[OSSR]Birthright Boxed Set

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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History »

Birthright Box Set Rules
Part III: The Birthright Campaign

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That's Angela Lansbury back when she was hot. Also, you should watch The Court Jester instead of playing Birthright.
Birthright wrote:What do kings, queens, high priests, and archmages do when an adventure comes their way? How does the DM handles a player character group that may be escorted by dozens of bodyguards and henchmen?
You know what? Leaving aside the fact that you left off the supposedly co-equal “guildmasters,” those are very good questions that you should have had answers to before you started writing this book. And probably put those answers on page 1.
AncientH:

To be fair, this is an issue that even actual novelists and story writers struggle with. 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, and even they sort of hang a lampshade on the fact that it only really works because everybody is nobility and pretty much nobody actually does anything administrative. So, like everybody has a title but the actual fief is over on the other side of the map so nobody cares. Or I guess you could make an argument for King Conan in Phoenix on the Sword - that actually provides two good examples, since Team Evil is a bunch of evil kings and a super-evil lich working to conquer Aquilonia, and then it's basically Conan "well, I've lost my kingdom and need my loyal barons and this convenient high priest of Mitra." But in neither case do the characters ever really "level up" in any real sense, even when they conquer territory.

Really, the only way this shit actually works is if the PCs have a) some common interest in working together, b) a goal to which they can all contribute, and c) some factor that requires them to do shit themselves rather than delegate it. C is the really tricky part. Conan the Barbarian is an aberration. Most thrones are not occupied by the highest-leveled Fighter/Thief/etc. in the kingdom. In fact, you cannot even play Conan effectively in a Birthright setting, since he doesn't have a Bloodline.

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FrankT:

This chapter is tasking itself with the monumental undertaking of presenting a set of guidelines for how you would go about actually playing this fucking thing. And so it begins by squandering 8 of its 24 pages on rants about the various gods and demons that people of the setting worship and the minimum ability scores required to be a priest of such and such a god. I don't care that you need a 14 Constitution to be a Priest of Erik, you don't care that you need a Charisma of 12 to worship Sera. No one fucking cares about any of this shit.

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I'm not saying that the regional religion isn't valid setting material. It is. The setting has people in it, they have various religions, and that's somewhat important. This material could – generously – find a place in the Ruins of Empire book. It has no place in the Rulebook. Also it's shit. Maybe it's something about the format, but this crap looks the same as the “lists of gods” in everything from the 3rd edition PHB to the Eberron setting, and I don't think I've ever managed to read through any of these. The format is deathly deathly dull and most of D&D's gods have historically been crap. I can't recall a single D&D setting that had a pantheon that was even a little bit interesting.

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The closet D&D has ever had to a decent pantheon of “gods” are actually the demon lords. Which is probably why Paizo spends so much time jerking off to what the demon lord of fungus or whatever the fuck is doing today. But demon lords only get a cursory mention in the last paragraph of this eight page section and this was all a giant waste of time and space.
AncientH:

These are pretty much the default settings that appeared in all the fucking Forgotten Realms deity books and Monster Mythology and an unknowable number of Dragon Magazine articles. The guys at TSR had singled in on this format and Erik bless their stupid little heads, they were determined to keep using it religiously.

One thing I never figured out about Birthright: why there are like ten separate churches for Erik and whatnot. I mean, I can kind of see this shit in a game where the origins of gods is lost in antiquity and you've got competing pantheons and shit, but seriously, Erik should just totally tell the god-damn priests to work together. I seriously have no idea why the resident Thief God doesn't run his fucking church as basically an extension of the thieves' guild.
FrankT:

The book drops six pages of science on your ass about Realm Spells. I mean, there's some obligatory fapping about how Elves can use True Magic and shit, but the only thing anyone gives any fucks about is Realm Magic. Elven True Magic is just the regular D&D Wizard class, restricted to blooded characters or elves because Colin McComb was involved. Realm Magic is different, and you get it from tapping lands. Now, stop me if you've heard this one, but you get different kinds of mana from plains, coasts, swamps, forests, and mountains.

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It was the 90s.

Mages get jack shit from Plains, and the best magic sources are in mountains and forests. So we have established that realms mages in Birthright are Red/Green.

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Ramp it. Ramp it hard.

The actual spells are accounting for power. You spend your domain action for the month to cast them, you pay out a bunch of gold and regency points, and you do a thing. The thing is like, summon up a bunch of mercenary gnolls for a few months or reduce the fortification level of an enemy castle or something along those lines. Most of these are directly comparable to regular domain actions, though usually with a slightly bigger set of costs and effects. If these were refluffed and hidden in the regular domain actions you would not notice. Like, if the Priestly “bless land” spell that temporarily boosts the output of the holdings in a province were called like “organize bureaucracy” or something, you'd totally do it sometimes – but it wouldn't feel out of place or weird. The Demagogue spell is probably the best, because it's 15 RP to shift a Rebellious province to High Loyalty (or vice versa) and at fucking level five you can pay that twice to hit two provinces. But while that's clearly superior in most cases to the cheaper and less effective “agitate” action that does one loyalty level in one province at a time, it's not out of place among the other domain actions.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we are now 14 pages into this chapter and not one fucking word has been spared for how this shit is supposed to be remotely playable.
AncientH:

Notably absent: psionic enchantments 10th level spells. I don't know if the writers forgot about these or wanted to pretend they didn't exist, but I'd believe either.

The whole thing about Realm Magic is that the writers acknowledge that the D&D magic system does not actually translate well to an admin minigame. It does not, actually, translate very well to a large-scale battle either; it's the same issue Warhammer Fantasy faces with whether mages on the battlefield are too powerful or just high-cost targets that can't do shit and are likely to get shot.

We get a little more information on Sources, which basically amounts to "magic and civilization don't mix." We've already noted that the higher the level of your Province, the lower your Source level can be (unless, of course, you're an elf). Now we get some additional restrictions: the higher your source is, the fewer actions you can take in a Province. This is...problematic for anyone that was hoping for an Eberron-style industrial magic setting. Fuck, it's problematic for playing goddamn Lord of the Rings, since it basically means Saruman fucks himself.

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Look, if you can't build Orthanc, you've basically failed as a system for wizards.

Not all the spells suck, but some of them are sort of the thing that's a button-press on Lords of Magic or Dominions IV. Like, the Alchemy spell lets you convert RP into GB at a 4:1 ratio (and costs 1 GB to start off with, so you need at least 8 RP to see any benefit).

Some of these spells just haven't been thought through. Like, Death Plague kills hundreds or thousands of people in multiple provinces. In DomIV you'd do that to generate corpses for your necromancy. In this game it...uh...well, you don't actually need corpses to raise dead? Seriously, Legion of the Dead lets you raise a mixed group of 200 zombies, monster zombies, skeletons, and giant skeletons, but it doesn't specify you need that many corpses.

