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Uplifted Roman Empire

One interesting idea is the scout ship can be used to transport Roman citizens to New Zealand, it has a temperate climate and in 113 AD no natives. Now how many people can you pack into a scout/courier? I bet a round trip can be done in two hours, fly above the atmosphere should get the Roman's there pretty quick. A small town can be established there with ship builders and blacksmiths, Rome's first colony.
 
One interesting idea is the scout ship can be used to transport Roman citizens to New Zealand, it has a temperate climate and in 113 AD no natives. Now how many people can you pack into a scout/courier? I bet a round trip can be done in two hours, fly above the atmosphere should get the Roman's there pretty quick. A small town can be established there with ship builders and blacksmiths, Rome's first colony.

Why bother? The Americas is a better bet. Start a colony that way in the Great Lakes region. The Romans are good at integrating native peoples into their society at various levels. The Great Lakes region has lots of farmland, iron, coal, and other raw materials to build with. Its weather is analogous to that of Italy too.

Putting another colony on the US East and West coasts would be useful as well for communications purposes among other things. In the American Southwest the availability of ores like copper, silver, and gold would be valuable and Romans integrating with the Anastasi tribes there would make for a quick expansion on colonial power.

If you can transport them using a scout ship, you could potentially haul say 20 to 30 people along with several tons of cargo each day to produce a starter colony of several hundred in a short time at each location over a period of a couple of months. Bring in mostly legionnaire's initially to build a fortified camp and other infrastructure at first.
These could be then reinforced into the neighborhood of a thousand persons over a year. From there, the colony relies on both internal births along with integrating indigenous peoples to expand further.
Such a Roman colony wouldn't need much new technology to get started. They already possess the necessary knowledge and technology to build a viable and protected town at the location selected. Turning the locals into Roman citizens means you rapidly go from hundreds of inhabitants to thousands.
Dropping Romans into Central and South America to take advantage of Incan and Olmec civilization would do the same in those areas. You end up with a widespread reasonably advanced civilization over two continents PDQ.
 
Why bother? The Americas is a better bet. Start a colony that way in the Great Lakes region. The Romans are good at integrating native peoples into their society at various levels. The Great Lakes region has lots of farmland, iron, coal, and other raw materials to build with. Its weather is analogous to that of Italy too.

Putting another colony on the US East and West coasts would be useful as well for communications purposes among other things. In the American Southwest the availability of ores like copper, silver, and gold would be valuable and Romans integrating with the Anastasi tribes there would make for a quick expansion on colonial power.

If you can transport them using a scout ship, you could potentially haul say 20 to 30 people along with several tons of cargo each day to produce a starter colony of several hundred in a short time at each location over a period of a couple of months. Bring in mostly legionnaire's initially to build a fortified camp and other infrastructure at first.
These could be then reinforced into the neighborhood of a thousand persons over a year. From there, the colony relies on both internal births along with integrating indigenous peoples to expand further.
Such a Roman colony wouldn't need much new technology to get started. They already possess the necessary knowledge and technology to build a viable and protected town at the location selected. Turning the locals into Roman citizens means you rapidly go from hundreds of inhabitants to thousands.
Dropping Romans into Central and South America to take advantage of Incan and Olmec civilization would do the same in those areas. You end up with a widespread reasonably advanced civilization over two continents PDQ.

The difference is New Zealand has no native people in 113 AD, they don't arrive until 1300 AD, so Roman's would colonize two fairly big uninhabited islands, they avoid the issue of hostile natives entirely, they don't have to worry about building forts or security, nor do they have to worry about giving native people diseases that they have no immunity against, maybe the time Traveller has a little bit on conscious in the back of his brain and doesn't want to be personally responsible for killing millions of native American inhabitants indirectly, maybe the Roman's will do that by themselves, but it won't be on him. Also there is another thing he could do, he could leave New Zealand off the map, he can print out a map of the world for the Roman's that does not include New Zealand, it is small enough that he can do that, so it will be his secret little colony that he controls, and he can also buy slaves, transport them to his New Zealand colony and release them there, they won't be bothered by an expanding Roman Empire that doesn't know those islands exist. Roman's can be pretty violent, brutal, and treacherous, he saw the play Julius Caesar, and he figures he could have an ace in the hole just in case there are some Brutuses out to get him.
 
Low hanging fruit would be grabbing the environs around Mesopotamia, Arabia and Persia, and do a little drilling. The Rhineland to set up an industrial base.
 
