Alternate Roman Empire World

I've started working on a hack set in an alternate Roman Empire where magic and mythology exist. The Empire is just beginning to stretch into the neighboring lands and meet mysterious and dangerous foes. The characters are grouped into a small cohort, a special forces unit of sorts, and tasked with discovery or elimination of a threat (or things along those lines).

Probably will include mass combat rules as well.

Has anyone already worked on something like this? Any comments or suggestions?

Thank you.

So I’m a classics major, and this is straight-up my jam.

I’m not sure how much work you did on the classes, but I do have a couple ideas--the officer class (Centurions?) could have moves that give other party members +1, the velites would be the sneaky guys, etc. When it comes to magic, you could maybe have one class and split it--some moves are priest/priestess-like, some moves are more hedge sorcerer/sorceress? Alternatively, the priest/priestess could be the class for magic and charisma, geared towards buffing (auspices!), while the sorcerer/sorceress could be more geared towards straight-up damage dealing (curse tablets). Also, Rome was a pretty restrictive society, so you might want to consider having the for-real magic alter the social dynamics in some ways, to give players a little more freedom.

Apart from that, I’ve got some questions:

• What specific period are we talking about? Cause there’s a big difference between the army under Augustus and the army under Caracalla.
• What kinds of threats? I personally am more interested in freaky monsters than straight-up conquering--I like the idea of throwing legionaries at enemies they were never meant to face.

Sorry about the delayed response. Have been away from the forums for a bit, but have done a lot of work on the game. Time period is basically end of the republic/beginning of the empire, but this is an alternate world so it's not exact. The playbooks are pretty well set for now and follow much of what you suggested. They are: aurores, decanus, gladiator, hastati, magus, medicus, praedo, triarii, velite, and venator. The magus playbook is the only one that needs significant work, and that's mostly the arcanum (spells). Many of the threats are classic monsters like the chimera or gorgon, but also gangs of celtic-like warbands and natural (ish) threats like haunted forests.

No worries! Glad to see you're still working on it. The playbooks all sound really interesting--I'd love to take a look, if you don't mind sharing?

I'm more than happy to share the playbooks with any interested. They are currently only hosted in a Facebook playtest group. PM me your email address and I will send them over. Would love to hear any feedback you have to offer.

- Martin

Quickstart rules have been posted to DriveThruRPG for anyone curious. Would love to hear any comments/feedback. Thank you.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/208332/Ruma-Dawn-of-Empire-Quickstart-Rules

Kickstarter campaign is live at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aryus/ruma-dawn-of-empire-rpg

Thanks for taking a look!

Looking really sweet. I made up a silly game while hiking with a friend, it was basically British Colonials versus a Roman culture that pulled a Japanese-style seclusion a while ago, but also had bullshit voodoo magic. Think emplaced cannons firing against charging masses of Roman legionaries while 40k-esque demons are being summoned. British characters had "Britishness" in place of Weird/Fatum, and Romans had "Cowardice" in place of Cool/Fortis(? I think I got the right one).

ANYWAY. Digression aside, it's really really hard to kill these characters. Like very hard. Unless marking a debility doesn't restore any health, in which case hitting maximum harm means not retreating has a definite chance to cripple you in a couple rounds. Which is ok I guess, but still feels a little... sudden? I'm not sure, but pacing seems to be a thing.

Are genders fixed? Like, 100%? That is a choice that you can make, but if anyone is going to be the mold-breaking female legionnairess, it'll be a PC. Just a thought.

Keen to see how this develops.