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  1. #11
    "I might have a line of "underworld" holdings equal to the level of the province. So, for a level 5 province, there would be a 5 levels of law holdings, 5 levels of temple holdings, 5 levels of guild holdings, and 5 levels of underworld holdings."

    That's what I was thinking. Understanding that Guild holdings represent undefined economic influence, I feel that the influence of criminal organizations differs enough (in its rawest essence) to be competeing in a completely different market. Things like blackmailing, protitution, larceny and the like which, while profitable, are not necessarily making a competition for major economic influence.
    I also feel that a system like this will actually keep the rules simpler. Instead of adding further mechanics onto existing structures, you are simply using the mechanics that already exist with a plus one. All you really need to do is add another row to your tracker spreadsheet.
    For the most part I believe that Underworld domains would run like Guild domains, using very similar mechanics, though I would probably either shift all of the espionage bonuses granted to Guilds over to Underworlds (or at least lessen them for Guilds and increase them for Underworlds). I have even debated letting Underworld set up their own supply lines (with other Underworld domains only) that do not compete with guild supply lines, or perhaps a way to ride on currently existing ones.
    One of the things that I really love about the Birthright system is the way that combinations of domain types can be used to represent different flavors of domains (like a theocracy being represented by merely adding law levels to a temple domain). The same principle could apply here. You could perhaps represent a smuggling domain by having it possess guild levels in addition to its Underworld levels. A temple of Eloele might combine Temple holdings with Underworld holdings. The possibilities go on but are similar to those that already exist.
    I also thought of ways of limiting Underworld domain size by the Law of a province. I originally thought of simply setting a cap to the Underworld domain size based on the number of Law levels (similar to the way province size limits Source level potential). I am now leaning a different way. Perhaps Law holdings not owned by the underworld regent automatically initiate a contest holding action as a free action at the beginning of the Underworld regents turn. This is a passive free action that just happens. I might raise the DC on this action to a 15 + holding level. I would also probably add a negative modifier to most Underworld domain actions based on Law holdings in the province. Note that any Law holdings held by the Underworld regent do not automatically contest or impose a penalty and would actually be useable as a bonus in the same way Law holdings can support other domain actions.
    One last note. I am not entirely sure that I would call them "Underworld" domains, but haven't thought of a catchier name.

  2. #12
    Oh, one other set of ideas.
    I would probably have Underworld holding levels impose some sort of penalty on Law holding domain actions. These penalties would exist even if the Underworld Regent owned the Underworld holdings in question. This would make most Law regents more interested in suppressing Underworld holdings than owning them.
    I could possible also impose the penalty on Guild holdings in some cases. Something like an assassins guild or a bunch of muggers might cause fear and disorder, while a group involved in serious larceny would be hurting major economic interests. I am not yet sure how I could mechanically differentiate between the two.

  3. #13
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by otomodave
    That's what I was thinking. Understanding that Guild holdings represent undefined economic influence, I feel that the influence of criminal organizations differs enough (in its rawest essence) to be competeing in a completely different market. Things like blackmailing, protitution, larceny and the like which, while profitable, are not necessarily making a competition for major economic influence.
    Any criminal activity will inevitably compete with legitimate activity at least indirectly (as of course does taxation).

    Firstly any economic surplus - wealth - that is diverted towards criminal activity is taken away from legitimate investment, and the need of business/individuals to protect against crime diverts them into unproductive investments such a secure area, guards, etc that make economic sense to the individual but which are inherently inefficient from a global perspective.

    Secondly wide spread drug taking directly impacts productivity; gambling undermines legitimate wealth creation routes (why work if you can just win?); extortion and theft discourages overt displays of wealth and penalise wealth creation through collateral damage of confiscation (undermining the economic drive to produce wealth); criminal activity itself utilises scarce resources (such as bright people) for non-productive ends depriving the wider society of their involvement; and so on.

    As such any 'economic crime' holding should reduce legitimate economic holding (guilds, trade routes, etc) by at least its own income. Given the exta-ordinary inefficiences of crime (from a nationwide aspect) reducing the maximum legitimate economic holdings by 2-3 times the size of the criminal holding would seem reasonable.

