Roman Setting Discussion

Nonono. You misunderstand my point. I am merely suggesting the greatest time to set your campaign would be around peak empire-growing time. However, I do not discriminate.

No Roman is my enemy. But to all other setting barbarians... Vae Victis

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Remember Teutoburg Forest.

QUINTILIUS VARUS

Eat shit, imperial scum.

GERMANIA BELONGS TO THE NORDS.

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Sorry my setting has GUNS and ANIME BABES and I'm not some FAGGOT.

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>>Not playing in the greatest setting available to us.

Ancient Finnish And Korean Empires >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Roman "empire"

play age of decadence

>Not playing in the greatest setting available to us.

Yeah, I've also noticed serious lack of Warring State period settings in TTRPG

>a setting where stoically dying is expected of PCs

Toppest keks.

SSDs do well, and there are entire archives of permanent electronic storage media archived by the various media companies. Literally just finished a project on helping htem move from disk-media to high-level NAS/SAN read-write networks.

You do understand such basic concepts like changing technology, language drift and other factors, combined with literal durability of objects... right?
Riddle me this - can you EASILY play nowdays a recording on a magnetic tape, stored for 40 years in best conditions, so the tape itself is undamaged? You know, just getting the right player for it.
Or picking a wax tube from early 20th century, with sound recorded on it. After all, ALL you need is a needle and a tube close to it.

Records that aren't readily accessable by themselves are a fucking disaster. I know how hard it's to access data stored in my city's library when the microfilm projector is down. And technically all you need is a looking glass and a source of light.

I don't like the Roman aesthetic
Scutums are heavy
Gladius are short
Latin names are silly

Wheres your heavy cavalry, why do you hate effective cavalry?

>heavy cavalry
>effective cavalry
Pick one

>heavy infantry
>effective infantry
pick one

mostly it's the vikings who I admit are largely a flavor thing. Plus, to open up technologies and different society styles just a little.

otherwise I would just be doing the full Late/Sub-Roman Britain.

With fantasy I can wrap my head around stuff like female knights, wizards, and liches but with something Roman I can't really picture what the equivalent of a wizard would be, or a female fighter.

That's partially because Rome was, nothing, if not patriarchal and not terribly superstitious that I can tell (least not much more than the normal, modern individual)]

Chances are, a wizard would explicitly be related to the clergy of Roman religion or tied to a pagan culture within the empire.

I think you can still swing a female fighter if they're part of an auxiliary unit where they didn't seem to give as much a shit.

Rather fight the Romans than help them conquer my homeland, the jerks.

But they are the same, so what are you smoking, horse-fucker? Lack of organised infantry was literally the only reason cavalry got its 5 minutes in history. Once infantry went back to being organised, cavalry was useless once again.
It always was, but due to retarded barbarians destroying everything, including military organisation, cavalry got a chance to "shine".

>Celtic druid
>Priest of just about any relgion
>Edgy barbarian female fighter
Here, solved. The concept is about them NOT being Romans, but operating on Roman orders.

The classical age would be very good for intrigue heavy grand strategy. You're not trying to knock off some bandits, you're conquering the frackin world. You don't just steal and murder, you commit espionage and assassination. You don't guard some caravan, You bodyguard the General of the entire Army from raiders and assassins.

if they're not Romans how is it a Roman setting?

I don't know much about military history user but are shit like Polish Hussars memes then?

I mean I hear a lot about how useful Cavalry is all the time, when did we start becoming organised again? Is it around the time we picked up pike squares or something?

>What are Roman auxiliaries
>What are borderlands

I'm a Pole. Hussars are on the same meme level as Sparta - they've got their ass beaten more often than they won, but those few victories they had were all spinned into legends to stroke national ego.

And yeah, pikes comming back was the end of cavalry. Once firearms rolled into the equation, cavalry became auxiliary. Once bayonettes became a thing, cavalry was already outdated. The final blow was around American Civil War.
Part of the reason why Polish Hussars were so "effective" was because they've rarely were facing pike formations. Once Swedes showed up with Gustavian drill, the show was over, only Polish military didn't get the memo for next 50 years.

