Rome is teleported into a standard fantasy setting

>Rome is teleported into a standard fantasy setting.
>Create here the roman empire.

Could such a setting be taken seriously?

So, Codex Alera?

i'm pretty sure it's been done

something to do with the lost legion probably

>Rome is transported into D&D
>They're basically uppity lvl 1 commoners who're retarded enough to hate magic, they have no patron deity in the land and they're lawful evil

A mid-level LG paladin razes their polity and genocides them within a day or so. His god is very pleased.

The Romans were pragmatic people. They quickly abandoned and adopted whatever tactic or strategy worked. I'm sure they would be quick to adopt magic and arm themselves with the best equipment around.

Best Roman Empire?

Isekai shit.

No, you are the real motherfucker.

>Romans
>Hate magic

You what?

>Rome is teleported into a standard fantasy setting
>Rome
So what does this mean? The entire fucking city is plopped down in another world? Around what time? Republic? Pre- or Post-Marian? Or is it just a bunch of Roman soldiers being dropped into another world?

Pretty much, between their foundation and the fall of the empire in the West they went through three or four different military systems just because their needs changed. Then again, are we really justified in wanking Rome over this? Doesn't every succesful empire adapt? And keep in mind that Rome has been around for a thousand years. This is the equivalent of us wanking off modern Frenchmen because they no longer use couched lance charges: of course they fucking don't. If they did, they'd be Spanish, English or German by now.

Search for "Better than any man", it is historic setting but with half-hidden magic and monsters.

Well, I am actually running this setting right now, aren't you lucky.
Granted, it has also many other ancient civilisations like the Hellenistic Greeks and Southern Indian kingdoms and so on, but the idea is that old earth was ruined in an apocalypse, so the gods took their favourite peoples and cultures to a new world, beat the shit out of the pre-existing generic fantasy pantheon, erased all Iron-Age Technology and the majority of the population and races. The gods then re-wrote history so that the descendants of the refuges always thought Sparta was next to a "Nymph"(Faerie) Infested forest, and that Rome was around at the same time as ancient Greece.
This setting however is not taken seriously in the slightest, my players consist of a History-Buff, Edge-Lord, Mute and Meme-master, and enjoy the copious amount of homosexual comedy and pointing out my historical inaccuracies, as well as the edge-lord enjoying the fact I carried over certain cultures doing human sacrifice in the open.
So, from my experience, no it can't be taken entirely seriously, fun as hell though.

>Rome
>Lawful Evil

Just read the Videssos cycle by Harry Turtledove for a small-scale version of this. A Roman legion (and one Gaulish chieftain) end up in a fantasy version of the Byzantine empire.

>Rome
>lawful evil
it's lawful neutral at worst user

Lawful neutral at best, leaning towards evil.
The empire was forged by conquest and enslavement of barbarian subhumans.
They received the glorious gift of civilization by rape and enslavement, no refunds.

It's certainly lawful with the vast majority of people being neutral and some upstanding citizens being good and some jerks being evil.

Like most societies.

>The empire was forged by conquest and enslavement of barbarian subhumans.

How is enlightening subhuman barbarians even remotely evil ?

Why do they hate magic? And didn't the Romans have a shrine to unknown deities in case they forgot to praise one they didn't know about? I believe they would find new deities to praise and love very quickly.

>Romans hated magic
Nigga are you high? The romans were crazy religious and didn't shy away from using magic. It was just human sacrifices like the druids tricked them into committing that scared the shit out of them.

>Praise the gods as usual
>Except this time it actually fucking works
>Remove barbarians
>Turn every elf into catamite
>NotJupiter is pleased

You know that zeus is in deities and demigods, right user?

You know what that means.

>NotJupiter
Macron?

Just look it up. They held magic in low regards, banished magicians from practicing their craft within a couple of miles of the city of Rome and regularily purged the city of texts detailing magical practices.

They got snowball's chance in hell in an universe that's so caster dominant that LVL 1 commoner cities literally can't survive without casters feeding them and carting their poop off.
Heck, the paladin won't even have to bother getting up because the wild dogs inhabiting Rome will automatically render the city inhospitable to its denizens.

Never mind all the undead shit that's going to happen in short order with them exposing babies left and right.

Though I guess with them being LE and this being D&D, killing babies is probably what is going to save them.

