Xmas games 2025 - part one

The Saturday after Christmas saw a gathering at Stately Counterpane Manor to launch this year's planned Gangs of Rome campaign.

The plan is to have a setting in which we can play a series of games that gradually tell a story without needing to have the right players present for every future game. Any given player will always represent the same gang and players can slot in whenever they are available.
 

We started the session with a bit of a lesson on how the rules work and then created a few characters to illustrate how that works.  Some dice rolling told us a bit about the backgrounds of the two gangs' patrons.  We didn't create names for these bigwigs at the time but Gangs of Rome has some fancy tables to do this for us.

We'll begin with The Green Gang, whose patron is Spurius Verdius, a lanista (the manager of a stable of gladiators). Spurius is known for is love of horses. He maintains a stable of racehorses on an estate outside the city, bringing the fastest of them into Rome whenever the games include a particularly prestigious race.

The Green Gang players so far are Tom Z (whose player character is Aerugo), Jamie C (Pavimentarius, although this would be a short-lived association as we shall see later), Ron P (Junius), and Matt C (Scaevola). In addition, the Greens had non-player character gang-members in the form of Lucretius (who deserted from the legion for love) and Domitianus (a versatile chap who is said to paint his body with the blood of his fallen foes).

Some Roman streets before trouble starts

Moving on to the Blues, we find that they are under the direction of Tarquinius Caerulius whose business is importing beasts for the arena but who is not averse to importing slaves as well. Given that Tarquinius will doubtless employ venatores (hunters; specialist gladiators trained to fight wild beasts) there is clearly scope for the two patrons' business dealings to overlap and we can assume that their rivalry stems at least in part from this. Maybe we will find out more as the campaign progresses.

The current crop of Blue Gang players are Matt Z (Parum Icarus), Andy S (Rufinius), and Leo F ("Julius Caesar" - not his real name but he thinks so highly of himself that the nickname has stuck). They were backed up by NPCs Januarius the bowman, Molendinarius (an experienced brawler), and vengeful Musca. 

As with September's test game, the scenario for our first encounter was The Brawl. This is a stand up fight between the gangs with points awarded for knocking out enemy gang-members and double points for doing so in a suitably dramatic fashion.

Parum Icarus is attacked by an angry mob
(photo by Tom Zunder)

Street fighting outside the temple

Molendinarius launches an attack on seemingly
unarmed Domitianus...

...and puts him out of action

More fighting

The Greens contemplate impending defeat

As the umpire looks on in period-inappropriate T-shirt,
some of the Blues try to avoid smugness

When we decided enough was enough, the Green Gang had lost four members whilst failing to inflict any damage on their opponents. Most important of the losses was their leader Pavimentarius who was taken out in a particularly cinematic fashion.

Post-game dice rolling revealed the fates of the beaten characters. Junius the thief was dragged from the streets with severe lacerations. For the next five games he will be limited to 3 actions in any action stack.

Lucretius recovered with no more than a bruised ego, while Domitianus had only a sprained ankle - he won't be able to carry two pieces of equipment in either of the next two games. Pavimentarius, however, is dead having been, at various times, shot, stabbed and thrown off a roof. He was known to be bitter and twisted and out for revenge so maybe his shade will haunt the streets on dark nights?

I had deployed The Seer as an incola in the game. She didn't play a huge role (which is probably as it should be). I played the effect of her buttonholing characters as costing them one successful activation roll. I think next time I might increase that to two and see how that goes.

I've started a spreadsheet to track the characters through the forthcoming campaign. Look out for more reports as the year progresses.