The reviewer has received a copy of Fvlminata 1st edition and Fvlminata 2nd edition and a free set of dice from the author at half price –these were for help in playtesting a supplement to the game. However, the review is unsolicited, and the reviewer aims for objectivity.
Fvlminata: Armed With Lightning, 2nd Edition.
”I would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second in Rome.” – Julius Caesar
With the wave of really good, highly visible titles coming out in recent months from second-string and independent publication houses, Fvlminata may pass under the radar. It’s a shame, because inside the softcover book is one of the most thorough games about the Roman Empire ever to hit the shelves.
In all fairness, it is also one of the only games about the Roman Empire to hit the shelves. That doesn’t detract from it’s quality though, and brings classic RPG ideas to this strange and relatively unexplored genre.
Fvlminata is an alternate history game that combines ancient Roman culture with elements of low fantasy and some alternate technology. Although the game’s major selling point is it’s major historical divergence – “What if the Romans had gunpowder?” – it prefers to provide a firm grounding in Roman history and culture.
Where it excels, though, is in it’s embrace of the ideas of genre emulation and setting immersion. The introductory setting insures that players get attuned to the Roman way of thinking, as well as “proper” Roman values – some of which are very different from the Judeo-Christian ideals of mercy, forgiveness, and love. Everything in the game is designed to produce the proper Roman “feel,” from the flavor text to the system itself.
Overview:
The premise of Fvlminata is twofold – first, what if a scientific genius were to have invented gunpowder in the Roman era, and, secondly, what if reality really did work the way the Romans believed it did? As such, primitive versions of pistol, musket, and cannon are found within the book, as well as several magical “spells” from various cultures that existed at the time.
The first chapter, “Salve – Welcome to Fvlminata” provides an introduction to the game, and provides an insight onto Roman culture, with brief touches on Roman numerals, Latin phrases, and timekeeping. The most useful part of this short introductory session is a guide to Roman culture and customs, presented in the form of a multiple choice quiz, which highlights the not-so subtle differences between the Roman and modern viewpoints.
The second chapter, “Personae – Creating a Character” is a guide to creating a Fvlminata character. This is similar to many other games, with a few interesting “Roman” asides – for example, characters choose a rank, either Senator, Equestrian, Plebian, Freedman, Foreigner, or Slave, and this choice affects the role that the character will have in society, as well as several system effects, including some “free” basic skills, determining initiative in combat, and economic wealth. Providing a list of sample roman occupations, (as well as the suggested rank and skills to accompany them) defining a character’s background is made a simple process.
The other part of character creation – assigning statistics to the character sheet is also covered. Using four main attributes: Intelligencia, Agilitas, Pietas, and Vis (Mind, Speed, Soul, and Strength, approximately) and directly adding skills in a “roll under” system. Along skills and stats, characters start with an imbalance in humors – the four fluids in the human body – that influence mood. These humors determine, to some extent, the character’s personality traits – lazy or energetic, sullen or joyous. Character’s start with three imbalances, as well as 3 humor points. As characters begin to balance out the humors, they acquire more “humor points” which allow them to reroll bad tali throws during the session.
Skills are chosen from a list, grouped by the god or goddess that oversees them. The player selects a patron god or goddess, who gives the character 1 to all skills under that particular deity’s domain. Magic is chosen at this point as skills (with restrictions – they start at –1 and can only be built up to 1 during the character creation process, instead of starting at 1 and adding ad infinitum.)
To help with character creation, there are 12 templates provided, a male and female example of each class, with full stats and background. These templates are invaluable to showing the different options available to players, as well as serving as ready-made NPCs for a Roman campaign, as some of the characters are interrelated.
Chapter 3, “Tali: The Rules of the Game,” details the system used for Fvlminata. The “add stat skill, and roll under” system will be familiar to veteran roleplayers, but this particular execution of it is quite different from most other games. Instead of using “normal” dice, the game uses tali – 4 sided dice with the numbers 1, 3, 4, and 6, or more accurately, I, III, IV, and VI on them. These dice can be made from d8s with stickers placed upon them (and there is a PDF on the Fvlminata website which allows players to print out these stickers) or they may be purchased independently. Personally, I would have found this a bother to the players and GM, if it wasn’t for the fact that I got my Tali set for free from one of the authors of the book.) The mechanic is designed to simulate the proper Roman “feel” of the game – the ancient Roman’s favorite dice gambling game used the tali.
A skill roll determines success or failure, according to raw numbers, and an effect roll determines degree of success – this effect roll being determined by the patterns that the numbers come up in, using the rules the Roman devised for their gambling games as a measure of success – a “Senio” or “one six” is the lowest roll, while a “Vultures” or four-of-a-kind, is the highest roll. These effect rolls provide “multipliers” to a character’s base effect. On either the skill roll or the effect roll, the humor points may be spent to allow the player to reroll any or all of his dice.
Skill rolls are typically used to perform one of five things – to act, to create, to influence, to learn, and to heal – these are all examined and clarified in the “Using Skills” subsection. Of particular note is the “Influence” rules, which provides a tangible method to determine the effect of social interaction – the player and GM agree on three possible scenarios for the interaction with the NPCs: agreement, concession, or neutrality. The roll determines which (if any) of these possible reactions play out. This provides a clear way to use “influence” skills – while the player should still roleplay things out, unlike most games with social or manipulative attributes, these rules allow for a quick way to determine exactly what a significant social success versus a minimal social success actually means.
Combat is pretty simple – skill rolls determine success in battle, and effect rolls determine the damage. Defenses are treated as contested skills between the attacker’s attack and the defender’s defense, and damage is determined by the weapon’s power, the wielder’s vis, and the effect roll. Blunt, Edged, and Pilum (gunpowder) weapons have different scales of damage. Initiative is determined by class rank – while it may not make sense for a weak Senator to move before a well honed gladiator slave in combat, the very idea of “Move Aside, slave, the Senator goes first” again adds to the Roman immersion.