Then you have shit like the Scry spell - how is this different from a crystal ball? Well, obviously, it costs more and does less. The writers just didn't think through crystal balls at the Realm level. DomIV handles crystal balls pretty easily, since it just assumes they cast a scry spell, and a scry spell has a nominal cost and clearly defined effect which is different from the opportunity cost for sending out a bunch of spies or shit.

Priests have their own Realm spells, which amazingly enough suck harder and there are fewer of them, but they don't have to fuck with Sources, just temple holdings. The only one you actually care about is Investiture, which is necessary to conquer a new province.

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Napoleon takes a level in Cleric.
FrankT:

The Monsters and Elven Gibberish Monsters takes just four pages, and is mostly dedicated to telling us which monsters in the Monstrous Compendium we can actually use. It's a pretty fucking short list. There are 92 entries on it, but for fuck's sake this is 2nd Edition – so that list includes dolphin, wolf, and sea lion. Fucking hell.

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The only useful piece of world building is that Birthright has an Upside Down called the Shadow World. The use of verbal space is not good. They talk about parallel terrain features, but they namecheck only forests and mountains. Are there shadow world parallels of castles and houses? I dunno. They also offhandedly mention that maybe some spells like Dimension Door use the Shadow World somehow and might be more dangerous in Birthright. That seems kind of important and maybe this section should have explained that a bit more. But it doesn't. Because fuck you.

That being said, the fact that Birthright has a Shadow World, as in fucking one, makes it like a million times cleaner than Greyhawk with its Astral Plane, Ethereal Plane, Ordinal Plane, Mirror World, and whatever the fuck. People who care about Birthright can have discussions about cosmology and shit that absolutely are not and could not be done about most of the other D&D settings. Simplicity is a virtue sometimes, and when it comes to alternate nightmare planes of existence, it definitely is.

But yeah, we set the “not getting to the nominal point of the chapter” counter to 18.
AncientH:

Birthright doesn't actually like the default D&D setting assumptions. Anything interesting is so rare you're never going to see one. There's literally only half a dozen dragons in the fucking setting. That's not acceptable. The game is Dungeons and Dragons. You need a dragon as a challenge for every fucking level.

What it is, Birthright is jerking off harder to Lord of the Rings than normal. The whole thing with fapping to Elves and rare dragons and strong Goblin nations isn't predicting Eberron, it's just the equivalent of all those 80s cheap fantasy trilogies that were trying to be Tolkien without getting sued.

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There are a few exceptions. Sortof.

The setting faps to the awnsheghlien - that's apparently plural and singular, and should be a proper noun with capitalization but apparently isn't because fuck English - which are eeeeevil bloodlines. Like, not just characters that are scions and evil, but actual "dark power" bloodlines and monsters with bloodlines. I have no idea how these assholes work, and they give no actual rules for them; they're basically supposed to be special one-off make-up-the-stats-as-you-need villains-of-the-week. Bah, humfuck.
FrankT:

So the part of the chapter called “The Birthright Campaign” that is actually about telling you how you might actually try to set up a Birthright Campaign gives itself about five pages. There are six pages left in the chapter (and the book), but some of that is appendix. For a game as out-there as Birthright is trying to be, that is not enough space. They are attempting to create a new theory of role playing where players play characters that don't necessarily ever interact directly, and then create cooperative storytelling where different players are playing continuous characters or one-off hoodlums at different times. In short, they are trying to be the thing that Ars Magica was also trying to be. And you know what? Five pages is just sort of insulting for something that ambitious.

The vision they have is, barring some obligatory 2nd edition horseshit about how D&D is whatever your DM wants it to be, that different players are going to be rulers in different parts of the continent and that in any particular story the uninvolved players will be gifted with shitty throwaway characters. That might actually work. But it would need a lot more infrastructure that this game bluntly does not have.
AncientH:

That's one option. Other options presented include "fuck it, no PC regents, you're just playing D&D in Cerilia," "Only One PC is Regent," "All PCs are Regent, but One is High King," and "Everybody has Overlapping Domains and Is Stepping On Each Other's Dicks."

None of these are terribly good premises for a campaign, they're just sort of styles of play. How about "Okay, you're a scion but dad/mom hasn't died yet, so you're all a bunch of princes/princesses who are sent off on an important mission because you have blood powers and character levels?" Or "You're a bunch of low-level regents suffering under an evil overlord, but you get wind of an artifact in a dungeon and need fellow scions to help you get it."

Power is one of the key things here. This is really a game that benefits from having PCs start out at a power level high enough that they can handle threats NPC henches cannot. That won't work for all styles of play - I've dealt with too many PC Necromancers at this point - but if you're going to presume the PCs can do shit that others can't, then you can get into some serious chosen one/special snowflake territory, and you might as well double down on that.

The other key thing is...goals. And in a game where it's Good to Be the King/Queen, you need them. Badly. But there's not really anything to...ramp up to. You can be High King and still be level 3. You can be a hermit wizard and level 20 and still not cast any fucking Realm spells worth fucking bothering with. This game doesn't really address this. Instead, we get completely bullshit "logistics of travel" rules, where you move about 10 miles per day when you have an entourage. This is also unacceptable.
FrankT:

The lazy “aw fuck it” proposals to handling large numbers of retinue soldiers fighting larger numbers of gnolls are crap and are a waste of the small amount of space they are given.
AncientH:

He ain't wrong. The appendix has the rules for Domain Design, and that's two pages of...meh. Basically, you get a random number of points determined by your Bloodline strength and type (tainted 2d6, minor 2d8, major 2d10, great 2d12); which you then spend on province level and holdings (with discounts based on class), assets are bought with GB (which you buy with domain points, so wtf?), with a non-optional terrain cost on top of that which adds more restrictions to the whole thing. You spend that on each province, which means you either end up with a lot of provinces in which you have jack shit, or one province where you own everything...I guess?

