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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 1097610" data-attributes="member: 8447">When there is talk of "ROME" we are covering an era from about 450 B.C. to 450 A.D., about 900 years of history.In that time, the culture and necessarily the laws altered.Take some of these notions about slavery:Some slaves owned slavesSeveral of the top bureaucrats under the Julio-Claudian emperors were slaves -- they were also amongst the richest men in all of the EmpireSlavery was not ethnic, nor was it necessarily inherited; equally, it was possible to place oneself into slavery in order to save one's family from greater debt and mass enslavementThere were laws about the ethical treatment of slaves, but these were not universally followed; conversely, several owners were taken to court over their treatment of slaves and some of the slaves were freed due to their treatmentThe problem here is D&D Alignment vs. reality(Warning!  Wombat On Soapbox!)Most societies are, in D&D terms, Lawful Neutral, in that they want to follow the laws, as the laws define the society, yet Good and Evil are difficult axioms to follow at large.  A Chaotic society may exist, at least for a while, but any group larger than a small group is going to have a VERY difficult time trying to be anything but Lawful, with a few squiggling over to Neutral.D&D wants to deal in Absolutes.  Societies are not so Absolute.Name a society that lasted for any appreciable length of time that you could name as Absolutely Evil where you will not get an arguement; the same goes for Absolutely Good.The closest you are going to get is probably something like Nazi Germany, and even there you are probably going to have a hard time labelling every single German as Evil.  Even in the aggragate, only a small but potent minority could be labelled as Truly Evil.So Rome was not EVIL in D&D terms.  Nor was it GOOD.  At best you will get Neutral, and that is only based on 21st century, North American/Western European, urban, educated, computer-literate standards.  Would YOU want your society to be judged by the standards of another society 100 years in the future in another part of the world?(The Wombat steps off his soapbox)So, D&D alignment standards do not apply to the Romans or any other RealWorld (tm) society.The only apply in a pure fantasty setting.  Never in reality.</blockquote>

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