Provinces as holdings

[kgauck]

Can a Province be contested if using this system? If the province can be contested do you still need the investure spell? And would this take power away from Temples? Also, if Ghoere takes the majority of Province Holdings in Bellam does that mean the Province is automaticlly moved to Ghoere from Roesone?

Well, in a way you can contest a province: its called war. The war rules exist for this purpose and should not be replaced by a holding type contest system, unless you want to eliminate warfare.

Why would this take power from temples?

There is no reason to think of Bellam as either Roesone's or Ghoere's. If its Ghoere owns 2 province holdings and Roesone 1, then Ghoere owns 2/3's of Bellam and Roesone owns 1/3. At some point the Count of Bellam has a choice to make, but that's a role playing issue. There is no reason there can't be eight counts of Bellam, in terms of who has the title. (That's kind of silly, two is a typical ceiling, but you get then point).

The neat thing about provinces is how you can have wars take parts of a province, rather than whole provinces. I would require an investiture when you install a count (or any civil authority) and end occupation. Not a separate investiture as you extend your control of the province.

[kgauck]

So you could have a "powerless" king who is head-of-state for one province with vassalages from a few others.

Like the early Capetians.

[kgauck]

I do not have a suitable reference from European history but how about the USA around 1800's or so.

Guild activity is an extensive activity. I would say the income and wealth of the cattle barons was in Texas, which was a state since 1836 and was reasonably well organized. The wealth and holdings were not in Oklahoma where the cattle drives passed by on the way to market. After some time, guilds developed in Kansas City and Independence where Philip Armour and Gustavus Swift moved guild holdings from their base in Chicago.

Regarding the Church model. Many missionary activities are properly thought of as an expense, not as a source of revenue and regency.

[Sorontar]

Re: the Church Model

But I thought that one of the things of the Birthright regency is that it is not about monetary wealth. It is about power and influence. If you have a level 2 holding, then a larger percentage of the population would dedicate their resources to you than someone with a level 1 holding. This enables you to "do things". The resources can be money, land, possessions, manpower, political support etc.

So a Church is powerful if it "controls" a large percentage of the population. "Missionaries" may not bring money to the church but they would still bring it resources, and hence regency.

My problem is that I thought the province level tended to indicate the population size of the province. So how can a temple holding have a level above the province level if both are indicating a proportion of the population? Or is that just indicating that it has resources that can't be included when considering the province level (ie. its not all about population)?

Sorontar
ps. this is all of the top of my head... I might need to recheck the definitions of the levels and regency

[kgauck]

Missionary work may have the faith of the people, but looking at actual missionary work, it doesn't pay for itself through the contributions of the converted, but through efforts from home. This was true when Patrick went to Ireland, Columbanus went to Germany, the attempts at re-conversion of heretics (in fact another of the Church's problems with wealth, was that it would gain revenues to combat heresies and pursue crusades, and then after the effort would still retain the ability to raise revenues).

Second, it doesn't follow that devotion of people translates into holdings. Holdings represent the ability to collect revenues and political capital. That may or may not mean lots of followers. It can also mean important, well placed followers; prestige; ownership of things (land, rights, privileges, &c).

And the purpose of province holdings would be to divorce province level from population size. So that province level represented how well organized the provincial rule was.

[stv2brown1988]

For example...Ghoere has 2 province holding levels in Bellam, Roesone has 1 province holding level.

For either regent to raise their province level holding they would need to succeed against the BRCS rules to raise a level 3 province to level 4?

Any raise in Province level would decrease Source level?

The only way for Roesone to lower Ghoere's province holding levels are through war? (Or the other way around) Or investure with both regeants present?

[stv2brown1988]

The following are possible occurences:
* King loses control of his law holding to someone else but retains the regency of the province as the head of state.
* King loses vasalage/s from one or more of the Jarls.... not sure how this is done. Is it a deinvestiture or just another ceremony or is vassalage really no more that a diplomatic agreement?

So you could have a "powerless" king who is head-of-state for one province with vassalages from a few others.

Sorontar

I want to begin play with King Bevering (sp?) issuing a Decree that Jarl X has been selected to be the next King. The six other Jarls have their own ideas about who should be King and it is not the PC. The next Decree from King B says the ceremony will be in the Spring, 6 months away. This gives the PC six action rounds to build alliances, remove enemies, strengthen their grasp on the Law/Guild/Province levels where possible, and hope the senile old fool doesn't change his mind between now and then.

[Rowan]

At some point, a mission may be successful enough that the community becomes self-sustaining. That's when it gains holding levels. Since Cerilia uses a polytheistic setting where many gods are revered even if the worship of one is more prominent in one area, temple holdings can grow rapidly. This is because there is less "conversion" that needs to happen, and instead a great show of wealth or power (building temples/Ruling holdings) or other concerted efforts can grow the influence of a temple in an area.

Any raise in Province level would decrease Source level?

The concept behind Province Holdings assumes that Province level has very little to do with the population in the province, and much more to do with influence over the people already settled their and organization/centralization/efficiency of government. As I tried to get into before, then, the interaction between Province level and Source level should change. By this mechanism, one way increased Province level would decrease Source potential is if you want to say that concentration of political power over a populace disrupts mebhaigl. That doesn't make much sense to me. Another way would be to say that as a land's people are brought under the influence of a divine bloodline, mebhaigl is disrupted.

I think I'd prefer to divorce Province level from Source potential entirely, though, in favor of maintaining the wildness/mebhaigl connection by instead perhaps linking Guild activity to Sources.

[AndrewTall]

Well, strictly province holdings doesn't have to budge from province level = population at all.

All the mechanic really represents is that some people in a geographical region follow one 'king' and a second lot follow another 'king'. Two kings thus get RP from the same geographic area for the same type of holding.

To keep the link between the number of province holdings and the population you just need to accept empty slots as potential and track the overall cap - much as you do for any other holding.

So you get a province 4 with holding levels Ghoere 2 / Roseone 1, Ghoere controls 2 levels (say the big city) and Roesone 1 (say the southern farms and villages) with 1 uncontrolled (say the farms in the north) which doesn't produce any significant RP or GB for a province regent.

Either Ghoere or Roesone could try and rule up their province holding by one level (effectively claiming the fealty of the independents, or straightening the chain of command to reduce inefficiency) or they could agree to an investiture to transfer their holdings.

War itself doesn't do much - the people retain their old loyalties until there is a ceremony of investiture.

[kgauck]

For example...Ghoere has 2 province holding levels in Bellam, Roesone has 1 province holding level.

For either regent to raise their province level holding they would need to succeed against the BRCS rules to raise a level 3 province to level 4?

Yes

Any raise in Province level would decrease Source level?

It depends on what you want Province holdings to indicate. My main reason for preferring province holdings is to allow a regent's hold on their province to rise and fall like every other holding without a connection to population. So while population may fluctuate, it does so much less than control of a province. So, with that in mind, I would not alter source levels with province levels.

The only way for Roesone to lower Ghoere's province holding levels are through war? (Or the other way around) Or investure with both regeants present?

Yes. The only way for Roesone to lower Ghoere's province holding levels is through war. You have to take them by force (or destroy them, which is very hard and would require pillaging ruthlessly for a long time).

Investiture is a positive act of claiming a province. Investiture with both regents present would become something that only happens in vassalization. Specifically not in the context we're discussing here. The other main advantage for me for province holdings is that there are too few provinces in any given realm for provinces to be handed over as the result of war. Instead the gains of a successful war should be fractions of a province, rather than whole provinces. So no more handing over a full province as a normal course of losing a war.