Ahem..*domain turns*?

[TheMotive@aol.co]

Hola!

I'm telling you, you guys have a knack for ignoring people when they ask
questions or request something.

In a previous letter I ask how the DMs who run Birthright campaigns run their
domain turns. I tried it, and all three times it didn't work out the way I
wanted. SO, could *someone* tell me how their DM or how *they* run a
Birthright campaign, so I have a basis of comparison?

- - The Motive

[Joe & Jodi Walder]

The Motive -

I don't know if everyone's ignoring you (I think you did get at least
one reply from Dubhghaill in Australia). I think everyone's currently
debating the regency vs. bloodline, the priest/paladin vs. religion and
duty issues, yadda, yadda, yadda...that your message got lost in the
fray.

I think Dubhghaill presented some good ideas.

How about this:

In my campaign, I have one or two players who are interested in regency.
The other players are pretty much anti-regent; in other words they
really don't want anything to do with ruling a province or holding, and
couldn't care less if all the regent players' lieutenants got a boo-boo.

What I plan to do (I haven't tried this yet) is meet with the two
players who like being regents either before the session or on separate
days and complete their domain actions. Therefore, when all the players
meet for the session, the regent players' domain actions are either
complete or will pan-out by the end of the session (or the next one or
two sessions).

If you decide to resolve the domain actions on days that you don't play
your campaign, you could use the web (that is if your regent players
have access to e-mail) to complete those turns.

No, it doesn't necessarily address your point that the sessions might
become just another "typical AD&D adventure" but sometimes you have to
compromise to keep your players interested in the game at hand.

Remember I haven't tried this yet, so it might not work. (Why do I hear
the phrase "Kids - don't try this at home" ringing in my ears).
Hopefully someone else will respond to your question.

Joe

[Gary V. Foss]

TheMotive@aol.com wrote:

> Hola!
>
> I'm telling you, you guys have a knack for ignoring people when they ask
> questions or request something.
>
> In a previous letter I ask how the DMs who run Birthright campaigns run their
> domain turns. I tried it, and all three times it didn't work out the way I
> wanted. SO, could *someone* tell me how their DM or how *they* run a
> Birthright campaign, so I have a basis of comparison?

Hmmm. I could have sworn I saw a couple of responses to this question.... I
could be mistaken, because the question has been asked a couple of times, which
might be part of the problem. Most of the folks on here aren't professionals.
We don't have any particular need to be here aside from an interest in a
discussion about a hobby that many of us enjoy. As a result it sometimes gets
boring rehashing old arguments when someone asks a question that is very similar
to one that has already been posted. This isn't the "Sage Advice" column in
Dragon, so people don't have any particular need to respond to questions.

Anyway, here is a long assessment of what goes on in my campaign so you have some
idea of what *I* do. In my campaign, the players started out as pretty typical
nobody's. There was a minor bloodline or two, but for the most part, nada.
Eventually, they worked their way up to becoming lieutenants of a regent, then
one or two of them (the blooded ones) were granted holdings of their own to
administer as vassals. Nobody is as yet a landed regent, though that might very
well be in the works.

This is admittedly the slow way of doing things. I do it that way because the
focus is on role-playing in my campaigns. Role-playing, role-playing,
role-playing. I make the characters performing domain actions role-play them
out. They have to adventure in a provence to locate a new source. They
role-play to agitate in a domain or perform a contest action. They must
role-play the discussions with other regents that are part of a diplomacy action
or trade agreement. I still make them roll dice to determine the results of a
domain action, but I often give them a bonus to their chance of success based
upon their performance during the role-playing part of the game.

For the most part, the holdings the characters control are small temples or
sources. There is a Law holding as well for a character who is considered the
sheriff in a province. I do this on purpose, as I want the characters to stay
hungry to give them a reason to adventure as much as possible. All holdings are
in the same domain, Aerenwe, so the characters can stay together and work as a
party, rather than be split up and possibly come into conflict with one another.