Low hanging fruit would be grabbing the environs around Mesopotamia, Arabia and Persia, and do a little drilling. The Rhineland to set up an industrial base.

Same deal. You'd want to start with coal because you can use it as mined. Oil requires fairly complex refining to make it useful. That will take much more technology and chemistry to make it happen.

Coal, iron (into steel), and steam power are the best early starting points for technological advancement.
 
The difference is New Zealand has no native people in 113 AD, they don't arrive until 1300 AD, so Roman's would colonize two fairly big uninhabited islands, they avoid the issue of hostile natives entirely, they don't have to worry about building forts or security, nor do they have to worry about giving native people diseases that they have no immunity against, maybe the time Traveller has a little bit on conscious in the back of his brain and doesn't want to be personally responsible for killing millions of native American inhabitants indirectly, maybe the Roman's will do that by themselves, but it won't be on him. Also there is another thing he could do, he could leave New Zealand off the map, he can print out a map of the world for the Roman's that does not include New Zealand, it is small enough that he can do that, so it will be his secret little colony that he controls, and he can also buy slaves, transport them to his New Zealand colony and release them there, they won't be bothered by an expanding Roman Empire that doesn't know those islands exist. Roman's can be pretty violent, brutal, and treacherous, he saw the play Julius Caesar, and he figures he could have an ace in the hole just in case there are some Brutuses out to get him.

The problem is that New Zealand is not resource rich. In order to push technology forward you need the resources to make the stuff that will allow that to happen.
Thus, initially you will need lots and lots of manpower to drive an industrial revolution. Hence why you pick locations with that manpower that the Romans can tap that are also on top of the necessary resources:

Iron
Coal
Lumber
Farm land (and wild animals like bison)
Water (both lakes and large rivers)

Instead of doing it secretly, you do it right out in the open. Your potential enemies don't stand a chance. In the America's you have a huge stone age technological population ripe for takeover.

Why go small when you can go big? Putting the equivalent of a legion with supporting civilians--say about 2 to 5 thousand total in the Americas would pretty much make both North and South America yours. Within a millennia you would have completely eclipsed Europe and have the potential to take over the planet without real threat to your own societal base.
All you'd really need is a slightly larger ship to haul people and "stuff" to the Americas early on. An Empress Marava class far trader carrying 100 to 200 people on a trip would do it. Cram them in the cargo hold. A few hours transit time and you're golden. You can bring livestock as well. Then bring basic tools and equipment you need.

One legion of 1000 troops would crush any native opposition. Incorporate them into your "New Rome" and away you go. Add in bringing in the smarter engineers and scientists of the time, and you have all the edge you need.

The Emperor wouldn't know what's really going on in the Americas and he'd have plenty on his hands improving things in Europe and the Med. You give him some stuff, but not the really good bits you save for your colonies in the Americas.

By the time the two cross paths regularly, the America colonies are now the true powerhouse of the empire and that's that. Also, unlike Rome itself, the Americas have spread to Asia and elsewhere gaining even more power.
 
The problem is that New Zealand is not resource rich. In order to push technology forward you need the resources to make the stuff that will allow that to happen.
Thus, initially you will need lots and lots of manpower to drive an industrial revolution. Hence why you pick locations with that manpower that the Romans can tap that are also on top of the necessary resources:

Iron
Coal
Lumber
Farm land (and wild animals like bison)
Water (both lakes and large rivers)

Instead of doing it secretly, you do it right out in the open. Your potential enemies don't stand a chance. In the America's you have a huge stone age technological population ripe for takeover.

Why go small when you can go big? Putting the equivalent of a legion with supporting civilians--say about 2 to 5 thousand total in the Americas would pretty much make both North and South America yours. Within a millennia you would have completely eclipsed Europe and have the potential to take over the planet without real threat to your own societal base.
All you'd really need is a slightly larger ship to haul people and "stuff" to the Americas early on. An Empress Marava class far trader carrying 100 to 200 people on a trip would do it. Cram them in the cargo hold. A few hours transit time and you're golden. You can bring livestock as well. Then bring basic tools and equipment you need.

One legion of 1000 troops would crush any native opposition. Incorporate them into your "New Rome" and away you go. Add in bringing in the smarter engineers and scientists of the time, and you have all the edge you need.

The Emperor wouldn't know what's really going on in the Americas and he'd have plenty on his hands improving things in Europe and the Med. You give him some stuff, but not the really good bits you save for your colonies in the Americas.

