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  1. #1
    Senior Member Mojczak's Avatar
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    Post My work in progress

    Ok, here are some of my retranscribed handwritten notes where I wrote some of my "problems" to resolve and which some of ended up with ideas which I won't put up here right now because I'd like to see what other people might come up with as solutions.

    Preliminary ideas

    Scope: rendering minimal domain-level play more interesting while giving rule sets to possibly enhance "normal" level play

    - Developping "Holding" Attributes:
    - Provinces: Divided Primarly between Organisation and Population levels(and agricultural potential?):
    - Population determining the number of cities in a province:
    - Population and Stability
    - Population and Organisation
    - Organisation determining the maximum level of Urban Areas(cities) in a province
    - Attibutes: influence, power, holding stability, holding "identity" (cultural, alignment, etc), reach, "legality"?; basically having each holding being something of a mini-province in themselves.
    Influence being the primary measure of regency collection, while other possibly enhancing or being merely for other aspects of play
    - Holdings: Law, Guild, Manor(agriculture and rural space?), Trade, Temple, Source, others? (space, mineral, natural ressources exploitations... in trade?)
    - Holding representing Influence over a certain field, like the percentage of actual influence over a certain field
    - To see if not possible to make the "holding" levels untopped in some way, in order to make the contest and rule holding actions more dynamic and less radical in their expression
    - I.E. Possibly having a stability or prosperity penalties or bonuses for multiple holdings fighting for the same "slot" making room for actual virtual "holding slots"
    - Volatile "Holdings" untied to actual power base but resulting of some sort of definite influence (i.e. bloodthristy pirates getting regency from their fearsome reputation over the coast of coeranys...)

  2. #2
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    Interesting. I think I've been working along many of the same lines. I've been working on a more scalable system that will also help DMs running non-BR settings to help add dimension and life to their worlds (particularly considering that 4e is finally trying to normalize larger scopes of play in the game worlds through the tier system).

    Attibutes: influence, power, holding stability, holding "identity" (cultural, alignment, etc), reach, "legality"?; basically having each holding being something of a mini-province in themselves.
    Influence being the primary measure of regency collection, while other possibly enhancing or being merely for other aspects of play
    I'm not sure where you're going with holding attributes--could you please explain further?

    In my own approach, I've been trying to keep the number of variables as limited and simple as possible, only adding more when one wants to "scale up" (or down) to a different level of play (from the "standard" BR level of play, which is more focused on barony-sized realms, to kingdom factions or empires, to province or intra-holding play in the other direction). So I would recommend keeping only the essential variables for each type of play.

    - Provinces: Divided Primarly between Organisation and Population levels(and agricultural potential?):
    - Population determining the number of cities in a province:
    - Population and Stability
    - Population and Organisation
    What do you mean by tying population with multiple other variables?

    Holdings: Law, Guild, Manor(agriculture and rural space?), Trade, Temple, Source, others? (space, mineral, natural ressources exploitations... in trade?)
    I consider "Province" holdings to represent the centralization of government control over a general populace (efficiency of taxation, administration, delivering and carrying out of orders, etc.), while "Manor" holdings represent control of a small number of people over land and basic production/exploitation of resources. Province holders don't really "own" the province, but Manor holders do tend to own, lease, or hold in indentured service the land and labor to cultivate crops and livestock, fell timber, and mine ores or quarry stone. To keep a feudal focus, Manor holdings for me generate a small amount of income but can also call a muster in a manner similar to levies, but with better trained and equipped units.

    I allow Guild holdings to compete with Manors in these renaissance societies, as more yeomen arise (producing basic resources outside the Manor system) and allowing more refined goods to be produced. Thus in Brechtur, particularly, there may be 1 Manor holding to every 2 or 3 Guild holdings, with Guild holdings exceeding their normal limits by taking up Manor slots.

    I also have a system for tracking resource exploitation. I use Food, Timber, Stone, and Ore, linking them to the ability to sustain Cities and Armies, build ships and some buildings, build fortifications, and muster troops, respectively. Resources are exploited by corresponding levels of Manor or Guild holdings and transported through Trade. This is one of my "layers" that doesn't need to be used at all, but adds a strategic level to game play, particularly in a more war-focused game.

