Naturally, both books had me thinking (again) about the possibility of running an RPG campaign set in the Rome Empire, but honestly I don’t think I could maintain the long-term interest to maintain a game in that setting, never mind maintain the interest of my players.
I think one problem with most historical gaming is finding a way to cover all the interesting bits you want to cover in one adventuring party's lifespan. I am reading a book about the history of Venice (Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081-1797 by William H. McNeill) which posits Venice as the cross-roads of Latin Christianity, Orthodox Christianity and Islam throughout the last millennium. It is packed to the gills with brilliant ideas for partial and complete campaigns (his writing is actually very gamer-esque - broad and thematic but concerned with making money and killing things) but they're scattered all over 700 years so that it would be very difficult to find one campaign that would be compelling enough to last a good time on it's own, but easy to find lots of ideas.
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Date: 2008-01-28 10:17 pm (UTC)I think one problem with most historical gaming is finding a way to cover all the interesting bits you want to cover in one adventuring party's lifespan. I am reading a book about the history of Venice (Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081-1797 by William H. McNeill) which posits Venice as the cross-roads of Latin Christianity, Orthodox Christianity and Islam throughout the last millennium. It is packed to the gills with brilliant ideas for partial and complete campaigns (his writing is actually very gamer-esque - broad and thematic but concerned with making money and killing things) but they're scattered all over 700 years so that it would be very difficult to find one campaign that would be compelling enough to last a good time on it's own, but easy to find lots of ideas.