upon with some house rules or things like that.
But.
And they have a lot of Odysseys of Theros and these in demigods books that could really provide somebody information on Greek mythology.
But.
And this goes out to my friend Jack out in California who introduced me to the One Role Engine systems.
So Rain from Atomic Overmind Press uses the One Role Engine which I played a lot of.
And it's very.
Can be very character driven and look chaotic and I like that.
And they have a book, there's a book by Arc Dream Publishing for it called Wild Towns Blood of the Gods for much more deity heroic style game.
Speaker B
00:20:02.000 - 00:20:42.200
Thanks for bringing that up.
I also wanted to just do one more quick callback.
When we covered Percy Jackson previously, I mentioned a role playing game called Agon A G O N which is all about legendary heroes.
And I think that would be great as would the micro RPG Half Blood.
The Prophecy.
So if that's one, you can try if you're going to be going down the micro RPG pathway there.
Okay.
So that is going to bring us to portables.
We've kind of already talked.
We talked about what we would.
What we've taken from other places and other books.
But what is it that you're going to take from the Lost Daughter of Sparta?
Eric, I heard you mentioned curses previously.
Speaker F
00:20:42.680 - 00:21:38.650
I mentioned curses and this.
You need player buy in on this.
But I love the idea of either the entire party undergoing having to fight and deal with one curse, or everyone having their own unique curses and having those curses even provides some level of benefit in the right situation.
Sort of like this curse is perfect to handle this situation.
So we're not talking about, oh, you're cursed, you're minus five to this now.
We're talking about a social curse or a curse and more of epic curses.
Not.
And classical curses, not modification curses.
I actually played a character that had a rusting disease and had to keep switching armors because of it.
And it was becoming an interesting thing that I had to solve.
Speaker B
00:21:41.300 - 00:21:43.140
I like that rusting curse.
That's awesome.
Speaker F
00:21:43.540 - 00:22:01.380
Yeah.
But you really had to get player buy in for that.
Some players who don't want to deal with curses or be like, I don't want my character weakened at all.
You need to really get that buy in.
But I love the idea of the entire party being under one curse that they have to deal with.
Speaker B
00:22:02.020 - 00:22:06.200
George, what would you take from the Lost Daughter of Spider?
Speaker D
00:22:07.710 - 00:22:41.820
Well, I mean, it's such a tight story that it's hard to steal one piece.
But I did like.
I like the monsters perspectives where nothing is as it seems.
Everyone's got their own thing that they're defending, if you will.
There's definitely a theme of.
With the monsters.
Have the gods not taken enough from me?
Which I liked.
I think I used this phrase during the, during the pregame.
We're not looking at.
The monsters here are not first edition orcs.
These are well developed characters with their.
Speaker B
00:22:41.820 - 00:22:58.940
Own backstories and that's pretty common in a lot of Greek myths.
Yeah, you rarely have somebody who's, you know, it's.
Medusa is not just somebody turn somebody to stone.
There's a whole thing, there's a whole backstory that goes to why she's here and why she's very interested in adding you to her statuary gardens.
Speaker D
00:22:58.940 - 00:23:17.170
Which is one of the themes of Percy Jackson, which we did in, you know, did in reference.
But I, I like the sort of Player realizing midway through the fight, I'm not just here to take hit points away.
There's emotional damage.
Anything to screw up the players makes me happy.
Speaker B
00:23:17.810 - 00:23:25.010
Psychic, but not real psychic damage.
That's what we're talking about.
Marshall, what would you want to take right out of this?
Speaker E
00:23:25.250 - 00:24:17.280
So I found the gods and the interaction with the gods to be really interesting.
And there is a campaign that I've been tinkering with on and off for a while where it involves there's a God war and the players end up as agents of the gods.
Each of the gods is having to manipulate mortals as they attempt to move up the ranks.
So lesser gods can become greater gods because all the greater gods are dead.
And there's a lot of Cold War style espionage going on between the different gods.