    - Holding representing Influence over a certain field, like the percentage of actual influence over a certain field
    ...
    - Volatile "Holdings" untied to actual power base but resulting of some sort of definite influence (i.e. bloodthristy pirates getting regency from their fearsome reputation over the coast of coeranys...)
    I started thinking about this just in the past couple of weeks--I'd be really interested to here what you're thinking. I wanted some way to abstractly represent someone's influence and ability to "call in favors," so to speak, get something to happen, or work plots behind the scenes. Now, PCs mostly should be doing this in active roleplaying--unless your time for that is limited and you want to focus your face time with the PCs in more action-packed adventure, with the PCs pulling strings in your increasingly-epic plots during your down time between sessions . It may also be a great help for a DM to help keep things dynamic and interesting with many more NPCs than one with limited time and creative horsepower (like myself ) might be able to do otherwise. The goal is to represent how, for instance, Gandalf or Elrond or Sauron might pull strings throughout the known world; who does Belgarath have pull with and how hard can he push to get things done; how do the immortal plots of Graz'zt or Asmodeus play out across the planes, and what influence do they have where?

    You're right in your approach, I think, to detach influence from holdings on some level. Favors, loyalty, reputation/respect/fear/honor, contacts, networks, and various resources and assets less fixed than holdings can and should be able to make a difference at domain levels of play. It's not what BR is focused on, but it should be a "layer" that could be added if one wanted.

    - To see if not possible to make the "holding" levels untopped in some way, in order to make the contest and rule holding actions more dynamic and less radical in their expression
    - I.E. Possibly having a stability or prosperity penalties or bonuses for multiple holdings fighting for the same "slot" making room for actual virtual "holding slots"
    I've been trying to figure out how to incorporate prosperity, "tech" level, or type of government, but have not found a way that is neutral enough or simple enough. I also haven't gotten very far in delving deeper into individual holdings, or those nebulous steps where PCs might have started their own enterprises, gained influence over a temple, or gained a small charter of land and tenants, and thus are much smaller than a typical holding but want to expand upon these organically to develop a domain.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Mojczak's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    Interesting. I think I've been working along many of the same lines. I've been working on a more scalable system that will also help DMs running non-BR settings to help add dimension and life to their worlds (particularly considering that 4e is finally trying to normalize larger scopes of play in the game worlds through the tier system).


    I'm not sure where you're going with holding attributes--could you please explain further?

    In my own approach, I've been trying to keep the number of variables as limited and simple as possible, only adding more when one wants to "scale up" (or down) to a different level of play (from the "standard" BR level of play, which is more focused on barony-sized realms, to kingdom factions or empires, to province or intra-holding play in the other direction). So I would recommend keeping only the essential variables for each type of play.


    What do you mean by tying population with multiple other variables?


    I consider "Province" holdings to represent the centralization of government control over a general populace (efficiency of taxation, administration, delivering and carrying out of orders, etc.), while "Manor" holdings represent control of a small number of people over land and basic production/exploitation of resources. Province holders don't really "own" the province, but Manor holders do tend to own, lease, or hold in indentured service the land and labor to cultivate crops and livestock, fell timber, and mine ores or quarry stone. To keep a feudal focus, Manor holdings for me generate a small amount of income but can also call a muster in a manner similar to levies, but with better trained and equipped units.

    I allow Guild holdings to compete with Manors in these renaissance societies, as more yeomen arise (producing basic resources outside the Manor system) and allowing more refined goods to be produced. Thus in Brechtur, particularly, there may be 1 Manor holding to every 2 or 3 Guild holdings, with Guild holdings exceeding their normal limits by taking up Manor slots.

    I also have a system for tracking resource exploitation. I use Food, Timber, Stone, and Ore, linking them to the ability to sustain Cities and Armies, build ships and some buildings, build fortifications, and muster troops, respectively. Resources are exploited by corresponding levels of Manor or Guild holdings and transported through Trade. This is one of my "layers" that doesn't need to be used at all, but adds a strategic level to game play, particularly in a more war-focused game.


    I started thinking about this just in the past couple of weeks--I'd be really interested to here what you're thinking. I wanted some way to abstractly represent someone's influence and ability to "call in favors," so to speak, get something to happen, or work plots behind the scenes. Now, PCs mostly should be doing this in active roleplaying--unless your time for that is limited and you want to focus your face time with the PCs in more action-packed adventure, with the PCs pulling strings in your increasingly-epic plots during your down time between sessions . It may also be a great help for a DM to help keep things dynamic and interesting with many more NPCs than one with limited time and creative horsepower (like myself ) might be able to do otherwise. The goal is to represent how, for instance, Gandalf or Elrond or Sauron might pull strings throughout the known world; who does Belgarath have pull with and how hard can he push to get things done; how do the immortal plots of Graz'zt or Asmodeus play out across the planes, and what influence do they have where?

