Settings: The Fall of Troy (The Myth Makers)

To the surprise and apparent confusion of some audiences at the time, Mission to the Unknown is followed, not by a continuation of its Dalek plotline, but by an unrelated historical. It’s primarily a comedy and lacks the evident educational remit of the earliest historicals. Like much of season three, it’s entirely missing in its original form, and, unlike the previous two stories, there is no animated or live-action reconstruction. This probably leaves it as one of the more unfamiliar stories to most viewers, and it's generally regarded as an average story by those who know enough about it to have an opinion. The comedic nature and the fact that it isn’t even trying to be historically accurate may present problems in typical time-travelling RPG settings, but let’s see what we can do.

Where & When

The story is based around the end of the Trojan War, as depicted in Homer’s Iliad, rather than as it would have been in real history. Troy, also known as Ilium, did exist, lying just south of the western entrance to the Dardanelles Strait in what is now Turkey. Based on archaeological evidence, the most likely date for the War is around 1180 BC, although, judging from the few surviving stills, the look of the story borrowed more from the Ancient Greece of at least four centuries after that.

Setting

While there is broad consensus among historians that the Trojan War probably happened in some general sense, we can’t say much more. In any event, regardless of the ultimate reality of the War, we are dealing here, not with history, but with mythology. The serial takes the view that much of the myth was accurate, which is unlikely from a real historical viewpoint… but we can’t absolutely prove it wasn’t, either. 

In a game, as in the TV serial, this shouldn’t matter much. Even if we can say that the Iliad very probably wasn’t recounting detailed historical events, the converse is still more plausible than that there were Sontarans in 12th-century England, and we aren’t bothered about that. The question is what sort of balance we want to strike. At one end, we could run the story as a fantasy adventure, complete with the gods that Homer has interfering with things, and Achilles being magically weapon-proof. At the other, we could try and recount a gritty historical story that ignores almost everything in the myth. 

Here, I will take the approach that we are trying to keep the background setting historically accurate, while assuming that the events and characters are broadly as they appear in the serial.

Let’s start with the Greeks. This is the ‘Mycenaean’ period of Greek history, although that’s a modern term, not a contemporary one. Nonetheless, even though we are over 3,000 years in our past, the Mycenaeans can reasonably be described as ‘Greek’ – they appear to have had the same ethnic origins as the modern people, and they spoke an early form of the same language. While they weren’t the “classic” Ancient Greeks we tend to think of from later times, they did worship many of the same gods, albeit not necessarily as we’re usually familiar with them. (For instance, Poseidon seems to have been their chief deity, not Zeus.)

Mycenaean Greece consisted of multiple city-states, which, in earlier years, may possibly have had a single king or confederal ruler. By 1180 BC, however, most of them are in terminal decline, partially or wholly abandoned in the wake of violent upheavals and invasions. The only exception is Athens, and even that will only last a few more decades before the region descends into a Dark Age of societal and urban collapse that will last for nearly four centuries. But that’s in the future, and, for the time being, Athens is doing considerably better than its fellow Greek cities.

On the other side, we have the Trojans. Troy at the time seems to have been culturally influenced by Mycenaean Greece, although probably not to the extent of sharing a language. What the Trojan language actually was is unclear, however, and having everyone speak Archaic Greek would simplify things in games without universal translators or telepathic circuits… and it isn’t entirely implausible.

At the time of the story, however, Troy is not merely geographically separate from Greece, but politically so as well, being a vassal of the Hittite Empire that dominates much of what is now Turkey and the northern Levant. In 1180 BC, the Hittite Empire is in terminal decline, having recently suffered multiple violent upheavals and invasions. In fact, the last Hittite emperor whose name is known to history died in this year, and whoever replaced him (if anyone) must have been ruling very little territory. Even if Troy was technically a vassal at the time, that would have been meaningless given the almost total lack of central authority.

To get a broader picture, we can look to see what was happening elsewhere across Europe and the Middle East. Beyond the Hittites lay the Assyrian Empire, at the time a declining power suffering from violent internal struggles and no longer the glorious force it had been mere decades before. On the southern side of the Mediterranean, we have Egypt, currently in its Twentieth Dynasty and in a state of decline due to violent upheavals and invasions that, among other things, had forced it to abandon rule over the lands of the Hebrews.

You may be spotting a theme by this point.

The twelfth century BC is the time of what historians term the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Just about everything was getting worse politically in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. Egypt and Assyria would at least weather the storm, albeit severely weakened, but the Hittites, Trojans, and Greeks did not. Arguably, the Trojan War may have been the last great Greek success story until everything went to hell in a handbasket… although, obviously, they did eventually recover, leading to the dawn of the “classic” Iron Age era 400 years later.

