I am finishing up our alr Rome book Servants of Gaius and have run into an issue. We have a chapter on Rome and its provinces. So far I have covered its history some key provinces like egypt and the various gauls. I've described some basics of politics and entertainment (as well as the military) but I only have 1,000 words left and need to write more about the city of Rome itself. If you were GMing a game set in the Roman Empire, what essential info would you want (within 1,000 words).

A bit of brainstorming, with absolutely no consideration for word count:

- A map of the city of Rome and immediate surroundings. If I arrive into town on the Appian Way and have to meet someone at the Circus Maximus and later someone else at the barracks of the Vigiles Urbani (I know, anachronistic for Caesar's time), which way do I have to go? What landmarks will I pass? Am I going through slums, a large market, or an area dominated by wealhy residences?

- What does a typical insula look like (along with keyed blueprint)? The house of a well-off merchant? The urban residence of a nobleman?

- At the time period of the game, what could the PCs encounter on the streets? Would there be armoured legionaries sitting in a tavern? Vigiles Urbani (and what do they look like)? Could they run into a distinctive looking merchant from exotic land X, where "X" is China / Black Africa / Parthia / whatever?

- If they want to undertake some urban skulduggery, what practical diffculties would they run into when trying to break into a residence (what sort of locks exist in the period, are there grates on the windows, locked chests)? Shadow someone on the streets? Pickpocket someone? Talk to a public figure privately without ANYONE overhearing (where and when would they be alone)?

Quote from: Premier;485532A bit of brainstorming, with absolutely no consideration for word count:

- A map of the city of Rome and immediate surroundings. If I arrive into town on the Appian Way and have to meet someone at the Circus Maximus and later someone else at the barracks of the Vigiles Urbani (I know, anachronistic for Caesar's time), which way do I have to go? What landmarks will I pass? Am I going through slums, a large market, or an area dominated by wealhy residences?

- What does a typical insula look like (along with keyed blueprint)? The house of a well-off merchant? The urban residence of a nobleman?

- At the time period of the game, what could the PCs encounter on the streets? Would there be armoured legionaries sitting in a tavern? Vigiles Urbani (and what do they look like)? Could they run into a distinctive looking merchant from exotic land X, where "X" is China / Black Africa / Parthia / whatever?

- If they want to undertake some urban skulduggery, what practical diffculties would they run into when trying to break into a residence (what sort of locks exist in the period, are there grates on the windows, locked chests)? Shadow someone on the streets? Pickpocket someone? Talk to a public figure privately without ANYONE overhearing (where and when would they be alone)?

Thanks. I went a bit over my word limit, but tried to include as many of these as I could.

Whether I can get all the blueprints and maps will be more budget dependant than anything else.

Quote from: Premier;485532A bit of brainstorming, with absolutely no consideration for word count:

- A map of the city of Rome and immediate surroundings. If I arrive into town on the Appian Way and have to meet someone at the Circus Maximus and later someone else at the barracks of the Vigiles Urbani (I know, anachronistic for Caesar's time), which way do I have to go? What landmarks will I pass? Am I going through slums, a large market, or an area dominated by wealhy residences?

- What does a typical insula look like (along with keyed blueprint)? The house of a well-off merchant? The urban residence of a nobleman?

- At the time period of the game, what could the PCs encounter on the streets? Would there be armoured legionaries sitting in a tavern? Vigiles Urbani (and what do they look like)? Could they run into a distinctive looking merchant from exotic land X, where "X" is China / Black Africa / Parthia / whatever?

- If they want to undertake some urban skulduggery, what practical diffculties would they run into when trying to break into a residence (what sort of locks exist in the period, are there grates on the windows, locked chests)? Shadow someone on the streets? Pickpocket someone? Talk to a public figure privately without ANYONE overhearing (where and when would they be alone)?

Having read the Doc. These were some of my thoughts as well, particularly the Maps of Rome and surroundings. Architecture likely to be encountered would be nice.

Game tentatively scheduled for Nov. 5 so we will see what the Players have to say in this regard. Thanks for your patience Brendan!

Edit: When I asked one of the players who had read the Doc. about lack of maps/floorplans he replied that in a PDF sort of thing he did not think it was that important as he could just "google it" and have multiple pages open if need be.

What's Rome like after dark?

I understand that farmers went to sleep early and awoke early, but do we know if night life existed in the city? If so, what was night reveling like?

How dangerous were the streets of Rome at dusk or at night? Were the night watch effective? Were personal bodyguards only for the very rich or could an average merchant afford one?

How in danger of illness were the citizens? What happened with all that poop?

Quote from: skofflox;485632Edit: When I asked one of the players who had read the Doc. about lack of maps/floorplans he replied that in a PDF sort of thing he did not think it was that important as he could just "google it" and have multiple pages open if need be.

The problem with that is it assumes you'll be using a laptop at the gaming table. In my experience, that's very, very far away from being the default case.

Quote from: Premier;485653The problem with that is it assumes you'll be using a laptop at the gaming table. In my experience, that's very, very far away from being the default case.

We will definitely be including a map of the empire and the city of Rome. I would like to include architecture as well but we have a lot of potential illustrations vying for a piece of the budget so will need to see (we want to illustrate things like weapons and everyday items). In the new doc i do describe the standard layout of a wealthy home and describe insula as well. Actually hit 58,600 words so going to do some layout magic to keep it under 110 pages. There were aspects of the legal system and political system that had to be included so went over. Unfortunately could only describe a handful of provinces. But what we will do is release more books describing chunks of the empire in detail ( most likely each one will be 60 pages of setting and 60 pages of adventure to demonstrate uses of the provinces described.

Skyfox, will send you the latest manuscript. After two months of playtest we tweaked combat and equipment quite a bit. There are also some simple overland movement rules now.

In terms of google; that is one advantage of historical settings. I run colonial gothic games and get tons of my maps online, printing them before the game. Still, i'd like to give players and gms as much as possible within 110 pages. The problem is we had to include a rules system, setiing material, npcs, monsters, etc inside that space. But we want to keep the thing at 20 bucks. In future when we write our fantasy game, we may shift to a 190 page format.

Quote from: Premier;485653The problem with that is it assumes you'll be using a laptop at the gaming table. In my experience, that's very, very far away from being the default case.

These are my thoughts as well.
I plan on running it from a laptop...have never done this so it will be interesting!
I will make some notes of often used info as well so a 50/50 approach.

Might have as many as 4 players for this, looking forward to it!

Brendan: Thanks for the up-date!

Quote from: skofflox;485691These are my thoughts as well.
I plan on running it from a laptop...have never done this so it will be interesting!
I will make some notes of often used info as well so a 50/50 approach.

Might have as many as 4 players for this, looking forward to it!

Brendan: Thanks for the up-date!

Personally I don't like using laptops at the game table, but I've had bad luck with hard drive crashes (nothing worse than losing all your campaign info right before a game). I still need a book with pages in front of me to properly run a game.

I will say this though, for running a modern google earth and mapquest are great.

What I've been doing for playtests is printing the manuscript and binding it at staples. If I don't want to spend the money on the binding and printing, I print at home and put it in a three ring binder. When it comes out it will be released in print and PDF.

Four players sounds perfect. That is how many I had at my last playtest and it we exposed a lot of mechanical issues.