I feel I should get more options than this. I do, in fact, want an entire GURPS book devoted to this shit. I might never use it, but it will be fun and useful and carefully thought out.
Last edited by Ancient History on Mon Sep 12, 2016 3:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Are you sure it's not the "Vale of Shadows"?
The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:
Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:25 pm
Nobody gives a flying fuck about Tordek and Regdar.
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Post by Ancient History »

Nope, Shadow World. Also, Shadow Land. They use both interchangeably.
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Post by JonSetanta »

I think Stranger Things lied to us. There's also no Thessian Hydra.
The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:
Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:25 pm
Nobody gives a flying fuck about Tordek and Regdar.
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Post by Mechalich »

Ancient History wrote:To be fair, this is an issue that even actual novelists and story writers struggle with. 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, and even they sort of hang a lampshade on the fact that it only really works because everybody is nobility and pretty much nobody actually does anything administrative. So, like everybody has a title but the actual fief is over on the other side of the map so nobody cares. Or I guess you could make an argument for King Conan in Phoenix on the Sword - that actually provides two good examples, since Team Evil is a bunch of evil kings and a super-evil lich working to conquer Aquilonia, and then it's basically Conan "well, I've lost my kingdom and need my loyal barons and this convenient high priest of Mitra." But in neither case do the characters ever really "level up" in any real sense, even when they conquer territory.
This sort of thing does happen in ROTK at times. Liu Bei and company periodically lose or get driven out of territory and have to march off with whatever soldiers left to them to conquer new territory. Or some minister says to his king 'I want to campaign over there' and marches off with a bunch of noteworthy generals and has fun adventures trying to conquer whatever - the best example being Zhuge Liang's campaign against Meng Hou. Still when this sort of thing happens there's usually a single leader character setting up deployments and stratagems and everyone else is running around and fighting duels or setting ambushes or whatever.

So perhaps the a system like this only works if you have one player as the ruler. Actually, maybe the ruler shouldn't be a PC at all, but a character the members of the party take turns controlling. As in you'd play as Guan Yu, Zhuge Liang, Zhao Yun, and Zhang Fei, and each of you would control Liu Bei for one turn out of four. That would probably mean the ruler would come off as a massive schizophrenic, but as an alternative to having a big dick NPC who just throws the party at adventures that are supposed to help their cause I can see it as an approach.
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Post by Chamomile »

If Birthright really wanted to justify itself as a setting designed for realm play, it would make sense for it to set itself up as a setting where 3-7 person oligarchies are the norm and it is the default that "king" is a temporary position that rotates between the heads of the grand dukes once every X years.

They could also have justified themselves as a setting with some kind of dungeons>armies>heroes>dungeons triangle. Dungeons spawn terrain effects that make marching an army through an area in an orderly fashion impossible and/or spawn monsters to patrol the area that have DR in the range of "enough to drastically reduce incoming mook damage" to "enough to ignore mook damage altogether."

Between the difficulty of bringing your army to bear in a dungeon-spawned forest and the superiority of dungeon-spawned forest monsters in skirmish battles against small numbers (particularly, forest monsters (and heroes) heal after just one or two nights' rest, so if twenty men get separated from their column by forest magic and Shelob eats them, it really doesn't matter if Shelob lost half her hit points in the process - on the other hand, if forty men find Shelob and kill her, it does matter that twenty of them were eaten in the process, especially since the dungeon will magically spawn a new Shelob after like three weeks), the army is coin-for-coin a bad solution to the problem (even if you can probably still win with a sufficiently overwhelming advantage).

So you send in the heroes, who navigate past the patrols, storm the dungeon and use high-damage attacks to kill high-DR monsters, kill the boss monster guarding the forest orb, shatter and/or reattune the forest orb, and now they can march their soldiers through to conquer the province on the other side. Heroes don't have DR, they just have really high AC, which means that large numbers of soldiers can still kill them with nat 20s, so they still have to rely on their own large armies to fight any wars that aren't within the range of dungeons they control.

Dungeons spawn along ley lines, and ley lines follow natural features like mountain ranges, woods, and rivers, which means two provinces separated by a river will also be separated by long, border shaped zone of influence of a river dungeon that follows that leyline, two provinces separated by woods will be separated by a long forest dungeon zone of influence, and so on. Gaps in the defense have to be maintained by regular old fortresses and militaries, so you can probably conquer most provinces without being forced to punch through a dungeon, but being able to go through a forest your enemies thought you couldn't go through worked out great for the Nazis, so it's a valuable option. In any case, the dungeons themselves can probably be set to produce rare magical resources during peacetime (like being tapped for realm spells or just mountain dungeons being a source of adamantine and forest dungeons being a source of healing potion herbs and stuff) and trade routes between provinces may be more convenient going through them rather than around them (especially for rivers), so you'll want to send either yourself or one of your small number of PC leveled lieutenants to go and claim it eventually.

Rifling through terrain types from D&D, I think arctic, coastal/island/river, desert, forest, hill/mountain, swamp, and volcano would be a decent variety of dungeon types to get you started. Possibly also a plains/grassland dungeon type that is actually just a castle built atop a leyline and whose orb just creates an area of effect that boosts regular army men to have monster-like DR and healing, but I think it's to the game's benefit that storming dungeons is a valuable option but not usually mandatory to expanding your blob. Some higher-level dungeon types would be underwater, underdark, fiendish, and celestial (you might want to have some other extraplanar types on here, but most of the inner planes can be adequately covered by just saying that they're mostly or completely blanketed in dungeon area effects, and drawing on the power of Elemental Plane of [whatever] is a pretty decent explanation as to where the mojo for a [whatever] dungeon comes from).

You can also apply this retroactively to other settings with some kind of Vecnan ascension or death of Mystra or whatever. Wild, inhospitable parts of the world that probably had dungeons already gain some new magical features and nearby kingdoms and cities become keenly interested in claiming them and keeping them out of the hands of enemies. If you're in Faerun, you're probably mostly shattering the dungeon orbs to destroy their magic altogether because civilization is the good guys and wilderness is the bad guys. If you're in Krynn, you're seizing control of them because good guys and bad guys are different nations. If you're in Oerth, you're probably using them exclusively and explicitly to become a warlord with control of a tiny slice of the map that you will eventually expand to world domination. If you conquer all or most of the starting world (whatever you end up calling it) and then want to make a multiplanar empire by following one of your underwater dungeons back into the Plane of Water, then from there conquering a few dungeons until you find one that lets out in the Sea of Swords or the Blood Sea of Istar or whatever, you can do that.
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Post by momothefiddler »

Can Priests build Orthanc?
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Mechalich wrote: So perhaps the a system like this only works if you have one player as the ruler. Actually, maybe the ruler shouldn't be a PC at all, but a character the members of the party take turns controlling. As in you'd play as Guan Yu, Zhuge Liang, Zhao Yun, and Zhang Fei, and each of you would control Liu Bei for one turn out of four. That would probably mean the ruler would come off as a massive schizophrenic, but as an alternative to having a big dick NPC who just throws the party at adventures that are supposed to help their cause I can see it as an approach.
Or in alternative the supreme ruler is "played" by a random table/deck of cards, perhaps with different tables/decks for different ruler personalities.

You could choose to disobey/ignore your ruler, but then you'll get less supplies/troops. However if you fulfill all their random whims, you 'll get extra rewards.

