StreamOfTheSky
Adventurer
You said it before I could. Kudos.
Greece vs. Rome: Which is better for a Campaign?
- Thread starter Wik
- Start date
You said it before I could. Kudos.
I voted Rome, since it is a much broader world in scope and in diversity. A strict Ancient Greek setting is more limited to Greece, Persia, and a few other areas. The Roman world contains Rome proper, the barbarian frontier of Gaul, the distant untamed land of Britain, the flourishing capital of agriculture and the sciences of Egypt, the ancient land of Greece, and so on. Having access to the entire Mediterranean Sea region is a big advantage. Points of Light is still even a viable concept out on the periphery of the Empire.
Of course, my preferred route would be to liberally steal concepts from the ancient Greek era, the Hellenistic period, and the Roman periods all at once into a custom setting.
Of course, my preferred route would be to liberally steal concepts from the ancient Greek era, the Hellenistic period, and the Roman periods all at once into a custom setting.
It depends on what you mean by Greek. If it is set during the time of the great epics, no not alot of people would be speaking Greek. If you mean Classical Greece with the Olympics, philosophy and SPARTA, then yeah it's starting to catch on. It's not until after Alexander's death that Greek becomes the Lingua Franka for the ancient world.
In Rome and its provinces, Greek was considered the language of the educated until the time of the first emperor. After that, Latin starts to be the common language.
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Dr. Strangemonkey
First Post
The Bronze Age is bitchin no matter how you swing it.
And I think Byzantium or the Early Medieval/Late Classical period are the best models for an awesome DnD game ever.
Early histories of Livy Rome would work awesomely well and is suitably heroic.
But the best thing to do is set it in the Early and Middle Republican period of Rome so you have Greek Successor states and city states, Carthaginian trade cartels, and Roman clients all roaming around a mediterranean and near east that - by the literary sources - was full of low scale wonders and strange magics.
You get the best of Greek and Rome without later Roman stability or early Greek overwhelming madness.
And - of course - you've got to Pulp it up to the Nth degree:
Harry Hausen monsters
gods speaking through masks
witches
curses
lycanthropes
traces of Atlantis
Hyperborean Giants
Druids
Magi
exotic slaves
Ebon Carthaginian Trade Ships arriving by night
Elephants
Lions
Weird versions of the above
Sacred Bears hiding in the hills of Italy
Cults
Child Sacrifice
Tatooed Barbarians drugging themselves into frenzy
Chariots
Mad Priests in obscure temples
Greek Machinery
Heroic Relics
Banners bearing the blessings of nations
Egyptian Astrologers
Alchemy
...and so forth
And I think Byzantium or the Early Medieval/Late Classical period are the best models for an awesome DnD game ever.
Early histories of Livy Rome would work awesomely well and is suitably heroic.
But the best thing to do is set it in the Early and Middle Republican period of Rome so you have Greek Successor states and city states, Carthaginian trade cartels, and Roman clients all roaming around a mediterranean and near east that - by the literary sources - was full of low scale wonders and strange magics.
You get the best of Greek and Rome without later Roman stability or early Greek overwhelming madness.
And - of course - you've got to Pulp it up to the Nth degree:
Harry Hausen monsters
gods speaking through masks
witches
curses
lycanthropes
traces of Atlantis
Hyperborean Giants
Druids
Magi
exotic slaves
Ebon Carthaginian Trade Ships arriving by night
Elephants
Lions
Weird versions of the above
Sacred Bears hiding in the hills of Italy
Cults
Child Sacrifice
Tatooed Barbarians drugging themselves into frenzy
Chariots
Mad Priests in obscure temples
Greek Machinery
Heroic Relics
Banners bearing the blessings of nations
Egyptian Astrologers
Alchemy
...and so forth
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Silverblade The Ench
First Post
Well, one of the most important countries in my own homebrew setting is based on Rome, literally. 
Romans from a *counter* Earth, so wasn't same as our Rome, came to an area, the remains of a mighty, but evil Empire decimated in the catastophic war that wrecked the world a millenia before.
Now, these Romans had soemwhat different ideas than "our" Rome. The Emperor was the head of the military and picked from within it by a random lottery from skilled and honourable centrions and officers. His job is to ensure the legions work well, and over see campaigns.
it is considered vile treachery for the Emperor to try and gain political power, or the senate gain military control, by law and custom, and this keeps things on a more even keel. It's worked mostly well for 4 millenia (bar a particularly malign hiccup that enforces the point).
