Post Roman D&D setting with magic and Roman Gods

Thomas Bowman · Sep 24, 2018

Imagine a standard Dungeons and Dragons setting Post Roman Empire, yet the Roman Gods stuck around, and the various successor nations that broke off of the Empire still worshipped those gods. As for Christianity, Jesus never was crucified, and that ended that. No religion called Christianity ever evolved, and without that example to follow, there was no Islam either, the Arabs remained pagans, but a major religion to survive, even though the Roman Empire fell, was the Pantheon of the Romans and the Greeks which became one and the same. This would have been sometime in the 1300s, there is no AD dating system. People tend to measure the years starting when the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar's rein began. Romans are rivals to the Norse gods, some Roman gods are also Norse gods, Venus/Aphrodite/Freya/Ishtar are all the same goddess for example. There are nations that are familiar to us, there are the Britons for example, there are the Gauls, there are the Goths, and the Germans, and the Slavs living in the east.

Would this make a great campaign setting or what?

JacktheRabbit · Sep 24, 2018

The problem is that Christianity is such a huge part of European and Middle Eastern history that I seriously doubt post Roman Europe would look anything like it did historically. You are pulling out the central thread of history from that time.

Thomas Bowman · Sep 24, 2018

Well look at those Roman provinces on the map then, they could be the names of the post Roman countries. Ireland becomes Hibernia, England becomes Britannia, they had those names before Christianity existed. France is known as Gaul in this setting. Basically the new kingdoms keep their own Roman provincial names to distinguish them from the Christian European names that those countries approximate.

Christianity is rather boring as a religion anyway. Men fight it out amongst each other over their different interpretations of God, whereas we could have the Roman gods fight among themselves instead and fight the gods of other pantheons as is D&D tradition. You see in real history, God, lets the men fight it out and never takes sides, and religious wars go on for centuries while God remains silent, then we have witch hunts and witch burnings because witches don't really have any power, people are just looking for an excuse to burn them, it is belief against belief without any facts to stand them up, just brutal sword play and murder. Now a clash of the Titans is more interesting than watching humans fight over their belief systems. What do you think?

Shasarak · Sep 24, 2018

Thomas Bowman said:
Now a clash of the Titans is more interesting than watching humans fight over their belief systems. What do you think?

Sounds like a good idea as long as we get all the monsters and such as well.

Thomas Bowman · Sep 24, 2018

Shasarak said:
Sounds like a good idea as long as we get all the monsters and such as well.

Well of course, that goes without saying. Here is a map of a Europe gone wild! In place of cities, there are ruins, and of course the Roman Gods walk the Earth among the monsters and various other races that inhabit it.

https://orig00.deviantart.net/26dd/...s_europe_ruins_by_thomasbowman767-dcco0wi.png

dungeons_and_dragons_europe_ruins_by_thomasbowman767-dcco0wi.png

Here is my first entry under gods, I'm following the order of the 1st edition Deities and Demigods, I couldn't find a good 3rd edition copy. I doubled her levels listed in the book, I felt as a greater goddess, she deserved to be more powerful to reflect this. I am currently working on Apollo, these are Epic level characters after all, and Aphrodite is a 94th level character and following most of the rules of 3rd edition, this is what I came up with. God's don't have spell lists by the way, they are like sorcerers, they have spell slots which limits how many kinds of spells from a particular class and level they can cast, but when the opportunity arises, they can cast any spell in the book on the fly without prior preparation. Also gods always get the initiative when combating mortals, when going against other gods the normal initiative rules are used.

Sepulchrave II · Sep 24, 2018

Around what date would your parallel universe diverge from actual Earth history?

