Gladiator: Road to the Colosseum (Out Now!)

I hope you recover as soon as possible with full health and life intact. Glad you are back.

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Hi there, with regard to your question on the three nationalities, I’m afraid I will be going with these three for now, with the possibility of weaving in a Roman story when I’m done. Mostly because these cultures are easier to research on. But I also recognise that there are very distinct subcultures even within each race. The Gallic and Germanic tribes were split into multiple tribes, and as you rightly pointed out, there are a ton of various African races, notwithstanding various greek city states, persions, illyrians, pontics, persians, scythians and many more.

The issue for me therefore is to balance realism and practicality. I want to give a relatively accurate portrayal and I will definitely add various cultures and races into the story (as friends, adversaries etc) but I don’t think I will delve into the specifics less it turns into a history lesson instead of a story. I hope this answers your question!

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@Pyyrhus @ruhenri @idonotlikeusernames
I am loving your discussion on Roman slavery, it definitely brings out a couple of extremely relevant points, as well as certain perspectives I have not considered. I have done quite a bit of reading, albeit mostly online. On the point of manumission and the liberties of a freed gladiator, I will reflect this closer to the end of the story, and perhaps this could be the prelude to the sequel. A retired gladiator could do quite a few things with his/her fame and fortune. Perhaps run his/her own ludi, or exact revenge on old enemies, or simply find a good spouse and retire into a life of decadence. I wouldn’t rule out a spartacus-styled revolt as well. But a story on such a scale will unlikely be included in this for now.

Certain themes I would like to include in the story would definitely include class, privilege and social status in Rome. Hence I will try to reflect the experience of a slave/gladiator in Rome without being too didactic or too superficial. A huge limitation to this is that there are literally no accounts of Roman slavery written by the slaves themselves (Do point me to one if you do happen to know otherwise) and we are already limited in our knowledge of the experience. Hence I will be taking a few (hopefully minor) liberties and assumptions to 1) make the story cogent 2) make the story more exciting.

At this point, I won’t reveal too much (I hope I haven’t yet) but I am definitely encouraged by your interest! Thank you so much and I hope further updates won’t disappoint! :smile:

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Thank you! You know what they say, health is wealth

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Well not if you’re going to limit the mc’s possible terms of manumission to what was historically available to them, since that sort of “manumission” was really just continued slavery under a different label. Which is why I urge you to at least consider the Ben-Hur style manumission where they simply assumed all Roman manumission was of the good kind and conveniently forgot to make the distinction between the possible types and conditions of Roman manumission.
Like I said before, legally speaking, gladiators where the second worst off out of the different categories of Roman slaves when it came to manumission, only being beaten out by those slaves who where legally prohibited from being manumitted at all.

There are, but those were usually written by the more “intellectual” slaves who had the good fortune to be manumitted into partial citizenship. If I was still at university or had access to my prof. for that subject I could probably point you to some. As for the rest, yeah, I do not know of any surviving accounts of slavery in Roman times being written by former gladiator slaves or other slaves lower on the slave totem pole themselves, but then they were very often illiterate, which is certainly an obstacle for my mc to overcome here and another instance where you may have to handwaive history a little in order to give our characters genuine options.

Answered it quite well, and I absolutely get that decision probably a lot less slugging through lists a descriptions of cultures too :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t like the new random generated friend. Can it be changed to a choice of fixed friend or random generated friend?

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May I know why you don’t like it? Just shoot away don’t worry! Do you mean changing it into a choice option meaning similar to how I did it with the realism/perma-death? Hmm how do you think I should do it?

It’s because I started playing the game before the random friend and always choose to be a Gaul, so for me Boadicea will anyways be the ginger girl with curly hair. So when I read that she is blonde/brunette woth short/long hair, it breaks my immersion, because I keep thinking “that is not Boadicea”.

You could add a choice after you choose if you want a random origin or if you want to select it:
label randonfriend
“Do you want your friend to be random or to have a fixed personality?”

#Random
goto next_scene
#Fixed
set fixedfriend true
goto next_scene

Then after the choice of your gender you could do:
if fixedfriend = true and bestfriend = “Boadicea”
set bestfriendhair = “curly”
set bestfriendhaircolour = “ginger”
(add others variables)
goto next_scene2

Then you would need to add the variables to every friend too.