So that's the, that's the campaign concept.
And I really liked the way the different gods interacted in this book and it made me just want to pick that project up again.
Speaker B
00:24:17.600 - 00:24:23.360
And that's the best thing.
Who doesn't love great inspiration for things you're already working on?
Like that.
That's, that's like a double.
Speaker E
00:24:23.360 - 00:24:23.840
Yep.
Speaker B
00:24:24.240 - 00:25:59.970
I agree a little bit with the, with the gods for sure.
I think this is the nicest in, in recent memory.
This is the nicest representation of Aphrodite I've seen.
It's nice to see the goddess of love get her due and be able to, you know, be someone who is not just out there to be treacherous and.
But what I did find to be the most interesting and perhaps the most challenging thing about this, about this particular text was that was the gender roles.
The idea that gender roles are taking a look from a modern perspective of what the gender roles would be, but also thinking about like, well, what are the gender roles that are going to be in my campaign and how am I going to have those represented and do I want them to be there or do I not want them to be there?
And I'll be honest, a lot of times I choose to just ignore those sort of things.
But this book makes me feel like, well, there's a of lot, a lot of potential, there's a lot of potential drama and a lot of potential catharsis to defeating those kinds of block, those blocks that you can, you can find in those kinds of gender roles.
And I, I would love to have a group of people and do a session zero and be like, hey guys, there I am being my patriarchal self.
Hey folks, how about, how about we, how about we try it with this in there?
And we talk about it.
I think that could be.
That could be great for the right group.
It also could be terrible because everybody's like, I deal with this all the time.
Why would I want to deal with it now?
But I do think that, that the, the presence of how different genders are treated is a.
Is a big part of this book.
And I'm.
I'd like to incorporate something like that into my campaign.
Speaker D
00:26:00.130 - 00:26:06.780
Well, if, if I may, Eric, I think I agree with you.
And I think that it goes beyond just gender.
It's.
Speaker E
00:26:07.100 - 00:26:07.820
It's power.
Speaker D
00:26:08.140 - 00:26:33.980
You've got the gods and monsters and humans.
And, you know, the main character is sort of inferior to both to her family.
She's got no power over her parents, who in turn have no power over the prince that they're trying to make an allegiance with.
Absolutely.
Gender is at the heart of it.
I feel like the theme of gender becomes.
Characters become gendered even beyond their gender, if that makes sense.
Speaker B
00:26:35.470 - 00:26:50.109
I agree to you that the folks who are.
That this is about.
This is also more about than it is about gender, to a certain extent, at least from the character's perspective, because it is her agency that we're really talking about there.
Speaker D
00:26:50.109 - 00:26:50.590
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:26:50.670 - 00:26:54.510
Anything else?
Anybody want to add any other portables we want to throw in?
Speaker D
00:26:54.510 - 00:26:58.670
I mean, if there were some way to steal the illustrations for a game, that would be awesome.
Speaker B
00:26:58.750 - 00:26:59.710
Oh, yeah.
Speaker D
00:26:59.950 - 00:27:01.310
Beautifully crafted book.
Speaker B
00:27:02.400 - 00:27:56.620
Yeah, that would be great.
I, I might consider scanning some of these illustrations and, and throwing them out as.
As little cards to be like, here, here are the gorgons that you're dealing with.
Or, you know, here's the goddess.
Right.
Like, this is what she looks like because they are just amazing representations.
Speaking of amazing representations and, and things like that, are there other books that have similar vibes to this particular graphic novel?
We've already talked about it being related to different Greek myths and all that sort of thing.
And I'm not saying we can't talk about Greek myths, but I'm looking to see what you folks would be.
A similar vibe would be something that you would read after this and be like, yes, this, this feels the same.
Or not just reads, watch whatever it is you're going to do.
And speaking of watching, I'm always going to go to my, my visual expert, George, you're going to go first and tell us about the media that you think would relate to this.
