Here is a Roman D20 carved from crystal in the 3rd century AD.
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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"
@futurebird they were used with other dice for playing Cryptae et Draci
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I think it depends on what you'd accept as "an RPG"
When I was 8 I was desperate to play D&D, my older brother, 17 ran a game, but wouldn't let me play because I was 8.
So, I decided to try to start my own game. Only. I didn't have a rule book, or anything.
I got my friends from school excited about the idea "it's like getting lost in a story"
And we made up characters I designed places for them to explore and was kind of a DM
We used dice for random events. Argued a lot. But had a wonderful time.
It went on for like three months.
This wasn't "home brew" it was "no brew"
Basically collaborative story telling with a leader and rolling dice every now and then.
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We used dice for random events. Argued a lot. But had a wonderful time.
It went on for like three months.
This wasn't "home brew" it was "no brew"
Basically collaborative story telling with a leader and rolling dice every now and then.
The campaign was about rescuing Prince (not a prince. The guy. Prince, the singer.) who was also king of the Fae. Only his court was planning to kill him and he didn't know this.
So, we had to break into the castle through the tunnels below which were full of various giant insects that could either eat you, or you could tame them and they'd help you.
You can guess which parts I was responsible for in all of that.
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We used dice for random events. Argued a lot. But had a wonderful time.
It went on for like three months.
This wasn't "home brew" it was "no brew"
Basically collaborative story telling with a leader and rolling dice every now and then.
@futurebird @jcastroarnaud @funkula I had a very similar thing, in high school, where I was the nerd with the rule books etc but my friends were too high and tripping all the time for any such structure. So I DM’ed from a spontaneous storytelling position, flowing with their wild digressions and keeping the story going, no matter where their attention and capacity went.
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The campaign was about rescuing Prince (not a prince. The guy. Prince, the singer.) who was also king of the Fae. Only his court was planning to kill him and he didn't know this.
So, we had to break into the castle through the tunnels below which were full of various giant insects that could either eat you, or you could tame them and they'd help you.
You can guess which parts I was responsible for in all of that.
Only the purple rain could remove the glamor from the court and expose the ones who had turned against him!
Then my brother totally STOLE one of my custom bug monsters and used it in one of his games and I'm still salty about that.
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This is damning.
Might as well have a bunch of character sheets with all the stats in Roman numerals.
"The front face of the tower bears the words: PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVRI
When read as a sentence reads "The Picts are defeated, the enemies destroyed, play with confidence"
The legionaries approach the strange tower.
It intones, in a low, but indisputably *mocking*, voice:
“PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVRI”
The legionaries are genuinely astonished when the defeated Pictish army emerges from thin air, an army of angry specters.
They speak, in flawless Latin, and tell the astonished legionaries they are definitely not defeated. The last thing the terrified legionaries hear, before the Pictish army overruns them, is:
“Romani ite domum!”
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This is damning.
Might as well have a bunch of character sheets with all the stats in Roman numerals.
"The front face of the tower bears the words: PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVRI
When read as a sentence reads "The Picts are defeated, the enemies destroyed, play with confidence"
@futurebird @potpie Brutus: "What's your THACI?"
Julius: "...Why do you want to know?"
Brutus: "No particular reason. Anyways, how many daggers can I buy with 70 salt packs? If I can get 60 to 70 daggers, that'd be great."
Pompey: "That'll net you roughly 23 daggers."
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Only the purple rain could remove the glamor from the court and expose the ones who had turned against him!
Then my brother totally STOLE one of my custom bug monsters and used it in one of his games and I'm still salty about that.
@futurebird @jcastroarnaud @funkula I loved this story! Did your brother eventually let you join his games, or you kept playing with your friends?
My brother is 9 years younger than me, and my sister 18 years younger and I got them to play as soon as they wanted. I was not around often while they were growing up, and they ended up GMing for other friends etc, but every time I went home I made a point to have at least an evening to play a one shot with them, for years.
Now we play online.
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I think it depends on what you'd accept as "an RPG"
When I was 8 I was desperate to play D&D, my older brother, 17 ran a game, but wouldn't let me play because I was 8.
So, I decided to try to start my own game. Only. I didn't have a rule book, or anything.
I got my friends from school excited about the idea "it's like getting lost in a story"
And we made up characters I designed places for them to explore and was kind of a DM
@futurebird @jcastroarnaud @funkula
the major purpose of the rulebooks and dice is enable people who've been beat to death by "you're too old to play make-believe" to give the games a chance. Without that, about 90% of people won't even try the games. (There are many other aspects of rpg in which the rulebooks and dice are a huge help, but those things only matter *after* you convince people to give the game a chance.) -
@futurebird @jcastroarnaud @funkula I loved this story! Did your brother eventually let you join his games, or you kept playing with your friends?
My brother is 9 years younger than me, and my sister 18 years younger and I got them to play as soon as they wanted. I was not around often while they were growing up, and they ended up GMing for other friends etc, but every time I went home I made a point to have at least an evening to play a one shot with them, for years.
Now we play online.
@luigirenna @jcastroarnaud @funkula
He did not! My brother is the worst. LAMO.
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@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."
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@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."
@willowwren @jcastroarnaud @funkula
I wonder to what degree there was WWF style story telling for those game and matches.
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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"
