The Soldier
Tagmata, thematic, or Arab ghazi — someone the army trained and then mostly forgot.
PRIMARY · BODY
EDITION II
The Tabletop Edition
A grounded historical RPG of the Byzantine–Arab frontier. Small parties. Hard miles. No clean victories.
THE PITCH
What the game is, in one breath
Children of New Rome is a tabletop RPG of the 9th-century Mediterranean frontier. You are not heroes — you are people the world has used hard, thrown together by debt, faith, exile, or a job nobody else would take. The Byzantine and Abbasid empires bleed along a thin road through the Taurus mountains, and you walk it. Towns are small, miles are long, and the dead are usually just dead.
The rules are elegant by design: a single core mechanic, light bookkeeping, deep choices. The period does the heavy lifting — and the GM has tools, not tricks, to help a session find its shape when the players (as they always do) refuse the door you opened for them.
DESIGN
Five Principles
- 01
Elegant, never clever
One core resolution. One damage system. No subsystems that exist only to prove they could.
- 02
The period is the magic
Real 9th-century texture — coinage, languages, faiths, food, law — does more work than any invented mythology.
- 03
Faith is real to the faithful
Mystics, priests and imams have power because their world believes they do. The GM sets the dial on what is true.
- 04
Combat is rare and consequential
Most scenes are decided by talk, money, or movement. When swords come out, someone usually dies — including PCs.
- 05
Every faction is compromised
Soldiers, churchmen, merchants, judges. There is no clean side. The players choose which dirt they can live with.
THE RULES
The Core
The Roll
When the outcome is in doubt, roll 2d6 + a Trait against a target the GM names aloud before you roll. Most things sit between 7 (everyday) and 11 (a feat).
- ·10+ You do it, cleanly.
- ·7–9 You do it, but the world charges you for it.
- ·6 or less You don't, and something turns.
No skill list. Four Traits — Body, Wits, Heart, Faith — and a single Background word ("tagmata soldier", "village midwife") that grants advantage when it plausibly should.
The Wound
No hit points. Every character has three slots: Shaken, Bleeding, Down. A hit fills the next empty slot. Down means dying unless someone reaches you before the next scene ends.
Armour does not absorb — it changes where the hit lands. Mail turns a killing thrust into a broken rib. A peasant in linen takes the same blow through the gut.
A whole fight resolves in three or four rolls. A duel can end in one. Players learn quickly that combat is the worst answer to most questions.
THE PEOPLE
Seven Ways to Play the Frontier
Every player character is a citizen of New Rome. Heritage — Roman, Armenian, Syrian, Khazar, Arab-by-marriage, Mixed (Digenes) — is who your grandmother was, not what passport you carry.
The Akritas
Frontier warden of the Taurus passes — half-Roman, half-Arab, bilingual, owing the empire nothing it cannot collect.
PRIMARY · BODY
The Mystic
Priest, monk, imam, or village wise-woman. Burns Grace on rites: blessing the dying, turning the unquiet dead, reading dreams.
PRIMARY · FAITH
The Merchant's Hand
Bodyguard, factor, translator. Knows three languages and which official takes which bribe.
PRIMARY · WITS
The Healer
Bone-setter, midwife, herbalist. The party's last argument against dying.
PRIMARY · HEART
The Scholar
Greek-trained or Baghdad-trained. Reads what others can't. Asks questions that get people killed.
PRIMARY · WITS
The Outlaw
A name on a writ in some other province. Useful, untrusted, and one bad night from the rope.
PRIMARY · BODY
ADVANCEMENT
The Roads of Kleos
There are no levels and no experience points. Characters advance the way Romans did: by deeds witnessed and remembered. Every session the GM awards Kleos — the bright name — and ticks the appropriate Renown axis: Piety, Cunning, Largesse, or Valour. When you cross a threshold you do not "level up". You write a short petition, in your character's voice, asking the world to recognise what you have become. The GM grants it, denies it, or counter-offers a humbler rung.
| TIER | KLEOS | AXIS | WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken for | 10 | — | The village knows your name. You can vouch for another at the kontoubernion or guild. |
| A trade of your own | 20 | any ≥ 3 | Master of a small workshop · decarch over ten spears · cellarer of the monastery · the midwife the women send for. |
| A name in the district | 40 | any ≥ 5 | Headman of the village · pentekontarch over fifty · senior notary to the bishop · an akritas trusted with twenty riders. |
| Reckoned in the theme | 75 | any ≥ 7 | Kentarchos over a hundred · archon of a small kastron · master of a guild house · the akritic captain the strategos sends for by name. |
Advanced classes
At Reckoned in the theme a character may petition for an advanced class — Tourmarch of the Pass for an Akritas, Protonotarios for a Scholar, Hegoumenos for a Mystic. Each is a senior role within the theme, reached via a named junior rung.
Multiclassing
At the same threshold (75 Kleos, axis ≥ 7) a character may instead petition to bear a second archetype — a stratiotes who has also become a notary, a healer who has also taken minor orders. The fiction must support it.