What if a solar storm wipes out half of the electronics and electrical grids on the planets? It has happened before.

>What are Roman auxiliaries
Dumb barbarian fodder
>What are borderlands
Empty places that had no civilization until Roman arrived?

The concept of borderland is to use things on the ROMAN side of border, even if as cannon fodder. Which should make civilising the region and turning it Roman even faster, because you are using up local manpower and making more space for settlers, while the people you are (ab)using think they can get gratitude of the Republic/Empire for their service, while ending up in suicide missions.
A win-win.

Alright, cheers user. I was talking to a friend earlier today about how weird it is that proper military tactics took so long to come back considering how obvious it seems to us today.

Guess I'll stop bigging up Hussars then.

If you have such a Roman Empire boner, you should check out Lex Arcana

Doesn't sound like a fun setting for a non-Roman citizen.

Depends on how you play it. Not sure if you are the same user I've originally replied to, but the point was to show that you can have a Roman setting with non-Romans in it taking active role AND depending on how you want to present Romans themselves, either outright abuse said non-Romans in the most cynical way, or actually being the good guys who gave those people a chance to shine and place in the Republic/Empire based on their merit and working on their citizenship.
It all depends on how you want to spin Rome itself in your setting and applying non-Romans to it later.

It's not about the tactics being non-obvious, but the logistical and infrastructural limitations, combined with cultural influences.
If you have bunch of tribals taking over, who never saw a formation in their life and adhere to "warrior code" and then actively "hunt" peasants to keep them low and obedient with rising feudalism, it's pretty hard to find a reason why you would like to train then said peasants into being combat-ready and capable force. Because there is always risk they might turn against you.

For pretty similar reasons all eastern countries (starting from Poland itself) were very eager to hire Western mercenaries into their armies, while in the same time very much against training their own people in Western-style tactics. Because that meant training peasants to be confident, capable and well-organised as a group. Something nobody living on heavy serfdom would like to see.

Then there is logistical problem. Arming a group of 500 men with pikes doesn't sound that hard, until you realise the amount of resources, craftsmen and tools it takes. Then there is getting those people together in one place and training them. That takes both proper organisation, time and money. And someone who knows how to do this, while being still loyal to you.
It's really no wonder mercenary armies were so dominant starting from High Medieval until Napoleonic Wars.

Romans are never good guys

There is a thing called "lighter shade of dark". For me, the ideal situation would be to have Romans as fucking invaders into your land, but on the other side, having local variety of thugs, large tribes and what not, so evetnaully as a non-Roman you end up in a classic case where you work for them, solely because in the pre-Roman power struggle your group, village, tribe or what not was the underdog and now you have strong patron.
Fits like a glove the way how Romans were handling shit like this, too. And doesn't make them gook in the slightest. Just the lesser evil.

Guess it's really time to change my keyboard for a new one.

>Rome
>Lesser evil
Maybe more organized evil, didn't Caesar massacre a lot of women and children along the Rhine?

Like I said, it depends on who you are and what is your situation.
However why do you try to insist I'm trying to whitewash Romans is beyond me.

My standard go-to example is relation between French and all sort of "Mountainiard" groups that allied themselves with French (and then Americans), because that was their only way of survival - using the outside, "powerful" patron as their protector, in turn givin their service.
Romans did that shit two millenias earlier, along their divide et impera.

>And yeah, pikes comming back was the end of cavalry

Bullshit. Cavalry weren't the gods of the battlefield, but then again, they never really were (Ask the French at Agincourt, for instance.) They were, however, extremely useful both in a strategic sense as scouts, skirmishers, and raiders.

On the battlefield itself, cavalry were great for restricting the movement of infantry - who would generally form squares (And therefore be mostly immobile) if there were horsemen around, which made them extremely vulnerable to attacks from other infantry or artillery (For which Napoleon was specifically famous.) Cavalrymen were also very good at attacking artillery, provided they could get the jump on the cannons. Unprepared infantry could be slaughtered by a well-timed cavalry attack, and once the battle was over, cavalry were used to prevent the enemy from reforming by harrying retreating enemies.

