Grecka the RPG is a narrative bridge, designed as much to introduce fans of science-fiction literature as to offer a great tactical and political fresco to seasoned role-players. The game is built on a unique learning curve in three tiers. The first tier offers an immediate, didactic way in, letting you live immersive infiltration missions with no mathematical complexity. The second tier enriches the table with modular rules suited to the habits of role-players, going deeper into the management of resources, stress and group manoeuvres. The third tier finally unfolds the full sandbox mode, designed for experts and old hands, opening the borders of a free campaign across the whole planet.

The rules engine rests on a pool of action dice in which every success sharpens the precision of the gesture. In this universe the characters are seasoned professionals: the system rules out humiliating or blocking failures. When the dice resist, the action is accomplished but the ambient tension rises, piling up complications that will be paid back a hundredfold in the relentless debriefing session before the hierarchy. At the heart of the game also lies the presence of greckon: this miraculous ore is not just an industrial resource, it infuses the human metabolism, triggering organic mutations, psionic resonances and an almost mystical sensitivity to the secret cycles of Grecka.

The exodus of the arks and the poisoned blessing of greckon

More than twelve centuries ago, humanity deserted an Earth suffocated by its own ecological excesses. Having reached the end of the voyage aboard the three arks of the PaliGenesia project — the Odyssey, the Iliad and the Aeneid — it founded its second chance on the planet Grecka. The colonists discovered greckon there, a black rock veined with azure and bathed in luminescent suspended particles. This fabulous matter produces colossal energy, fertilises the soil and holds back the water tables, making biological life possible on an otherwise sterile planet. But this windfall has its downside: overexploited by greedy industries, the planet is withering. As soon as the deposits fall below the critical threshold, fauna mutate unpredictably, flora wither and devastating climate anomalies strike the territories. Worse still, greckon has crept into the blood of the inhabitants, binding their flesh, their emotions and their consciousness to the deep vibrations of Grecka.

The mosaic of the six Islets and the chasm of the Nekrí Zóni

Human civilisation is not a united bloc. It has split into six Islets of greenery hemmed in by the immense mineral desert of the Nekrí Zóni and the salt waters of the Avisso Sea. Each nation has forged a radical political identity: Olympie the Verdant, a hegemonic megacity that preserves its climate by buying the quotas of the others thanks to its monopoly on the akhélisium of the moon; Hadessie the Blue, a martial kingdom divided into ten feudal clans; Épidie the Dark, an austere nation packed into an oceanic depression under the rule of an authoritarian Guide; Elysie the Dry and its merchant emirates; Tartarie the Harsh with its arid immensities; and Blanchie the Tropical, an island empire jealous of its independence. Relations between these peoples swing between precarious trade treaties, customs boycotts and military skirmishes smothered by censorship.

The supranational illusion and the ghost of Bureau 9

Faced with the ecological peril and internal rivalries, the Greckal Supreme Assembly rose up. Equipped with a public Senate and official courts, this institution tries to impose laws for reasoned exploitation. But on the ground of financial interests, public diplomacy proves powerless against corrupt mining consortiums, smuggling cartels and state conspiracies. It is in this breach that Bureau 9 operates. This outfit is attached to no organisation chart and its existence is rigorously ignored by the Assembly itself. Born of a fierce will to save the biosphere at any moral price, this phantom organisation deploys its squads to eliminate, in the shadows, the threats that official laws can neither see nor punish.

The PaT* take the lead of a clandestine Bureau 9 squad. Recruited after a relentless selection for their exceptional skills, they have stepped through the hidden door into total clandestinity. They play elite operatives who have given up their civilian lives, their official identities and any legal existence to become the invisible guardians of the planet.

To fulfil its intervention mandates, a team combines highly complementary specialities. A table may bring together a diplomat spy and subtle manipulator, mistress of social protocol, able to poison the chancelleries and wring strategic secrets out of ambassadors; a peerless infiltrator, expert in urban climbing, silent neutralisation and emergency extraction; a systems engineer able to hack industrial terminals with a solid holographic projector and deploy arachnid reconnaissance bots; or a combat agent hardened by the storms of the Nekrí Zóni, able to wield kinetic rifles coupled with greckon and to show a strange psionic resonance in the face of the planet’s reactions.

