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  1. #31
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    Lord Johnny, are you two doing stock BR? What edition? Which region? What part of the timeline?

    I've seen a lot of branching out over the past few years, to new settings, frontier lands, or different timeline periods. In other words, a change-up of the standard storylines, something that several here have noted is a barrier to entry.

    I like variations on the main storyline (different time periods and some differences in region), but I do love the setting itself and find it difficult to get enthusiastic about learning the lore of an entirely new setting -- much the same problem several commenters have noted with regards to getting new BR players.

    It seems, too, like PBEMs have been dwindling over the past few years. I haven't been involved in one for maybe 2 years now due to Real Life demands. Occasionally feel the strong itch to do it again, though.

    If the barriers to entry and sustaining domain level play are theoretically surmountable by rules improvements + easy-to-configure-and-use automation, the other barriers to entry regarding story/setting and advertising would need to be addressed, as well. Perhaps something that creatively combines a bit of "tabula rasa" or "rise to rule" gameplay options, where people wouldn't need to know anything about the setting at first and learn as they go, could help there.

    Competing for attention is perhaps the hardest part of all, requiring either luck, truly outstanding gaming the goes viral, or a coordinated effort that may have to involve some money or at least artwork and dedicated volunteer effort.

  2. #32
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    We're basically doing this just absolutely standard, with what we find in the core and player secrets books we have as PDF's. This is our first foray into the world (aside from one disasterous attempt with a mutual friend who turned out a bit too friendly, and that game lasted all of 3 sessions) so we're trying not to change too much about it. Mostly just little tweaks to how some rules are applied, or how characters get made at the start, etc. Nothing huge.

    We're starting in Anuirea, with 3 out of 5 in the Southern Coast (Ilien, Roesone, and Aerenwe) but we have one player who just ascended (think domain turn right before game start) to the throne of Elenie, and the last player is going to be gaining the throne of Taeghas, which will be a fun campaign all it's own no doubt.

    That being said, it's just going to be starting from what gets outlined in the books, and going from there. If that makes it a "standard" game, then yeah that's what we're playing, but being so new to the community, I can't honestly tell you whether or not this is a standard game of Birthright or not.

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    If the barriers to entry and sustaining domain level play are theoretically surmountable by rules improvements + easy-to-configure-and-use automation, the other barriers to entry regarding story/setting and advertising would need to be addressed, as well. Perhaps something that creatively combines a bit of "tabula rasa" or "rise to rule" gameplay options, where people wouldn't need to know anything about the setting at first and learn as they go, could help there.

    Competing for attention is perhaps the hardest part of all, requiring either luck, truly outstanding gaming the goes viral, or a coordinated effort that may have to involve some money or at least artwork and dedicated volunteer effort.
    This is a good point that I failed to mention in the first reply to your post. My wife and I were involved in the aforementioned first game. We didn't get very far into it, but we did set up the first domain turn, even if we didn't actually get to play it. So, since 2 of the players in our group are being introduced to this entirely brand new (the 5th party member having about as much experience as we do) our first "adventure" is going to be putting me on my throne (Roesone). We tweaked the family to where I am the youngest child, and the youngest male child. (In order, male born, male born, female born, my character (male) born).

    My middle brother having assassinated my father and my older brother, and attempting to claim the throne, with me coming in to stop it from happening etc. We will have a little bit of the politicing, a little bit of the fighting, and 1 actual battle (probably about 4 - 6 units for each side) to get everyone used to the system etc.

    It helps that of everyone, I am the "newest" to gaming with only about 2 years in table top gaming, so some of the concepts of the game aren't new so much as just slight adaptations.

  4. #34
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    One important thing that holds Birthright back in my opinion is a lack of good adventures for it. The few official ones that were published back in the day were mostly crap, and no one seems to have made new ones since then.

    It was said several times upthread that "people don't roleplay anymore", and apparently that's the reason why they don't play BR. I think both parts of that are very wrong, and I also think it's an extremely arrogant thing to say. But obviously you need to give people a reason to play in your obscure setting from the late 90s, instead of a well-supported one like Forgotten Realms or Golarion.

    In fact, that's a big part of why Pathfinder has been so successful; they have their Adventure Paths to introduce the setting, show the selling points, present different play styles, just basically give people something to do in it. There is no reason why you couldn't do the same for Birthright. It's a fantastic setting, it just needs good, well-written adventures to advertise itself.

    On a related note, another thing that probably has held Birthright back has been an excessive focus on the domain-level play. Not that there's anything wrong with the domain level in itself, but it's not a good selling point for new players, at least not as a primary one. Show them all the other cool things you can do as normal adventurers in the setting first, and then maybe some of them will start looking into the domain level as they get to know it better.

    So that's my TL;DR: Advertise the setting through good, well-written adventures on the level of individual adventurers.

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