Speaker D
00:27:57.190 - 00:30:24.090
Well, I've got a couple.
I got a very owl house vibe from it.
When you're saying, what would you do after this?
I Would maybe give this to anyone who likes Owl House.
I think I've said before I love, I love the TV show Firefly.
I've said Firefly is what Star wars grows up to be.
This in a sense, to me, is what Owl House grows up to be.
It's got the same sort of, you know, myth.
Obviously it's a much more contained story, but it's got the same mythic feel and at its.
And at its heart, a queer love story.
I also have this bit of a wild card.
We're watching rewatching Ted Lasso to get ready for the final season, which will be long done by the time this airs, I think, but not fun the next season.
And there's a bit of a.
For those of you who've watched Ted Lasso, there's a bit of a Roy and Keely between the main character and Artemis with Artemis being the closed off Roy character who has to learn.
And I think this is because it's sort of a mythical graphic novel.
It made me think of Mage.
I think I would say that Mage is an inherently male centered comic book story that is written in a way that can be enjoyed equally across gender.
This is the reverse.
This is an inherently female centric book.
But I think that many guys would love it as well.
And that sort of rolls into my last suggestion.
It's my, my first, I believe non.
I often do non.
But this is nonfiction.
Year or two ago I read a book called the Heroine's Labyrinth by Douglas Burton where he tries to talk about a monomyth of the heroines.
I'm not going to call it Journey because it is not a journey.
And that's one of, that's one of the differences that he keys into a female version of the hero's journey.
I know that in the notes Felicia Day says that she intended a feminine, you know, a feminine hero's journey.
But she hit on some of the elements that are in the Erwin's Labyrinth.
And yeah, got me thinking about that book again.
It's good read for anyone who wants to read a variant of the hero's journey where it is not about a guy leaving home and going off to fight a dragon and get an elixir, but rather a woman sort of protecting the hearth for the family and dealing with a masked minotaur of deception.
Speaker B
00:30:25.130 - 00:30:44.670
I will also throw in another heroine's journey.
The other book that I'm going to put in is the Heroine's Journey by Gail Carragher.
Very similar sort of approach.
So another book in that same thing, if you're interested.
Marshall, do you want to talk about what media you think has the same vibes as the lost daughter of Spartan?
Speaker E
00:30:44.910 - 00:32:24.150
So coincidentally, I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago and it was a reading vacation and I read this and immediately before this I read the Games Gods Play by Abigail Owen, both books in that series that are currently out.
And the parallels just kept hitting me over and over for those unfamiliar games Gods Play.
Basic premise is that the Greek gods are having to have a contest based roughly around the 12 laborers in order to decide who will rule Olympus for the next hundred years.
And a girl gets chosen by Hades, who has never entered the contest before for complicated reasons, but there is a lot of her having to face down the series of trials.
She does end up falling in love with Hades and it's a whole Romantasy subplot between them.
Also, going back to Eric's earlier point about Aphrodite, it has a very similar portrayal of Aphrodite.
She is really a cool person in this and is very supportive of the love that is growing between the main character of Hades and they end up becoming friends.
And it's.
It's a very.
Another very interesting depiction of the goddess.
Speaker B
00:32:24.390 - 00:32:28.790
That sounds awesome.
I'm gonna have to add that to my.
I'm have to add that to my read list.
Speaker F
00:32:28.790 - 00:32:29.990
I just typed that down.
Speaker B
00:32:30.390 - 00:32:35.230
Fantastic.
Eric, after you're done typing, do you want to tell us about your media picks?
Speaker F
00:32:35.230 - 00:34:27.070
Thankfully, I finished typing.
Yeah, I have a couple.
So when I first started to think of strong female protagonist who really goes on this sort of hero's journey has to deal with curses in regards to finding their love.
It was brought there by Brandon Sanderson via Tress of the Emerald Sea.
Who is this character really has to use their smarts.
