Dark Tales of the Dark Wine Sea

What if everything that Homer wrote of the greatest journey across the ancient world was false? What if its hero, the greatest general of the forces arrayed before the walls of Troy led by Agamemnon, renowned for guile and his cunning, was a liar? A bully and a freebooter, a reaver and a ravager, a slaver and a pirate. What if Odysseus and his men sailed the dark wine sea, from one end of the Mediterranean to the other—and beyond, not in search of a way home denied to them by the gods, but in search of plunder as recompense for the ten years before the walls of Troy? And what if you sailed with him? Roleplaying games and supplements, such as the island-hopping campaign of Agon from One Seven and Trojan War from Green Ronin Publishing, cast the Player Characters as the heroes, serving their kings and adventuring in the name of their gods. Not in Odyssey: Black Tales. This is a roleplaying game which casts the Player Characters not as ancient Greek heroes, but as the marauders and the pirates under the command of the wily Odysseus. Yet as the lost King of Ithaca commits them to darker and darker deeds in search of plunder, there are some who suffer pangs of conscience. Will they follow the commands of Odysseus and remain Marauders or will they answer the call of conscience and morality and reject his orders, instead becoming Saviours who protect the peoples that Odysseus targets?

Odyssey: Black Tales is a ‘Class and Level’-style roleplaying game from Italian publisher, Officina Meningi. Published via a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is one-part comic book, three-parts roleplaying game and has a mature, if not quite adult, tone. The artwork, primarily consisting of two-page spreads, is very good, but whilst not explicit, does depict scenes of both torture and sexual acts. These are not illustrative of Odyssey: Black Tales’ game play, but rather of what monsters Odysseus and his crew have become and what the Player Characters revolt against—at least if they follow the Saviour path in an attempt to redeem themselves.

Odyssey: Black Tales presents its core game and associated game play first, interspersed between the comic book style scenes of the monstrousness of Odysseus and his crew. Six acts, from ‘The Sacking of Ismarus’ to ‘Seizing the Sirens’, take the crew across the Mediterranean, including partaking of the forbidden delights of the Lotus Eaters, battling the Cyclops, and selling souls on the shores of Hades, before the journey ends for the crew—if not, famously, Odysseus—as the Sirens take their revenge and the fate of the Player Characters is decided. Structurally, each act consists of three phases: ‘The Encounter’, ‘The Pact’, and ‘The Pillaging’. ‘The Encounter’ is when the crew come upon more People of the Sea and Odysseus gives orders as to how he wants to deal with them and the temperament of the People of the Sea, whether or not they are hostile, is determined. Away from the ship, the Player Characters together make ‘The Pact’ and forge a secret alliance that will raise Odysseus’ ire should he find out. This pact will vary according to whether the Player Characters act as Marauders, still in service to Odysseus, or as Saviours attempting to undermine Odysseus’ efforts to plunder the peoples of the Mediterranean. The reward will differ depending upon the role that the Player Characters decide to adopt. In general, the Saviours’ reward is narrative in nature, whereas the Marauders will receive material and materiel rewards. As the King of Lies, Odysseus will come to suspect the Player Characters if they act as Saviours and they may be forced to act otherwise against the People of the Sea to hide their intent, which will certainly not endear the Player Characters to the People of the Sea, who will come to regard them as Marauders anyway they are trying to avoid this. Consequently, this forces the Player Characters to tread a fine line, but this may not be enough to escape Odysseus’ wrath.

The core play of Odyssey: Black Tales is built around the six acts of Odysseus’ anger and avarice with his path to redemption and the repairing of his reputation taking place after he has confronted the Player Characters and escaped the revenge of the Sirens. The Cantor—as the Game Master is known in Odyssey: Black Tales—and her players can play through the six acts and finale, and be done. However, there is scope for the Cantor to expand her campaign by adding Quests, whether of her own creation—perhaps inspired by the maps in the Odyssey: Black Tales Map Pack—or adapted from other adventures. To that end, there are notes for the Cantor for handling roving monsters, doors and chests, secret paths, traps, and looting, as well as a bestiary, so that she can run a dungeon. The bestiary gives stats for ordinary men and women as well as classic creatures from Greek mythology, such as Cerberus, Chimera, Cyclops, Harpy, and so on. However, there is no advice as to what a typical quest for Odyssey: Black Tales might look like and how it might play. This leaves the Cantor with a lot of work to do unaided.

