Anyone have Strongholds and Dynasties or Empires?

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Well, I got the book yesterday- and it's a better system than I thought, after giving it a read... a cursory flip-through wasn't sufficient.

It seems rather delicately balanced, so it's tough to decide what I want to add to it... hmm...

 

[Aaron2]

Well, I got the book yesterday- and it's a better system than I thought, after giving it a read... a cursory flip-through wasn't sufficient.

It seems rather delicately balanced, so it's tough to decide what I want to add to it... hmm...

Which book did you get?

I got Empire yesterday. Any idea what part of the Appendix is OGL? The page in the back didn't mention it.


Aaron

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Which book did you get?

I got Empire yesterday. Any idea what part of the Appendix is OGL? The page in the back didn't mention it.

Empire... although I like it much better now, I'm having trouble figuring out a few things, I hope someone can help me:

1. Is there any way for promoting units from Warrior to other classes, other than through ruler class abilities? How the training rules work, in that case?

2. Do rulership abilities apply only from the ruler himself, or do ministers (Prime Minister, Treasurer, General in particular) count as well?

3. What are villages really good for, anyway? You can't add improvements, and without improvements, they can't be used for production... yet it says in their description that they are "nodes for production efforts"... ?

 

[Silveras]

Which book did you get?

I got Empire yesterday. Any idea what part of the Appendix is OGL? The page in the back didn't mention it.


Aaron

From the looks of it, none of it.
It looks like the appendix was originally "Chapter 6", but someone changed it without updating the declared OGC. So, the missing "Chapter 6" is OGC, and the Appendix is not (legally speaking) as far as I can tell.

 

[Silveras]

Empire... although I like it much better now, I'm having trouble figuring out a few things, I hope someone can help me:

1. Is there any way for promoting units from Warrior to other classes, other than through ruler class abilities? How the training rules work, in that case?

I did not notice any, which is why my suggested additions allows religious rulers to "promote" to Paladins or Blackguards.

The Fighter's class ability speaks of upgrading units from Warriors to Fighters "for free", but I could not find any other mention of this.

Suggestions:

• When mustering units, spending a second season training the same unit creates a unit of 1st level Fighters instead of Warriors.
• When mustering units, decreasing the size from Medium to Tiny allows the creation of a unit of Rangers instead of Warriors. Such Rangers have a Favored Enemy appropriate to the history of your realm.

As I said before, it feels like the 50/50 content split forced out a lot of material for both parts. A longer book with the full content, or 2 books (one on each topic - realm management and mass combat) would have been a better approach.

2. Do rulership abilities apply only from the ruler himself, or do ministers (Prime Minister, Treasurer, General in particular) count as well?

I don't see it mentioned, but the Rulership benefits seem to apply only from the ruler. The ministers fill in for the ruler in some areas, but I don't think it is intended for you to be able to recruit such staff to get the additional class features. Otherwise, every realm would have 4 PC-types running it (1 ruler + 3 ministers of different classes).

3. What are villages really good for, anyway? You can't add improvements, and without improvements, they can't be used for production... yet it says in their description that they are "nodes for production efforts"... ?

Villages are good for building up. They can provide more living space for your population, and population there can produce trade goods (Wooden and Exotic items especially).

From the description, it looks like there are some implied rules that are missing. Namely, that you need 1 stronghold per X land units to work them appropriately.

In keeping with the Civ3 feel of much of the material, I suggest that Villages have a radius of 1 and allow you to work the surrounding 8 land units (9 total spaces); Towns have a radius of 2, but occupy too much of the space they are in to allow that to be worked any longer (20 total spaces); and Cities have a radius of 3 (44 total spaces).

This becomes especially important if you also borrow from A Medieval Magical Society. Historically, a single ruler might control land units that were scattered about - 2 here, 2 more over there, 3 to the south, 4 more to the north, and so on. As the scale rises from Barony, this becomes less of an issue, but might never completely disappear.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Hmm... the book said that a Guild was necessary for making exotics and wooden goods, and a village can't have a guild- so all I can think that it would be useful for would be Gnomes and Elves producing magic items.

Hmm... I thought that maybe I could add training rules allowing for other classes, with different training times depending on the class-

8 seasons for Wizards, Clerics, and Monks
4 seasons for Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, Druids, and Bards
2 seasons for Sorcerers, Barbarians, and Rogues
1 season for Adepts and Experts

Also, government ministers are way too expensive. I want to have some way for PC's to have a whole slew of generals, diplomats, agents, and champions they can call on... any suggestions for a lower price? The standard recruitment price could be kept, and the normal price used to pay the main members of the government (Treasurer, the head General, etc)...

