Roma Imperious (RI) is HinterWelt Enterprises’ fourth role-playing game. In the style of Shades of Earth (SOE), HinterWelt’s second book, Roma Imperious is an alternate world history. Roma Imperious provides a detailed and well-mapped history that provides endless story for history buffs and non-history buffs alike.
RI is what would have happened if Rome had continued to flourish, instead of declining as it did in real history through the discovery and application of magic. Possibly due to the ever increasing use of magic, magical creatures and monsters are increasing in presence and danger. Good for the gladiator trade, not so good for Roma's far flung legions. Although Roma does include a rough sketch of the Eur-Asian, African and Indian subcontinent, it focuses primarily (as should be expected) on the Roman Empire.
The book is extremely thorough in its contents, including character concepts in chapter 6 such as Artificer, a tradesman who creates magical tools; Praetorian Guard, a protector of Rome who falls into the rouge category rather than fighter; and the Medicus, a doctor with surgical skills and healer spells. These are 'prebuilt' character concepts, based around the True20 Core roles of Adept, Expert, and Warrior, adding a new role, the Martial artist. The book also gives examples of plot seeds and character backgrounds that fit within each of the Kingdoms and Empires described.
Using the in-book character creation, it is very hard to find out how much money your character starts with. Strangely, the information for how much money your character starts with is not located in the pre-gen characters, or the rules for character creation, but just after the the equipment lists. The character creation section’s reference to an area of the book on weapons and equipment has an optional rule that allows a dice roll for starting wealth.
The book is not a complete roleplaying game in it's own right. It is a worldbook and sourcebook to be used with the True20 roleplaying system. It replaces a few true20 concepts with it's own (a few extra feats, some new skills, 'count your pennies' wealth rather than a wealth score, and an almost completely rewritten spell system and martial arts system adapted from the earlier Iridium system.
This is in many ways an eye opening game for me. The notion of gaming on Earth has always been a bit scoffed at in my circle. "Well we live here, what could possibly be special about it?" RI does a fantastic job of answering that question and more. It makes 'ordinary' history interesting, and as an added bonus, there's no need for my players to pour over an arcane (and sometimes silly) fantasy map. Just pull out an atlas and there it is.
The book ends with several appendices, conversion from Iridium to True20, Conversion from True20 to Iridium, an adventure, the True20 license and Product Identity, and an extensive index.
Presentation
RI currently only available in PDF (although a hardcover should be available shortly). The book’s cover – a Roman Centurion on a lion-driven chariot – is reflective of the alternate world history by mixing the standard Roman element of a chariot with the fictional element of having a lion in front of it. The colors used are rich and the art is extremely well designed with a picture-like quality.
The interior is all black and white and almost completely "found" art, but meshes well with the game. As you might expect, there's a lot of open source historical and fantasy-historical artwork to be found for free. Traditional-looking Roman pictures, and some renaissance and Victorian pictures are the main choices here. This has the pleasing effect of making the "nude" pictures feel much more classical and tasteful, rather than pandering to baser instincts.
The monster section seems to rely much more heavily on more modern art styles, though a small portion of it is 'found' art as well. All in all a very good selection and examples of the various monsters to be found in the world, as well as art you can hold up and say “this is what you're facing”.
The detailed maps that appear in the front and back inside covers of the book show the Roma Empire as it stands, all of Europe, and circling the Mediterranean basin. Small insets show the greater Eur-Asian continent, India and Africa with shadings to indicate the greater empires therein. Smaller maps appear in the chapters detailing the provinces of the empire and the other Kingdoms and Empires. The maps are extremely well done, in that they could pass – in all ways but the fictional titles, of course – as real maps from such a time.
A large (24” x 36”) fold-out map, a replica of the one in the front inside cover of the book, is available separately. The map does add some clarity and is aesthetically nice, but it is not absolutely necessary for play.
The written content has clearly been put together with a great deal of thought to readability. The first half of the book is background story for the game and the second half is the modifications to the True20 core rules for the game. Then there is a small sample adventure Murder in Roma that appears at the end of the book. The chapters flow together well. Even for those who have never picked up a HinterWelt or True20 book before, they should be able to navigate RI easily, which is another incentive to play.
