@funkula @futurebird RPGs also need a theme, and the realization, from the players, that they can *create* their own theater play, instead of only watching.

I think that RPGs weren't created in Roman times or the Middle ages, because of lack of critical mass: too few people knew how to read/write, and paper was expensive. It would be much harder to find someone able to create a RPG system - an endeavor much harder to do than, say, create a theater play.

@jcastroarnaud @funkula @futurebird
Could the gladiator fights be considered a kind of violent RPG, where your body is the character sheet? A kind of extreme LARP? These were spectator sports, true, but they were much less often deadly than popular history suggests, and often played out elaborate scenarios from mythology and history, even filling the Colloseum with water for sea battles, which we weren't sure was true until a couple decades ago. To some extent, the stories for these scenarios were shaped by those that ran the game, with final, but limited, "DM" arbitration by the emperors. It's not a perfect analogy, but maybe enough to push back on the idea that there was no possibility of conceiving of such a thing.

I wonder if such cooperative stories were just the unrecorded province of children...I played out such stories with my childhood best friend, one as character, one as storyteller, years before I ever heard of an "rpg."

Here is a Roman D20 carved from crystal in the 3rd century AD. These were used, historians suspect for telling fortunes. However, no one can *prove* they weren't used for some kind role playing game. Which is what getting a fortune told with a die is kind of like anyways if you ask me.

"roll for initiative"