Not really considered themselves a hero to begin with, but realizes they have to go on this epic quest to quote unquote, evening quest, uncharted waters, quite literally to save their love.
And there's curses and there's fantastic stories.
There's meeting epic monsters and talking with them and figuring ways out, tricky ways out of situation.
In terms of comics, there's a bunch.
There was something about this that did remind me.
Took me a little while to figure out.
There was a comic called I Killed Giants that really used a graphic novel in a way to explore this young girl's relationship with some bad stuff happening in her life and her attachment to almost this like Norse mythology to find a way through which I love that comic.
They did make a movie on It I still like the comic better and then that from comic that went into TV series, Marvel, Runaways, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and then full on into movies that dealt with curses like Penelope and Ella Enchanted.
So yeah, there was.
There's a lot there, I think, and really good stuff.
Speaker B
00:34:27.870 - 00:34:43.239
Agreed.
Those are great recommendations all around.
I just quick note.
The first advertisement on the podcast was for a local production here in Massachusetts.
A theater group did a production of I Kill Giants.
Speaker F
00:34:43.719 - 00:34:44.199
Nice.
Speaker B
00:34:44.599 - 00:35:29.630
As far as the comic and graphic sort of bits of it, I agree with George that Owl House is fantastic.
I would also throw in Steven Universe and Nimona as other great, not epic, but like dealing with large powers but also being a very close and small story and having to do with like how people relate with each other.
So those are fantastic.
George and I also agreed again when he said Girl Underground, which for the longtime listeners we talked about that when we talked about Nettle and Bone, which I also think is very close to this particular graphic novel.
I think that's a great story.
And of course I think everybody has to say Madeline Miller's Circe would be a great thing to read with that.
It's been a huge book recently.
Speaker F
00:35:30.670 - 00:35:31.230
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:35:31.720 - 00:36:30.670
But the main thing that I would tie into this is Rachel Smythe's Lore Olympus graphic novels.
They are absolutely about.
It's a romance between Hades and Hades and Persephone.
And it does take a story that we all kind of know and really just draws it out to a much bigger world and a much more interesting modern reinterpreted field of myth so that there's not as much rapage, which is awesome though not none.
So a little trigger, a little, little content warning there.
This is definitely an NC17 piece here.
Not because there's like graphic things in the book, but because it deals with very serious topics like sexual assault.
But lore Olympus is beautiful and the story is great and the characters are interesting and I think that they would pair really well with the lost daughter of Sparta.
Now we're at that part of the show where we let people tell us really cool stuff of either about themselves or projects they're working on or things along those lines.
So Eric, did you have something that you wanted to talk about?
Speaker F
00:36:31.310 - 00:37:16.190
So it's just something I came into.
I have an old vehicle I had to donate recently and I was looking around for different avenues to do that and really started looking at and chose Vehicles for Veterans as just a fantastic organization.
You donate your vehicle there, they give you good tax write off for it.
But it's really about they use that vehicle, they sell parts of it, and it really goes to support veterans for housing, medical care, mental health service, dogs, all sorts of community support.
So it's just a great organization that.
Yeah, I would recommend.
If you have a vehicle you have to donate and you're wondering where to go, I would say go there.
Speaker B
00:37:16.670 - 00:37:44.650
Okay.
So thanks, Eric.
That's a great recommendation and that is going to bring us to the end of this particular episode.
So thank you folks, so much for being here and talking about this amazing book.
Thanks again especially to Felicia Day for joining us for her book blurb.
And you should also.
I had a more extended conversation with Felicia about several other parts of the book, and that'll be following the end of this episode.
So please enjoy.
And again, thanks guys, for being here.
Speaker A
00:37:46.010 - 00:37:51.060
And now for my full conversation with Felicia Day about her graphic novel, the Lost Daughter of Spartan.
Speaker B
00:37:52.340 - 00:38:01.060
And welcome to the Game Masters Book Club, Felicia Day.
Wow.
