Wine Dark Sea: the final voyage of Odysseus

This posting discusses the background of a game I’m working on, my design principles, and includes a draft of combat rules. I welcome comments on the design goals and on the workability of the combat draft. I plan to post other segments as I write them up. (Skip down a few paragraphs if you don't care about the sources that inspired the game concept).

Background:

This game-in-progress is inspired by a minor thread in the western literary tradition, a footnote of sorts on Homer’s Odyssey. It’s the idea that Odysseus, after his ten years on the blood drenched plains of Troy and ten more struggling to return to Ithaca, would not be content to live out his life in peace at home. The idea was launched in the christian hell of Dante’s Inferno (canto xxvi):

“Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
for my aged father, nor Penelope’s claim
to the joys of love, could drive out of my mind
the lust to experience the far-flung world
and the failings and felicities of mankind.
I put out on the high and open sea
With a single ship and only those few souls
Who stayed true when the rest deserted me.”

In Dante’s account, Odysseus and his ship sunk within sight of the mountain of purgatory, but the vision of an Odysseus struck with wanderlust, driven to seek new adventures, left its own small wake, with later writers picking up on the same theme. Tennyson’s poem Ulysses is probably the best known:

“It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel …
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me …
Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Odyssey: a Modern Sequel is the other major work in this tradition. Unlike the other two sources I’ve mentioned, it is epic-length. Kazantzakis cuts out the final two books of the Odyssey and opens right after the confrontation with the suitors:

“And when in his wide courtyards Odysseus had cut down
the insolent youths, he hung on high his sated bow
and strode to the warm bath to cleanse his bloodstained body.
Two slaves prepared his bath, but when they saw their lord
they shrieked with terror, for his loins and belly steamed
and thick black blood dripped down from both his murderous palms…”

Odysseus soon decides that Ithica is foreign to him and leaves the island forever. To crudely summarize, he kidnaps Helen, witnesses the destruction of the palace of Knossos on Crete, visits Egypt and locates the source of the Nile, founds a utopian colony,  undergoes a variety of religious experiences, sails to the south pole, and dies. 

Design concepts:

So I’ve been drawn to the potential of a game on this topic for a while. I like the combination of  themes it suggests: post-Homeric + voyaging + finality. I recently made a list of the main concepts and principles I wanted to bring to the game, some inspired by Homer’s epics, others more closely tied to the literary sub-tradition of Odysseus’ final voyage.

1. Odysseus is the hero of the journey. His is the single main character of the game. Players jointly control Odysseus, taking turns guiding his action.
2. Odysseus is a ‘man of many turns.’ He is a fluid character whose motivations and capacities are open to multiple interpretations. Players each choose one version of Odysseus, and all can draw upon these different aspects during play.
3. The crew of Odysseus’ ship, his fellow mariners, are important companions.  But they are ‘expendable,’ their lives transitory in a way that provides contrast to Odysseus’ central destiny. Players create a group of crew members for use as secondary characters.
4. Homeric epithets –poetic, identifying phrases like ‘breaker of horses,’ ‘insatiable in battle,’ or ‘mind archer’ – define all characters and creatures. These epithets determine characters’ strengths and weaknesses for game purposes.
5. Battle has visceral and devastating effects on human flesh. The game’s combat rules are based on Homer’s bloody, almost ritualized descriptions of battle.
6. Fate determines the time and place of a man’s death. It can shield – or slay – more surely than the strongest armor or sharpest spear. Characters can ‘spend’ their fate to better survive combat or other dangerous situations. But expending fate draws the ultimate end closer.
7. Heroes outmatch ordinary men, and gods toy with all mortals. There are three categories of characters in the game: mortals, heroes, and divine beings.  Heroes have more epithets than mortals. They also roll more dice in combat and other dramatic situations. Divine beings are a step above heroes.
8. Gods intervene in the lives of mortals. Characters may be favored or disfavored by a god., although I am leaning to having less divine intervention than in the Illiad or Odyssey.
9. Each new island is a place of marvel, discovery, and potential danger. Players take turns creating the marvels of the far-flung world that Odysseus and his men encounter on their voyage. Game master duties rotate from player to player.
10. The game will end with Odysseus’ death. Players determine the time and place of his passing, and thus the length of the game, by adding to or subtracting from Odysseus’ fate after each island.

