Questing with Percy
GMBC-07 Percy Jackson with George Krubski, Marshall Smith and Eric Driks
Link to Rick Riordan’s website is here
Link to GameOnPhilly is here
Link to 1980sNow podcast is here
Link to Crafty Games is here
Speaker A
00:00:12.320 - 00:00:21.520
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great role playing experience. This episode, three new Game Masters take up the quest of the Jams Book.
Speaker B
00:00:21.520 - 00:00:25.560
Club with the first book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympiad series, the.
Speaker A
00:00:25.560 - 00:00:34.900
Lightning Thief by Rick Reardon, George Krumsky, Marshall Smith and Eric Tricks. Accept the challenge of bringing Percy, Abigail Grover as well as all of the.
Speaker B
00:00:34.900 - 00:00:36.860
Olympian gods to your gaming table.
Speaker A
00:00:37.100 - 00:00:38.620
Let's get into the conversation.
Speaker B
00:00:40.460 - 00:00:53.980
Hi everybody. Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club. I am Eric Jackson. I am your host and I am here to introduce you to three new Game Masters. This is great.
Welcome everybody. How's it going?
Speaker C
00:00:53.980 - 00:00:56.700
Yay. Yay. Fantastic.
Speaker B
00:00:57.020 - 00:01:37.560
All right, so I'm gonna have each of these wonderful people tell you something about themselves and then they have a deep philosophical question to answer before we get started. One of religious importance.
Everybody here is going to talk about their favorite mythological deity before we get started talking about all of the deities that are present in Percy Jackson's the Lightning Thief and the Percy Jackson Olympians series. So I think we're going to start with George.
George, would you want to introduce yourself to everybody and tell them what your general gaming background is and who is your favorite in game? Dede?
Speaker D
00:01:37.560 - 00:02:07.090
Sure. My name is George Krupsky. I've been gaming since the 70s.
I think it might be a little unusual in that I skipped over D and D pretty quickly and went into sci fi and superheroes almost immediately. I played D and D but I spend most of my time when I'm running games. It's sci fi in the old days, superheroes, pulp fiction, you know, pulp stuff.
There you go. Couple I've I've run at least two decade long campaigns and a lot of other shorter stuff as well.
Speaker B
00:02:07.090 - 00:02:09.170
Fantastic. And your favorite deity.
Speaker D
00:02:09.170 - 00:02:21.690
It's tough to pick a favorite deity. So I like a lot of the Middle Eastern stuff I'm interested in like the Shanaima, the Persian book of Kings.
Gilgamesh I guess is a hero rather than a deity, but I think the Middle Eastern stuff's pretty cool.
Speaker B
00:02:21.930 - 00:02:24.250
Awesome. Marshall, would you like to go next?
Speaker E
00:02:24.490 - 00:02:42.810
Sure, absolutely. So I've been gaming since Redbox D and D. The best Christmas present I ever received. And I have a few different things as far as geek tread go.
I've got a couple of publishing credits, a couple of playtest credits, mostly for things that came out of AEG.
Speaker B
00:02:42.890 - 00:02:44.970
Not to interrupt Marshall, but what is AEG?
Speaker E
00:02:44.970 - 00:03:07.340
Oh, Alderac Entertainment Group. So I wrote for 7th Sea, the first edition. I did short story for Warlord of the Accordlands.
I did play testing for Spycraft after it left Aegis and did some writing and play testing for Edge of Midnight done by Rob Vaux, which again after he left aeg.
Speaker B
00:03:07.340 - 00:03:09.420
Fantastic. And your favorite deity?
Speaker E
00:03:09.420 - 00:03:25.260
I think I'm gonna have to go with Morrigan, both the actual goddess as worshiped by the Celts, and she gets some really fantastic representations in a lot of different fictional books. The Iron druid, Dresden files, etc.
Speaker B
00:03:25.260 - 00:03:28.510
Great. Fantastic. Eric, your turn now.
Speaker C
00:03:28.910 - 00:03:52.670
Thanks. And thanks for having me here. Yeah, so my name is Eric. I'm from the Philadelphia area.
