Rjurik Bureaucracy

[Witness3]

I'm starting a new campaign using the Stjordvik's doom adventure I ran a couple years ago.

This time, I'm using full BR rules. The players are jarls and will play the kingdom using the rule by council rules (1 action per month).

Now, I was thinking about splitting the domain. Rjurik realms are different from Anuireans : each jarl has his own law holdings, sometimes even guild or temple or source. RAW, I think, everyone collects their tiny RP and GB and put them together, but I want them to act more as a single kingdom.

I'm using 2E rules (get the lowest between domain power and blood score). Consider this scenario: A thief Jarl gets 100% domain power from guild holdings. If the king is not a thief, he gets 50% from guilds. Since domain power sum will not be exactly the same , I'm thinking about the following solutions:

1. Unify everything, and always consider the best % when adding to domain power;
2. Only province levels go to the king (taxes+domain power), Each jarl has a personal pocket of their own holdings, but may freely contribute to the crown expenses.
3. Unify everything, but only the Crown matters. If they are losing regency from this, maybe they should start thinking about "replacing" the king with someone more "fit".

I understand that RAW everyone should collect separately and decide via vassalage how much to give to the crown, but in this adventure jarldoms are more into background, and are not played a single, 1 province domains, so I was wondering what would be more fun in this sense and why?

[masterdaorin]

I would do Option 3, since it has the most RP potential.

Note that the "Rjurik method" is still essentially feudalism, as is done elsewhere within Cerilia, albeit with more local say in how things are run. I suspect the writers did it differently for the Rjurik Highland realms just to illustrate this independence streak.

Remember, even in Anuire, there is a chain of leadership. All those provinces have counts (or earls - i.e. jarls), who answer to the Duke or King (i.e. "the ruler"). This probably gets glossed over in most BR campaigns but, even within Anuire, these nobles absolutely have a say in who they swear fealty to. Thus, if a count switches loyalty to another ruler, a portion of the province goes with them to this new ruler. The peasants and the noble don't leave the province, of course, but their wealth and earning potential now goes to this new ruler.

That, I suspect, is how most Rule actions are actually accomplished "in game"...

I believe that there are 47 or so different jarls in RAW. IMC, I just lump all the Rjurik Highland realms under a single leader per realm, to make things simple, and the jarls are simply there to remind the leader that he relies upon them for continued rulership (just like everywhere else in Cerilia).

[Witness3]

Thank you for you reply!

In the end, they choose 4 jarls and 1 wizard (ohlaak). So I've joined all jarl domains into 1 (the loyalists) and kept the wizard separated, as he doesn't have the slightest desire to bend the knee. They will act on the same domain initiative, however, and the wizard will partecipate into the council's roleplay.

[masterdaorin]

No problem!

I PM'd you, in which I wouldn't mind your feedback...

[Witness3]

Answered right now. I don't look to PM here very often, sorry.

[AndrewTall]

I would expect that Jarls are vassals of the King/Queen, so some of their regency/gold goes to the crown. You might have a unit or two of military units paid for by each Jarl as well to lessen the burden on the crown.

One option to make the domains and realm work better is that you stack the crown and Jarl's holdings when determining if more than half the law is held, and so on - at least if the jarl and crown are on good terms.