Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3944647" data-attributes="member: 4937">With good players, sure, you can emulate just about any feel.  One of the problems that you run into though is that the players have to be as stoked about the concept as you are.  In this case, they have to be willing to go out and read a few hundred pages of social history about life in Rome (or at the very least, watch the series).  If they don't, then they won't know the concepts that they need to be in character.  Alot of really interesting campaigns die stillborn, because they depend on the characters knowing much more than the players do about the setting.  This puts the game referee in a real trap.  If he doesn't explain the setting, then the game will seem really arbitrary and random to the players.  The players will do things in ignorance that the characters would never do, and then the DM will punish the players for his lack of communication.  But on the other hand, if the DM does try to explain the setting, the first N sessions will be so didactic and so much like lectures that the players will be rightly bored and feel like mere observers.Highly knowledgable, highly skilled, and highly mature players might can get you over that hump, but its a pretty big one.  Rome would actually be easier to do than a homebrew, because at least the players have reference material to access outside the game session.</blockquote>