I didn't think I'd ever say that in my entire life.
That's fantastic.
Speaker G
00:38:02.580 - 00:38:09.140
Very good to be here.
Love the concept for the podcast and you reaching out about my book was a delight.
So thanks for doing this.
Speaker B
00:38:09.300 - 00:38:30.730
Well, the book is a delight, to be perfectly honest.
It's really just a fantastic, it's a fantastic book.
I've read.
I, I've read Circe and I've read.
And I was, I was reading your.
I, I've, I, I've.
I noticed in your, your afterword that you mentioned, and I never pronounced this correctly, the D Alare's a book of Greek myths.
Speaker G
00:38:30.730 - 00:38:48.380
Oh, dollar race.
It's dollar race.
Only because I messed it up too.
Filanoe is my character.
Everybody messes that up too, because nobody wants to say it out loud because it is hard.
Also, we don't know how they pronounce things back then.
So you just be confident when you say something and then whatever, and we're good.
Speaker B
00:38:48.380 - 00:39:17.180
But I had that book and I read that book to pieces.
I, in fact, had.
My mom had to buy me a second copy of that book.
I destroyed the paperback version.
They eventually bought me the hardback version.
So I was on that.
When I saw that, I was like, oh, she gets this.
This is fantastic.
And it really is just a, a fantastic book.
I'm wondering if you could give us your, you could give us your elevator pitch, I guess.
What's the book about?
Speaker G
00:39:18.460 - 00:40:44.880
The Lost Daughter of Sparta is a hero's journey that I crafted around Filonoe, the youngest daughter or the youngest sister of Helen of Troy, the very famous Helen of Troy, who has been lost to time.
Filonoe is only mentioned once in ancient Greece text from like 300 BC, and I stumbled across it, and the piece of text is that Filonoae was made immortal by Artemis, the goddess Artemis.
And so I was so intrigued by this one little fragment that I decided to craft a story for her because I loved reading, and I love reading mythology, especially to my daughter and fairy tales.
And I wanted to craft a hero's journey for a girl character set in this time that would be inspirational and something that would teach my daughter some things that I think will do her good in her life.
That mainly that she deserves to be loved for who she is.
And that is the pitch.
It is a graphic novel, and I have a wonderful illustrator, Rowan McCall, who I found to illustrate.
It's three color, which is kind of unusual, but we wanted to evoke the sort of three color pots that were made in ancient Greece, where we get a lot of information about how they lived and what they thought about things.
So it's very personal.
It took six years to make for me.
I started it just when Covid hit, and it's finally coming out now, and I just really love it.
And I hope anybody who picks it up loves it too.
Speaker B
00:40:46.160 - 00:41:06.130
And I'm sure they will.
Absolutely.
Yes.
The graphics are quite stunning.
I hadn't realized the tie into the pots.
It just the splashes of red and that marking the main character and all of that really just.
It stood out and it really made it a unique graphic novel for me.
So that was so.
Speaker G
00:41:06.130 - 00:41:06.650
Thank you.
Speaker B
00:41:06.890 - 00:41:08.930
Please tell your illustrator that for sure.
Yeah.
Speaker G
00:41:08.930 - 00:41:54.220
Oh, yeah.
She was brilliant.
You know, that was one thing I had nothing to do with, like, where the red would go.
I mean, I did conceive of this character having a curse on her.
She actually has multiple curses, but we learned that in the book.
But she has a port wine stain on her face.
And, you know, if you read in ancient times, anything that was flawed on an infant, especially a girl infant, would lead to exposure or abandonment or, you know, people did not look kindly upon defective children back then.
And so first, you know, I really love the idea that, you know, from their point of view, this girl is cursed by the gods, and it ties her really beautifully to her sisters in interesting ways.
Speaker E
00:41:55.180 - 00:41:55.700
It does.
Speaker B
00:41:55.700 - 00:42:00.140
And I really love the way that that story evolved.
I loved how you tied them all in.
