Birthright - Regency

In my last post I questioned the need to tie Birthright’s regency rules to a character’s bloodline score. According to the rulebook a characters bloodline score does one thing with regards to regency; it caps it. So if you happen to have a low bloodline score and rule a large realm, you will be severely handicapped as a regent. While there are undoubtedly rulers who are ill-suited to sitting on the throne, I don’t see how that necessarily makes the game more interesting to play.

However, I didn’t have any evidence that the bloodline ever impacted the game to a great extent, so I sat down with the Ruins of Empire book and compared the regency generated by the realms of the southern cost and the bloodlines of the rulers.

Realm	Regency Generated	Bloodline Score	Regency Lost
Diemed	41	42	0
Medeore	23	32	0
Ilien	28	21	7
Roesone	30	24	6
Aerenwe	40	37	3
Mieres	50	17	33

These are all realms, though they include examples of Temple, Guild, and Magic holdings.

For the most part there is very little loss of RP, the main exception being Mieres, which I was hesitant to include, as it’s a vassal state with a puppet governor. Granted the governor also controls all of the guild holdings of the realm he nominally controls, which is where much of the lost RP come from.

How is this important, aka, what are RP used for? Simply put RP are used to take actions that impact the domain. Just about every action requires the use of RP, and additional RP can be spent to influence the results. For example, if you controlled 2/3 of the law holdings in a province, and wanted to increase it to 3/3 you’d use the Rule action. Doing so will cost 1GB plus 1RP times the level you’re trying to achieve, in this case 3. The success roll is 10+ on a d20. As I said before, the roll may be modified by spending RP on a 1:1 basis. So spending 6 additional RP (9 total) would make the success roll 4+.

In Birthright RP can also be spent to increase a characters bloodline score by spending points equal to the score he’s trying to reach (1 point more than his current score) which requires at least 2 domain turns (aka 2 seasons!). While interesting, this isn’t useful for my purposes, and it isn’t something that happens very often due to the fact that RP earned every turn are capped at the bloodline score!

Another rule is that Regency can be lost by engaging in actions that violate a character’s alignment, or by failing to adequately respond to various events that crop up during the domain turn.

Next Birthright post will begin a 2 part series on Economics.

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This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic is Animals and it's being hosted here at the Tower of the Archmage! How can you get involved? Easy! Write a post about animals, anything about animals, and share the link!

Map - Fortified Cloister

When I was working with Dylan on editing his adventure Death and the Lady, I created this mp, my own version of a fortified monastery, and it’s been sitting in my folder of maps unused and unloved.

Not shown is the (undrawn) 3rd floor, bell tower, or dungeon. I may revisit this at some point, as I rather like it...

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This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic is Animals and it's being hosted here at the Tower of the Archmage! How can you get involved? Easy! Write a post about animals, anything about animals, and share the link!

Tim Curry Tuesdays - Vincent Price

Horn of the Minotaur Lord

Cleft from the head of the Minotaur Lord Drax-Mur by the gnome demigod Crixi and enchanted by the sorcerer Molko, the Horn of the Minotaur Lord is an impressive artifact from antiquity. Roughly four feet long and bound on each in end gold, this magic item is rather difficult to conceal, although some foes have turned an ran just seeing the horn after hearing of its dreadful power.

Horn of the Minotaur Lord Level 9
A blast of this horn causes enemies to flee in terror
Lvl 9
Lvl 19
Type: Wonderous
Power: Standard, Daily x 2
Blast 5, +15 vs Will 2d6+6 Sonic damage and all enemies hit will immediately run their full speed directly away from the horn. This move is in addition to any actions they have or will take this round. If used a second time in a day there is a 15% chance of summoning a Demonic Savage Minotaur. It will attempt to take the horn and return it to the depths of the Labyrinth.
lvl 19: Blast 10, +25 vs Will. In place of the Demonic Savage Minotaur an Iron Golem will be summoned shaped like a minotaur.