The squad depends on no regular army. Bound by an unwavering commitment, it can count only on its own composure, aware that in the event of arrest or compromise, no institution will come to claim its bodies.

The PaT* are the absolute engine of the planet’s salvation. Their tactical decisions, their ethical compromises and their discretion determine whether the Islets will go on coexisting or sink into total war for energy.

In concrete terms, the characters carry out all the underground, shady operations that official diplomacy condemns. They infiltrate society receptions under painstakingly built false identities to photograph confidential registers. They descend into clandestine mine shafts in the no man’s land of the Nekrí Zóni to sabotage the extraction generators before the underground collapses. They carry out targeted assassinations of crooked financiers ready to provoke a famine to send stock prices soaring, and orchestrate surgical abductions of dissident scientists to put them out of harm’s way.

As the missions imposed by their command unfold, the characters face the rigour of the debriefing, where every piece of evidence left behind at an operation scene brings sanctions and reprimands. But as the operations pile up, the veil tears: the agents discover the buried mysteries of Grecka, the remains of erased civilisations and the truth about the planet’s consciousness. The game then opens onto a vast sandbox mode, where the squad breaks free of its initial orders to choose its own battles and weigh on the destiny of the whole world.

The universe and the dramatic dynamics of Grecka the RPG are rooted in a rich dialogue between visionary literature, geopolitical dramas and spy stories:

The Grecka novel trilogy by Lysiah Maro, the complete foundation of the universe, for the subtlety of its ecosystems, the poignant writing of its heroines and that breath of human epic mixed with environmental urgency.

Frank Herbert with Dune, for the centrality of a single resource shaping the whole geopolitics of a world, the austerity of rocky deserts and that mystical dimension where the ore alters biology and opens the mind to psionic perceptions.

Éric Rochant with Le Bureau des Légendes (The Bureau), for the demands of work under cover, the art of living a false life without betraying your mission, the loneliness of intelligence officers and the almost administrative rigour of security debriefings.

Kim Stanley Robinson with the Mars Trilogy, for the scientific credibility of space colonisation, the societal debates around the modification of landscapes and the birth of new cultural identities on an adopted land.

René Barjavel with La Nuit des Temps (The Ice People), for the tragic warning against technological excess and the fragility of civilisations that refuse to face the warning signs of their fall.

The game is calibrated for a table of one game master and 3 to 5 PaT*.

Game sessions call for formats of 3 to 6 hours, or longer for groups who like to meticulously prepare their infiltration protocols, build their covers and polish the psychological confrontations.

Grecka the RPG offers great flexibility of formats thanks to its modular structure. It lets you play nervy, self-contained initiation missions of 2 to 3 hours to discover the universe step by step. It lends itself ideally to multi-episode tactical arcs centred on a major espionage affair. Finally, it unfolds its full scope in an open, long-running campaign, where the PaT* roam the Islets freely, break the biological riddles of greckon and build their own legend on the planetary chessboard.

PaT* (Person at the Table): a player taking part in the game. In the French original the term is a feminine noun, which stresses that responsibility for the story and the initiative of action rest in the hands of the table.

Greckon: A pure energy ore with a bluish luminescence, buried deep in the planet. Vital to the survival of ecosystems and to technology, it also runs in human blood, causing resonances and mutations.

Bureau 9 (B9): An ultra-secret espionage and counter-intelligence organisation. Clandestine to the point of being unknown to the official leaders and to the Assembly, it eliminates in the shadows the threats weighing on the world balance.

Greckal Supreme Assembly: A supranational political institution publicly bringing together the representatives of the six Islets to legislate on energy quotas and maintain a fragile diplomatic peace.

Nekrí Zóni: A vast, arid and hostile mineral desert stretching between the inhabited Islets, swept by winds and dotted with clandestine mines and abandoned remains.

Islets: The six habitable, green territories of Grecka (Olympie, Hadessie, Épidie, Elysie, Tartarie, Blanchie), built on massive concentrations of underground greckon.

Akhélisium: A very rare transition metal mined exclusively on the moon Akhélisie. Held almost entirely by Olympie, it is a major economic lever over the other nations.

E.C.A. (Abnormal Climate Events): Violent, recurring weather catastrophes triggered by the critical depletion of greckon deposits beneath an Islet.

Isorropía: A philosophical and spiritual current advocating technological moderation, respect for living cycles and the pursuit of perfect harmony with the planet Grecka.