Lessons from Percy Jackson in Adapting Myth

Something a little bit different today. This blog is all about using history (including historical understandings of things like religion and folklore) and using that to inform and inspire roleplaying. In the past, I've looked at some examples of media as components of larger posts, from George RR Martin's use of religion in A Song of Ice and Fire to the ways that Joss Whedon's Firefly reinforces the racist Lost Cause narrative about the Civil War.

Today, though, I wanted to just look at a piece of media that intentionally uses history--or in this case, mythologies of a historical era--in an interesting way. How does this media draw from history well? Where does it fall short? And how can we use that to inspire our TTRPG campaigns? If people enjoy this post, maybe I'll do more of these sort of in-depth dives into a single piece of media.

Today's case study? Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan.

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My Experience

To start, I want to say that I came to Percy Jackson as an adult. Despite being a history kid right when Percy Jackson was coming out--basically the target demographic--I somehow completely passed the series by. I recall watching the bad 2010 movie adaptation at a friend's house and falling asleep in the middle.

When the new Disney+ show came out, however, my partner and some of my close friends all wanted to watch it, so I gave it a shot. While I think the pacing of the show had some flaws, I enjoyed watching it and was told to read the books, which were better-paced.

And I really enjoyed the books! Despite having zero nostalgia factor for the stories, I thought that the original 5-book series was well done. So, that's the perspective that I'm coming from.

The Good

Myths are Reinterpreted & Combined

During the series, Percy meets with classic figures from Greek mythology like Daedalus, Medusa, and Poseidon. He goes on a quest for the Golden Fleece. Yet rarely are the stories direct, 1:1 retellings of the classics. This means that for those familiar with the mythology, the story is not spoiled.

For example, in the mythological quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason must sail through smashing rocks, plow a field with fire-breathing oxen, sail past the Sirens (which he does by playing music to drown them out), and fight a man made out of bronze. The Sea of Monsters, which tells of Percy's own search for the Fleece, preserves the basic episodic structure of the myth, but the exact details are drawn from a variety of sources. Instead of the smashing rocks, Percy sails between Scylla and Charybdis--though Jason's path is acknowledged as another option that they reject, instead opting for the one taken by Odysseus in the Odyssey. Instead of plowing a field with the oxen, Percy fights them in the opening, pre-quest sequence. Instead of being "purified" by Circe the Enchantress, Percy faces the more malevolent version faced by Odysseus. He sails past the Sirens as well and then faces off against Polyphemus (also from the Odyssey). In fact, despite being a quest for the Fleece, Percy's story is far more similar to that of the Odyssey in its episodes.

Yet it is not a simple retelling of the Odyssey either. Even beyond the basic quest being that of the Golden Fleece, certain key Odyssey episodes are not present. The Island of the Lotus Eaters is in The Lightning Thief (book 1 of the series) rather than Sea of Monsters (book 2), for example.

This tells us how we should use history and myth in our games. Rather than a direct retelling, we should reinterpret. We should use. You can see an example of this that I've done on the blog in my post on the Luddites. The Luddites, despite being a real faction in history, should be adapted to be a group facing off against whatever new, exploitative technology makes sense for the fantasy world. I suggest using the undead in that article. Something completely different, and yet with familiar, historically/mythologically-inspired premises.

Additionally, we should combine things to help keep things fresh. Smashing the story of the Golden Fleece together with the Odyssey is more interesting than just retelling one of those stories individually.

You Don't Need to Know the Myths

I'll admit that, just as I never had a Percy Jackson phase, I also never really had a Greek myths phase. In comparison to many of my history friends, my antiquity knowledge is sorely lacking. (Though it's an area that I'm working on improving; I've been learning a lot about Rome recently, and so moving back in time is likely next on my list).

But this did not stop me from enjoying Percy Jackson. I'm sure that Rick Riordan made a lot of more subtle nods to myths than I picked up on (case in point: I did not know that the fire-breathing oxen that Percy fights at the beginning of Sea of Monsters were relevant to the story of the Golden Fleece until I was reading more about the myth as part of writing this post). But the point is that by reimagining these myths, he makes them accessible even to those who aren't familiar with them.

The same can be true of a good application of history (or myth) in our RPGs. As a player in a game that involves the Luddites, you don't need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Industrial labor movements. If you do, you might catch that "Captain Ludd" is a reference to the real-life Luddites; but if you don't, you should still figure out that these Luddites, in the game, are a violent, working-class uprising against new technology. Just having a reference is not enough; you need a strong internal storyline as well.