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I see, thanks for the feedback! I have fixed it on my working copy.

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@idonotlikeusernames
Ahh I understand what you are getting at now. Yes, the dediticii were manumitted slaves that didnt have much of the rights given to a full Roman citizen, and this would limit their ability to do much at all.

I would say that I probably will consider a more liberal, “positive” take on manumission so as to grant the MC more freedom in terms of his/her post retirement options. Whichever that may be. But i definitely need to read up a lot more to see what was possible and what wasnt.

Ultimately, things might change and I might consider fixing a career path for the MC if it makes practical sense. For example, for the MC to become a lanista. It would be interesting to say the least haha

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You could also use the MC as a political tool for a senator, or have a noble MC be recognized for his noble blood or what have you. By political tool I mean he could create some special term for the MC that exempts him from the limited rights most freed gladiators had. Of course I’m getting into conjecture and throwing out random ideas on two topics I don’t know a large amount about (creating a story/Roman slave law)

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True but that only works for the noble mc. On the other hand if the author makes it so that my peasant mc could eventually get that partial citizen manumission, that would be a huge step up in the world for him as combined with a fortune that would grant status almost equal to that of a patrician, heck if such manumitted slaves had children they were full citizens. The only restriction the good kind of manumission carried was not being able to run for public office yourself, though you were permitted to speak out in the forum and otherwise so you could argue for and support others and you did have active voting rights.
So if he can get that best kind of partial citizen manumission my mc would be very happy and it would allow him to take revenge on his “noble” bully from an equal position eventually.

This would be viable if the time period was a little later when the emperor could do whatever he wanted, the republic was more legalistic so in the time period of our mc such a custom deal wouldn’t really fly. Though again that would assume the author wanting to make the game as realistic as our academic understanding allows. If he wants to say that Caesar of Pompey, with or without the help of some of the era’s great legal minds, can in-game can bend the laws of the Republic enough to get our mc’s a custom manumission deal that would be fine too.

You can always make the same conceit Ben-Hur did and ignore the different types of manumission for different categories of slaves the Romans historically used and just go with the good, partial-citizen one as by default.

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There’s also something to be said for the Romans view on different cultures, I’d be curious to see if character’s opinion modifiers vary by culture, though that could get into the unnecessary realm real quick. Something like the salt coast modifier with Cazarosta in Sabres perhaps?
It would lend itself to replayability imho, though you run the risk of making different cultures seem better than others stat or character wise, ala the Aetorian being the MVP start in Sabres.

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@idonotlikeusernames
Yes, there will be distinct differences in the expectation of a peasant/merchant//noble MC simply because of their different perspectives in life, which I hope would be/has been shown in subtle, nuanced ways.

To be honest, I am considering changing the time period because… well, the Colosseum wasn’t built until 70AD? So if I will probably change the time period, but this would mean losing out on some historical events like the siege of Alesia and Alexandria, as well as Rome’s transition from a Republic to an Empire. And Julius Ceasar’s era. So I am still considering which time period would suit my purpose the best. In a way to make things more exciting as well.

A Ben-Hur styled manumission would definitely be the most convenient way to go about doing it. A custom manumission would probably require a lot of luck, influence and popularity for it to be considered let alone to be passed.

@Pyyrhus
In terms of race. Well, subtle advantages will start to be introduced. Picking of slaves based on the ability to speak latin, will be added. And this would affect the MC’s access to various options (political and otherwise) as well as the ability to make friends (perhaps in a way like the interaction with Taurus)

One question is this. I understand that CoG has strict rules on racist content and I am not sure if this would be dancing around the definition a little. But slaves were definitely subjected to racial discrimination (greeks were definitely more valued than say, gauls) So this would be a question to the more experienced writers/moderators/editors. To what extent would the content allow somewhat discriminatory behaviour on the part of the Romans against the MC or other NPCs based on their race/skin colour?

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Yeah, not the most historically accurate but certainly the most fun for your players. Like I said Ben-Hur’s director and writers also conveniently chose to disregard the various categories of manumission and simply go with the best and most advantageous one.

Don’t worry you have, though of course any man can better himself and for my peasant mc that would hopefully include becoming literate somewhere along the way.