Thomas Bowman · Sep 24, 2018

Well there is no Christianity or Islam, so that gives you a fairly good idea, about the time Jesus Christ would have died but didn't seems like a good split off point, somewhere around 30 AD I'd hazard to guess. The Roman Gods also make their presence known, and I suppose if there are Roman gods, there should be other pantheons as well, the Norse Gods also inhabit northern Europe, Britannia is a contested area between the Roman gods and the Norse and Celtic gods, the Middle East is an contested area between the Roman/Greek Gods and the Egyptian, and Babylonian gods, some Roman gods are also gods of different mythos wearing different clothes - that way they gain extra worshippers without then necessarily knowing it.
In this universe it is around the time of Christopher Columbus, the technology is about as advanced as in Columbus' time, ships are starting to sail across the Atlantic and discover new continents, and Native American gods are discovered there as well. Gunpowder weapons are still very crude and not all that effective, so the tech is approximately the same as the current era in the Forgotten Realms. Latin is an extinct language, various temples to the Roman Gods still use it in their services, just like the Catholic Church did in our history, but people speak their national languages, The Britons speak Britannic, the Gauls speak Gaullic and so forth. Time has moved on, and the Roman Empire is no more. A pagan Greek speaking Byzantine Empire exists that still calls itself the Roman Empire, but in western Europe, the Roman Empire is no more. There is a German Empire in central Europe, it is a loose federation of vassal states. Germania is split between the worship of Roman deities and of Norse Deities, and some Norse Deities are actually Roman deities in disguise.

Eltab · Sep 25, 2018

Thomas Bowman said:
Well there is no Christianity or Islam ...<snip>… In this universe it is around the time of Christopher Columbus, the technology is about as advanced as in Columbus' time, ships are starting to sail across the Atlantic and discover new continents

Your alternate history is going to diverge from IRL History more than you expected. Without The Crusades (and how they ended), Europeans don't have any reason to go exploring the Atlantic. It takes both Christians and Muslims to have The Crusades. Therefore...
The Mediterranean is still the preferred route to get from West to East. Constantinople / Byzantium and Alexandria in Egypt are the most important cities for eastward travel beyond the old Roman Empire boundaries. (Which most people still think of as 'the limits of the civilized world.')

You can still have the Viking route to America, but it's rather a secret - or not advertised widely to become common knowledge. The Norse also do not realize how BIG that landmass is, having had a tough time getting past the Canadian coasts.

Thomas Bowman · Sep 25, 2018

But at the time of Christopher Columbus, the printing press existed while in the time of Leif Ericson, it did not, and thus it was easier to keep secrets in the year 1000 AD than it was in 1492. So we're talking about a pagan world with active gods and monsters that has a printing press. The reason for crossing the Atlantic won't be the same, but other people will find other reasons. Some inquisitive wizard might be curious as to what's on the other side of the Atlantic, and he won't necessarily need a ship to go there, and there are probably merfolk and aquatic elves that already know about the place anyway. Though I think most creatures of the oceans live in the shallow areas because that is where most of the food is. There is probably a Viking saga which details the exploits of the Vikings in 1000 AD and their colonies across the Atlantic. I'm assuming the Vikings still abandon their Vinland colonies due to the Little Ice Age, but in a pagan world, that saga probably still exists someone, and if someone with a printing press gets a hold of it, you can be sure word will get out that there is something on the other side of the Atlantic. And if no one else, the Norse gods to whom the Vikings prayed to probably still know about the place, they are immortal after all. Norse gods can talk, and they themselves might have motivation to tell their worshippers about the place, if only because the Roman Deities appear to be taking over Europe, having some land to colonize might be a big help to them.

The Greek goddess Gaia has a secret, she knew about the Americas from before civilization, after all she is the Earthmother.

These stone age statues are of her, and she was worshipped by people all around the globe under different names, unlike the others in the Greek Pantheon, Gaia is a stone age goddess, she is over 10,000 years old, and she remembers the land bridge that her people crossed to get over to North America during the last Ice Age. The people of North America call her the "Great Spirit" and a bunch of other names depending on the tribe involved. The idea of a general nature deity is pretty universal, and I think an active Gaia would take advantage of that. The Native Americans of course wouldn't know they were worshipping a deity whom the Greeks call "Gaia" but Gaia herself doesn't feel that she has to tell them either, she just enjoys their worship. Gaia is also known as the "mother of monsters" to the Greeks, and she has been very busy as of late.

Here is an article, we don't actually know what these figures represents other than women. There was no writing accompanying them.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/anc...nus-figurines-european-paleolithic-era-001548

Dioltach · Sep 25, 2018

Without the Pope to crown Charlemagne Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (and in fact without Christianity as a reason to continue the conceit of the Roman Empire to stay off the Apocalypse predicted in Nebuchadnezzar's dream), you don't have any Germanic Empire, even a notional one.

Also, why are you referring to "Norse" gods? They're simply the Germanic gods that got pushed to Europe's northern periphery by the arrival of Christianity.