The empire in times past was more brutal and expansionist, but for a long period it has been more benign, let once conquered naitons gain freedom, and is now looked on as a very stabilizing trade and military partner for the region. old grudges are mostly long gone in the face of mutual threats, trade and appreciation.
The Empire widely uses and encourages magic, but also has very strong laws and a codified police force, external agents and bounties are common place (so there's plenty of scope for adventurers, including detectives).
The basic law though, is that no one is allowed to carry a weapon beyond a knife or staff, without permits, and excessive magical violence is also illegal, obviously (ie, Fireball in town = gonna get you roasted in return).
magic is used ot help build the canals and roads that have greallty improved trade and food production, and the military has its own magical academy, orphans are taken in, trained and become support units for the legions.
The legions are armed/armoured in adamantine, over the millenia, the empire's adamantine mines have provided the army with superb advantage, and since the adamantine is practically impervious to damage and wear, it has accumulated. From being originally only a thing for officers, every legionary has such now, that with their training and magical and other support units makes them greatly feared.
A typical century will have 50 fighters lvl 2 to 4, adamntine shortsword and banded mail, large shield, javelins. 10 archers or slingers (some of whom will be scouts, so rangers or rogues), and 5 centurions (lvl 4 to 9 fighters), 5 spellcasters of lvl 3 to 7, plus one tribune or senior centurion, and 10 calvary of one specific type (light, archers or heavy). They are definatley NOT "warriors" or mooks, they are well trained soldiers.
many legions have specific make ups, and duties. Such as dwarven mountain regiments, heavy assault infantry (elites), etc.
The Empire does of course, have problems.
The ancient war left terrible regions of magical chaos and poison, from which threats may erupt, moutainous regions from which orcs etc may attack (so the empire has a line of defencive walls etc, think Hadrian's Wall D&D style), and the once Empror who became a tyrant, still lives as a vampiric lich and always dreams, and tries, to take his throne once more, which has lead ot catastrophic wars.
Great arenas mostly have races (Which are pretty huge and may have rocs, wyverns, magic carpets, as well as chariots, mastadons and all kinds of strange vehicles and beasts), gladiators rarely fight to the death any more, unless condemned criminals, and most serious criminals are sent to the adamantine mines, which is a slow death sentence as the super hard dust eats away at their lungs...of course, there are large thieves guilds, it's a rich palce indeed! Hence the need for having a true police force, not just a city watch (many wealthy districts hire mercenary companies for extra security, and each major town will have a legion stationed in the town or close by, on a rotated duty, as well as as civic militia for major threats).
The main city is a vast place, sheltering inside the partially remaning, brobdignagian-sized defencive works of the long destroyed empire.
Two elite legions guard it at all times, inside with more near by,
"subura", the place most ordinary folks dwell is a rough place in the nastier wards.
The city has vast warren underneath it of anicent ruins, though some places have been cleared down to bedrock for safety after fires or monster invasions.
Pretty fun place
Had a long running campaign where the PCs were "vigeles" (police, in this setting, unlike Rome, per se).
One fun adventure was discovering the local pub they liked, the pies they ate, well, they came from a butcher, who was a yuan-ti, and well..."long pig" tastes good, don't it?
Romans from a *counter* Earth, so wasn't same as our Rome, came to an area, the remains of a mighty, but evil Empire decimated in the catastophic war that wrecked the world a millenia before.
Now, these Romans had soemwhat different ideas than "our" Rome. The Emperor was the head of the military and picked from within it by a random lottery from skilled and honourable centrions and officers. His job is to ensure the legions work well, and over see campaigns.
it is considered vile treachery for the Emperor to try and gain political power, or the senate gain military control, by law and custom, and this keeps things on a more even keel. It's worked mostly well for 4 millenia (bar a particularly malign hiccup that enforces the point).
The empire in times past was more brutal and expansionist, but for a long period it has been more benign, let once conquered naitons gain freedom, and is now looked on as a very stabilizing trade and military partner for the region. old grudges are mostly long gone in the face of mutual threats, trade and appreciation.
The Empire widely uses and encourages magic, but also has very strong laws and a codified police force, external agents and bounties are common place (so there's plenty of scope for adventurers, including detectives).