Been gaming a while, from Dungeons and Dragons to Palladium to variety of different hero games. Cthulhu. Had my hands playing in a lot of things. Literature, writing degree, first time delving into Percy Jackson. So excited about it.
Speaker B
00:03:53.010 - 00:03:55.170
All right. And your favorite deity, Eric.
Speaker C
00:03:55.490 - 00:04:14.770
So gonna have to go with Hercules. Hercules. Hercules. Just because very much has a lot of faults as far as gods go.
You know, ruled by passions, makes mistakes, is just very human and understanding more of the human condition, and then gains that godly power in the end of his journey.
Speaker B
00:04:15.090 - 00:05:55.670
Fantastic. And I am Eric Jackson. I'm the host and obviously the least qualified person who is in here having no degrees or a cred credits whatsoever.
However, my favorite deity is Hermes. I like him for the same reason that I like Odysseus, in that I like a clever God. Actually, any trickster God would do.
But I've been thinking about Hermes since we've been listening to Percy Jackson, which is where we're going to pick up next. This book follows Percy Jackson and his journey to understand his divine origin.
This book talks about Percy Jackson and his relationship to his God father, Poseidon. He meets up with a group of other God children at a camp called Camp Half Blood.
And from there he gets two great friends, Annabeth Chase, who is also a God child of Athena, and Grover Underwood, who is a satyr. And they have a whole questing thing that's going on with them, which I think is really interesting in the. In the book.
And they take themselves on a quest, a very. It's very specifically referred to as that. And on that quest they go to stop a war with the gods.
I don't think they really finish that in the first book. And obviously there are movies that have been based around this book and there is a TV series that's currently running on Disney plus.
So this is a very, very, very popular book. So does anybody have anything they want to add about this book before we start talking about what we'd want to do with this in a tabletop.
Speaker D
00:05:55.750 - 00:05:58.150
There's a play as well. There's a musical.
Speaker B
00:05:58.150 - 00:05:59.350
Okay, great. Eric?
Speaker C
00:05:59.510 - 00:06:18.200
Yeah, I was just going to say for a setting background, it has such great themes in it.
Themes of the fantastic existing in the edge of society, the use of destiny, that whole notion of found family versus family, and some darker themes also running through it that even though it's a young adult book, is really pulls you in.
Speaker B
00:06:18.360 - 00:06:18.920
Marshall.
Speaker E
00:06:18.920 - 00:06:34.600
It also does have some really interesting themes about whether or not you need to do what your parents expect you to do. Just because you have a destiny, do you have to follow that destiny? That gets much more in the later books, but even the first book has some of that.
Speaker B
00:06:34.760 - 00:06:36.040
George, anything additional?
Speaker D
00:06:36.040 - 00:06:53.690
No, I mean, I think that it's, you know, maybe worth mentioning that it's clearly from the young adult crop that followed the success of Harry Potter. I mean, Rick Riordan was writing well, I believe well before Harry Potter came out, but Percy would not exist without Harry.
And there's a better series, in my opinion.
Speaker B
00:06:53.690 - 00:07:27.970
Yeah, no, I wouldn't disagree.
I also just want to mention that now that we've talked about Rick Riordan, that it's been specified in a number of articles that he wrote this book specifically for his son Hallie, who has ADHD and dyslexia, which of course is something that also Percy has. And I think it gives really good representation for people who are neurodivergent.
So folks, let's start with Marshall first and let's start talking about how we could take this exceptional series and turn it into a fantastic tabletop role playing game. Marshall.
Speaker E
00:07:28.290 - 00:08:05.380
So one of the things that you really want to focus on is a lot more of the narrative drives rather than a lot of the mechanical drivers on this, because a lot of what the various characters do stems from inner fire, their inner drives, and their connections to their immortal parent, rather than just, I trained and therefore I'm good with the sword. They get a lot of their abilities just handed to them, but they have to be worthy of them.
I would really be looking for a much more narrative game system to use to do for this.
Speaker B
00:08:05.940 - 00:08:08.020
And do you have one that you think would work well?
