Elven Forests & Source Potential

[ryancaveney]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Athos69 wrote:



> This is where having a non-linear population to province level falls

> apart, but otherwise it is an excellent way to determine population.



I don`t so much mind the nonlinearity; what I think this shows is the

danger of the idea of splitting provinces. AFAICT, it exists only as an

attempt to explain the origin of the Imperial City province. I am not

convinced of the need for such a rule; I am fairly content to say "at the

continent-spanning height of the Anuirean empire, a one-time-only

exception was made." The biggest problem with introducing an explict rule

to explain the IC is the slippery slope to allowing players to use it

themselves in every domain, which strikes me as disastrous.



The other reason I think splitting provinces is a bad idea is that one

major function of the division of the map into provinces is the regulation

of military movement. If you cut a province in two, you also double the

amount of time it takes an army to march across the same old distance!

Even worse, the speed change happens only in some directions: e.g., E-W

but not N-S! This is a truly horrible thing to do to the military part of

the game. Ideally, all provinces would either be identically sized in all

dimensions, or have different movement costs per province per compass

direction; both of these are quite challenging. A two-scale approach,

such as Kenneth`s method of chopping provinces up into 30-50 6-mile hexes

is pretty much the only way to maintain both variation in province shape

and sanity in movement rules.



This is why, in the D&D Companion Set, all "provinces" were defined

precisely as individual hexagons on the world map.





Ryan Caveney

[ryancaveney]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Raesene Andu wrote:



> Quite simply the question is should all elven forest province be

> changed to */9 provinces.



Absolutely yes, without any reservation. This is the very first change I

ever made to BR back when I first bought it -- the many cases in which the

source potential is listed as (9 - Province Level) are to me obviously an

error in applying the rules. All elven provinces are */9, yes definitely.





Ryan Caveney

[Osprey]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Raesene Andu wrote:

> Quite simply the question is should all elven forest province be
> changed to */9 provinces.

Absolutely yes, without any reservation. This is the very first change I
ever made to BR back when I first bought it -- the many cases in which the
source potential is listed as (9 - Province Level) are to me obviously an
error in applying the rules. All elven provinces are */9, yes definitely.


Ryan Caveney

I think PURE elven forests have a 9 source rating. However, I see many of them slowly being tainted on the borders with developed lands, and a resultant drop in source rating taking place, especially where roads have been built through the forests, but also on borders with any developed lands (say, -1 source bordering a province of level 3-5, -2 next to a 6+ province).

Yet another reason to resent the humans...they really are everywhere, aren't they?

-Osprey

[Raesene Andu]

On the whole source potential thingy, I was thinking of changing the way it is calculated (mainly to bring some order to the whole thing).

Basically my idea was that there were three underlying terrain types
5 - Plains/Hills
7 - Mountains
9 - High Mountains

And on to these basic types you applied a series of modifiers based on additional terrain features, like so.
Forest +2 (lowland, hills, mountains only)
Elven Influence +2
River +1 (if river flows through province, not just runs along its border)
Swamp +3 (lowland only)
Glacier +1 to +3
Dragon Bones +1
Coral Reef +3
And so on.

[Osprey]

I'd suggest adding a set of matching guidelines for things that decrease a source potential. Province levels and deforestation are the default ways, of course, but one could imagine magic-draining events in a province's history also dropping the source potential. Extensive mining and quarrying in hills and mountains might do that, as well as rifts into the Shadow World (where the SW source is leeching off the mebhaighal) or other corrupting magics. I reckon we could come up with a good list of ideas with some collective brainstorming.

-Osprey