Kinda like the shogun or the pope in the medieval times. Everybody's supposed to obey them, and there's benefits for doing so, but they were as often ignored.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
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Post by Ancient History »

momothefiddler wrote:Can Priests build Orthanc?
Sure. Priests don't give a fuck about the environment.
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[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
The DIVINE RIGHT OF JEDI discussion has been split off to here:

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56623
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Chamomile wrote:If Birthright really wanted to justify itself as a setting designed for realm play, it would make sense for it to set itself up as a setting where 3-7 person oligarchies are the norm and it is the default that "king" is a temporary position that rotates between the heads of the grand dukes once every X years.
Basic D&D figured out in the early 80's that the Fighters would be Barons of small areas with a fortress and leading a company or two each, the Cleric would run the temple system that overlapped them and handle social conformity, the Wizard would have a tower for research and having it inside a Fighter's castle is just sensible and mutually beneficial, and the Thief runs a commercial enterprise (as cover for being the Mafia) within all their lands.

Just add that the Druid oversees the local monster preserve (because forests full of monsters increase your source or whatever), the Bard has a diplomatic or trade emissary role, the Paladin is like the head of the Inquisition and has powers to call up the rest of them for duty, and the Ranger is your head assassin and bounty hunter as court bailiff.

Giving the presented character options something to do in a party-friendly realm system is pretty simple, really. You don't even have to pigeon-hole the classes, just have some overlapping options, maybe the Thief wants to run the temples and the Druid do diplomacy with the Elves, it's fine. Then let them all contribute in a realm turn, and pool points if they share a task.
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Post by Mechalich »

Chamomile wrote:If Birthright really wanted to justify itself as a setting designed for realm play, it would make sense for it to set itself up as a setting where 3-7 person oligarchies are the norm and it is the default that "king" is a temporary position that rotates between the heads of the grand dukes once every X years.
Mediating this sort of system seems like a good job for interventionist deities. If the gods lay down the lay that says 'no person shall rule a land bigger than X square miles for more than X years in succession' and then they actually go out and smite anyone who tries to become dictator for life that could allow this sort of oligarchy-based system to develop.
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Post by hyzmarca »

tussock wrote: Just add that the Druid oversees the local monster preserve (because forests full of monsters increase your source or whatever), the Bard has a diplomatic or trade emissary role, the Paladin is like the head of the Inquisition and has powers to call up the rest of them for duty, and the Ranger is your head assassin and bounty hunter as court bailiff.
The Assassin should probably be your head assassin, especially since he's the only character who can use poisons.

Mechalich wrote:
Chamomile wrote:If Birthright really wanted to justify itself as a setting designed for realm play, it would make sense for it to set itself up as a setting where 3-7 person oligarchies are the norm and it is the default that "king" is a temporary position that rotates between the heads of the grand dukes once every X years.
Mediating this sort of system seems like a good job for interventionist deities. If the gods lay down the lay that says 'no person shall rule a land bigger than X square miles for more than X years in succession' and then they actually go out and smite anyone who tries to become dictator for life that could allow this sort of oligarchy-based system to develop.
That's probably excessive. And it's better accomplished using local politics.

IE. You don't say that every land is ruled by an identical council, that's silly. You say that your Players' land is ruled by a council, because that makes the game work, and then back-engineer local sociopolitical assumptions to justify it.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Creating a society that has space for adventurer groups who are also the regional governing body would be an obvious way to get your kingdom management groove on while still having the players play a more or less typical D&D party. That would be completely acceptable.

But Birthright isn't that. Birthright was never that. The kingdom management minigame is only mostly done. And the setting is just two parts half assed European history with three parts neo-Tolkienian ravings, stir with a penis and add lemon to taste. The question being asked with the setting was always "How can we cram in this neo-Tolkienian trope or this weird thing from a book of medieval history I read?" rather than "How can we make this actually function as a cooperative storytelling game with four players and a DM?"

I don't know if we're going to really get in to the nitty gritty in the Ruins of Empire book, but it's got a wicked case of TL;DR going on. Someone put a lot of work into this setting. And it is much richer and more authentic feeling than most D&D settings.
Ruins of Empire wrote:The noble warrior god Haelyn is the protector and brother to Roele, the founder of the Anuirean Empire. Naturally, the astronomers based in the city of Anuire in those long-ago days chose the constellation of Haelyn to help them measure time.
That shit goes on for quite a while talking about when various stars are and are not above the horizon. And I don't care. And you don't care. But it's the kind of thing that would be nice to have written about a fantasy world that you hypothetically cared about for other reasons. Someone a lot of work into that, and if I was in any way interested or invested in having dialogue for astronomers from Anuire to spout off, I'd be glad I could look that shit up. That's going the full Tolkien, and I salute that kind of in-depth world building.

But a house on rotten foundations does not stand. Birthright's up front promise to the reader that it will give you more fapping to Tolkien and War of the Roses historical fiction than other settings is not an appeal I have ever cared about hearing. Birthright doesn't have a pitch to get me to care about the setting because the setting is a masturbatory elf-wank. And it doesn't have a pitch to get me to care about the game, because the authors don't really care about the game in the first place.

Let's take the idea that you might want to play as the temporary sidekicks of one of the other players who is playing the protagonist who is more powerful than you and also the king. What do you get for doing that? XP? GP? On a character who is specifically a throw away that you will never see again? What the fuck? Ars Magica didn't have a good answer for why you might be willing to play temporary placeholder characters in another player's story, but it had one. Birthright doesn't even address the issue.

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Post by hyzmarca »

Well, you could always take a page from forum quests and just have one character controlled by democratic vote if it came down to that.

Which is problematic in it's own way. Especially since it turns player paranoid up to 11, and ensures only the most mediocre options will be taken at any given time. But at least there is a game in arguing with the other players for hours about what your character is going to have for breakfast.
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Post by talozin »

FrankTrollman wrote:Someone put a lot of work into this setting. And it is much richer and more authentic feeling than most D&D settings.
If memory serves, at one point there's a rant by one of the two authors --95% sure it was Rich Baker -- about how when he was trying to get hired by TSR, he hauled out a 500-page fantasy potboiler he'd written and showed it to them, and the Birthright setting is basically the setting for that novel converted to D&D terms.
TheFlatline wrote:This is like arguing that blowjobs have to be terrible, pain-inflicting endeavors so that when you get a chick who *doesn't* draw blood everyone can high-five and feel good about it.
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Post by Username17 »

I would believe that. There's three evil races, and they are goblins, gnolls, and.... orogs? Fucking seriously? That goes with the setting's insistence on using unpronounceable pseudo Celtic words for stuff. Basically Birthright is a setting where you get to play in a generic and bad fantasy novel from the late eighties.

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Post by Mechalich »

The funny thing about generic fantasy and generic D&D settings is that they're easy to produce but they are both bad fits for the system - because even in 2e D&D was sufficiently high magic as that it was minimally high fantasy for 'on some serious cocaine' values of high - and they tend to be incredibly boring.