Speaker E
00:08:08.500 - 00:08:51.319
So one of the first things that came to mind is Kids on Bikes, which is a very narrative system. Some of our listeners may know it better as Kids on Brooms, which was Featured on Dimension 20.
Also never stop Blowing up, they turned it into an 80s action movie thing. I found out while researching for this that they have just published a system called Never Stop Questing, which is based on that system.
I haven't had a chance to look at it yet because it literally just dropped. But Kids with Bikes is a great system, very narrative, very focused around young kids doing interesting things.
So I think that it would be a great fit for this.
Speaker B
00:08:51.559 - 00:08:52.679
That's fantastic.
Speaker D
00:08:52.679 - 00:08:53.239
Yay.
Speaker B
00:08:53.319 - 00:08:58.159
New games coming out. George, how about you give it a shot and tell us how you would run this game?
Speaker D
00:08:58.159 - 00:11:14.350
I agree with a lot of what Marshall said. I think that it's, it's very narrative heavy game like combat in the Percy Jackson books is not really fought so much as solved.
So a traditional RPG is not going to be a good match for it. I will note, as I said earlier, I skipped over D and D to a lot of other games and I've spent most of the 21st century running two 10 year campaigns.
So a lot of my gaming references are older. I would, you know, I'd definitely be interested in checking out some of the stuff that Marshall recommended. Games that came to mind for me are the.
Some of the Margaret Weiss games that are sort of more narratively based or a little looser. One of the things I really like got a game based on the TV show Leverage. You have skills, but mostly it's based on your role.
But I think it would be a little too difficult here because there's so many different gods. So you couldn't have like, okay, we're going to make a Poseidon role now. We're going to make a Zeus role now.
I think something loose like that would be, would be nice. One of the older games that occurred to me was the old Wizards of the Coast Marvel rpg.
Within the Percy Jackson universe, there's definitely these things scale up. You've got the demigods, you've got the gods, you've got the Titans.
Unless they've got some trick, a God, a demigod rather is gonna have a lot of trouble against someone at a higher level. Even within the demigods, there's a scale where the children of the big three are sort of more powerful. The big three are Poseidon, Zeus and Hades.
They're more powerful than the children of the other Olympians who are more powerful than the children of the lesser gods. So something that scales up, I think, but obviously you have to compensate in some way. Everyone wants to play one of the kids of the big three.
You know, structurally, I think the series does a great job of setting up guidelines for what an RPG would be like. There's definite rules for why the kids can't go to the cops and why the kids can't go to the teachers to fix their problems.
Which is one of the ways in which I think it's much better than Harry Potter. Among the three main characters, yes, it is Percy's series.
Percy's name is on the COVID But Annabeth and Grover both have their own very clear and very different motivations than Percy. I think it's a great setup for a small group of narratively based players.
Speaker B
00:11:14.430 - 00:11:20.030
All right, fantastic. Eric, what did you have in mind for our Percy Tabletop game?
Speaker C
00:11:20.590 - 00:12:43.220
So my first, regardless of system, my first approach was going to be a session zero with the players. I mean, if you know your players really well, you'll have a good idea they'll fit into this.
There's a lot of themes in there, especially if you don't know your players. Violence, bullying, drug and alcohol abuse was sort of hinted at in some ways.
Different beliefs around Eurocentric and disabilities and things like that. But just to engage your players to get on the same footing I think is really important, system wise.
D and D I think could be a great fit, but I was leaning more towards a cousin to D and D, which is Mutants and Masterminds, which is a D20 system based on the 5th edition rule set. And it's very hero based system. But they've already done some of the lifting.
They have a supplement called Claremont Academy, which is their high school setting for young heroes. And their power level system plays really nicely into that Demigod God Titan level where, hey, you're just starting out. Maybe you're a PL6.
You don't have a lot of points. Your powers are going to be lower and you can earn those points and develop your abilities as you go and train.
The other is the Unisystem Light, which is used in the Buffy angel game system, which I find just a really fun system. Very theme and role playing oriented for that.
Speaker B
00:12:43.220 - 00:14:48.480
All right, fantastic. I definitely agree with you on the D and D part. I think that is the standard item, no matter how we all might feel about Dungeons and Dragons.
