Any Roman history nerds here?

[SJB]

Useful graphic.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One of my players suggested that the settlement be 100% veterans setting up apartment blocks and a small town, and not active military at all. Apparently there's a historical precedent for this. (I confess, most of what I know of Rome comes from Asterix comics, although they did have the Mansions of the Gods story, which featured apartments set up for veterans to pacify the Gauls of the comic.)

Any thoughts on whether this would be better as an official military base or just a civilian enterprise? As @Fenris-77 notes, the veterans are certainly more than capable of building a defensible space on their own.

 

[SJB]

There’s an ACKS scenario called the Sinister Stone of Sakkara set in the Borderlands of the Auran Empire (cough Roman). The first part of the scenario is placed in a beleaguered Imperial fort with floor plans, etc. provided.

 

[Mad_Jack]

You could get a lot of mileage from a set-up where a bunch of veterans have been recruited and subsidized to build a new settlement in advance of civilian settlers arriving. Hell, what if an entire legion had been down-sized now that the war was over, and some government official came to them to offer the chance to essentially become PMCs contracted to establish a new town?
On any given day, a party could be functioning as police, caravan guards escorting civilian settlers, scouts, political envoys or trade representatives to neighboring settlements/tribes, etc., or even doing traditional adventuring stuff like clearing bandits out of the forest...
It'd get even better if the veterans have to sometimes deal with the whims of the newly-minted (politically appointed) civilian Governer who's going to be ruling the settlement once it's established.

Or, here's another idea - What if the former Commander of the now-defunct Legion was given a huge land grant for their service, and establishing the new settlement is part of the terms of the grant? So he came to his former troops looking for volunteers to help him build the settlement and pretty much the entire Legion signed on.

 

[Dioltach]

I'm not a scholar of Roman history, but I've seen Gladiator like five times, so...

 

[UngainlyTitan]

One of my players suggested that the settlement be 100% veterans setting up apartment blocks and a small town, and not active military at all. Apparently there's a historical precedent for this. (I confess, most of what I know of Rome comes from Asterix comics, although they did have the Mansions of the Gods story, which featured apartments set up for veterans to pacify the Gauls of the comic.)

Any thoughts on whether this would be better as an official military base or just a civilian enterprise? As @Fenris-77 notes, the veterans are certainly more than capable of building a defensible space on their own.

A lot really depends on the era. Essentially slightly different things went on in the late Republic, the Early Empire and the later Empire.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A lot really depends on the era. Essentially slightly different things went on in the late Republic, the Early Empire and the later Empire.

My thinking is this is an analogue to the Roman Empire at its peak. (I've been running games in Ptolus for 16 years, which is set in the last few years before its version of the Holy Roman Empire falls apart, probably violently, and want a different tone here.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

My thinking is this is an analogue to the Roman Empire at its peak. (I've been running games in Ptolus for 16 years, which is set in the last few years before its version of the Holy Roman Empire falls apart, probably violently, and want a different tone here.)

So Augustus to Marcus Aurelius? To be honest I am not sure, it is a long time since I looked at Roman history in detail. I think Augustus did quite a bit of military settlement but mostly in Italy but later you are talking about a stable set of legions garrisoning the frontier and no major standing down of large groups of soldiers.
I suspect that in that period you had a lot of old soldiers retiring to the nearby towns where the legion was garrisoned.
Then you have the 3rd century crisis and the Diocletian reforms where the legions were seriously reformed and more was done by Auxiliariae.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Veteran settlements were an idea that recurred every 2-3 generations. Some of the problems were:

• Nobles would get upset they couldn't claim more land for their clan
• Veterans often left their colony to return to the garrison where they had spent a decade or more and quite likely their wife had family
• Land grants required constant expansion, creating unnecessary wars
• Veteran colonies created potential rebellion points, either a source of partisans for their general or anger at poor quality of their land grant

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Veteran settlements were an idea that recurred every 2-3 generations. Some of the problems were:

• Nobles would get upset they couldn't claim more land for their clan
• Veterans often left their colony to return to the garrison where they had spent a decade or more and quite likely their wife had family
• Land grants required constant expansion, creating unnecessary wars
• Veteran colonies created potential rebellion points, either a source of partisans for their general or anger at poor quality of their land grant

Yeah, my thinking is that, if we end up doing more than just treating this as a home base for dungeon crawls, it will all eventually go at least one or two types of wrong.