Greyhawk, Mystara, and Birthright are all boring settings that don't have hooks to inspire passionate interest. The Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance are just weird enough to get people to care, and the really passionate fanbases follow the truly bizarre settings like Dark Sun, Planescape, and Spelljammer. Those settings may be bad (as the failures of Spelljammer were recently documented) but they have hooks and stuff in them that people care about and they offer adventuring possibilities that aren't in every generic fantasy novel.

A generic fantasy setting that functions at the level of detail the average gaming group of murderhobos actually cares about is something that can be whipped up in about five minutes. Heck, donjon has a demographics calculator and settlement designer that can do it in seconds. So doing that, only a lot more detailed, doesn't get you very far.
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Post by OgreBattle »

They have some really nice art

Image

and also some really...
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Post by Username17 »

The lack of global and regional demographics makes actual conquest difficult in a cooperative storytelling game. In single author fiction the war is over when the author says it is. But in cooperative storytelling, that's an emergent data point from inputs and outputs. How many goblins are there? How quickly can they replace lost wolf riders? These questions need to be answerable.

Birthright is honestly most of the way there. I can figure what I would need to do to conquer Aniure. I just don't care because it's a dumb place I don't want to conquer.

A standard DnD world, with its hundreds of sapient races, would actually be a blast to conquer. But we'd genuinely need some information about how many lizardfolk and giff there actually were.

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Post by OgreBattle »

Official playtest notes used to be on wizards.com, here's a copy of it on a fansite where the OJ Simpson trial dates it to an early/mid 90's:

http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~leirbakk/rpg/ad ... ytest.html

by Roger E. Moore

In October and November 1994, a TSR product group conducted playtests of the first-draft BIRTHRIGHT(TM) game rules. As the group's creative director, I recorded the action and published the notes in our group's weekly newsletter to other TSR co-workers and executives. Thinking that "normal" gamers might want to see the TSR creative process, such as it is, involved in working out a new game's bugs, I thought it would be nice to publish my game notes for the world to see. As a bonus readers get a free look at how the BIRTHRIGHT game plays out--sort of. We made up a lot as we went along, and the tale grew in the telling. The participants included Rich Baker (the DM), Colin McComb, Anne Brown, Sue Weinlein, Jon Pickens, Skip Williams, Bruce Heard, and myself (who ran Good King Arglebargle I).

Session #1

Rich went over the BIRTHRIGHT character-creation rules (again),and we rolled up our first batch of royal rulers and their oppressed domains. The overall impression of the group was that the kingly "top down" perspective of this game is very exciting and provokes a lot of new interest in role-playing. Despite a few moments when conversation was understandably sidetracked by in-depth discussions on the Wonder Bra, the O.J. Simpson trial, Colin's habit of torturing peasants who asked for a Bill of Rights, and a brief rendition of "It's My Province And I'll Buy If I Want To," we got a lot done.

For a sample of the action (one Realm Turn, all we had time for), I offer you the Tale of Good King Arglebargle I, Lord of the Free and Happy County of Ilien.

Good King "Papa Doc" Arglebargle I, the Mighty, is a 1st-level fighter, the regent of the single province of Ilien. Ilien is a coastal province (7 rating) of light forests and good cropland. It is dominated by the Free and Happy City of Argh, a seaport that is also the site of Castle Argh (1 rating). "Papa Doc" set up his daughter, "Baby Doc" Arglebargle II, as his most trusted lieutenant and castellan of Castle Argh, and shelled out for an extra level of Loyalty to ensure that his free and happy citizens stayed happy, or else. A unit of elite infantry (The Free and Happy Rangers of the Free and Happy County of Ilien) keeps the peace in this tiny kingdom, aided by local law-enforcement officials (7 "stranglehold" law holding).

In our first exciting Realm Turn, Colin the Thief King was approached by a foreign power and asked to marry another king's daughter. He kept the tribute sent to him and said he would "think it over." Anne the Wizard Queen did nothing because she is a wizard and wizards do nothing, but Sue the High Priestess had lots of trouble with some snotty wizard king somewhere and with Colin, who"forgot" to pay tribute to her. Everyone became highly aware of Ghoere, a large evil kingdom to the north whose shadow fell across the kingdoms of the coast (us) like the shade of a man falls across an anthill. Then the Spider led troops into Jon's country while Jon was reduced to NPC status for forgetting when the meeting was. ("Jon's got monsters, Jon's got monsters!" rang the cry.)

In the Free and Happy Kingdom of Ilien, Good King Argle pondered these events as he counted the semi-oppressive taxes gathered from his free and happy citizens. "Time to build up the castle," he grunted, and sent his daughter "Baby Doc" off to oversee construction of a few new walls, some towers, and a moat full of tiger sharks and strangleweed. Castle Argh's renovations will becomplete next Realm Turn.

Next Realm Turn: Will Colin get someone to throw a ball so he can actually look at the other king's (7 rating) daughter? Will Sue fix that pesky wizard? Will Anne do anything? And what of the Free and Happy Rangers? Stay tuned.

Session #2

Yes, it's time once again to look into the lives of the Free and Happy Citizens of Ilien, the province-state named for the Sigourney Weaver film of which Good King Arglebargle I (the Mighty, he of the Tainted Bloodline) is so fond. Last issue, as you recall, Castle Argh (located just ten minutes north of downtown Argh, on the sunny southern shores of fair Ilien) was upgraded to level 2 status, thanks to the moderately severe tax-and-spend policies of the Good King (the Mighty).

The end of Realm Turn 1 saw Colin the Rogue blow his action turn on chasing his prospective bride across the face of Cerilia ("I was workin'!") and thus get nothing of consequence done within Guild C. Anne the Wizardess (a.k.a. Magic A) finally took action and attempted to create a holding in a place called Care Bear (perhaps that was Caerwil), an effort that failed miserably and lost mucho dinero; in a retrospective turn, Anne went adventuring and gained 2nd level instead. Sue the High Priestess, fed up with Colin's fooling around with her provincial law holdings, challenged him and kicked him out. She spent some time messing with other provinces with only moderate (for now) results. Skip the Other High Priest made an effort to cause some trouble, with no (for now) results. Jon, who had monsters, apparently got rid of them.

The beginnings of Realm Turn 2 were dramatic indeed. Skip the OHP suddenly found a horde of megamonsters (sent by the Spider?) uprooting his temples in Frorien. Colin discovered the same batchof mega monsters were eating up his guilds and profits in the same province. Jon the Mostly Absent survived a determined assassination attempt, but was gravely wounded; all Roesone - or at least the parts that remembered he was king - danced and sang in grief. Then a terrible natural cataclysm struck Temple X in Duerlin; the earth belched fire, the skies vomited hail, and the crocus did not bloom.