In terms of what the players roleplay, there are five Classes. The Spartan is a peerless warrior; the Athenian is a cultured warrior, able to read and write and well versed in the arts and philosophy; the Achaean is diplomatic and cunning; the Healer is a highly disciplined aesthete who harnesses spiritual energy to enhance his perception and change the laws of physics; and the Oracle instinctively understands the laws of sorcery to cast spells. Each Player Character has three abilities—Valour, Intelligence, and Cunning—which range between one and twelve. Each is primarily determined by the Player Character’s Class, but may be adjusted according to the difficulty that the Cantor wants to set her campaign at. The Player Character has Endurance Points, the equivalent of his Hit Points, whilst Strike Points represent the amount of damage that the Player Character can inflict, whether from a weapon or other source (but it can come from external sources). Protection is the equivalent of Armour Points, whether from actual armour or another source.

Creating a Player Character is simple. The player selects a Class and rolls the character’s Abilities. The Player Character receives some basic equipment and some money to buy more. The player also chooses a name (though there is no list included) and can add a background if he wants. The Player Character is Level 1 and has the Rank of Novice. The process is fast and simple.

Theokleia

Class: Oracle

Level: 1 Rank: Novice

Valour: 5 Intelligence: 7 Cunning: 4

Endurance Points: 5

Abilities: Sorcery

Equipment: Dagger, Burlap Sack

Mechanically, Odyssey: Black Tales is relatively simple. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls six-sided dice and attempts to roll under the appropriate Ability. The difficulty determines the number of the dice the player rolls and the method of determining the outcome. For example, for an Easy task, the player rolls three dice and adds the two lowest results; rolls two dice and adds them together for a Normal task; and three dice and adds the two highest results for a Difficult task. A roll of two ones is always a success, but if two sixes are rolled on any dice, it is a critical failure. Overall, it feels inconsistent and it is not easy to grasp.

Combat uses similar mechanics. Initiative is determined by a six-sided die being rolled and the result deducted from the combatant’s Cunning. Combatants act in order, highest to lowest. In a round, a combatant, whether creature, NPC, or Player Character, can move or move and then act. Movement is intended to be handled using maps and figures, in particular the Odyssey: Black Tales Map Pack, but does not have to be. A combatant’s Valour determines the number of squares that can be moved. A combat action can be a Melee Attack, Ranged Attack, Defence, Manoeuvre, Retreat, Mental Power Activation, Recalling a Spell, or Casting a Spell. Of these, Defence increases the difficulty to successfully hit the defender; Manoeuvre covers any other action from changing a weapon and standing up from a prone position to picking a lock and drinking a potion; Retreat means moving towards or getting to an Escape Square on the map (or the equivalent if not using a map); Mental Power Activation is required to use the powers of the Healer; Recalling a Spell is needed to ready a spell to be cast; and Casting a Spell can be of any spell that an Oracle holds in his memory. An Oracle can hold as many spells as he likes in his memory, but there is a penalty to successfully cast a spell in combat if the Oracle holds multiple spells in his memory.

In order to successfully attack, a Player Character must make a successful Valour check. The Difficulty is Normal, meaning that two dice are rolled and added together. To determine the Strike Points—or damage—the player rolls a number of dice determined by the size of the weapon. One six-sided die for a light weapon, two for a medium weapon, and three for a heavy weapon. At higher experience Levels, a player adds more dice to this roll. The defender rolls dice equal to the Protection rating of any armour, natural or worn, and this is subtracted from the total number of Strike Points. If the Strike Points are reduced to zero, the attack inflicts no damage, but if not, the remainder are subtracted from the defender’s Endurance Points.

