[OSSR]Birthright Boxed Set

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:51 pm

GâtFromKI wrote:
Ancient History wrote:You just don't normally see the Council of Barons get together and go have an adventure. In fact, the only time I can think of this working is Steven Brust's Dragaera series
LotR? The fellowship of the ring contains a king in exile, a dwarf prince, an elf prince, and a regent's son. (and the actual fiefs of the dwarf and the elf are on the other side of the map and nobody cares)

And LotR isn't even an exception, most of the arthurian myths are about some noble men having some adventures... "The Council of baron going have an adventure" is a trope older than fantasy itself; nobody want a story about fief administration, but many story are about fief administrators going in an adventure.

Thing about that is, the fief administration part isn't shown and the land holder part of each character you mention is fluff. You said it yourself, nobody gives a damn about fief administration but Birthright is (trying to be) a game about fief administration as well as stabbing fools.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Fri Sep 16, 2016 11:21 pm

One thing about limited desire for fief administration is that D&D is not a game primarily oriented towards conquest. Conquering the world is something you can do, but not something you necessarily need to do or even want to do, and in some cases (like for pretty much all full casters in the 3.X paradigm) it's actually easier to create an entirely new world rather than conquer an existing one.

If you're playing Dynasty Warriors Empires you absolutely do care about the fief administration minigame because it influences the combat stages used for conquest and conquest of ancient china is your goal and the game ends when you have laid waste to your foes and become emperor.

Now you could set up the fief management minigame such that it empowered you ability to conduct dungeoneering enterprises, you could even still have wars and conquest involved it would just be handled entirely offscreen. Doing that means creating a scenario where the function of a castle and land is primarily to empower a hero as they go questing about the map.

The game that comes closest to that experience in my recollection is actually Heroes of Might and Magic, which is a model that you might be able to work from.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 7:26 am

The issue is the Happy Ever After issue. DnD wants characters to have continuing stories about the same characters after they have gotten to what would be the resolutions of most normal stories. You marry the princess and take over the kingdom... and then what? People may want there to be a next story, but such a story would have to start with the main character already being a landed noble.

What I think is interesting about the birthright playtests is that it showed there is interest in playing landed lords. Indeed, once you have the kingdom management minigame up and working for characters who have completed quests and now own provinces, there will be people who want to play that game right off as merchant princes or countesses or whatever.

Fantasy storytelling does have difficulty bridging that gap. Look at what an abomination the Disney animated sequels are for the most part. But one thing I have noticed is that Eastern fantasy seems to have way less problem with this issue. If you talk about the hero as a samurai rather than a knight, the conceptual difficulties of maintaining story continuity while upping the stakes from murder hobo to manor master to city boss all seem to melt away. I don't know why that is.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 7:52 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Fantasy storytelling does have difficulty bridging that gap. Look at what an abomination the Disney animated sequels are for the most part. But one thing I have noticed is that Eastern fantasy seems to have way less problem with this issue. If you talk about the hero as a samurai rather than a knight, the conceptual difficulties of maintaining story continuity while upping the stakes from murder hobo to manor master to city boss all seem to melt away. I don't know why that is.

I presumed the reason for that is because there's just plain more inertia for Eastern fantasy to include upping the stakes. Western fantasy has a long tradition of glossing over such details, and that inertia carries over in association to this day.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 11:57 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Fantasy storytelling does have difficulty bridging that gap. Look at what an abomination the Disney animated sequels are for the most part. But one thing I have noticed is that Eastern fantasy seems to have way less problem with this issue. If you talk about the hero as a samurai rather than a knight, the conceptual difficulties of maintaining story continuity while upping the stakes from murder hobo to manor master to city boss all seem to melt away. I don't know why that is.

Well, partly there's historical precedent. Liu Bang, later Founding Emperor Gaozu of the Han, was born a peasant and began his military career as a patrol officer. He went on to found the most culturally important dynasty in the history of East Asia. So it's baked into the storytelling tradition that people can do that - you can go from some nameless adventuring warrior to become an Emperor, or even be deified (looking at you Guan Yu), and there's plenty of other historical examples of both heroes and villains doing more or less that.

I also think it has to do with state structure. In a fantasy Europe D&D variant your character is maybe a fighter, but the noble who you start out serving is probably an aristocrat, which means that to take his place involves transcending class boundaries both of social class and game mechanics. Whereas in fantasy Japan the superior who you're trying to replace is simply a samurai with more levels than you.