>No patron deity.
They have several.

Because magicians back then were basically "pay for a death curse get a free miscarriage curse". They heavily relied on augures and other divinity based predictions/blessing.

>Sol Invictus !
>The emperor really becomes a living God of sun and military might
>We 40K now

as the story goes, jim butcher/jim butcher's creative writing teacher didn't think so.
they weren't wrong, so codex alera just steers into the patent ridiculousness of it

>The wild dogs will render the city inhabitable
Wot.
>Cities can't survive without casters feeding them and carrying their poop off
But Rome can and is used to that.
Are you intentionally being retarded?

See Also, the roman people sure as shit didn't shy away from cursing people if they felt that they deserved it.

>But Rome can and is used to that.

Yes, but Rome was located in the real world, not D&D where two cats can win a straight up cage fight against an adult man.

People do lose fights against cats in the real world user.

Plus soldiers would likely have more than 1 level and most craftsman have levels in expert or aristocrat.

Simply speaking Rome might be a better place for level 1 people than actual fantasy town #31.

Plus the cat example breaks apart if the cat is an actual cat. The moment that cat gets a swift kick that cat is gone.

Also, depending on whether this'd be the days of a Senate or a hereditary Emperor era, their societies could deeply affect the outside world for the better, while the outside world improves Rome with better armor and means to both war and general livelihood.

If all the gods and rituals hey already did became real, they’d be fine

I never noticed the glamorous job of wizards removing poop from the street or those who produce food in great quantities.

>The empire was forged by conquest and enslavement of barbarian subhumans.
I mean, so was America.

>In hoc signo vinces
>The Chi Rho is an actual protection charm
Constantine and his troops bring the one true faith to the fantasy realm they invade.

So Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There?

>Macron
>not Jupiter

But Rome was a Republic.

We have dozens of examples of magic incantations and potionmaking from ancient Rome, plus all the importance they gave to specific religious practices, predictions and so on.

Codex Alera is ridiculous because it was literally fantasy Romans + Pokemons. I still enjoyed it

Basically, Byzantine/Eastern Roman is the most A E S T H E T I C out of the bunch.

The Roman habit of interpreting natural phenomena as signs from the beyond stemmed from the Etruscans.
The Etruscans, who developed reading omens and auspices into a form of science, knew different means of divination. In their beliefs the signs they read were sent to them by a mythical boy called Tages, who in their mythology was to have been ploughed up from the earth.
They would seek to read the future by examining the entrails of sacrificial animals, the liver being of special importance for that purpose. They would observe lighting and interpret its meanings. And they would try and put meaning to any unusual phenomena which occurred.

The belief that objects, or living beings could possess special spiritual properties was widespread in primitive societies. The Romans were no strangers to this idea. Stones, trees, springs, caves, lakes, swamps, mountains - even animals and furniture - were all deemed to be hosts to spirits (numina). Stones in particular were often seen to contain spirits, especially if they were boundary stones, dividing one man's property from the other. It is very telling that the Latin word for such a boundary is terminus and that there actually was a Roman god called Terminus. This odd deity took the form of a huge piece of rock which rested in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. Apparently several attempts to move the bolder when constructing the temple had failed. And so it remained within the temple, because it had 'refused to move, even for Jupiter'.

But Roman superstitions didn't end there. Children were told stories of nasty creatures who'd come to eat them if they weren't good. From the Greeks they had Mormo, a terrifying woman with donkey legs. And the Roman Lamia who stalked around looking for children to eat.

Children were by far not the only ones to fear such bogeys. The ghosts of the dead (lemures) roamed in all kinds of dark places. The Romans believed that some houses were visited by ghosts. Perhaps because the house had been the scene of a crime, worse still a murder.
Nobody dared live within such haunted walls, few would even go near the place.

Nightmares were generally seen as omens of bad luck. A bad dream might be reason enough for a lawyer to ask that his case be adjourned .
The Historian Pliny the Elder tells of a M. Servilius Nonianus, who was one of the leading men in Rome, and who was terribly worried about losing his sight. To prevent this from happening he wore a lucky charm around his neck consisting of the two Greek letters alpha and rho. Consul Mucianus, too, suffered form the same fear of losing his eye sight. He sought to prevent it by carrying with him a live fly in a white cloth.
Pliny the Elder reports that both methods were very successful in preventing the men from going blind.

