Birthright??

[Ampolitor]

So in everyone's opinion why did Birthright not take off? (Besides Corporate screw ups) I loved the game world and ideas behind it! I think that Forgotten realms was considered the main game world at that time, pushing everyone else out. I didn't always have PC regents, they usually played nobles controlling a small area of a kingdom, which led to a lot of great games. It's like there were two games in one, the adventure and the political game in the background. I'd love to hear everyone Else's opinion. If you like it or disliked it, and why.

 

[Crothian]

It wasn't until after the setting came and went did I learn really what it was about. I don't think they marketed it well. I have all the books now but that was mostly through luck and circumstance and not really a desire.

 

[malcolypse]

i don't know why it didn't take off, but a buddy of mine did a 3.5 conversion that i'm on my way to play in about half an hour.

he messed with the world a bit and drew a new map to suit it to his taste and his players, and i've been having a ball.

 

[Agamon]

The game had awesome potential, and while the setting was interesting for vanilla D&D play, playing as it was intended (running countries) would be a lot of work for the DM. It'd made a fun PC game, but then Civ would still be better.

 

[Lhorgrim]

I tried to get my group into it back then, but I hit two major obstacles.

Pronunciation: We had a hard time with the unfamiliar names and associated pronunciations. We could have gotten used to it I guess, but it was a barrier to getting "into" the game when everybody was butchering the names and such.

More familiar and better supported options: Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and homebrews were front and center. There were novels for Birthright, but they were lost among the many FR offerings.

I also think some of the "hook" of Birthright was the regent stuff, and I never tried to start my players out a regents. I wanted them to develop as characters and then "wear the crown on their troubled brows."

We just didn't get to learn the world before other settings pulled us away.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Pronunciation: We had a hard time with the unfamiliar names and associated pronunciations. We could have gotten used to it I guess, but it was a barrier to getting "into" the game when everybody was butchering the names and such.

Pronunciations were a total drawback. As evocative as they may have been, they were just too much of a pain. That didn't push me away though.

What did make it tough to get in to was that starting out as rulers/"leaders of many" is a significant change past traditional D&D play. That's probably where it failed to appeal to the bulk of D&D customers.

That novels are above, I believe, traditional TSR game fiction. The setting is more coherent than other TSR settings and does about the best job of all D&D settings at mimicking a pseudo-European myth, cautiously avoiding inventing new creatures. In fact celebrating European mythological beasts. Nor blending it with other genres like Lovecraftian mythos or sci-fi elements.

 

[Glyfair]

In my case, I got into the world as 3E was approaching. I bought the early 2nd Edition books, but was out of D&D at the time and didn't get back until 3E.

I thought about trying it in 3E, but it never seemed to fit well. I was going to try to "back up" into 2nd edition and started a character generation session, but after a session of attempts we decided we didn't feel like going back and trying to learn 2E, it was just too much to deal with for a one-off campaign.

That said, I do love the world and the concepts. Still, it's being so strongly tied to 2nd edition it was doomed it for our group.

 

[gamerprinter]

I bought the boxed set and really loved the setting. The pronounciations was carp, but then I love history, ancient linguistics, in fact I didn't need a pronounciation guide, I already knew by looking at it that the elves, the sidhelien were the 'shee-len'. Which I loved as arcane practicing, non-divine elves (in fact I still see elves in all subsequent editions as that way...)

I liked the idea of the quintessential Gorgon as a singular monster, that may have spawned lesser gorgon, but was the first or original Gorgon, as a king and almost a god - which has a very ancient Greek feel to the idea.

After I complete my Kaidan setting development, followed by my Lands of Keld, ancient iron-age Celtic setting, I am very much interested in creating an ancient Greek campaign and would love to bring in the Birthright singular monsters that rule exotic lands around the main Greek peninsula and develop storylines similar to Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, and the Odyssey, using the Birthright format as a means of doing that.

Even the wizards drawing power from the land is an interesting take to utilize.

I did think the Birthright setting was overly vanilla, which in comparison to FR and other settings was difficult to compete. That's why I think developing a non-vanilla setting like an ancient Greek world might better fit the Birthright concept and work for a game like Pathfinder.

But development of that won't be until next year, I'm afraid.

GP

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

We did a 3/3.5 conversion, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

My PC started out as a non-regent, when most of the others were regents, which made the realm-building sessions terribly boring. I mean, horribly boring. So I wound up in charge of the guilds of Halskapa. In order to get Free Money, I put in 0-level guilds in high-level provinces, and described them as "department stores" selling Halskapan products in Anuire.

The setting products were pretty darn evocative. We never really had a problem with pronunciation, though it was fun describing everything as Celticy ("Celticy Arabs, Celticy French, Celticy Germans..."). The novels were so-so; some were really good, and others were sanity-blasting works of horror (and not the fun ones).

Brad

 

[Dragonhelm]

At the time, there were so many settings anyway that it was hard to get into yet another.

IIRC, we had Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Planescape, Ravenloft, Al-Qadim, Oriental Adventures/Kara-Tur, Mystara, and Dark Sun. Plus people had their own homebrew settings.

That's a lot of different ways to split up D&D. I'm not certain that there was room enough for another.

Personally, I didn't get into the whole bit with big nations. The unique monsters were a nice twist.