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In Short

The Good: The presentation of Rome is extremely well done, with mechanics incorporated into each specific and generic location. All of the new rules for formal debate are absolutely wonderful. The reimagining of vampire society for this time period is excellent, especially in the ways vampire society serves as a dark mirror for mortal society. The Storytelling advice is absolutely solid and, like the rest of the book, serves to aid the Storyteller in play as much as it can.

The Bad: Readers would be best served to consult other resources for information on the history of Rome. Vampire and Roman government are surprisingly distanced from one another.

The Physical Thing

Under the Cover

Further supplemented by a piece of short fiction and an excellent introduction that provides a useful lexicon for the rest of the piece, the only potential flaw is the brevity of the Sources and Inspiration section. But, then, Rome isn’t a difficult thing to learn more about.

Chapter One The History of Rome - 42 pages.

Speaking of learning more about Rome, the first chapter focuses on providing a working history of vampires in Rome. This is an important distinction to make because this chapter just doesn’t measure up as a history generally. Those who are already familiar with Roman history won’t have any trouble navigating the history of the Kindred, but readers like myself who simply haven’t been exposed to a lot of Roman history may have trouble following this chapter. Often the author seems to assume that the readers will appreciate the significance of vampire activity during a given event, but I often found myself having trouble following along.

It’s a good work because it expertly integrates the Kindred into Roman history, discussing their reaction to various events (such as the chaos of the great fire) and how their own society formed and evolved over the years. Readers interested in gaining a firmer grounding in Roman history generally, however, may best be served by seeking an outside source. While this is a mild criticism, I certainly don’t expect any author to cover all of Roman history in 40 pages and integrate vampires into the works. Additionally, this chapter isn’t really key to running a game set in Rome. For groups that aren’t overly concerned with getting every detail right a simple skim, or attention to specific details to provide a history for particular vampires, will work quite well. The rest of the book does a fine job of painting a picture of Rome as it was at the end.

Finally, much of this product assumes a general lack of interaction between Kindred and humans. Part of this is due to the Camarilla’s masquerade, but I think a certain amount of it is necessary to allow history to have played out as it did. Nevertheless, I leave this portion of the book a little disappointed that there isn’t a stronger vampire hand attempting to influence various Emperors and political events. While nothing keeps a Storyteller from introducing this, and it seems like a strange group that would not have vampire characters dabbling in mortal politics, I would like to have seen vampires having a stronger role in Roman history. The degree of insanity and craziness during portions of it seems like a missed opportunity for further integrating vampires into the history.

Chapter Two Player’s Guide - 52 pages.

The reinvisioning of vampire society introduced here is nothing short of amazing. The organizing government, the Camarilla, is split into Wings which each fulfill a necessary role in vampire society. Through their efforts the Camarilla maintains three core rules: dominion over territory, destruction of outlaw vampires, and a ban on cannibalism. While these rules make good sense, they’re fantastic as applied to the game. Dominion over territory frequently forces vampires to engage in politics with others and to negotiate with the Senex over tribute and additional territory. The prohibition on destruction of other vampires except at the bequest of the Senex means that vampires either must destroy their rivals from the shadows, thus creating conflict and drama, or they must politically campaign for the downfall of their rival. These rules, combined with the setting and factions, are a recipe for exactly the sort of enjoyable gaming I expect when I imagine vampires in Rome.

The Wings of the Camarilla include the Senex (senate), the Legion (militia), the Augurs (pagan mystics), the Santified (Christians), and the Strangers (criminals and peasants). Belonging to each group provides a whole host of benefits, many of which are represented in reduced XP costs for specific abilities and access to unique Disciplines (such as Cruac and Theban Sorcery). These groups make good sense and will readily appeal to various characters. While the Senex appears to be the most powerful at first blush, the strong focus on oratorical skills to influence the Senex means that the well-spoken Kindred are the true powers in this society.

The Clans remain largely the same, though the Ventrue have been replaced with the quickly degenerating Juli Clan native to Rome. While they still occupy the same archetype as the Ventrue, as all Clans occupy the same archetype, their cultural flavor has been appropriately adjusted to reflect their homeland. In this way Requiem for Rome can be notably different in that a given Clan often has strong cultural roots. While anyone could be embraced, in many ways these Clans are still seen as outsiders.

