Seneca the Younger reputedly loaned the Britons 20M sesterces(!!) and got tough when he called in the loan all at once. What a fucking douchebag. (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 62.2)
You're in a Roman legion, in Britain, about 100 AD. You're supposed to repress rebellion amongst the restive natives. You have not enough troops, haven't been paid in a while, and also it seems like the horrifying ancient gods these heathens worship are real. The last Praetor was found turned inside out. (A horror game. Being in the ancient world means no cell phones. Also, politics.)
Pushing: you can add a die to your pool, which then steps up your stress after the roll. Any spoilers step up stress as well.
Physical Social (Rank?) Mental Uncanny - pegged at 1d4
List of 8 or so, with about half of those actually assigned for any given PC--thus, culture clash is real, but resolvable.
My Culture is a mandatory one. Probably.
Composure for mental/spiritual stuff Wounds for physical Possibly a standard SFX to step back Resolve to avoid Stress? Check rules on
NOT USED but perhaps useful for reference for now. List in source, commented out.
Which of these are specialized skills, and which are effectively privileged ranks? Most of these are also immunes, exempted from the dog-work duties.
- Auxila - A foreigner, in auxiliary roles such as archer units or scouts.
- Actarius – A military or camp clerk.
- Agrimensor – A surveyor (a type of immunes).
- Alaris – A cavalryman serving in an ala.
- Architecti – An engineer or artillery constructor.
- Armicustos – A soldier tasked with the administration and supply of weapons and equipment. A quartermaster.
- Ballistarius – An artillery operator (a type of immunes).
- Clinicus – A medic.
- Frumentarii – Officials of the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd era. Often used as a Secret Service, mostly operating in uniform.
- Immunes – Soldiers who were "immune" from combat duty and fatigues through having a more specialist role within the army.
- Quaestionarius – An interrogator or torturer.
- Sagittarii – Archers, including horse-riding auxiliary archers recruited mainly in North Africa, Balkans, and later the Eastern Empire.
- Speculatores and Exploratores – The scouts and reconnaissance element of the Roman army.
- Venator – A hunter (a type of immunes).
- Vexillarius – Bearer of a vexillum (standard).
You’re a non-Roman attached to a military unit. You could be from nearly anywhere in the world.
- Common Touch: Double Empathize when dealing with ordinary, non-Roman peoples.
- Flexible Tactics:
Your philosophy teaches you to enjoy pleasure and avoid pain, which is only natural. However, you’re not, as the Stoics would suggest, a libertine--some pleasures are to be sought more than others.
- Atoms and the Void: Take a Plot Point when you insist in company that the gods don’t exist and/or that everything that occurs is because of little things bumping against each other.
Your background allowed you access to tutors and books. You are literate (as most soldiers are not). Know, Bluff, Notice
- I Read about That Once: Spend a Plot Point to create a d8 Asset reflecting your knowledge of the situation at hand.
You were a slave, from birth, from being captured in war, or as punishment for a crime. You were manumitted or bought your freedom. Empathize, Persuade, Endure
- Begging your pardon, I’m just an ignorant fool, but: When you seem servile and harmless, double Persuade.
You have that most prized of possessions, Roman citizenship. The laws are less harsh on you (you are unlikely to be tortured) and you can vote. You are also exempt from many taxes.
- “Civis Romanus sum!”: when facing problems with Roman authorities, step up or double Persuade.
- Soothing rhetoric: When you spend a plot point to create a social or political asset, also step back a related complication.
Visions come to you, and you see spirits or hear them whispering in your ear. Such experiences leave their mark--take an appropriate Trauma at the start of the game. Visions: Take d6 Composure Stress, or step it up. The GM will give you a vision, which you keep as a d6 Asset. Unsettling Gaze: when you fix someone with your eerie visage, spend 1 Plot Point to step up Uncanny and use it in place of Menace.
“Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.” You have taken Stoic philosophy to heart, strengthening your resolve and inspiring you to serve the cosmopolis, treating all humanity as brothers and sisters.
- “It’s nothing to me”: spend a Plot Point to step back any Mental Stress
- The Consolations of Philosophy: when you have time to talk with someone, double Treat to remove Mental Stress.
Notice, Move, Travel (underground) You have done time in the mines. This is one of the deadliest and harshest jobs, done almost exclusively by slaves. Your alertness has kept you from cave-ins and the lash, you can squeeze into ridiculously tiny crevices, and you have a passing knowledge of mineralogy. When trying to get passage through a seemingly impossible space,
You’ve been on the march so much, a soft bed seems strange. Camp Life: When making camp in the wild or a putting up a makeshift shelter, step up or double Survive for the Action. On the March: When travelling, double Endure. Highlighted Skills: Labour, Shoot, Survive
Create the various tribes and their interactions. However the GM secretly decides which ones are corrupting themselves with the occult/fae/whatever it is.
Use Ranked Distinctions as Careers, Backgrounds, Personality, etc.; this takes care of social class as that can be a feature of the appropriate ranked Distinction.
Perhaps social could be encapsulated in Rank, physical split between military specializations - Speculatori and Alaris, for example
Ranks: d4 slave, d6 free Roman, d8 citizen, d10 equestrian, d12 senator
Use Diaspora’s “first blood” rule: first physical hit also generates mental stress
I want an idea of self-control--some kind of resistance or damage track or something that says whether you can keep your cool in the face of provocation. Angry is a bad consequence to have.
“It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.” Heart of Darkness
Rules hack (from https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/cortex-prime-trait-hope-and-shadow.822721/post-21643253):
What I would do for this is something similar to what I did for my Double Cross hack: When you go over d12 in either Hope or Shadow, you gain Light or Darkness Trauma, and your character isn't lost until you cross the d12+ threshold in trauma. Your Hope and Shadow dice balance naturally, but whatever your trauma ranking is becomes the minimum size of the corresponding die. So if your Darkness Trauma gets to d10, your Shadow die can't be lower than d10--and your Hope die can't get larger than d6. If you want exchanges to happen after that, you need to work off your trauma, or you're pretty much doomed to fall to the light or dark at some point. There's a slower escalation there, but it's still an escalation.
Magic: https://vsca.blog/2018/10/19/magicians-in-the-soft-horizon/
Use a "bring down the pain" conflict system: one roll to decide a conflict, but spend something to get fine-grained resolution.