Chapter 4, “Imperium: The Roman Empire” and 5, “Res Publica: Matters of Public Record” are two of the high points of the book, providing a detailed look at what life was like in Ancient Rome. Detailing the city of Rome, the countryside, the provinces, and providing enough detail to the places that characters will work, grow, play, and fight in, “Imperium” is a good rundown of the geography and anthropology of Rome. Res Publica details the history of the Roman empire, providing numerous timelines, both in Roman and Christian measurements, of the major eras of Roman civilization, from the founding of Rome to where Fvlminata’s history diverges from our own. It also provides a rundown of Roman government and the relationship between law, crime, and punishment.
Following up on the detail provided in the geography and history of Rome, Chapter 6, “Pax Romana: Roman Society at Peace” presents the daily life, as well as significant life (and death) events, of the average Roman. It provides guides on Roman appearance, diet, religion, clergy, economy, science, and medicine, once again, providing for the immersion in the Roman culture.
An entire chapter: “Ludi: Games of Life and Death” is devoted to gladiatorial combat and chariot racing – not surprising, considering that almost every Roman pop-culture movie of the past half century, from Ben Hur to Sparticus to Gladiator has dealt, in some way, with the public arenas. This provides plenty of details for those who want to use the famed Circus Maximus or Flavian Amphitheatre in their campaigns. Added as an afterthought, but still given significant detail is a quick rundown of the theatres of Rome, which, like in real life, did not capture nearly as much attention as the detail of the Roman blood sports.
Chapter 8, “Bellum: The Art of Warfare,” provides a guide to siege craft and war campaigns [not the gaming term] of the Romans. It provides detail on the military tactics and troop formations, the relations between the Roman army and it’s foreign auxiliary. Special detail is given to the Calvary, the Praetorian Guard, the Urban Cohorts, the night watchmen, the Amazonian guard, and Imperial Navy.
Chapter 9, “Arcana: Secrets of the Universe” is really the heart of the book – and it is what makes Fvlminata an “alternate-history” game instead of “history” game. To quote from the book: “In FVLMINATA, the universe behaves according to the ancient worldview, which allows your persona to inhabit a world of mystic secrets, spirits [numina] and potent magics.” It starts off with an examination of Terra Fulminata – gunpowder – it’s ingredients and how they relate to the Roman worldview, (as well as providing rationalization as to why the Romans could have invented gunpowder even without a scientific worldview.) It examines the underworld and the spirits of the dead, explains the magic system as well as explains how the Romans believed magic worked, examines different culture’s versions of magic in extreme detail, providing over 2 full pages of information on almost all of the cultural interpretations, and up to 5 pages on the major ones. A list of spells is provided, and each spell is given an origin tying it to one of the aforementioned cultures. Each spell is not powerful enough to unbalance any one game or character, and they all capture the flavor of the culture they derive from – once again, allowing the players to experience immersion even while doing “low-fantasy” magics.
The final chapter: “Fabulae: Adventures in the Imperium” provides one large adventure that has been playtested at conventions – “The Pepper Merchant” – as well as a lengthy guide to writing your own adventures in Fvlminata. The book is rounded out with an Appendix of Roman names, a glossary, a list of sources which spans 3 pages, an index, and a character sheet.
The book is softcover, black & white interior, 234 pages. The book’s font spacing is somewhat larger than most RPG books, but not enough to make any significant difference. The book contains a better layout and some new material than the first edition, but the material is mostly the same, the main difference between the two is added detail, a better-explained combat system and a larger print run. The cover artwork is full color by Christopher Shy, the interior artwork is charcoal on paper by Jeremy Leach. With a $29.99 sticker price, it has a page cost of $0.13.
GM Utility:
The book will find little here to use if he does not plan to run a Roman Empire game – it can, however, be used without either the Magic or the Gunpowder to make a Roman game more accurate to the way Rome really was. There’s an adventure included – which is well thought out and interesting. GMs may want to adopt the “influence” system to other games – however, little else will be of general use to GMs. The authors of Fvlminata essentially “redesigned the wheel” in order to provide an immersive Roman experience from the ground up.
Comparisons/Combinations:
Time-Travel GMs will find a very good use for it, by providing an setting for the “What if Rome never fell?” scenario, and by adding and subtracting elements of other games, Fvlminata does have some limited flexibility. However, the game is self-contained, for the most part, and not likely to be of much help in other campaigns. It is, however, a good replacement or companion to GURPS Ancient Rome.
Caveats and Failures:
I’m a little puzzled by the decision not to provide an alternate method of task resolution than to use the Tali – since scores are anywhere from the 4 to 24 range, a guide perhaps using 4d6s instead of four tali would have been greatly appreciated, considering that buying the tali is almost certainly a special order – either that, or 4 8 sided dice will specifically be converted to full time tali using the stickers. This adds a cost of anywhere from four to eight dollars on top of the book’s price. Creative GMs can come up with house systems, or use the rules of GURPS Ancient Rome, but at that point it is nearly not worth it. While the tali were designed to – and do – invoke the Roman “feeling” of the game, not providing an alternate will turn away some gamers who simply do not want to be bothered.
I think that more emphasis should also be put on “alternate campaigning” i.e., Roman Empire without guns but with magic, or Roman empire without magic, but with guns – not enough to change the default setting from it’s intended purpose, but a few words in the “designing adventures” section would have been nice.
Conclusion:
Treading virgin ground in RPGs is often dangerous – Fvlminata marks its path perfectly. It is intelligent, insightful, and will undoubtedly be praised by critics other than this one, and it has provided something which few games successfully provide: an immersive fictional world.
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