So to say that pikes were the end of cavalry when they were being used effectively hundreds of years later is silly.

The Romans were very practical and because of that could be very, very brutal to their enemies. It was best to end a fight before it began because your enemies knew what would happen if they tried and failed, after all.

Julius Caesar massacred a lot of people in Gaul. That is why the Roman people loved him as they held a grudge from the Gallic/Celtic sacking of Rome in ~390 BC.

>Discredits reintroduction of pike formation
>Brings Agincourt in the same sentence
I'm not even reading further, go fuck a goat

Most of those places was talking about have EM protection meaning the Solar Storm would not harm the content.

Pike formations were not used at Agincourt, so...?

Ech wasn't big part of why heavy cavalery and stuff like hussars got phased out was that they were to expensive for what they did. Training rider, getting combat ready horses, armor and rest of equipment did cost a cubic shit ton.

Well the love part is due to how generous he was handing out the spoils of war to the masses. Previous generals had done the same but not in the scale Ceasar did it and it was one of the reason some senators disliked him as they saw Ceasars generosity as buttering up the plebs for his takeover of the Roman Republic.

When I say people, I generally mean the plebs moreso than the senators who hated pretty much anyone and everyone.

REEEEEEEEE

Awww, fuck, this was a fun game.

The really expensive part - at least for hussars - was in horses. You needed to have FOUR of them, all highly trained and having a lot of traits to be useful for their job, while it was expecting you are going to lose AT LEAST two of them in single battle.
So if a war was going too long, you easily ended up with situation where you had hussars, but no suitable horses for them. It would be hard to "mass produce" such horses with modern understanding of animal husbandry and we are talking about even early pre-scientific horse breeding here.

And then came advances in firearms, but most importantly advances in firearms tactics, making hussars all but obsolete around 1680s.
But honestly speaking, they were obsolete the moment they've showed up. It was lack of enemies having proper counters against their charges that allowed an utterly outdated formation thrive, rather than them being some sort of unstoppable killing machines.

*about not even

Even if not for advances in firearms and proper armies showing up after Deluge there was no way Commonwealth could afford to field unit so expensive for long and they would get droped anyway

there was an ancient finnish empire? i knew there were korean empires.

Commonwealth couldn't afford them during the Deluge, while technically being at its peak when the whole clusterfuck of 1650s started.

It's a meme/joke about Finnish and Korean nationalism. user. You must be really new in the net

>You must be really new in the net

nah, just new to rome threads.

Explain to us all what a joke about Ancient Finnish Empire and your inability to get it has to do with you being new to Roman threads

It's ok, user. Everyone was once new. The part that matters is ability to admit it.

What would a party of 5 look like in a fantasy Roman setting?

A centurion of some sort. Probably gladius/shield
Legionnaire tank with a big rectangular Marian shield.
Dacian auxiliary with a two-handed falx.
Archer auxiliary from Crete, Syria, or something.
Maybe a retiarius style gladiator?
A priest of some sort. Not sure of which Roman god would be associated with healing or whatever.

The only joke about Finnish empire goes like this.
Hohol catches a golden fish. It offers him 3 wishes. He thinks about it, tugs on his moustache, and comes up with:
- I want Mongolia to invade Finland.
Ok - goes the golden fish. It is done. What about your second with.
Hohol smiles and repeats:
- I want Mongolia to invade Finland
Same repeats the third time. Exasperated magic fish asks:
-You asked for Mongol-Finnish war 3 times in a row. What did you get out of that? What was the point?
- But consider, - answers hohol, - how ruined moscal's kaleyards now are!

and which is the girl of the party? I'm guessing the archer, but she could never be an auxiliary

There is a version of this joke about Poland, USSR and China, where a Pole wishes for PLA to muster their troops, get all the way to Poland and return upon reaching borders. Three times. When asked the fuck, he just shrugs and says "Imagine what they did to USSR on their way back and forth"

>Explain to us all what a joke about Ancient Finnish Empire and your inability to get it has to do with you being new to Roman threads

To be fair, the joke was brought up in a Rome-comparing manner, so it's reasonable to assume that the meme includes the whole "these empires were better than Rome" bit.