The basic law though, is that no one is allowed to carry a weapon beyond a knife or staff, without permits, and excessive magical violence is also illegal, obviously (ie, Fireball in town = gonna get you roasted in return).
magic is used ot help build the canals and roads that have greallty improved trade and food production, and the military has its own magical academy, orphans are taken in, trained and become support units for the legions.
The legions are armed/armoured in adamantine, over the millenia, the empire's adamantine mines have provided the army with superb advantage, and since the adamantine is practically impervious to damage and wear, it has accumulated. From being originally only a thing for officers, every legionary has such now, that with their training and magical and other support units makes them greatly feared.
A typical century will have 50 fighters lvl 2 to 4, adamntine shortsword and banded mail, large shield, javelins. 10 archers or slingers (some of whom will be scouts, so rangers or rogues), and 5 centurions (lvl 4 to 9 fighters), 5 spellcasters of lvl 3 to 7, plus one tribune or senior centurion, and 10 calvary of one specific type (light, archers or heavy). They are definatley NOT "warriors" or mooks, they are well trained soldiers.
many legions have specific make ups, and duties. Such as dwarven mountain regiments, heavy assault infantry (elites), etc.
The Empire does of course, have problems.
The ancient war left terrible regions of magical chaos and poison, from which threats may erupt, moutainous regions from which orcs etc may attack (so the empire has a line of defencive walls etc, think Hadrian's Wall D&D style), and the once Empror who became a tyrant, still lives as a vampiric lich and always dreams, and tries, to take his throne once more, which has lead ot catastrophic wars.
Great arenas mostly have races (Which are pretty huge and may have rocs, wyverns, magic carpets, as well as chariots, mastadons and all kinds of strange vehicles and beasts), gladiators rarely fight to the death any more, unless condemned criminals, and most serious criminals are sent to the adamantine mines, which is a slow death sentence as the super hard dust eats away at their lungs...of course, there are large thieves guilds, it's a rich palce indeed! Hence the need for having a true police force, not just a city watch (many wealthy districts hire mercenary companies for extra security, and each major town will have a legion stationed in the town or close by, on a rotated duty, as well as as civic militia for major threats).
The main city is a vast place, sheltering inside the partially remaning, brobdignagian-sized defencive works of the long destroyed empire.
Two elite legions guard it at all times, inside with more near by,
"subura", the place most ordinary folks dwell is a rough place in the nastier wards.
The city has vast warren underneath it of anicent ruins, though some places have been cleared down to bedrock for safety after fires or monster invasions.
Pretty fun place
Had a long running campaign where the PCs were "vigeles" (police, in this setting, unlike Rome, per se).
One fun adventure was discovering the local pub they liked, the pies they ate, well, they came from a butcher, who was a yuan-ti, and well..."long pig" tastes good, don't it?
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This certainly deals with the relatively alien nature of ancient Greek culture.
Greece did a lot of stuff first, and best, like art and philosophy, but the way individual Greeks saw the world and thought of themselves is very different to the modern West, which derives its culture from Germanic, Christian, and Greco-Roman Classical roots. The Greeks don't seem to have had a concept of individual rights, as we understand it, whereas Roman Citizenship concept is not so far from our own ideas. Greek 'freedom' was the freedom of the polis, the city state, to be free from external interfernce, and freedom of the Hellenes from outside influence. The Romans had a certain concept of individual liberty, though much less developed than our own, which I think comes primarily from Germanic and to some extent Celttic roots filtered through Christian teachings.
Conversely, the Homeric Greeks certainly had a highly individualistic concept of Heroism based on individual glory, whereas Roman myth-heroes were always acting on behalf of the Roman people. A game like Iron Heroes focused on 'kewl powerz' seems to suit Heroic Greece well.
I picked Greece, mostly for "points of light" reasons. I see borderlands, wilderness, and lots of warfare as key to a D&D setting, and ancient Greece is full of that. Big wars (Persian, Pelopponesian), little wars (somebody's messing with Thebes), plus lots of interesting states (Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Troy, and the Amazons of Lesbos, for starters) to intrigue with each other.
For Rome, you could get some very interesting settings, but the "obvious" -- 44 BC, Julius Caesar stuff -- doesn't strike me as D&Dish.
Something like campaigning with Caesar in Gaulia, or being Romano-British and hanging out with Arthur as the empire crumbles, could be really cool.
There was a movie in 2007 or 2008 called, I believe, the Last Legion, about getting a boy emperor out of fallen Rome, and escaping to Britain. That was ALL D&Dish goodness.
