In about a year I will be running a Birthright campaign in my current gaming group using 3.5 rules.

Basics:

  1. The PCs will be in Turonen. I plan to make them younger siblings of Duchess Flaertes if I can make the timeline work out without mucking things up too much. I plan to allow 1 PC to be an adopted sibling or simply the child of a trusted lieutenant. (This is to give a player a chance to play a demihuman or a different bloodline if needed.) The PCs will start as Lieutenants to Duchess Flaertes, this is to give them a way to get familiar with the rules before jumping in to full domain running.
  2. I plan to allow only one demihuman but will discourage it. This will be to reflect the game setting. I also plan to discourage PC Wizards and Sorcerors. for other reasons which will become clear later. Likewise Druids would be hard to fit into this game.
  3. I plan to have some house rules which I discussed in another thread, a summary: DR for armor, class defense bonuses,and maybe a few rules from Conan D20 brought in.
  4. The PCs will start at 3rd level and have one 2nd level champion and a few 1st level servants/henchmen who can later become lieutenants. I will probably give each PC a virtual Leadership feat or I may give the Noble class Leadership as a bonus feat at first level to encourage use of that class.
  5. This campaigns themes will be the return of the Shadow, in the guise of the Cold Rider and the Lost, as well as the PCs forming a Dynasty and trying to reunite the Empire. This will be a long term game, possibly 2 years or more real time, and the PCs children, or even grandchildren will be the ones who finish things, assuming no PC gets the long life blood ability at some point.
  6. I will pregenerate bloodlines, most will be based of Duches Laerte's, but I will probably throw one or more extras in.
  7. I will primarily focus on Avanil, Boerune and Alamie as the other NPC realms that will be most important. I plan to occasionally have major things happen in other realms that the PCs will hear about. Alot of these will be based off the rumors in the various Players Secrets books and/or the rumors in the Ruins of Empire book from the main boxed set.




Rough Timeline:

The beginning

541 MR: I plan to have a small "prequel" set about 10 years before the game start, with the PCs being around 6-10 years of age. They will be with the Duchess and a small group of guards in a village to oversee some festival or something. Rhoubhe will attack and the PCs will be made to hide in a secret cellar or something. A young girl who was a friend of theirs (I am also debating having this be a favorite cousin or sister) will be taken, much like in the Players Secrets of Tuornen. Also, one of their guards will be killed to give them time to escape.

551 MR: The PCs all become Lieutenants to Duchess Flaertes as they are now 16 years old or so. I may if some of them are much older, allow them to have been Lieutenants for awhile, but this would have been offscreen stuff before the PCs started. One PC will have a Champion, who is the son of the guard killed by Rhobhe's men in 541 MR. They will start small, handling essentially random events I plan to pregenerate, this first one will most likely be a bandit raid.

551-553 MR: The PCs continue to be Lieutenants. I will use this time to introduce them to the big movers and shakers in Tuornen as well as the politics that affect the realm, such as the emnity of Alamie. Smart PCs will use this time to begin making alliances. They will also be sent to other domains as ambassadors at times to get them familiar with these domains. Also, they will be introduced to various regents daughters and sons and some not so subtle hints will be dropped that they need to start thinking of a good marriage. I will modify one or two adventures from Legends of the Hero Kings to take place during this time period as well. 553 MR will finish with a heavily modified version of the sample adventure out of the main Birthright book with the marriage of the two feuding noble families.

554 MR: Duchess Flaertes will step down. I originally planned to have her assassnated, but have decided instead to have her step down, possibly due to some mysterious illness. Her last act as regent will be to order the PCs to jointly rule Tuornen as noted above. I am going to use a modified Sword and Crown as a starting point. This will give a good excuse for me to introduce alot more of the politics into the game. In particular, Boeurune and Avanil will put heavy pressure on the PCs to choose a side. Many events down the road will be modified by the PCs choices during this adventure. At least three noble daughters will be offered to the PCs for marriage purposes:

  1. Aubre Avanil: Marrying her would of course, be a mistake but a very interesting one.
  2. Boerune's Daughter: This could concievably set up a Guinevere type of situation.
  3. Lillean Swordwraith's daughter: This will be an interesting choice since she is potentially descended from a Roele bloodline. This will of course be pointed out to the PCs.Obviously I need to create this NPC.
  4. I also plan to have a few other Noble women feel the PCs out, one or two that would be very deadly for the PCs and a few that would be quite interesting.