    That said in cross-border terms things may be different, the old USSR used to steal technology wholesale from the west which while 'criminal' and counter-productive from a global perspective was no doubt profitable for the soviets - it depends by what is meant by 'criminal' really.

    The same works for law domains. A 'mafia' which operates within the formal legal system via corruption (Osoerde anyone?) is a 'criminal' holding but which has identical outputs to the 'legal' law holdings of noble courts, sheriffs, verderers, etc in the realm. A band of outlaws who enforce 'illegal tolls and taxes' is likewise fairly similar to the local lordling in effect for the peasants and merchants who get tapped up by one or other as they pass by.

  4. #14
    I just wanted to throw out a few reasons I opted for some of the mechanisms I did in the suggestions I threw out . . . .

    (1) Underworld holdings with law/temple/guild subtypes . . . . I like the idea of different flavors of underworld holdings -- not just ones that behave like a specific holding type. I can see there being cults and smuggling rings and corruption /influence rackets that each have their own areas of influence and that each behave like a specific type of holding.

    (2) Subtypes competing for the same underworld slots . . . . I like the idea of illegitimate holdings competing with each other. I could see fierce underworld battles between cults and smugglers for instance. That seems like the basis fo4 adventures you see all the time in AD&D.

    (3) Dark side effects of underworld holdings . . . . I like each level of underworld acting as an effective negative level on legitimate holdings held by the same regent in the same province for two reasons: (a) I really like the idea of these being parallel power structures and I don't think the existing regents should be running around co-opting them -- just for the sake of game balance and flavor. (b) With the "nature" of regency being somewhat akin to authority, I think that an underworld holding being held by the same regent affects the legitimacy of his other institutions.

    (4) No draining effect on legitimate holdings . . . . Although the case can be made that an underworld holding always siphons off gold and regency, I think a much better model is to make them independent -- so as to be undetectable and to be more viable as holdings in their own right. I like games where the "official" known knowledge is something like the thieves guilds were destroyed five years ago and then the DM turns to the thieves and tells them that there are three vibrant thieves guilds. The idea is that there will always be some form of crime. And, the legitimate rulers may or may not be aware of it or they may or may not care about it. But, the siphoning is already factored into the collections in the book. That makes it so that these holdings are truly secret and the first act of a player is NOT to go around rooting them out and trying to destroy them.

    Anyway, those are my two cents . . . .

  5. #15
    It would seem, Mr. Harrison, that you and I are on pretty much the same page on this. I am going to be running a Shackled City campaign set in Cerilia, and when I started looking at the power-players involved it just didn't make sense. For Guild Holdings, I would have had three major Crime sydicates and at least three major Trade factions. It was what originally turned me on to the idea.
    I do however still like the idea of pitting criminal guilds against Law as well as each other. My thought was that I would impose a negative modifier equal to half of the total Underworld levels contained in a province on certain domain actions. This would, I feel, represent effectively the negative impact that such activity would have on an orderly society without being to harsh a penalty. Indeed, in many provinces a ruler might find it more profitable to work with a syndicate than against it.
    I do like your idea of penalizing a "legitimate" regent from obtaining Underworld holdings, mostly from a balance stand-point. It is possible to punish such behavior simply through role-playing, though that may not always be effective against a GM's only weakness (players), who are a crafty and greedy lot.
    As for maintaining secrecy, I don't neccessarily see it a default requirement. Perhaps simply using one of the above mentioned methods for hiding Regent status. For most real-world criminal boss types, I think that they are less protected by secrecy than by simply being to powerful to touch without a coordinated effort (as would be depicted with normal domain actions like any other domain type).

  6. #16
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nicholas Harrison View Post
    I just wanted to throw out a few reasons I opted for some of the mechanisms I did in the suggestions I threw out . . . .

    (1) Underworld holdings with law/temple/guild subtypes . . . . I like the idea of different flavors of underworld holdings -- not just ones that behave like a specific holding type. I can see there being cults and smuggling rings and corruption /influence rackets that each have their own areas of influence and that each behave like a specific type of holding.

