Witness3's Guide to writing Birthright-esque adventures

Case 1: You are a king, a pope, a guilder, a wizard who has inherited a name that has been going on for centuries. What are you going to do? Travel from village to village asking if there are goblins to hunt? Tavern brawls? Why get your hands dirty for 100 gold if your guild makes 12,000 a month?

Case 2: You’re playing a fighter, and, since you are a modern player you spent 2 sleepless nights building an optimized 90 HP damage single attack. The first mass battle arrives, you can’t use any of your skills, because the DM will not risk having a single character killing the whole army by himself as it would break the game. Or maybe you're a thief, who has done the group a favor by putting all your skill points in searching for traps and hiding, only to discover that the most dangerous traps may be a province threatening a rebellion because you raised too much taxes.

Case 3: You are a DM. You have just realized that 90% of your quests start from the king or a court wizard who assigns dangerous missions to adventurers. Except now your players are the king or the court wizard, not the adventurers. What to do?

These three cases to me are the two souls of birthright. Giving up on either one basically means giving up on birthright. If the regent is a normal adventurer, you are playing D&D with a different setting, but you are not really playing birhtright. On the other hand, if you had characters made, sooner or later your players must use them, otherwise it would not be birthright, but a hybrid between Risk, Grayhawk Wars and Game of Thrones.
I will give you some ideas to overcome this dilemma and propose a game experience that is both Birthright-esque and not just "D&D with blood feats". We will build a small railroad adventure, then we will see how these adventures are not as linear as they seem, thanks to domain mechanics.

What we are going to do is:

• Extend common d&d props using birthright's look & feel
  
• Show alternative interactions with NPCs
  
• Mix D&D and domain actions
  

I will try to write a little railroad adventure, using some typical d&d props. I use the term Prop to identify clichés that help us build an adventure. The dungeon is a prop, the tavern is a prop, as is the brawl in the tavern or "the sinister figure approaching you in an alley".
You need to take these elements into consideration when changing props:

1. Think big - where would you put a village, put a province, where would you put a province, put a kingdom.
   
2. Birthright is a role-playing wargame, try to give a military touch to situations. Besiege a city? Good. Storm on a castle? Better. Clean sewers from dire rats? No thanks. Remember: the temple of elemental evil is not explored, it is besieged.
   

The motivations of an adventurer are obvious: to become stronger, to become richer, to survive, to solve a personal quest linked to his background.
On Birthright the reasons for a domain to move his assets, or for a king to go on a quest, may be duty, politics, manifest destiny, or culture. The duty is the responsibility towards the people, politics is to perform actions that benefit from more than one domain; manifest destiny may be the will of a god or the simple desire of the Anuirean Throne / the title of Lord of the Vos / reform the Brecht League / become the new king of the Khinasi. Culture is the most interesting part, it means going to see what expectations the dynasty of a regent has on him, or what themes are considered national aspirations, such as Diemed's reconquest of Medoere, or defeating Rhuobhe for Boeruine. That’s why we love to fill the Birthright wiki with history!

Let’s use motivations to create an adventure:

In terms of game mechanics, rewards usually mean: experience points, magic items, money, plus some items such as assets or just fame.
On Birthright you can also add regency points, assets, holding levels, military units, land, blood, reputation and why not, even a noble title. Being the Count of Binder gives you the right to aspire to the imperial throne, this makes the Duchess Eriene Mierelen of Brosengae, the current title owner, an interesting target for a wedding or a vassalage.

"You have just arrived in a village." How many times have you heard it? On birthright, your court is the village: it will be one of the courtiers, or a hearing with a local noble or dignitary, to inform you of important news. The king does not ask, the king replies! the quests seek him and not the other way around. A wizard can suddenly appear during a banquet, a god appearing to the regent in a dream: So it was with Roele and that was the beginning of the anuirean empire!
I love using random events to start a quest: an astral coincidence, a festival, or a wedding, or why not, the coronation of the new regent. Something could go wrong, which may be a good reason to investigate...

Let’s have our players find the quest:

A king does not have a party, he has a realm at his service. Domain actions can be seen as real skills, with which the regent may act on a vast territory such as provinces. Use actions as narrative generators and not only for domain sheet stats, let the players with their courtiers develop a strategy and make the best use of their assets. Just like in normal adventures, it won't be a single action that dictates the story.

A Birthright-esque fight must be prepared and organized following extra criteria compared to a normal fight:

• Players will rarely go around alone;
  
• Any player can always use domain assets (army, spells) to completely skip the fight.
  

To balance encounters, try to keep these key points in mind:

1. Soldiers or followers of players should be 0-level (if your system allows), first, second or third level max; reserve third level for special military orders such as knights or elite infantry.
   
2. You can always raise the action DC or even block domain actions: anti-magic camps, lookouts for which the enemies run away when the army arrives, enemies too strong for which the price in human lives can be very high.
   
