Character Creation Challenge 2026 Day 7: Mazes & Minotaurs

Mazes & Minotaurs is my favorite fictional conceit that became a full fledged roleplaying game.  You can find the full history here with links.  Essentially, back in 2002,  Paul Elliott (author of the games Zenobia and Hostile) wrote a column over at RPG,net speculating on what the first rpg would've been like if it was based on Greek and Roman epics and mythology.  He concluded you would get something like Mazes & Minotaurs.  Then Oliver Legrand came along and turned it into an actual game. 

 

In the alternate timeline of M&M there were two editions.  The Original 1972 edition, that I will use to make my character, and the Revised 1987 edition.  Each of these and their supplements can be found free here or on DriveThru.

 

Character creation is pretty simple in the Original version: 

 

Step 1 : Roll the character’s six basic attributes.
Step 2 : Select the character’s class and record its
special ability (if any).
Step 3 : Determine the character’s name, gender
and age.
Step 4 : Determine the character’s combat
modifiers, defense class and hits total.
Step 6 : Determine the character’s other modifiers.
Step 6 : Determine wealth and equipment. 

 

And you end up with this:

 

There are only six classes in the original version, which is supposedly a re-release decades later with some humorous commentary.  The setting is very sparse in the main rule book but is fleshed out in later expansions.

Mazes & Minotaurs is not a clone of original D&D.  It adheres to the spirit of the game and has a lot of similarities but is it's own game.  So, if you are at all interested in fantasy Greco-Roman RPGs, sly parodies that are playable games or a thought experiment on what could have been, I encourage you to check Mazes & Minotaurs out.

p.s. Please pardon my horrible handwriting.