Over the last few months, I've pondered starting a campaign with basic birthright principles and an adjusted ruleset, in a campaign world of my own. Its nature has encouraged me to introduce such things as culture holdings, populations and colonization, as well as other things without which representing the campaign world would be nearly impossible. Unlike Cerilia, which borrows (if not rips off) heavily from real-world cultures, the Heartland campaign world has aimed for originality, which means uique cultures and racial mindsets, phiolosophies, faiths and utilities, new architecture, weather plantlife and pretty much everything else that still leaves the world similar enough to Earth. It also means a larger documentation that needs to be read before playing, and this is what worries me - not many people might want to scroll through several pages of descriptions before playing.

The Confederacy, with its unique laws, military structure and society, allows regents and their lieutenants to be voted as counts - each owning a single province - for five years, but excludes anyone from gaining complete dominion over any of its regions. Astul, the city of sorrows, with its tribal neighbourhoods and centrally-placed castle, takes pride in the size of its population, which has been amassed through slavery and immigration. The two can be replicated with deportation actions, as well as occasional slave raids in surrounding lands. The region of Bal Azmilav, known to the Sandriharians and others as the southern steppes, includes such well-hidden domains that few could ever hope to conquer them, despite their feeble armies, primitive organization and run-down economies. Without the stealth rules I've developed, none of these tribes could survive, yet with the rules in place, they're actually powerful enough that they could easily succeed in a defensive war. Meanwhile, certain organizations, such as the gnomish monopolies, cannot be fully represented without the existence of resource-related rules, nor can the peace between Astul and the Confederacy remain justified. There are many, many aspects of my campaign world that use the rules I've introduced, so that without them, any game I were to run would simply fall apart. The only problem is, my ruleset takes about twenty pages. I can either rely on players to read it all, or highlight the rules they really need to know and keep out most of the clutter that they're never really going to use. For example, temple regents that have been forbidden from recruiting armies might not care about warfare rules.

I'm about to start this campaign, so I need to know if anyone's interested in actually reading new rules and playing in a new campaign world. From what I've seen, most games focus on Anuire and involve playing the same domains over and over again, with emphasis on trying out new twists to the old characters rather than diving into a completely original setting. Is it a bad for move for me to run a Birthright campaign like this, or would people actually join it? If so, what would be ~your~ reasons?

If people do sign up, I can guarantee I'll be running it for at least the next six months, but the ammount of role-play hooks I'll be throwing in will vary, based on how much people deal strictly with RP and how much they focus on governing their domains. I've yet to negociate the technical side of things, but I've finished the written material. I'm thinking of setting up an InvisionFree forum, where I'll post the rules as well as any IC locations that might be needed. Note that, as most cultures tend to remain isolated (spiritually, if not physically) from one another, there probably won't be a single "common room" type of location - instead, different cultural groups will each have their own meeting place.

Note that, as the number of players grows, I might spread the game over the whole continent. For now, I estimate that 30 players will be needed to cover either half of it. Early on, however, the action might take place on either the eastern or western side of the continent, depending on everyone's playing styles. The west feels more like standard birthright, with former colonies besieging the heart of a fallen empire and city-states scrambling to take advantage of the chaos all around them, while the east sports the more or less democratic Confederacy, as well as a barbaric group of fortress-dwellers in the north and ruthless warlords in the south. Whichever the players choose, they'll be facing (or playing) the leaders of artistic movements, guilds of ancestor-worshipping gnomes, a monopolistic faith that struggles to tear down its local rivals, as well as a large number of mercenaries, secret orders and rebel organizations. Expect the gameworld's real history to be cleverly hidden, either deliberately or not, and every group to have its own, often suprising reasons for its actions. Playing in Heartland won't be so much about winning as about ~understanding~ the gameworld, and in the end, those who attempt to recognize the truth behind their rivals' actions will earn far greater rewards than simple political power.