3. About 80% of a modern editions character's abilities are combat; it may be time for players to showcase their skills, feats and builds.
   

Either way, you need a skirmish system. Your fights will average 20 elements vs 30 or so, you can't expect to handle them individually. I do not recommend the war card/3e mass battle system, unless you find a way to integrate classic combat (see point n.3 of the list above). It is important that your system allows you to manage clashes between large groups of people, as well as clashes between individuals and groups of people: the players, after giving orders to their soldiers, will want to fight openly.

In classical game geography there usually is a village with one or more dungeons to explore. Inside the dungeon, the characters will find treasures and reasons to continue the adventure.
This can also be applied on Birthright, but considerations must be made:

• You have already spent much more time than normal in domain roleplay and management. At some point you will have to decide: either go to the dungeon or play Birthright;
  
• How big is a dungeon? Is it important to get there immediately? What do others do? If you are playing the "to each his own throne" mode, other players may be forced to wait their turn for sessions. If the other players don't have quests at stake, they could easily get bored;
  
• Domain actions should allow you to bypass the adventure or the dungeon.
  

First, a simple and effective solution: makes sure that players have a secondary character to play in the court of any regent, or find a way to engage the other kings in the affair.
Here is another solution: make situations less long but more intense, and reskin them with Birthright elements, such as diplomacy or military actions. Make a 3 rooms dungeon with a skirmish in and a boss, maybe a room with a small treasure but a death trap.
You can then sow the adventure moments - dungeon rooms - between various realms. After all, the characters have time and means to move. This has two benefits: you can create new political situations and use travel to make time go by and activate the next domain turn without blocking the adventure.

Remember that as a DM you don't have to compete with adventurers to get the iron throne, but you’ve got to present them with difficulties and perils. You are not obliged to respect domain levels, points or actions, even if doing so gives a sense of justice and suggests that the opponent can be truly beatable.
Two tools are available to you: random events, which you can make happen without actions and dice rolls, and
realm magic. Birthright wizards should be powerful. You can use realm spells as a narrative ploy without having to get tangled up with ley lines and source holding levels, as long as it doesn't give players an excessive disadvantage.

So far we have seen a small linear D&D adventure: the heroes investigate, fight, explore, twist, fight again. We have transformed this adventure into a Birthright adventure: the king gives orders, moves armies, makes decisions that can cost the lives of many people, finds himself having to involve nobles and realms that are anything but willing to help him, then leads his men in a mass battle.
What if the heroes in the classic adventure don't investigate? What if they don't go to the dungeon? Will the world burn? What happens if everyone dies? Game over? Adventure over?
Birthright has more possibilities than normal D&D stories:

1. There will always be a king (or a queen!) , a leader, a kingdom. To break the game you should make a deeismar-style event and make the continent disappear. Nothing prevents players from taking on the role of their successors!
   
2. Not dealing with problems has consequences, but they should never be big enough to break the game. The consequences of the adventure is the invasion of a province, nothing that cannot be resolved in a domain season;
   
3. Domain can solve things so as to avoid the whole story: the king could ally with the High Mage and destroy the source, or increase the level of civilization in the province so that the source sinks on its own, or request his state religion to find a domain spell that contains negative energy. All in 30 minutes of play.
   

• Wanderlust is cool, but there are many other reasons to leave the throne room: glory, responsibility, thirst for power, prophecies, economic opportunities, the rules of your noble household...
  
• Reward players with RP, GB, domain spells, blood points, or just plain glory. They are worth as much as experience points and magic items;
  
• Use random events and key characters from the setting to provide ideas for action - quests seek the king, not vice versa;
  
• Domain actions must allow to solve big situations that cannot be solved otherwise, to simplify small activities or to solve parts of the adventure without playing them directly. Use them as if they were skills, and allow players to use them flexibly to solve problems;
  
• Buy, steal or create a skirmish system! A good skirmish has at least 30 or 40 participants;
  
• Make sure there is room in the skirmish for individual character skills;
  
• Do not create single megalithic dungeons, but small situations of few rooms, scattered on the continent; you will allow more time to flow and you will not block the game;
  
• Do not be afraid to change or break domain actions or the rules if it serves to give an important blow to the story. Just don't create problems with unlimited resources;
  
• Do not force specific solutions or actions, let the players create alternative strategies to solve the adventure;
  
• Don't worry about how it will end, unless you blow up the planet your adventure is just one event in a thousand-year history. Other kings, other adventurers will come, and the peoples will recover.
  
• Make consequences of the adventure change the game's status quo.
  

These are some official Birthright adventures that I played as DM. If you are playing them as a player, do not read them further! I added them to further exemplify the difference between birthright adventures and normal adventures.

This is one of the tournament modules and can be found in the download section of this site.

This is one of the tournament modules and can be found in the download section of this site.