The lordships responded at once. Colin the Rogue ordered an increase in prurient activities to fill his guild coffers. King Arglebargle I (the Mighty) again subjected his Free and Happy Subjects to a moderately severe taxation, then slashed the Courtbudget from 2 to 1 GP, resulting in the removal of all toilets from Castle Argh, the establishment of a cash bar in the Foreign Dog Diplomats' Room at the Hairy Arms Inn in downtown Argh, and the institution of pot-luck suppers at all royal diplomatic functions ("Bring Something To Share!"). Wizardess Anne formally accepted the position of Special Magic Lackey in the service of Sue "The Elephant Master" Weinlein's temple. And Skip did nothing.

Colin, irritated that Sue's temple had treated some of his own guild lackeys unkindly by burying them without waiting for them to die first, looted his own treasure vaults for money to be used as bribes against Sue's snickering priests. Sue noted the potential for corruption but wisely ignored it in favor of letting her church be dragged through an endless spectacle of shame and disgrace, thus giving her another aspect of Colin to complain about. Meanwhile, Anne attempted to create an army without paying her soldiers a salary. Though this venture failed, it was obvious that her heart was in the right place, and her fellow rulers saluted her inspired effort.

Good King Arglebargle I (the Mighty), upon the completion of Castle Argh's facelift, decreed Ye Publik Day of Rejoicing and Carousing with Barn Animals throughout the Free and Happy Kingdom of Ilien. The festival activities were overseen by the Free and Happy Rangers of Ilien and the Not-So-Secret Police of Argh, and the merriment and cheer were allowed to run on for nearly three days. Finally the wineries were empty, and the gleeful shrieks of the celebrants filled the heavens as they were whipped back to their jobs.

Next Session: The Action Turn! Who will be chewed upon by big nasty monsters next? Who tried to off Jon the Mostly Absent? What rifle will set Sue and Colin to yearning once again for each others' chitlins? Must Anne really be required to pay her soldiers a salary, or can she change the rules once she starts to edit them? What kind and benevolent deed is Good King Arglebargle I (the Mighty) contemplating for his first Action Turn? And what of the toilet situation, or are Ilien's courtiers being forced to "hold it" until they can get to Roesone or Medoere? Stay tuned for the next uncensored installment of...Playtesting!

Session #3 "Running out of gold is really unhandy." - King Jon the Mostly Absent

This week's episode of Playtesting was almost completely derailed right from the start when it was discovered that no one had remembered to bring dice. While the dice were sought, Sue told everyone about her peculiar Freudian dreams and Rich reminisced about his baby blankie.

The nasty megamonsters in Frorien that so annoyed Skip, Colin, and the Evil Empire of Ghoere were dealt with during Realm Turn 1. Guild Y continued building its coastal trade profits, Wizard Z expanded his reach across Medoere (Sue) and Roesone (Jon), and Colin worked on his coloring book.

Then diplomats from Diemed offered to perform a special urban and agricultural service for Sue's kingdom of Medoere, in which thousands of Diemedian 4-H officials would march across Medoere's westernmost province to check for deer ticks. If they found none, they would loot the province briefly and return home. Sue could cancel this service for only 16 wagonloads of gold and a promise to let the Diemedian royal family use her castle as their summer retreat.

Somewhat nonplussed, Queen Sue began mustering a mighty army of seminary students and choir directors, while sending her lieutenant to see King Jon, the lieutenant's brother-in-law. Sue's Imperial Wizard Lackey Anne burned out her crystal ball in spying on Diemed, but reported that silly old Diemed had nothing more than six or maybe twelve divisions of heavily armed professional soldiers along the border, not to worry.

Colin the Rogue did his part by expanding his criminal operations across Medoere, claiming that it was all Sue's fault since she never wrote back asking him not to do this. Skip the Other High Priest, this week replaced by Bruce the Imposter High Priest, muddled on through as well.

In the Free and Happy Kingdom of Ilien, Enlightened Center of the World, Good King Arglebargle I (the Mighty) ordered docks to be built, moneyhouses to be raised, warehouses to be filled, and a trading center formed right on the shores of fair Argh, happily replacing the dreary orphanages and smelly hospitals that once lined the beach and made the place so drab. The crowd at the ceremonial opening of the trade center obediently applauded before being whipped back to work. The Good King (the Mighty) collected the first tariffs himself from all the foreign dogs trading partners who came to do business. Alas! Such happy times for Ilien were soon ended. The lap dogs of war were soon yipping at the Gates of Civilization. Queen Sue the High Priestess was awakened in another one of her many Freudian dreams by the hairy, nasty Spider, who was aware of the Diemedian siege towers being lined up along the border with Medoere and sent his regrets. However, the Spider said, he/it might be able to persuade Diemed's royal family to put off their deer-tick inspection of western Medoere if Sue would only - well, perhaps it was a bit much, but maybe - just maybe - Sue could sent a hundred blonde virgin diplomats north to the Spiderfell, "so we can do lunch."

Sue consulted with her advisors, who pointed out that the Spider had not been very specific and a hundred cocker spaniels would fit the letter of the request. As the Royal Dogcatchers worked overtime to fill the menu, Sue received word that Guild Y had once again expanded its cocai - um, coastal trading operations across Medoere.

It was then, during the Holy Breakfast, that Sue the High Priestess looked out her temple window and noticed the first wave of refugees filling her capital's downtown streets. The First Annual Diemedian 4-H Deer-Tick Inspection had begun.

Medoere's mighty seminary students and strapping inkwell fillers did their best against the hordes of heavily armed 4-H officials, but Sue's blessed soldiers found themselves outclassed by the superheavy cavalry of the latter (State Fair Grand Champions, 1958-1994). Tragedy followed in the Diemedians' wake, as hundreds of Sue's temples and roadside shrines were accidentally lost to careless smokers or the bad placement of oily rags. King Jon the Mostly Absent sent a messenger to Queen Sue, telling her that "substantial forces" were on the way, but the messenger tried to cross the Diemedian siege line around Sue's castle and was forced to undergo exploratory surgery under the care of Diemed's 4-H Metal-Shop Class.

Sue was in the process of convincing the local organized crimelords that their loan of gold to her was actually a nonrefundable donation to her temple (I am not making this up) when word came that King Jon's forces had crossed from Roesone into eastern Medoere, on their way to help out. "I love a scrap," said King Jon, almost fully recovered from a somewhat unsuccessful assassination attempt earlier in the year. Colin the Rogue even ordered his forces to venture forth from Endier into northern Diemed, though they hastily claimed to be lost and retreated when they encountered a large force of Diemedians who weren't pretending to be 4-H Club anythings.

Then Anne the Wizardess, peeved at the loss of her crystal ball and unable to sleep from all the noise outside the castle walls, leaned out of a tower window and cast a teleport spell on a unit of superheavy Diemedian cavalry. All 100 cavalrymen and horses vanished without a forwarding address. After quick consultation, the Diemedian 4-H Horde announced that western Medoere was free of deer ticks, and they abandoned their tents and fled home. Medoere was saved.