Design concept 5. ‘Homeric’ combat

“the red death and the strong destiny”

Combat in Wine Dark Sea is is built around the language used to describe combat in the Iliad and the Odyssey.  In Homer’s epics, descriptions of fighting are vivid and bloody. The poet zeroes in on man-to-man struggles and narrates the outcome of a shot arrow or thrust spear – then moves on to the next assailant and victim. These descriptive scenes can be broken down into three parts.   

1. Strike (did the attack succeed and if so, where did it penetrate the victim’s flesh)
2. Injury (physiological description of the injury and any bloodletting)
3. Narration (poetic imagery of the strike and metaphor on the finality of death).

Take this account as an example: “Now Tros with his hands was reaching for the knees, bent on supplication, but he [Achilles] stabbed with his sword at the liver so that the liver was torn from its place, and from it the black blood drenched the fold of his tunic and his eyes were shrouded in darkness as the life went.”

Strike =  ‘he [Achilles] stabbed with his sword at the liver’
Injury =  ‘the liver was torn from its place, and from it the black blood drenched the fold of his tunic’
Narration = previous quotes + ‘his eyes were shrouded in darkness as the life went.’

Players roll dice to determine the outcomes of each of these three elements: the success of the strike, the extent of the injury, and the language and finality of the combat. A single opposed roll will answer the questions:
• Strike: did the attack hit the intended target, bypass any armor or defenses, and penetrate the victim’s flesh?
• Injury: if the attack was successful, how serious was the injury?
• Narration: who describes the attack, and does the outcome extend beyond the immediate strike?

Step one: The attacking player and defending player determine how many dice to roll. Offensive and defensive combat values have a starting number based on the character’s status. Mortals get 2 dice for attacking and 1 for defending. Heroes get 4 dice on attacks, 3 when defending. Divine beings get 5 dice for attacking or defending. Add one dice for each applicable epithet. Add one for a special weapon or armor (like Odysseus’ bow) and add two for divinely crafted or magical weapons or armor (like Achilles’ armor). Finally, a defending character may choose to expend fate points before an attack is rolled.  The defender receives two additional dice for each point of fate expended.

Step two: attacking player and defending player roll their dice simultaneously, concealing the results from each other.

Step three: attacking and defending players both take their three dice with the highest results and decide which will be the Strike die, which will be the Injury die, and which will be the Narration die. Still keeping the dice concealed from the opposing player, line them up in a row: Strike, Injury, Narration. At times the attacking player will only roll two dice. In this case, one dice must be placed in Strike, the other in Injury. If the defending player rolled less than three dice, they can choose what categories they will assign dice to and which categories will be left empty.

Step five: Attacking and defending players reveal their dice and compare results in the three categories:

Strike:
• Attacker higher: Attack hits
• Tie: Defender retreats out of range. One or both of the two combatants must spend next action closing on enemy in order for either to attack each other.
• Defender higher: Attack misses or is blocked

Injury:
• Attacker higher: Attack misses or is blocked
• Tie: Defender is crippled, cannot move far, and can be automatically killed by any subsequent attack [a]
• Defender higher: Defender is injured and rolls one fewer die when attacking or defending.

Narration:
• Attacker higher: Attacking player narrates the attack result including strike, injury (if strike succeeded), and (if victim was slain) their choice of metaphor relating to the killing blow and/or a short tagline on mortality/finality [c]. If the defender was killed, the narrative momentum grants an additional attack on any nearby target.
• Tie: If the strike failed, defending player narrates the resulting retreat, miss or block. If strike was successful, the attacking player narrates the attack result including strike, injury, and (if victim was slain) their choice of metaphor relating to the killing blow and/or a short tagline on mortality/finality.
• Defender higher: If the strike failed, defending player narrates the resulting retreat, miss or block. If strike succeeded, attacking player narrates the attack including strike and injury. Defender then narrates how slain character curses attacker with final words before dying. [d] Curse drains 1-3 fate points from the attacker (1 if defender is mortal, 2 for slain hero, 3 for slain divine being).

