New to Birthright,advice sought

[Kaz]

I recently came across the Birthright Campaign Setting Rulebook, DM Screen, Atlas of Cerilia and Ruins of Empire used for around 15 bucks. I gobbled them up. The Warcards were not available.

I plan to run a Birthright campaign using the Rules Cyclopedia. My original plan was to use the mass combat rules in the RC, but I posted over at therpgsite.com and a couple guys recommended I not do that. I decided I would use the rules as written for the time being. But, as mentioned before, I don't have the Warcards or access to any.

Can the War and Conquest PDF I downloaded from here completely replace that system? How good is it?

Also, any other advice you can give me in regards to running a Birthright campaign and running it with an alternate edition of D&D, would be greatly appreciated. My plan for now is to have the characters start blooded but not as regents and make them claim their crown. Something akin to what I've read of the adventure King of the Giantdowns. In fact, if I can get my hands on that module, I may just run it.

Thanks for the help!

[Birthright-L]

At 08:32 AM 1/15/2012, Kaz wrote:

>I recently came across the Birthright Campaign Setting Rulebook, DM
>Screen, Atlas of Cerilia and Ruins of Empire used for around 15
>bucks. I gobbled them up. The Warcards were not available.

Welcome to the BR community. Madness is optional.

>I plan to run a Birthright campaign using the Rules Cyclopedia. My
>original plan was to use the mass combat rules in the RC, but I
>posted over at therpgsite.com and a couple guys recommended I not do
>that. I decided I would use the rules as written for the time being.
>But, as mentioned before, I don`t have the Warcards or access to any.

I don`t think you`re missing much by not having access to
warcards. I never liked them. Hence:

>Can the War and Conquest PDF I downloaded from here completely
>replace that system? How good is it?

Well, I wrote it, so due to that bias I can`t particularly comment
about how "good: the system is. I do think it works better than
warcards by a longshot, but there are many systems for resolving
large scale combat that you could use. However, the W&C system *is*
meant to mesh with the existing BR domain rules. Folks might argue
about how well it actually does that... but other systems might
require more than a little massaging to make them work at the scale
of the BR domain. For instance, a "unit" in some games might be
freakishly large in BR terms, or might really just be just a bit
larger than what most people would find comfortable for adventure
level combat (squads or a few dozen individuals) which is a bit too
small to be the right fit to replace warcards or just fit with the
20-30 mile distances of provinces. Where other systems (including
warcards) articulate the numbers of creatures in their respective
units, the W&C system abstracts large scale combat in a way
comparable to how the domain rules abstract provinces and holdings.

>Also, any other advice you can give me in regards to running a
>Birthright campaign and running it with an alternate edition of D&D,
>would be greatly appreciated. My plan for now is to have the
>characters start blooded but not as regents and make them claim
>their crown. Something akin to what I`ve read of the adventure King
>of the Giantdowns. In fact, if I can get my hands on that module, I
>may just run it.

My biggest piece of advice is this: err on the side of the campaign
setting. That is, don`t let the rules of a system that you are using
cancel out the basic premises of the campaign. When there`s a
contradiction between the rules and the campaign, the campaign should
when if at all practicable. Other folks might come up with a
different set of themes, but I`d suggest the main BR themes are:

1. Bloodline.
2. The Shadow World.
3. The threat of awnsheghlien.
4. Races are racist.
5. Magic is relatively rare compared to standard D&D settings but
still everywhere, just not in the form of magic items.
6. Politics, politics, politics.

Hope that helps,
Gary

[Magian]

Warcards: Any battle system can be used to replace them. Rules cyclopedia can work I don't see why not.

Character rules: Just as any character system can be used to replace the character / adventure system from D&D, AD&D, 2E, 3E, 4E, Gurps, etc.

Domain Rules: The Domain system has been redone a few times. You can use the rulebook from the books. Hopefully you can find other supplements since they all have some good ideas in them. This website has a lot in the forums, the BRCS a 3E writeup in the downloads section done by some in the community here. Each PBEM play be email game tends to have their own verions of rules that are worth looking at as well.

Approach to play: Play with what you have right now and have some fun. Put it together and go with it. If you want more you have this community to rely on for more questions that you'll have later on. Goodluck on getting stuff. I am sure you can get the whole collection from some online place somewhere. Ebay and Amazon I know probably have them over time from sellers. A good idea could also be join a PBEM to see how they do it. You'd have a big learning curve, but reading each character and realm blurb can help. The brwiki has some good ideas as well.

[JoseFreitas]

Back in the day when I played a Birthright campaign, I never really went for the Blooded characetrs option, I simply treated Birthright as another campaign setting with some strange rulers and powers. Eventually, we did have a few characters who were blooded. There weren't many battles so don't take my advice too seriously.

Our primary center for the campaign was the threat of the awnsheghlien, as well as various conspiracies having them at their center, together with lots of politics.

I used the War Machine system, and it worked perfectly well. You have to have a little creativity to interpret the Regency powers, and it doesn't work with players who are too finnicky or uncomfortable with lots of DM arbitration.Otherwise it's an excellent and easy system to use.

I think I'm going to take a look at this War & Conquest system, it's the first I've heard of it! Just goes to show I don't pay much attention to the stickies and so on!