But it does have a specific book out right now called Mythic Odysseys of Theros which runs on this whole idea of you playing heroes. So if DND is all your people are comfortable with, then I think that's a great place to go.
But I also agree with George that I don't think this is supposed to be a combat heavy game based on the book, because as you said, combat is solved, not fought for. That I found two different games, one of which was called Godbound. And Godbound is a very dark version of this.
So if you are the kind of person who wants to make Percy Jackson gritty for some reason, that would be the game for you. But I think the game that most closely matches it for me is, is a role playing game called Agon A G O N. It's a very quick play based system.
It has one role resolution, like George was mentioning earlier.
It has great mechanics for things like when you generate your character, you have an epithet and it also talks about Lineage, which is going to bring us to those big three. And then we have other items like Divine Favor. You can activate Pathos, which this book does in abundance.
There's a whole scoring system that's based on bringing straight from the book quote glory of their name. So I think a Gone is a great quick play version of this.
I haven't had a chance to run that game, so I can't speak to how great its mechanics are, but they did read really well. If I were going to run Percy Jackson, that's the system I would try it in.
Unless I couldn't get anybody interested in a new role playing game, which, you know, let's be honest, is 90% of the time when you're trying to get a group of gamers together, in which case I would be like, okay, let's play D and D and we'll go Mythic Odysseys of Theros and I'll get to run my game that way, even though it might not be perfect.
Speaker C
00:14:48.560 - 00:15:00.960
And hey, if you do D and d, there's a first edition Deities and Demigods book you can still find PDFs to view online, which has a lot of great little snippets of information on multiple pantheons.
Speaker B
00:15:01.780 - 00:16:08.090
That is absolutely true. Which is a great lead in to our next topic, which is going to be what are the things we're talking about stealing stuff from older versions.
So now we could talk about stealing stuff from Percy Jackson.
That is of course the primary function of every game master and that is I will steal from all of the media that I have ever read or watched and I will put it in my game somehow. And this is the basis of this entire podcast.
Actually, I'm going to be rude and I'm going to take the first one because I just want to say that I really like Camp Half Blood. I love a good school book in any version. Percy Jackson doesn't spend a ton of time on the school.
It's there and it's very active and it has very specific rules. But that's my favorite part.
And even though things like Strickhaven, which is a D and D book, which is, again, a little bit more Harry Pottery, has some structure for something like this, I do think a Camp Half Blood would be something I'd want to put in a world where I had children of gods. And I will pass the baton on to Marshall next.
Speaker E
00:16:08.170 - 00:17:29.629
Great.
On that note, just before I take the rest of it, there is another RPG that I found called Camp Myth, which I wouldn't recommend in general, but it is specifically a light RPG for running Camp Half Blood. So there's no journey, there's no quest beyond it, but if you want to go earn merit badges at camp, that's what it's all set up for.
One of the things that I loved about the Percy Jackson books was the Mist, especially from a game master perspective.
You see this sort of thing in a lot of these urban fantasy kind of books of, hey, Muggles, just don't notice, or, you know, people on the Hellmouth just rationalize away the vampire.
I feel like Rick Riordan just took it to another level with the mistake, because not only does it explain why the mythological creatures and the magical happenings don't get reported, but the interactions between the mist and the main characters and the NPCs, it was really interesting in a number of places where the rubber hit the road on that. Just watching people as the mist took over their perceptions, or as they came out of the mist and they saw, oh, my God, that really is a monster.
So I. I really liked what he did with the mist.
Speaker B
00:17:29.789 - 00:17:52.840
All right, fantastic. I agree.
I think it's a really great way of dealing with that, and that could be used in almost any game that you're running that has a paranormal aspect, Monster of the Week, or like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of game, or anything where that happens. That explanation is very useful. Eric, do you want to talk about stuff you'd like to take from Percy Jackson next?
Speaker C
00:17:52.920 - 00:19:05.040
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of great ideas in there. I also love Camp Half Blood, and one of my advices to GMs is when you're running games, it's not just about the quests and the Dungeons and the.
