At 10:23 AM 10/20/97 -0600, you wrote:

>Mr. Stark:

Please call me Ed ... ;-)

>Since you wrote it, could you please explain to me the backround
>and reasons for the ruling (on P. 78 of Havens of the Great Bay) that
>allows elves (and in this case half elves) ruling territories predomidantly
>inhabited by humans to develop source holdings to their maximum potential
>providing he controls all the holdings (etc)?

><

You make a good point (with the part of the post I snipped, of course), and
it's one we discussed and went over in playtesting time and again. The
ruling I made for Colin Shaefpaete should be considered ONE POSSIBLE
INTERPRETATION of the existing rules. Now, as a game designer on the BR
line, my interpretations are going to have more wide-reaching
effects--probably, though with all these netbooks ... ;-)

It's my opinion that it's generally easier to allow elven regents to have
their special ability regarding sources and province levels and be done
with it. That's not why I made that ruling, however. I gave Colin S. the
go-ahead on that ruling for two reasons: One, he's a really powerful wizard
who rules a group of islands with a fairly small population anyway and,
two, it just seemed more interesting. Colin rules his realm with a pretty
iron (if somewhat chaotic) hand and probably does everything he can to keep
the land "pure" enough for his sources to stay high. If he were a PC, I'd
probably make him spend one domain action a turn just "managing" his
realm's province and source levels. But, being an NPC, he gets away with
stuff ...

If you guys don't like those reasons, there's no reason you can't change
the rationale or the ruling for your games. Colin S. just seemed so
inherently interesting to me as he's presented now (he was a playtest
character)that I just kept him that way.

Ed Stark
Game Designer, Wizards of the Coast/TSR Division
Asst. Brand Manager, BIRTHRIGHT/GREYHAWK/MARVEL Group
TSR Website: http://www.tsrinc.com