We always get samurai and knights in western rpgs, why not hoplites? Cant even one hand a spear most of the time.
>>98030797Ruined by the boring 300 movies.
>>98030797Idk what you're talking about anon hoplites are dope as fuck
>>98030797Post pics? Post pics!
>>98030797Most games simply take place in later eras. It's very tied to the Greek and ancient era.
Would you happen to just have played with Ghosts?
>>98030826
>>98030828Carthage was using citizen hoplites all the way through the second punic war and hellenised Gauls fight in a manner that sounds suspiciously like hoplites. They weren't a Greek exclusive.
>>98030797Traditional games?
>>98030856But in pop culture they are heavily linked to that era. RPGs are rarely historical or accurate historical if they are. So the only time you see them is as relics or in an ancient era game
>>98030797Hoplites are mooks. You can't have a duel between hoplites. And they're kinda gay.>>98030842>>98030856Booba helps but won't help it get mainstream.>>98031376There's already 2 pics of minis.
>>98031386Fuck are you talking about not mainstream there's how many plastic kits for Hoplites now? Warlord has one, Victrix has like 6 of them, Wargods of Olympos has all metal fantasy Hoplites.Here's an Amazon from WGoO next to a 1/72 Achaemenid archer because I like tall women.
>>98031376are western rpgs not traditional games?
>>98031386https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Ze3KEhKnM>inb4 they aren't hoplitesAchilles is generally depicted as a hoplite by ancient greeks and they basically were in the movie
>>98030797Dome Above!
>>98030797Knights and samurais are nobility. Hoplites are just normal foot soldiers, and they’re ok I guess, there are quite a few settings that have them
>>98031687Most hoplites were upper/middle class and land owners, citizens of their state anon
>>98031715So who was the unwashed masses in Greek ranks?
>>98031738How big do you think these armies were
>>98031738not everyone was a hoplite
>>98031740Idk like 1000 people at most? >>98031753Yeah that’s what I’m asking, who was everyone else? As far as I know hoplites had to buy their own gear but that is actually true for most militias throughout centuries and even most soldiers
>>98030797Your players will roast you when they see that the only difference between them and a regular fighter's their resistance to cold.
>>98031738There was no unwashed masses. There were skirmishers like slingers and peltasts but fighting was considered a honour, not something you would let the scum do.
>>98031738>So who was the unwashed masses in Greek ranks?Mostly they didn't fight. If they did, it'd be as skirmishers (light javelineers, slingers, "psiloi"). Or, in the case of Athens and many other states after the Periclean reforms, oarsmen.
>>98030797>We always get samurai and knights in western rpgshave to witness samurai in mine RPGs yetI mean you can stat it based on knight stats, but no dedicated stuff
>>98030813So you're saying before 300 Hoplite was a common class available in TTRPGS? Tell us more, uncle definitely-a-real-grog.
>>98030797No mechanics that allow them to hop right.
>>98030797My last campaign had one PC who did indeed wear light armor and a cloak while wielding spear and shield. He wasn’t a trained soldier, but he was the party frontliner and they were in a vaguely Greecian region of the setting.
>>98032335>He wasn’t a trained soldierNeither were hoplites, for the most part.
>>98030797>Where is the hoplite love?2000s nerd culture was all about retarded binaries, so greeks got shat on and romans wanked to high heaven. later herstorians started talking about how the greeks were actually cool uhmkay but by that time nobody actually made new rpgs.
Hoplite love is like a steady marriage, you don't need to say it out loud because you know in your heart it is eternal and undying, and that your love for your hoplite will outlast your own life, that if there is a life after death that you will stand together in the phalanx in Elysium. Your shields, as well as your hearts, interlock.I run a Cyberpunk game and I sometimes wish one of my players would run it just so I can play my idea of a poserchipped street samurai. Corinthian helmet, of course, and a big wide shield with which to advance on my enemies and then poke them with my pokey-stick.
>>98032377300, the movie adaptation, came out in 2000s, and it wanked the Greeks, or at least Sparta, something fierce.
>>98030797I like the hoplite aesthetic, but they got dabbed on hard by sword and board bois, aka the Romans. And sword and board continued to rule the world for another 1500 years. Hence why knights are now the default
>>98032453Hoplites used swords too and Romans used spears too.
>>98032457And vastly different tactics*.Romans were evenly match with hoplites until they discovered the magic of "Just go around their spears." Then Greeks lost.
