The Glory of Rome: Campaign Sourcebook (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Historical Reference, Hr5 Rome) [Paperback]

David L. Pulver (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 210 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast; 2nd edition (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560766735
• ISBN-13: 978-1560766735
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,054,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rome in 2nd Edition D&D, May 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Glory of Rome: Campaign Sourcebook (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Historical Reference, Hr5 Rome) (Paperback)

This is a supplement for 2nd edition D&D that covers the historical period of the Roman empire and translates roman myths and folklore into D&D terms.

It provides a good timeline for the empire, an okay section on roman adventures and the roman world, but the great section is the 2nd edition class and kit write ups. It provides for political soldiers, gladiators, oratory before the Senate, street thugs in the capitol city, witches, and priests for all the ectsasy cults and Roman gods. It is set in a low magic background as are all the historical settings but the magical details are great including the three witch spells it includes (dream curses, love charms and protective amulets).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roman AD&D...about darn time!, May 2, 2008

By 

Marius the Wanderer "Roleplayer, Storyteller,... - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Glory of Rome: Campaign Sourcebook (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition, Historical Reference, Hr5 Rome) (Paperback)

In 1993, TSR published the _Glory of Rome_ historical campaign handbook. By that time, I'd been running my "Roma Subterranea" campaign for over a year, and had had to come up with my own rules tweaks to adapt AD&D to a Roman setting. It was interesting and instructive to see how many of my ideas were thought up independently by their stable of dedicated gamers after extensive Roman research. It was also entertaining to see what they'd missed, and how many of my fixes remain uniquely mine.

Pluses: They definitely did their homework on this one. I got the feeling that we were all reading the same books; the Osprey military-history handbooks and Colleen McCollough's _First Man in Rome_ foremost among them. You will find in here the Legionary subclass (called a 'kit', nowadays, but quite distinct from mine); Gladiators and Charlatans; and the first-ever description of the Christian cleric in game terms. Quite a bit about ancient magic, superstition, and folklore (curse tablets, protective amulets, love potions...all things which the Romans believed in). New skills, equipment, and so on; a really nice map of the Empire (no hexes!) showing its historical development; and, above all, a genuinely great job of converting a game meant for medieval fantasy to a mostly-urban environment where travel was a little safer and a lot more widespread than at any point in the Middle Ages.

Gripes: After reading the massively pan-cultural description of the Heraldry proficiency in the 2nd Ed. Players' Handbook, I was shocked to find GoR denying Romans access to this skill. If "the shield-emblems of African tribal chieftains" qualify for such study, how much more appropriate must be the shield-emblems and standards of the Legions, or the signet-rings of noble families, or the width of the stripe on a magistrate's toga? Also, I think they missed a major opportunity to bring magic into the setting via the clerics. Things like the Palladium, the Seven Shields of Mars, and the Eagles of the Legions must be extremely powerful artifacts (especially under the _Tome of Magic_'s rules regarding 'faith-magic'); but to hear TSR tell it, there's not enough mana in the Roman world to set off a smoke alarm. Just because the *wizards* can't get to it...

Favorite feature: The book's got Roman _auctoritas_: "In any instance of conflict between the Players' Handbook and this Supplement, the Supplement shall take precedence in a Roman campaign setting..."--so Ciceronian! All in all, a strong recommend.

This supplement is for AD&D 2nd Edition, so may be a little hard to come by nowadays; but it should still be obtainable, as long as all the version-jumpers are still trying to get rid of their older stuff.