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  1. #11
    My main problem is not really the lack of fluidity really, it's the fact that the provinces look, well, they basically look like something that could have been drawn up by the american government (straight lines, no exclaves), which you won't see happen with pre-modern states, there's a slight tendency to try, but even today there's leftovers from these eras. There was also the issue of the size of the province: how do you get a smaller domain, then. How do you represent the smaller states of the period?

  2. #12
    Member rjurikwinds's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gwrthefyr View Post
    My main problem is not really the lack of fluidity really, it's the fact that the provinces look, well, they basically look like something that could have been drawn up by the american government (...)
    Ha! Hilarious! Yes, I have been trying to use "existing maps" for birthright campaigns and I always have problems because provinces are not normally "all the same size"
    => But then you should just allow players to combine two provinces to make a bigger one (create province variant... perhaps with a DC based on the final provinces level!), or allow them to split provinces into smaller parts (as I had detailed in my previous post)
    That would allow the map to be packed with both small 2/0 provinces and huge 4/9 provinces...

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gwrthefyr View Post
    My main problem is not really the lack of fluidity really, it's the fact that the provinces look, well, they basically look like something that could have been drawn up by the american government (straight lines, no exclaves), which you won't see happen with pre-modern states, there's a slight tendency to try, but even today there's leftovers from these eras. There was also the issue of the size of the province: how do you get a smaller domain, then. How do you represent the smaller states of the period?
    I suspect that part of the basic idea was that domains below a certain territorial level wouldn't have the ability to perform some functions in a significant way, and therefore didn't need to be represented in the same fashion as larger ones. The individual Duchies and other major Anuriean states in the base setting are around the size of Wales: at as little as 20-25 miles across (and less, for some islands), a single-province state can really be quite impressively small.

    You do have enclaves in the form of holdings across borders (e.g. Avanil's law holdings in Diemed), and though truly tiny holding-only domains (Law or otherwise) are distinctly rare in Cerilia, there are a few around (e.g. Mourde Alondier in the Erebannien, or the holdings in the Basilisk's realm).

    It's also worth bearing in mind that handling the weight of NPCs tends to be one of the major problems for DMs as it is: adding many enclaves and tiny statelets may add flavour, but it will also add work for anyone running the game.

  4. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Exile View Post
    I suspect that part of the basic idea was that domains below a certain territorial level wouldn't have the ability to perform some functions in a significant way, and therefore didn't need to be represented in the same fashion as larger ones. The individual Duchies and other major Anuriean states in the base setting are around the size of Wales: at as little as 20-25 miles across (and less, for some islands), a single-province state can really be quite impressively small.

    You do have enclaves in the form of holdings across borders (e.g. Avanil's law holdings in Diemed), and though truly tiny holding-only domains (Law or otherwise) are distinctly rare in Cerilia, there are a few around (e.g. Mourde Alondier in the Erebannien, or the holdings in the Basilisk's realm).

    It's also worth bearing in mind that handling the weight of NPCs tends to be one of the major problems for DMs as it is: adding many enclaves and tiny statelets may add flavour, but it will also add work for anyone running the game.
    Except I feel "holding as land" feels like a weird way to do it when the game is built around the idea of "province as land", which is why I'm trying to rework that part of the holding system into something that can work for "x as rulership" - one of the alternatives I'd thought of was completely removing province and just having law, which causes issues though the further in time you stray imo (say: restoration England: how do you do the separate power of parliament and the king while having the king still be overall ruler sort of thing, or the simple fact that the three crowns spent a good chunk of the period being at war with each other despite having the same king, all without having the crown losing said law holdings entirely until the end of the 17th century)

    I'm also not thinking about millions of statelets, there weren't that many with any significance all told that fell under the size of a province outside of some areas: sure the holy roman empire was split into 300 statelets in theory, but of those, a large number were "imperial knights" whose states were just an estate with none of the powers of a prince (and ended up as barons in Prussia and Bavaria when all was said and done), and the others tend to be close to the size of an average BR province with a few dozen exceptions (who would eventually end up absorbed by more powerful families)

    Italy would be a similar situation, sure on paper it looks extremely split, but by the 15th century, only about 8 states of the peninsula would be too small for a BR province (Asti, Guastalla (but often an exclave), Massa, Lucca, San Marino, Malta (but an island), Piombino, not Monaco (Genoese exclave though at the time) and later the Stati dei Presidii (leftovers of the republic of Siena, spanish exclave on the Tuscan coast))

