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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 9000572" data-attributes="member: 6801845">I have a world map and outlines of powers but there are a lot of blank spaces.  Part of that is because the main continent is way too large, but I've been using it forever so I'm not going to change.  If I had set up something reasonable, say the size of the British Isles, it would probably be quite a bit more filled out.  On the other hand, the word "kingdom" can mean many things.  A large valley somewhere?  Monaco is an independent country (smallest if you don't count Vatican City) at less than 1 square mile.  Liechtenstein in the center of Europe is 133 square miles, with a handful of island nations like San Marino (24 square miles) somewhere in between.So again, it's a matter of scale.  So a city state like Monaco?  I can find room for that.  Even a Liechtenstein now and then, no problem. But looking at my handy dandy "100 smallest countries" chart, something like Greece (50,949 square miles and the largest country on the list) would be odd to just pop up unless it was a distant island nation.  I'd also question why we needed to add a brand new kingdom.  Why not just use one that's already been described?  Describe what kind of backstory you have and I'll give you options of where you can come from.If someone pitched an idea for a campaign where everyone starts out as wealthy, we could work something out.  But what I'm concerned with is balance.The thing is that some people don't realize they're abusing the system to the point of it being an issue.  The story I told above of the group discussing the issues we all had with their abuse of the noble background?  When we had the intervention, the guy seemed to be genuinely surprised.  They didn't realize they were being, for lack of a better term, a power hog that was dominating combat.I don't think the guy who abused his background was a bad guy.  He was just not very aware of the impression and impact it had on other players.  It was like everyone playing an online video game but one person was using cheat codes to give themselves a powerup.  The issue wasn't the level of power so much as it was the imbalance.  In my experience people like to feel like they're contributing equally.I certainly try to have background matter even if I don't use it as much as I could.  I've just never figured out how to have backgrounds have significant impact, not just being helpful bonuses either mechanically or RP wise, without getting too meta-gamey.  If the group all had ties to wealth or power, we could probably come up with some system for accountability. Yes, you have access to the royal treasury but that treasury comes from taxes so there are limits to how much can be spent and why.  Or yes, you have connections to the local militia but their power is not unlimited so use them wisely.  You'd have to have some kind of resource pool, probably something pulled in from another system (I know there are some superhero systems that implement some of this).So it could work.  I may even discuss it as an option when discussing our next campaign if I had a system to handle everyone in the group having access to powerful outside influences.  But part of the fun of D&D is going from zero to hero for a lot of people, myself included.  Not sure what that journey would look like if I was already heir to the throne.</blockquote>

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