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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sniffles" data-source="post: 3962452" data-attributes="member: 30035">Somehow I missed this thread until I was looking for something else. I just recently finished watching the series myself, and my friends and I have all been talking about how much fun it would be to run a campaign in an ancient Roman-inspired setting. But I think there are some modification you'd have to make to make it fun for players. Celebrim mentioned some good ones in his post. Trying to recreate what happens in the series is likely not going to work unless all your players are history buffs, and are willing to be "railroaded" by history.For myself, I'd want to see a campaign in a fantasy version of Rome. Introduce magic, and add elements of sexual and racial equality that didn't exist in the real world. As a female player I wouldn't want to be stuck playing only male characters (despite the series characters like Atia of the Julii, most Roman women didn't get out much). And I suspect many players wouldn't want to be limited to playing only humans, either. If your players are a similar group, you'd probably need to find ways to include dwarves and elves and halflings in your version of Rome.I think the best way of introducing an adventuring group in such a setting would be similar to the way Vorenus and Pullo are introduced in the series. Have them be soldiers and send them on a mission. I imagine the Roman army had scouts and interpreters just as armies did in other periods of history, so non-humans might take those roles. Or possibly some of the PCs could be camp followers or support personnel. They could even be slaves.Slavery brings up a concept that's hard for many players to get around in my experience. Players tend to react to it the way we would now, rather than looking at it the way the members of a slave-owning culture would. Few Romans would object to slavery, since their civilization was practically built on it. Even the slaves probably didn't object to it much. Slaves had the potential to gain their freedom, they often had positions of power (like Caesar's aide Posca), and many of the cultures the Romans conquered also practiced slavery. But it's hard to get players out of the mindset of opposing slavery and wanting to set all slaves free. Although I suppose that could be a goal for the PCs if it's something the players feel strongly about.Religion is another concept that the show did nicely, but players are likely to have trouble with. D&D tends to treat polytheism as if it were a kind of monotheism. You don't worship a pantheon of deities, which is what really happened in polytheistic cultures. Instead you cherry-pick one specific deity in D&D. But that one isn't as difficult to get around. Eberron has already taken steps toward handling a polytheistic religion more the way it would be handled in real life. I'd personally like to see a Roman campaign put more focus on religion in daily life; look at the way Vorenus had a shrine in his house, and there were shrines on the streets that people could visit as a matter of course in their daily routine. Pullo even went on a sort of pilgrimmage to help Vorenus. I could see that religious aspect of life as another way to get the characters involved and show the players more of the game world without having to give them historical lectures.</blockquote>

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