Where & When
As with The Reign of Terror, the story includes a real-world historical event, making it possible to date it precisely. The bulk of the story runs from 10th to the 18th July in the year AD 64, although the characters have been in Italy for “four or five weeks” when it starts, and there is a gap of a few days at the end before they leave. Most of the action takes place in Rome, although there are some scenes set in other nearby parts of Italy.
Setting
One of the first things to mention is that, absent some external means of doing so, it won’t be easy for the PCs to determine what year it is. Nobody in Rome at the time knows that it’s the year 64, because the Anno Domini system won’t be invented until the sixth century. So far as the vast majority of Romans are concerned it’s “the year of the consulship of Bassus and Crassus”, which is unlikely to be of much use to anyone without a good roll on a relevant History skill. If they can find a professional historian – the only sort of person in Rome who would have any need to give years a number – he could tell them it’s 817 AUC… but he’d probably find the question odd and it still may not be much help.
Most people probably do, however, know that it’s been ten years since Nero became emperor, which should at least orient a stranded time traveller. And, while the way that Romans counted the days within the month is strange to modern ears (10th July is instead “the sixth day before the Ides”) and weeks are nine days long, not seven, the months do have the same names – and lengths – as they do today.
At the time of the story, the Roman Empire is close to, but not yet quite at, its maximum extent. It already rules most of western Europe, the Balkans, and the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean. The conquest of Britain, however, is still ongoing, with the Romans in control of the south and east (including Londinium) but not yet the areas that we would now call northern England and Wales. The Empire is surrounded by barbarian tribes on almost every side – its only civilised neighbours are Armenia and Parthia on its eastern frontier.
The story starts in a villa outside Asisium. Now known as Assisi, this is famous today for being the birthplace of St Francis but, even in the first century, it was a reasonably prosperous town, with walls, an amphitheatre and at least one major temple. It lies in Umbria, a hilly region of central Italy with forests on the slopes and farmland in the valleys, about 85 miles (140 km) from Rome as the crow flies, but at least 110 miles (175 km) by road.
It is here that Ian and Barbara are captured by slavers. Enslaving free people was, of course, illegal… and also very common. Typically, such kidnappers would hold their captives for ransom, but if the family didn’t pay up or (as in this case) didn't exist, selling them into slavery is the next best option. Most slaves were either born into the status or were recent wartime captives, but what the slavers are doing in the serial would not have been an especially rare occurrence. In the story, the slavers state that most of their captives come from Gaul, but Britain would also be a prime source at the time, especially since the conquest was still ongoing.
Barbara rightly states that the Romans treated their slaves badly, at least by modern standards. True, slaves were valuable, and a sensible owner wouldn’t want to damage them too much, but that still leaves plenty of room for unpleasantness and not all owners were sensible, anyway. Slaves, after all, had none of the rights of a citizen and could be beaten or sexually molested with impunity.
One area where the serial doesn’t match reality is in Ian being sold as a galley slave. Contrary to many films, the practice of using slaves to row galleys, rather than free men, is medieval, not Roman, although it did happen on rare occasions when manpower was short during wartime. A more likely, if potentially less atmospheric, use for a physically fit slave would be in mining, or perhaps agriculture. Alternatively, he could be sold on as a gladiator – a practice that would be banned in the second century but had not been at the time of the story.
Rome is about fifteen miles (24 km) inland, so it makes sense that Ian manages to reach it in about a day from wherever it is he washes up on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The others take a more direct route overland, but, either way, aside from the coda at the end, the remainder of the story takes place in the city. While there are a few outdoor scenes in markets and the like, we only see the interior of two key locations: the arena and the palace.
The arena in the story is not the famous Colosseum because that had not been built yet. It was, however, much larger than the 1965 TV studio implies, likely having been able to seat several thousand people. Having been destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, we don’t have too much detail on it, but it’s thought to have been three stories high and probably a mixture of stone and wooden construction. Built around 30 years before the story is set, it was a testament to the growing popularity of gladiatorial combat at the time, which was about to reach its zenith.
Gladiatorial games typically consisted of two sets of events. In the morning, criminals, prisoners of war, and the like would be sent out to die en masse, either by being thrown to wild animals or by facing armed and armoured warriors, often as part of the reenactment of a famous battle where they play the losing side. (Christians would only start to become regular victims in this after the Great Fire, but that isn’t to say it didn’t happen at all yet). This, realistically, is the sort of fate that we would expect Ian to be being lined up for, as is implied in the relevant cliffhanger even if it isn’t what eventually ends up happening to him.
This was followed in the afternoon by the fights between the professionals, the single combats that distinguish the true gladiators from the “being thrown to the lions” part of the entertainment. Although the fights would become much bloodier later, during the first century only about 10% of the combatants in these afternoon combats died, perhaps in part because of the expense of training them. (10% may sound like a lot when we’re talking about risk of death, but it’s probably lower than one would expect when people are literally hitting each other with swords). Any PCs ending up as gladiators could, in fact, expect a fair amount of training although mostly with fake, wooden weapons.