Well I for one hope you keep the time period (and simply change the rules of manumission for your gameworld) as I think it is one of the most interesting periods in Roman history.
The only thing setting it later would do is to actually have the Colosseum finished, but if you want a/the Colosseum you could also introduce a plausible reason why the alternate historical Roman Empire/Republic built one earlier on, as well as why they regard manumission of gladiator slaves in a subtly different way. Remember there’s a lot you can do with alternate history.

A tweak you could certainly make to history is to have the first two servile wars/uprisings go more badly for Rome and have someone in power figure out that co-opting the most tactically minded, dangerous and popular of the slaves (i.e. the surviving gladiator slaves) even deeper into the system by essentially making the wealthy surviving ones into upper-class elites with little reason to rebel would work better. Of course this tactic may lead to more “thumbs down” and less surviving manumitted gladiators then there were historically but everything has its trade-offs and if our mc is among the surviving manumitted ones it would work out much better for them compared to the historical options, particularly for the peasant and middle class mc’s the noble one would simply be trading one kind of nobility for another with the humiliating intermediate experience of having been a slave, but then again you cannot have everything.

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This game is amazing! I can’t wait until it comes out, and I don’t want the forum to die out.

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@idonotlikeusernames
I agree, but I think if I allow a gladiator to simply challenge an emperor AND win. It would be outrageous. To think that an emperor would risk his position and privilege for a duel. So even if there were a means to do so, via a coup, rebellion or whatnot, I will probably not have in this this book. But if all goes well, I am planning for a series and this could be a possible sequel.

Literacy would be extremely useful. In fact, I am actually finding it difficult to make the story cogent for non-latin speaking MCs. Having to put in mandatory translators and whatnot.

Working with alternate history could allow me to tweak the rules and traditions to my liking, which is something I will embark on extremely carefully.

With regard to the servile wars and your proposed alternative, I must say that it is quite an interesting thought to establish a working meritocracy to have the best and brightest serve Rome. Political ramifications would be extremely interesting to note. Imagine recruiting Hannibal Barca as a consul to lead legions in expeditions against Pontus. It would upset the traditional Roman households should there not be a “glass ceiling” for foreigners. In terms of senatorial powers, political office and military positions, I can only imagine that traditionally influential Roman households would never allow such a situation to unfold, rejecting it should it come up during senatorial debates as they would 1) want to protect their own interests 2) uphold Roman pride and the image of Roman superiority over foreign civilisations.

But I must say that it is a legitimate strategy. Should the good gladiators be given positions of true freedom and find patronage or influence in Rome, they might slowly forget the hardships that they had borne. Over time they could probably become so entrenched into Roman society that over the course of 2-3 generations, their families could serve Rome as well as a “true” Roman household. Another way could be to constantly rotate the gladiators such that they do not start to establish long standing cliques and alliances within themselves, strong enough to risk their lives in a bid to rebel against Rome. I must admit that I am still struggling to see how I can fit it in. If all else fails, hey, its my story right hahaha. But I will hate to tweak history without a solid explanation.

@Rafael_Trigo
Thank you so much for your kind words! I will continue working hard to make sure it doesn’t! :smile:

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For Egypt and Greece it would be a matter of linking the MC to the Romans ancestors in Greece/Troy and label them as a “lost” Roman that was returned to their rightful home. I have no idea how you would go about that in Gaul though. In Greece/Egypt there’s plenty of Greek peoples and bloodlines that could be “linked” back to Troy. Gaul has a few Greek colonies on the coastal areas Massilia (Marseilles) and on prominent one in Iberia I can’t remember the name of around Barcelona I believe. So theoritically you could retcon the MC into an area near a Greek colony and claims could be made “Romanizing” the MC retroactively. You’d have to ask someone more knowledgeable than myself on Roman society and family claims, but I don’t see how if someone could claim to be descended from Zeus or Hercules it would be a massive stretch to have a patron who had something to gain “make up” a Roman heritage or Greek adjacent heritage for the MC

