Shadow of the Colossus... in Mythic Greece!?!

Hello Gamersplaners,

This is an Interest Check for a game/setting concept that would basically be "Shadow of the Colossus" set in ancient, mythic-era Greece.

I'm using the Genesys rpg for the system, feel free to Apply here, or PM me with interest.

"Colossus" battles would of course feature heavily in the game, however it would also include all the other kinds of more traditional ttrpg gameplay (social/political intrigue, physical infiltration missions, "man to man" combat, etc.).

I started this game to help me fill the void left in the day due to me basically tuning out all social media and world news... So communication and activity expectations will be high. I want to create a light-hearted, fun, and fast-paced distraction and am looking for two more folks who are looking to help us in that effort.

See ya in game!

Can I play if I am familiar with FFG Star Wars but not Genesys?

So do we post interest here and then go there or just apply? Also how familiar with Shadow of the Colossus content does one have to have?

Hey birdman! Familiarity with the Star Wars system is certainly better than nothing.

It'd be ideal to have the Genesys core rulebook for it's character creation process and Talents, but it's close enough to Star Wars that it should be manageable for me to just explain it to you...
Zero knowledge of SotC is required, the only thing it has to do with this game is that it was part of the inspiration for it. This game is really just gonna be an experiment to see how well the Genesys system can capture the "humans talking down a Kaiju" feel.

I have the Genesys book (bought it in a panic when the FFG news dropped a while back) I'll start reading it now!

Some good news in case you haven't heard, Asmodee is moving basically all FFG Roleplaying division to Edge Studio, which is another Asmodee company. It looks like Genesys and other FFG TTRPG may survive yet!

Also, emsquared is awesome, genesys is awesome, and I highly endorse joining what will hopefully be a super fun game!

I'm glad, but like I said, I bought it in a panic (and Force and Destiny core, and 3 splat books) just in case. I may follow Emsquared's lead and also start a game with Genesys rules.

Yea, I bought the 3 Star Wars "era books" (Collapse of the Republic, Rise of the Separatists, and Dawn of Rebellion) right after they announced the lay offs.

Glad the lines will live on, just hope the best-in-the-biz, FFG-quality lives on with them.

Emsqured, i would love to play with you again, but I have no love for Greek mythology

Understandable. It was really just a convenient setting that could easily "receive" the colossus battles-premise, without me having to do a bunch of world building.

I on the other hand love Greek mythology and would love the idea of trying a SotC game. Sorry I missed out on this one.

Depending on how this trial run turns out, I'd like to make a more robust hack out of it...

The thing about a SotC translation to ttrpg/pbp is that the gameplay that is really fun about SotC does not translate into ttrpgs. Right? It is not fun to roll climbing skill check after climbing skill check after climbing skill check, whoop failed one, fall, climb roll, climb roll, climb too... Not interesting, not fun.

So how do I make that into a fun ttrpg? How do you capture the feel of that kind of battle without boring tedium? That's what I'm working on with this.

I'm unfamiliar with SotC, but maybe Talents for making people into super-climbers? Something that lets you basically ignore Athletics checks related to Climbing. If it's in-genre, and the climbing is just a means to an end, might work.

For me, you have to open up the SotC to story. The kaiju fights are set pieces. They happen, but they aren't the point of the game. Players need a goal in mind, like resurrecting a loved one. I could come up with a million goals that make sense.

1. Needing a particular artifact to heal the king, and it's stuck on one of the kaiju's horns or something. Which one? Who knows. (Hint...it is the last one, regardless of order the PCs go in.)

2. Needing to cast True Resurrection, a 9th level spell, to get a hero back from Tartarus. Hades would give the hero up, but he's been dead so long their soul is too fragile for the god to just hand him over. The PC needs to be strong enough to cast the spell so they have to grind...or they need kaiju parts as ingredients.

The trick is, make the PCs investigate in order to find out what they need and where the proper Kaiju MIGHT be. But sometimes the ancient tomes are wrong about which kaiju is in which mystical location.

For the skill stuff, I go back to a podcast I used to listen to called Critical Hit. They played 4e D&D skill challenges in a very interesting way. If I remember correctly, they needed X successes before Y failures. There were skills that were designated as Important, in your case athletics or whatever skills are available to the PCs, and those would contribute to total successes or failures. But the players who don't have those skills could contribute as well. Basically, if they could justify any skill use and succeed at a medium difficulty roll, they could provide a bonus to the next Important skill roll.

As a example, while climbing a mountain the party wizard narrated that some loose rocks were falling and he put up an arcane field that deflected the falling rocks with an Arcana check. It didn't cost him a spell power...it was narrative only. That mountain could be a kaiju with some rocks it picked up that fell as it was walking away.

You could also have "kaiju parasites" for actual combat. These monsters have made their homes on the behemoth and attack the PCs because they know they intend to kill the kaiju.

You'll have to adjust things based on the different rules for Gynisis instead of D&D, but its possible.

Don't get me wrong climbing should absolutely be a part of it, and furthermore, I don't want to create a new game, I want to fit the SotC concept into Genesys. Which already has movement/climbing Talents (Conditioned from gcrb, Free-running from SotB, Catfall in the Expanded Talents, Knack for It, etc.). The pieces are all there... but it's just a fact that the twitch-reflex, kinetic gameplay of video games doesn't translate into ttrpgs, so how do you for those pieces together without completely diluting the epicness (Is HIGHLY recommend just watching some actual-play videos of it, if you're interested, it's a very cinematic game). That's why I'm experimenting with how to approach it.
Right, and that's exactly how I'm approaching it. That's why I created this game.

It's mythic ancient Greece. There's a "Cult of the Titans", trying to being back the Titans cuz the gods of Olympus are spiteful and capricious of Man, the gods don't want that. They find some heroes to stop them.

Gotta investigate the cult, gotta learn about each Titan, gotta infiltrate their temples, gotta fight them, gotta deal with politics in places where they're/the idea is popular, gotta quest for magic items to help you. And yea the Titan battles are big puzzle bosses with, ideally, a couple different solutions to get to their sigils.

That sounds awesome.