The bring back Birthright thread!

Neo · Jul 14, 2004

*bumpage*.. keeping the dream alive

Brain · Jul 14, 2004

Yay Birthright!

Ranger REG · Jul 14, 2004

Personally, they should find a publisher who is dedicated and qualified to publish Birthright line. Of course, the drawback is that if that publisher fail in their duty to maintain the line, WotC will get the blame.

Steel_Wind · Jul 14, 2004

I'll add a "me too" to being inspired by Birthright to come back and have a look at TSR. While I had not left gaming, I certainly had left TSR behind in the rear view mirror.

Birthright was new. It was different. There was a concept behind it which was innovative. No mean feat for a game that have been out 20+ years.

The problem with Birthright was that it tended to appeal to the older gamer. The gamer who WAS looking for something new.

In the end its pretty simple: Brithright had the old Fatbeards attention but it just didn't appeal to the hack n slash power gamer.

You can question, debate and scream about how great the setting was all you like - but 12-16 year old kids' imagination was not captured by Birthright.

It's a mature setting for mature players - and in this case "mature" is not a synonym for "nudity/sex".

Birthright.net continues to deveolop the game - there is a decently large 3.0 beta conversion .PDF put out by the original designer of Birthright and fans continue to contribute. It a web web world out there - and no setting need die these days.

I'd buy a 3.5 hardcover for Birthright in a heartbeat...but I am not sure there are enough other people who would in order for any licensing revival to make sense.

Ramien Meltides · Jul 14, 2004

Birthright is the setting that I credit most with my continued fascination with D&D. At first, I dismissed the setting as "that place where you play as kings", but after reading through the booklets in the boxed set, I was hooked. No other setting has ever affected quite as much as Birthright. From the way you could run an entire game using the domain rules to the iconic and deep campaign world itself, Birthright inspired me.

If some company were to pick up Birthright and bring the setting into the D&D 3.5 era, add me to the pre-order list.

For those of you who don't know, Kenzer & Co. are coming out with "Hackright" for Hackmaster, which is about as close as we're likely to see, methinks. More's the pity.

Heretic Apostate · Jul 14, 2004

I've heard the suggestion of using the Arcana Unearthed rules to flesh out Birthright...

Food for thought.

Neo · Jul 14, 2004

Heretic Apostate said:
I've heard the suggestion of using the Arcana Unearthed rules to flesh out Birthright...

Food for thought.

not too keen on the bloodlines in UA myself but with some tweaking they'd work for sure. They'd need theme'ing for birthright use too.

nikolai · Jul 14, 2004

Birthright was great. The kingdom aspect of it really expanded what you could do with the game.

Has anyone heard anything about Bloodline? It looks to be a near clone of Birthright by Mongoose.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/detail.php?qsID=440&qsSeries=Bloodline

Targeteron · Jul 14, 2004

Ahh Birthright, what a great setting that is. Its the only Campaignworld i pick up over and over and over again to read. I just love it. Personally i was not a big fan of the kingom ruling part per se and i am still not. But the world itself was great. I liked the Domainbooks, too bad when it was out i was too young to buy it all, so i basicly just have the basic material, the BBEG book and my favorite domain: Rjurik Highlands. I can´t put my finger on exactly why i like it so much, but something in the descriptions about the domains just clicked with me. I could best describe it as: Just enough detail to be able to run without too much work on my own and inspire me, but not too much detail to be suffocating (wich would be the realms for me for example). Also the artwork of the books and the covers was really inspiring and could easily set the mood for the domain you where reading about.
Also the idea of the bloodlines always appealed to me. It just felt "right" that player characters which are extraordinary individuals by default have some special background wich makes them as powerfull as they are (even at 1st level).

Thanks for the link to the upcoming Moongoose Box. Sounds like a Birthright clone allright. It all depends if they can pull of a similarly engaging World, I am not such a rulejunkie. One for my watchlist for shure.

Ranger REG · Jul 14, 2004

Steel_Wind said:
I'll add a "me too" to being inspired by Birthright to come back and have a look at TSR. While I had not left gaming, I certainly had left TSR behind in the rear view mirror.

We pretty much left TSR since TSR is no more.

Steel_Wind said:
Birthright was new. It was different. There was a concept behind it which was innovative. No mean feat for a game that have been out 20+ years.

The problem with Birthright was that it tended to appeal to the older gamer. The gamer who WAS looking for something new.

Perhaps. Actually, many of us oldtimers were looking for a good political system for our lord-level PCs. To me, that was Birthright's appeal.

In fact, the good thing about discussing how we missed BR and a demand for a realm management system prompted d20 publisher to provide alternatives. Now I owned Fields of Blood: The Book of War, a toolkit that I can drop into any D&D & d20 Fantasy game that may or may not have bloodline features.