And the dragons to put a statement in there, but it's about the competitions, the social interactions. I think it was mentioned in the other system, like merit badges, just great ways to make players feel successful, challenge them in different ways.
There's, obviously, without giving anything away, there's interactions that Percy Jackson has in the Camp that are both good and bad. There's competitions they have that, some of which they describe, some of which they just allude to.
I think my players, some of the fun, most fun they've had is when I was running non adventure situations where they had to keep maybe taking part in a fair where there was a pig chasing competition and they had to capture it or just little fun things like that that lets players do their thing, but not in a lethal combat sort of way really. When I heard that I was like, oh, that's a fun thing to do at Camp Half Blood or whatever school game system you'd be looking for.
Speaker B
00:19:05.040 - 00:19:06.000
Right George?
Speaker D
00:19:06.480 - 00:20:30.620
As I alluded to before, I think there's a great structure for a campaign in the Percy Jackson world in that you've got the mist which explains why you can't just go to the cops. The gods don't want to be interfered with, which is why the teachers don't get involved. So you sort of sidestep that.
Why don't they just go ask the Avengers for help question. There's also as Eric, I think you alluded to the, the quest model.
So there's ways to sort of let the you know if you're running a campaign, you can sort of let the players hang out and relax and learn and evolve and then when it's time you just shove a quest on them and they're out in the world. We can do that in any game. But here it's built right into the narrative.
It makes much more sense than I'm, you know, sorry to, to knock Harry Potter, which I do love. The fact that something crazy happens every year in Harry Potter is arbitrary.
Here it's built into the narrative of the quests, the dealing with the gods. One thing that you know that we haven't really talked about that I think would be interesting when the book starts.
Harry Percy does not know who his divine parent is. Obviously a lot of the other characters do know.
But I think whatever system one were to use you'd want to be able to incorporate in some way reflecting the mystery of maybe some of the characters know, maybe some of the players know who their characters are descended from and some of them are going to learn in game which could add a fun dichotomy to, to the game as well.
Speaker B
00:20:30.620 - 00:21:38.930
I wanted to bring up one more thing and again I'm bringing this up and it's actually part of, of the role playing part. But one of the things that I liked about Percy Jackson piece is that some things were on a clock they felt very time pressured.
And for that, Blades in the Dark has some really great systems.
It's mostly designed for heists because you have a certain amount of time, but you could modify some of that clock material in order to give you that feeling of the approaching solstice or whatever time limit you're giving your quest.
You wouldn't necessarily even need to run it in Blades in the Dark, but you could steal that clock system, which is that you have a clock as the players and you as the game master, have a clock. And if there are successes, the character's clock moves forward.
If there are failures, then the game master's clock moves forward, and whoever finishes first wins kind of a thing there. So that's a great piece to help make that feeling, which takes place a lot in the first book, for sure.
This idea of extreme time pressure and having to get things done within a certain amount of time, that could be a great way to reflect that concept, which I would also like to take from that book first.
Speaker D
00:21:38.930 - 00:22:45.380
I think we see it in this book, but it definitely is very apparent as the series progresses. A lot of times the characters think they have a clock, and that clock changes dramatically in response to circumstances.
So there's definitely instances where, if you're using the Blades in the Dark model, where they lose, like, three slices off the clock before they even realize what's happening, which adds a lot of good pressure, a lot of unpredictability to the series. I don't know what Riordan's background is, but definitely, I think, applies a lot of screenwriting techniques to the story.
And some of them are basic elements that any game can use to its benefit.
Obviously, any time there's time pressure, if people have all the time in the world, they're just going to grind up, get all the resources they can, and complete the quest, finish the mission, whatever. So I agree with you. I think that the clocks are great, and I think whole idea of, why can't they just go to the adult? Now if you see a.
A movie and you get to the end, you're like, why didn't they just go to the police? That's probably not a good move. But once there's a reason for them to not go to the police and they're on their own, much better movie.
And that's what Riordan has done.
Speaker B
00:22:45.380 - 00:22:50.380
All right. Does anyone have other things that they'd like to steal from Percy Jackson at this point?