By the time the two cross paths regularly, the America colonies are now the true powerhouse of the empire and that's that. Also, unlike Rome itself, the Americas have spread to Asia and elsewhere gaining even more power.

I was thinking New Zealand would be a great place to build a library, kind of like Terminus from Asimov's Foundation series, you have an agricultural society that no one knows about except those living on the islands, the advantage New Zealand has is that it's out of the way. The politics of the Empire may be somewhat unpredictable, so you build a society on New Zealand, a society of farmers and librarians and a bunch of books and technical manuals in print, and you also keep things the Emperor of the Roman Empire might not like, such as a copy of the Constitution of the United States, some history books of the timeline the time Traveller is from, eventually he fixes the fuel Processor of the ship and returns to the Classic Traveller Era in the Terra System when the search for the missing time ship and the thief who stole it dies down a bit, he has some Terran contacts who sympathize with the cause, and he ships some modern technology to the New Zealand colony he is establishing.

A few Solomani rebels wanted by the Imperium Authorities are send to the New Zealand colony to lay low for a while, and they help to teach some former Roman's slaves various modern skills. One long range goal is to turn the Roman Empire back into a republic, but one on a more democratic basis. The time Traveller estimates that when the Roman Empire reaches the technological level of the late 1700s on Earth, this would be the best time for a revolution to push the Empire into a more Democratic basis. The weapons of civilian frontiers men and soldiers are much the same in this era mainly that of muskets and black powder rifles and cannon.

I'm just throwing some ideas out here, maybe it can be a campaign setting. What role would the player characters play in this? The time Traveller is an NPC, he basically creates this setting through his interference in history. I don't think its realistic to make the Roman Empire last into modern times, but perhaps the tech level advancement could be accelerated. There are three eras the 1st century era, the modern era, and the Roman interstellar era, we try to preserve Roman culture into the Interstellar era. I figure this could be achieved by the 5th century, this is basically 400 years, 200 years to reach tech level 7 and another 200 years to reach tech level 15, and have a bunch of Roman colonies on various different worlds surrounding Terra.
 
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To build such a library you need the free labor beyond farming and other subsistence levels to do the construction. Then you need the industry to make paper, ink, movable type, printing presses, bindery materials, etc.

A library like the one at Alexandrea required all that too. If you plan on putting in works by world scholars, etc., in addition to stuff gained from the future, you need a means to transcribe all of it into texts.

Another problem might be the ship's computer and other electronic storage doesn't contain across-the-board knowledge that could be necessary for rapid technological advances.

As I pointed out, just making something like a musket from scratch 500 or so years early requires considerable advances in numerous technologies as well as in science.
To make a musket locally requires the technologies for mining the necessary ores, then smelting them, then making them into the proper shapes. A musket barrel requires a considerable amount of technology on it's own. This won't happen with a small population base.

So, given the nature of the Roman empire by the Imperial period, it might be better again to go with a variant of the Byzantine Empire. That is, you set up a new and separate colony where it can expand rapidly in terms of population to give you the manpower base to exploit for making technology and industry. If you carefully add in the better minds available to do things like transcribe literature into books, and learn the technology so it's transferable, you can make it a stable republic right from the get go. Let the original wither on the vine while creating a new Rome in the Americas.

Instead of enslaving the indigenous population you turn them into Romans and make them willing participants. With minimal warfare and plenty of room to expand, this empire becomes a world beater in relative isolation. They know about the rest of the world but the rest of the world doesn't know about them.

Thus, when they do decide to reestablish contact after several centuries or more, they are so far in advance of the rest of the world they can easily take control. The biggest thing your benefactors have to do is make sure they don't end up an imperial colonial monarchy or dictatorship but remain faithful to being a republic focused on world enlightenment.

This might be summed up by saying they show up bearing blue jeans, soda pop, and chocolate bars. Being centuries ahead of everybody else means they become the model for advancement but since they aren't simply taking over and forcing the locals to bend to their will means the locals elsewhere have to become capitalists and entrepreneurs to catch up.
Dispose of unpopular dictators and monarchs when you come across them to help out the locals and play world police.
 
I suspect New Zealand is popular because global apocalypses like nuclear wars and zombie outbreaks are likely to pass them by, and it lacks the Australian penchant for making the wildlife lethal.
 
One other thing to remember, the cargo capacity of a scout ship is (per mongoose 2) 12dtons. That is 160 cubic metres. Or more than many Roman sea-going traders.

