This is Heroes of Olympus, a sorta RPG by B. Dennis Sustare (of Bunnies & Burrows fame). The first image is of the second edition box with art by Chris White (1983) and the second image is of the first edition with art by R. MacGowan (1981). I love, love, love the second edition painting of Jason fighting the guardian of the Golden Fleece. The first edition cover has its charm, too. It kind of has the vibe of an ad for a TV mini-series event. Or at least a cover of TV Guide. The sets are essentially identical otherwise — the second edition had a reprint of an article by Sustare providing information on how to use Chaosium’s Thieves’ World material with the game.
Anyway! Kind of a strange game here. It is a mix of RPG, wargame and traditional board game, based around the story of Jason and the Argonauts — players take the role of Argonauts, whether from mythology, or originals they create using a point-buy system that involves an interesting ranking system for skills. Basically, there are really good skills, pretty good skills and regular skills, and you can only have so many of each in proportion to the others. I like this! There are three types of combat — formal one-on-one duels, larger melees and naval combat. The first two are neat. Duels are tense affairs full of trickery. Melees are a bit different than other RPGs, in that your character is touched by the divine and squaring off against mobs of normal dudes, so there are lots of things that can make you feel very powerful. The naval rules…ugh, they’re just wargame rules, I don’t care.
The book is rounded out with piles of source material for campaigning in mythic Greece. There’s info on gods and monsters, of course, encounter tables. Magic is interesting. Mostly, you get magic items or blessings from special places, or from the god you worship. Followers of Hermes and Hecate can get access to spells in exchange for regular sacrifice, but this is taboo and the necessity of hiding your magic makes it of dubious value.
All in all, an interesting system. Shame it died on the vine.
