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.

[masterdaorin]

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.

That is ultimately why I chose to keep Rjurik realms the same as the others... separating them is really only relevant when the jarls go rogue. Which, admittedly, should probably happen more often than in the other cultures (excepting the Vos, which should happen more often than the Rjurik).

[Witness3]

One should not forget that sometimes we have law holdings from the king and the jarl in the same province.

As previously said in this thread,

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.

So, here is what I thought. The idea is that the jarl - king relationship is way more important than anurie, where it's taken for granted, as Jarls are more prideful and stubborn. However, they know the rjurik way, be it new or old: in a world full of cold, dangers, famine and war, either you group together, or you die.

• Bureaucracy is unified - one treasury, one regency pool;
• Jarls will behave like lieutenants, with one caveat - their extra action may be done only on their province, with a max expendable rp/gb pool equal to their province level. This seems little but it's perfect for the whole old ways approach and explains why rjurik lands are so low level. If they need help, they ask the king, and he provides the standard domain action.
• Province loyalty is loyalty to the jarl, not the king. Jarl's loyalty seems to be much more unstable and individualistic. Diplomacy (and roleplay) changes the jarl's opinion, while Agitate turns the people against the jarl.
• Jarls have no court and conduct no diplomacy. That's what the sovereign is there for. They may farm it, but that would be borderline treason.
• Unless the king has holdings in that province, everything that is not war, famine or a province-level threat falls upon the shoulder of the jarls. This means that political bicker such as contest and such won't usually benefit of the whole RP pool for defense/aggression, unless the king is interested in.

I Know it's a huge change, but it the end I really want a different feel from each sub-continent.

[masterdaorin]

One should not forget that sometimes we have law holdings from the king and the jarl in the same province.

I would think that indicates that there is another power player in that jarl's domain - probably a powerful tribal chief.

I wish they had done that for the Vos realms... it seems way too unified in the Heartless Wastes IIRC...

So, here is what I thought. The idea is that the jarl - king relationship is way more important than anurie, where it's taken for granted, as Jarls are more prideful and stubborn. However, they know the rjurik way, be it new or old: in a world full of cold, dangers, famine and war, either you group together, or you die.

• Bureaucracy is unified - one treasury, one regency pool;
• Jarls will behave like lieutenants, with one caveat - their extra action may be done only on their province, with a max expendable rp/gb pool equal to their province level. This seems little but it's perfect for the whole old ways approach and explains why rjurik lands are so low level. If they need help, they ask the king, and he provides the standard domain action.
• Province loyalty is loyalty to the jarl, not the king. Jarl's loyalty seems to be much more unstable and individualistic. Diplomacy (and roleplay) changes the jarl's opinion, while Agitate turns the people against the jarl.
• Jarls have no court and conduct no diplomacy. That's what the sovereign is there for. They may farm it, but that would be borderline treason.
• Unless the king has holdings in that province, everything that is not war, famine or a province-level threat falls upon the shoulder of the jarls. This means that political bicker such as contest and such won't usually benefit of the whole RP pool for defense/aggression, unless the king is interested in.

I Know it's a huge change, but it the end I really want a different feel from each sub-continent.

Of course, play how you want to, but at the risk of playing devil's advocate, it seems to me that these ideas may make things more complicated than it needs to be.

If you really want to gain the feel of each sub-culture, may I suggest you focus on each culture's major religion as the gateway for atmosphere? That's where the difference would really stand out...

[Witness3]

I would think that indicates that there is another power player in that jarl's domain - probably a powerful tribal chief.

Why? the manual explicitly says that the holdings belong to the jarls. In cases such as Svinik, they seem to allude that different holdings may represent different sheriffs loyal to the jarl or to the king. Such case would be exactly what happens in Anuire, such as in Medoere where Kalien has a mercenary company that actually works as the law instead of the theocracy in one of their provinces.

An interesting case, I'm finding out, it's the blood skull barony. Here different rulers actually represent different leaders of different monster tribes. The fact that they have such low internal cohesion is the reason why the barony has not crushed its neighbors.

I wish they had done that for the Vos realms... it seems way too unified in the Heartless Wastes IIRC...

Absolutely true. I did not have the honor of playing a game in Voosgard yet but they should reflect the hardship of civilization in such an uncivilized place! Some lack of coherency between expansions unfortunately was one of the flaws of BR that they didn't have the time to address.

Of course, play how you want to, but at the risk of playing devil's advocate, it seems to me that these ideas may make things more complicated than it needs to be.

Testing ideas and confronting each other is what the forum is about, isn't it? :P

I think it depends a lot on the type of game a person has in mind. I understand that many people try to play this game as a civilization/europa universalis kinda game, with the goal of raising everything to level 10 as in "it's the logic thing to do". In such scenario handling 40 to 60 provinces as they were 40 to 60 realms would be utter madness.

While I respect this approach, I do not play the game this way. My campaigns have a story/adventure at domain level. In this scenario, for instance, players have to recover the loyalty of the rebel jarls in Stjordvik, while struggling with usual domain stuff, and increasingly aggressive neighbors, all in 4 turns. The last time I played this "module", players got a bit frustrated on having a single domain action, expecially the wizard who was sadly useless (no one would spend time on farming source levels or even ley lines). This approach gives them a balanced way of each doing their part without breaking the game. It also helps that rjurik realms are really poor compared to anuireans, so even with many actions they count their GBs each round.

As for NPC, Single Jarl stat are perfect for checking out what a small domain can do each round; as for the other kingdoms, I use my agenda system but I assume stuff are just harder and slower since there would be bickering between the king and the jarls. Jarls have 0 court level by default, so diplomacy occurs only if the players go talk to the jarls themselves.

I know that theoretically even in Anuire every province is governed by a Count, but I'm that the expansion has made an extra effort to emphasize this difference, it seemed correct to exalt it in turn at my table.

If you really want to gain the feel of each sub-culture, may I suggest you focus on each culture's major religion as the gateway for atmosphere? That's where the difference would really stand out...

[/QUOTE]

Druid grooves' politics have stronger ideological connotations than anuireans, for example they oppose Rule actions or look with suspicion at those who friend wizards, but at the end of the day they play exactly like the churches of Anuire, a political force to look to for official recognition. Ironically, Rjurik Highlands turns them into a giant conglomerate, and tells you "just split them where needed". This is what I'm doing. I removed The Emerald Spiral and gave some holding to the druid PC (druid/berserker) so he may cast spells once in a while.

Again, they seem to become interesting when the old debate Old ways vs New ways sparks. And that also is fuel for jarl-king bickering and much loved drama.