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  1. #1
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    What do you find most/least enjoyable about Birthright?

    I'm curious what aspects of the game people find most enjoyable -- and therefore what should be focused on to make the game more fun, improve the game, or grow the game.

    Is it the domain level play?
    The setting?
    The political intrigue in PBP posts?
    Is it the rules and rules tweaking?

    Does anything bog you down or make things less enjoyable?
    Perhaps complexity, or length of time to play or resolve things?
    Difficulty mixing domain level play with adventure, or with storylines and court intrigue with other players?

    Please don't limit yourself to this list

    Interested to hear about what you think makes Birthright great, and what holds it back.

  2. #2
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    [QUOTE=Rowan;91733]
    Is it the domain level play?
    The setting?
    The political intrigue in PBP posts?
    Is it the rules and rules tweaking?[/quote\]

    Of these, what I remember about interesting me in the first place, it was 1,2,and 4 of this list. I liked a setting that was less "kitchen sink" than FR or GH, more defined. The powers and clerics and rules adjustments were sellers, too.

    Does anything bog you down or make things less enjoyable?
    Perhaps complexity, or length of time to play or resolve things?
    Difficulty mixing domain level play with adventure, or with storylines and court intrigue with other players?
    I've never gotten a domain-level game really off the ground, they usually bog down in complexity. The DM has many NPC realms to monitor. Even if they are inactive for a given round, there's still a lot to watch and keep track of.
    I've had better success mixing adventure-level play with a limited amount of domain and intrigue; the latter just don't sell among my players.

  3. #3
    Administrator Arius Vistoon's Avatar
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    hi,
    for my me and my players is the setting attract us but in game...strangely, it's a balanced between domain level (the less), intrigue (the most but not from the setting) so all our campaign take place in my world like "normal game" and since fews yeras, with my own rules (inspired from birthright, pathfinder and hârnmanor)

  4. #4
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
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    I saw the art - huge armies etc & knew I wanted a piece of that action.

    After reading the box, the rulership & the blood seemed very cool. Especially in context of 2nd Edition - which, as discussed by the makers of the game at conventions we attended the two ways people differentiated their characters was their mid level assistants/horde/followers/army or their magic items. (some caveating here - it had been a 2 hour panel with 7 past & current makers of DND - so this conversation wandered everywhere).

    When I opened my first box set up, I was floored by the fact that there was even more art & then by cast of characters along with their intertwining stories. I felt like I was reading a novel instead of DND manuals - was very exciting.

    Immersive. Epic. Huge ... so much potential for fitting into various adventure hooks they setup or slipping your own in there too. I know there's newer campaigns that encompass some of the same ideas, but this was the one I discovered and fueled most of my time in DND, even when I didn't use blooded regents or the nation names etc - this was the epic campaign set - some how whitewolf, dark sun, dragonlance & forgotten realms just seemed so much smaller than Birthright when reading through the box set.

    It blew my mind when I discovered that the carefully arranged countries of Anuire were just one portion and no where near the biggest portion of the world that was designed.
    Legacy of Kings: Member

  5. #5
    Member Rond0017's Avatar
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    For me it was a mix of the high level of play (running a realm/guild/temple is awesome!!) mixed with the politics and intrigue.

    Complexity for me is a double edged sword. I love the fact that you can build all the different buildings, they all give bonuses, and are all needed for something; but the upkeep, the domain asset tracking gets to be a nightmare. The original rules were WAY too heavy into bonuses and stat stacking. I'm sure many of us that still run the game have found our own set of rules based of the originals. (I know I have done extensive manipulation in my games. Domain tax collection was a nightmare!!)

    I have also found that my plyers struggle with creating events on their own, often times only reacting to other things. Which means I, as a DM, need to constantly be prodding them with NPCs.

  6. #6
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    I think i was first attracted to Birthright for the setting itself. It's recognizable as D&D, but yet had enough twists to make things surprising. This is a setting where elves speak "welsh" and may very well want to kill you, where magic and real wizards are rare, where true monsters run domains, and where seeing a dragon may be a once-in-a-lifetime event. I guess putting magic in its place (that is, not the domain of normal men) always had high appeal to me.

