Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Introducing Peter Williams


Today's post is brief and light on content. I asked my brother and co-author, Peter Williams, to chime in just a bit. He's a Latin teacher with  degrees in Classical Studies and Education. He has, over the past year, served as a nearly endless spigot of dusty tomes and strange words, making sure that the synthesis of history and myth is in line with our initial goals.

Here's his guest post:


I love the Greeks. Like my brother, I was always enamored of their myths while growing up, but it took a couple of decades to go beyond that. I started learning Ancient Greek when I was 17 years old, and it changed my life. I do not mean to speak in cliché, but that is the truth. I learned about Plato and Homer, I actually read Greek tragedy, instead of simply skimming summaries to get by in high school English, and I ultimately became a Classics major and then a Latin teacher.

Gaming was always my most beloved hobby, but I mostly avoided touching any sort of roleplaying game set in Greece. I never encountered one that dealt with the issues that the Greeks themselves did in their literature. Many of the games that I saw would have interesting elements, but they always seemed to focus on the wrong things, this one spending the bulk of its mechanical space on getting Herculean strength just right, that one on presenting the right set of monsters, and this other one on presenting exacting historical detail. Many of these were great games, but they were missing something crucial that I was looking for in a game about the Greek world.

When Ian approached me about working on Age of Bronze, I was sold more or less instantly. When he further discussed having a character’s tragic flaws and passions play a central role, I was fully hooked. What we have ended up concocting is a game dealing with heroic deeds and mighty kings, but also with hubris and tragedy.

This was, I hoped, a game that we could make which would speak to those issues with which the Greeks themselves dealt in their literature.


I will try to get another guest entry to Ian soon about how historical and how mythical our setting is, and just what source material we used.

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