Any Roman history nerds here?

[Zardnaar]

Are you familiar with the Byzantine theme system?

Basically put tge defebcevof each region in the hands of the locals. Downside independent generals type things and not wanting to help the next theme over.

My thoughts for defebd8bg the frontier in D^D world is more basic defenses (trenches. Basic wooden forts) and light infantry and ranged troops.

Depends how common magic is though. Or the monsters that can burrow, fly, telephoto that obsolete keeps.

 

[Yora]

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)

Regensburg grew around the castle of the Roman governor of Raetia. The original roads of the castle layout still exist, though they've gone somewhat crooked after 2000 years of new constructions.

 

[Zardnaar]

Regensburg grew around the castle of the Roman governor of Raetia. The original roads of the castle layout still exist, though they've gone somewhat crooked after 2000 years of new constructions.

Good chunk of European cities and roads built over Roman ones.

In a rare few cases they're still using original Roman construction. Lighthouse in Spain, Dam in Syria, various buildings etc. Roman ruins nope still in use.

 

[Mad_Jack]

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.

Right, so, basically, the construction of the fort and surrounding town are going to depend mainly on two things...

1. How much financial support and backing the commander has to accomplish this...
and
2. The logistics of getting materials to the site that can't be sourced locally.

If the commander is backed by people or government offices with lots of resources who really want this project to happen, your fort and town are going to look a lot more like the later examples of Roman construction provided. If the materials needed for construction can be sourced locally, that makes it easier, but one thing the Romans were known for is not letting little things like topography or logistics get in the way of them building for their greater glory, lol.
(As mentioned above, a LOT of major European roads still follow the routes established by older Roman roads.)

Given that this place is still under military authority, the commander shouldn't have too many problems with finding physical labor (even skilled workers) for the expansion, although, having just finished a civil war, some of those workers may have some prickly feelings about having been conscripted into government service.
You'll also want to answer questions like whether the government is actively recruiting (or even subsidizing) new settlers for the town, and how the settlers feel about starting their new lives... (Are they starting over after losing everything in the war? Folks from the losing side trying to get away from the winners by heading out to the frontier? People with limited prospects back home looking to strike it rich, or alternately, rich people looking to corner new markets and get richer? Etc., etc....)
On a related note, one of the things you'll need to decide is how the majority of the veterans being posted to the fort feel about the just-finished war. A fort full of exiled malcontents and conscripts guarding a powder keg of disgruntled ex-rebel townies is going to be a whole different kettle of fish than a well-oiled and efficient fort and town run with exemplary military discipline and wisdom, and how the commander chooses to deal with the soldiers and the civilian populace (dictator vs. benevolent authoritarian) will dictate a whole lot about the general feel and character of the town.


(You're probably not familiar with the old 1994 tv series Hawkeye starring Lee Horsley and Linda Carter, but it's a spin-off/continuation of the James Fennimore Cooper novels set in a military fort during the French and Indian War and quite a few episodes have side plots that you can mine for ideas about running a frontier military fort and the sort of day-to-day issues that come up.)

 

[Parmandur]

That's why they speak a Romance language in Romania & Moldava to this day.

 

[gamerprinter]

I saw someone's development of a setting timed at the end of the Roman Empire, where like Arthur's tale is left on Hadrian's Wall as the Romans are pulling out of Britain. Thematically, the game was set up like Twilight 2000 - Roman trained and equipped adventurers in a 'post apocalyptic world' where civilization (Rome) is gone, and the locals are trying to deal with the chaotic aftermath. Keeping with the theme, the developer called his game 'Twilight 200'... LOL.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

Fun fact, the Reconquista, the military campaigns the Iberic Christian kingdoms waged agains the al-Andalus used a similar tactic: to secure the frontiers they gave titles and lands on the borders of the kingdoms to accomplished military veterans. When the lands on the Iberic Peninsula were all conquered the two main Christian kingdoms who fought in these campaigns, Portugal and Spain, repeated this process with the America.

(disclaimer: although I'm indeed a historian this is a gross simplification and I don't have any sources at hand right now. Please treat it as a fun fact and not as reliable information)

 

[Blue Orange]

Not gonna claim to be a Roman history nerd as I don't have the basic info, but I'm always happy to hear more.

RPG sourcebooks I know of are Cthulhu Invictus for Call of Cthulhu, Requiem for Rome for Vampire: the Requiem (NWoD), Eternal Rome (Green Ronin) for 3.5, and Lex Arcana which is Rome with magic by an Italian company.

 

[kigmatzomat]

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.

You should consider your game's magic level on the fortifications & construction. One 1st level caster with the Mold Earth cantrip can build a fairly significant moat & berm in a week. It also makes the effort of putting up wooden palisades much easier as it digs & fills the holes.

They can till & plow 1-2 acres of hard packed soil a day and do most of the work for earthen-walled structures, saving a huge amount of hard labor for the farmers and their draft animals. (Reminder: an acre was the amount of land a man, an ox and a wooden plow could plow in a day)

1st level ritual spells like Unseen Servant can do the work of half dozen very old/young workers while Floating Disk is a cart + donkey worth of help.

Higher level casters with Plant Growth, Wall of Stone, Stone Shape, Fabricate, Levitate, etc have similarly big impacts. Plant Growth is especially useful as it significantly increases production with only an increase in harvest labor plus it can make hedge-walls, which are effective defenses.

 

[Fenris-77]

So depending on your fidelity to what your soldiers do compared to Roman legionaries, you wouldn't find many sets of veterans that were more capable of building a fort, should they need to, at least Roman veterans before standards about building a fort after every day's march slacked off. Banding together for mutual defense and support would make sense in the scenario you outline above so perhaps something like walled steadholds makes sense - so smaller than a town, but containing 2 or more family groupings.