One oddity is the possible ‘Additional Effects’ for any attack, ranged or melee. If twelve is rolled on any attack, an Additional Effect is potentially triggered. This occurs whether the attack is successful or not. It can result in the attacker getting another attack, knocking the defender or his weapon to the ground, or even the defender striking back! Since most attacks are at Normal Difficulty and two dice have to be rolled, this means rolling double six. It is possible for a Player Character to have a Valour of twelve, the maximum value allowed by the gods, whether by increasing it through experience or setting the overall difficulty of the game to high at the start of the campaign. However, the Additional Effect is not based on skill, or rather on Ability. It is simply a lucky roll, and for almost every situation will occur when the attacker fails.

The casting of magic requires an Oracle to recall a spell to his memory, and he can hold as many spells in his memory as he wants, although this imposes a penalty to cast any spell during combat. The Oracle starts play knowing a wide range of destructive, psychic, and special spells, and will learn rituals at each experience Level gained. To successfully cast a spell, an Oracle’s player must succeed at an Intelligence check at Normal difficulty, minus the Complexity of the spell, which ranges from one to four. For example, Harmonious Lament is a Psychic spell that makes it harder for an attacker to successfully strike an opponent and has a Complexity of one, whereas Curse inflicts five six-sided dice’s worth of Strike Points and has a Complexity of four. If the attempt fails, the Oracle does not forget the spell, but can attempt to cast again, but with a bonus to the roll that reduces the Complexity penalty. This can be done again and again until the Complexity value is reduced to zero or the spell is cast.

Also included in Odyssey: Black Tales are rules for group checks and challenges, and the setting is supported by a decent equipment list and a lengthy loot section. The latter better supports long term play since the campaign itself gives out specific loot in each act. There is advice too on playing Odyssey: Black Tales solo or with two players, and these are workable enough.

One of the claims about Odyssey: Black Tales is that the rules are compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, Old School Essentials, and Mörk Borg. This is both true and untrue. It would be challenging to adapt it straight from the core rulebook, whereas what the Game Master will actually need to facilitate the process with ease is the expansion supplement, Black Tales – Adventures in the Mediterranean and Conversion Kit.

Physically, Odyssey: Black Tales is stark jet black throughout with white text and great art. The book is slightly overwritten in places, especially when trying to explain the rules, but a careful read-through is enough for them to be clear.

Odyssey: Black Tales wants to be two things and it succeeds at one and does not succeed at the other. In the first, it wants to be a storytelling game, telling the unrevealed epic of Odysseus before he retold it, not as an anti-hero, but as a villain, and the fall of the Player Characters who stood by him and the redemption of the Player Characters who stood against him, in secret at first, and then openly in the final act. Across the six acts and the finale, Odyssey: Black Tales gives the structure for the players and their characters to tell that tale. In the second, Odyssey: Black Tales wants to take the players and their characters beyond that epic. This could be after the end of the campaign and its confrontation between Odysseus, the Player Characters, and the Sirens, but it could be an entirely different campaign in the Ancient Greek world. To support that, Odyssey: Black Tales includes rules for Player Character advancement, monsters, loot, and various different situations, particularly if a dungeon-like environment is involved. What Odyssey: Black Tales does not provide is background to the Ancient Greek world or its gods and mythology or any advice for the Cantor, whether that is really on running Odyssey: Black Tales or on creating content of her own. In fact, the Cantor is left to her own devices and experience to that end. This is where Odyssey: Black Tales fails.

Odyssey: Black Tales is the basis for a solid, Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game set in the Ancient Greek world that ably supports its retelling of Homer’s Odyssey with Odysseus as the villain and the path to his own rehabilitation as a hero. There can be no doubt that Odyssey: Black Tales has scope for play beyond this arc, but the support for that is simply not present. In the hands of an experienced Cantor, this is not an issue, but for anyone else, it makes the wider roleplaying and storytelling possibilities of Odyssey: Black Tales a challenge.