I'd like to hear any comments about the following before I submit it to
the Netbook.

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When rulers threaten thier guilders the guilders quite often come back
with a comment on how the kingdom's economy would collapse without the
guilds. The basic BR rules fail to cover that so I've come with this
method. The basic principals here are that an approximately medival
society does not need guilds to properly function, all "manufactured
goods" are simplistic enough to be made in the home (such as wool
clothing). When guilds are built, the populace falls into more
specialized roles thus one family will make food while the other makes
clothing instead of one doing it all for themselves. As a result guilds
are not required for employment. Now the game functions.

When a province's guild is destroyed (by contest, military force, etc.),
many people are suddenly out of work. The result of this sudden loss of
employment varies with how long the people have been in specialized
roles. If the region has been home to guilds for many, many years (like
the Southern Coast of Anuire) the people have a hard time getting back
to being fairly self sufficient. As a result, the ruler of the province
in question is faced with a Matter of Justice event. How the ruler can
deal with the situations in addressed later. If the ruler allows the
Matter of Justice (high unemployment) to go on unfixed for more than one
year (or another time span determined by the DM) a Rebellion or Great
Captian results. If the region is used to guilds but has either had
guilds for less than two generations or never had more than 1/2 the
guild slots filled, the effect is more moderate. A Matter of Justice
occurs but it is not as strongly supported. If the Matter of Justice is
ignored, the people go back to being self-sufficient. If guilds are a
new introduction, no adverse effects result as a collapse of the guilds,
the people just go back to what they've been used to.

When a ruler is faced with a Matter of Justice stemming from high
unemployment, he has several options. First, he can accept the loss of
guilds as fairly permenent (like when a guilder dies and his holdings
fall apart with no one to take them over) and take steps to teach the
people self-sufficence. The cost of this is greater if there are no
current residents from a pre-guild era, although it is ulimatly up to
the DM. Secondly, the ruler can institute programs to keep people at
work (build actions, decrees, etc) while the guilds (under a new or old
controler) build themselves back up. Finally, the ruler can just wait
until the guilds build themselves back up and just hope that the people
don't rebel first. There are, of course, other options that a ruler may
take. Thier effectiveness is up to the DM.

These rules are fairly crude and possibly complex when specifized for a
campaign, but the complete loss of guilds is a rare occurance.

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I'm also working on a Civilization-based way of depowering trade routes
(without using the guild average rule) and making them more realistic.

- -Andrew (sorry for the fairly long message if you aren't interested)