Speaker G
00:42:00.460 - 00:42:01.100
Thank you.
Speaker B
00:42:01.740 - 00:42:25.500
I am familiar mostly through my spouse, Amelia, who has a Classics minor.
And so I've heard a number of these stories before.
I heard some of the stories before.
But you did mention that our main protagonist, whose name I'm not going to say confidently, even though you.
You did, you said that that is that really.
That's the only mention of that character in.
In the last couple thousand years, the only one.
Speaker G
00:42:25.500 - 00:43:43.520
It actually appears in Hesiod's catalog of women.
And this is a guy who wrote quite a lot back then, and we only have fragments, of course, that survived, but he wrote a whole book or compilation of all the women who were in mythology and prominent in history at the time, and that's around 300 BCE and this is the only mention that we have that survives.
But, you know, I actually just did a really great podcast with some Greek experts, and there was another mention of this character in Pausanias, I think is the name several hundred years later, and it had a little bit different context.
So they, you know, in their opinion, they were like, well, there has to be more to the story, because there is a specific context that is different from what was mentioned before.
So there probably was a story, but we just don't have it.
We don't have so much from back then.
And, you know, for me, I just feel so sad that this character who obviously has something going on here, doesn't have a story.
And I am sad also that, you know, as much as I love Greek myths, you know, a lot of the women, we don't have a woman hero.
And the women who are in the hero stories of, like, Heracle and Perseus and Theseus and Jason, those women are either sidelined or treated horribly.
Right?
Speaker E
00:43:43.600 - 00:43:43.960
Yeah.
Speaker G
00:43:43.960 - 00:44:14.670
Which was not unusual for the time, to be honest with you.
It was not a great time.
If I were to time travel, it would not be to ancient Greece as a woman.
It wouldn't be as.
A lot of times I would not want to just pop up as a woman.
It would be Bad news bears.
But at this particular one, I wanted to.
Inspired by Circe and other kind of feminist retellings, I kind of wanted to own this lore that we collectively own, you know, from the past and sort of add a different perspective to it.
Speaker B
00:44:15.070 - 00:44:46.390
I agree.
I mean, I think this does.
This fits super well with obviously with Circe and other graphic novels like, like Rachel Smudge's Lord Lore, Olympus.
I think those are.
All that stuff is really tied in.
But I do want to.
I do want to get one thing out of you that maybe other people haven't asked you about the book, mainly because of this particular podcast, which is you're going to play your.
Your main character.
Do you have a particular system?
Because I know you are a tabletop person.
Do you have a particular system that you think you'd like to play this story in?
Speaker G
00:44:47.430 - 00:45:20.620
Oh, wow, that's interesting.
I mean, I've always played D and D. I've played a little bit of Pathfinder as well, which was very fun.
They have a lot of similarities and I think I probably want to stick with one of those.
I didn't.
I don't.
It's quite unusual.
When you asked me on this and I heard the concept, I was actually a little surprised that there isn't sort of a Greek mythology system out there.
You know, we have so many Greek gods or Roman gods inspiring our modern day superheroes and yet we don't have an OR playing game.
It kind of feels weird to me.
Speaker B
00:45:21.260 - 00:45:46.730
We talked about this a couple of times and this particular thing that we're doing here right now will get dropped into a.
We'll have some other GMs come in and comment on what they would use.
But we did do Percy Jackson previously and there were a couple of really great suggestions on that episode for possible, for possible role playing games to play young Greek heroes.
So that would be.
That's probably gonna be on the list.
Speaker G
00:45:46.730 - 00:45:51.890
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
If anything would start it off, it would be like Rick Reardon with Percy Jackson or something.
Speaker F
00:45:51.890 - 00:45:52.130
Right?
Speaker B
00:45:52.130 - 00:46:05.490
Yep.
You've already met.
I already brought up the connection to the book of Greek Myths.
And you've mentioned Circe.
Are there any other, are there any other books that directly led to this besides the.
