Ancient/Roman Britain

[Reynard]

I am looking for a campaign setting that is based on (or is) ancient or Roman Britain. Anyone that could point me in the right direction would be made of pure helpful awesome.

 

[The Lost Muse]

That's a tough one - for RPG sources I'd suggest Green Ronin's Eternal Rome, or possibly GURPS Fantasy (the sample setting is, IIRC a Roman empire if magic had existed). For info on Britian, I'd suggest GURPS Celtic Myth (if you can find a copy).

However, I would personally grab the series of novels by Jack Whyte: The Skystone, The Singing Sword, etc... a bunch of them have some excellent info in appendixes. They flesh out the various cultures in Britian (and Ireland to a degree), during and after the fall of the Roman empire, and follow the lineage of King Arthur from his Roman and Pendragon roots.

 

[Reynard]

That's a tough one - for RPG sources I'd suggest Green Ronin's Eternal Rome, or possibly GURPS Fantasy (the sample setting is, IIRC a Roman empire if magic had existed). For info on Britian, I'd suggest GURPS Celtic Myth (if you can find a copy).

However, I would personally grab the series of novels by Jack Whyte: The Skystone, The Singing Sword, etc... a bunch of them have some excellent info in appendixes. They flesh out the various cultures in Britian (and Ireland to a degree), during and after the fall of the Roman empire, and follow the lineage of King Arthur from his Roman and Pendragon roots.

I would be very surprised if there wasn't a d20 ancient/roman britain campaign setting. It seems a natural fit.

I read The Skystone and enjoyed it, but never moved on to the second book in the series. Does the quality remain consistent?

 

[Huw]

Not an RPG sauce, but try the TV series A History of Britain by the BBC. Contains exactly what it says on the cover, narrated by Simon Schama, and covers prehistoric through to the 20th century.

It has many nice "common people" touches. The Roman Britain episode, for example, has an extract from a letter written by a soldier stationed up at Hadrian's wall. Should give you a bit of flavour for the setting.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Well for starters, there is the free PDF Legends of Excalibur: War with Rome.

 

[Blackwind]

Sorry--no help with RPG sourcebooks. But if you ever get a chance to visit the British Museum (in London), they have a great exhibit on Roman Britain.

Also, if you do a search for "Roman Britain" on Amazon (or similar book-finding site), there are some nice-looking sources available.

 

[Claudius Gaius]

There aren't all that many, simply because d20 usually has far too much magic for even semi-realistic settings to make much sense (How many newly-recruited legions equal a party of high-level adventurers? Why don't the Clerics just heal him?). Pendragon makes a good resource, but isn't d20. There's some old Rolemaster stuff with some information. Chivalry and Sorcery was more medevial (as well as a bit over-complicated in many spots). The Medevial Players Manual has some bits that might be useful, but it also has some magic systems and abilities that are awfully easy to abuse and is far too strongly christian for most ancient roman settings.

Of course, you can derive a lot of flavor from simply using a vaguely-familiar map and some classical names, from giving your highly disciplined imperials roman-style equipment, and from limiting the equipment list a bit. Outside of that, just damp the magic way down. Rune Magic or Witchcraft (both available in Eclipse as shareware) would probably be about right.

 

[Reynard]

Sorry--no help with RPG sourcebooks. But if you ever get a chance to visit the British Museum (in London), they have a great exhibit on Roman Britain.

I have been to London twice, and it was trips to the museum as well as Stonehenge and Bath that really made me fall in love with ancient and roman britain. I guess if no one else is going to make a d20 setting for it, I'll have to do it...

 

[The Lost Muse]

I would be very surprised if there wasn't a d20 ancient/roman britain campaign setting. It seems a natural fit.

I read The Skystone and enjoyed it, but never moved on to the second book in the series. Does the quality remain consistent?

In my opinion, the quality remains consistent throughout the series, with the exception of the stand-alone book told from Uther Pendragon's point of view. I prefer the later novels with Merlin narrating, as the conflict between the Senecas and the Brittani is given more attention than strictly necessary.

 

[Reynard]

Of course, you can derive a lot of flavor from simply using a vaguely-familiar map and some classical names, from giving your highly disciplined imperials roman-style equipment, and from limiting the equipment list a bit. Outside of that, just damp the magic way down. Rune Magic or Witchcraft (both available in Eclipse as shareware) would probably be about right.

I wasn't really thinking an actual historical fantasy campaign set in Roman Britain (though I am now...) Initially, I was thinking more of a setting/campaign heavily inspired by it, casting the various races in various cultural positions and using druids vs monotheism (I know that comes a little later, but it's just fantasy anyway), barbarism vs civilization and untamed sorcery vs exacting magic as the key conflicts in the campaign. The neat thing as that either side, or neither, could be the protagonists.