But "average" high imperial Rome is not D&Dish to me. I studied Latin for 3.5 years and I love Rome Total War, so I'm not a barbarian, but I'd go Greek on this one.
For Rome, you could get some very interesting settings, but the "obvious" -- 44 BC, Julius Caesar stuff -- doesn't strike me as D&Dish.
Something like campaigning with Caesar in Gaulia, or being Romano-British and hanging out with Arthur as the empire crumbles, could be really cool.
There was a movie in 2007 or 2008 called, I believe, the Last Legion, about getting a boy emperor out of fallen Rome, and escaping to Britain. That was ALL D&Dish goodness.
But "average" high imperial Rome is not D&Dish to me. I studied Latin for 3.5 years and I love Rome Total War, so I'm not a barbarian, but I'd go Greek on this one.
Jack7
First Post
Every real world historical, literary and religious source I could find or read (I have a personal theory that not only did Byzantium spur on the Renaissance, but also that it was the forerunner to much of how the United States developed). I even used a few game supplements like Byzantium: Beyond the Golden Gate.
But the game, while taking place in the Empire, and the Basilegate Team - traveling everywhere from the Frankish Empire and Britain, to eastern and northern Africa, to the Near East, to secretly infiltrating Persia - is really most interested in the legend of Prester John.
In the setting Prester John (they think he might be) is real, not myth, and lives on another world that is geographically an exact copy of Earth (our world is the setting for the game) but is different biologically (different animals and creatures inhabit it) and culturally. On that world Elves and Eladrin and Giants (though I don't call them that) and so forth are real.
On that world magic is real but very dangerous (can even cause magical mutations, which is where most monsters come from) and some of the inhabitants, like the Priest King (an Elf) of the largest and most well developed nation, want to find a replacement for it. He has sent agents to our world to study it and see if thaumaturgy, or miracle working (Divine magic) could be a possible replacement for their arcane magic. Many there have also become interested in human religion, though some are violently opposed to anything from the human world. So there are pro-human, anti-human, pro-Divine magic, pro-God, anti-Divine magic, anti-God factions on that world. And some who just want to retain arcane magic regardless of what happens with other kinds of magic because eon that world they rely upon arcane magic in the same way we rely upon technology in our world.
Some people in our world know of these other creatures visiting our world and some consider them very dangerous, deceitful, or that they may even be demons, agents of Satan, or forerunners of the Apocalypse. Some think that the Elves and others are actually the people of Prester John and want to make alliances with him, considering him a possible military and political ally too valuable to ignore. Others don't really know what to make of him, or his people.
But as these two separate worlds have become secretly entangled then not only have agents made it to our world, but so have monsters, and enemy agents who are seeking to make alliances with the enemies of the Byzantines, like Persia, and the Bulgarians. A few enemy agents have even appeared in India and China. And other strange things are happening like a lot of earthquakes, new plagues, animals and humans being kidnapped or disappearing (taken to the other world to be experimented upon by anti-human factions), even apparently graves breaking open and the dead sometimes walking the earth. As far as the populations are concerned most of these activities are kept secret or explained away as natural disasters or acts of God. But they keep happening, and not just in the Empire, but all over the known world.
So the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople formed up a team (the Basilegate - The Emperor's Legate) to go out and investigate these occurrences, fight monsters they encounter, try to make contact with the people from the other world, and see who they really are and what they really want. Meanwhile "Prester John" has formed up his own team (a different set of players, called the Caerkara) to go to our world and see what they can discover. Eventually the two teams crossed paths and now they even work together cooperatively on some missions.
It has worked real well as a setting for over ten years now. There is now even an African team and an Oriental team of human explorers/investigators/adventurers, and occasionally they work with the Basilegate too.
And then you've got the anti-teams, like the Anti-pope and the Dragoons who are out to hunt down and annihilate the Paladins, Rangers, and Cavaliers, and the groups from the other world who are out to kill humans or use them or experiment on them, and underneath that you have angels and demons secretly operating in background, and you got a lot of good stuff to keep players hopping and guessing as to what is really going on.
It's the best setting I've ever found or developed.
Yes, a lot of high-personality intrigue (the Romans would have never let an Alciabides run wild for long, they were to interested in law and order) and frontier's action. That's what makes Greece superior to me as a campaign and milieu setting.
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