Obviously the quote that you read from Hesiod.
Speaker G
00:46:06.210 - 00:48:48.930
I definitely was inspired by Circe and A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes.
I also was inspired by Dallaire's Greek mythology.
Of course, there's also another book called, I believe it's Wives, Goddesses and Whores or Whores Goddesses, Wives.
It's sort of a book from the 1970s.
It's one of the first actually scholarly books on women's history that I just happened to pick up.
And it's a really interesting examination about how Greek, you know, analyzing the history of it, how women, what their place was in Greek society.
And you know, some of the, some of it's a little out of date.
I mean, obviously it's like 50 years old.
But there's a lot of really relevant stuff because she's, you know, drawing on all the ancient sources about how women were treated, you know, like it was.
And it's very eye opening, especially when you kind of consider how goddesses.
Why Were these goddesses?
You know, they have a lot of women in their pantheon and it's like, why were they there?
What do they represent?
What did they inspire?
Also, you know, like ancient Greek women, especially high born ones, would be married off at 12 or 13 to 30 year old men.
That was just what happened.
And there was a lot of, you know, queer activity.
It was a very gay society with men, the way they related to each other.
But women especially, again, high born women were just considered just breeders in a way.
And they would weave and they would be kind of confined to the house.
And so in general, not the best time to be especially highborn princess.
And like, that was very impactful for me because combining that with fairy tales, the things that we tell our daughters, is very much conditioning them to be transactioned with.
And I think we see that a lot in very relevant nowadays, especially again, with very powerful men.
There's a lot that we could kind of draw from.
But just in general, you know, if you tell a little girl that, hey, you're a princess and when a guy does something cool, he gets to take you, there's not a lot of agency.
And you know, yes, it may be an innocuous aside, but that's setting the template because these children don't know what the world is, right?
And so when you tell them how the world is, especially early in their life, that's very impactful.
And so whenever I did this, I would always call it out to my daughter.
Do you really wake up and marry the first guy who kisses you?
Should somebody kiss you when you're sleeping?
You know, I'm calling these things out.
And, and so it kind of was like frustrating to always be calling these things out.
Like, what happened to Medea?
Like, why is Ariadne getting dumped on an island?
Is that okay?
Like, so, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B
00:48:48.930 - 00:49:27.350
There's.
And you did a great job of, you did a great job of framing that world partic.
And, and to a certain extent, the, the almost inevitability that everyone had about it, that your character had to work very hard and literally had to get a goddess's help to break free of this.
So I do think you do a really great job of pointing out that there are, there are inequities in this world, but, but there are solutions.
And they're not easy and they're not always, they're not, it's not always just like, oh, we wave our hand and everything is happy and nice for, for people who, for, for women, for LGBTQ folks.
But, you know, but You.
You show that path and that that path is possible.
And that was very inspiring.
Speaker G
00:49:27.350 - 00:49:30.470
Yeah, thank you.
It's all about allyship, right?
We need community.
Speaker B
00:49:30.550 - 00:49:31.070
Oh, yeah.
Speaker G
00:49:31.070 - 00:49:37.429
We need people to accept us for who we are.
And that's universal.
Whatever your gender, whatever your.
And, you know, I'm not.
Speaker A
00:49:37.429 - 00:49:37.790
This.
Speaker G
00:49:37.790 - 00:50:40.630
This book is not about teaching or preaching to people.
It's really just more reaching with the story.
And I'm not like, I don't have an.
My only agenda is to have people quit.
Question ever.
Right.
And so if you could see somebody's point of view that you wouldn't have thought of before, I think that's.
So that's a gift.
And it might not change your mind, but at least you're more educated about what you believe.
And that's what we should all be questioning a lot of times, especially with social media.
We're consuming so much.
We just accept things.
We accept society.
We accept ally.
Allying with a certain political group or whatever.
And it's like, well, what do you think society should be?
What do you think, you know, this existence should be?