I think that matters. It's conceptually easy enough to develop a system for a thief to become head of the thieves' guild, but there's no mechanism for the thief to become a lord. Whereas Japanese Samurai can move up and down the samurai ladder from the very bottom to the very top without crossing any sort of role barrier. Chinese military or civil officers can do the same thing.

I think it also helps that in Eastern fantasy a 'mage' is often just a specialized kind of civil officer or samurai. Zhuge Liang had magical powers in ROTK (and other sources place considerably more emphasis on them) but it doesn't really impact his role at all. Likewise in Japan you could be a monk and then just stop being a monk - you could even go from being a monk to being the Shogun (this happened under the Ashikaga shogunate at least once) and you could go from being a samurai to being a monk, it was much more fluid.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 5:31 pm

I don't think I buy that. The number of stories where characters become king at the end is too numerous to count. We can start with King Arthur and end with the guy from Puss n Boots. The issue isn't even that characters who had land didn't get adventures. The Song of Roland and King Arthur are very much about land holders doing things and conquering stuff.

The issue I think is that in Eastern storytelling, at least those parts as have permeated Western consciousness, the 'Minister Hero' is a much bigger deal. You don't know or care what lands Galahad administered in his capacity as a landed lord. But there are quite a few Chinese heroes who are very specifically bureaucrats.

Honestly, I think it has more to do with middle ages Europe being such a shit hole. If we were talking about Roman heroes it wouldn't be weird for champions to also be in charge of flood repairs or road construction or something.

Which means ironically that Birthright was shooting itself in the nuts by being so slavishly devoted to fapping to European royal blood themes.

-Username17

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 5:38 pm

Mechalich wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Fantasy storytelling does have difficulty bridging that gap. Look at what an abomination the Disney animated sequels are for the most part. But one thing I have noticed is that Eastern fantasy seems to have way less problem with this issue. If you talk about the hero as a samurai rather than a knight, the conceptual difficulties of maintaining story continuity while upping the stakes from murder hobo to manor master to city boss all seem to melt away. I don't know why that is.
Well, partly there's historical precedent. Liu Bang, later Founding Emperor Gaozu of the Han, was born a peasant and began his military career as a patrol officer. He went on to found the most culturally important dynasty in the history of East Asia. So it's baked into the storytelling tradition that people can do that - you can go from some nameless adventuring warrior to become an Emperor, or even be deified (looking at you Guan Yu), and there's plenty of other historical examples of both heroes and villains doing more or less that.

I also think it has to do with state structure. In a fantasy Europe D&D variant your character is maybe a fighter, but the noble who you start out serving is probably an aristocrat, which means that to take his place involves transcending class boundaries both of social class and game mechanics. Whereas in fantasy Japan the superior who you're trying to replace is simply a samurai with more levels than you.

I think that matters. It's conceptually easy enough to develop a system for a thief to become head of the thieves' guild, but there's no mechanism for the thief to become a lord. Whereas Japanese Samurai can move up and down the samurai ladder from the very bottom to the very top without crossing any sort of role barrier. Chinese military or civil officers can do the same thing.

I think it also helps that in Eastern fantasy a 'mage' is often just a specialized kind of civil officer or samurai. Zhuge Liang had magical powers in ROTK (and other sources place considerably more emphasis on them) but it doesn't really impact his role at all. Likewise in Japan you could be a monk and then just stop being a monk - you could even go from being a monk to being the Shogun (this happened under the Ashikaga shogunate at least once) and you could go from being a samurai to being a monk, it was much more fluid.

Can you give some examples of modern eastern fantasy where protagonists go from zero to king and keep on adventuring?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 6:02 pm

Sailor Moon.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 6:07 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Sailor Moon.

Don't they just have nominal titles from a destroyed kingdom and actually just live as japanese schoolgirls?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 6:27 pm

Well, Sailor Moon quite literally levels up as Neo Queen Serenity and rules over Crystal Tokyo or whatever in the future.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 6:34 pm

Ancient History wrote:Well, Sailor Moon quite literally levels up as Neo Queen Serenity and rules over Crystal Tokyo or whatever in the future.

Are there any adventures set with Sailor Moon in that period?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 7:11 pm

Naruto, various characters become leaders and now manage teams in addition to personally fighting.

One Piece hasn't ended yet but the goal is to become pirate King, there are characters who are basically kings or literally kings like Crocodile, Doflamingo, etc. Luffy and Ussop wind up with thousands of pirates loyal to them but they prefer to personally adventure.

