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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 10, 2014 21:56:41 GMT -5
One of the ideas I was toying with is to add in the idea of cadet clans, which would be minor branches of the major clans. What this would do is make a player's vassals be under the control of another player. At present the vassalage hierarchy is as follows: CHUO-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Agawa (Ikeda clan) -- Lord of Midori (Ishikawa clan) -- Lord of Oharu (Hashimoto clan)
HOKUSEI-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Sasaguri (Ikeda clan) -- Lord of Akiota (Oshiro clan) ---- Lord of Otawara (Takahashi Clan) -- Lord of Odai (Tanaka Clan)
HOKUTO-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Tamamura (Yamashita clan) -- Lord of Mihama (Ogawa clan) ---- Lord of Masaki (Ishii clan)
NANSEI-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Kodama (Watanabe clan) -- Lord of Fukuchi (Abe clan) -- Lord of Agari Retto (Maeda clan) -- Lord of Yamaki (Mori Clan)
NANTO-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Yamaguchi (Nishimura clan) -- Lord of Hinohara (Takagi clan) -- Lord of Sakaide (Miura clan) -- Lord of Yurihama (Takeuchi clan)
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 10, 2014 22:12:44 GMT -5
But, what if some of those vassal clans are minor branches of the major clans, owing allegiance to the head of the major clan as well. The the hierarchy looks something like this (with the colours indicating related clans)
CHUO-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Agawa (Ikeda clan) -- Lord of Midori (Ishikawa clan) -- Lord of Oharu (Hashimoto clan)
HOKUSEI-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Sasaguri (Ikeda clan) -- Lord of Akiota (Oshiro clan) ---- Lord of Otawara (Takahashi Clan) -- Lord of Odai (Tanaka Clan)
HOKUTO-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Tamamura (Yamashita clan) -- Lord of Mihama (Ogawa clan) ---- Lord of Masaki (Ishii clan)
NANSEI-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Kodama (Watanabe clan) -- Lord of Fukuchi (Abe clan) -- Lord of Agari Retto (Maeda clan) -- Lord of Yamaki (Mori Clan)
NANTO-DO Paramount Lord/Lord of Yamaguchi (Nishimura clan) -- Lord of Hinohara (Takagi clan) -- Lord of Sakaide (Miura clan) -- Lord of Yurihama (Takeuchi clan)
Note: I just assigned the colours randomly, and the above is likely nothing like the way such assignments would end up looking like.
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 10, 2014 22:26:31 GMT -5
There are a couple of options on how to handle the cadet clans rules-wise. 1. They are fully controlled by the major clan player (effectively each player has several realms, some of which are vassals of other players) 2. They are treated as vassals of the parent clan (i.e. NPCs who generally do as the player wishes) 3. They are treated as vassals of the local Paramount Lord, but the parent clan has a lot of influence over them (i.e. a major bonus to Diplomacy, etc.)
What do you guys think of this idea?
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Post by Valdemarstor on Jan 10, 2014 22:31:06 GMT -5
My gut instinct is to keep it simple. Birthright seems complicated enough for inexperienced players.
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 10, 2014 22:37:27 GMT -5
Well option #2 would keep it simple, effectively just making each realm not geographically contiguous, its vassals would be scattered across the map..
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Post by Valdemarstor on Jan 11, 2014 10:33:01 GMT -5
Fair enough. I can certainly get behind non-contiguous territories since, historically, that was pretty typical in medieval societies.
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 11, 2014 11:15:10 GMT -5
After thinking about it overnight, given the likelihood of our not having a lot of players, the non-contiguous realms would likely just result in the game consisting of players consolidating their positions by conquering each others' vassals, and just result in effectively the regional setup that we have to begin with so there really wouldn't be all that much point to it. So, the idea I have come up with to still retain the clan-oriented flavour I am after is to define each clan's relationship with each other clan.
