Zweilund Islands

[kgauck]

Especially small places with large populations must be food importers.

[AndrewTall]

I'd rather correct the 'tiny province' issue than work around it - and split large provinces as well. Sea provinces get +2 to maximum population to reflect fishing for foodstuffs, they don't need a rule that says they can be half normal size.

And yes, I'd make the city of anuire a city in a province rather than a city-province, allowing people to split their provinces in half is bad for game balance, why not create 2, 3 or more cities in a province and claim they just import food?

I hate to go 4e on people, but saying that pretty much every province must be able to support itself at a subsistence level seems like a better rule than tracking the entire continent's trade routes to ensure that the population can feed itself in the cities.

The Zweilunds hasn't been worked on yet, why not merge it into 2 provinces of L4-5 each? The pirate isles concept works just as well, if not better - to support themselves as is the pirates would have to take a ridiculous share of total trade to sustain their population, and any such significant drain would result in crippling retaliation from the basin states.

Remember that we want to have lots of trade in Brechtur, but there are several pirate realms - Kiergaard and the Gorgon's Crown both probably have privateers at least, Grabentod is openly piratical, other realms may dabble from time to time - even ignoring independents there are a lot of pirates chasing the trade so some need to be cut down.

[Wilenburg]

this information that I got is from the cities of the sun source book for birthright the only problem with merging province is that the map would be needed to be worked out to make it work.

[Thelandrin]

I always thought that the Zweilund Isles were ridiculously overpowered. Not lny does it have far too many provinces, half-Elves can now apparently claim the Elven bonus of not hurting the mebhaighl. It's blatant power-creep.

[geeman]

At 02:01 PM 6/19/2008, AndrewTall wrote:

I`d rather correct the `tiny province` issue than work around it - and split large provinces as well. Sea provinces get +2 to maximum population to reflect fishing for foodstuffs, they don`t need a rule that says they can be half normal size.

And yes, I`d make the city of anuire a city in a province rather than a city-province, allowing people to split their provinces in half is bad for game balance, why not create 2, 3 or more cities in a province and claim they just import food?

I hate to go 4e on people, but saying that pretty much every province must be able to support itself at a subsistence level seems like a better rule than tracking the entire continent`s trade routes to ensure that the population can feed itself in the cities.

I`ve never found the tiny "city province" thing to be particularly satisfactory either... but it should be said that most folks don`t seem to have an issue with it. The ZI might very well be exactly what you describe, especially since the color text of the HotGB supports the idea that those islands aren`t self-supporting. At least, the concept of self-supporting populations based on piracy seems oxymoronic.

The Zweilunds hasn`t been worked on yet, why not merge it into 2 provinces of L4-5 each? The pirate isles concept works just as well, if not better - to support themselves as is the pirates would have to take a ridiculous share of total trade to sustain their population, and any such significant drain would result in crippling retaliation from the basin states.

I don`t think they`d be crippled by such a revision, but I also don`t think there is really an issue with the size of provinces. So, I think the question should be, does the small size of the Zweilund Island provinces really bother enough people to justify a "revision" that is really a rewrite? I`m bothered by it a bit, but no so much that I think the original materials should be changed. To me, it`s not the role of an update (or a wiki) to fix things unless they are manifestly broken, and this is just very unusual and bent. There`s nothing the game that says provinces must be of a particular size. There are examples of others that are similar, and we have an even more glaring problem with the IC. If there`s one issue that can address them all then great, but I don`t see merging them as really being a fix so much as an end-round.

Remember that we want to have lots of trade in Brechtur, but there are several pirate realms - Kiergaard and the Gorgon`s Crown both probably have privateers at least, Grabentod is openly piratical, other realms may dabble from time to time - even ignoring independents there are a lot of pirates chasing the trade so some need to be cut down.

I doubt Kiergaard or GC really sets many pirates loose on the seas. Kiergaard is still a more or less broken land, not really all that suited to the sort of thing that lends itself to shipbuilding and naval expeditions, and the Gorgon isn`t really a naval power. He isn`t really the type who would want to support privateers, or even a navy because sea-faring military requires a higher level of autonomy than land forces. The Gorgon prefers to keep power under his thumb and once you turn a captain and crew loose on the high seas--especially privateers--they are pretty much independent operators. It`s notoriously difficult for a central government to maintain control over such people.

Besides, you can never have too many pirates in a fantasy RPG.

Thelandrin wrote:

I always thought that the Zweilund Isles were ridiculously overpowered. Not lny does it have far too many provinces, half-Elves can now apparently claim the Elven bonus of not hurting the mebhaighl. It`s blatant power-creep.

Well, I`m not so opposed to power creep--it`s the power grab that seems more the problem. That aside, there`s another rationale for the population levels of those islands inspired by this issue. That is, it looks like they`ve gone down normally, but maybe because of his elven heritage and the colour text that describes him as being absent for long periods of time, he`s found a way to populate provinces that would normally be too small for such levels.... So there are several things that individually or in combination can be used to justify the size of the ZI provinces:

1. The population is mostly piratical, so they don`t require land for crops, livestock, etc.
2. They are really urban provinces like the IC, not standard provinces.
3. The half-elven ruler knows or is capable of dealing with population increases in ways that are based on his Sidhe background.
4. He`s spent months not in some arcane magical research, but dedicated time to some sort of domain level magical process that allows his domain to increase in population.

