I thought I'd start a new thread about Green Ronin's "Eternal Rome"...
Have you read TESTAMENT and TROJAN WAR? Eternal Rome has pretty much the same mixture of history (a lot) with outright fantasy (a little).
I've bought ETERNAL ROME now, and skimmed through it, and I like it. It's just a huge bunch of Rome-related resources, rules and details that can be used for various purposes. It has a good variety of stuff -- maybe it's a little broader than it is deep, but still, I was favorably impressed. I like it more than TROJAN WAR.
The mini-adventure by Scott Bennie is good, as well. I would buy anything by Scott Bennie.
It's true that ETERNAL ROME doesn't do a *perfect* job of reconciling the D&D3.X rules with historical realism, but that's pretty much impossible. (To use one of about a billion examples: why didn't someone just resurrect Julius Caesar after he was assassinated.... and for that matter, if Caesar could be appointed Pontifex Maximus, doesn't that mean he would have to be a high-level cleric?
) I'd say that, on the whole, it does a good job of mixing the two gameplay types. The idea of Vigils being able to cast firefighting- and city-protection-related spells is about the height of magical craziness in the book. (That's a compliment.) I would've liked to see just a few more super-obscure Roman deities (Bellona?), but the prospect of playing a Cleric who worships the Deified Emperors is sufficiently entertaining & promising. They don't say what domains Christians would have access to, but at least they mention TESTAMENT, which *does* talk about Hebrew domains... and instead of pussyfooting around the subject they offer a fairly thoughtful sidebar along the lines of "Please *do* feel free to include Jewish and Christian (and Gnostic) elements in your Rome games, but it's probably something you should decide on for yourself, so we're not going to go into great detail about it."
For a more D&D-ish game, I was glad to see that it had suggestions on adapting MONSTER MANUAL creatures for Rome, as well as the possibility of having demihumans on the fringe of the Roman frontier. And it mentions all those awesome/ridiculous legendary things like the one-eyed Arimaspians, Amazon warriors, and the super-poisonous basilisk lizards. On the whole, I'd say that the only thing I really noticed missing is historical-time-based adventure hooks, but they *do* have site-based adventure hooks, which are good if not better.
Famous NPC stats would've been interesting, but I can't say I miss 'em *too* much, since I'd rather not be restrained by too much realism... in my own campaign I've already decided that the General Sulla is going to be an evil Paladin of Mars (using EGYPTIAN ADVENTURES' Ghaffir class), General Marius is going to be a Fighter with a few levels in Barbarian (picked up during his stint in Africa), and Pompey the Great is going to be a Warmage. I'm content with my totally made-up version in which Sulla de-ages from an old man to a 30-year-old when he activates his Paladin Battle Aura.
Basically, ETERNAL ROME is a set of "Rome tools," and it's a good, versatile set. Although normally this kind of product cross-referencing bugs me, I also appreciate the fact that it refers to how stuff from TESTAMENT and TROJAN WAR could (or couldn't) fit into a Roman setting... a suitable way to end the Mythic Vistas series of "ancient world" RPGs, just as Rome was the end of the Mediterranean ancient world.
Jason
mcrow said:
Have you read TESTAMENT and TROJAN WAR? Eternal Rome has pretty much the same mixture of history (a lot) with outright fantasy (a little).
I've bought ETERNAL ROME now, and skimmed through it, and I like it. It's just a huge bunch of Rome-related resources, rules and details that can be used for various purposes. It has a good variety of stuff -- maybe it's a little broader than it is deep, but still, I was favorably impressed. I like it more than TROJAN WAR.
The mini-adventure by Scott Bennie is good, as well. I would buy anything by Scott Bennie.
It's true that ETERNAL ROME doesn't do a *perfect* job of reconciling the D&D3.X rules with historical realism, but that's pretty much impossible. (To use one of about a billion examples: why didn't someone just resurrect Julius Caesar after he was assassinated.... and for that matter, if Caesar could be appointed Pontifex Maximus, doesn't that mean he would have to be a high-level cleric?
) I'd say that, on the whole, it does a good job of mixing the two gameplay types. The idea of Vigils being able to cast firefighting- and city-protection-related spells is about the height of magical craziness in the book. (That's a compliment.) I would've liked to see just a few more super-obscure Roman deities (Bellona?), but the prospect of playing a Cleric who worships the Deified Emperors is sufficiently entertaining & promising. They don't say what domains Christians would have access to, but at least they mention TESTAMENT, which *does* talk about Hebrew domains... and instead of pussyfooting around the subject they offer a fairly thoughtful sidebar along the lines of "Please *do* feel free to include Jewish and Christian (and Gnostic) elements in your Rome games, but it's probably something you should decide on for yourself, so we're not going to go into great detail about it."For a more D&D-ish game, I was glad to see that it had suggestions on adapting MONSTER MANUAL creatures for Rome, as well as the possibility of having demihumans on the fringe of the Roman frontier. And it mentions all those awesome/ridiculous legendary things like the one-eyed Arimaspians, Amazon warriors, and the super-poisonous basilisk lizards. On the whole, I'd say that the only thing I really noticed missing is historical-time-based adventure hooks, but they *do* have site-based adventure hooks, which are good if not better.
Famous NPC stats would've been interesting, but I can't say I miss 'em *too* much, since I'd rather not be restrained by too much realism... in my own campaign I've already decided that the General Sulla is going to be an evil Paladin of Mars (using EGYPTIAN ADVENTURES' Ghaffir class), General Marius is going to be a Fighter with a few levels in Barbarian (picked up during his stint in Africa), and Pompey the Great is going to be a Warmage. I'm content with my totally made-up version in which Sulla de-ages from an old man to a 30-year-old when he activates his Paladin Battle Aura.
Basically, ETERNAL ROME is a set of "Rome tools," and it's a good, versatile set. Although normally this kind of product cross-referencing bugs me, I also appreciate the fact that it refers to how stuff from TESTAMENT and TROJAN WAR could (or couldn't) fit into a Roman setting... a suitable way to end the Mythic Vistas series of "ancient world" RPGs, just as Rome was the end of the Mediterranean ancient world.
Jason