The Bad

Shoehorning Everything Historical In

I get that in this series, the Olympian Gods have persisted throughout history as guiding figures in Western Civilization, and so there do need to be heroes between Perseus of Ancient Greece and Percy of modern-day New York or the framing of this as a continuing legacy would be shaken to its roots.

The problem is that the series wants to name-drop historical figures as demigods all the time. Harriet Tubman, Amelia Earhart, Blackbeard, George Washington, and Harry Houdini are all mentioned by name as demigods. Not to mention the continuous references to the fact that World War II was started over a conflict between children of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, implying presumably that Hitler was a demigod.

This poses a couple of issues for me. First, and this might just be me, but it makes it feel like those figures are just sort of... there? Like they're being named just so that the author can make a joke about Harriet Tubman secretly being a demigod.

Second, and the bigger flaw, is that the historically important figures of the day do not seem to be demigods. If Washington was a demigod, was Bill Clinton? If Houdini was, was Keanu Reeves? If not, why were the great celebrities of history demigods but not those of today? If they are, why did those demigods not get called upon to fight Kronos in Book 5? I'm pretty sure demigod-Keanu would have been willing to pull a John Wick and fight off Titan minions, and yet we don't hear about that.

I know that the answer is that having adult demigods around, participating in the events of the book, would detract from the adventures of our protagonists. It's the same question faced in TTRPG campaigns so eloquently posed by one of my players when they were tasked with disrupting an enemy army: "Why can't we send large numbers of soldiers to do this?" The answer is plot.

But from a logical worldbuilding framework, it raises an inconsistency. Having demigods exist but who do not become famous for their mortal-facing deeds would, I would argue, have created a more consistent, more coherent world.

We can learn from this for our own TTRPGs and worldbuilding. While it's great to adapt history, we shouldn't fall into the trap of trying to use one historical explanation for everything. This is a bigger deal if we, like Riordan, are trying to set something in a version of "the real world," but it's also worth considering in original worlds as a general rule--not every leader or celebrity needs to be divine in origin or otherwise blessed. And if they are, there needs to be a reason baked into the setting that all leaders are of a divine bloodline (like in D&D 2e's Birthright campaign setting).

Percy Jackson and TTRPGs

The main lessons that we can take from Percy Jackson are to reinterpret and combine historical stories and myths rather than simply repeat them, make them accessible to those unfamiliar with the source material by placing them in an independently solid narrative, and don't try to force everything into your historical parallel.

Beyond those lessons though, I also want to raise that Greek myths are great source material. There are a lot of them so you have a wide range of material to draw from, a lot of people have at least a passing familiarity with the big ones (like the Odyssey), they touch on good themes, and they're very episodic in nature which makes them relatively easy to use as episodes in a larger narrative (like a side quest in an RPG).

If you're looking to incorporate Greek mythology into your RPGs, I have a few suggestions. If you play D&D, checking out Mythic Odysseys of Theros is a great starting point. Theros is an official setting, and it is inspired by Greek mythology. It also has one of my favorite 5e rule additions: mythic creatures for boss fights, which allows certain creatures to heal themselves up back to full for a more powerful "stage 2" of the fight. This is such a fun rule for dramatic fight sequences, and it really helps with game balance when there's a whole party fighting a single creature. Theros as a setting has a ton of extra content published for it on the DMsGuild to check out as well.

And of course, as I already have mentioned earlier, the first volume of the Uncaged Anthology is a tremendous resource of one-shot adventures that focus on reimagining classic myths about maligned women. The first volume tends to focus mostly on Greek mythology.

For those looking for other systems that might do Percy Jackson-esque stories better, check out Scion by Onyx Path Publishing. Scion is annoyingly broken up into several books, all focused on different power levels, but they build on each other so you need the lower-powered content for anything higher-tier. For Percy Jackson status, you'd need the core book (Origin), definitely the second book (Hero), and possibly also Demigod for higher-level play.

A story I've seen repeated (though I can't find a primary source to confirm): Rick Riordan, after writing the original Percy Jackson series, based his sequel series, Heroes of Olympus, on a 1st-edition Scion game that he participated in. The rules I linked are for the updated 2nd edition, but this system is fundamentally built for stories like that of Percy Jackson.

Thank you as always for reading and supporting Veritas Tabletop! Be sure to subscribe to the blog for more history and RPG content, and let me know if you enjoyed this more media-specific type of article in the comments!