Mazes & Minotaurs

Mazes & Minotaurs
Author(s)	Olivier Legrand
Release	1972

Mazes & Minotaurs (2006) and Revised Mazes & Minotaurs (2007) is an old-school roleplaying game set in the mythical ancient Mediterranean, based on Greek mythology as seen through the lens of pepla and movies with Ray Harryhausen's animated monsters. All rulebooks and associated materials are available for free on the creators' website.

History

The game was created by Olivier Legrand and others, based on a concept by Paul Elliott: what if Gary Gygax and David Arneson came up with a game based not on pulp fantasy, but Greek myth? It is written in a tongue-in-cheek style, claiming to be "the first roleplaying game", with a fictional product history (the original version came out in 1972, the revised edition in 1987). While written as a parody, it also set out to be a complete and playable system.

Versions

Two versions of the game exist: the 1972 Original Rules and the 1987 Revised Rules. The two editions use the same system, the Revised Rules provided some streamlining and added more options.

Mechanics

Mazes & Minotaurs is a D&D-like class-based system that uses d20 for action resolution. Characters are defined by an array of six Basic Attributes and secondary scores calculated from them.