Regency, scions, and LTs--variant systems

Dungeons & Dragons BRCS 3.0/3.5 Edition
1

I had a thought today that might be useful in various BR games.

BR rules have always acknowledged the possibility of such events as Great Captain/Heresy and rebellions. These are rather hard to explain inside the normal Regency system. How did those folks get enough RP or GB to do such things, or, more importantly, outside of DM fiat or the rather random event resolution rules, how are they sustained?

The rules do give a method of handling them–more of a negative approach, where if the PC fails to resolve the issue adequately on the resolution table or doesn’t succeed in Agitate or suchlike, it gets worse, etc.

However, what if, just as a general rule of thumb, the various nobles and scions mattered a little more to rulers mechanically as well as just thematically?

What I figured was that all established nobles with some sort of domain (titled Counts, guild leaders over provinces or regents, bishops or prelates, etc) can be considered to gain a small amount of RP each season? I was thinking generally 1RP for minor bloodlines, 2RP for major, 3RP for great. The size of the domain doesn’t really matter much, because these folks are normally vassals of the true regents and effectively give over all of the RP income from their provinces or holdings to their regent. The source of the RP is essentially divine influence and power just inherently generated by being blooded and having an established connection to some sort of domain, whether as nominal , “assumed” vassals or as Lieutenants.

This scenario allows PCs who are not yet regents to have a couple of RPs to spend on actions, to ascend the throne with a few, and for NPCs to occasionally cause trouble or provide a boon to a regent if he has done something worthy to win the NPC’s help.

In the case of Great Captain events or rebellions, the associated scions (if any) would be effectively usurping all of the RP from the holdings or provinces involved in their actions, providing them with another source.

As for GB income, the Player’s Secrets I think rightly assume that there exist substantial land and money-generating assets outside the holdings system. Various NPCs, then, depending upon their assets, could also generate seasonal GB. This would probably range from 0.5GB per season to 2 or 3GB, usually staying on the low end, and all depending on how rich or extensive the lands and assets of the NPC are.

Of course, these incomes are normally low-level background incomes that can be assumed to be spent pretty continually. They become useful as a guideline when a non-regent PC or an NPC wants to get involved at the domain level with something, and the guidelines can then be used to help determine how much the character has accumulated to spend, and then if the involvement continues past a season, how much more they generate.

Does this sound useful to anyone?

Does anyone else have ideas or systems that accomplish similar goals, or do you just use DM fiat when necessary?

2

In a message dated 5/21/2008 7:04:59 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET writes:

Does this sound useful to anyone?

It does, it does!

Does anyone else have ideas or systems that accomplish similar goals, or do
you just use DM fiat when necessary?

So far, I`ve just used fiat.

Lee.

3

I figure that lower level leaders make half of the regency and all of the money of the higher rakning leaders. Then over-leaders make half the regency and half the money, but they would only exist if there were an Emperor or if the Imperial Temple were re-united, or if we’re talking about Gunther Brandt or Gretta Seligsdotter.

4

So your holdings and province levels effectively generate 50% more RP and twice the GB? That’s interesting. How do you assume most of that is expended? There could be some large private armies that way, unless there are lots of lower level leaders.

5

Generally the extra money and RP go to making the game work they way it already does (instead of just adding your holdings, your subordinates are paying their own RP) fighting off their own challenges, and doing their own thing. There is not any more money in the game any more than there is when I use the DMG to calculate the amount of wealth in a town.

6

I went for a 1/3 and 2/3 rule in my last 2 campaigns, actually. What I mean was, the lesser nobles got a total of 1/3 of the province level, and 2/3 of the law in the province. However, this often got divided amongst the Count, if there was one, and then the other lesser nobles, meaning that each usually only got 1 rp or so.

Gold income would be about 2/3 of the law levels, but again, split up amongst a number of lesser families. This means that usually, individual lords and knights may have a squad or two of men-at-arms, but that’s it.

7

Wouldn’t this encourage the formation of larger, unified kingdoms over the use of oaths of vassalage?

For example, in a campaign I’m in, the PCs all want a piece of the action ruling land in one realm where one PC is duke. However, if they were counts who work under the lord (like the counts mentioned in the player’s secrets of Roesone, where the lord has his name on holdings and they’re effectively wheels in the machine), according to the official rules they collect absolutely nothing.

Under normal rules, the ruler would have to invest the other pc with a province or two and then ask for a piece of the profits - this weakens the pc duke since he’s giving away a portion of his realm, gb and rp generation, and the pc vassal is giving away a portion of his collections as well.

If I follow your numbers correctly, then using your system I could just make them general underling-cog-barons in the grand duchy without even making them semi-independent vassals, and not only would the duke continue to collect full RP and GB, but the counts/barons/underlings would also get their full share of GB, at the small cost of half RP (parts of that would normally go to the overlord anyway).

On top of that, if a third tier of ruler shows up (emperor, etc) then he gets another free shot on top of all that. Is that different from a vassalage agreement, and if so whose name is on the holdings? I read it as the emperor doesn’t actually own the lands and such (the mid level holders do since they’re the ones that get 100%), but since he’s nominally over them he gets a boost even without a oath of vassalage passing on the earnings.

I would love some kind of system that gives lower tier nobles some GB and regency so pcs could work under the main landed pc without crippling him, but this seems even superior to vassalage. What is the balance?

8

The standard game assumes you want to play domain regents, so it provides rules for that. It doesn’t say that counts get nothing, in fact it implies they do, but the realm system just doesn’t want the burden of that kind of complexity.

And I agree. The bookkeeping for all three levels of governance would be a headache.

Normally I prefer to play at the count level, do my bookkeeping at that level and just estimate roughly what the domain sized folks are doing.

Does it encourage the formation of larger, unified kingdoms? Sure. These territories are very small. No one has a territory as large as the Duchies of Brittany, York, or Burgundy. Let alone territories the size of smallish kingdoms like Aragon or Scotland.

9

I don’t know how much emphasis/trust you put on the Player’s Secrets as canon, but in the PS of Roesone (pg 8), it gives mention of Count Sedrie Bellamie, and then claims “The Bellamie family are blooded scions, but the count is not a vassal regent and gains no regency for holding land in the baron’s name.”

10

In the past I’ve used an system dividing each province into estates held by the minor nobility of the realm. A province had one estate pr. level, giving a level 5 province five estates. These were run basically as a standard realm, but all income were divided by ten. This opened for relatively powerful vassals in cases where one noble had multiple estates in one or more provinces.

This was a fast and dirty patch to allow for a level of play my players wanted, but I’ve also seen other systems that used similar mechanics.