Speaker C
00:22:50.460 - 00:23:26.940
I did explore the concept when I was thinking about running a game in this world. I thought, you can Actually run it from two different points of view.
You can run it as the kids that are, you know, getting these destinies and these quests.
Would it be interesting also to say, all right, you were half blood campers, you are now adults in this world looking after these kids, or you are now working as part of. As an adult, you know what happened. The end result of these characters growing up, the adventure doesn't have to stop. The mission just changes.
Speaker D
00:23:27.500 - 00:23:37.660
Eric, you may want to keep reading the series because as it progresses, they do kind of deal with the fact that like, hey, we're getting a college level and after. What does that mean?
Speaker C
00:23:37.660 - 00:23:38.060
Right.
Speaker D
00:23:38.380 - 00:23:41.260
Which is very interesting and it shifts the dynamic quite a bit.
Speaker C
00:23:41.260 - 00:23:43.580
Absolutely. I am planning on continuing it.
Speaker B
00:23:43.740 - 00:24:19.360
Oh yeah. I would also recommend, at least as far as games are concerned. There are is a game called Changeling which is out of the White Wolf group.
And one of the things about it is that it has levels of folks who are involved in the magic world. And there are wildlings, which are like the kids, and then there are. I forget what the middle one is.
And then there are grumps, which are the older people who have been around for a really long time. So that might be something. If again, maybe not the best system to run this in, but you might find some inspiration and it sounds great.
Speaker E
00:24:19.760 - 00:24:26.800
And of course, White Wolf also has Scion, which is intended to be. You are. You are playing a demigod.
Speaker B
00:24:26.800 - 00:24:27.800
Oh, well, there we go.
Speaker E
00:24:27.800 - 00:24:44.290
But it is a much more adult focused game and I don't feel like it would be appropriate for Percy Jackson per se. But if you wanted to play adults who are dealing with a lot of these kind of things, that might be something to look at.
Speaker D
00:24:44.850 - 00:25:11.400
Well, if I may, I think you bring up an interesting concept. Percy Jackson is almost sort of straight down the middle. High fantasy, if you will.
It's sort of the Lord of the Rings or Star wars of this type of world.
But you can see very easily how there could be either a ridiculous Douglas Adams esque version, or let's just imagine an alternate version of Percy Jackson where they run into the pantheon of Cthulhu. And that's going to be horrifying.
Speaker C
00:25:11.710 - 00:25:46.210
I was just gonna say the temperature, the how harsh the world is, whether it's a light and fun world versus a dark and gritty world can almost be seen as the whole balance of the Greek mythology. You have everything from Disney's Hercules. These gods are sort of these funny little fun guys who get their hair blown out to.
You have some really dark Themes in some of the old mythological tales and some of the stories that have come out so you could. Either way, you lean. It's a great setting. It's a great potential for a campaign setting.
Speaker D
00:25:46.290 - 00:25:53.330
Even within Percy Jackson, there's pretty clear implication if you don't make it to Camp Half Blood, it's a very different life.
Speaker C
00:25:53.410 - 00:26:15.740
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of adult themes in there, which I think plays to the statement that, you know, teenagers these days are not immune.
Many times they're tried to be protected, but really it's these. Some of these darker things out in our world are out there and you can't kill people 100%, regardless of how much you try. Ooh, that was a downer.
Speaker B
00:26:15.740 - 00:26:42.970
There's these two parents on here.
So I can appreciate where mythologizing and fictionalizing the terrible things that can happen to kids is a good way to then use games like this to discuss the real things that are happening in the world with our children. Which I guess brings me to a quick side question and I. Again, I don't know the answer to this. George and Eric, do you game with your kids?
Speaker C
00:26:43.130 - 00:26:59.310
I do. I gamed with my kids when they were little.
Starting them off on keeping the borderlands with their first module and them being really little and trying to climb over the wall and scape, which they didn't have to do, but they're in their 20s now and I still game with them when I can.
Speaker B
00:26:59.700 - 00:27:00.100
Awesome.
