Birthright??

[DanMcS]

I love Birthright, and it's the setting I like to run in best. I'm currently running it using Pathfinder.

I recall Birthright being one of the examples used when insiders talked about late-era TSR mismanagement- the books had high production values and slim to no profit margins. So it was financially DOA.

Conceptually, Birthright was a hybrid in the worst sense.

As a setting for adventurers, it didn't offer much that you couldn't get in Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or one of the other dozen settings that were out by then, and many people already had their favorite.

As a nation-building wargame, it was cool, but nothing you couldn't get from Diplomacy or some other nation-level wargame.

The card-based battle rules were not well-received.

It added at least two extra rulesets to character building (bloodline powers and domain rules) to a game which is already pretty complicated. For my current game, I trimmed the bloodline rules down to about 3 pages of feats and character progression, and I trimmed the domain rules down to maybe 2 pages. And I still I had players not interested in them. The original rulebook was, what, 96 pages?

The domain rules were too complicated for the number of NPCs a GM would have to manage; the universal advice from players on handling NPC domains was to handwave them, because it would be too tedious to meticulously track every possible domain.

I think it would have been better received as kingdom rules for Greyhawk, FR, et al. But I'm glad they published it, and I enjoy the books I have.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I found Birthright to have a lot of good ideas, (bloodlines, management of domains) a great map, (lots of forest/mountain areas, which was nice after Greyhawk) and a lot of oppotunities for character advancement.

But being a regent was not that much fun. IT gave the DM a way to track what was going on behind the scenes in a semi-rulelike way, but for actually running domains, it was not much fun. I ran a few campaigns there, but all of them were just normal campaigns set in the world, and they were great fun. I liked the domain rules for how it added to the DM's background management of the world. That was nice to have.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I will say that domain management taught me how to use Excel.

Brad

 

[nightwyrm]

Our group is planning a 4e game using the birthright setting. I'm not sure how the DM is going to deal with the birthright-specific rules and the ruling your own country thing, but after reading the 2e stuff, I'm not too optimistic about the whole adaptation. It seems rather complicated and tedious. Seems kinda like playing a round of Dominion or Agricola between adventures.

 

[gamerprinter]

When we played Birthright, rather that each player being a different king, we were senior officers of the court all serving a single king, as in the Cleric was the Archbishop, the Ranger was the Warden, the Fighter was the Field Marshall, the Wizard was the Grand Vizier, the Rogue was Guildmaster of Thieves, etc. Each month, rolls were made as to events, as per domain rules, with requirements set by the King, then the PC party would organize their underlings to handle day to day business, while we went on missions to handle sovereign business. When war came up, we organized our forces and worked together to overcome the opposition.

So we played using the same concepts but kept it tighter and easier to manage as we were of all the same sovereignty. It worked better than each player being kings of separate kingdoms. We had a lot of fun.

GP

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Well the production values were amazing for the time - the boxed set came with nice rulebooks, a full color poster map or 3, army cards,, and a nice DM Screen with that full-color painting on the outside - it probably did lose money but it was a very striking set and made a strong impression. Also it came out in 1995 so it wasn't right at the end of the TSR run, but looking back that might have been the last plateau for them.

I liked the background for the most part - the "Archvillain" style monsters like the gorgon and the spider fit a lot of fantasy fiction very well - it's more high fantasy than sword and sorcery but it should work in D&D quite well. The destruction of the gods and the creation of the bloodlines gives a nice spic historical feel and then links it directly to the PC's. The emphasis on domains with actual mechanical support is a nice change and when added to the bloodlines and the big bads gives the world a unique feel.

Now mechanically the bllodline powers were pretty simple to handle, but domains were an entirely separate system and didn't really interact a ton with the rest of D&D at the time. This made it easier in many cases to just ignore it which I think hurt the game. Better integration mechanically and even some simplification would have led to more use of the domains in actual campaigns. I think 4E could do this better with it's new design philosophy - maybe we'll get a chance to see down the road. My take is that although it may not apply in a realistic sense, in a D&D sense being "the king" should always be a benefit to your character, never a hindrance. Wealth, some kind of inherent bonuses, power boosts tied to paragon paths - there have to be some ways to do it.