Diemed looked upon the suppression of civil disorder and deerticks in Medoere as a victory, though the sudden loss of 100 cavalry soldiers was a bit troubling. The mystery was solved a week later when survivors of the force straggled south into Diemed out of the Spiderfells, where they had "done lunch" with the Spider and his/its minions. The Spider, meanwhile, appeared in another Freudian dream to send his/its appreciation to Sue the High Priestess for the canned goods. Sue was now left with a huge clean-up bill for western Medoere, though she also had a real Medoerean army filled with (and these are her exact words) "spanking new boys." King Jon, for his part, managed to convince Diemed to give him enough gold to ship his army home from Medoere, the alternative being a deer-tick inspection of eastern Diemed that would end when the shores of western Diemed were reached.

The weeks after the One Month's War were filled with activity. Anne the Wizardess researched alchemy, King Jon built roads, Skip/Bruce boosted his temples, and Colin spied on the Evil Empire of Ghoere and learned horrible news, which he successfully sold to King Jon and Sue the HP. He tried to sell it to the Free and Happy Kingdom of Ilien, but Arglebargle I (the Mighty) was out on a short adventure. Arglebargle II took the message and promised to call Colin right back, but promptly forgot. It mattered little anyway since the Good King (the Mighty) was already up to his hip boots in secret dealings.

The first secret dealing was less than a total success, involving a search for sunken treasure that ended abruptly when King Arglebargle I discovered that he could not swim. His second dealing, the formation of the Most Secret Free and Happy Scouts of Ilien (all volunteers from the Not-So-Secret Police of Argh), was a total success, however. And his third - well, the third one cannot be revealed here just yet.

And so ended another session of Playtesting. Next week: the thrills of Realm Turn Three!

Session #4

If Governor Tommy Thompson ordered the Wisconsin National Guard to burn down TSR, how many men would it take? This and other questions occupied the minds of your playtest group Wednesday as we prepared to start an accelerated game to see 1) how the system works over many game turns, and 2) whether anybody will ever get around to conquering anybody else. The Governor Thompson question came up late in the game when we were trying to decide whether a regent has the power to order troops to destroy unfortified holdings in that regent's domain. We decided the answer was yes. (We also decided it would take only one Weekend Warrior with a flamethrower to finish TSR off, or two soldiers if the second one passed out bratwursts to convince the employees that this was merely a "company picnic.")

Skip brought the dice for the playtest (as usual - thank you!) and we began cranking out the Realm Turns as fast as possible. Actually, we got through only one-third of a turn (an Action Turn, equal to one month game time), even with only three NPC regents, but it was amusing nonetheless.

In the wake of the One-Month War in our last session, Medoere's High Priestess Sue found herself still in debt to the local Mafia, with some additional trade troubles, a poor tax-collection return, and a highly expensive army of "spanking new" choir boys and mercenaries demanding to get paid. With a deep sigh, Sue fired the mercenaries, paid off the Mafia with the remains of the tax returns, paid off the guild causing the trade uproar, and almost but not quite sent the "spanking new" boys home to their farms, deciding at last that their rosy cheeks (ahem) certainly did brighten up the local scenery. Then the Mafia asked about the interest owed on the money Sue had borrowed. Interest? asked High Priestess Sue. What interest? Nice domain you have here, said the Mafia. Be a shame if something happened to it. Oh, the interest, said Sue, and began tearing apart the royal sofa in search of spare change.

Wizardess Flunky Anne, meanwhile noted an increase in crime and corruption within her magical domain, but promptly ignored it, rightly reasoning that what imps and familiars did on their own time was none of her business. Instead, she bought a new crystal ball and began spying on the mysterious Wizard Z, who was crowding her territory in Medoere. It was thus that she uncovered the plot by Good King Arglebargle I (the Mighty) to hire the remarkably powerful Wizard Z as his court magic flunky, which perturbed Wizardess Flunky Anne a bit as Good King Arglebargle I was regarded by other the regents as something of a low-class paranoid isolationist mad-dog pariah elitist dictator and cheapskate.

Speaking of Good King Arglebargle I (the Mighty) and the Free and Happy Kingdom of Ilien, difficulties broke out on the streets of the Free and Happy Seaport Capital of Argh. A friendly dispute between two rival shipping firms, Loot The Foreign Dogs Inc. and Makum Payen Blud Ltd., led to a certain amount of name-calling, hand gestures, fisticuffs, and three nights of rioting in which 17 buildings were burned and 250 people were rendered homeless. Good King Arglebargle grew weary of "the troubles" and sent word through his daughter, Princess Arglebargle II (the Mistress of Torment), that if the firms did not cease rioting immediately, the royal family and the Free and Happy Elite Heavily Armed Rangers would beforced to kill them a little bit. This subtle diplomacy worked, and peace once again reigned on the free and happy streets. In an unrelated event, it was reported that a wagonload of royal gold was dropped off in the front yard of Wizard Z's home in northwest Ilien, crushing most of the petunias and marigolds.

But the worst was yet to come! While King Jon the Mostly Absent and Skip the Other High Priest laughed off matters of justice that occupied their own domains, Colin the Rogue King was found by his guards to have suffered a terminally fatal mountaineering accident in his living room. Colin II the Rogue King's Son grew suspicious, rightly believing that his father would never have attempted to throw himself upon so many climbing spikes while tied to a chair buried in a vat full of concrete suspended from the ceiling - at least not while he was sober. Colin II began a spy operation to learn the identity of the person who supplied the climbing spikes, and soon found to his surprise that it had been the king of Ghoere, His Royal Highness Darth Adolf Saddam Nikita Khomeini "It's Nothing Personal" Bates I, currently occupied in building roads across Ghoere so his soldiers could more easily reach and oppress the populace in the manner to which they were accustomed.

So it was that, two weeks later, the king of Ghoere climbed out of his royal shower to answer the ringing of the royal semaphore, only to fall on a bar of royal soap and permanently disfigure himself on the large number of caltrops and land mines scattered around the bathroom floor. About a hundred miles west of the palace, Colin II hung up the semaphore in disappointment and consoled himself with a banana split and plans for a more successful but much less expensive future terminal surprise for Ghoere's king.

The rest of the month was characterized by an upsurge in the construction industry. Orange barrels began appearing along the footpaths of southern Roesone as King Jon began building the Greater Roesone Interprovince Oxcart Turnpike. Perpetual rivals Diemed and Medoere likewise began their own highway projects tomake it easier for them to conduct impromptu Deer-Tick Inspections of each other's territories using the latest in military technology. Skip the Other High Priest built up one of his temples; Good King Arglebargle ordered construction to begin on yet another series of moats, dungeons, barracks buildings, towers, and massage parlors for Castle Argh; and Temple X began to build up its temple holding in Ilien, but local union rules required a 10-day coffee break for every brick put up so little was done beyond laying the first two or three bricks. A strike is anticipated for an equally extended lunch period.