I hope this helps you out,
- -Gary

[Manfred V=?ISO-8859-1?Q?]

>TheMotive@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Hola!
>>
>> I'm telling you, you guys have a knack for ignoring people when they ask
>> questions or request something.
>>
>> In a previous letter I ask how the DMs who run Birthright campaigns run
their
>> domain turns. I tried it, and all three times it didn't work out the way I
>> wanted. SO, could *someone* tell me how their DM or how *they* run a
>> Birthright campaign, so I have a basis of comparison?
>
>Hmmm. I could have sworn I saw a couple of responses to this question....

Ey guys, I even think, that some servers still do not operate in a
reliable way. Sometimes a discussion is going on, and I cannot find the
beginnings of it, so I cannot take part :-(


>This is admittedly the slow way of doing things.

Put I thing a good one... a couple of friends abandoned a BR campaign as
they were overwhelmed by the rules of running a province.

> I do it that way because
>the
>focus is on role-playing in my campaigns. Role-playing, role-playing,
>role-playing. I make the characters performing domain actions role-play them
>out. They have to adventure in a provence to locate a new source. They
>role-play to agitate in a domain or perform a contest action. They must
>role-play the discussions with other regents that are part of a diplomacy
>action
>or trade agreement. I still make them roll dice to determine the results
>of a
>domain action, but I often give them a bonus to their chance of success based
>upon their performance during the role-playing part of the game.

This is quite my way. All domain actions have roleplaying effects, so the
players get used to the fact, that ruling has consequences.
But to simplify the game, we stick to the domain action round every three
months. The results of these actions are revealed during the following
quarter. This makes it possible to get things right and helps the players
plan.

E.g. the regent PC ordered his troops to move into a province and enforce
martial law to get hold of an outlaw guild. During the following month,
the troops gathered in the province. The regent visited the province in
the second month and realized, that the situation did not improve, but
his lieutenants assured him, that the situation will be under control
within one or two weeks. In the third month a message arrived, that
riots, panic buying and economic disaster were going on.

I think the major problem is, that most players do not get used to the
holding structure. If the players get their domains by acquiring them
through role-play, their mind gets used to the whole system, this will be
much more fun.

I hope this helps

Manni

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[Mark A Vandermeulen]

On Sat, 20 Jun 1998 TheMotive@aol.com wrote:

> In a previous letter I ask how the DMs who run Birthright campaigns run their
> domain turns. I tried it, and all three times it didn't work out the way I
> wanted. SO, could *someone* tell me how their DM or how *they* run a
> Birthright campaign, so I have a basis of comparison?

I set my game up so all the players could have a regent character, but in
the same domain (fortunately, I had 4 players, so could have a landed
regent, a priest regent, a wizard regent and a guilder regent). That way,
when its time to do domain actions, everyone can participate in that, and
when its time to role-play, everyone can be involved in that. I also
started them all out at level 1, a distinct disadvantage when surrounded
by more experienced rulers, and which has forced them to cooperate
(although not always smoothly, in particular the guilder and the wizard
tend to be at each other's throats, with the poor fighter forced to try to
intervene and balance out their opposing requests (raise the population,
no, decrease the population, etc. etc.) On the whole, though, in order to
survive they have had to cooperate, and gaining experience was really
important to them in the beginning, so they were constantly trying to
balance staving off threats from their rivals and running out into the
country to attack bandits, etc. and earn the respect of their people and
their "inherited" lieutennants. I set the game up by saying that their
fathers all were killed on the same night, and a lot of their early effort
was spent in trying to figure out the details, and to comprehend the
conspiracy that was working against them.

All in all, domain turns have not been a problem for me. I have everyone
work out WHAT they are going to do before hand, but then we roll successes
at the game, but everyone is involved in that, in my case, so I haven't
experienced much problems. I can see that it might be more of a problem if
the characters weren't dedicated to cooperating as much.

Mark VanderMeulen
vander+@pitt.edu