Any Roman history nerds here?

[Mad_Jack]

I have a homebrew setting with an evil empire inspired mainly by Rome. In this setting, the Dragonborn were created as shock toops for the empire, and when they retire they get their own little plot of land. So there are little communites of dragonborn in client kingdoms who are ostensibly loyal to the empire. But you know, after a few centuries of being their own community, loyalties tend to drift.

A similar thing happened to the Old Empire in the world where I'm setting my Dungeon23 project - long ago at its height the Empire used to span the eastern half the continent, but the majority of the army was of a different ethnic/religious group than the nobility and it didn't take very long from a historical perspective before the "provinces" came under new management, lol.

(Ironically, those former provinces (currently known as the "Eastern Kingdoms") would themselves later make almost the same bad decision with their own colonies (now known as the "Western Kingdoms"), splitting the continent up roughly into thirds...)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Could you say they were given... keeps on the borderlands?

Shhh! Let me look like I came up with this myself!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

OK, so it sounds like this is a workable setting idea.

My current thinking is that all of the PCs are veterans of a just-concluded war that the kingdom is wisely wanting to distribute around the fringes of the kingdom, rather than have too close to home. (The last war should probably have been a civil war started by a disgruntled general.)

They arrive in this province and discover that it sucks and is full of monsters and such. There's a town that started as a fort (I'll probably look up how Roman settlements looked), and a lot of land that if you can, you know, displace the wyverns and such, you can build a homestead on. The obligatory healer in town is probably a military chaplain and the multi-denominational temple is primarily focused on the god of soldiers. The highest level NPC spellcaster is a war wizard, etc.

The powers that be aren't supposed to allow you to head back home and, off the edge of the map, there are patrols that will enforce that. But it's also a damned long walk no matter what, so it's a lot easier to at least raid the nearby ruins and at least try and make a go of it.

 

[Mad_Jack]

There's a town that started as a fort (I'll probably look up how Roman settlements looked)

A few thoughts -

If the fort started as a frontier fort and the town recently grew up around the fort over time rather than being settled concurrently, it's probably going to end up being a wooden stockade fort on whichever side of the town is closest to the nearest forested area, with the town forming "behind" it toward the nearest farmable land. There will be an additional stockade wall around the core part of the town itself (probably the marketplace, stable, local smithy, tavern, and any other small businesses that the town might have), but any private dwellings will probably be outside the wall. Any sort of town government would be located in the fort.

If the place has been there for at least a couple decades and has begun to develop a fairly large population they may or may not have begun to erect stone walls if the materials are available but (assuming a Roman-style town) there will be a wall around the entire town including private dwellings, and there may well be some sort of plan to the town and/or some attempt to keep expansion of the town organized. Important town buildings will be made of stone if possible. Roads in the immediate vicinity of the town will be fairly well-maintained.

A well-established town will have a larger stone fort, and the wall around the town and most of the buildings will be stone as well. Only the poorest folks will live outside the walls, and the local roads for quite some distance from the town will be well-maintained and safe, with regular patrols extending several leagues from town.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Thanks, that's really helpful. My current thinking is that this is largely a new construction, but the military leader (I have no idea what the appropriate Roman rank here would be) who's responsible for running things quickly realized that the homesteaders aren't going out into the wilderness any time soon and is expanding to make sure everyone has a safe base of operation while the wilderness is slowly cleared.

 

[gamerprinter]

What you might think of as a Roman town isn't really the medieval equal. Cities were walled, but while 'towns' by feudal perspective required walls. Roman 'towns' weren't as defensible, and kind of sprawled over a large area. A Roman fort tended to be a temporary setup, though Roman 'temporary' was often more permanent than the local strongholds, even. For someone with wealth and some political power, they'd live in a Roman villa - like you'd find anywhere in the empire. A low walled enclosure with buildings on both ends, but one being the residence - it would feature plumbing with hot and cold water, mosaic interior floors, vast garden and walkways inside the enclosure. Outside nearby would be a temple to Saturn, Jupiter, and probably Mithras (if the army has any presence at all). But it wouldn't be surrounded by walls. A more permanent military fort, would be a stone version of the walls and large buildings, and wooden buildings where there are tents in the fort shown below.

 

[Tonguez]

Castra Deva (Fortified Camp on the River Dee) was the largest Roman fortress-town in Britannia and stood on the site where Chester now stands. It began life as a palisaded camp in AD47/48 with a fossa ditch and dirt embankment but by the AD70s was a solid stone fort occupied by the 20th Legion (Valeria Victrix).
The standard Roman plan was a rectangular structure with rounded corners, with defensive angle towers and interval towers. The 'via principalis' main road ran east to west (it still exists as Chesters Eastgate.) The east gate had a double archway with a statue of the god Mars in the middle. The streets were layed out in a grid.
The principia, or headquarters building, was the most important and impressive building within the fortress. A large courtyard surrounded by offices and stores. Behind the courtyard stood a great hall which was known as the basilica.
The canabae civilian settlement grew up outside the fort And an amphithetre was built just outside the south east corner of the fort, replete with dungeons, stables, foodstands and a shrine to Nemesis.

info taken from Roman Chester

oh and to help a Legions Command Structure is
1 Legate (General)
2 Tribune laticlavius (second in command)
3 Camp Prefect
4 Five Tribunes (General Staff)
5 Primus Pilus (Senior Centurion)
6 Centurions who commanded centuria

A legion was often divided into 5 cohorts each with 6 centuria (100 men)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I guess I need to find a D&D-style map of something like Castra Deva, although since they're worried about being attacked by ogres and the like, I can't see them building a stadium at this point it their history.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Could you say they were given... keeps on the borderlands?

Forts on the borderlands maybe. Keeps are largely a Norman invention. But then I'm not sure the building is the D&D module is technically a keep. Fortified tower house maybe?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

View attachment 281419
Castra Deva (Fortified Camp on the River Dee) was the largest Roman fortress-town in Britannia and stood on the site where Chester now stands. It began life as a palisaded camp in AD47/48 with a fossa ditch and dirt embankment but by the AD70s was a solid stone fort occupied by the 20th Legion (Valeria Victrix).
The standard Roman plan was a rectangular structure with rounded corners, with defensive angle towers and interval towers. The 'via principalis' main road ran east to west (it still exists as Chesters Eastgate.) The east gate had a double archway with a statue of the god Mars in the middle. The streets were layed out in a grid.
The principia, or headquarters building, was the most important and impressive building within the fortress. A large courtyard surrounded by offices and stores. Behind the courtyard stood a great hall which was known as the basilica.
The canabae civilian settlement grew up outside the fort And an amphithetre was built just outside the south east corner of the fort, replete with dungeons, stables, foodstands and a shrine to Nemesis.

info taken from Roman Chester

oh and to help a Legions Command Structure is
1 Legate (General)
2 Tribune laticlavius (second in command)
3 Camp Prefect
4 Five Tribunes (General Staff)
5 Primus Pilus (Senior Centurion)
6 Centurions who commanded centuria

A legion was often divided into 5 cohorts each with 6 centuria (100 men)

I've been in that amphitheatre!

I should probably mention, in the real world Eastgate slopes up quite steeply from the river. I doubt the ground was dead flat in Roman times (it would have flooded for a start), so the place wouldn't have looked so geometrically perfect in reality.