Fist of the North Star antagonists tend to be warlords fighting other warlords.

UC Gundam's the tale of how Char goes from Zero to king of the space colonies.
Gundam Iron Blooded is about building up a mercenary group with Martian independence from Earth as the goal.

Berserk is the story of Griffith's dream to become king.

MGS3, Portable Ops, Peacewalker, Phantom Pain follows the story of Big Boss becoming king of mercenaries and kingdom managing while also personally going on missions.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 7:30 pm

Longes wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Well, Sailor Moon quite literally levels up as Neo Queen Serenity and rules over Crystal Tokyo or whatever in the future.
Are there any adventures set with Sailor Moon in that period?

Yes. Also there are flashback adventures where they do shit in their past lives as planetary royalty.

-Username17

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 10:07 pm

If we're listing examples from anime:

Code Geass: Zero starts out as a high school student with a talent for chess and ends up ruling the world. He and various other characters including Suzaku continue to engage in personal adventures and giant mecha battles despite have attained very high command ranks.

Magi: this is probably the perfect example, since the adventures are quite literally dungeon crawls where you go and fight your way through a bunch of monsters, free a djinn and earn treasure and magical power as a result. Alibaba, the protag, and Sinbad, the resident big dick NPC (and later star of his own spinoff) both start at the bottom and earn royal status and keep adventuring the whole time. They even have empowered retainers to form their adventuring parties. Sinbad's spinoff includes several sequences related to him founding and expanding his merchant company, and he goes on adventures for that specific purpose.

Utawareumono: this series starts off with a guy who has amnesia who happens to be a skilled fighter and strategist defending a village and he goes on to gather a group of really talented (mostly female, because Japan) warriors, acquire and expand a kingdom and still go on adventures with them. This series typifies the king+his band as special forces approach that's common in these types of stories.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 11:42 pm

This isn't anime, but Meikyuu Kingdom is literally about kingdom management via dungeon crawling, since your kingdom is in the dungeon world.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:35 am

Okay, so then western examples would be:
Saints Row is eventually about the president of the world going on adventures.
Wheel of Time.
Dune.
Song of Fire and Ice.
Lord of Light. Has gods of various religions duking it out and going to fight djinn.
Chronicles of Amber has Corwin organise and lead multiple armies.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 2:59 am

Mask_De_H wrote:This isn't anime, but Meikyuu Kingdom is literally about kingdom management via dungeon crawling, since your kingdom is in the dungeon world.

Was it ever translated into Englsh, official or by fans?

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 4:56 am

OgreBattle wrote:
Mask_De_H wrote:This isn't anime, but Meikyuu Kingdom is literally about kingdom management via dungeon crawling, since your kingdom is in the dungeon world.
Was it ever translated into Englsh, official or by fans?

Fan Translation came out a couple years ago.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:55 am

Longes wrote:Okay, so then western examples would be:
Saints Row is eventually about the president of the world going on adventures.

I've been called.

So, Saints Row starts with you being some shmuck who gets caught in a fire fight between gangs, and getting taken in by the Saints because of it. You help them take down rival gangs, and then get blown up a boat.

Saints Row 2 has you wake up in a coma, and to my understanding, that's the one where you become The Boss. You destroy rival gangs.

Saints Row the Third starts with you leading your lieutenants on a publicity stunt bank job ...owned by another gang. Though you don't know it until you're captured by the police and wake up in the plane of the leader of that gang. You wind up in a new town you don't control and destroy rival gangs to take over, eventually taking on a paramilitary antigang task force which uses almost the exact same mechanics as the rival gangs. You end the game controlling a new city and declare it an independent city-state.

Saints Row 4 starts with you as the president. And a movie star. The first "mission" as president is just walking to a press conference and making decisions on a couple bills. Then aliens attack. It's that kind of game. You get into the fight to defend the White House, and it's shown that you never really stopped being an ass kicker, since there are guns in Peru much every room and hallway, but the actual "being an administrator and asskicker" portion... doesn't really exist. The aliens capture you, put you in a lotus eater machine, and destroy the planet. You then use the simulated reality of the lotus eater machine to free your lieutenants and conquer the alien force (implied to be an entire species that is all soldiers) ...by taking down rival gangs.

If they weren't rebooting the series, I imagine Saints Row 5 would be about time travel and intergalactic conquest.

Well, ok. There's a Saints Row 4.5 where you play as one of two lieutenants and take over Hell.