The 4dTon staterooms are over 50 cubic metres. As life-support isn't an issue (the air is breathable and just needs refreshing periodically), you can squeeze in 20 or so bodies per room when transporting them in what the hoi-poloi wouldn't see as unusual overcrowding for a ship.

Your ship has more metal in it than an entire Roman Legion.
 
To build such a library you need the free labor beyond farming and other subsistence levels to do the construction. Then you need the industry to make paper, ink, movable type, printing presses, bindery materials, etc.

A library like the one at Alexandrea required all that too. If you plan on putting in works by world scholars, etc., in addition to stuff gained from the future, you need a means to transcribe all of it into texts.

Another problem might be the ship's computer and other electronic storage doesn't contain across-the-board knowledge that could be necessary for rapid technological advances.

As I pointed out, just making something like a musket from scratch 500 or so years early requires considerable advances in numerous technologies as well as in science.
To make a musket locally requires the technologies for mining the necessary ores, then smelting them, then making them into the proper shapes. A musket barrel requires a considerable amount of technology on it's own. This won't happen with a small population base.

So, given the nature of the Roman empire by the Imperial period, it might be better again to go with a variant of the Byzantine Empire. That is, you set up a new and separate colony where it can expand rapidly in terms of population to give you the manpower base to exploit for making technology and industry. If you carefully add in the better minds available to do things like transcribe literature into books, and learn the technology so it's transferable, you can make it a stable republic right from the get go. Let the original wither on the vine while creating a new Rome in the Americas.

Instead of enslaving the indigenous population you turn them into Romans and make them willing participants. With minimal warfare and plenty of room to expand, this empire becomes a world beater in relative isolation. They know about the rest of the world but the rest of the world doesn't know about them.

Thus, when they do decide to reestablish contact after several centuries or more, they are so far in advance of the rest of the world they can easily take control. The biggest thing your benefactors have to do is make sure they don't end up an imperial colonial monarchy or dictatorship but remain faithful to being a republic focused on world enlightenment.

This might be summed up by saying they show up bearing blue jeans, soda pop, and chocolate bars. Being centuries ahead of everybody else means they become the model for advancement but since they aren't simply taking over and forcing the locals to bend to their will means the locals elsewhere have to become capitalists and entrepreneurs to catch up.
Dispose of unpopular dictators and monarchs when you come across them to help out the locals and play world police.

Seems the time Traveller will need to go back where he came from and bring back some doctors, in particular virologists, and people specialized in developing vaccines, and New Zealand can act as a quarantine area so that new arrivals have a chance to work out the new diseases in their systems so they don't spread them to the native Americans when they arrive. Vaccinating the native populations is likely to take a long time. I suppose they can be tracked down by satellite thermal imaging of their camp fires, then you have to worry about "misunderstandings" with first contact scenarios.

Not all natives will likely be friendly, some of the doctors might get killed in these "misunderstandings". And of course there is the communications barrier, the Ancient Roman's spoke Latin and Greeks, the Ship's library probably has records of these languages, but whatever the natives spoke in the 2nd century Americas was not written down, so the ship's library probably has no record of those to use in translation programs. Of course there are those three 3rd Imperium researchers ensconced in the Roman population and then stranded by the time Traveller when he stole their ride home, that ship was due to pick them up before that ship got stolen, maybe they would know something about native American languages in the 2nd century. Part of the purpose of research is them gathering of new information. Probably those three are looking to take back the time ship at their first opportunity.
 
Hmmm.


If you have time travel as an available tech, that would make for some more interesting choices rather then picking a specific jumpstarter empire to gussy up for single world government.

Scifi is littered with species that have met disaster or war and perished, leaving enigmatic ruins and artifacts. You could go back and save them from whatever, and get a lot more functional races and empires alive in the current timeline.

Conversely, perhaps the disaster WAS the time travel empire that decides no competitors are a Good Thing.


Once you have a base population of TL7-8 that can survive and sustain, you could start in on colonizing other planets, timing them to all grow and get TL9 about the same time while you are busy knitting them together culturally so they know about each other. Instant Star Empire in a box.

An empire that can go back in time and 'fix things' may be an inherently more stable entity. It may also be VERY susceptible to the conceptual weaknesses of what that enforced culture/law is.

Another fun concept to play with- maybe the First Imperium is stable precisely because they have this sort of internal fixit, they didn't want the technology getting out so few had it and it was lost/dormant during the Interstellar Wars.