Speaker D
00:27:00.100 - 00:27:15.460
George, for me, board gaming, but not rpg. We did read both the Percy Jackson, both the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series, as well as a couple other ones.
And I'm talking into when she was like 14. I was still reading books to her in the car.
Speaker B
00:27:15.860 - 00:27:39.670
That's awesome. Marshall, are you with me in the no kids camp?
I am in fact excellent there, but George does talk about reading books and books that would be related to this. I think we've covered HP pretty well, but I'd like to go on and ask Eric, could you lead us off on media and.
Or books that you thought would be inspiring, like Percy Jackson the Magician series.
Speaker C
00:27:40.070 - 00:28:10.000
Both the TV and the books. I think plays heavily. Again, slightly aged up, but you still get a lot of those similar themes.
Much more focused on magic, but there's still gods and there's mythological quest creatures and there's a lot of fun interpretations of what magic means in the world.
On the other side of it, you have things like Buffy or Supernatural in Dresden Files, which is all that, like Supernatural on the outskirts just beyond your normal vision.
Speaker B
00:28:10.240 - 00:28:13.080
Great. Fantastic. Marshall, would you like to go next?
Speaker E
00:28:13.080 - 00:28:42.760
Sure.
When we're talking about gods walking among men, my mind immediately goes to American Gods, a book that I've read many times, and it is obviously much more adult themed than Percy Jackson, but wrestles with a lot of the same questions around destiny, around the interplay between human free will and the will of the divine. And I think that you could play with a lot of very similar elements.
Speaker B
00:28:43.320 - 00:28:43.880
George?
Speaker D
00:28:43.960 - 00:29:49.970
Well, I mean, if you like the theme, if you want variations of the theme of Percy Jackson, you don't need to look much further than Rick Riordan himself. He has done the Percy Jackson series, goes between Greek and Roman. I think there's. I think there's 14 or 15 books now.
He's done Egyptian, where the characters are not descendants of the gods, but are the avatars of the gods. He's done a Norse series where they're soldiers for Valhalla. In fact, one of them is Annabeth's cousin. I know he's done a Celtic short story.
I haven't read that one. He's got his. An imprint called Rick Riordan Presents, where I. They do probably a dozen different myths.
You know, it's Hindu, Aztec, Korean, Caribbean, Navajo, Chinese, and a bunch of others that I'm forgetting. I wanted to add something besides Rick Riordan direct, so I started thinking about what were some of the series that we read.
There's a series of books called Fable Haven by Brandon Maul. That it?
It's a series of nature preserves across the globe where supernatural creatures exist and someone is trying to take them all out, which, again, would be a pretty good rpg.
Speaker B
00:29:49.970 - 00:31:34.950
Agreed. Absolutely. I'll wrap it up here and talk about my favorites.
If you wanted to do a school book and you didn't want to do hp, I would recommend Naomi Novik's Scholomance series. The first book is called A Deadly Education. We were all talking about changing the theme from. From lighter to dark.
If you wanted to run a much darker version with Cthulhu, like beings involved, that's the book. It absolutely is fantastic. Giant creatures called more mouths devour people whole and.
But they never actually kill them, and they live inside their stomachs forever. It's horrid, but it's great. It's a fantastic series, and I have a personal low tolerance for horror. That book is great.
I cannot say enough about Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education. I would also, along the lines of the destined questy one person recommend, In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan.
It's a little Bit more of a portal fantasy, less of a being in our world thing. So although there is some back and forth between that. So in that regard it could be really good.
And then the last one I thought of is just a classic of fantasy. People get together and they're destined to move forward and they powerful parents. I would go with anything by Tamora Pierce.
All of her YA stuff is amazing. You know, starting with a lot of the first adventure from the Song of the Light of series.
She literally has, I think like five different young adult series with kids with powers who go on cool things. But that's all in a fantasy world, not within our world. So in that regard it's a little, it's another half step away from Percy Jackson.
I think again, the Deadly Education by Naomi Novik is the best match.
Speaker C
00:31:35.350 - 00:31:36.470
Sounds fantastic.