>>98031386>>98031605I was asking op
>>98030856The Carthaginian citizen hoplite militia (usually called to serve only in Africa) was probably adopted after wars with Greeks in Sicily, and their African hoplites (with linothorax instead of metal cuirass) are recorded in the 480 BC Battle of Himera.The first recorded use of the hoplite phalanx was by Argos (inventors of the "Argive grip" that enabled tight shield walls with heavy 1 metre circular wooden shields) in the 669 BC Battle of Hysiai, where they destroyed an invasion force of Spartans wielding multiple javelins each and argive-grip-less shields who probably fought in a looser tactical formation. The loss was so humiliating that the next generations of Spartans adopted the weapons of their enemies and transformed their entire society after wewuzzing and inventing the fictional lawgiver Lycurgus.To further illustrate pre-phalanx Greek warfare, the first historical intra-Greek conflict, the Lelantine War (c. 700 BC) was fought by swordsmen, with support from cavalry and chariotry, after the rival cities agreed to disallow ranged combat with bows and slings. Etruscans also adopted their enemies' tactics but preferred heavier panoplies. The use of bronze thigh-armour (cuisses) survived longer in Etruria than among the Greeks, for example. The lighter combo of helmet, greaves and shield (with linen or metal cuirass being optional) was generally preferred in the Greek-influenced world. Certainly by the time the Etruscans conquered Rome and imposed the rule of foreign kings, they'd mastered the art of the phalanx, as the Servian Constitution of Rome (c. 500 BC?) records the 1st property class (front rank of the army) to consist of true hoplites, while spearmen in classes 2-4 carried oblong shields.>>98031738It's generally estimated that the poorer half of the citizens of a polis would serve as skirmishers (and because Greek historians generally listed the numbers of hoplites in battles, the size of a typical Greek force needs to be doubled).
>>98030813The 300 predates RPGs. Tony Curtis and company. The 2000s movies were neat but adaptations of a comic book. They took quite a bit of creative liscense.
The hoplite shield looks cooler than knight shields and roman shields.
Thoughts?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnDtf0muoqI
>>98032453>And sword and board continued to rule the world for another 1500 yearsThat really didn't. The spear was still the most predominant melee weapon on the battlefield until the bajonet (which basically turns the rifle into a spear). The same goes for any battlefield outside of Europe. It's all spears and some variant of a missile weapon.Greek phalanxes lost because the Greeks themselves were already in decline. As the other anon pointed out, swords and shields were not just some magical superweapon, and not the only thing the Romans used.
>>98030797>MB
>>98030826Ok
>>98032775Multipart hoplite miniatures? Multipart hoplite miniatures.
>98032612>destroyed an invasion force of Spartans wielding multiple javelins each and argive-grip-less shields who probably fought in a looser tactical formation. The loss was so humiliating that the next generations of Spartans adopted the weapons of their enemies and transformed their entire society after wewuzzing and inventing the fictional lawgiver Lycurgus.Fucking kek, fuck spartans
>>98032791>cretan niggas out here swinging a labrys like they're not gonna hit their friends
>>98031759As has been pointed out, a lot them were slingers, or possibly very light infantry, or camp followers. By Alexander's time there also existed a sort of hybrid class, they had better armor and arms, but not the extent of the main hoplite force, and could be more mobile and reactive than your phalanx.
>>98032949Spartans are the most overhyped force in history.
>>98032980They ARE the hype.
>>98032980>missed marathondelicious
>>9803237700s wanked Greeks, Romans was 10s.They're not called Halo Legionaries.
>>98032747>Greek sources are actually HARD TO USE>military history is anything but straight-forward and its relation to political history is sketchyChecks out.
Thinking of getting the Aegean RPG, what is everyone's thoughts?
Play Runequest
>>98033826>Romans was 10swhat came out
>>98030797Hopelites rely on having a lot of soldiers working together alongside each other, which makes them unsuitable to games about individualistic adventurers.
>>98034428Hoplites could fight individually, also it's fantasy
>>98034413I was gonna say HBOs Rome but that was 00s as well
>>98032980They had to be, otherwise their society falls apart. If they have the hype, people are less likely to fight them and as seen it only takes a few bad losses for them before the damage is irreversible. They were however very good at hype, turning their disastrous loss at Thermopylae into a propaganda boon that people still read as a "victory" thousands of years later. Or the famed lachedemonian response of "if" when threatened by Macedonian annexation that didn't actually get a response and they were still annexed anyways some time later. That being said, because all the men did wad train, fight, and eat hot chip that made them actually very good competent soldiers in comparison to the citizen hoplite thing others were doing so there's always some kernel of truth in every myth.
>>98030797D&d has had one handed spears since 1974
>>98030797No pants so they look like DORKS
I've been toying with the idea of kit bashing some oathmark elves with some victories hoplites.