Mass combat was done in kind of a clunky way - it was a sort of card game with stats for different units on cards which were positioned on a poster map / battle mat kind of thing - yet another new subsystem that looked complicated and played a little clunky which led to a lot of handwaving. If it had come back for 3E it would have been cool to see it supported with some kind of miniatures play but realistically you need a non-gadget way of handling mass combat for D&D to really integrate it and have people use it.

The marketing was strong at the start - Dragon had big foldout ads in full color and they talked about ruling a domain and all of the things that made it different. They did that part right. Later though...with 5 major nations, putting each one out as a boxed set was probably a mistake - I know I struggled to gather them back then as it seemed like they took forever to come out. In the meantime we were also buried under a seemingly endless set of "players secrets of x" supplements that were short on content and tough to distinguish from one another (wikipedia says there were only 15 of them but it seemed like more). I think this helped kill interest in the line too as it was too much detail too fast for a brand new setting.

Overall I think timing was a factor - if it had launched about 1990 and been handled as say 2nd edition's "Eberron" (as Eberron was to 3E) then I think it would have fared better although the mechanical complexity tied into Domains and Mass Combat would have impacted its popularity. There isn't anything inherently wrong or weak as far as the concepts behind it - big progenitor archviallian monsters who control chunks of the main continent (some of whom are fallen heroes), an emphasis on running nations controlled by semi-divine player characters , adventuring to further your nation's position in the world and possibly for political reasons - it can make for a really interesting campaign that runs a little deeper than our traditional looting games. It could have been positioned as truly "Advanced" D&D - bigger stakes, bigger responsibilites. more power - but it ended up positioned as "one more option among many" and as the youngest of the 2E worlds it never matured enough to deserve a revisit by the company.

If WOTC sticks to the one campaign world per year plan they have followed for 4E (although 2011's announced schedule so far makes this a little murky) AND 4E has several more years left to run then I think Birthright is worth a revisit. One book or box on the world with paragon paths and epic destinies and maybe a domain system, one book of monsters detailing the big bads and some of the different Cerilia versions of regular monsters, plus an adventure and you're good. Make Heroic Tier = "you're one of the royal family", Paragon = "you're the heir apparent" and Epic = "you're the ruler". In this world you're not going to spend your Epic levels gallivanting off in the Nine Hells, you're going to spend them gathering your armies and meeting The Gorgon head on as he tries to invade your realm! There's a certain segment of the D&D crowd that that's going to appeal to. Whether that segment is enough to justify putting it out again, I can't say but I would play it and I would run it so there's one vote.

This is a fairly lengthy post I realize, but Birthright was something I really liked when it came out and looking back I realize it's one of the directions D&D could have gone that was stifled mainly due to business problems, not flaws inherent to the concept. It's not a new or even an uncommon story in RPG's, but this one in particular bothers me as it had and still has potential untapped.

 

[Thanael]

In my case, I got into the world as 3E was approaching. I bought the early 2nd Edition books, but was out of D&D at the time and didn't get back until 3E.

I thought about trying it in 3E, but it never seemed to fit well. I was going to try to "back up" into 2nd edition and started a character generation session, but after a session of attempts we decided we didn't feel like going back and trying to learn 2E, it was just too much to deal with for a one-off campaign.

That said, I do love the world and the concepts. Still, it's being so strongly tied to 2nd edition it was doomed it for our group.

There is a 3E conversion on Birthright.net.

 

[gamerprinter]

I find it strange that so many people consider 3e or Pathfinder a bad fit for Birthright. Other than the domain rules and monster rulers which are specific to the setting, Cerelia is pretty much a vanilla setting - I can't really think of any fantasy RPG it wouldn't fit and not have to require any shoehorning. It would seem to be a straight and easy fit to 3e or Pathfinder, even 4e for that matter, as the systems mechanics are separate from the setting itself.

I find it odd is all that you'd think otherwise...

GP

 

[Orius]

And there are the bloodline rules from UA which were probably inspired by the setting in the first place:

Bloodlines :: d20srd.org

Hmm, and all those domain rules on Birthright.net I may have to crib for use in my own campaign. I've already ripped bits and pieces of Birthright that were either in Dragon or the free downloads on WotC, but they didn't give me a complete picture of the sturcture of the rules.

 

[Glyfair]

There is a 3E conversion on Birthright.net.

I am aware of that project, but it didn't really click for me.