How to Play
Legio Aeterna is a text RPG set in the Roman Empire, 4 CE. Augustus reigns, the legions hold the frontiers, and your journey is about to begin.
Living Game Master
A dedicated narrator responds to everything you do, and the story adapts to your choices.
Total Freedom
Type any action you can imagine, or tap suggested choices. The world responds to creativity.
The Fateful Die
Risky actions require dice rolls. Your character's stats add bonuses to tip the odds.
Permadeath
Death is permanent, and Rome is dangerous, so weigh every risk.
The Game Screen
Header Bar
Your name, level, and vital stats. Tap the menu for full character options.
Location & Time
Current location and time of day. Time passes as you act.
Scene Area
The narrative describes your surroundings, the people around you, and what happens when you act.
Input Footer
Type actions or tap suggestions. Quick buttons for Trade, Arena, Property.
Your Character
Choose your background: legionary, gladiator, merchant, druid, philosopher, and more. Each has unique starting stats, skills, and story hooks.
Vital Stats
HealthTake damage; if it reaches zero, your character dies for good.
EnergyUsed for strenuous actions. Regenerates with rest.
DenariiRoman currency. Earn through work, quests, or trade.Six Core Stats
Stats affect your dice roll bonuses and determine what you're good at:
Skills & Careers
Earn XP from actions and quests, then spend skill points to unlock powerful abilities. Six skill trees, from combat techniques to social manipulation.
Martial
Agility
Endurance
Scholarship
Wisdom
Rhetoric
Your background determines your starting career. Advance through ranks by meeting requirements:
- Roman Military: Tiro to Miles to Centurio to Primus Pilus
- Gladiator: Novicius to Veteranus to Primus Palus to Rudiarius (freedom)
- Merchant: Peddler to Wholesaler to Magnate to Trade Prince
- Architect: Apprentice to Architectus to Master Builder to Imperial Architect
- Priesthood: Initiate to Priest to Senior Priest to High Priest
- Scholar: Student to Scholar to Master to Famous Philosopher
- Tribal Warrior: Warrior to Champion to War Leader to Legendary Hero
- Sailor: Deckhand to Helmsman to Trierarch (Captain)
Combat
When violence erupts, the game enters turn-based combat. You have 15 seconds to choose your action each turn. Roll the twenty-sided die + your stat modifier versus the difficulty to hit.
Attack
Defend
Flee
SkillsRemember: Death is permanent. Know when to fight and when to flee.
The Arena
In cities with arenas, fight as a gladiator for glory, coin, and your freedom. Work your way up through five tiers of increasingly deadly opponents.
Combat Stances
Crowd Favor affects your rewards. High favor means better pay, and the crowd may spare you if you lose. You can also wager coin on your own fights.
In gladiator cities the Ludus training hall opens beside the Arena. Drill combat forms there, the feint, the riposte, the blade lock, and they play out inside your real fights.
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Dice, Coins & Ludus
The Fateful Die
Risky actions trigger a twenty-sided die roll. Your stats and skills add modifiers that tip the odds in your favor. A natural 20 is a critical triumph; a natural 1, a spectacular failure. Choose wisely which risks to take.
Fortuna's Coins
Fortuna's Coins let you reroll a failed dice check, turning disaster into triumph. Earned weekly as a gift from the goddess of luck.
Ludus Latrunculorum
Challenge the inhabitants of the Roman Empire to Latrunculorum, the ancient Roman board game. Wager denarii in taverns and test your strategic mind.
Conversations & Quests
A Word with Anyone
Hold a private conversation with almost anyone in a scene, shown as a real message thread with portraits. Persuade, bargain, hand over an item, and mind your tongue: an insulted Roman can end the talk, or reach for a blade.
How Work Finds You
Quests reach you many ways: a giver seeks you out and a sealed offer scroll follows, a talk lets slip a lead, a letter arrives from a stranger who has heard your name, or your own spoken promise becomes a duty. Every objective completes on real deeds, not words.
