lyndon@pobox.com (Lyndon
05-29-1999, 04:42 PM
One of the things I'd like to see is realm-ruling rules for other
worlds than Aebrynis.
This would need adaption, depending on how soggy with divine
or other power the lands and characters are, but people were founding
realms on Aebrynis, raising armies, building up cities and temples,
founding trade routes, etc. before the old gods died.
They weren't mastering sources, or casting realm spells of
either wizardly or priestly sorts (though the old gods could have
granted Tome of Magic type Quest spells, which are similar), but stuff
was going on!
A passage in the Glossography for the World of Greyhawk that I bought
in 1985 is (taking the line that this is a translation of a
centuries-old work from Oerth) "The Sage's work was not widely
circulated during his lifetime. ... (it was rediscovered) several
centuries later, when a copy was discovered in an Illithid's lair in
the Riftcanyon. This copy eventually found its way to the Royal
University at Rel Mord, where it was examined by Pluffet Smedger, the
Elder, a scholar and historian. ... To aid his study ... Smedger the
Elder created mathematical models, or games, that he used with his
students at the university to recreate and examine historical events
and political interactions described by the Sage."
While a variety of companies have done a lot of character-level
mathematical models (games), and there are bunches of army-level
models, fun kingdom-scale models of historical and political
interactions have been rare. Birthright comes closest to the Ideal
Set of Rules I've been looking for to run a sweep of history across
years and generations. (Chaosium's Pendragon of course has lots of
ideas, and assumes a decades, or generations long campaign, though in
practice most players bog down in adventurer-level detail).
One of the things Birthright does very well is model a realm where the
ruler is not in total control of everything in every province of the
realm. In real life most historic realms tended to have the rulers'
powers decline sharply once one was out of sight of the king, army and
tax collectors. Birthright's having economic, religious, magical and
law sources in a variety of other hands nicely models this mess.
Lyndon the slightly less long-winded
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worlds than Aebrynis.
This would need adaption, depending on how soggy with divine
or other power the lands and characters are, but people were founding
realms on Aebrynis, raising armies, building up cities and temples,
founding trade routes, etc. before the old gods died.
They weren't mastering sources, or casting realm spells of
either wizardly or priestly sorts (though the old gods could have
granted Tome of Magic type Quest spells, which are similar), but stuff
was going on!
A passage in the Glossography for the World of Greyhawk that I bought
in 1985 is (taking the line that this is a translation of a
centuries-old work from Oerth) "The Sage's work was not widely
circulated during his lifetime. ... (it was rediscovered) several
centuries later, when a copy was discovered in an Illithid's lair in
the Riftcanyon. This copy eventually found its way to the Royal
University at Rel Mord, where it was examined by Pluffet Smedger, the
Elder, a scholar and historian. ... To aid his study ... Smedger the
Elder created mathematical models, or games, that he used with his
students at the university to recreate and examine historical events
and political interactions described by the Sage."
While a variety of companies have done a lot of character-level
mathematical models (games), and there are bunches of army-level
models, fun kingdom-scale models of historical and political
interactions have been rare. Birthright comes closest to the Ideal
Set of Rules I've been looking for to run a sweep of history across
years and generations. (Chaosium's Pendragon of course has lots of
ideas, and assumes a decades, or generations long campaign, though in
practice most players bog down in adventurer-level detail).
One of the things Birthright does very well is model a realm where the
ruler is not in total control of everything in every province of the
realm. In real life most historic realms tended to have the rulers'
powers decline sharply once one was out of sight of the king, army and
tax collectors. Birthright's having economic, religious, magical and
law sources in a variety of other hands nicely models this mess.
Lyndon the slightly less long-winded
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