>all eastern countries (starting from Poland itself) were very eager to hire Western mercenaries into their armies, while in the same time very much against training their own people in Western-style tactics
Not all
Russia gladly adopted Western infantry tactics, and did not use mercenaries *in formations* - with notable exception during the Time of Troubles. Hiring specialists from abroad (as officer corps) was a regular practice, though

user, Russia also happend to have Peter THE Great, who picked up Eastern country and literally died trying westernising it, but he DID shake the entire structure, top to bottom and then bottom to top.

that and the fact that I'd never seen it brought up in any thread on Veeky Forums outside of this one today, yeah.

maybe user's just mad his meme isn't as widespread as he thinks it is.

Girl is their camp-follower, bed-warmer, clothes-washer and a healer (in traditional "wash wounds, apply bandages" sense)

that's not very fantasy, or interesting. how about one of those hunnic horse riding archer girls?

Wrong culture, wrong time period, pathetically wrong opinion

Not to forget the strategic role as scouts and raiders, even in the age of Bayonets. Never ignore the simple Hussars and their "little war", raiding supplies and securing villages.

How's it the wrong culture if a Roman setting is about the influence of Rome, or a Roman like entity exerting power over its neighbors and eventually conquering them, but not necessarily about Rome? How's it the wrong time period when no time period was ever stated? How's it a wrong opinion when its correct?

While that is true, it is worth pointing out that Peter did not grew in the vacuum. Why was he so enraptured with West? That's because he grew up hanging around the 'Nemets District' (sorry for buthered translation). What was that? Well, it was a district in Moscow where westerners and their families lived, set up as a separate community due to some cultural differenties - thakfully it never went the ghetto route.
Why was there a district for westerners? Because Peter's older brother, his father, his grandfather, who ruled before him, were already trying to get western specialists in Russia, and they were already westernizing the army by introducing western-style regiments with western officers into it

Most games are set in gunpowderless Late Middle Ages with varying degrees of Renaissance flare, both pretty distant from the Early Middle Ages.

Maybe a Germanic woman of some sort if you really had to have one, though Romans of any sort were hugely misogynistic so I can see them not really going for it.

Well yeah, its fantasy that's sort of a given to take liberties to make things more interesting. More interesting would be things that normally don't occur like a female fighter.

Wizards would be haruspex and augurs, maybe some barbarian shamans or druids.

Female warriors would almost certainly cross dress and pretend to be men. There were a number of cases (I'm recalling the American civil war here, but still) of female soldiers living as men til they were killed and stripped and their gender was discovered.

or just not have them be part of the Legion, that seems to be the entire crux of the conflict.

Entirely reasonable as well. There's no reason "the Chick" can't be a second or third son Equites or Patrician bastard city bred pussy whose father bought him rank.

or just take all the liberties one usually does with medieval Western Europe settings, unless misogyny is integral to the society and setting to the point it can't be ignored.

Vestals who cast fire spells sourced from the Hearthfire?

Oracles who see events before they happen?

Ascelpius would be the god of healing.

Oh look, the remnant is getting uppity again. Regiment, stand by to fire by rank. I see they still haven't learned the shield wall is out-dated.

Hypiscratea the Amazon dressed as a man and went into battle with her husband Mithridates Eupator. Sarmatian women had to kill and scalp a person before they could get married.

What would be the army deployment of the Eastern Roman Empire on the field? How different were they from their Western counterparts?

ERE was more about cavalry than infantry. After that, not quite sure.

Depends on period, really. But it definitely dropped any "Roman aesthetics" around 8th century.

It is pretty integral to Roman society, yeah. Even moreso than actual historical Europe.

tfw the Vestal loses her virginity so gets buried alive.

Most famously they made use of heavy armored cavalry, known as cataphracts.