Birthright. Tell Me About It. Please.

[jollyninja]

love the setting, interesting locales and different enough from the other published settings to make everything "new again" but familiar enough to have everyone still in the loop. the 2e boxed set was worth the purchase if only for the randomly generated kingdom events tables, great for a dm lacking in inspiration for where to take the campaign, a peasant revolt and how the pc's side in it spices things up nicely, as do the bandits that begin raiding villiages in times of famine.

with that said the only game i ever played in was an ill concieved one in which we all played regents and were still for some reason adventuring arouind without escort at level 2. eventually we killed the gorgon and the psychotic human hating elf. it kind of ran like a really low budget, one writer highlander series. we ran around stealing magical powers from other scions. in hindsight, perhaps I should have lost my paladinhood, ah, to be young again.

 

[irdeggman]

Check my sig. Go to the BRCS discussion thread and then the "pinned" threads at the top for the "latest" version of the 3.5 update.

Great setting. It and Dark Sun were my 2 favorite 2nd ed ones because they were "different".

BR had a great advantage in the fact that there were 5 different human cultures, each one unique in theri own way.

No common language.

Elves were very much more magical in their nature than in other settings and dwarves were very much more tied to the earth.

Halflings were extremely unique, having come from another "world".

Very good, very broad and a lot of things that can be used in a DM-unique way.

 

[Nyaricus]

Man, Birthright actually sounds like the type of D&D world that I'd love to play in. My homebrew come across much the same as BR does - a place where magic is rare, and feared, and where every monster has a place and purpose. Where politics actually matter, and are ingrained right into the setting, and where the setting itself is internally consistant within itself. Birthright sounds sexy

Stuff like bloodlines I see in UA, and would be easy to introduce. We now, thanks to DMGII and PHBII have stuff like Affiliations and Associations (whatever it's called in the DMGII) which could help with all that politics stuff, and working your way up from a minor noble to king. Not to mention there is the BR conversion off its' site, and there is a wealth of information which to draw upon. That's pretty sweet, all-in-all

I'd like to see and hear more from others, however, on what they thought of Birthright. I am extremely interested in this, as it really appeals to my vision of D&D.

cheers,
--N

 

[Davelozzi]

I never got a chance to run Birthright but I wanted to for quite a while. If I did, I am not sure whether or not I would use the whole political/domain rulership aspect of the campaign or just use it as a setting for a more typical adventuring campaign like an_idol_mind suggests. At any rate, I think that it is a great setting that for whatever reason never got the recognition it deserved.

Many of the previous posters have already given good summaries of its strengths - great villains, well developed cultures with interesting histories, interesting NPCs, and good takes on the races in a more Tolkien, less generic D&D sort of way. It's also one of the best relatively low magic settings ever produced for D&D. In short, the setting as a whole is a lot more cohesive than any of the other published D&D worlds. It makes good sense internally, and is definitely not a "everything and the kitchen sink" type of setting.

That said, at this point I am not particularly likely to run it anytime soon. I agree with Glyfair that it works best in 2E and that the 3e conversion is less than inspiring. However these days I am not sure how likely I could get my players to play 2E. Furthermore, my tastes have changed somewhat in the past several years. At the time, I specifically wanted a more realistic, low magic world. These days, though I would still prefer that sort of setting for novels, movies, etc., for D&D I think that something a little more high octane is more fun for the players.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Under 2nd ed. I ran two concurrent campaigns - one adventuring, the other political. There was a lot of fun.

In the Political group one of the 'Bad Guy' NPCs ended swapping sides, and joining the 'Good Guys', he was a merchant, and the PCs were good for business.... They never really trusted him, but he was good for their business too.... (El Hadid, if anyone is wondering. In one roleplaying session where all the PCs were at a party he managed to get bribed five times to do the same thing... once he knew what he was going to do he went to as many people as he thought would agree with it, and took bribes to do it anyway. )

Sometimes the Adventuring game was doing missions for the political group. There were actually two parties of adventurers, though only the one group of players, one of which was the Goblin Adventuring Party, also called 'The Flying Garbonzo Brothers' following an incident where they were swinging, leaping, and pole vaulting into a castle.... These chaotic good goblins were a huge embarrassment to the paladin Regent that they were working for, but they were trying so hard to be the good guys.

It was the most fun that I ever had under 2nd ed. and I still consider running it again, every now and then.

The Auld Grump

 

[irdeggman]

I either ran or played in no less than than 5 different versions of 2nd ed BR.

I dabbled in an on-line 3.5 one that died far too quickly.

Personnally I think the 3.5 version at Birthright.net does work fairly well, even though there are things that need some real tweaking - like ruling a province domain action (far too powerful IMO). The 2nd ed domain level mechanics were really a d20 based one at that. The 2nd ed multiclassing system doesn't translate at all well into 3.5 and the RP gained based on class system won't work at all, IMO, for a 3.5 mindset. That is one of the reasons for the shift to skill based RP collection in the BRCS instead.

Cry Havoc has a good system of mass combat that could be readily ported into BR (in fact there was a download on the Birthright.net site where someone had done some Cry Havoc conversions of standard units).

Fields of Blood is a another good book that has mechanics for domain rulership and mass combat that could be used. Although it has nothing that would connect to bloodlines for rulership - unlike the BRCS (the moniker used for the 3.5 Birthright rules at BR.net).

IMO the UA bloodlines do not work at all well for capturing scions. The concept does work well for capturing anwsheghlien transformation, IMO. The UA bloodlines are based on a physical transformation of some kind, IMO.

 

[irdeggman]

Here is a link where you can get some "free" BR downloads from WotC.


Book of Regency and Blood Spawn are real good books to have.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads

 

[Thomas Percy]

I play BIRTHRIGHT from nearly 10 years.
IMHO it's the best campaing setting ever.

 

[Ranger REG]

Personally, I think Birthright works best if you take the rulership out of the hands of the PCs. It's not that the regency rules are broken, but they're probably the least interesting aspect of the setting.

Not to me. After doing some small-party adventuring, I wanted to do something to change and affect the game world. That means my PC must enter into a bigger, geopolitical game.

Birthright is the first simple realms management system I've seen back in the 90's. Of course, by then, I was playing Lord of the Realms on my PC. My gripe with the system is that the designers took the whole "divine right of kings" too literally (hence the "bloodline") that is crucial to the rules. It's not a bad thing ... for Cerilia as a setting, per se ... but I wanted to "lift" the rulesystem and incorporate it into my favorite campaign that doesn't have this bloodline abilities.

 

[Blastin]

I ran a two year campaign in Birthright, and a 9 month campaign. I LOVE the setting. It is the most internaly consistant campaign world I have yet to see.
It works well as a standard setting where you are just a bunch of adventurers, and it works well as a purly political game where the players are the rulers.
My favorite way to run it (and did in both campaigns) was to start the players out as "regular" adventurers and then, as they gained a rep in an area, transition them into the regent/ruler style. I'd then mix the two to the player's liking....run a few months (game time) of rulership, and then when they were getting tired of that, break into an adventure where they got to kill stuff
My players all LOVED the game. The first broke up 'cause I moved, and the second when we had some major interplayer conflict.

irdeggman.....
How is the 3.5 conversion going? I thought the 3.0 version was...ok.....but the whole culture over there on the 3.5 conversion sent me running for the hills. I would love to get a 3.5 game going, but don't have the time to do the conversion myself