The True20 System The True20 system as you may know, started in the Blue Rose romantic fantasy roleplaying game, and then became it's own system licensed by Green Ronin game company. It's primarily a stripped-down and cleaned-up version of the standard d20 system. For example, in d20, you can have a Strength of 13 or 14, say, but you rarely use the numbers 13 or 14. You mostly use the strength modifier, which, for those, is +1. True20, just uses the Strength Modifier as your Strength attribute: your Strength would be +1, and you wouldn't bother with 13 or 14 at all. But most of the gadgetry of the d20 system is there: levels and classes and favored skills and feats and Fortitude saving throws and so on. I'm choosing to skip most of the exacting details, because either you know it mutatis mutandis, or actively don't care. Some things are very non-d20, like the way the system doesn't 'do' hit points, but instead use a toughness save vs a DC based on damage, and a 4 condition status track (bruised/hurt, dazed/wounded, staggered/disabled, unconscious/dying) The Hinterwelt adaptation of True20 uses a mana & spell list based magic system. Some schools of mages are restricted in which types of spell they can cast (although there's no Divine/Arcane split) and a mana cost for each spell and spell level. Martial Artists use a Chi cost for each of their special maneuvers, and function a little like psionists and a little like mages. RI True20 has also replaced and added a great many feats of it's own, sometimes renaming existing ones. They are often named in a very flavorful in milieu way, such as A Precipice in Front, Wolves Behind (gain bonuses to attack and toughness when in desperate straits) or Don't Speak Against the Sun (bonuses to Diplomacy and Bluff when you appear to be using logic and facts in your favor), and To Err is Human (when you fail a skill check, you gain a +4 bonus on your next use of that skill).
The Best
The game-world setting was definitely the best part of Roma Imperious. A well thought-out meshing together of standard Roman history and fictional elements brought together a detailed story that is pleasing to those who know what really happened and those who simply want to play the game.
Roma Imperious goes over Rome – and all over the related areas, including Africa, Aegyptus (Egypt), the Jade Empire (most of Asia), and Hispania (the area around the Spanish peninsula). This is good for a couple of reasons – of course it’s always good to have background information, but it also allows for setting the campaign in the other areas.
The PDF adaptation of the game is fantastic. I cannot stress enough how good the indexing, layout, and full clickable, searchable, cut-and-pastable, functionality that HinterWelt has installed in this PDF. This PDF is a shining example of just what an e-Book can be, and what kind of advantages a PDF can deliver when it is done right. It is fully bookmarked, with excellent indexing, and it's possible to click on the text links in the PDF itself, and go to the topic or chapter in question.
A most enjoyable addition to the True20 version of RI is that the Britannia province has been added and detailed as fully as the other provinces. I consider this addition to be worth the price of the book, but this is primarily because I am a huge “Roman Britain” fan. The Britannia province is detailed as extensively as the other provinces from the Iridium version, and has plenty of plot hooks and adventure seeds.
The inclusion of a ready-to-run adventure at the end of the book is an excellent inclusion. I am aways pleased to see a small insight into how the game 'should be played'. The story given is a good example of how to incorporate the elements of the setting into the game.
With the same idea, the character templates – each including some back story – are fantastic for a group’s first experience, a one-shot game, a con game, or a pick-up game.
The Worst
There's no core rules in the main book. It's assumed that you will be using RI as a worldbook or supplement book for True20. This will disappoint those who pick up the book expecting to have a full and complete game in their hands.
There is no character sheet in the book, and I consider this a fairly serious omission. Although again, the book is expected to be used as a worldbook for the True20 corebook, there are sufficent new skills, and altered wealth, magic, and martial arts systems that a new character sheet should have been provided. This flaw is mitigated somewhat by the wealth of pre-generated characters with complete stat blocks, but there should still have been a blank character sheet somewhere in the book.
Overall
A buy recommendation from me. Roma Imperious is filled with great setting where plot hooks abound, and it is fascinating and endlessly useful for an alternate history/fantasy buff. The setting is so complete and well laid out in fact, that it could be used as a resource for other role-playing game systems.
Whether using it as a source book or playing RI, this is definitely a useful book for gamers of varying levels of experience. The setting has something to please almost everyone. Roma Imperious is a fascinating and detailed game-world to adventure in.
The book is currently only available in PDF form, but a hardback book is forthcoming.