 

[Silveras]

Hmm... the book said that a Guild was necessary for making exotics and wooden goods, and a village can't have a guild- so all I can think that it would be useful for would be Gnomes and Elves producing magic items.

Hmm... I thought that maybe I could add training rules allowing for other classes, with different training times depending on the class-

8 seasons for Wizards, Clerics, and Monks
4 seasons for Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, Druids, and Bards
2 seasons for Sorcerers, Barbarians, and Rogues
1 season for Adepts and Experts

Also, government ministers are way too expensive. I want to have some way for PC's to have a whole slew of generals, diplomats, agents, and champions they can call on... any suggestions for a lower price? The standard recruitment price could be kept, and the normal price used to pay the main members of the government (Treasurer, the head General, etc)...

Ok, I was wrong about the Villages. They should be able to produce *something*, though.

As for training other classes... well, Experts and Adepts seem out of place. Experts are sort of "presumed" to be in the population already... no need to train some up.
Adepts are the sort of spellcasters you create when you can't create others (primitive tribes, etc., that don't have Wizards and Clerics).

The training of other types of "units" might not be appropriate. You don't usually see "squads" of Wizards, Sorcerers, etc. Of course, that depends on the world in which you are running; in a world where magic is plentiful, training a unit of Wizards or Clerics might be perfectly fine. Still, I would not make a matter of just time. I would require specific city uprades -- a Mage Academy to train Wizard or Sorcerer units, a Grand Temple to train Clerics or Druids, and so on.

As for ministers, I think what you are seeing is the abstract nature of the system. You should probably read each "minister" as "minister and staff". The reason there are only 3 is because there there only 3 main areas where a PC ruler would benefit from having a staff --day-to-day administration, military, and money. Each individual minister is basically the "chief" of that department, the spokesperson who actually meets with the leader. In other words, the fact that you can take a bunch of diplomacy actions represents that you have a bunch of diplomats to send. If the costs seem high, think of it like this: to be convincing, the ambassador needs a staff that reflects power and ability, and that costs money.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Well, the real reason I'm wondering about this is because I'm trying to run a, shall we say, "Master of Magic" style campaign. Each of the players in this campaign is the lord of their own domain. I want to have each ruler control a cadre of heroes they can send out on missions in addition to their ministers, and I'm not sure how to price them- any ideas?

In addition, Sorcerers and Wizards are able to automatically promote their warriors to Sorcerer and Wizard, just like Fighters... so armies of spellcasters are implied by the book.

 

[Silveras]

Well, the real reason I'm wondering about this is because I'm trying to run a, shall we say, "Master of Magic" style campaign. Each of the players in this campaign is the lord of their own domain. I want to have each ruler control a cadre of heroes they can send out on missions in addition to their ministers, and I'm not sure how to price them- any ideas?

Interesting. I tried to run a mixed internet/face-to-face game in my world using modified Birthright rules. The internet players were the rulers, and the face-to-face players were the adventurers.

For that, I created a new action for Regents ... "Hire Adventurers", and made it a possible response to the domain Events, almost as good as dealing with the event personally.

Your best bet is probably to treat them as Cohorts ... expensive Cohorts, because they are very loyal, competent, and numerous (the main model is pretty much 1 Cohort, though it does not seem to be a specific limit).

Otherwise, you could spend some gold to create an elite organization for them to belong to. Basically, your ruler is chartering/sponsoring an order of knighthood (or a similar organization), and as head of that order can send them on missions. Cost-wise, that should be comparable to a Grand Temple or Arcane College ... ongoing maintenance costs in addition to up-front setup fees. Maintenance costs should go up if the 'warband' becomes larger than a standard party (4 characters).

I think I actually favor the second option, overall.

In addition, Sorcerers and Wizards are able to automatically promote their warriors to Sorcerer and Wizard, just like Fighters... so armies of spellcasters are implied by the book.

That shows what I get for commenting without reading closely. I stopped when I realized that each got 4 abilities. Since that is *not* the approach I would take, I stopped reading in-depth.

Philosophically, I am opposed to the idea of the upgrades, unless the system offers some benefit to employing those Sorcerers / Wizards other than in the military.

 

[drnuncheon]

Ok, I was wrong about the Villages. They should be able to produce *something*, though.

They may indeed produce a great many things, but the question is do they produce them in enough quantities for meaningful export? In general, they're probably only making enough of anything to supply their own needs. In order to have the infrastructure to manufacture enough goods for export, you need something the size of a town.

J