Tyler Do'Urden said:
The main reason MoM came to mind was the city improvements and enchantments... lots of ideas for a fantasy world there, and for grading the differences between more advanced and less advanced structures. And I have that manual burning a hole in my closet.
MoM's improvements and enchantments impressed me less for D&D play than adapting Civ. On the other hand, City-wide spells *might* be a nice addition to the Urbanmancy spells (from CityWorks).
Tyler Do'Urden said:
I don't have the book yet, and when I flipped through it (at a game store in Minneapolis a week ago, when I didn't have any money) I missed the part about class abilities... do they all kick in at 1st level, or do you get additional abilities as you level? (For instance, one at 5th, another at 10th, etc)... and, if so, what about adding abilities for Prestige Classes? Given the plethora of them out there, I can understand why Mearls may have avoided this in the book, but for campaigns like mine in which I limit the available prestige classes to a small list (usually between 10-20 classes approved for the setting), I may have to add some abilities for them. In addition to reworking the abilities for Arcana Unearthed to begin with.
They are phased in at levels 5, 10, 15 and 20 for each class. To be honest, I don't see it being worthwhile to add the abilities to existing classes -- that means every attempt to integrate other materials requires yet more thought/attention/work.
Tyler Do'Urden said:
Rulership feats are an interesting idea, and could mesh in interesting ways with the Arcana Unearthed Ceremonies. I'll have to look into those for my campaign.
Another thought- It's interesting to see how the underlying system could be adapted to other settings... I noticed this with the Cry Havoc! mass combat system as well. How hard would it be to port these rules to make a domain system for, say, Wheel of Time, or, way out there, Star Wars? You'd have to change the buildings, the commodities, and many of the assumptions of the setting (not to mention the scale), but it's an interesting thought. I'm a wargamer from way back, and I've always wanted to run RPG campaigns that added elements of politics, strategy, and rulership... they just seem so lacking in the campaigns I've played in, and the recent computer games of this type have been disappointments (Civ3? Ho-hum. MoO 3? Yech. Warcraft 3? Boring...) It seems that computer strategy games are getting blander and more dumbed-down... the last one I really liked was the original Age of Wonders. I miss games like X-Com, Master of Magic (even with the bad AI and terrible soundtrack), Master of Orion I and II, Civ2 (the most modular, expandible and customizable strategy game ever- Civ3 lacks my favorite element of Civ2!), Alpha Centauri (who says you can't make a turn-based strategy game with a unique plotline and flavorful ambience). I've wanted to run a pencil-and-paper game that merges roleplaying and strategy, just as I've wanted a computer game that could do the same...
Apparently, you missed Birthright.
Birthright was an attempt to add wargame elements to the AD&D 2nd Edition RPG. Rulership of landed realms, with or without ownership of religious temple networks, criminal/mercantile trade organizations, troops/courts/brigands, and/or magical nexii and ley lines were the core of Birthright. Add some mystical "divine blood gives special powers" and you have a potent combination. Domain management was covered pretty well (though more abstractly than some liked) and Priests and Mages could wield powerful Realm Spells -- magic that affected hundreds of square miles for months (sometimes years) at a time.
Birthright's weakness was that it tried to be insulate the RPG parts from the wargame parts to some degree. It tried to be a simple wargame that RPG-ers would not mind playing occasionally in between adventures, while still being enough of a wargame that wargamers might get to like RPGs through it.
The combat system was card-based. You had a card that represented the unit, for example, with the stats printed on it. Each unit could take up to 4 "Hits", each of which reduced its effectiveness. A battle was set up on a 3x5 grid of spaces, with additional spaces at the back of each side's position representing reserve pool, killed/routed, etc. Units moves were 1 space for foot, 2 for cavalry. Almost all actions were resolved by drawing the next card from the deck; when exhausted, the deck was re-shuffled. Skills could give you an advantage, but not much.
Strategy involved "Where do I need to fortify ?". You could fortify and/or garrison just about any type of holding (Law, Temple, Guild, Source, or Province), but a Castle (fortification for a Province) was most effective.
Politically, Regents could spend "Regency Points" (a pool of personal power) and/or gold to influence the success of actions (their own and others). Religions were especially good at improving/eroding the loyalty of the people to the ruler; merchant rogues were good at making money; mages had nasty realm spells, and any of them could raise armies with enough gold and/or land. All of them could also steal power from each other. Vassalage was handled (although more could have been done with it).
All-in-all, except for the a) lack of scalability, b) tight ties to the campaign setting, and c) sometimes unbalanced "free powers", the Birthright rules were a very good basis for building a campaign just like you described. If the 3rd Edition converted BR rules were a) OGC, b) scalable, c) not tied so tightly to the campaign setting, and d) not tied to "blood abilities", those would be an excellent system to adapt to ANY genre or setting.
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