Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 11 to 19 of 19
  1. #11
    Senior Member Beruin's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    228
    Downloads
    4
    Uploads
    0
    An absolute must-read and a brilliant inspiration for BR is the ancient Chinese novel "Three kingdoms".

    The novel chronicles the fall of the Han dynasty and the division of the empire into (you guessed it) three feuding kingdoms. It mainly describes the exploits of Liu Bei (a paladin-like character), who rises from humble beginnings as a mat-maker to power as the ruler of one of the kingdoms, and his two friends, the mighty warrior or barbarian Zhang Fei and the master strategist and diplomat Lord Guan.

    IMHO, the book is simply awesome and it has everything: Intrigue, diplomacy, betrayal, warfare, even battle magic. On a sidenote, the Chinese apparently believed that horse dung has dispel magic properties, as in one battle enemy magic is banished by catapulting cartloads of horse dung against the effect.
    Anyway, when reading the book, I found myself thinking on nearly every page: Hey, I could use that IMC. Even the first sentences had my thinking about BR.

    Quote:
    "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been."

    Well, that sums up Anuirean campaigns pretty good, doesn`t it?

    I believe I can`t really do justice to the book in my meagre English by just praising it, so here are two short scenes I found memorable as an example of the contents:

    1. One of the warlords feuding for supremacy suffers from a shortage of grain and can`t supply his army sufficiently. Understandably, morale drops as the soldiers begin to grumble. He manages to borrow enough grain from an ally. However, he does not distribute it outright. Instead, he publicly accuses one of his most loyal officers of setting aside the grain for his own gain and orders to behead him. (However, he promises to care for his officer`s widow and children). As a result, his soldiers believe that he cares for them so much that he`s even willing to sacrifice a close adviser and morale goes through the roof.

    That`s lawful evil par excellence IMHO, and it brings Gavin Tael to mind...

    2. After a failed assasination attempt on a tyrannical usurper of the Empire, Cao Cao (another main character and later on the main enemy of Liu Bei) has to flee, together with an associate. They find shelter at the farmhouse of a distant relative. After a while, their host leaves to get some wine and takes some time. The two men get suspicious, listen and hear the sound of knives being whetted and then someone say: "Let`s tie`m up an` kill`m." They burst into the neighbouring room and kill all eight people inside, only then do they notice the pig that their host ordered slaughtered for their dinner.
    They flee the house only to meet their host coming back with two bottles of fine wine. So as to not leave a new enemy behind, they cut him down, too...

    Well, this sound like something that could happen to my players (except for killing the host, they`re not that evil. Instead, they would probably cook up one of the most unconvincing fairy tales you ever heard..).

    Hope I did not bore you with too much detail,
    Christoph

    P.S.: For those interested I read the two volume English translation by Moss Roberts. Paperback, more than 1500 pages for about the price of a new WOTC supplement.

  2. #12
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Springfield Mo
    Posts
    3,562
    Downloads
    2
    Uploads
    0
    Koei made a fine game (or a half dozen versions of the game) based on Romance of the three kingdoms. The provinces are easily understood in Birthright terms and would be an excellent setting for an oriental BR setting. One of the nice features of the game was after playing it several times you get to know who all the main heros are. It wouldn't take me long to make up d20 stats for the likes of Lu Bu, Liu Xun, or Zhang He.

  3. #13
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    California, USA
    Posts
    2,165
    Downloads
    4
    Uploads
    0
    At 06:28 PM 9/25/2006, Christoph Tiemann wrote:

    >Quote:
    >"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.
    >Thus it has ever been."

    OK, that made my reading list.... Nice.