    I'm not suggesting millions of them, but just an optional house rule for the purpose of realism, as these tend to appear on tense borders especially. Well, realism and rule of drama: making things messier is fun for some - also the plan involved consolidating holdings and removing the 10 level limit, basically while there would be a number of feudal landholders and more npcs to keep track of, each of these NPCs would also have less complicated bookkeeping by virtue of the holdings being reduced to a handful for each type (my initial example has the principality of Avanil put as a single high level holding after all; for that conversion I tend to go for provinces having triangular population, squared wealth and I'm torn between linear and triangular holdings, and in fact still a few more things - this also has an effect that there's a point where just improving the population won't give much more, which is where I'm tempted to have domain traits or holding splits (say form a city) happen, as all you're getting over time is rural overpopulation): more than the NPCs to keep track of, my limited BR DMing experience has been that it's the book keeping of vast, complex and numerous domains which tends to suck out your soul.

    It will probably be put as an alternate option when I'm through with putting together my TrueBirthright conversion draft...
    Last edited by Gwrthefyr; 06-01-2010 at 08:08 PM.

  5. #15
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    Why not just treat province levels like other holding levels?

    Thus Avanil might control 1 level of Alamsreft while Tuornen controlled 2. Represent this however you want on the map--the province could be split with some internal border, or the dispute could be waged across towns or with no definitive boundaries, but rather intermingled peoples owing their allegiances separately. This would create more conflict and more fluidity among borders.

    I prefer a somewhat different holding system, anyway.
    I consider provinces to be well-settled, already having populations at the max geographic potential (unless the region is specifically sparsely-settled, like frontiers, where a manual arbitrary adjustment reduces that potential).

    Thus every plains province in the Heartland of Anuire has 8 levels (9 if by river, 10 if by sea).
    This means that every other holding type can keep advancing until the total for that holding type reaches the maximum. Guilds, for instance, can outstrip Province levels.

    By this system, Province levels represent governmental, administrative control over the general populace. One does not have full control (extensive tax collection apparatus, sufficient ministers, and record-keeping to control a given population) until one has all the slots filled, and administrative control can be mixed. However, often realms will try to declare boundaries (i.e., claim a whole province without filling all the slots) and back up the claim by force.

    In addition to Guilds, Laws, Temples, and Sources, I include two other holding types: Manors and Trade.
    Manors represent the manorial system: landholders controlling agricultural or resource-extraction type operations with tenant workers. They produce some money and can exert some influence like laws, but can choose between more money or being able to call up military units for seasonal service.
    Manors and guilds can compete for slots if they exceed the base slots for their provinces.

    Trade holdings represent trade routes in this system. They are more fluid than other types of holdings.

    There are some additional rules implications of these, but what I'm getting at is that between the mixed province holding types, manor holdings (representing the power of the lesser nobles), and the ability of the trade, guild, law, and temple holdings to outstrip the province level, you can represent quite a variety of different situations and heterogenous borders.

  6. #16
    Ehrshegh of Spelling Thelandrin's Avatar
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    I do like that idea, but it does sound very complicated!

    Ius Hibernicum, in nomine juris. Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    Why not just treat province levels like other holding levels?

    Thus Avanil might control 1 level of Alamsreft while Tuornen controlled 2. Represent this however you want on the map--the province could be split with some internal border, or the dispute could be waged across towns or with no definitive boundaries, but rather intermingled peoples owing their allegiances separately. This would create more conflict and more fluidity among borders.

    I prefer a somewhat different holding system, anyway.
    I consider provinces to be well-settled, already having populations at the max geographic potential (unless the region is specifically sparsely-settled, like frontiers, where a manual arbitrary adjustment reduces that potential).

    Thus every plains province in the Heartland of Anuire has 8 levels (9 if by river, 10 if by sea).
    This means that every other holding type can keep advancing until the total for that holding type reaches the maximum. Guilds, for instance, can outstrip Province levels.

    By this system, Province levels represent governmental, administrative control over the general populace. One does not have full control (extensive tax collection apparatus, sufficient ministers, and record-keeping to control a given population) until one has all the slots filled, and administrative control can be mixed. However, often realms will try to declare boundaries (i.e., claim a whole province without filling all the slots) and back up the claim by force.

    In addition to Guilds, Laws, Temples, and Sources, I include two other holding types: Manors and Trade.
    Manors represent the manorial system: landholders controlling agricultural or resource-extraction type operations with tenant workers. They produce some money and can exert some influence like laws, but can choose between more money or being able to call up military units for seasonal service.
    Manors and guilds can compete for slots if they exceed the base slots for their provinces.

    Trade holdings represent trade routes in this system. They are more fluid than other types of holdings.