There could be more fantastic rationales. Large populations who live effectively on the water at all times, massive (urban) docks "reclaimed" land, like Venice, slums filled with captured, half-sunken wrecks, etc. None of those things really equate to an area of land like that of the more typical BR provinces, but taken as a whole it makes some sense.

Gary

[kgauck]

I`ve never found the tiny "city province" thing to be particularly
satisfactory either... but it should be said that most folks don`t seem to have an issue with it.

I can only speak for myself, but this is the kind of issue I don't object to because people should do as they please in their own games. Using this idea to explain canon however is something I would object to. Tiny city provinces are a bad idea for the reason's Andrew has mentioned.

[Wilenburg]

i have to agree with kg the power of the game is up to the players and the gm and use the source books as a guide

[geeman]

At 07:00 AM 6/20/2008, kgauck wrote:

>>I`ve never found the tiny "city province" thing to be particularly
>>satisfactory either... but it should be said that most folks don`t
>>seem to have an issue with it.
>
>I can only speak for myself, but this is the kind of issue I don`t
>object to because people should do as they please in their own
>games. Using this idea to explain canon however is something I would
>object to. Tiny city provinces are a bad idea for the reason`s
>Andrew has mentioned.

Well, we already have a tiny city province in the canon, just as the
tiny Zweilund Island provinces with their relatively high population
levels are in the canon. There`s not really any particular need to
articulate the issue further at all, except that the size of the
islands seems to strain credibility for the same reasons that the IC
does for some folks. For the sake of that credibility, I think
adding to the existing materials is preferable to altering the canon.

If there was a "Create Urban Province" mechanic that I liked I
wouldn`t have a problem with tiny city provinces, but so far I just
haven`t seen one that fit all that snugly into the existing
system. There are issues with population levels getting "split off"
and the aforementioned balance issues. It seems to me, for instance,
that a city province should be handled quite differently from a
standard province. Things like trade routes should be required to
account for the lack of self-sustaining population measures. There
are problems dealing with sources too, since source potential comes
most directly from terrain. The whole domain magic system for an
urban province needs to be thought through.

It was easy for the original designers to just plunk the Imperial
City down on the map, but the implications are pretty
broad. Similarly, the Zweilund Islands were easy to create, but we
don`t know if they are meant to be anything in particular. In size
they are very similar to the IC, and they aren`t alone. There`s no
actual size requirement anywhere in the BR materials that I`ve ever
seen, so the existence of a province of any size is theoretically possible.

So, essentially, there is a choice between:

1. Deal with small, city-sized provinces by adding domain rules that
explain the canon.
2. Change the canon to eliminate small, city-sized provinces by
rolling 2+ provinces into one another.

In the past I`ve been a proponent of rolling the IC into the nearby
province and having the Chamberlain rule over that, but that was
before I`d considered the issue with the Zweilund Islands and other
tiny provinces around Cerilia. When taken as a whole, then, I`d
prefer option #1 as it is remains truer to the canon. Explaining
canon with a new concept is better than ignoring or changing canon.

Gary

[kgauck]

The city of Anuire is like Ancient Rome or Renaissance Paris, a city larger than all other cities by a wide margin. It was once the seat of an empire, and since Anuire didn't fall to barbarians, its capital city is still a large city. So the existence of Anuire, which is perfectly plausible, is really only evidence that there is a city of Anuire. Its not generalizable since there are no other Imperial capitals out there. The city of Anuire works much better as an exception than as something with implications for other locations.

[AndrewTall]

The Zweilunds are the worst example of 'tiny province syndrome' I know of - most other examples can are one-off's which can easily be fixed by swaying the province lines a little - the spiderfell by contrast needs to be cut in three at most.

I looking purely at the domain mechanics for law, temple and guild holdings province size is irrelevant - the mechanics relate to number of people.

If looking at population density then clearly the size of the province matters - the Zweilunds for example indicate that the locals are 2-3 times as good as the Mudenites at growing crops, fishing, etc - and they have the population to prove it.

If looking at source levels then again province size is important - two L1 provinces have significantly more source potential than a single L2 province, if anyone can kibble their lands to rule the fragments up as mini-provinces then wizards will do very nicely...


My point on piracy is simple. Pirates prey on merchants. Merchants build a certain level of loss into their cost calculations. Too much cost and their goods become overpriced preventing trade, too much brutal piracy (murder rather than simple theft) and no merchant dares leave port preventing trade.

Rich realms worth pirating are Berhagen, Danigau and Muden, (Massenmarch maybe), with some loot from poorer realms such as Wierech, Dauren, Grevesmuhl and Rzhlev. These realms will however only export their surplus goods - and will take action to protect themselves if that surplus is threatened.

Pirate realms preying on these realms wholesale are the Zweilunds and Grabentod, with some smaller scale stuff from the Gorgon (piracy is a release for his troops and luxuries for his table) Kiergard (they want slaves and goods), and probably Rzhlev. The Rjurik may also have the odd viking raid depending on whether you see them as Norse or Celtic.

So we have perhaps a third to a half as many pirates as traders by population - and the pirates are using a fraction of the trading nations surplus to form almost their entire subsistence - a model which is simply not sustainable if it is even possible at all. The question the Zweilunds population thus posses is 'does every merchant get attacked by 2 pirate ships? Or 3?' If so then trade is impossible in the Great Bay - and I'd rather cut back the pirate province levels then eliminate trade from Brechtur - which I think would be the more severe contradiction of canon.

The only real drawback to cutting down province levels is that it restricts the ships that the pirates can build - but any pirate worth hunting across the great bay and keelhauling should be able to steal their ship anyway ;-)