Are you implying America isn't LE?

Well trying to align a massive society like America is stupid, but I'd put it squarely at TN.

So what happens when they run into the Rome-equivalent that damn near every generic fantasy setting has?

>This thread
>Lol, Romans would get shitwrecked. Just look at the retarded peasants' inability to secure resources and promote sanitation and city planning! Rome is doomed!
>t. Wojak brainlet

When really:
>Rome undergoes extensive planning and demolition
>nearly perfects sanitation
>aggressively secures resources
>Politically active and reliable (to allies)
>Able to wage wars with Paradox-level turnarounds
>DEEPLY religious
>Rely heavily on prophesy and augury to most important decisions
>Extremely socially organized
>Like autistically socially organized

I'd say they have a good chance at becoming pretty dangerous once they find a deity that basks in adoration and reverence. They'd power-level faith in said deity as an entire society and be well-off against most threats by a long shot.

Well Rome has two follies in it's nature.
Complancy from slavery
And the lack of central moral stoicism that they needed from the greeks. Without regular contact with the Greeks, the scholarliness of the elites would degrade unless they brought the Greek classics with them. Left to their own devices, the Romans were depraved beings of the lowest kind, withholding the middle east and deep african tribes of course

>Could such a setting be taken seriously?

Gosh I wonder

Didn't the Mos Maoirum preceed the coming of stoicism to Rome?

Bane?

According to Cato "Fucking destroy Chartage" the Older it was

I came here to post this.

The writing queues that series was based on are "lost roman legion" and "pokemon".

>standard fantasy setting.
they get beaten by the more technologically/magically advanced empires and powers

Greeks after a few centuries in the Empire were basically just another flavour of Roman. No major rebellions and the Greek spirit was subsumed into Rome. You will note that the 'Greeks' held up Rome for another nearly thousand years after its fall. So no, you are wrong, and rather dimwitted.
What other powers? Nations do not simply attack, and like the other posters have noted, Rome is quick to form allies and learn the power dynamics around. A single city-state would find it hard, but not impossible, to survive, and would come into contact with rogue adventurers first. There they could learn magic, take the knowledge of Steel and such with them, and reforge these new ideas into much better reform.

Seriously, D&D shit is stupidly overpowered. The Romans would adapt so hard that there would be no contest. The powers usually written in this setting have no depth to the manipulations, glory, and cunning the Romans had. Nevermind their rigorous and perfect military acumen, that was defeated only by largely steppe hordes, who had little planning for rulership and only opened up the way for barbarians to seep through the cracks.

>perfect military acumen, that was defeated only by largely steppe hordes, who had little planning for rulership and only opened up the way for barbarians to seep through the cracks.
so orcs?

Rome crumbled under the pacifism and "lets be nice to each other" mentality of heretic jews.

Good god they would splinter hard when it turns out there's multiple real gods and they say different things.

So I have this magical rock that drives tigers away. Would these romans like to buy it?
I haven't seen a tiger in ages here in the far north so I am 100% sure it works

For you

>Nevermind their rigorous and perfect military acumen, that was defeated only by largely steppe hordes

Is that so?

>real gods
>not prime mover
>no final cause
jokes off heathen scum

Yes, Evil, romaboo

The empire itself qualifies as evil.
The destruction of Carthage was evil, salting the ground was evil, the line in the sand was basically "we can destroy you" nonsense that falls under evil.

The only reason Rome is portrayed as good is centuries of historiography dominated by people basing their political aspirations on imitating it.

We really should bring Chalcedonism black.

>Nevermind their rigorous and perfect military acumen
Rome nearly lost a legion to a horde of welsh peasants, lost three to an ambush to germans, who didn't even have fucking cities at that point, lost ground to the persians on the regular so hard they killed an emperor and set their capital up in a former roman city, could barely submit Dacia, a region the size of fucking England, and only won the Dacian and Punic wars by burying them in corpses.

Romans are orcs.

It's amazing how such a bad writer managed to take two ideas, which could reasonably mesh together, and through sheer incompetence make something so utterly stupid. Not "ridiculous", not "over-the-top", but just plain "How did you manage to fuck this up?" stupid.

