Post by barrataria on Oct 7, 2009 17:38:54 GMT -6
Sounds like I need to pick up the Companion Set. Does anyone have experiences agreeing with or contradicting Delta's problems in the comments to the Grognardia post on the Companion Set with the domain and mass-combat rules there, or better still house-rule fixes for them?
The mountains of gold is a problem, but the idea is that the characters get experience from running strongholds, so that the massive amounts of xp they need prevent them from having to go on Bloodstone Pass-type adventures. Which isn't such a bad idea, but IMO should have gone further into the abstract like the Birthright system. Rather than merely having rules for "baronies", it delved into the differences in the holdings of the various classes and their operations, such as building temples and thieves' guilds (and abstracting the management of those too... and yes I know that's irrelevant here ).
The big problem with BR's system to me is that it is card-based... MtG was all the rage, so there are cards for resolving everything from mass combat to all these "domain actions". So, as the War Machine abstracted combat, the BR domain management system abstracted those details, a little too much for my taste. Also, it's very tied to the game world so "blood magic" and "ley lines" and "realm spells" are a big part of it and therefore probably not much use to you all.
But I do like them better than the Mentzer rules which to me were not much better than hand-waving. Every hex has "resources", which are the key to its revenues. But they are determined randomly, basically, and the DM is left to figure out whether they are beehives or gold mines. Then there's a big table of "random events" with entries like "Comet 25%" or "Major Incursion 15%". And a nice statement that "space prevented detailed discussion of the entries".. which was repeated in the Rules Cyclopedia
My players always LOVED the territory-development part of AD&D, which we played straight out of the DMG (which I think in turn was lifted from the booklet you are discussing here). But that also was abstract- every barony produces the same revenue for every character of the same class.
I would love to work up a detailed campaign management system that would guide the DM on establishing the revenue sources for the world, provide guidelines on whether visitors/travellers remain to "set up shop" as they pass through the new fief, and integrate the activities of other classes and races (an elf castle? will any of the human nomads passing through stay in the new hobbit-hole? etc.). I think some of that integration could come from encouraging the development as a group adventure too... the
Of course, if the world is settled whomever actually has title to that land will not be too excited by the new "development", and that's another issue that's only been hinted at in the existing rules.
So, since I've never written one word of any of it, I expect to have a draft finished right before my funeral