[a] Example of  crippling blow

“Next in order the bronze point of his spear wounded Deucalion in the fore-arm where the sinews of the elbow are united, whereon he waited Achilles' onset with his arm hanging down and death staring him in the face. Achilles cut his head off with a blow from his sword and flung it helmet and all away from him, and the marrow came oozing out of his backbone as he lay.” – Butler, Iliad

Example of metaphor

“Patroclus coming close up to him stabbed with a spear-thrust at the right side of the jaw and drove it on through the teeth, then hooked and dragged him with the spear over the rail, as a fisherman who sits out on the jut of a rock with line and glittering bronze hook drags a fish, who is thus doomed, out of the water.”  - Butler, Iliad

[c] example of mortal tagline

“a cloud of darkness overshadowed him as he sank holding his entrails in his hands.” – Butler, Iliad

[d] example of dying curse

"Big mouth.
Remember it took three of you to kill me.
A god, a boy, and last and least, a hero.
I can hear Death pronounce my name, and yet
Somehow it sounds like Hector.
And as I close my eyes I see Achilles' face
With Death's voice coming out of it."
Saying these things Patroclus died.
And as his soul went through the sand
Hector withdrew his spear and said:
"Perhaps."- Logue, War Music

oops- noticed a typo- mortals get 3 attacking dice, not 2

double oops- another mistake- under Injury, the result for attacker higher should read: "defender is killed."

Heya,

I need to read it again, but from a first blush, it looks really interesting.  Will post again when I have more time ;)

Peace,

-Troy

Wow, that's an awful lot of combat rules, and awful few rules for seeking, striving, finding or not yielding.  Is the game fundamentally about murder?

Oh, and if you haven't read Mike's Standard Rant #3 then I hope you will.  It fills in the motivation behind my question far better than I'm likely to.

While Tony has a point, I really like the potential of a group-input murder simulator, with different people narrating different parts of the violence. I get off on that stuff though.

I was mostly posting to bring up Plato's take on Odysseus, at the end of the Republic: after his striving and searching his soul is in the afterlife, choosing his next lot in life once and for all, and he picks last, but searching around he finds the life of an ordinary, law-abiding city-dweller (citizen). This is a pretty powerful statement, the idea that being an average member of a well-administrated polis is a better lot in life than the storm and striving of Odysseus fighting in the war and trying to return home.

You may want to think about the different possible final judgments about a life like Odysseus' as an endgame mechanic, I guess is what I'm suggesting. I don't have much more detail than that though.

Thanks for the comments.

Tony, I should have stressed more clearly that each of my 10 design goals gives rise to a section of the rules. I just posted the combat part first, partly because I was having fun pulling gruesome quotes.

I have seen that rant of Mike's but it's useful to get a refresher. The game's action resolution mechanic will look a lot like the combat part (compare rolls to show 1. success or failure, 2. quality of success. and 3. narrational extras. I wanted to have a specfic list of outcomes for battle because of the linguistically ritualized way that manslaughtering is presented in the epics. Since the Illiad in particular is known as a 'poem of force' I also just liked the idea of trying to capture that in its own section.

Sean, the example from Plato does question my intent of having the game always end with Odysseus' demise. 2 of my 3 sources end in death, but a final journey could end another way. The fate rules I'm thinking of are only dealing with mortality, and very geometric: fate points will have a time axis and a location axis and whenever either of these 'reach zero' you're pretty much done for.  Plyers in a game could just stop it while Odysseus is still alive, but maybe I'll think about making the fate system more flexible.

mark

Since people are chipping in with other Odysseus/Ulysses sources, and you seem to have a healthy devotion to literary sources, I will note that Kafka has a very short story about Ulysses and the Sirens. I believe it's called '"Ulysses and the Sirens," in fact -- I'm not at home at the moment, so no books to check. It doesn't deal with the after-Odyssey Odysseus specifically, but like many of those stories it is a reinterpretation of Odysseus as a man, and the meaning of that particular episode.