Hugely underrated, and if I ask any AI about historical Rome gaming, GURPS Classic: Imperial Rome is always mentioned as a prime resource. While games like ACKS are "Rome-like" games, GURPS presents the real thing. And while the "Greek lineage" of fantasy tends to be more about monsters, magic, the gods, and myth, the "Roman model" is all about war, politics, lineage, rulership, empire, dominion, factional intrigue, riots in the streets, and power.
There are no monsters in the Roman model of roleplaying other than other humans, political factions, armies, and interests rooted in money and power. Monsters and major non-human factions would distract from the core purpose of playing in a Roman game, and even magic is a cheat that would circumvent the purpose of raw, brutal, and vicious political power.
Modern D&D and its "magic and monsters" model does not do court intrigue that well. Even Star Wars, trying aimlessly to "simulate an empire," misses all of the intrigue and deep politics of the inner workings of a real empire, how it works, who supports it and why, and the motivations of those who stand to benefit from fostering and supporting such a system. Star Wars presents us with a "grand space wizard" who has force lightning and mental powers, and that is nothing in comparison to a true empire. Magic is distracting us from the "why" emperors maintain and hold power, a cheap and easy explanation we are told to buy into, and it breaks the story model.
Real empires? All about greed, money, power, faction, family, and control. Many times the power is an illusion, and those who question the illusion are deemed threats to the republic. Money and power are the root of all evil, and that never changes.
And a game in Rome is going to get dirty, since there are topics here that modern D&D frowns upon. Gender differences (based on marital status), slavery, and many taboo topics "inappropriate for today's audiences" are fully frontal and presented in the raw here. If you can't stomach historical gaming, then D&D and modern story gaming will be better for you. Don't get offended; it is what it is. We can't change history books because we don't like what is in them, nor should we, since we will end up repeating the same mistakes if we forget the lessons of the past.
There is a question of whether gaming is a proper place to discuss and explore these topics, but gaming has always been a safe place to explore difficult ideas like this while keeping our safe distance and perspective. The moment you confuse a game and reality (as corporate "identity gaming" seeks to do), these subjects become forbidden topics. If you can keep a proper distance and historical perspective, gaming gives you a way to explore very difficult themes in a safe, firewalled environment where you can live history the way it was and gain a perspective on where the world was and why we live in the world we live in today.
Also, a warning about the setting. Popular culture and Hollywood tend to paint the Roman era in very salacious and fantastical undertones for shock and spectacle. This isn't excusing what they did; they were evil in many senses of the word, but understand that much of the marketing and stories from this time are purely for spectacle and have little basis in reality. Also note that many of the accounts of the figures, events, and conflicts of the era are sparsely documented or presented by wildly biased writers. In a sense, this era was the birth of modern media, where what historians wrote was often used to control the record of the past to benefit a desired future. We are just left with the shocking accounts and twisted narratives serving a forgotten purpose, and those need to be taken with a grain of salt the size of a salt mine.
Again, another lesson that can be learned here is that history is written by the victors. You can get into a situation like with Caligula, someone that in the modern era "everybody knows" is a deviant madman, but all we know about him is through surviving accounts. What if the man was a young 24-year-old reformer who may have had a few issues, who focused on eliminating graft and corruption, and those who were "on the take" and profiting from the corruption ran him out of power by inventing salacious stories about him to turn the populace against him?
What do we know? The man had a very short reign as Emperor, and he was assassinated. Certain events were recorded as happening, such as wars and proclamations. Much was written about him posthumously, a lot of it salacious. He was replaced by a safer, more acceptable, older relative. Is any of it true? The events we can corroborate, such as wars, the line of succession, and other items recorded in records, are more likely true, while opinions from others with their own agendas are likely shaped by perception and the desire to create a narrative.
There will be places in interpretation where your view of the facts will be "just as true" as what anyone else has written. Know where the historical record is solid, and know where it becomes opinion and rumor. Find that line, and be cognizant of when you cross it, or if you need to.
A good historian will say, "we don't really know," and that what we read "could have been true" or "it could not." Trying to pin down history as something certain about something that specific, especially that far back, will have many problems. What we have in the historical record is what we have, and we can uncover a lot of truths there, but the more we deviate from "what we know for certain" is where the realm of interpretation and fiction are introduced, and our stories move into being less real and our take on what we see.
Understand the difference between the historical record and hearsay, and how that affects perception. Even the GURPS book mixed the "Hollywood version" of the setting, as seen in popular culture, with the historical record. It is unavoidable, since this is what we see in movies and TV, and often, real history is dry and boring. Use a time machine and drop someone from today into actual Rome, and it will likely be a boring, day-to-day existence, with them wondering, "Where is all the crazy stuff I saw on TV?"
Though, to be honest, why we play this setting is to see all that crazy stuff we saw on TV.











