D&D General Ancient Roman D20

[Dioltach]

"Let's play a futuristic scifi game set after the fall of the Roman Empire!"

 

[Blue Orange]

I like to think that the ancient Romans played an RPG where they pretended to be ancient Egyptians.

"You guys, they did NOT have bronze back then. I want you to tell me exactly what you think your character's breastplate is made of, Lucius."

"I'm just gonna, like, step out into the vomitorium for a moment-"
"THERE ISN'T ONE, MARCUS! Ugh, it really breaks my sense of immersion when you do stuff like this!"

There's Papers & Paychecks, first shown in a cartoon in the 1st ed DMG, which has a warrior, a priest, a wizard, and a bearded fellow who could be a priest or wizard rolling dice. "It's a great new fantasy role-playing game. We pretend we're workers and students in an industrialized and technological society." I believe it was converted into an OSR version.

Then there's the indie (I can't remember the name!) where you play gamers playing an RPG (thus you are gamers playing gamers playing fantasy characters). There are rules for generating both your gamer characters and the fantasy characters they are playing, and stuff can interrupt the 'game'.

 

[Oofta]

Well, we do know that dice were used in religious rituals in the Mediterranean world from textual evidence (such as the Hebrew Bible, where throwing dice for decision making is an acceptable form of divination), and one of these dice has Egyptian Deity names on them. There is no evidence of statistics based dice games, but there is plenty in regards to divination.

Absolutely dice and other artifacts were used for religious purposes. But it's kind of like saying some future architect saying that since it's documented that a goblet is used in some religious practices that any ornate goblet is assumed to be used for religious practices.

We also know that people have been playing games for millennia. Go was thought to have been invented as long as 4,000 year ago. Some D20s may have been used for games or divination, we simply don't know.

 

[Parmandur]

Absolutely dice and other artifacts were used for religious purposes. But it's kind of like saying some future architect saying that since it's documented that a goblet is used in some religious practices that any ornate goblet is assumed to be used for religious practices.

We also know that people have been playing games for millennia. Go was thought to have been invented as long as 4,000 year ago. Some D20s may have been used for games or divination, we simply don't know.

Well, that's the problem with archeology all around.