To the west and the north, however, there had never been any civilisation in the city-building sense anyway. The Bronze Age here was a tribal one, with much of central Europe being inhabited by early Celts. It’s less clear whether the Celts reached as far as Britain at the time, although the culture there had at least some similarities.

Turning to Troy itself, the city had been rebuilt following a major earthquake about a century before the story, and our archaeological knowledge of it is limited by further demolition and new construction work in later decades and centuries. Nonetheless, we know that it was dominated by a high hill below which the regular town stretched. The latter seems to have been cramped, with small buildings and narrow streets. This was surrounded by a deep ditch, which probably had a wall or at least a palisade behind it. 

The hill overlooks the city and the nearby coast and is sculpted into a series of terraces. This is where the homes of the wealthy are located, and the hill is surrounded by its own wall, a thick stone structure around 9 metres (30 feet) high with five gates and several watchtowers. The palace stood on the highest level of the terrace, built around a great rectangular hall with stone pillars supporting the roof.

Much of the story, however, takes place in the surrounding countryside. Aside from agricultural land – which probably wasn’t being worked close to the city itself during the siege – this is generally open woodland dominated by oak and beech, rather than the scrubbier Mediterranean vegetation we would find further south. The story is supposed to be set during the early spring, so the temperature would be fairly cool, with average daytime temperatures around 12°C (55°F), and chilly, but not freezing, nights of 5°C (40°F). At this time of year, it rains every other day or so, although not very heavily or for long.

Historically, we can’t be certain that any of the characters featured in the Iliad were real people. Even if they were, they would have been subject to four hundred years of myth-making and exaggeration even by Homer’s time, so what they would actually have been like is something we can never know. But, taking the Iliad at its word, Agamemnon and Menelaus are brothers, the kings of Mycenae and Sparta respectively, and the leaders of the Greek forces. Historically, that’s perhaps unlikely, given the status of the two cities at the time, but it’s easy enough to either gloss over or change.

Odysseus, meanwhile, is the king of Ithaca, a small island off the coast of Kefalonia, while Achilles is the commander of the Myrmidons, a famous warrior band from Thessaly. While the Iliad does have Achilles kill the Trojan warrior Hector, as happens at the beginning of the serial, it doesn’t mention his own death. Later versions of the myth have him killed by Paris, rather than Troilus, which wouldn’t fit well with how the former is portrayed in the serial.

Priam, King of Troy, is supposed to be around 80 years old, even older than he appears in the serial. He has numerous children, four of whom we see: Hector, Paris, Troilus, and Cassandra. In the myth, Paris also dies well before the final fall of the city, killed by a Prince of Thessaly who doesn’t appear in the TV story. Troilus’ fate is changed even more radically; in the serial, he survives, but in the Iliad, he dies early on in the war (probably being killed by Achilles, a reversal of what happens in the story). He is, as in the serial, a teenager, and said to be remarkably handsome.

The key character from the myth that doesn’t appear in the serial is, of course, Helen. There’s no reason to leave her out in a game, and PCs may well want to meet her, if only to get her side of the story. Exactly how she would be best treated is, however, a matter of taste.

If we’re being historically accurate to the period, then the arms and armour of the opposing warriors won’t resemble what we typically think of as Ancient Greek, nor what we see in the few surviving images from the serial. We are, after all, in the Bronze Age, not the Iron Age of classical Greece centuries later.

Although swordsmen did exist, the primary weapon of most soldiers was a spear, perhaps with only a dagger as backup. Armour for the heavier infantry troops consisted of a simple bronze cuirass supplemented with leather skirts studded with bronze, and a helmet likely made in the same way. Surviving illustrations of the time show many soldiers wearing horned helmets, with the horns probably made from boars’ tusks. Other helmets were made from leather covered with plates of boar-tusk ivory. Heavy infantry were the only troops to regularly carry shields, made of wicker coated with leather.

Lighter infantry wore little if any armour, perhaps with a tough linen kilt and wrappings around the legs and maybe some patchy leather overlay. Cavalry and elite warriors had the best equipment, consisting of a bronze cuirass, greaves, and open helmet, with a reinforced leather kilt. Swords are, perhaps, more likely weapons for cavalry than they are for infantry. 

Scenario

As so often with Hartnell-era historicals, the plot here relies on the protagonists being captured. The twist is that they split up early on, are captured by opposing sides, and then forced to figure out a way to ensure their respective captors’ victories. If you’re going to split the party, and the group is okay with it, this is a good premise, but, as always, it may be difficult to arrange.