    (2) Subtypes competing for the same underworld slots . . . . I like the idea of illegitimate holdings competing with each other. I could see fierce underworld battles between cults and smugglers for instance. That seems like the basis fo4 adventures you see all the time in AD&D.
    I agree, but why not do this with existing holding types, the same way that different guilds compete? Admittedly crossing the law causes some issues as the conflict/trade-off between legal and illegal holdings would never be exact, but the system is an abstraction, and doubling the number of holding types would significantly increase complexity so 'bending' a view of existing holdings works better imo.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicholas Harrison View Post
    (3) Dark side effects of underworld holdings . . . . I like each level of underworld acting as an effective negative level on legitimate holdings held by the same regent in the same province for two reasons: (a) I really like the idea of these being parallel power structures and I don't think the existing regents should be running around co-opting them -- just for the sake of game balance and flavor. (b) With the "nature" of regency being somewhat akin to authority, I think that an underworld holding being held by the same regent affects the legitimacy of his other institutions.
    If you use existing holding types - so a mafia has, say 2 law holdings, 8 guild holdings, 2 trade routes and a priest holding, then the underworld holdings automatically limit the legitimate holdings of the relevant type in a similar, possibly identical manner to negative holdings - I can see some nasty spreadsheet formulae otherwise

    The one issue I have on using standard holding types is occupation - without some horrible side effects to occupation any ruler suffering significant underworld holdings will simply occupy and raze. As I'd limit the action anyway that wouldn't matter for me, but if a GM is using the vanila response to occupation then a different underworld holding type that can't be occupied easily makes sense - of course it would then beg the question of why legitimate holdings didn't convert...

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicholas Harrison View Post
    (4) No draining effect on legitimate holdings . . . . Although the case can be made that an underworld holding always siphons off gold and regency, I think a much better model is to make them independent -- so as to be undetectable and to be more viable as holdings in their own right. I like games where the "official" known knowledge is something like the thieves guilds were destroyed five years ago and then the DM turns to the thieves and tells them that there are three vibrant thieves guilds. The idea is that there will always be some form of crime. And, the legitimate rulers may or may not be aware of it or they may or may not care about it. But, the siphoning is already factored into the collections in the book. That makes it so that these holdings are truly secret and the first act of a player is NOT to go around rooting them out and trying to destroy them.

    Anyway, those are my two cents . . . .
    I think that the organised holdings should suffer the least from crime - criminals pick on the easy targets first and the independents having less size and structure, that means that in effect the underworld holdings are draining business - and the negative level / use of a standard holding level then represents a limit on the maximum income that the legitimate holdings can claim regardless of their efficiency - at least until they start contesting the underworld holding (more sheriffs, less corruption in the judiciary, no favours for cronies, etc, etc).

  7. #17
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    Domain type for Criminal Organizations [9#27472]

    Generally speaking, I think that "criminal" holdings could be best
    portrayed in BR by using a "clandestine" or "secret" holding rule
    rather than having an entirely different type of
    holding. Effectively, there`s not a big difference between a
    "sub-holding" and one that has a tag (and maybe +5 to the difficulty
    of the check to create and/or rule the holding) to make its presence
    stealthy. In practice, it`d be one of those things that most people
    understood to exist, but is officially denied or can only be dealt
    with directly through more clandestine (read: intrigue) ways in BR.

    Of course, if one really wants to emphasize a particular style or
    theme of campaign, it makes perfect sense to have a more particular
    set of rules. If one were to play Birthright: Mafia Wars (or
    something more medieval/fantasy in flavour) then it makes perfect
    sense to have a criminal organization holding. One could even argue
    that smuggling differs from gambling, and counterfeiting differs from
    extortion enough to justify something like

    Corleone Family domain
    Prostitution (3) in New York City (25/0)
    Gambling (5) in New York City (25/0)
    Extortion Racket (8) in New York City (25/0)
    Extortion Racket (3) in Brooklyn (19/0)
    Etc.

    In general, though, I think one can go with the standard holding
    types in a normal D&D campaign with enough wiggle room to justify a
    guild holding and trade routes to explain most of what happens
    illegally (maybe "extra-legally" is more apt for such a thing...)