Maybe I was too unclear, but if the best and brightest former gladiator slaves get to enjoy the good kind of manumission they would still be prohibited from holding public office themselves, though they’d be citizens, upper class citizens due to the fortunes they usually amassed if they were good even. It would only be their children who’d be full citizens from birth.
All I’m saying is if they deal with the best and brightest former gladiator slaves the way they already historically dealt with many of their manumitted more intellectual household slaves, who the Roman upper class had little trouble assimilating, often marrying them after their manumission.
See the wikipedia article on manumission and look for ancient Rome, though I’ll note at a glance that wikipedia article is guilty of the same sort error the Ben Hur movies are and that is to regard the best kind of manumission, where one became a partial citizen as the only kind of manumission, which is false, but for fictional purposes it should be quite tolerable as declaratii manumission of the kind “manumitted” gladiator slaves historically got would be mostly worthless.

Again in short, the glass ceiling on the good kind of partial citizen type manumission would be that you’d still be barred from actually seeking and holding public office for yourself, though you could support and campaign for (in roman, republic times that mostly meant giving public speeches and hosting parties on behalf of) your favoured candidate for those public positions.

Lastly you’re certainly right in that some of the more traditional or impoverished partricians themselves tended to historically view the more wealthy manumitted partial citizen freedmen and their offspring as the somewhat vulgar nouveau riche.

I believe one of the results of those debates is why the partial citizenship when making freedmen out of their most favoured slaves was likely created in the first place. As partial citizens those freedmen gained a mostly equal legal footing in daily lives and were most importantly not subject to unequal contracts whenever they conducted business with true citizens and since many of the freedmen where historically the most intellectually able slaves and some of the best intellectuals in Rome they were then allowed to debate and write as freely as any other citizen, yet they could not seek public office and thus what most Romans regarded as the highest powers for themselves. One of the compromises in that was that any children born to them after they became freedmen (though not the ones they may already have had before) did become full citizens.

Yep, again it would be giving them the same sorts of positions and opportunities that the former slaves used in more intellectual pursuits already got historically. Not totally beyond the pale, particularly if one of the terms of their alt-historical partronage might have included service as either a regular legionairre, or more desirable for the in-game mc an officer in the auxilliary forces before the manumission really became final and irrevocable.
Don’t forget that most manumitted slaves were also subjected to a period of “patronage” most often to their former masters but sometimes to the state before their manumission became a truly irrevocable right. For the historical gladiators their only duties under this system were, as you’ve noted to train more gladiators and run the gladiator schools on behalf of their former masters, though of course as declaratii they were always under threat of re-enslavement for nearly any reason and their terms of patronage were not limited to an x number of years or one last, finite task or a finite value of goods and services to be rendered, as was usually the case with the partial citizen type manumission.
In the alternate history an additional term of faithful military service might precede their final and definitive manumission (and enjoyment of their amassed fortune) instead. And, yes, such a term of what we call probation in a dangerous military occupation would help reduce the numbers of the “lucky few” true survivors even further to such small numbers the roman aristocracy would have very little trouble absorbing them and their descendants, though of course the first few generations of such families descended from said freedmen former gladiators would likely be treated as vulgar nouveau riche and “show off” so-called “war heroes” by the traditionalists. But that was par for the course and the nouveau riche partial citizen freedmen a popular trope of Roman literature.

Oh one last observation, for gameplay purposes if you do like the idea of making some sort of additional military service a requirement for freedmen former gladiators before becoming partial citizens then I suggest following another Hollywood convention and reducing the Roman term of military service from the historical 20 to five or so years for the characters, so they’d be in their thirties, instead of fifties when they become truly free partial citizens.

Historically and for gameplay reasons I’d suggest making freedmen gladiators serve their required military terms of their possible patronage as officers in the auxilliaries, rather than ordinary legionnaires. Historically because the auxilliaries were less prestigious, though some of those regiments and their officers did get recognized as war heroes and in imperial times were included in the rear of some victory parades. The possible alternate historical consequences of the Romans getting more capable auxillary troops earlier on because they let some of the best and brightest martially inclined former slaves serve in and lead them could range from more rapid expansion of the empire to a longer lived Western Roman empire. It would blur some concepts that were not adopted until the imperial era historically such as some Roman citizens serving in the auxilliaries (mostly the cavalry) rather than the legions but that might be worth the trade-off for the expanded gameplay possibilities it provides.

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