Nero’s primary palace had been constructed just four years previously, although it would be destroyed in the Great Fire, rebuilt and expanded, and then demolished again to make way for the Colosseum and Trajan’s Baths. Although its short lifespan means that we don’t have many details of the pre-Fire structure, we know that it consisted of a complex of buildings, including a decorative courtyard surrounded by a colonnade of pillars, sunken gardens, at least one sacred shrine with a spring dedicated to a local nymph, a large rotunda with marble-lined pools, and an underground passage connecting to older palaces on the Palatine Hill. Much of the structure was either made from or dressed with marble, and there were many rich frescoes, decorative tiled inlays and other signs of opulence.
A brief scene in the palace shows Nero relaxing in the baths – although we only see the sauna and the nudity is understandably not depicted. If PCs spend any significant free time in Rome, the public baths are, along with the market, the sort of place they wouldn’t be able to avoid visiting without looking odd. (And, given the absence of other plumbing, being smelly). They are also, of course, a great place to pick up gossip and to find out what’s happening around the city. All free citizens used the baths regularly, and there were several of them across Rome. It’s worth noting, however, that they were single-sex, albeit often with both male and female baths under the same roof.
As for Nero himself, although he is played by a middle-aged man in the serial, he was only 26 at the time it is set, having held the throne since he was a teenager. Whether he was truly as villainous as he is in the serial, let alone as apparently stupid, is debatable but it’s a question of what works for the story. Despite his young age, Poppaea was his second wife, and older than he was at 34, the daughter of a senior government official and – if we believe the Roman historians who disparaged Nero – an ambitious schemer. They had no living children at the time the story is set.
Scenario
Trying to follow the plot as it happens in the serial is tricky in a game. Much of it relies either on the protagonists taking a particular unwise decision or being the victims of personal misfortune, neither of which can be guaranteed. An equally significant issue is that the plot as written also involves splitting the party – twice. The Doctor and Vicki head off to Rome, while Ian and Barbara stay behind, and then the latter two are again separated by the slavers. Ian and Barbara’s plot is all about them trying to get back together again, but a major element of the humour in the serial is that the two initial groups keep missing each other.
This, needless to say, is difficult to arrange, and it’s not necessarily desirable, either, depending on the players. Having said which, if you really wanted, it’s possible to throw in guest characters for the players whose PCs aren’t present to play; Delos is really the only example of this from the serial, but one could come up with others.
Ian and Barbara’s plot also relies on them being captured by slavers early on. If we want to keep the slavery elements, a possibility is to have the PCs need to rescue an NPC who has been captured; slavers have the advantage of being, like Nazis, the sort of indisputable bad guys that everyone can agree on hating. Unless the PCs decide to let themselves be captured as part of their plan, the action would be from a very different perspective than in the serial, but it’s still there. And, if they are captured (deliberately or otherwise), regular galley slaves may not really have been a thing, but slave merchants might have plausibly used their captives on a temporary basis to move their ships about… and, if they didn’t, well, it’s not as if many sword-and-sandal films haven’t ignored that down the years.
The gladiatorial elements are, however, potentially much more interesting in game and don’t even require PCs to be enslaved to take part. True, most gladiators were slaves, but a few were not; it was very much looked down on socially, and, in the real world, involved significant risk to life and limb without much of an upside… but it happened. Of course, given how dangerous it was, the PCs may need a good reason to take on the role, but, again, the opportunity is there. Speaking of which, it’s worth noting that female gladiators did exist historically, albeit as an exotic rarity.
In the serial, Ian is threatened with being thrown to the lions and being made to fight them, which is entirely plausible for a captured slave, rather than a professional gladiator. This is, after all, purely a method of execution; the human ‘fighters’ are unarmed and unarmoured and, in the unlikely event that the lions didn’t kill them outright, a gladiator would be sent in to finish the job. A fair contest is very much not the point.
For obvious reasons, we’re best off skipping the sections where the humour is intended to come from Nero failing to sexually molest Barbara.
Away from the slavery plotline, we have the sections where the Doctor unwittingly becomes involved in the scheme to assassinate Nero. In the story, he decides to impersonate a Corinthian lyre player because he thinks it’s going to be fun, but, in a game, we can come up with other motivations. All that’s required here is for the PCs to have a good reason to want to get into the palace as guests of the Emperor. Pretending to be Maximus Pettulian is one way of doing that, but they could come up with other aliases, or with some other way of appearing to be the sort of person you’d want to invite to the court.