I agree that Classical Antiquity should get used more as a setting, theme, or influence, but it's also not like it is extremely rareThe amount of stuff that uses Greece, Rome etc may be small compared to the Middle Ages or Feudal Japan, but Greco-Roman theming itself still vastly outnumbers say Mesopotamia, Ancient or Medieval India, Mesoamerica (at least if we're talking actual Mesoamerican influences rather then generic jungle ruin/tribesmen stuff that barely resembles the actual IRL civilizations), the Andes etcFor fucks sake we even had a giant thread about using ropes/knots as a part of worldbuilding a week or two ago and like only two anons brought up Andean Quipu
>>98034413A couple of mid games
Most RPGs feature singular characters working in small teams, which is counter to the primary thing Hoplite are known for, formation/phalanx fighting.
>>98036285That's why my setting is the ancient near east + mesoamerica.>Aztec / Caucasus hybrid Empire>Persia / Inca hybrid empire in the mountains led by Necromancers>Phonecian / Calusa merchant seafarers>Chichemec / Libyan hybrid desert people>Comanche / Greek horselord hybrid kingdoms>Pueblo / Hittite hybrid highland clans>Mesopotamian / Maya hybrid city states (ruled by Dwarves)There's also a Maya / Egypt analogue ruled by the Children of the Stars (ancient aliens) and my take on the sea peoples are a bunch of hyper evolved baboon monsters.It's been fun to play in.
>>98032955my friends will dodge
>>98035265But let's be real - the training they did do was drill to move in very basic formations. The kind of shit a marching band learns to do. They weren't actually drilling with weapons or anything like that. And they didn't spend as much time training as people think. The Spartans were the 1% of their society and spent a lot of their time sitting on their ass doing leisure elite shit.
>>98035265I've heard that Spartans didn't really do military training in peacetime and didn't necessarily go to war more often than the Greeks in average. The latter'd still mean that pretty much every Spartan would see war, and they did perform well compared to their contemporaries, but my impression is that by no means were they anything we might think of as professional soldiers. I'm not a historian, though, and if someone's got sources to show me wrong, I'll accept that.
>>98030797Probably because the great preponderance of western rpgs are set in the mish-mash faux-medieval stasis setting that's firmly based on outdated popularly conceptions Western Europe. The Knight - particularly the romantic, sanitized fairy tale Chivalry abiding version - is easy to drop in. And the Samurai got to come along because it's easy to fit them in a Knight-sized hole and replace Chivalry with 'Bushido.'Meanwhile the Hoplite doesn't get the same love or occupy the same cultural space. There's far fewer pop culture representations of Hoplites.>>98034585There are a lot of spear fags out there. Maybe some of them have their dudes dress up like Hoplites. Maybe some of them have their dudes come from upper class landowning backgrounds as Hoplites would have.
>>98036285I'm going to be real with you my dude and this will probably break your heart but the only thing I'd do with Mesoamerica is have dudes in jaguar skills using those clubs with onyx in them as bad guys in the jungle who want to capture people to cut out their hearts. >>98035265>it only takes a few bad losses for them before the damage is irreversible. The bigger problem for them was that once you stopped being a Spartiate (because there was no land for you, because you had a shit year(s) and you weren't rich enough anymore, because your dad was a piece of shit or someone thought he was a piece of shit and he got de-Spartiate'd, or you couldn't make friends with other Spartiates so they wouldn't invite you to be part of their boy-fucking club) there wasn't a way to become a Spartiate again, so the number of Spartiates dwindled as much because Spartan society was retarded more than because of battle losses.>>98037136>they did perform well compared to their contemporariesThe thing that impressed Greek contemporaries was that the Spartans could maneuver their formations better than their contemporaries - if you actually go through Sparta's military record it's actually something like 49% victory to 51% loss. >by no means were they anything we might think of as professional soldiersNone of the Greek poleis citizen-soldiers were. Most of them were farmers, politicians, philosophers, and in the case of the Spartans (the Spartiates, specifically, which is who we're trained to think of as Spartans, ignoring the other social classes that made up like 99% of society) a class of leisured elites who seem to have done nothing but sit on their asses 95% of the time.
>>98037220>have dudes in jaguar skillsThis should read "dudes in jaguar skins." Apologies for my mental retardation.
I guess this thread is as good a place as any to ask this. Since the WA Greek style skeletons came out, I've been kind of toying with the idea of getting them and some historical hoplites to have a bank of minis I could use to create some sort of loosely Classical inspired skirmish/warband game. However beyond historical Greeks, Skeletons and Amazons I've never really been able to find any cool minis to represent other types of fantasy armies of the era, or classic fantasy races in antiquity garb. Does anyone have any good pointers? Specifically looking for some sort of sexy snakewomen/gorgon faction, and satyr/centaurs/minotaurs type units.