I am thinking that 4 or 5 degrees of relationship would suffice, with each degree of relation giving a bonus to diplomatic type actions between the clans. Something like this
RELATIONSHIP BONUS Close blood +4 Distant blood +3 Close marriage +2 Distant marriage +1 Unrelated ±0
This would have the added advantage of not eliminating the other landed domains as viable player positions as well. Also, since the the characters holding the various Temple and Source domains would be members of a clan, the relationship bonuses would apply to interactions dealing with those as well.
The idea could even be extended to military affairs as the clan relationship might have an affect on morale or the likelihood of the troops following orders, but that is just a vague idea at the moment and needs a deal more thought before anything concrete comes of it.
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Post by Oshiro Yasuo - Osh (Tudor) on Jan 11, 2014 16:18:52 GMT -5
I never played birthright so I don't know if my proposition will be in the game direction, but why we don't play as cadet clans of a single paramount lord. We will need to cooperate, to a certain extend, to put the paramount lord as emperor and we as new paramount lords (so we against the world).
Again, if this is not the feel of the game, sorry for the proposition.
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 11, 2014 17:31:40 GMT -5
That's a perfectly viable model for a game. It is one that I considered, but I decided against it because the Paramount Lords are not really all that much more powerful than some of the vassals, more just a "first among equals" sort of thing.
However, if we refocus it from the regional power bases to a clan-focus, combining that with the idea of spreading the cadet clans around the map, it could work quite well actually. it would also have the advantage of allowing players to join in later on by taking over one of the NPC faction positions.
I rather like this idea. What does everybody else think?
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Post by Valdemarstor on Jan 11, 2014 19:41:10 GMT -5
More NPCs appeals to me for a few reasons: * More regents means more interesting balancing/diplomacy * More opportunities for new players * Theoretically smaller domains for each player, so less work; this may, in fact, not be in the case depending on how you scale it
The chief drawback that I see is the extra burden on you. You've mentioned at birthright.net that you have lots of spare time; the extra burden may not be a big deal for you.
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 11, 2014 20:29:10 GMT -5
No, the time is not an issue for me, and if it turns out to be so I can always recruit one of the players to take care of some of the bookeeping. I have done a bit of number crunching and have come up with five roughly balanced factions
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Post by Oshiro Yasuo - Osh (Tudor) on Jan 11, 2014 20:48:29 GMT -5
So, we choose a faction or a region to pick the different cadet clans?
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 11, 2014 21:01:54 GMT -5
Well, assuming that the cooperative idea is a go with everybody we will first have to see if there is anybody who wants to play a temple, Guild, or Source domain, and then we will pick a faction (or more) based on the number of players. For example, if there are 4 players wanting to play a landed domain, then we will play one of the 4-clan factions, and if there are 6, then we will have two of the 3-clan factions in play, and so on.
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Post by Bob (DM) on Jan 11, 2014 21:04:05 GMT -5
Actually, if we can get two factions with PC regents, that would be a lot of fun.
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Post by Tanaka Kozo -Tnk (Tristan) on Jan 12, 2014 15:54:54 GMT -5
If you are going to go with players working co-operatively in factions it may be worthwhile to have multiple agenda levels. For example if we are playing two factions in one region where the Paramount Lord has passed away with no heirs there could be: Global Agenda - preserve the region from outside domination (i.e. don't allow someone external to take over). Faction Agenda - have a landed regent leading as the Paramount Lord, lead merchant clan, etc., (1 agenda for each holding type). Individual Agendas - tailored to each domain.
At the organic end of the story the winning faction is the one that has the most faction agendas completed (with Paramount Lord as a tiebreaker) and the winning player is the player in the winning faction with the most (or biggest) individual agendas completed.
This way you get faction vs. faction conflict, but (hopefully) if a faction is clearly dominant the players within that faction will start to backstab each other to ensure that they come out on top.
With the standard (at least in ROE1/2) reward that winning means you get to help drive the direction of the story.
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