In a time travel game involving time agents, for example, one way of sticking close to the original is to have the Time Agency plan to have the PCs accompany the real Pettulian and suddenly find that he’s dead and they have to imitate him… especially tricky if none of them have a suitable Performance skill. If they’re impersonating gladiators, however, they’re not getting an invitation to the banquet because they will be deemed to be of very low social status… but if they want another reason to get into the palace, well, there were plenty of rumours about Roman noblewomen inviting the manliest gladiators to, ahem, spend the night.
Once we have a reason for the PCs to be at the court, it’s easy enough to have Tavius believe that one or more of them are the assassin(s) he’s been waiting for and involve them in some of the shenanigans in the story – ambushes, poisonings, and all the rest of it. The question is why the PCs would want to play along, assuming they don’t want Nero dead four years early.
Here, they could perhaps be after something else that’s in the palace, or some other secure area that getting close to the Emperor would help with. If we portray Nero as he is in the story, we probably don’t want that to be anything that helps him too much, in case the PCs change their minds, but time agents could be on a mission to save somebody who dies in the original timeline. Tavius is an obvious possibility, since he’s fictional and it would give a good reason to appear to be helping him out. On the other hand, if we’re okay with changing history, it could even be Poppaea, since she died the following year (either in childbirth or because Nero killed her; historians are divided on the matter).
They might also want to foil Locusta, even if she believes that nobody ever wants revenge on her. Or perhaps she has some vital piece of information they need. In darker games, they might even want to recruit her themselves.
Moving away from the plot as depicted, first-century Rome naturally provides a whole host of possibilities for stories. One location worth mentioning is the Circus Maximus where chariot-racing and other games and festivities were regularly held – and chariot-racing is obviously another pastime that could provide entertainment in an RPG. Nor is this the only appearance of the first-century Roman Empire in Doctor Who lore; on TV we have The Fires of Pompeii, in the audios Wrath of the Iceni is set only four years before The Romans, and the novel Byzantium! is explicitly a prequel to it.
In other genres, Ancient Rome, or at least Rome-themed settings, are relatively common in fantasy games, with Vynestra being a recent example. Similarly, there is Cthulhu Invictus, which is even set in the first century, although this naturally has a different feel to it than the partly comedic serial. Even in non-Roman fantasy games, gladiatorial combat is a common trope, albeit usually pitting an adventuring party against either an opposing team or an exotic monster that can’t also attack the spectators.
Rules
The tech level is 2 in both GURPS and Doctors & Daleks, and 1 in Traveller. The fact that this is a pure historical, and one less exotic than The Aztecs, means that we require little in the way of specific rules to emulate it. There is poison, perhaps, and maybe stats for lions, but neither of these are particularly unusual in RPGs. However, it may be useful to look at the arms and armour of the day.
This is the period when legionnaires would have been wearing the lorica segmentata armour that we associate with them most, although it may have only recently become standard issue. We are not likely to encounter legionnaires in Rome, however, since they are all stationed elsewhere. Instead, we have the Pretorian Guard protecting the city and palace and the associated Numerus Batavorum serving as the Emperor’s personal bodyguard. While the former were Roman, the latter were recruited from Germanic tribes, primarily in what is now the Netherlands. On military duty elsewhere they would wear mail shirts and open helmets, but on palace duty they were supposed to be unarmoured, wearing civilian dress to maintain the appearance of a peaceful and safe environment. They were armed with swords, with a dagger as a backup weapon.
Gladiatorial equipment is more distinctive, however, not least because it was primarily intended to look interesting rather than be practical. The helmets are an exception to this, usually being full helms with a face covering and designed to be very effective – the last thing you wanted was for a combatant to be knocked out early in the fight.
Other than the helmet, the remaining armour typically consisted of a pair of greaves and something over the right arm, with the gladiator otherwise wearing nothing but a short kilt or loincloth so as to show off his physique. The arm armour was often just thick padding, sometimes with a metal shoulder piece, but in later years, would be replaced by full-length mail, scale, or segmented plate. The rare female gladiators got to add some kind of binding over their upper bodies, since the audience was not there to see topless women – the Romans recognised the need for some civilised standards while they were watching people being stabbed to death.
This sort of partial armour is easy enough to simulate in systems that allow armour by hit location, but in those that don’t it’s probably better to just abstract it out. In 5E, for instance, we could just call it light armour, probably with an AC of 12+Dex mod. An alternative is to roll a second d20 to determine which body part is hit and assign a difficulty to the accompanying attack roll to reflect an AC of 10, 11, 14, or 15 accordingly.
There were many variations on the weaponry employed, but four particular styles dominated. ‘Thracians’ and ‘secutors’ used small shields, with the former using straight stabbing shortswords, and the latter curved slashing ones. ‘Mymillos’ used shortswords and large shields, wearing a greave on only the left leg. Finally, the popular ‘retarius’ was armed with a trident and a weighted net and was always matched against a different type of gladiator to contrast the fighting styles.
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