Source in non-provinces

[ryancaveney]

On Wed, 12 May 2004, Gary wrote:



> Something about the inorganic, mathematical nature of a grid, however,

> turns me off. In a perfect world there`d be something that had the

> functionality of a grid with the more naturalistic method of more

> irregular borders.



There`s no reason you can`t have both: that`s what using many small hexes

is for. A hex three miles in diameter has an area of about 7.8 square

miles; you can fit 128 to 192 of these in a "typical" rulebook province of

1000 to 1500 square miles. With that many little bits to arrange, it`s

perfectly possible to represent even weird shapes like Bhaine in Taeghas

tolerably well; the only drawback is that it`s a rather time-consuming

task. Ideally, all one really has to do is photo-enlarge sections of the

map enough that you can just lay over them one of the clear plastic sheets

printed with a small hex grid which were distributed in several of the

other 2e boxed sets. If I were running an active campaign, I`d be headed

to Kinko`s right now to do just this.



> Back in the early D&D days we used to map out the domains ruled by PCs

> using 1 mile hexes inside larger, 30 mile hexes.



The Companion Set used squares inside of the hex, as I recall (or at

least, modules like CM2 did), but yes. =) A BR province is about one and

a half 30-mile hexes, such as may be found on the 1983 Greyhawk map.



> That was a big of a leap in scale, but I`m thinking that something

> like that would work, and would allow for a scaling effect of a domain

> from the local, manse level to whatever level one wanted.



Those rules were designed for minor nobles who only ruled one or two

provinces; beyond that, they grew too unwieldy. The thing which first

drew me to Birthright was the larger scale of domains it made practical;

perhaps all one really needs to describe the low-level structure of

province and guild holdings is a translation table to the "old way"....





Ryan Caveney

[Raesene Andu]

With regard to the various coastal province that are only level */5 (i.e coastal provinces that seem to be lacking the +2 bonus and so forth.) I've only ever applied those bonus for provinces that are primarily coastal (i.e islands).

Also, the maximum source level I capped at 10, to match up with the province level. I can't remember having a source holding higher than 9 though.

In most of the regions of Aduria I've mapped out provinces, unclaimed provinces are still mapped out, they are just uncontrolled, so you can create holdings (primarily source holdings) there, but until someone wants to claim those lands, the remain uncontrolled wilderness.

[geeman]

Raesene Andu writes:



> Also, the maximum source level I capped at 10, to match up with

> the province level. I can`t remember having a source holding higher

> than 9 though.



In the past I`ve argued for both province population levels and source

potential of provinces of 10+. I have population tables that reach as high

as population levels written out that go to level 30+ and, technically,

using the rules as originally published the source potential of a province

could reach 12+ fairly easily. Game mechanically I don`t think there`s any

particular reason why one needs to cap province population or holding levels

at 10, or the maximum source level of a province at 9-.



Gary

[geeman]

At 06:10 AM 5/13/2004 +0200, Osprey wrote:



>

Oceans, on the other hand, should be their own provinces IMO.

> They would

> get a bonus to their potential source levels for being

> "coastal" too, and

> would be uncontrollable by land-based wizards without some sort of

> extenuating conditions being met, but on the whole I see them operating the

> same way land provinces do.

>

>

> Are you perhaps thinking of awnshegh/ershegh mages of the sea, just

> possibly? ;)



Absolutely. There are a few sentient aquatic races in BR, though one

doesn`t necessarily think of them having bloodlines and, therefore, access

to both true magic and realm spells. I do, however, like the idea and in a

few cases there are reasons why an awn-/ershegh that had been based on the

land might go to the sea. More often than not the sea-based awn-/ershegh

tend to be prototypically bestial, but there`s no reason why that has to

always be the case. I`ve been thinking of writing up the Kelpie, for instance.



Gary

[Raesene Andu]

For ocean province you could potentially use the ocean areas from the naval rules... I haven't done that myself, but it is a possibility.

[Don E]

Originally posted by Benjamin@May 13 2004, 01:01 PM
But a 'house rule' I've always felt I would enforce if I ever were to play a game is that ley lines can't extend more than 50 miles between sources. You could have ley lines that are hundreds of miles long, so long as they hooked up to a source along the way.

That would explain why wizard regents haven't gone off and tapped the wilderness dry - they can't maintain the network of sources to draw the power to their homes. Everytime they set up the source network, another wizard contests away the 'invader'.

First off only 50 miles between sounds a bit harsh, but that might be your intention. With a hookup in every province it would cost the wizard a significant number of RP to maintain,

There is also no need for the wizard to have a ley line connected to a source for RP collection, so the proposed rule would not deter a wizard too much. Unless you would change that as well.

Cheers,
E

[Foundry_Dwarf]

Originally posted by ryancaveney@May 13 2004, 02:40 AM
On Wed, 12 May 2004, Gary wrote:

Personally, I favor doing such a remapping (Kenneth

uses three-mile hexes) and then making all provinces exactly equal in

number of hexes (though not necessarily in shape), and then rewriting the

army movement rules to fit the newly-drawn hexes.





Ryan Caveney

This is exactly what I did for my homemade map.
Each province was defined as a single hex on the world map, but the borders could "gerrymander" when I moved in as long as the exact same number of hexes was covered (IIRC I used 30 mile hexes followed by 10 mile hexes in the more detailed map ... each hex was divided into 9, or something like that)
-Dwarf