    I just reread some Bruce Catton books (an American Civil War
    historian) that`d been gathering dust on my shelves for quite a
    while. I mention in this context for a couple of reasons. First,
    I`d forgotten what a nice turn of phrase Mr. Catton can
    muster. Where he gets his most poetical is in describing the horrors
    of conflict, the edges (as in cutting surface) of character and in
    summing up the tenor of the time. A quote about US Grant on the road
    to Petersburg in _A Stillness at Appomattox_:

    "Grant had a basilisk`s gaze. He could sit, whittling and smoking,
    looking off beyond the immediate scene, and what he was looking at
    was likely to come down in blood and ashes and crashing sound a little later."

    The other thing he does well is portray the politics of the time in a
    very real and forthright way. He`s usually (but not always) right
    factually... but he`s always thematically, and that`s the strength of
    his books. He also transitions nicely from strategy down to tactics
    and on to individual "scenes" of conflict in a way that could
    exemplify how things might go from domain to battle to adventure levels.

    Gary

  4. #14
    Administrator Green Knight's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    1,018
    Downloads
    20
    Uploads
    0
    1. Various books about real-life history. Ranging from medieval law, to renaissance economics, to military history, and anything else you can imagine. Not onyl is it good for giving a "historically accurate feel" to my games, but you'd be surprised by all the good plotting and infighting to be found in RL.

    2. Shakespeare. Great drama. Great characters. Great humor and tragedy. This really is a must.
    Cheers
    Bjørn
    DM of Ruins of Empire II PbeM

  5. #15
    Administrator Green Knight's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    1,018
    Downloads
    20
    Uploads
    0
    3. Sleepy Hollow for a good movie with some Shadow World elements to it.
    Cheers
    Bjørn
    DM of Ruins of Empire II PbeM

  6. #16
    Senior Member Doyle's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Box Hill, Victoria, Australia
    Posts
    138
    Downloads
    31
    Uploads
    0
    My primary inspiration for the campaign I'm currently running was a thread on this list. In addition to this (as I also do a plotline for each of the characters), my other inspirations are the Amber series (both Zelazny and Betancourt), RL history and Shakespeare (who nicked half his plots from history anyway). Minor plotline stuff comes from almost every fiction book I read - including the bad stuff. Because I have the disadvantage that most of my players are much better read than I am, I mix in some of the "penny dreadfuls" I've picked up as the plot holes are usually easy to fix up and my players are unlikely to read something they consider trash.

    Looking back over this, I'm going to blame my vagueness above on my cold and lack of sleep. To answer the question initially posed, my preferences for good plotlines;
    Celtic and Germanic folklore and faerietales (the versions that have not been put through the Hollywood filter),
    Anne McCafferey's Pern series (mostly the inter-guild politics),
    Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera (more for scenario / character plot than campaign),
    Any good historical discourse on the first and last of the Tudors (Henry VII and Elizabeth I)
    and of course, the BR archives
    Doyle

  7. #17
    Hi,

    Just my two cents:
    Historical novel series like: Fortune de France by Robert Merle and The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon. Both take place in France although in different time periods. Merle's series start in the second half of the XVIth century and continues until up to the reign of King Charles the XIIIth. If you would like to start a campaign based upon religious war, divided nation or young infants controlled by "evil" advisors and finally gaining the upper hand than these books are for you! What's more the main characters are always tinkering in the vicinity of the King's court thus there are a lots of "court adventure seeds" inside!
    The Accoursed Kings storyline begins with the reign of King Philip the Fair and the trial of the Templars in the XIIIth century. Focuses mostly on aristocratic intrigues, betrayal, assassination etc. The main point of the second series is, IMHO, that it gives a very good insight into the minds of period aristocracy (what, how and why motivate the members of the uppermost social classes).

    The third one I highly recommend for everybody who wants to DMing in a feudal-like world is A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe from Hazardous Retreat Press. This is a D20 supplement which converts the feudal system into game mechanics (economy, trade, cities, religion, jurisdiction etc.) plus highlights the HUGE role of social connections within medieval Western Europe (nobody cares about who you are but who your lord is )!