>>98037136Spartans were leisure citizens who were FORBIDDEN by law to train with weapons or have a profession. Spartans, men and woman under 20 had to do unarmed atheletic training but that was over after 20. They're political influence comes mostly from Persian funds as their puppet state after the persian wars in greek politics more than them being good soliders. No other greek state thought spartans were better warriors than them man for man.Again they had, by law no profession. They were not professinal solidershttps://youtu.be/dZMFrNBDAgM 'The Ancients' on youtube is another good historian series
>>98035265>That being said, because all the men did wad train, fight, and eat hot chip that made them actually very good competent soldiers in comparison to the citizen hoplite thing others were doing so there's always some kernel of truth in every myth.they were only able to do this shit because helots, its like when celebrities lose weight, its way less impressive because they just pay someone to do all the busywork maintaining their life for them
>>98031715The depends entirely on the time period. The Hoplite was not a static specialty, but one that took multiple different evolutions. By the time of the Persian Wars, the majority of the hoplites were composed of lower and middle class citizenry. >Certainly by the time the Etruscans conquered Rome and imposed the rule of foreign kings, they'd mastered the art of the phalanx, as the Servian Constitution of Rome (c. 500 BC?) records the 1st property class (front rank of the army) to consist of true hoplites, while spearmen in classes 2-4 carried oblong shields.It's a question whether or not the Romans even fought in the manner of the hoplite phalanx, because this requires a society structured similarly to the Greek city states. More recent archeological evidence and the works of Classical revisionist are building a strong case against this age old view. Roman historians that wrote about the early days of Rome, such as Livy, made a lot of assumptions about how the city and early Roman society was structured; they assumed that since Rome was in close proximity to the Hellenic world, the Rome must have been like a Greek Polis. The more recent evidence instead points to the idea that the early Latin society was tribal and clan based; really more similar to the Celts rather than the Greeks.
>>98037390Mostly the helots, but there was at least one underclass above the helots but beneath the spartiates who also did a bunch of work.
>>98030797The spear is a puny peasant's weapon.REAL warriors use BIG weapons that can chop limbs off and crush skulls.
>>98030797The answer is Mazes & Minotaurs or AD&D 2E Age of Heroes.
>increase the length of the spear>this unparalleled military innovation shocked and dominated the Hellenistic world for centuries
>>98037491orcs are stupid
>>98037235The easy and lazy option is to point you at GW and the Daughters of Khaine for the snakes and the like, but they'd probably need a fair bit of work to 'de-Warhammer'. Osprey have recently released a system, "Warriors of Athena", based around that sort of thing and North Star figures are doing some tie-in stuff, though as far as I know are more one-off types and in metal, at least so far. Wargames Foundry have a Greek Mythology range, though again in metal and with some rather old-fashioned design cues; might be personal taste on that one. Picking and choosing your way through some of Raging Heroes' lines (especially the fantasy dark elf or 'lust elf' lines) could work, especially if you're after bare skin and T&A. All resin as far as I know. What I've had from them is very nice, though some of the bigger things got a bit fiddly in terms of delicate connection points.Barring that, sticking "28mm Greek Mythology" into the search engine of your choice and going through the links is probably your best bet.
>>98032980Especially the Halo version!
>>98030797Because samurai and knights are individualistic. You have the lone samurai and the chivalric knight. Hoplites are the exact opposite. Hoplites are meant to be one cog in a machine, standing next to their brothers.
>>98030797>Cant even one hand a spear most of the timeHuh? In DnD spear is versatile and you can even use pilums.
>>98037220Calling Incans Mesoamerican is like calling Greeks Nubians.
>>98037801plenty of art depicting mythological heroes/warriors looking like a hoplite and fighting monsters and shit, just look at all the vidya too like titans quest
>>98037235Ralpartha has an army of centaurs and a army of beast men but they are not really greek inspired. Wga had a fauns, satyr and centaur box of plastics thats oop now I think. Snake women... Warhammer daughters of khan i guess? Other than that there are alot of Medusa/maralith miniatures in plastic and metal rolling around but they are all individually designed so they wouldn't mesh well together in an army.Your best bet to get what youd like is 3d printing but I doubt theres an entire list of stuff to fit all your requirements in a coherent design look.
>>98037706Thanks for the comprehensive reply anon. Haven't heard about Warriors of Athena but I'll gladly check it out, seems fun. For the minis yeah, it's more or less what I reckoned, it's all either one off sculpts, goonercore or truly ancient shit. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with wargames foundry, because while a lot of their sculpts are pretty kino, a lot of it is also really janky wonky sculpts that really haven't stood the test of time.