>hate magic
>no patron deity

they feared magic, especially connected to human sacrifice, but they did not hate it. They had:
>a fucking book full of magical prophecies in their capital which they threated as a real deal, it even made them perform hated human sacrifice during hannibal's attack
> Big ass, ever expanding pantheon full of native and foreign gods. Sometimes after razing a temple they'd rebuild it for free to apologize.
>Roman commanders had to supply their armies with lots of animals like pigs or cows from their own supplies - not for consumption, but for sacrifice.
>at some point there was a law in Rome that had every tenth piglet be taken by state and given to consuls so that they could gather those sacrificial animals easier.

>no patron deity
They’ll just adopt a patron deity. They did that type of stuff in real life.

>a patron
>just one
Rome took whatever they felt like taking. At one point a general rode into a conquered city, saw a statue of a goddes he liked, took it back to Rome, set it up, and added it to the pantheon.

Fucking waifufag generals

>standard fantasy setting
>Could such a setting be taken seriously?
Frankly, i have my doubts.

>The only reason Rome won the Punic Wars is because they didn't even shrug after losing 20% of their fighting age men in a single battle
You may be on to something here.

Between Epona, Isis, Cybelle and the entire Greek pantheon, there are very few Roman gods that weren't borrowed. Had they reached India, I'm pretty sure they'd adopt half the Hindu pantheon.

>The destruction of Carthage was evil
>Its wrong to conquer a people after fighting three wars against them
Ah yes the good thing for Rome to do would to be fighting the Twelfth Punic War in 10 A.D.

>implying
Roman clients were the aggressor in two of the three wars.

>Between Epona, Isis, Cybelle and the entire Greek pantheon, there are very few Roman gods that weren't borrowed.
The Greek pantheon wasn't borrowed or stolen, the Roman pantheon was just like every other Indo-European religion. There are massive parallels across all Indo-European religions because they mostly developed from a single precursor religion or concept. For example Thor, Donar, Zeus, and Jupiter are all a chief god of thunder who is portrayed as defeating a serpent. Likewise Odin, Wotan, Saturn, and Cronus are portrayed as a wise old man and father of the primary gods including the aforementioned thunder god.

Yes and? Nations have to keep up their relations with their allies. Using your logic any state that has any allies is probably evil.

Ah, good point there.

>Rome crumbled under the pacifism
Rome peaked during the Pax Romana.

Right, and we still fall under the text description of lawful evil

>Rome peaked during the Pax Romana.
The Pax Romana had some of their worst expansionary wars like the invasion of Dacia, Parthia, Persia, Britiannia. Asw well as several bloody revolts like Boudica's rebellion and the 2 Jewish wars.

If any of you guys read Nicollo Machiavelli and his works on medieval warfare, you guys would know that romans would adopt very fast. Caesar built a fortification around the city and then assaulted it while his own fortifications were assaulted, romans outperform almost any military force in history. Such level of discipline like that of roman infantry is impossible for medieval-like settings that rely on cavalry or magic. Thinking that romans would not use magic or technologies of this world, along with mercenaries and new gods is stupid. In few years, you would have guys with effective engineering, super strong military, siege machines, any army innovations, social system more effective than feudalism etc.
Thinking that everyone around them would instantly try to destroy them is ignorant, underdogs of current political situation would try to get an advantage of sudden new power in region (see notes on Gaelic wars and celt allies of Rome)

Again, the romaboo shit is stale and Macchiavelli was writing from extremely limited sources.

The roman army broke against the persian dynasties on the regular, broke against germans, nearly broke against welsh peasants. They won half their wars because they were willing to be callous about their soldiers' lives, there's a reason Pyrrhic victories are named for one of their enemies.

Military schools studied Cannae, not Alesia.

>The roman army broke against the persian dynasties on the regular
Persians were using some roman advancements and using some greek elements in their warfare, they are not something completely separate. And in the end, Persia fell under roman legions. Rome would get enormous advantage in the setting described due to numerous reasons, its not just warfare I am speaking about.
> broke against germans
defeated and conquered celts and germans in many unequal battles, nice cherrypicking
>nearly broke against welsh peasants
drowned britain in blood in every rebellion. Let me remind you, most roman legionaires were peasants themselves, its not roman problem they are actually good at training their peasants, so winning over them is now an achievement.
>They won half their wars because they were willing to be callous about their soldiers' lives
So they will fuck up an enemy if they can, even if costs them a lot? Its a dangerous opponent. Rome would dominate most medieval setting unless magic there is hard to get and you can't just hire wizards or teach your own