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Inspiration for this item goes to Bat of Ancient Vaults and his version for Labyrinth Lord/Classic Dungeons and Dragons.

Sunday Inspirational Image - Chimera

I don't know what you'd call it. Maybe a kanga-zam?

Whatever you call it, a wizard probably did it.

Birthright - Domains

Now that we’ve unboxed Birthright it’s time to move into the meat of the setting. I do find myself a bit conflicted about which direction to go in, as I find the setting is really cool, and so are the domain rules. The question is, which are you more interested in? I’m guessing the rules, with more interest on the domain level play over the setting specific rules for characters.

Let me know if I’ve got that wrong.

With that in mind, we’ll look at the domain level rules. In Birthright, the land is divided into provinces, and each province has a pair of scores. The first is the civilization/population score. How many people are there, and how well developed is it? A scattering of villages? 1 or 2. A fair sized town? 3 or 4. City? 5+.

Correspondingly there is also a score for the magic potential of the province. Depending on the terrain of the province, the base value can range from 5-9, and it goes down one for every level of civilization the province has, unless the population is primarily elves.

Within each realm there are 4 types of holdings - Law, Guild, Temple, and Magical. The maximum level of each holding is based on the level of the provice, except for magical holdings, which are based on the provinces’ magical score. These holdings can be divided between multiples regents if the level is above 3.. For example, in a providence 5/1 there can a pair of regents who control Law (one with Law 3, one with Law 2). Controlling the Law of a province does not necessarily mean being the ruler of a province, though it helps.

So what does ruling a province and/or controlling holdings do for you? First off, controlling non-magical holdings allows you to generate income in the form of Gold Bars (GB). Now, these are not in fact giant bars of gold, but an abstraction representing approximately 2,000gp. The level of the province and the level of the holding will determine the potential amount you may generate every season.

In addition to the revenue, you also earn Regency Points (RP) for controlling appropriate holdings. Everyone earns RP for ruling a province, while only Clerics and Paladins earn RP for controlling Temple Holdings. You earn 1 RP for every level of province you rule and every level of appropriate holding you control. Now this is capped by the ruler’s bloodline score.

In Birthright, regents are people who’s ancestors were at a battle between the gods a millennium ago. The gods all died, and their power was shared among the survivors, elevating new gods from the champions, and imbuing everyone else with varying levels of divine power. This power allows individuals to collect RP, as well as other possible powers based on the strength and derivation of their bloodline.

If I were to port this over to a different system, Rules Cyclopedia for instance, I’m not sure how I’d address the bloodline rule. For one thing, it’s fairly campaign specific. For another, it’s not really all that important to domain level play, except as a cap on the accumulation of regency points every season.

Time to run some concrete examples, and see what’s what with bloodline scores and regency points. Stay tuned!

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This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic is Animals and it's being hosted here at the Tower of the Archmage! How can you get involved? Easy! Write a post about animals, anything about animals, and share the link!

Bits and Bobs IV

1) This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic is Animals and it's being hosted right here! How can you get involved? Easy! Write a post about animals, anything about animals, and share the link! (I know you’re going to get so tired of reading that this month. You might as well just go ahead and do a post on animals...)

B. There is an awful lot of gaming stuff on my Google+ stream. I like it! I only wish I had more time to devote to it. So many things to comment on...

III - Fight On #2 is Free (for a limited time) So I Oubliette #6! You should snag them while you can!

4. I haven’t worked on my megadungeon since May, and I’ve been feeling the itch!

e - I find myself editing more than I ever expected, and for a number of different people and projects. I sometimes have to remind myself that as a volunteer editor I can only suggest changes. If the author/project leader doesn’t take them, that’s their choice.

VI) There is no #VI.

7 - I am obviously not at or going to GenCon this year. Believe me, you’d have known about it for months if I was going! Maybe I should make that a goal for 2012... anyway, I hope everyone who goes has a great time!