  8. #18

    Melanie Rawn

    writes a beautiful double-trilogy, the two entitled Dragon Prince and Dragon Star, following 2+ generations (2 full, plus 1 on each end, from great-grandfather to great-granddaughters, focusing mostly on what are eventually the grandfather and father generations) of rule, in a continent defined by about 6 kingdoms plus one increasingly powerful Temple domain, if you think of it like BR.

    Along with brilliant and beautiful writing (quite vivid descriptions of people, places, things, colors, magic), Rawn has brilliant rulers; Rohan (the 'grandfather') and his wife Sioned, particularly, engage in amazing statecraft and political manuevering; they utilize lieutenants, wage both cold and hot wars, deal with spies and other forms of treachery visited upon them -- as do all the other rulers of the countries included, though we obviously see more of Rohan and Sioned, and a bit more of their chief opponent, than the others.

    http://www.melanierawn.com. Here's her website. She's written other fantasy books; I tried one, and didn't get into it as much. These six, at least, were great for me. They've been out long enough that you could find them all 2nd- or 3rd-hand.

    On another note, I'm about to start George's books myself, due to recommendations from friends, so I'm glad to hear about them on this list as further support.

  9. #19
    Member Hrandal's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Partick, Glasgow, Scotland
    Posts
    53
    Downloads
    0
    Uploads
    0
    Hmm, it might sound strange, but the Flashman books, by George Macdonald Fraser, give what I see as a marvellous look at the way politics, personality and military action come together. Although the era is very different from BR, the Flashman character sees a lot of societies as or more primitive than the standard fantasy setting. His role as jaundiced outsider gives a lovely view of how human nature allows it to make the same mistakes over and over again, but find different excuses each time.

    I love the way he portrays the nobility and middle class of Britain as being entirely ignorant of the realities of life in foreign countries, while at the same time terribly eager to export their superior culture to them. Even the senior officers are generally depicted as martinets or outright imbeciles, but the British Army is shown to be so well trained that the troops usually manage the stupid or seemingly impossible tasks they are set, time after time.

    He can show how a decision can be made by one personality's caprice, or how the perceptions of the commoners can force a leader to act even when they believe wholeheartedly that its the wrong decision (the War Office choosing Sebastopol as a military target because the newspapers started telling everyone that it was a good place to attack; The fact that the government records of the decision show half the cabinet were asleep when it was made, etc)

    Ultimately, it is a cynical view of human affairs, but also quite a fond one. Flashman sees people's flaws, but he also appreciates them. It makes for a much rounder picture of a human being than is usual in historical writing - perhaps too rounded for the D&D alignment system.

    Flashman meets a lot of the most respected "heroes" of the 19th and early 20th century, and by and large they fall into two camps - rogues who play on their public perception (as Flashman does) or earnest lunatics who actually believe they have been sent by God to accomplish some holy task. A few are also shown as people who've been swept along by the tide of history, and seem to be simply struggling with the weight of other people's expectations. Almost all the portrayals are sympathetic to some degree, though.

    When it comes to society, I think Flashman shows you how people are willing to accept the most outrageous strictures in order to fit in - Flashman is several times packed off to war simply because he would lose face in society by refusing, even though he is a terrible coward by inclination. Thats something I don't see so often in BR, truly inconvenient social mores. If your hero gains a reputation as a great warrior or a great general, then every kingdom will be sending them letters begging for help when some monster or invading army appears on their doorstep, and how are you going to keep that good rep unless you go haring off to help? And who minds the kingdom while you're gone? And of course, its ungenteel to expect payment for your services - chivalry should be its own reward.

    Oh, yeah - and they are very well written books. Apparently the history is spot-on, although the characterisations are obviously guesswork to a large degree.
    Last edited by Hrandal; 10-16-2006 at 01:54 PM.
    "As soon as war is declared, it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum."

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
BIRTHRIGHT, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, the BIRTHRIGHT logo, and the D&D logo are trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., and are used by permission. ©2002-2010 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.