>And in the end, Persia fell under roman legions.
Ctesiphon wasn't in Persia because the romans politely handed it as a gift, you know

>They won half their wars because they were willing to be callous about their soldiers' lives
and, you know, effectively creating military science? Creating a disciplined military with a hierarchy and upwards mobility that became the model for modern armies? Having decently trained and educated generals? Having a system of lower officers who were given great autonomy to improvise and adapt to the situation? Incorporating their military into their political advancement scheme? Romans weren't just barbarians throwing warm corpses at their enemy, their tenacity is nearly unmatched but so is their ability to turn war into a true artform.

>Military schools studied Cannae, not Alesia.
Because Cannae is the 'ultimate' setpiece battle where total encirclement of the enemy is achieved, where Alesia was a trick that only works once under highly specific circumstances other generals are unliekly to find themselves in. I'm not going to say Caesar was greater than Hannibal, I'm saying that Caesar's schtick was finding a way where none appeared available.

so you prefered to ignore everything I said to spit this nonargument, ok.

No, because people fail to understand the Roman Empire was founded because Romans did the old Cloak and Dagger on their Gaulish Allies and then had enough manpower to constantly put down rebellion after civil war after rebellion.

>The Romanaboo comes into the thread, kicking and screaming when people point out the flaws the Roman Empire had.

Sorry buddy, the Roman Empire won't have former Gaul allies they can backstab to get a leg up in power.

Also

>VISIGOTHS

>Roman Empire won't have former Gaul allies
that was republic, go back to гeddit

>What other powers? Nations do not simply attack

Okay, they find that there are disoriented primitives in their lands, so they start a policing action to teach them civilization.

That was the Birth of the Empire. Caesar backstabbing the Gaul Allies of the Roman Republic and putting in to power the constant cycles of bloodshed required to prop up such a flimsy Empire.

You paint the roman military as this absurd, ultimate fighting machine when it struggled against semi-nomadic tribes in the eurasian steppe and regularly lost ground in the middle east after initially finishing off the Seleucids as they were getting fucked up by an upstart, new persian dynasty, so sincerely sorry for disregarding your non-points

>Rome crumbled under the pacifism

Rome always had a "we will attack whenever it's convenient for us"-policy. They never were pacifist. They got less murderous when control over military glory became soley the Emperor's though and thus the majority of people who could legally lead war parties out to plunder had a whole fucking lot less to gain from it.

>Having decently trained and educated generals?
Every army in the world put its pampered scions of the aristocracy in charge, there was nothing new about that in the roman system.

I thought they won the war because the Carthagians couldn't do a damn thing about Scipio Africanus camping out in their front yard while Hannibal was trying and failing to keep a loose alliance together and his mercs paid?

Folks always concentrate on what happened in Italy when even the Romans agreed that the war was won and the invasion turned back in northern Africa.

Zama was years after Cannae and the impetus for it was literally Cannae. Of course landing a force on top of Carthage had to do with it but by that point Rome was bleeding its population to a degree that would have made most ancient city-states say uncle years before.

Rome generally was fucked when they had no roads to march on, no infrastructure to live off and no local potentates to keep their asses covered. It's why they conquered the celts, but just built a wall and paid off the border tribes to keep the much more primitive german tribes outta their hair.

>Caesar backstabbing the Gaul Allies of the Roman Republic and putting in to power the constant cycles of bloodshed required to prop up such a flimsy Empire.
Which of course had nothing to do with the many crises Rome at the time faced during that period involving the urban poor, a lack of land, the nobility claiming all the land and propping it full of slaves causing mass unemployment, the inability of the senate to do something about it etc. etc. right? Nope, it was just Caesar killing Gauls and then invading Rome. And everyone fucking hated him for it, right? That's why the status quo was restored after his death without a hitch, right?

Scipio Africanus was one of the very few survivors of Carrhae. His campaign in Spain came years later. My point is that most sane civilizations would've buckled after losing 20% of their fighting age men in a single battle. Rome kept persevering, and the fact that they still managed to send Africanus out to fuck up Spain was part of the perseverance. Had Rome buckled, Africanus would never get his political/military career started in the firs tplace.

*Cannae, Carrhae was something else.