    There are some additional rules implications of these, but what I'm getting at is that between the mixed province holding types, manor holdings (representing the power of the lesser nobles), and the ability of the trade, guild, law, and temple holdings to outstrip the province level, you can represent quite a variety of different situations and heterogenous borders.
    I worked some time ago some ideas that remember me a little of this, specially allowing holdings to go over the province level, something that always bothered me.

    For this what I did is to duplicate the duality between population-law to the other holdings, so I had economics-guilds, faith-temples, and magic-sources. Those three new "things" were the equivalents of the province level but for the other holdings (economics could be always maxed at 10, faith depended on the race and magic depended on population).

    It worked pretty nicely, although I like a lot Rowan idea.

  8. #18
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    The biggest complication comes in just re-envisioning the system. Starting holding levels from ROE don't work out so well--gives people a lot of room to advance. Also increases the gold in the game quite a bit, which suggests some adjustment in domain action costs and may require a good mass combat resolution system for larger armies. Those larger armies are more accurate anyway, though, if the common Plains provinces (level 8, 9 if by river, 10 if by sea) have 80,000 to 100,000 people in them.

    Also, adding new holding types does add more regents. In small games this isn't much of an issue. I'm currently working on a project to automate turn submissions through a form so that basic action resolution is handled automatically. The DM then just handles exceptions, adds the RP flavor, or overrides results if appropriate. I was doing this in Access, but I think I'm going to build it in SharePoint now. I have the intent of making it possible to run all of Anuire, perhaps all of Cerilia, fairly easily this way.

    By the way, the new holding types and the ability to expand beyond province levels makes for more competition among all types of domains.

    One nice thing about this system is that the realm rulers can compete with each other directly without necessarily going to war (though they may provoke war this way, as well). Also, with the Manor holdings, you get lesser nobles mattering more, with the ability to potentially stage meaningful rebellions. Further, with Manor and Guild holdings ultimately being able to occupy the same space, you get a conflict between the nobility and the merchant/artisan classes. In real world history, you'd see Manors eventually replaced perhaps entirely with Guilds. Brechtur has more Guilds than Manors, and Anuire more Manors than Guilds, for example. Also, the surprisingly high province levels of Brechtur in the source material are no longer out of whack; Anuire's common plains make Anuire's population much higher, since Brechtur is more mountainous. Ditto for the terrain limitations in other areas of Cerilia; Anuire is most powerful because Anuire has the best terrain for humans and thus the larget population.


    I have variants that work particularly well with this system for somewhat modified versions of Contest, Diplomacy, and Agitate to make them more encouraged and common, as well. Also, I make Vassalage and Lieutenancy mean more and become more common.

    I know, I know, lots of changes means its harder for other people to use. I actually do think my version is ultimately simpler and more intuitive. Once I get my turn submission assistant working, I'll launch it and publish my version so people can take what they like from it (since we all like to tweak the system so much!).
    Last edited by Rowan; 06-04-2010 at 03:54 PM.

  9. #19
    Lol, I also liked Rowan's ideas a lot (my draft document constantly refers back to these rules for some material; the square wealth formula also came from there, and the urbanization "domain feat" was made with the idea that it would make it possible to have more guilds/trade than the level allows, the alternative in my mind was allowing to split off cities from the main holding but cities would be limited to only guild and trade as economic holdings, but I never reached a point of satisfaction for that one)...

    Also, I tend to run with the underlying assumption that there is about a major lord (count and above) for 2 provinces (excluding the city provinces of Masetiele and Anuire), with about one head of a patrician family for every level as is in the basic rules (this almost fits with MMS:WE's tables when I do the add a level to each province thing), counting the princes above. That's obviously not a flat figure but an overall: some areas will have more division than others.

    EDIT: for quick math: that's about 400-500 princes for the whole of Cerilia (roughly 110 are the main rulers, the remnant are their vassals), and more or less 2100 nobles overall. With the population numbers I'd gotten in some of my notes, multiplying by 4 for households, assuming that the nobility is very interrelated within each region, and adding a x10 knightly class I got about MMS:WE's assumption of about 1/500-1/1000 people being of the aristocracy, which is also one of the guesstimates for blooded lineages that's been used by some. Also this gives a maximum potential of about 420 knight units for all of Cerilia (likely much less possible) assuming all the heads of households are raised and assuming the knight unit only has 50 of them, which sort of fits one of the knight limitations house rules xD - I'm tempted to have a separate action to deal with knights and scutage.
    Last edited by Gwrthefyr; 06-04-2010 at 07:35 PM.

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