Or, they intentionally disappear from the galactic stage to allow their handiwork to go fractal-natural and not give up their meddling, and mysteriously are still manipulating events current game time for an unknown end.

Maybe that's where Grandfather went to escape and is still active today.


Speaking of manipulation, this would be the Hivers' FAVORITE toy. What sort of galaxy would the Hivers use time travel to shape?


Time wars when two time travel capable empires clash. BAD STUFF.


Final thought, if you go beyond thought experiment and actually run something like this, you are going to need some simple rules to limit them and make for challenges. I'd start with something simple- you can't exist in the same time twice. Profound effects and limits though, you botch something, IT COUNTS.
 
Admittingly, you want a polity with a pre established infrastructure you can take over, which also covers the Middle Kingdom and who's in charge at the moment in the East, the Parthians?

If taking over the Roman Empire has more potential, than you have to figure out how it actually functions, and what parts you'd need to control to get to your objective, because we know, the strongman system was a development out of the fact that the Senate could no longer control a pre industrial empire.
 
Hmmm.


If you have time travel as an available tech, that would make for some more interesting choices rather then picking a specific jumpstarter empire to gussy up for single world government.

Scifi is littered with species that have met disaster or war and perished, leaving enigmatic ruins and artifacts. You could go back and save them from whatever, and get a lot more functional races and empires alive in the current timeline.

Conversely, perhaps the disaster WAS the time travel empire that decides no competitors are a Good Thing.


Once you have a base population of TL7-8 that can survive and sustain, you could start in on colonizing other planets, timing them to all grow and get TL9 about the same time while you are busy knitting them together culturally so they know about each other. Instant Star Empire in a box.

An empire that can go back in time and 'fix things' may be an inherently more stable entity. It may also be VERY susceptible to the conceptual weaknesses of what that enforced culture/law is.

Another fun concept to play with- maybe the First Imperium is stable precisely because they have this sort of internal fixit, they didn't want the technology getting out so few had it and it was lost/dormant during the Interstellar Wars.

Or, they intentionally disappear from the galactic stage to allow their handiwork to go fractal-natural and not give up their meddling, and mysteriously are still manipulating events current game time for an unknown end.

Maybe that's where Grandfather went to escape and is still active today.


Speaking of manipulation, this would be the Hivers' FAVORITE toy. What sort of galaxy would the Hivers use time travel to shape?


Time wars when two time travel capable empires clash. BAD STUFF.


Final thought, if you go beyond thought experiment and actually run something like this, you are going to need some simple rules to limit them and make for challenges. I'd start with something simple- you can't exist in the same time twice. Profound effects and limits though, you botch something, IT COUNTS.

Actually it is a parallel Universe created by the wormhole inside the time drive of the Scout ship. The wormhole was created by the Ancients, they didn't do much with this wormhole, so there were no detectable changes in this timeline, but one end of this wormhole did get time dialated by several thousand years, this is the wormhole discovered by scientists of the third Imperium and incorporated into the time drive they built for this Scout ship, it operates much as any other jump drive as far as fuel requirements go, but instead of jumping through jump space it jumps through the wormhole instead, expanding the mouth for an instant so it can enter and it uses the jump bubble it creates to it can prop open the neck of the wormhole, and when all the way through, the wormhole opening shrinks back to subatomic size where it is stored inside the time drive. It doesn't actually travel into the past timeline leading to the OTU, the world of this Roman Empire has an unknowable future until it happens depending on what occurs in its present which happens to be 113 AD, its history went along pretty much as our history did, until the arrival of the Time Traveller, he thinks it is a time machine, but he is actually incorrect, where the time drive actually takes him to is a parallel Universe that looks like the past, but he doesn't know that. The Time Traveller is operating under the false premise that he can change the present he is from by altering the past, so he is altering events in this parallel universe thinking it will do his cause some good but, he is actually wrong, the three 3rd Imperium researchers that are stranded here actually know better, and they will have a laugh when they get around to telling the Time Traveller how wrong he is.

They actually did an experiment on the Moon's surface, the left an obelisk on the Moon's surface at the site of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, within plain site of where those astronauts were going to land. If the Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin found the Obelisk it would have changed history, and they deliberately put it in the spot where those astronauts could not have avoided seeing it, they used a picture taken by those astronauts to determine where to put the Obelisk where it could not be missed by them, they then went back and checked the historical records and they had not changed.

