By the reckoning of years used in the Danassan Hegemony, the date is 3000 Ἔτος Κόσμου, the three thousandth year since the creation of the world. A new millennium is at hand, an age of prosperous cities and growing empires, new gods and ancient mysteries, science and darkest magic. It seems likely to be an age of conflict as well. Ambitious generals and kings struggle for power, and barbarian peoples look with envy on the wealth and sophistication of civilized lands. What history will reveal next, not even the gods can know for sure.

Fourth Millennium has been conceived as a game setting, derived from some of my own fiction: short stories set in the Greek “Heroic Age” as well as the novel-in-progress Twice-Crowned and its eventual sequels. It’s grown past its literary beginnings, though, taking on shape as a rich alternate-historical fantasy world.

Fourth Millennium echoes the Mediterranean world of our own history, in the first century before the Common Era . . . but fate has taken its own turns here. An offshoot of Minoan civilization survived, creating a neo-Hellenic culture in which women hold religious and political power. The Peloponnesian War may have taken place, but its outcome was less viciously harmful to the Hellenic civilization at its peak. Alexander the Great may have died young, but his son survived and came out on top of the civil wars that followed his death. The Roman Republic is on the rise, but it faces tough competition in the East, in the form of an Hellenistic world that is stronger and more unified.

Adventurers can come from a variety of origins: Greeks of several varieties, Romans and other Latins, Celts, Germans, Berbers, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Judeans, Persians, and many more. They may be warriors and soldiers, oracles and seers, legates and senators, or philosophers and scientists. There will be a variety of possible campaign structures: military stories, politics and intrigue, high-stakes commercial ventures, mysteries, exploration, possibly all of these at once.

The concept in my head is for a Cypher System game, published under the Monte Cook Games open license. I can already see the broad outlines of the game, and a lot of details that will fit the setting. I’m still debating whether to write one book or two here – there may be so much setting detail, so much to suggest a variety of structures for campaigns and adventures, that it won’t all fit in one volume.

Best guess is that I’ll be pulling together notes for Fourth Millennium while I work on getting Architect of Worlds out the door in the first half of this year. I might post a few fragments and notes here, or push them to my patrons as small freebies. Once Architect is finished, assuming my muse is still engaged by then, serious work on this project is likely to get under way.

Have to say, the more I think about this project the more excited I am for it. The ancient Mediterranean world has been a personal fascination for over half my life; it will be nice to get back to it as a game designer. Not to mention I’ve learned a lot since I wrote GURPS Greece, coming up on thirty years ago . . .