If we want to do something else with the setting, we at least want the PCs to interact with the various mythic figures such as Achilles, Paris, and so on. To do this, they are likely going to have to be embedded with one side or the other, and, assuming we don’t split the party, the Greeks are probably the better bet, providing more opportunity for an infiltration mission like the one Steven undertakes in the serial.

If it’s a standard time patrol story, where the objective is usually to maintain history, we do, however, have the issue that it’s hard to see why anyone would care. It’s easy enough to imagine why somebody might want to assassinate Napoleon, boost Saladin, or even change the outcome of the Battle of Hastings, but Troy is a different matter. Perhaps, then, the initial change to history is something random or accidental and the Time Agency (or similar patron) is simply spooked as to the unpredictable fallout of changing something so early in history – three thousand years is a long time for a butterfly effect to be magnified.

A possibility might be for Odysseus to die or be otherwise incapacitated so that somebody else has to come up with the Horse and keep events on track. Honestly, if the PCs end up on the Greek side in just about any game (including a straight historical game where they simply happen to be in the Greek army), one of them is bound to suggest the Horse if none of the NPCs gets there first. It’s what happens in the serial, after all.

The PCs might have to impersonate Odysseus, or some other figure who dies before they should, becoming part of the myth to maintain its structure. Again, this fits with the serial, where Steven impersonates Diomedes and Vicki Cressida, even if the end result departs from the original myth featuring those characters. There’s a lot of leeway for things like that, given that our best account of what happened was written four hundred years later by somebody working with oral tradition to deliberately create a good story rather than reflect actual history.

We could also fit the story into a fantasy game, either throwing gods into something set approximately in the real world, or changing the names of characters and locations to fit some other fantasy game. Again, once you’ve got a siege and present the PCs with the puzzle of how to get inside the city, it’s entirely possible that one of them will come up with an analogue of the Horse – and if not, well, any sufficiently entertaining stratagem will do.

Perhaps a bigger problem here is how the story is going to end. In the original, this is largely brushed under the carpet, with the focus being on the time travellers getting back into the TARDIS before somebody stops them. Priam and Paris are both killed, as are plenty of innocent people, including women and children. We don’t see what happens to Cassandra, but in the myth she is raped, kept as a sex slave by her enemies, and eventually murdered. (I mean, blimey, she’s not portrayed very positively, but one can see why they left that bit out of the TV show).

Perhaps then, our scenario could include a mission to save someone who died in the original historical event. Cassandra herself is the obvious choice, partly because her suspicious nature will mean the PCs will have to work harder to convince her they’re on her side. Here, we might make her genuinely prophetic, perhaps having an unusual ability to sense changes to timelines or otherwise of interest to time agents.

In a fantasy game, on the other hand, removing some of the more unsavoury aspects of Bronze Age warfare is even easier to justify.

Rules

Assuming we’re sticking with historical accuracy, rather than the more mythic look of the TV serial, the setting is in the Late Bronze Age. In most systems, this either is, or is a part of, the second-lowest tech level. Thus, it’s TL 1 in both GURPS and Traveller, but TL 2 in Doctors & Daleks (which doesn’t start at 0). Aside from the limited weapons and armour and the absence of magic, it’s fairly typical for a fantasy setting, of which there is hardly a shortage in TTRPGs.

The only issue that might look as if it requires some tweaks to a ruleset is the fact that there is no iron, only bronze. In all but the most detailed of systems, however, this is unlikely to have much practical effect. A spear is still a spear whether it’s tipped in bronze or iron. Even armour isn’t all that different; the real advantage that iron had, once people worked out how to get fires hot enough to forge it, is that iron ore is relatively common and doesn’t need to be carefully mixed with other metals to be useful. It’s cheaper and hence easier to use in bulk, not necessarily any better – at least until we get high-quality steel.

Bronze is denser than iron, so if you track encumbrance, a sword or other weapon made mostly of metal would weigh about 10% more than the equivalent iron weapon would. It’s also far more expensive, which is the main reason that regular soldiers aren’t wearing much, if any, metal armour. But that’s about it, and it may not matter much in many games. 

For instance, heavy Mycenaean/Trojan armour is basically a breastplate in D&D terms, so AC 14 with a Dex mod of up to 2. The armour of light infantry is equivalent to leather at best. In more detailed systems, where the default assumption is high-quality steel, then a point or so reduction in effectiveness is more likely to be justified.