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Choose Your Own Odyssey
Brief
Choose Your Own Odyssey explores the overlap between Homeric epic and modern role‑playing games by following a teacher, scholars, and game designers who translate the Odyssey’s narrative logic into playable systems. Laurie Jenkinson Brown recounts a classroom project that became You Are Odysseus, a branching choose‑your‑own adventure with 51 endings; her students’ attempts to 'improve' Odysseus typically end in death, or in a quick, anonymous homecoming that sacrifices kleos (renown). Roger Travis of the University of Connecticut frames oral bards as proto‑game‑masters who recomposed possibility space for audiences, noting continuities such as ancient D20‑style dice and the episodic, boss‑fight aristea structure of Homeric scenes.
The episode then profiles two contemporary designers who gamify Homeric values rather than simply grafting D&D mechanics onto the Odyssey. John Haygood’s Land of Myth supplies archetypes (divine offspring, unrivaled warrior, trickster) and opens with a Mount Olympus scene to fix gods’ moods; he found iconic monsters are often unique, so solutions are role‑playing problems, not lootable encounters. Jonathan Drake’s tabletop Odyssey uses oxen as sacrificial currency and initially experimented with D100 mechanics but shifted toward Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA), which better incentivizes behaviors important to Homeric audiences—kleos, bonos (suffering), nostos (homecoming), timē (peer honor), and xenia (guest friendship). Designers agree PBTA‑style systems discourage 'murder‑hobo' play and make reputation, gift exchange, and sacrificial offerings mechanically meaningful.
A 40‑minute playtest with host Eric Balinski (as Admeadows, an Athena‑backed trickster) demonstrates the approach: investigation, social rolls, and a staged lion encounter yield narrative rewards—glory, honor, and strengthened xenia—rather than mere treasure. Guests converge on the idea that reading the Odyssey through RPG design clarifies why Odysseus makes costly, memorable choices: the epic prizes memorable action and reputation over swift, anonymous survival. The episode balances moments of agreement (bards ≈ GMs, PBTA fits Homeric incentives) with practical tensions—designing around unique mythic monsters, and keeping modern players from acting anachronistically—while arguing that role‑playing can illuminate ancient value systems and storytelling mechanics.
Why it matters
Laurie Jenkinson Brown (high-school ancient-history teacher) turned a classroom choose-your-own-adventure project into the book You Are Odysseus, which contains 51 different endings (including one ‘perfect’ ending); her students usually die when they try to make ‘better’ choices than Odysseus, and the quickest survival path she observed trades fame for an anonymous happy homecoming.
Key details
- Roger Travis (University of Connecticut) argues the Odyssey anticipates role‑playing games: oral bards function like game designers/GM/players recomposing a 'possibility space,' and archaeologists have found D20-style dice with Greek letters more than 2,000 years old.
- Laurie and Roger map Odyssey structure onto RPG mechanics: episodes act like leveling encounters (aristea), Odysseus loses six men to the Cyclops, uses a 1:20 wine dilution to drug him, calls himself ‘Nobody,’ then taunts and reveals his real name—actions that trigger a Cyclops curse delaying homecoming for another 10 years.
- John Haygood (Athens) is developing Land of Myth, which gives players archetypes (divine offspring, unrivaled warrior, trickster) and begins sessions with a Mount Olympus scene to set gods' moods; he found many Greek monsters are unique, so they must be handled narratively rather than as killable loot.
- Jonathan Drake (UK) built a tabletop Odyssey game (originally dubbed 'Nostoy,' later 'Odyssey') that uses oxen as measurable wealth you can sacrifice to gods, and initially used a D100 mechanic before moving toward Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA) to reward Homeric values (kleos, bonos/suffering, nostos, timē, xenia) rather than brute-force combat.
- Host Eric Balinski playtested John Haygood’s system as a trickster named 'Admeadows' (patron Athena) in a 40-minute scenario: the party killed a giant lion, returned its hide to Aphrodite’s temple, and earned cleos (glory), timē (honor), and xenia (guest-trust), illustrating how PBTA-style rewards recreate Homeric incentives.