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I’ve got a cool idea for a campaign in Zeus: Master of Olympus. Setting aside sandbox scenarios, which offer no serious challenges, three major obstacles are the workhorses of scenario design: a shortage of exploitable flat terrain, a variety of disasters (including monsters and hostile gods) that destroy a city’s economy, and military attacks that threaten an outright loss of the game. Rarely do scenarios make significant use of resource limitations. Oh, you may have to sit patiently while you accumulate enough of some good from a trickle of available trade, but rarely must a player do entirely without something. So my scenario idea explores such shortages to the limit; it places the player on a barren waste – no fertile land, no timber, no marble or bronze. Everything the city needs must be exported, and no cash can be raised by exporting native products.

That’s quite harsh. So how does the player earn money for these exports? Taxes will cover the salaries of workers from high-end housing, but not by a large enough margin to pay for the goods necessary to support high-end housing. The city must import olives, grapes, and bronze, and export oil, wine, armor, and weapons – those it doesn’t need for itself – and survive on the added value of industry. If necessary, I could even prohibit the building of tax offices to keep the treasury sufficiently meager.

(On a related note, I wonder if it’s possible for a city to support itself entirely on the taxes of a huge elite population and just enough workers to staff its supply chain and cultural services. Let’s see, 80 elite houses need… 9.6 fleece, wool, oil, and wine… plus armor… workers for five, eight, four, seven…. Taxes come to… Yes, it is possible. How about that? A whole new scenario idea.)

Answering why anyone would found a city in such a wasteland starts to provide a back story for the campaign: the city’s leader has been ostracized for some crime against his home, and his brother put upon the throne. The campaign involves, first, setting up a manufacturing-for-export economy, and, second, using the profits to build an army and retake his old city. What will really sell the story is its unusual presentation of the protagonist as a villain. The last scenario could allow the player to run his large, prosperous home city after slaying the rival who drove him out – until the harpies (standing in for Erinyes) begin to attack. The last scenario forces the player to build Apollo’s temple while the harpies lay waste to everything in sight. Once this is accomplished, “winning” text in the conclusion will inform the player that the oracle explains the harpies will not be satisfied until the blood crime of killing a relative is repaid; since they will hound the protagonist to his death, he must commit suicide to save his city. Dramatic, no?