Speaker B
00:31:36.870 - 00:31:54.630
All right, so that brings us to wrapping this up here. I've had a wonderful time talking with you folks.
If you would like to again say who you are and if you've got any projects out there, if you want people to follow along or anything that you're supporting or doing out in the world. George, why don't you start?
Speaker D
00:31:54.790 - 00:32:48.290
Of course, I think it was about two years ago I worked on the 10 year anniversary edition of the Firefly Born board games based Jon Joss Whedon's TV show. If you like the game, if you like the show, if you like gaming, check it out.
It was a game found campaign so you'd have to get the whole thing probably from a gaming store. But it's, it's definitely a very fun game. If you want to talk about it, find me on boardgamegeek.com on Firefly, the game page.
I also want to put a, you know, put do a shout out for my friend Will Padilla. He does an 80s themed podcast called 1980s Now. They talk a lot about the significance and the nostalgia of the 80s, but they also do these sort of.
They call it true crime, but it's really just weird true stories from the 80s. And I've done a couple scripts for them. I'm working on one coming up soon that depending on Eric, when this episode drops that may already be out.
Speaker B
00:32:48.370 - 00:32:51.090
Oh, it probably will be given the rate at which I edit things.
Speaker D
00:32:51.090 - 00:33:07.280
Yes, that's fair. So we're, I'm doing one for. It's going to be based on a real life treasure hunt, late 70s, early 80s.
And another one that I did a while back was on the Atari Sword Quest games. That was a good episode.
Speaker B
00:33:07.280 - 00:33:33.690
Yeah. Extra shout out to Will and I started working on this podcast back last year. He was the main guy I spoke to on like how do you do a podcast?
He was quite, he's been a rock of stuff support and theoretically at some point he said either A I could come on his podcast or B we could get him on here. So we'll see if we can't get Will to show up and do a little discussion with us at some point in the future. Over to you, Marshall.
Speaker E
00:33:33.850 - 00:33:51.220
I want to shout out to my friends over at Crafty Games. I became friends with them doing Spycraft back in the day.
They've largely moved over to board games, including a great board game based on Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. They have just opened up their Amazon shop, so ask people to go check them out.
Speaker B
00:33:51.380 - 00:33:53.460
Fantastic. Eric, give us your shout outs.
Speaker C
00:33:53.460 - 00:34:28.989
All right, so my shout outs, you know, as previously mentioned, our main character this podcast is Percy Jackson, who's a bit neurodivergent.
And I just wanted to bring some attention to gameonphilly.org which you can surprise learn more about@gameonphilly.org and I just encourage you to visit the site. Volunteer, donate if you can. Can is an organization that seeks to share the benefits of role playing games.
The people in the Philadelphia area, especially the economically disadvantaged and Neurodiverse. So great organization. If you have time, take a look.
Speaker B
00:34:28.989 - 00:34:46.790
All right. I can only say that I'm super happy that you guys, we gotten together. This is our first recording together.
So thank you so much for doing the book club with me. It's always great to have new people on and you guys brought really great energy and really fresh ideas. So thank you so much for being here.
Speaker C
00:34:46.870 - 00:34:50.990
Thank you. It's a great group. I learned a lot, so I appreciate it.
Speaker D
00:34:50.990 - 00:34:51.590
Thanks, Eric.
Speaker A
00:34:53.110 - 00:35:23.200
And that's our discussion of the Lightning Thief, the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series by Rick Reardon.
You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-squareproductions.com you can learn about upcoming episodes on our social media, on bluesky, at gmbookclub, bluesky social, on Facebook, @gamemastersbookclub and on Instagram gamemastersbookclub. You've been listening to the Game Masters.
Speaker B
00:35:23.200 - 00:35:24.720
Book Club brought to you by me.
Speaker A
00:35:24.720 - 00:35:47.290
Eric Jackson and K Square Productions. Thanks again to our demigod like GMs George Krupsky, Marshall Smith and Eric Dreg.
Look for them to return when the book club covers dungeon crawler Carl by Matt Dinnipan. 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.
Speaker B
00:35:47.290 - 00:35:49.650
Place where the falling angel meets the rising.