drnuncheon said:
Well, the medieval church was hardly landless...if you're interested in religious and economic power as well, you should poke around a little bit, because there's a 3e conversion of Birthright. (At Birthright.net maybe?)
J
No, the
late medieval church was not landless, but much of that land was donated by the faithful to the
early medieval church when it
was (practically) landless. Its social power (based on the devotion of the followers) grew into land-based power. Some countries passed laws forbidding the practice of leaving land to the church because the church was becoming *too* powerful (in the eyes of the rulers), and the church never died (so the crown got no inheritance taxes for land changing hands).
I am aware of Birthright 3E; I just did not initially think it relevant to a discussion of Empire. My homebrew world is described entirely in terms of Birthright: Provinces, Domains, Realms, and Holdings (Temple, Law, Source, and Guild). The reason the lack of non-landed power structures is one of my pet peeves is because I find it hard to represent the complex balance of power in that world using any other system.
Why do I want to use a different system ? Because, on some levels, the BR system is
too abstracted. But that is a different discussion.
Birthright also has rules for implementing sea power. Empire makes little mention of sea power. If you add a port to a city (you may add features to cities much like building city improvements in Civ), you get an economic benefit. There is, however, no shipbuilding industry, nor is there discussion in the mass combat rules of naval combat or boarding actions (unless I missed them).
Areas where Empire could be improved (and, while most of these are easily implemented by the DM, some are just so obvious that they should be part of ANY comprehensive discussion of Realm management):
- Mineral resources are only focused on metals (copper, silver, gold, mithral, adamantine, iron); no mention of gems are made. Adding gems would not be difficult using the abstract system presented, it just should already be there.
- While water provides food (in the form of fish, presumably), there is no discussion of resources like ivory (from whaling) that could also be used to produce trade goods.
- Ports should enable a shipbuilding industry.
- Ships should be another trading option.
- Herbs and Spices should be available as trade goods.
- Jewelry should be a trade good that can be produced using mineral resources.
- Trained or rare breed animals as a trade option, and a city improvement to enable them, should be available.
- A discussion of alternate government forms (Theocracy, Magocracy, etc.) would have been helpful. While there is a discussion of each Core Class as King, there is no discussion of adjustments based on a government type other than Monarchy.
- Naval elements for the mass combat rules.
- Alternative sources of political power would have been nice.
Now, to be fair, Empire does many things well:
- Provides a playable framework for making realm management part of the game.
- Provides a scalable system for said realm management.
- Offers excellent advice for making sure that any realm you hand to your players is viable.
- Takes into account variable unit sizes in the mass combat system.
- Covers adjusting the Base Classes to represent Kingship.
- Does a good job of handling inter-realm trade in a workable manner.
- Provides a workable mass combat system.