The World
Regions to Explore
Land travel via Roman roads
Sea voyages (storms, pirates)World Events
Dynamic events reshape the world around you: grain shortages, plagues, festivals, military campaigns, and political upheavals.
Historical World Map
The in-game map reflects the actual Roman Empire as it existed in 4 CE, with historically accurate cities, provinces, and frontiers. Your position is tracked as you travel, and you can plan routes across the known world.
Economy & Factions
Trade & Property
- Goods sell cheap at the source, dear far from home
- World events move prices: famine, fire, festivals
- Own tabernas, workshops, farms, villas
- Build monuments with the Architect skill
Reputation & Factions
- Factions across the empire track your standing
- Reputation affects prices, access, and missions
- Help one faction, their enemies may dislike you
- Senate, Legion, Merchants, Mystery Cults, Tribes...
Production Chains
Gather clay, ore, timber and wool, refine them at your own holdings, and sell the finished goods at a markup, or build the grandest things with them. Quarries, kilns, smelteries and workshops cover the whole chain.
Recipe Patterns
Crafts are learned from parchment patterns sold by regional specialists: the gladius in Hispania, purple cloth in Syria. Own the pattern and your workshop knows the craft. Weapons and armour craft instantly at the forge.
The Side Menu
Tap the menu button to access all your character information and game systems:
A Place of Your Own
Four ways to put down roots. Each starts small and grows into a system of its own.
Your Villa
Find an abandoned villa on the road and claim it. It rises room by room in full 3D: kitchen, baths, library and great hall, with farm plots, presses, workshops, staff at their posts and real herds in the pens.
Your Homestead
Bed down rough on the open road and a sealed scroll offers you a homestead. Raise a casa in woodland or by the sea, add a fishing boat, watermill or apiary, and hunt, fish and forage by hand.
Found a City or Village
Citizens earn or buy a founder's charter and raise a city across five tiers, appoint a governor, answer the Curia's petitions, and stand against raids. Non-citizens found a tribal village under a Headman instead.
Run a Gladiator School
Buy a school in an arena city. Recruit fighters, equip them from your own stores, train them on real regimens, stage bouts you can watch, and one day grant a favourite his freedom.
The Steward's Ledger
Your villa, homestead and colony ask for a hand each real day. Yields gather in a ledger to settle line by line, in person for free, or from afar for the steward's fifth.
Wear & Daily Matters
Buildings wear down and want repairs in the same materials they were built from, and small matters, a sick ox, mice in the granary, arrive on decision cards. Leave one too long and it settles itself, badly.
The Wider Empire
Beyond your own walls: war, games, grand works and the other citizens of Rome.
Tactical Battle
Command troops on a hex grid, for Rome or against her. Rise far enough and you lead a force of your own: named companies that need provisioning, pay and a steady mood. Battles open on a war council and close on a war ledger of the fallen.
Sea Voyages
Book passage between ports across the Mediterranean. Multi-day voyages bring storms, pirates and fellow travelers, and some destinations can only be reached by sea.
Olympics & Hippodrome
Eight events across a four-day festival, most of them playable in a full 3D Olympia. At the hippodrome you drive the chariot race yourself, fit your car out in the upgrade bay, and bet on the outcomes.
Construction
Build aqueducts, temples and monuments for the empire. Choose a careful, standard or ambitious approach, and advance the Architect career from apprentice to imperial architect.
Faction Warfare
Political conflicts erupt between factions across the empire. Choose a side, run missions, and shape the outcome. Betrayal is allowed, and remembered.
Play With Other Citizens
Open Multiplayer from the menu: write letters with gifts, wager on gladiator bouts, duel in person, or host live events, a chariot race for up to eight, a pitched battle, an Olympic contest. You earn nothing but the wager, so it never becomes a grind.
Tips for New Players
Achievements
Achievements track your deeds, from first blood to conquering the arena, mastering skills, and exploring every corner of the empire.