Blasphemous Abomination or Really Kinda Kewl? - Merging Roma Arcana and Banestorm

[Hero of Canton]

Like the words on the wall ask: Has anyone tried creating a 4e Banestorm Campaign that uses the worked example campaign setting Roma Arcana from 4e Fantasy?

I'm currently in the process of working up a new campaign set on the continent Ytarria in the world of Banestorm 4e. The core concept is that the Banestorm did most of its heavy-duty bodysnatching NOT during the Middle Ages (as canonical Banestorm holds forth) but INSTEAD took place during Classical and Late Antiquity. This would give the setting a basis in the Hellenistic Zenith and Roman Pax Romana rather than the one with which it comes stock.

Questions? Comments? Ideas?

Hero of Canton

[Blind Mapmaker]

That's certainly possible and far from blasphemous. You'd probably be able to lift a bit of the general background rules from Roma Arcana. The resulting setting would not resemble Banestorm very much. The conflict between Islam and Christianity is pretty central to the setting and humans and humanised humanoids are certainly the focus.

Depending on where and when your first settlers come from, the setting could be a lot more democratic and splintered. Chose carefully, immigrants from the Roman Republic and Periclean Athens would be lead to radically different societies than those from the Roman Empire and the hellenistic kingdoms that sprung up in the wake of Alexander. Come to think of it, you could probably get away with whisking Alexander himself to Yrth. I mean he wished for more worlds to conquer anyway.

To keep the religious factor important pepper the traditional Olympian religions liberally with mystery cults and Christian heresies. Manichaeism is very interesting too. That and Celtic and other religions should keep things weird and interesting.

Magic could blend with Greek ingenuity to lead to technomagical inventions and empowered servants of the gods are certainly fitting too. If you like them throw in a couple of dinosaurs from another world to recapture a bit of the Roma Arcana feel.

On the whole I think an antiquity-based Yrth should be a bit more multipolar and regional. Oh, and you might want to include the Sahudese and people from other parts of the world.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

That's certainly possible and far from blasphemous.

Come to think of it, you could probably get away with whisking Alexander himself to Yrth. I mean he wished for more worlds to conquer anyway.

To keep the religious factor important pepper the traditional Olympian religions liberally with mystery cults and Christian heresies. Manichaeism is very interesting too. That and Celtic and other religions should keep things weird and interesting.

Magic could blend with Greek ingenuity to lead to technomagical inventions and empowered servants of the gods are certainly fitting too. If you like them throw in a couple of dinosaurs from another world to recapture a bit of the Roma Arcana feel.

On the whole I think an antiquity-based Yrth should be a bit more multipolar and regional. Oh, and you might want to include the Sahudese and people from other parts of the world.

Get Alexander without the army his father built and not much happens.

If you keep this new Yrth contemporary with our time you have a lot more time for things too evolve in new directions. This will make the problem of technological and cultural stasis even worse.

It might actually be more interesting to game only a century or two after the Banestorm. There would be so much less to explain.

In a truly Romanized version Elves or Dwarves could play the role of Greeks. They are older and more advanced cultures that Romans want to both emulate and conquer.

Oh, and the orcs are the German barbarians beyond the frontier.Ghu only knows why it took me an hour to think of that.

[Hero of Canton]

One reason I am contemplating the change in the origin story of Ytarria is to remove the Christianity vs. Islam element from the campaign. My players don't want it because they find it a distasteful theme from the daily headlines to have present in an RPG setting they are using for escape from the modern world for a while. That's an opinion I share BTW.

Hero of Canton

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by Hero of Canton

One reason I am contemplating the change in the origin story of Ytarria is to remove the Christianity vs. Islam element from the campaign. My players don't want it because they find it a distasteful theme from the daily headlines to have present in an RPG setting they are using for escape from the modern world for a while. That's an opinion I share BTW.

Same here, to an extent. Other than that, I love what little I've seen of Banestorm.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Not that I don't like the idea or anything, but if you want to get rid of Christianity vs Islam, wouldn't it be easier to just set the game in Cardiel? That's pretty much what Cardiel is for...

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Hero of Canton

Questions? Comments? Ideas?

Well, one thing I like about Roma Arcana is that it implies multiple kinds of magic much more strongly than Yrth does. Yrth seems to mostly be the GURPS Magic magic spell system, which is absolute vile ****, whereas Roma Arcana implies Germanic berzerker/skinchanger magic and Druidic recall of past lives, and so forth. It's not really developped as player-selectable options, but it's strongly implied to be an element of the setting and thus something that should be available to player characters.

In that regard, Roma Arcana is more similar to my Ärth historical fantasy setting, which also has multiple magic systems, and with a spell magic system that, while actually being intelligently designed, also allows for flashy blatant spell effects similar to the ones from many of the Colleges in GURPS Magic.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Not that I don't like the idea or anything, but if you want to get rid of Christianity vs Islam, wouldn't it be easier to just set the game in Cardiel? That's pretty much what Cardiel is for...

That would be a big fat "no". Cardiel is the only nation which combines substantial Christian and Islamic populations. This is not a recipe for avoiding Christianity versus Islam issues.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Do you also want to get rid of Christianity? That would pretty much set the upper limit for your banestormed exiles to the first three Julio-Claudian emperors. That might be a good thing, though, because the Roman Republic was not yet a laughable shell by that time and the emperor acted more like the primus inter pares (not that he was, mind you, but the illusion still held).

Personally, I think a greek-themed or at least a more multi-polar Yrth would be more fun, but it would also be more different than a Roman Empire version. I would pull the original settlers from the 4th and 3rd centuries BC and then season them with later arrivals for some variety. That way you still get immigrants from a mighty Carthage, Ptolemaic Egypt, various other Greek kingdoms and lots of Celts. As Fred Brackin said the Orcs can sufficiently serve as a substitute for a Germanic barbarian threat.

One important thing that would be missing from Greco-Roman Yrth would be feudalism, but patron-client relationships can take up the slack there. Slavery would, however, be even more prominent and likely even harsher without the restraining influence of Christianity.

Different magic systems would probably be a good idea. Although I wouldn't say that standard GURPS magic is impossible to use, I think Path/Book magic, Clerical Magic or maybe Realm Magic would probably better fits. Season with some magical powers as desired.

As far as the Alexander question goes, I'd say that anybody with a half-way believable claim for being Alexander would probably gather a lot of followers among the arrivals from later times. He was a legend even among his enemies, after all. It all depends on whether you allow arrivals to shift in time or have them arrive at the correct chronological intervals.

Fred Brackin raises the most important point, though. It would be a bad idea to give those cultures 2000 years of evolution. The Middle Eastern parts, Carthage and the Celtic fringe are sufficiently alien for modern audiences as they are. If you give them too much time to evolve, they will turn pretty unrecognisable or laughably stagnant. There are enough "Roman Empire with some tiny little innovations" timelines already.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

Do you also want to get rid of Christianity? That would pretty much set the upper limit for your banestormed exiles to the first three Julio-Claudian emperors. That might be a good thing, though, because the Roman Republic was not yet a laughable shell by that time and the emperor acted more like the primus inter pares (not that he was, mind you, but the illusion still held).

Roma Arcana specifically does not have a visible Christian presence, though there are suggestions for how to deal with Christianity if the GM wants it to exist. That's part of why it's an AH.

Bill Stoddard