A staple of my teen (late 70s/early 80s) years. We used to argue about the geography and challenges of Odysseus’s trip vs the travels of the Fellowship of the Ring.
One of my friends tried to DM a game set in Homer’s universe. Really didn’t work well at all but was a fun idea.
Well really we should have just made up a whole game. Different campaigns for each episode of the odyssey, for example, and different kinds of characters rather than simply injecting a paladin and a wizard into Troy.
Or you could say it was the 14 yo kid problem: we didn’t really know what we wanted to accomplish. It did lead to many hours of fun discussion/argument though!
Quite nice read but if you are wondering why in hell would anyone spend that much time drifting around in the Mediterranean it's because you should not mess with god of the seas, specially if you do so arrogantly (Odysseus not only killed one of Poseidon's sons but he was a big full-of-hubris asshole that had to pay for it in due time). The Odyssey is one of those rare sequels that are better than the first story :-)
The Odyssey is more like a spin-off than a sequel and that is one of the reasons why it's better.
Odysseus wasn't the leading actor in the Iliad, he was only among the main cast (I'm not even sure if there is any person in the Iliad besides Odysseus that is in the Odyssey).
The pacing is different, the Iliad tells a story of a few weeks, the Odyssey takes 10 years.
Most importantly though is that the themes are completely different in the two poems.
Nestor, Menelaus and Helen appear in Odyssey. I think even Achilles makes a brief cameo when Ullyses traverses the Underworld. Also the fate of Agamemnon is also described at some place.
What. Odysseus did not perpetrate hubris. His men did, by killing and eating Helios' oxen and they died for it, but he did not participate and was spared. He was persecuted by Poseidon for
killing Polyphemus, but he was virtuous enough that he was favoured by Athena
and had her help throughout his travails and was allowed to finally return to
his wife and his son at the end.
I don't know where all that comes from about Odysseus being full of hubris and
an asshole etc. He's one of the more down to earth and sympathetic characters
in both epics. All the other "heroes" come across as mindless brutes, whereas
Odysseus uses his brain, for a change- and it makes a big difference. He's the
favourite of Athena, after all, the goddess of wisdom (and war, and peace,
also).
I've always enjoyed and been intrigued by Greek mythology. Started with Roger Lancelyn Green's "Tales of the Greek Heroes" as a kid, continued with Rick Riordan's "Percy Jackson" series as a teen, until I finally read the original Homeric epics (in the Fagles translation) last year. Great stuff - still fascinating after two-and-a-half millenia!
One of my friends tried to DM a game set in Homer’s universe. Really didn’t work well at all but was a fun idea.