Do you think people should be judged for this?
Or, you know, and I think the more we know for ourselves outside of what other everybody else is doing well, then we can.
We're more rooted in the reality of us, which is important.
It's really important for us to be loyal to ourselves first and foremost, before we start adopting what's what we're told to adopt, just because that's the way it is.
I don't believe that.
Speaker B
00:50:41.110 - 00:50:57.510
And I am on board with you.
That is fantastic.
All right, so obviously you have a book out, which is amazing.
Felicia Day, you have a fantastic book out, the Lost Order of Sparta.
And can you tell people where to get it and if you have anything else that they should be aware of that you're working on?
Speaker G
00:50:58.550 - 00:51:05.500
Yeah, you could get it anywhere.
You get books, right?
I mean, you order it.
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local indie would be great.
Speaker F
00:51:05.650 - 00:51:05.810
Great.
Speaker G
00:51:05.810 - 00:51:17.010
You know, whatever you.
Whatever makes it easy for you to get my book, please do it.
And I'm currently working on putting together a Kickstarter for the Guild reunion movie.
It's our 20th anniversary next year, so.
Speaker B
00:51:17.010 - 00:51:19.090
Oh, my goodness.
Where did the time go?
Speaker G
00:51:19.730 - 00:51:39.530
I know.
I'm going to be announcing that next week for signups, and then we'll run it this summer and hopefully shoot in the fall for next year to celebrate the show and.
Yeah, we'll see.
You know, it's very.
I've never done my own Kickstarter, but I've been.
We were the first to put a PayPal button up on our website in 2008 to try to fund the show.
So I predate Kickstarter, guys.
Speaker B
00:51:39.530 - 00:51:40.010
Wow.
Speaker G
00:51:40.650 - 00:51:44.290
But we have a great script and all the cast are on board and I'm really excited about it.
Speaker F
00:51:44.290 - 00:51:44.490
So.
Speaker G
00:51:44.490 - 00:51:44.810
Yeah.
Speaker B
00:51:45.050 - 00:52:03.940
All right, Fantastic.
Thank you so much.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to have someone who is.
Okay, I'm gonna.
This is where I geek out just a tiny bit and say it's wonderful to have geek royalty on the show.
Absolutely fantastic.
Queen of all gaming, Felicia.
Speaker G
00:52:03.940 - 00:52:11.060
No, no.
I'm a Grand Duchess now.
I've decided to retire to the country after this movie so you can Grand Duchess.
I like that better.
Speaker B
00:52:11.060 - 00:52:20.220
Grand Duchess, whatever your title is.
Our pleasure.
Fantastic.
I'm so excited to so Grand Duchess Felicia Day, thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you.
Speaker G
00:52:20.220 - 00:52:21.020
Thanks.
Thank you.
Speaker B
00:52:21.260 - 00:52:28.020
And I hope that you have the the best of days and the best of times and hope that this book does super well and everybody gets a chance to read it.
Speaker G
00:52:28.420 - 00:52:30.020
Exactly.
Well, thanks very much.
Speaker A
00:52:32.740 - 00:53:55.490
And that was the Lost Daughter of Sparta by Felicia Day.
With Grand Duchess Felicia Day herself also serving at Her Grace's pleasure, Lord George Krupsky, Marshall Marshall Smith, and Sir Eric Drix of the Order of St. George.
These three amazing game masters will return to discussion.
Retribution falls in early October 2026.
Our next episode, come listen to Jonathan Mazur, Shaun Murphy and John Corbett discuss Jeff Lemire's strange and metafictional graphic novel Black Hammer.
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-square productions.com GMBC.
You can learn about about upcoming episodes on our social media on bluesky at gmbookclub bluesky social on Facebook, gamemasters book club, on Mastodon amastersbookclub and on Instagram amastersbookclub.
If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space and be sure to share those episodes with your gaming community.
You've been listening to the Game Master Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Later, gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising angel.