Other Systems

[Diongham]

I am not going to have an oriental birthright. I am just going to use the mechanics for a Birthright setting.

Oh, then I know even less. lol I have a pretty good understanding of the setting. I have the 3rd Edition of the Oriental Handbook but as far as it's mechanics I'm not too sure.

I just heard of a book for 3.5 Edition by Alderac Entertainment titled Empire. Plain and simply it deals with ruling and running an Empire for Dungeons and Dragons. Anyone have this and can give some ideas what it has in it that could either; be used in Birthright, or be used to run Birthright?

There is also Heroes of Battle by Wizard of the Coast that deals with War Campaigns from the PCs perspective. It doesn't deal with ruling kingdoms just what the PCs would do in a major battle. Dealing with them like they were a big Dungeon Crawl. Pretty nifty stuff though don't know how it would be adapted to Birthright but it might make the Adventure portion a little bit more exciting.

[Vicente]

I just heard of a book for 3.5 Edition by Alderac Entertainment titled Empire. Plain and simply it deals with ruling and running an Empire for Dungeons and Dragons. Anyone have this and can give some ideas what it has in it that could either; be used in Birthright, or be used to run Birthright?

Empire is a simple translation of Civilization rules (the computer game) to pen and paper. The rules related to empire building are pretty short and have their good share of weird things (like automatic actions, what a strange way to perform maintenance and things like that).

I don't think I would use that system as is, but it's a nice inspiration for some ideas. Could be nice for a simple campaign where the PCs get to rule something but in general ruling takes a very very very small part of the play time and you don't want the complex politic interactions that you have in BR.

[kgauck]

There is also Heroes of Battle by Wizard of the Coast that deals with War Campaigns from the PCs perspective. It doesn't deal with ruling kingdoms just what the PCs would do in a major battle. Dealing with them like they were a big Dungeon Crawl. Pretty nifty stuff though don't know how it would be adapted to Birthright but it might make the Adventure portion a little bit more exciting.

Heroes of Battle is a good book, but its ideas about how to make a battle a dungeon crawl aren't the reason. Battles between domains is the most common combat opportunity I have in my games, and battles are liable to be critical to the success or failure of any given domain. Running a good battle is therefore a big deal.

[Rey]

Did anyone try to make complete custom rules for large scale BR battles, both field battle and siege?
I remember that a member of our group once made rules about gaining experience for troops in combat and groups in training, how long it took them to gain more hp and HD, what bonus would they receive if they had a commander fighting alongside, then bonuses from spells, when did they roll morale checks with what penalties. Combat was made fairly simple and quick. All of the actions for a unit and the results were actually decided on the spot and partly in agreement between DM and the players.
I had those somewhere on the papers. Personally, I disliked the easiness of making combat by those rules so I've decided to make my own. Once we tried them out, but it felt hard to follow for the first time so I got disappointed and got back to the previous version.

[Green Knight]

Diceless roleplaying works extremely well with Birthright; be it the adventure, politics, or war-fighting part.

[cyrano24100]

Did anyone try to make complete custom rules for large scale BR battles, both field battle and siege?
(...) Personally, I disliked the easiness of making combat by those rules so I've decided to make my own. Once we tried them out, but it felt hard to follow for the first time so I got disappointed and got back to the previous version.

I've never been happy with my mass combat rules; The ones I keep coming back to are here; http://www.rjurikwinds.com/rw_battle_rules.html
With players I awarded something like 5,000xps for any enemy units destroyed (hard), and 1,000xp for simple victory.
Gio Garzzeli (gazza666 I think) and many others from this forum helped devise an extensive battle system -- we even started to code it: Gio might have it on his site.

[Vicente]

Did anyone try to make complete custom rules for large scale BR battles, both field battle and siege?
I remember that a member of our group once made rules about gaining experience for troops in combat and groups in training, how long it took them to gain more hp and HD, what bonus would they receive if they had a commander fighting alongside, then bonuses from spells, when did they roll morale checks with what penalties. Combat was made fairly simple and quick. All of the actions for a unit and the results were actually decided on the spot and partly in agreement between DM and the players.
I had those somewhere on the papers. Personally, I disliked the easiness of making combat by those rules so I've decided to make my own. Once we tried them out, but it felt hard to follow for the first time so I got disappointed and got back to the previous version.

Cry Havoc has pretty nice rules for mass combat, although it takes a while to resolve battles using that system.

[dundjinnmasta]

Savage Birthright, anyone? (For the unintiated that would be Birthright using Savage Worlds ruleset!)

[marcum uth mather]

my friends and I have used the Hero system. building a bloodline has been a little difficult, but we made it work. pluse Heros way of large scale battles works well.

[Green Knight]

EON

A Swedish fantasy RPG system.

http://www.neogames.se/eon.htm

It's a fairly gritty system that focuses on skills; there is no level development and no super-human characters.

It lends itself well to BR.