The actual mechanical changes range from the mundane to the exciting. Skills have been tweaked for the period. Computers, Academics, Science, and Drive have been replaced with Religion, Warfare, Archery, and Ride. While there’s no example, the Warfare Skill strikes me as being particularly interesting as Storytellers could use it to resolve an entire scene during a battle or as an opposed roll for superior positioning/cover at the start of a conflict.

The new Merits are where the changes began to really interest me. As discussed below, an entire system for formal oral arguments has been added to the game and several of the included Merits apply to this. Debate Style: Reason and Debate Style: Rhetoric offer characters even more power when presenting before the Senex and are thoroughly well done. Fighting Style: Formation Tactics offers extremely powerful benefits to an organized squad using these tactics. Fighting Style: Gladiatorial provides a variety of unusual maneuvers, and even more Merits continue to support the Roman feel.

A smattering of new Cruac and Theban Sorcery Rituals round out the mechanical additions.

Chapter Three Rome and Necropolis - 64 pages.

“This is the city of Rome in the last year of the reign of Constantius…” is how we are introduced to our current setting, along with a detailed map with labeled locations. The setting is presented in part as a list of locations, both unique locations and common examples, found throughout Rome. I find this to work extremely well, and having a variety of interesting locations in which to set scenes is a far more useful resource to me in actually playing the game than an essay on the city itself.

What’s particularly unique about the way Rome is presented is that every location is accompanied by its own special rules. Want to use the aqueducts to escape the city? Here’s what you have to do. Need to go hunting? Visiting the Porticus Sanguineus allows you to automatically succeed, as humans are always chained there for vampires to feed on. Every notable location, specific and generic, through human and Kindred society has its own special touch that encourages the Storyteller and players to actively make use of the city throughout their Chronicle.

Each location is given enough detail that it comes to life in the reader’s mind and really feels like a distinct, important place in the world. A location, however, only gives a partial idea of the day to day life in Rome. Fortunately the author provides an excellent discussion of current government, religion, sports, theatre, slavery, poverty, citizenship, and a variety of other topics. This discussion is beautifully extended into vampire life, covering all the same ground and very reasonably depicting a believable underground community patterned after Rome.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, and I think it’s fantastic, an entire system for debate is included. Debates come in three distinct forms – Personal, Philosophic, and Procedural – each of which involves the participants creating a total number of successes necessary to be defeated. This is then modified by the audience, what’s at stake, and various other factors. The orators then take turns arguing against one another, using various modifiers in order to try and get the upper hand. It’s very well done, and if that wasn’t enough the designer wisely makes suggestions as to how to involve all of the player characters in the scene so that it’s not just one player stealing the show for an hour (though any dedicated orator is certainly going to shine). It reminds me of the really smart game design that I often find in smaller press games, and I like the system so much I’m tempted to use it in other World of Darkness games.

Chapter Four Storytelling and Antagonists - 59 pages.

The Storytelling suggestions are excellent. Plot hooks, alternate time period recommendations, major events to incorporate into the game, triggering events to start off a new plot arc, and everything else you might expect in the form of Storytelling support can be found here. Roman society was rife with conflict, and this chapter brings that home by providing a large variety of themes that play up these conflicts. Roman vs. Barbarian, Christian vs. Pagan, and others receive excellent discussion and provide a variety of ideas. A variety of short and interesting example settings outside of Rome, excellent locales to have a foreign vampire visit from, are also included to add even more in the way of options and background.

Where this chapter actually shocked me, though, is in its presentation of character aspirations. Create A Cult. Ok, cool, that sounds pretty standard. Lead A Wing. Once again, a good political goal for many games. Restore The Glory Of Rome. Wow, that’s pretty epic. Save The Roman Empire. Now we’re talking! While so many World of Darkness games are focused on the small scale, Requiem for Rome really provides the players with a big ole sandbox to pursue whatever goals their characters desire no matter if they’re practical or epic in scope.

In addition to a useful collection of pregenerated NPCs the major outside villain introduced are the Stirges. These are hateful disembodied spirits obsessed with destroying the Julii (and probably any other vampires) while reveling in the pleasures of violence along the way. These adversaries can serve a huge variety of roles. They can stir the political pot, foster paranoia, provide a definite foe, or just mix a little chaos into the world to keep things unpredictable. My only gripe is that they seem far too capable and, if left uncontrolled, could easily skew a game towards a bodysnatchers sort of theme.

Finally, three new Bloodlines are included to offer Roman Kindred more Bloodline options. They all fit nicely into Roman society and are easy to integrate into the campaign either as distinct factions or just as an oddity for interested players.

My Take

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