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View Full Version : What would you want to track if you were doing Cerillian genealogy?



Magian
05-03-2011, 11:41 AM
What I've considered are:

Bloodline : This will be interesting for tracking derivations and strengths. The loose guidelines of the rules from TSR don't provide much. I forget if any new ideas from the BR.net products has more. I remember a few thread discussions on this topic that I'll have to look into when I get to that point.

Title : Hereditary titles would be a good thing to track, offices of appointment may or may not be something other than as an occupation.

Title claims : I am not sure how I'll work this out entirely, but for sure things like Boeruine's claim on the Iron Throne, or the situation in Osoerde. When it comes to multiple titles and minor houses claims on things it seems like it would get kinda complicated but educating at the same time to come up with them.

Race : The mixing of races seems like it would change the standard templates of bonuses to PCs. Not so important for NPCs but something to think about.

Nationality : Is this important to a BR campaign? Does a character say I am half Roesonean on my mothers side and a quarter Avanese and one eighth Ghoerean and one eighth Ghiestean on my father's side? If so how far does the division go? For example if I am loyal to the Bellamie family from the county of Bellam do I even recognize the name of Roesone? It seems the whole issue is too complicated to even try to implement.

Religion : I don't think this is important at all. With a pantheon religious culture it seems unnecessary. As far as I know even in my personal culture I can only come up with one that would even mean anything, but with the possibility of conversion to another religion or even agnosticism or other it just seems fickle and useless a thing to track. That brings me to the conclusion that we live in what we can call a culture of a pantheon of religions. Heh.

Class/Description/Character Info/et. al. : Since I am tracking this elsewhere it becomes redundant.

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Unions (that produce offspring), Names, Sex : All are standard genealogy events tracked in most family trees.

Burial location : This would be a neat idea to add in, but will add a bit of work. There is a place for how a death happened to so that may be an idea to work on if and when I do this. Some of the TSR materials provide for some death descriptions. Michael Roele's death is probably the most famous and his place of death and burial if it even happened is a spot of interest for some rumors and legends. This kind of info can bring out some RP flavor during ceremonies or announcements (obituaries). If anything just having that location jotted down in your genealogy chart gives players the option to visit this grave.

Names and Titles : One issue that came up when I was playing around with the family tree of the regent of Tuornen was when Dalton Tanner claimed the title Duke of Tuornen, married Lanelle Flaertes, and passed on his title claim of Duke of Tuornen and his wife's last name of Flaertes. It would appear that if this is standard practice for Anuire, then the highest title and highest name get passed on regardless of patriarchal/matriarchal precedence. So, does this mean we may want to consider family rankings or was this particular instance a political maneuver for Dalton to hold sway over the populace with this family name backing him? Oh and I am not even sure he adopted Flaertes, but it was passed on seeing as he was a common name of Tanner.

AndrewTall
05-03-2011, 07:44 PM
I think that it might be easier just to have a generic 'comments box' - some people are 'done' with just a name and some dates, others get 'hero of the imperial city, proclaimed lord protector of the empire date xx' or 'excommunicated in xx for practising necromancy and entombed alive by his daughter who alone could resist his foul sorcery'

If the any personal details are of interest they can go in there, if not then the details aren't worth mentioning - and specific boxes for the details would make completion a chore and make ret-con's likely.

Birthright-L
05-03-2011, 07:45 PM
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AndrewTall wrote:
I think that it might be easier just to have a generic `comments box` - some people are `done` with just a name and some dates, others get `hero of the imperial city, proclaimed lord protector of the empire date xx` or `excommunicated in xx for practising necromancy and entombed alive by his daughter who alone could resist his foul sorcery`

If the any personal details are of interest they can go in there, if not then the details aren`t worth mentioning - and specific boxes for the details would make completion a chore and make ret-con`s likely.