In her copious spare time, Wizardess Flunky "Regency To Spare" Anne did manage to make some money (quite literally) using an Alchemy spell and the entire supply of lead fishing sinkers used by the Medoere Sportsmen's Club. "Groovy!" Anne said, as she went on a spending spree and inflation once again soared off the charts in her home provinces.

It was at this point, the end of the first Action Turn, that it was discovered that Medoere and Roesone had built their highways illegally. (Sue and Jon didn't actually have the funds or something - a lame excuse.) The highway workers threw down their picks and shovels to go on strike, and we all decided to pick up the action next week.

What new and very unfortunate accidental event will trouble the daily routine of Colin II the New Rogue King? How long until the Interprovince Oxcart Turnpike is finished? Who really cares about mean old Ghoere anyway, aside from all those domains within a week's march of its borders, which is to say everyone on the map? And about Medoere's "spanking new" soldiers - just who's doing the spanking? All will be revealed next week in our next session of ... Playtesting!

Session #5

Play started out typically enough - only Skip remembered to bring dice, Sue wanted to talk about Jon's carefully worked out plan for putting needles into keyboards, and Colin brought up Cartesian mind-matter dualism. Then the "Sue Sings Silly Songs" period began while Rich sorted through his DM's notes, and we heard Poe's "The Raven" sung to "If I Only Had a Brain," the words to "Amazing Grace" combined with the theme music from "Gilligan's Island," and a rousing start to "The Banana Splits" which was interrupted when Roger lost control and shot everyone. Ha ha - just kidding, of course.

Anyway, play began when the Tyrant-King of Ghoere, His Foulness Darth Adolf Saddam Nikita Khomeini "That's Mister Death To You!" Bates I called King Jon the Mostly Absent on the semaphore to borrow a cup of sugar. King Jon was out, so the Tyrant-King was put on hold, which enraged him so much that he declared war on Roesone. King Jon, upon his return, dithered for a time over whether it was worth declaring war on Ghoere in response, thinking maybe the two kings could get together later over a cup of hot java and be friends. News from the northern frontier, however, telling of the massing of thousands of Ghoere's troops and the virtual abandonment of all Roesone's border towns and farms by southward moving citizens, led King Jon to think that the question was moot.

Last-second defensive preparations included the fortifying of Temple X's holdings in Roesone, complete with fall out shelters and three-week supplies of toilet paper, and Colin II the New Rogue King's attempt to have his guilds fortified. However, Colin II immediately ran into the same union problems that last week faced Temple X, with only one person laying stonework while the rest went out for "chocky doughnuts." Since Colin II was the very person who had originally set up these union rules, he was forced to take himself aside and give himself an ultimatum or face execution. The results of these self-to-self negotiations will be revealed next week. Maybe.

Sue the High Priestess meanwhile established a seaport, immediately running afoul of the guild from which she had borrowed so much money during the One Month's War. And in the fair and greenlands of the Free and Happy Kingdom of Ilien, sometimes called the Free and Happy County of Ilien but still Free and Happy nonetheless, Good King Arglebargle I (the Mighty) decreed a temporary increase in the prime lending rate retroactive to the last true new moon as applied to second mortgages and transportation closing fees of the current fiscal quarter as per article 15 of the Give Me Your Money Or Die domestic taxation program. Only enough money was earned to pay off the cost of posting the decree, resulting in a net gain of zero gold pieces, for which the Good King's chief economic advisor was fed to the moat weasels.

I have completely forgotten what Wizardess Flunky Anne did, but it couldn't have been important.

And now for news from the front. While King Jon belatedly paged through Zebulon's Big Book o' Warfare in search of the tactics chapter, the Tyrant-King of Ghoere dropped his black lace hankie to signal the start of the invasion of Roesone. In response, the XXXII Superheavy Panzer-Cavalier Army, the 52nd and 101st Republican Guard Armored Infantry Divisions, and the 88th Flames of Death Air-Bombardment Archery Corps crossed the border into northern Roesone, thundering across two entire provinces before they realized they had not yet met a single living thing. In a classic pincer move, these forces then moved eastward toward King Jon's alternate campaign headquarters in the suburbs of Bellam, which was at that moment being assaulted with whips and chains by Ghoere's leather-bound 97th Mobile Torturers Battalion and the 666th Dominatrix Auxiliaries.

"This would have been a good time to have been mostly absent," muttered King Jon bravely from his castle tower as he viewed the encampments of the enemy, stretched like a dirty black stocking from the castle walls out to the horizon. He retired for the night to get his beauty rest, but at dawn sallied forth from his castle with the courageous heart of his army: 112 unarmed drunken kobolds and a halfling with a wrist slingshot. Following this advance team were the rest of King Jon's human forces, who fervently hoped that Ghoere's army would accept the kobolds, halfling, and King Jon as a sacrifice, then go home. This, sadly, did not happen.

In the initial portion of the Fearsome and Disastrous Rout of Bellam, King Jon's archers opened fire on the enemy from too farback, and his inexperienced swordsmen swung themselves into near exhaustion long before contacting their opponents. Sensing blood in the air, 73 separate companies of Ghoere's mounted shock troops eagerly hurled themselves upon King Jon's shrieking soldiers like tornadoes on a trailer park.

A final casualty tally for Roesone is delayed pending the recovery and identification of body parts. King Jon is, alas, mostly absent and not available for comment.

Next week, the third (and last) month of this dramatic Domain Turn. Where will Ghoere's blood-crazed dominatrixes next slake their thirsts? Will King Jon become the Completely Absent? Will Colin II end up paying for the doughnuts? And where did Sue learn those stupid songs? As if we cared.

Stay tuned for next week's episode of . . . Playtesting!

(Regretfully, there were no more sessions of this particular playtest. However, in the final version of the campaign set-up, Sue Weinlein was honored by being turned into Suris Enlien of Medoere, Colin McComb became Guilder Kailen of Endier, and Roger Moore became Rogr Aglondier of Ilien.)
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

Words you don't want to see in the product's advertisement wrote:We made up a lot as we went along
Last edited by Longes on Wed Sep 14, 2016 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Longes wrote:
Bertie Wooster wrote:Can anyone explain to me a joke about peasant dwarf adventurer named Carlos?
I'm going to guess - this.
Also:
http://www.somethingawful.com/news/dung ... ons-4th/1/
Username17
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Post by Username17 »

I don't have a problem with the obvious flippancy of the playtest report. They are there to test functionality, not test the game for thematic ressonance. Having the players name their test castles after Monty Python references and refer to events as like deer tick inspections and shit is fine.

But getting through that few game turns in five sessions should have been a red flag.

-Username17
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Post by GâtFromKI »

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.
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