How to handle land holding PCs?

[A2Z]

Has anyone ran a game where the PCs are land holders? I'm trying to figure out how I should handle this. It seems to me there are three very important considerations.

1) How much land does a holding actually comprise?
2) How much income does it generate?
3) How much man power is available (mounted warriors/militia/farmers and craftsmen)

So, has anyone dealt with something like this in their game? Or are there any game books around with rules to steal?

 

[Woas]

Yes. The characters in the game I run are landholding vassals. To figure out how many serfs/villagers they ruled over I used the wonder Medieval Demographics Made Easy website, located at: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

 

[kigmatzomat]

Expeditious Retreat Press : Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe
Get it.

It won I dunno how many awards when it came out but is an excellent supplement for deciding populations, craftsmen, profit, expenses, etc that can be used to drive stories. Also includes a functional and clean building construction system that takes maybe 3 pages of text (mostly tables) and can really be boiled down to one slightly complicated formula.

 

[A2Z]

Yes. The characters in the game I run are landholding vassals. To figure out how many serfs/villagers they ruled over I used the wonder Medieval Demographics Made Easy website, located at: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

Ooh! That's good, thanks!

Expeditious Retreat Press : Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe
Get it.

It won I dunno how many awards when it came out but is an excellent supplement for deciding populations, craftsmen, profit, expenses, etc that can be used to drive stories. Also includes a functional and clean building construction system that takes maybe 3 pages of text (mostly tables) and can really be boiled down to one slightly complicated formula.

I remember that book now. It got some great reviews, I wonder if I can find it now.

 

[Quartz]

Perhaps a silly question, but does it actually matter to your game?

 

[DreadArchon]

Perhaps a silly question, but does it actually matter to your game?

Yeah, that's a pretty silly question. I'd think that the PC's would get frustrated if you wrote "small fiefdom" on their item list and didn't let them interact with it at all.

 

[frankthedm]

Depends on alignment of PCs. Be kind and make coppers hand over fist, Be neutral and make plenty of silver or be evil tyrants and squeeze a few hundred gold a month from the people's misery until the real heroes show up.

Given loot adventuring tends to make, by the time PCs are strong enough to be land owners, the profits should not be worth it compared to dungeon crawling.

 

[Ourph]

Yeah, that's a pretty silly question. I'd think that the PC's would get frustrated if you wrote "small fiefdom" on their item list and didn't let them interact with it at all.

I don't know. I see Quartz's point. It's not necessary to figure out land area, militia contingent or monthly profit down to the last acre, head or silver piece in order for the PC to interact with his domain.

Personally, I like figuring all that stuff out, but if I were a player in this situation I wouldn't expect the DM to have everything catalogued and documented if it wasn't fun for him and wasn't going to have any significant bearing on the game. I might ask if I could do it on my own (with his approval) but I wouldn't expect someone else to do that much work for so little in-game payoff.

 

[DreadArchon]

I don't know. I see Quartz's point. It's not necessary to figure out land area, militia contingent or monthly profit down to the last acre, head or silver piece in order for the PC to interact with his domain.

Meh, I guess I put too much of my own view in that (i.e. too little of other likely views). I've played Galactic Civilizations II a bit much, I'd be doing some serious tweaking if I was allowed land.

"Okay, how much would it cost me to subsidize training programs for my commoners? And what productivity can I get from crafting personnel--will I be able to have people training on spears and using light armor, or should I look into monk training? What would it cost me to hire some monks to train my peasants?"

 

[A2Z]

Yeah, that's a pretty silly question. I'd think that the PC's would get frustrated if you wrote "small fiefdom" on their item list and didn't let them interact with it at all.

Exactly. I'd like to meet the player's who wouldn't want to know how much phat loot their peasant farmers generate for them. Or how many of them can hold a sword and suck up damage.