The time Traveller who stole the time ship did not know all this, so his efforts to uplift the Roman Empire so it could dominate space were all in vain, they might someday have their Interstellar empire because of him, but it would exist within their own parallel universe, and any one of those researchers will be happy to explain this all to him once he finds them, all he managed to do was ruin their research project by contaminating this Roman society, and now because of him, they won't get to write their research papers and they are really pissed about that.
 
Admittingly, you want a polity with a pre established infrastructure you can take over, which also covers the Middle Kingdom and who's in charge at the moment in the East, the Parthians?

If taking over the Roman Empire has more potential, than you have to figure out how it actually functions, and what parts you'd need to control to get to your objective, because we know, the strongman system was a development out of the fact that the Senate could no longer control a pre industrial empire.

Technology changes things, makes the area of the Roman Empire at its height easier to control and thus govern. A simple technology that could change things would be the telegraph, if the time Traveller can build a few of these, the Roman's would have better communication and direct its legions to where they are needed, a radio would also be helpful, even if everyone is still traveling on horses and wagons, the ability to communicate instantly would make a big difference to the Roman's. The best frequency to operated on is the frequency of ham radio sets, as those get deflected by the ionosphere and can be used to communicate with any point on Earth. Probably the means to build ham radio sets can be found in the Ship's library. Vacuum tubes could be used to make them, and the Roman's could learn to make vacuum tubes and copper wires, it takes some practise with trial and error of course, and they would also need to make batteries to power these ham radio sets, but I'm sure the Roman Empire could get it done if they knew what to do. The Roman's are famous as copy cats, they copied the Greeks architecture and religion after all.
 
Intresting take, although a bit dissapointing to any players that had bought into the McGuffin.


Plus, time for a funny Roman cartoon-
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I think that the Roman Legions would be ripe for conversion into a gunpowder army.

Exchange the pilum for a musket, fix bayonettes, get them to advance to twenty yards, fire, and charge.

You have the basic organization, centuries for companies, cohorts for battalions, a depleted legion for a brigade, and full legions with auxiliaries for divisions.
 
Same deal. You'd want to start with coal because you can use it as mined. Oil requires fairly complex refining to make it useful. That will take much more technology and chemistry to make it happen.

Coal, iron (into steel), and steam power are the best early starting points for technological advancement.

The thing is, you don't have to know the chemistry to use the refining.
In fact, fractional distilling is one of those things that is doable just by knowing how to make the tool and load it. The stills for it can be made with sheet metal. Copper sheet is well within the capability of Rome... and rivets, too.

The thing is, copper is not cheap in antiquity. Nor overly precious, but still not cheap. Getting enough to make the stills for fractional distillation of petrochem is the initial bar. Once you have the still, tar, kerosene and gasoline are easily used.

The actual chemistry of bronze, for example, isn't known until the end of the middle ages... but recipes were known due to trial and error.
 
I think that the Roman Legions would be ripe for conversion into a gunpowder army.

Exchange the pilum for a musket, fix bayonettes, get them to advance to twenty yards, fire, and charge.

You have the basic organization, centuries for companies, cohorts for battalions, a depleted legion for a brigade, and full legions with auxiliaries for divisions.

Yeah that makes sense, the legions we're foot soldiers, they would skip over horse cavalry and the age of knights, the middle ages just wouldn't happen. They would have to lose the shields however, a musket is a two-handed weapon, they wouldn't be able to form shield walls or turtle formations once the enemy has gunpowder weapons as well. Barbarians would probably also get their hands on gunpowder weapons and learn how to use them as well, the American Indians did. The Roman's would probably have better access to cannons, so Roman forts would probably still be of use, as barbarian tribesmen would lack the cannon for knocking down their walls. Whatever you seem American Indians armed with in classic westerns, the Europeans barbarians would probably have access to as well.

I think this would make an interesting setting for native characters. What if the PCs decided to roll up some native characters, either Roman's or Barbarians. If T20 is used, T20 variants of 3.5 D&D classes could be added, the D&D Fighter, Rogue, and Barbarian could be used without adding magic to the setting. Roman currency could be used for purchases and treasure. The Sestertius (sp), Denarius (de), the Aureus (Au) = 25 dp, and the Dupondius (du)= 2 cp.
For game purposes let's do this.
1 Au (Aureus) = 25 de = 100 sp = 500 du = 10 gp (standard D&D gold piece) an Au is also worth Cr1000 because of its gold content.
 
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