    You're right in your approach, I think, to detach influence from holdings on some level. Favors, loyalty, reputation/respect/fear/honor, contacts, networks, and various resources and assets less fixed than holdings can and should be able to make a difference at domain levels of play. It's not what BR is focused on, but it should be a "layer" that could be added if one wanted.


    I've been trying to figure out how to incorporate prosperity, "tech" level, or type of government, but have not found a way that is neutral enough or simple enough. I also haven't gotten very far in delving deeper into individual holdings, or those nebulous steps where PCs might have started their own enterprises, gained influence over a temple, or gained a small charter of land and tenants, and thus are much smaller than a typical holding but want to expand upon these organically to develop a domain.
    Cool to see I am not the only to think in those lines.
    For the provinces this is still mainly unclear but I wanted to separate the population "level" from the organisation level, both that would merely be variable to determine the other levels of holdings or cities and the agricultural potency that would determine the maximum level of population sustainable without inflation or stability difficulties and the organisation level that would determine mostly the maximum reacheable level of provinces and manors. In other words the level of cities and manors holdings would represent their efficiency to conduct their tasks more than anything else. I wanted to set some guidlines to make the rulins of cities and manors as random as possible and very costy... and from the said level of cities and manors would depend other holdings that have established bases in them. But that is only first phase thinking and I am still trying to find ways to improve that as when I am thinking of temple holdings, for exemple, and the posiblity of dividing "priestly" influences I'd want other temple to be able to set powerful base zone (like a grrison of holy warriors and a monastary...) without necessarly having regencies or without necessarly toping levels of holdings in place or organisation allowing other rites to actually "manifest without influencing"... And still struggling, with that in mind, trying to figure out to compute regency, holding level (if they have to be compltely set in stone for regency collection...), and other factors...

    (more later, because I dont have much time right now)

  4. #4
    Senior Member Mojczak's Avatar
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    I think what would be easier is to try a pbem with experimental rules with a limited group and give feedbacks here and as I have limited time I wouldn't have to two twice the thing which would be an asset for me so i will be starting a game around a single four province domain with a group of 5-7 to begin with, 3 of them being live players (my young brother, and two friends) but I'd like other people's feedback and I eagerly send invitation to other people who would be minded enough to put some lengthy effort and dedication to developping a new domain setting formula.

    PM me if interested.
    Last edited by Mojczak; 01-13-2009 at 10:24 PM.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Mojczak's Avatar
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    Hah, I see I didn't bring much enthusiasm, did I? Anyway, if any one changes mind hostilities will be starting around January 23 on a closed forum. Just PM me. The method will be we will create two completely new domains, graft them to Anuire in some way, somewhere, and permit optimal developpment from part of the players. Like twin isles not too far from the west coast, populated by people from old andu origins melted with local culture there was there was the best proposition I had so far... A kind of united kingdom parallel.

    Original rules will be used and heavy changes will be affected with the insight of both dm and players as the game goes. Much of the process will be open and most info will be revealed OOC to permit everyone to developp whole jugement.

    Character rules will be that of... tu dum. Edition 3.6 and will too be subject to modification and alteration. (we are a group of people who believe in the concept of lethality keeps you edgy and gives you a sense of responsability)

  6. #6
    Senior Member Mojczak's Avatar
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    Ok, so there has been change, my player group pretty much convinced me it was a rather bad idea putting so much effort in something most would simply just ignore and that I should put my energy at something more worthwile than trying to suck some energy back into an already more than dead and moribond community (sic) which I more than partly agree with for the moment. So we decided we would have a fun small pbem, if anyone wanted to join we would be glad, and more than that we would play bare rule 2e tsr dnd and, just have fun chill and kill the goblins. And maybe later work up a building up a whole "chronicle" for pathfinder sytem at which point I might say "hello people, here is the finished work". The action is still centered around the isles west of Anuire and we will keep three(3) places open for "internet" players, for the moment.

    In a shelf. Magical and political situation of these islands is rather obscure, divided in three duchies and one principality, the islands have been rather closed to outside activities, being seen as difficult partners at best and brining little rewards, the developping cultures are chaotic at very best (in it's true sense) mixed between a serie of sidhe aspects (although no true sidhe is believed to have remained on the island) old andu traditions and some completly unique to these islands, and some rjurik forms. Rumors of shadow world fissure has drove the WIT to send a small number of knights to investigate and drive all signs of weakedness from these isles and some rumors saying that these islands might have been the long resting place of Ghoigwnnwd starting to circulate on the big Island has brought a higher number than adventurers and scholars to seek evidences and treasuries that might come with such a find as Ghoigwnnwd's "lair". Thats a part of the starting situation and the whole things starts some 50 years in the future of the current setting.

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