The shadow ladder
An optional parallel track. Infamy is read on the same four axes and runs from a name in the dark to the brigand chief the district fears. The book carries it as a sidebar — use it if your table wants it.
A NOTE ON CEILINGS
These are the lives of free Romans of the themes — Joe Bloggs of 838. They will not become Masters of a Theme, cupbearers to the Basileus, or despots of cities. Advancement is small and pivotal: the village headman, the kentarchos, the master of a workshop. If a character outgrows the theme, the road continues — in Byzantine Ascendancy, our online RPG of the imperial court — where the same Kleos, the same four axes, and the same petition system carry the character into the world of strategoi, logothetes, and the City itself.
THE GM'S BOOK
Tools, Not Tricks
Players never take the road you laid out. They burn the inn, marry the villain, or follow a stranger they were supposed to ignore. The GM book is built around that.
The Three Roads
Every scenario ships with three plausible ways forward: the soldier's, the priest's, the merchant's. If the party invents a fourth, the same NPCs and stakes still fit — just rotated. No prepped path goes to waste.
Faction Clocks
Six factions, each with a six-segment clock that ticks toward a named event (a raid, a tax census, a martyr's feast). The world moves whether the party does or not. Improvisation has gravity, not chaos.
The Honest NPC Sheet
Every named NPC has three lines only: what they want, what they will lie about, and what they would risk dying for. That is enough to play them anywhere the party drags them.
The Pull
When a scene drifts, the GM may name a Pull — a small piece of period truth (a bell rings for prayer, tax collectors enter the square, a known face appears) that re-engages stakes without railroading.
The Faith Dial
One page, set at session zero. From 'It's all in their heads' to 'The dead walk and saints answer'. Mystic powers, undead, omens, and miracles all scale to where you set the dial.
Two-page Towns
Frontier settlements pre-built on two facing pages: who runs it, who hates whom, what's buried under the church. Drop one in any session in five minutes.
STARTER ADVENTURE
The Abbot's Debt
A ONE-NIGHT FRONTIER MODULE · 3–5 PLAYERS
A reliquary — a finger-bone of Saint Theodore — has been stolen from the monastery above the frontier town of Loulon. The abbot can pay. The thematic judge wants it back before the strategos finds out. The merchant who bought it has already promised it to a buyer in Baghdad. Three roads lead out of this. None of them are the one the party will take.
The Party, as Strangers
- · A tagmata soldier with gambling debts to the wrong sergeant.
- · A disgraced priest sent to "assist" the abbot — really, to watch him.
- · A Syrian merchant's bodyguard, far from home, paid in copper.
- · A village healer who was simply in the wrong inn on the wrong night.
The Three Roads (and the fourth the party will invent)
- I.The Souk after dark — social stealth, listening at curtains, a name traded for a name.
- II.The Brothel — the soldier who took the bribe drinks here. Violence, blackmail, or pity.
- III.The Smuggler's Tunnel — under the town hall, where the merchant has stashed it for the next caravan east.
What the GM Has Ready
- · Six named NPCs on Honest Sheets — abbot, judge, sergeant, merchant, brothel-keeper, the smuggler's child.
- · Two faction clocks — the strategos's tax inspection (4 of 6) and the next Arab raid season (3 of 6).
- · One small truth, sealed: the reliquary is a fake. The real one was sold a decade ago by the abbot himself.
- · Three Pulls ready for when the table drifts — the call to prayer, the arrival of a wounded scout, a child the healer recognises.
By the end of the night the party will have been lied to by everyone, possibly killed a soldier they could have talked down, walked away with ten nomismata, and made an enemy of one faction they didn't even know they had crossed. The GM will have learned the tone: nobody tells the truth, every faction is compromised, and the right thing costs more than you have.
AT THE TABLE
A Note on Faith and Faction
In 838 the Mediterranean was the most multi-religious place on earth. Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived, worked, fought, traded, married, and prayed alongside each other. The game treats every faith as it would be treated by its own faithful: sincerely, intelligently, and without caricature. Villains are people, not religions. The book says this plainly on its first page, so every table starts in the same place.
THE GENERATOR
A character in two minutes
Every copy of the book — PDF or boxed set — comes with a code printed inside. Redeem it on this site and the online character generator unlocks the parts the book pays for:
- · Save unlimited characters to your account, editable anywhere.
- · Custom Backgrounds and faction Edges — the wider menu the book ships with.
- · Print-ready PDF sheet, parchment and Cinzel, matching the book's design.
- · GM party view — one share link, the whole table on one page.
- · Boxed-set codes mint four extra seat codes for your players when you redeem.
The basic generator stays free for everyone, so anyone can try a character before they buy.
PLAYTEST PACK · v0.1
Ready to run tonight.
Quickstart rules, four pre-generated characters, and The Abbot's Debt in full.
OPEN THE PLAYTEST PACK