Comparison: Strongholds & Dynasties - Empire - Magical Medieval Society - Birthright

[mattcolville]

Pulling out my copy of Birthright, it looks like it is mapped at 1"=25 miles. Eyeballing it, most provinces seem to run from 1/2" x 1/2" to 1" x 2"; the average appears to be 1"x1". That would put the smallest provinces "spot on" in the scale of FoB, but most BR provinces would be about 4 FoB hexes.

Matt, have you had a chance to do some measurements and calculations ?

Alas, no. I'm working on my own D20 stuff now. This may mean a more ambitious project in the same area, but realistially my involvement with the Book of War ended long ago. Though I am interested in what people perceived were the strengths and flaws of the book, in the high likelyhood I revisit the subject with some other product.

 

[Silveras]

Please Silveras, after some monthes of playtests, could you tell us which rules you are using now ?

I have tested all these rules exept S&D (but i have ordered it).
- MMS is the one i prefer. Unfortunately, it doesn't purchase some rules about trade for instance. What i want to say is that MMS is excellent, but it's too "conceptual" and not enough detailed for my campaig...
- Empire is too incomplete (ressources management, etc...) and some bugs are not fixed
- FOB is good but contains no detailed ressources management, so you don't know if the province is rich because of its trade capabilities or mines or agriculture...
- Birthright is too complex. It's a game, not a set of rules for a RPG campaign, and i don't have time to play at my favorite game AND birthright

And on S&D, how have you scaled the internal consumption ?

Thank you very much

Sadly, I have not been running any games for some time, and so have not had any opportunity to continue playtesting.

I had posted my house rules for modifying Birthright a while back, but it does not appear to have survived the last round of archiving. The main idea was to merge the idea of Birthright's province levels with MMS:WE's population density. A short version of that document is available on the Expeditious Retreat Press' web site.

I was not too bothered by the lack of resource details in FoB. If anything, I think roo much detail is what "broke" the Book of Strongholds and Dynasties. S&D divides resources into categories and grades of refinement, and then only allows so many in a province. While the book states that Provinces can be of any size, it also appears that the rules were written with a specific size in mind. As a result, the resource rules do not seem to scale well at all. I made a few attempts to make them work, but had no success. The book's system works fairly well for small domains, but breaks when they reach the point of trying to support a city.

 

[Silveras]

Alas, no. I'm working on my own D20 stuff now. This may mean a more ambitious project in the same area, but realistially my involvement with the Book of War ended long ago. Though I am interested in what people perceived were the strengths and flaws of the book, in the high likelyhood I revisit the subject with some other product.

I will be curious to see what you come up with.

 

[Wraith Form]

*bump*

Just because of the effort and dedication put into this by Sil. Wow! Thank you!

 

[Silveras]

Alas, no. I'm working on my own D20 stuff now. This may mean a more ambitious project in the same area, but realistially my involvement with the Book of War ended long ago. Though I am interested in what people perceived were the strengths and flaws of the book, in the high likelyhood I revisit the subject with some other product.

On that note, and since Wraith Form was kind enough to bump the thread ...

Strengths:

• Nomadic camps
• Consideration of cultural type
• Frequent notes about "tuning the system"
• Active representation of organized groups (the Guilds)
• Treatment of domain-level spellcasting
• Large selection of core monsters converted to Unit stats

Weaknesses:

• 12-mile per hex scale does not lend itself to use with existing camaigns mapped at 24 or 30 miles per hex
• Inability to play as head of a Guild instead of a land-ruling leader
• Specific list of spells for domain magic instead of guidelines on selecting and adapting "normal" spells.
• Treating humans differently from "other monsters" in the troop creation rules (specifically, using Human Commoners while other monsters are Warriors by default).

I would urge others to post what they thought were the strengths and weaknesses of Fields of Blood here, as well.

 

[rom90125]

\bump...

Just found this thread. Outstanding Siv...truly inspired!

I own Cry Havoc and FoB but have not had the chance to integrate either into my current campaign.

After reading everyone's input, I felt compelled for the bump. Is there any new opinions or insight to add?

 

[Silveras]

\bump...

Just found this thread. Outstanding Siv...truly inspired!

I own Cry Havoc and FoB but have not had the chance to integrate either into my current campaign.

After reading everyone's input, I felt compelled for the bump. Is there any new opinions or insight to add?

I don't have anything new to add at the moment, but I expect to revisit this thread once Power of Faerun is out (March 2006 or so). From the catalogue entry, it sounds as if it addresses similar material.

 

[Muaadeeb]

I find myself looking for FoB now. How's the review on Power of Faerun comming?

 

[HeavensThunderHammer]

*Necromantic Bump*

I'm curious about any more discussion on this. I own Powers of Faerun, and it completely lacks any mechanical guidelines, but has great RP guidelines for running a realm and how they get setup, particularily *in* Faerun.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Thanks for the bump. It let me go back in time, so to speak, and give some well deserved XP for efforts way back then.