Need Advice on Campaign

[brownie]

Long ago I created a world based off of FR. I had it about 90% complete with all the bells and whistles. The problem I ran into is, I lost my hard drive and lost 85% of the info. With 5E here I decided that I would recreate the world and let the characters create what they wanted to.
Back Story:
The characters were from FR. The good Deities found out that the evil gods have been hiding this world from them and building strength from it. Obviously the main inhabitants of the world are goblin, orc, giants, and the rest of those smelly beasts. The group was sent over in groups of 30 every 90 days. Obviously they had to start from scratch and at only 1st level. The game is going well and they realized after meeting a strong contingent of Dwarves that the more followers that worshipped that god, he would be able to bring that many more followers to the new world every 90 days.
The issue I am having is instead of making it just city based like FR, I would like to transition it towards Birthright with the sources and realm magic and being blooded. All the good things that we like about BR. I have come up with a way to introduce the gods and bring them in. I would use them as lesser gods of FR sent over get it started.
We have a fort started and expanding it to a hamlet. I want to start this sooner rather than later going towards the direction of BR.
If anyone has done something like this or has some good advice or questions please respond.

[arpig2]

I have transitioned from adventuring to BR in a number of campaigns and would be happy to offer any advice/ideas you might want. What is the issue you need help with?

[brownie]

The main issue I am having is setting the world up in BR landscape such as with holdings. I was wondering if anyone else has done that because each of my capitals that my world had previously before losing my info were just huge cities. Now I am going to create countries and use the domain turn system to help them build the world. Right now I have the following characters: Cleric; Paladin; Fighter; Warlock with a few NPC's that can come with the group that they choose before mission starts. The cleric will be the High Priest of the KD. The paladin and fighter will probably be different governors of land that they can develop as they want. I have 3rd command of Mask from FR as head guild master for now. I brought them in from FR so I have to talk to them about changing minor things about the gods. Also with the way I started this world I am not sure how to get them blooded unless demigods come over and have a war as the simple folk keep trying to live.

I guess the main questions is has anyone created their own birthright world?
How did it work and did you start it from scratch?

[linde]

Well, the first thing I would do when creating a birthright setting is to draw a map, or in the case of existing material, I would divide the map into provinces.
Then I would look at how many people live in each province and assign a province level based on population. If the province levels I get don't seem logical, then I would juggle the numbers around a bit to make the map more to my liking.

Then I would chunk together provinces in suitable kingdoms, preferably with boarders that align with the naturally defensive features of the land. Possibly editing the lay of the land. At this point I would also assign a dominant terrain to each province, and perhaps adjust the sizes of the provinces populations and level to better match that terrain, or pick another terrain.

At this point I would decide on the landed rulers and the scope of their influence. Then pure guilds and temples, and I would almost always have non landed domains cross boarders of landed domains.

Lastly I would look at it all and try to balance things out by adding the wizard domains. Arcane magic is the edge that some domains need to be viable, while other domains can function with a wizard enemy. In the case of established wizards in the setting, I would create their source network and adjust their level to achieve the same.

The main problem I can see with creating an entire continent for 4 player domains is that it is almost always most profitable to try to make allies, build your defenses to the point that your enemy would get hurt by attacking you, and then focus on internal growth. So what you might get is a lot of domains that you have to keep track of while your players run their own xenophobic realm.

So the first thing you should do, is probably to have a talk with your players about where they want the game to go.


The issue about blooded characters can be solved in many ways:
1. The living gods invest some of their divinity in the characters for whatever reason.
2. A comet passes in the night sky and ancient powers within the characters awken.
3. Some Gods have it out at each other.
4. The ancient artifact containing the souls of old dead gods is disturbed.
5. Just about any other story you want.

In the specific case of your setting, where it sounds like the lands are relatively low populated I would just draw lines on the map, call provinces lvl 0-2 and use the domain turn to populate it. I think however you might want to change the rule province action, since it sounds like growth is a purely religious thing. Or let all lands be theocracies to reflect the direct control that the deities seem to have on the size of the population.

For bloodlines in this setting I would use option 1 I wrote above. The gods are investing in their followers ability to rule a realm and thus allow the god to draw more power.
Then why not give all a really strong bloodline you ask? Because bloodlines are in essence, the power of the god, and no god wants to weaken itself too much. In the case of a relatively low populated realm an investment of investing someone with a bloodline of 5 or so will be enough to give them a fighting chance. But in the end it is all about what you as GM and the players fell is right.