    Also, history! I don't think many settings established as solid a history as Birthright did. This really helps drive plots and adventures- good idea fodder.

    While i liked the potential to run domains, (politics, battles, etc), i didn't make use of that for many years. And even though i liked the notion of blood powers, i never cared for how many of them were implemented- too many were too much like spells i guess.

    As i got more into it, i developed quite a like for the Shadow World. At first i thought it was just going to be a version of Ravenloft, but i'm glad that as it developed it became much more weird and unique.


    -Fizz
    Last edited by Fizz; 11-23-2016 at 03:01 AM.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Fizz View Post
    As i got more into it, i developed quite a like for the Shadow World. At first i thought it was just going to be a version of Ravenloft, but i'm glad that as it developed it became much more weird and unique.
    -Fizz
    I like the Shadow World too - it's a realm contaminated by the taint of Azrai, and the former home of the Halflings (which make the Cerilian Halflings proper Half Fae unlike in other D&D settings).

    The Realm of Nesirie (which was detailed in On Hallowed Ground and which I would make canon across the whole setting) also really struck a chord for me - the idea that there was this place which symbolized the stages of grief and if you could get there, could help you through it, was a great idea. I am currently planning an adventure in which the players have to guide a scion through the Shadow World to The Waves of Grief to help him/her to move on.

    For me, its the setting. Its really well thought out, there is the sense that this world needs heroes and its not too bleak, there is a lot of intrigue and the continent of Cerilia feels like a world that could actually work.

  8. #8
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    I used a variant of the shadow world, working on the idea that it had been strongly affected by the energies released at Deismaar, and had it at once one realm and many. To keep maps simple I had shadow world provinces mirror Cerilia, to reflect the way that the shadow world is sundering in my setting the alternate could be one or more of:

    The gloom. Physically similar to Cerilia but bleak, populated by the undead and some dreamers (those living in despair) and a few magicians, awnies and dark fey.

    The shadow world. Domains where the regent (usually an awnie, or undead spellcaster but sometimes something supernatural not found on Cerilia) maintained a stable set of rules (time goes at the same speed in the domain, distance and directions are constant, etc), lots of fey, but being slowly taken over by the Cold Rider and rival awnies.

    The spirit world. The 'light' equivalent of the shadow world. As the shadow world darkens it is splitting into two with the light domains increasingly distinct, someone well versed in the plane can travel between them but already some provinces of cerilia have both a shadow world and a spirit world counterpart.

    The wild. The realm of dreams, the strong willed can shape it as the will, but otherwise is is shaped by the dreams of the people (taking a loose definition) of cerilia, often 'border' provinces for shadow world or spirirt world provinces.

  9. #9
    Junior Member ChaosMarine's Avatar
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    For me it is the domain rules that drew my group to Birthright and kept us coming back. The ability to have such a power and control in the world was awesome! We eventually ported the rules to some homebrew worlds for a change. I knew I always liked the setting for its different and distinct pantheon of gods and history, but after trying domain rules in some other worlds I realized how much a part of the feel was from the setting itself. The fact that many of the characters in the world were mid-lower level made us so much more able to interact with the world from early on. I also liked how the world stood apart with the bold choices made to not have everything. The elves of Cerelia may not allow for the divine rivalry between the elves and orcs, but they won't be confused with elves of Tolkien either.

    It is difficult to mix regents and adventure. Every adventure can't have the fate of the realm at stake and we prefer the "To Each His Throne" style. We've started playing what we call "Kings and Heroes", where we have adventurers in the worlds and any player that wants plays a regent as a second character. We feel the adventurers allow us to go on adventures frequently without a stretching incredulity about what drives the regents. The regents give us a larger scale view of what is going on around us.

  10. #10
    For me; the most enjoyable was the domain and political intrigue play for me.
    The least enjoyable was the complexity of running a campaign in a midsized kingdom:
    I think Birthright has a scaling problem
    The complexity is linear with domain size, which is a problem even for computer strategy games (Civilizations with Infinite City Sprawl can become quite tedious to manage late game).
    Sometimes, I wonder whether it would not have worked better to only have detailed micro management for your own demesne, and abstracted macro management for all additional provinces.

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