    The articulation of more and more particular functions to go with the
    domain rules does follow under certain circumstances, but be aware
    that there is a pretty endless amount of that kind of thing that
    could go on. Once one goes with a criminal holding, for example,
    then it could be articulated in the way described above. After all,
    if there`s room for two types of holdings in a province that more or
    less describe a similar process (economic trade) then why not three,
    five or seven to describe the particulars economic trade that all
    could exist side by side once one starts to get particular about what
    is being represented.

    The real question is whether or not it will play well over the
    tabletop without players or the DM getting lost in the particulars.

    There are a few things that I think should be articulated that aren`t
    in the standard BR domain rules. The original rules do ahve a
    function for representing castles in such a way. The War & Conquest
    system is basically a presentation of military assets in a way that
    corresponds to that method of portraying a domain feature. That is,
    as a sort of representation that has levels like holdings, and a
    domain level affect, but in a limited way. In addition, to military
    features I think roads should be a sort of infrastructure described
    in a similar way. Rather than just "a road to X" one should have
    roads(x) within a province, reducing the travel costs in that
    area. Palaces should be levels. Monuments might be described as
    levels. The particulars of a capital city might be levels.

    What if crime were "outlaws(2)" or "bandits(4)" or something like
    that? The effect might be comparable to the drain of law holdings on
    temples and guilds. It might serve as a bonus to certain random
    events. They wouldn`t generate RP or GB directly the way holdings
    do, but would have a few domain level effects that could be portrayed
    in a way that competes with and complements the existing domain features.

    Gary

  8. #18
    Site Moderator Magian's Avatar
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    I came up with a couple ideas in this line of thought the other night while working on my personal campaign's Book of Roguecraft.

    Extortion holding: A hidden holding of Law that is usually found in chaotic realms that don't rule up their land's law up to max or in wild lands. They can make law claims on other holdings in the province and function pretty much like law holdings, but are specifically designed as underworld types preying upon others within the lands. I think I would not allow them to collect taxes, maybe instead prey upon tax collectors and get some gold that way. For all intents and purposes they are less effective than a regular holding, are hidden, and must be specified which holdings they extort each income phase of the turn.

    Corruption holding: Simply put is a hidden holding level zero that fills a slot as per type and can only gain the corruption effects of like holdings. If the holdings limit is used, then they should count against it (optional.) Such a holding must be stated to collect its income and which holding it will target. 1 GB will be lost to the regent that is targeted per collection. A regent could establish a normal guild holding and a corrupt guild holding to leech off rivals. A corruption organization could establish themselves within an entire realm before making themselves known by making collections. Once a collection is conducted, the affected domain knows about it and where it occurred. To root out such holdings see the hidden holdings description.

    Spy Network: Functions as a level zero hidden holding, costs 1 RP to maintain, and is a prerequisite for some types of espionage like the infiltration rules mentioned earlier and aid in agents such as spies, assassins, and ambassadors that take part in intrigue.
    One law, One court, One allied people, One coin, and one tax, is what I shall bring to Cerilia.

  9. #19
    Site Moderator Magian's Avatar
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    Here's my rewrite on the spy network.

    Spy network: A spy network functions like a hidden holding and is not part of the holdings of a domain, rather they are considered assets. Each spy network will be tallied as a holding for maintenance purposes. It takes an espionage action to find a spy network. If there is more than one in a province, then an appropriate roll will be used to determine which one is revealed. Once revealed it requires another espionage action (signifying counter-espionage forces), or a decree (signifying arrests) to remove the spy network.

    A spy network is a prerequisite in order for a regent to conduct espionage actions in a province. The spy network must be ruled up like a holding to equal the province level in order to conduct assassination actions in that province. This simulates the requisite infiltration required for such an action. The cost to create and rule a spy network are the same as a normal hidden holding. If a spy network is found out by another regent through espionage actions, the ruling up of that network will only be revealed with successive espionage actions. In the game of cloak and dagger information is power and must be current through active intelligence efforts. Keeping tabs on your enemies is an active and time consuming effort.

    Spy networks serve to represent individuals that serve a domain. A regent could set up multiple networks in a single province to be redundancies against destruction.

    If there is a class that is allowed to have espionage as a free action, then that free action could also be used to create or rule spy networks.
    One law, One court, One allied people, One coin, and one tax, is what I shall bring to Cerilia.

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