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1200 BCE Molten Bronze - Beginner and LGBTQ+ friendly!
Your world is ending. Slowly ending. Not that you know about it. That is not important right now. Something of yours has been stolen. You need it back
TYPE
SYSTEM
LEVELS
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
Free
Details
Weekly / Tuesday - 11:00 AM UTC
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
Campaign Length / 5+ Sessions
5 / 5 Seats Filled
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Schedule
Meet your party members
5/5
About the adventure
Ugarit is dying, though no one will admit it yet. The harbors are still crowded, the temples still receive incense and bronze, and the scribes still press certainty into wet clay. But something has gone wrong beneath the order of things. Across the great cities and hidden sanctuaries of the Near East, sacred artifacts have vanished from priesthoods, mystery cults, temple archives, funerary houses, and esoteric societies. These are not trinkets, but objects of power, memory, oath, and divine favor. In response, a vast search has begun, stretching from the Levantine coast into Canaan, Anatolia, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, and beyond. You are not the masters leading it. You are the ones sent into the dust, the markets, the shrines, the caravan roads, and the back rooms to find what the powerful have lost. This is a street-level Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition chronicle set in 1200 BCE, at the edge of the Late Bronze Age collapse. The game is about omens, theft, faith, politics, and the slow realization that these disappearances are part of something much larger. Each player belongs to a different organization with its own rites, beliefs, and secrets, and each has a personal stake in recovering what was taken. You begin as lower-ranking members, overlooked by your superiors and surrounded by people more important than you. That makes you useful. It also makes you expendable. The story starts in Ugarit, but it will follow rumors, clues, dreams, and obligations across a world held together by trade, ritual, and fragile alliances. The tone is mystical, tense, and human. This game is for players who enjoy investigation, social maneuvering, hidden agendas, old gods, symbolic magic, and characters who grow into significance rather than starting there. I like to run games where the world feels lived-in and reactive, where magick is strange and meaningful, and where small choices can reshape relationships, communities, and eventually history. Expect a mix of grounded local scenes and uncanny supernatural mystery: dockside negotiations, temple rivalries, stolen tablets, haunted roads, prophetic dreams, and the sense that the world-system itself is beginning to crack. You do not need to be an expert in Mage lore to enjoy this game. What matters most is that you want to play someone with convictions, loyalties, and questions they cannot easily answer. This is a campaign about different paths to power colliding under pressure, about what people do when the sacred is threatened, and about who you become when the search for a stolen relic turns into a descent into the hidden machinery of a collapsing age.
Game style
Puzzle / Mystery Focused
Roleplay Heavy
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Theater of the Mind
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Average response time: 2 hours
Response rate: 100%
About me
I have been playing and DMing games in a variety of game systems for nearly 10 years. I work in the TV industry and have a penchant for intrigue, drama and cinematic moments. Fittingly, story-first games and storytelling itself are more of a focus than crunchy mechanics for whatever system I use. I have DMed DnD 5e (and 5.5e), Scion 2e, Ironsworn, Mage the Ascension 2e, City of Mist and Legend in the Mist - the systems I have played and experimented with a many more. I am also always up for a challenge or to try out new and different systems. I just love playing games! I tend to build heavy and varied worldbuilding where players are incentivized to explore the worlds history, cultures and secrets in their own unique way. Obviously players are more than welcome to not do that and focus on their own character and mission. I am more than happy to improvise interesting moments and tailor what I am doing to whatever my players want to do!
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Session 0 will be very comprehensive, explaining the setting, the system and some character ideas in detail. Afterward, you will be completely free to create your character. We will be using the standard character creation for Mage the Ascension 20th anniversary edition, just some talents that obviously don't work for the setting (e.g. firearms) will be changed. I will be available to help with the character creation, if you have questions and how we can incorporate your ideas into the game and world. We will mainly be using my discord server, but I am trying out harpy.gg to manage images, backgrounds, handouts and other elements.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
- harpy.gg account - join my discord server - Mage 20 character sheet (will be provided by me)
What StupidHerodotos brings to the table
I am not great at voices (and English is not my mother tongue), but there will be a variety of complex and weird NPCs. I also enjoy using a whiteboard style interface, in which I can drop images, maps and other elements freely. Not only that, but I am always story and character first, so rule of cool can trump actual rules as long as it not too extreme. There will also be ambient music, loads of mystery, intrigue and opportunities to learn more about the world. I tend to create very detailed worlds, so there is always an incentive to dive deeper.
Homebrew rules
Just the modified talents.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Computer or Mobile Device
Platforms used
Safety
How StupidHerodotos creates a safe table
I take player comfort seriously and build safety into the game from the start. Before play begins, I will share a general Lines and Veils document and a Google Doc that collects our table rules, expectations, and safety procedures. These documents are living references and will be updated if new boundaries or concerns come up during the campaign. Session 0 will cover safety tools, tone, themes, system basics, setting details, and collaborative character creation, so everyone knows what kind of game we are building together. During Session 0, we will also go over the Monte Cook RPG Consent Checklist, discuss Lines and Veils as a group, and make sure everyone has a clear way to communicate boundaries. I use an Open Door policy at all times, so anyone can step away, take a break, or leave a session early for any reason and without having to justify it. Breaks will be built into longer sessions, and anyone can call for an additional pause whenever needed. For in-session safety, I use X, N, and O Cards, which can be given either out loud or by sending me a Discord message during play. X means stop and move away from the current content, N means something needs to slow down or shift, and O means you are okay and comfortable continuing. If something feels off, you are always free to pause the game immediately, whether privately or in front of the group. I would always rather stop and adjust than push through someone’s discomfort. After sessions, I like to leave time for debriefing and aftercare, especially after intense scenes. We can check in briefly as a group, talk about anything that felt heavy, and make space to separate in-character tension from out-of-character feelings. I also keep an eye on bleed and will encourage players to speak up if the emotions of the game start hitting too close to home. My goal is to create a table where players can engage with dramatic, emotional, and sometimes dark material while still feeling respected, heard, and safe.
Content warnings
Safety tools used