Have you run or played in campaigns that featured a PC(s) with land and a dominion? Did everyone have a stronghold or was the dominion shared amonst the party? Which edition and what kind of rules did you use? Did it affect the delivery of the campaign much and in what ways?
(http://homepage.eircom.net/~osrai/castle.jpg)
Yes. I was in a Birthright campaign. I had a Thief character and controlled the merchant stuff. The other guys ran the kingdom, the churches, and the magic. It was a lot of fun. One of the better ideas to come out of 2e.
Sure, several times (though at higher levels, not from 1st level a la birthright).
Usually the PCs have separate strongholds, but in my Eberron game they ended up co-operatively holding an extradimensional one.
In one campaign each PC had a stronghold in a city they founded - the half-orc fighter held the castle, the cleric/thief the grand hotel, the bard a sort of circus pavillion, etc.
I've done campaigns where I started them with a dominion, but in 0e/1e back in the day, characters with strongholds soon became NPCs or absentee-landlords.
Birthright was an interesting setting concept.
In one AD&D 1ed. game we took it to that level. Seperate domaines on a large island..."retired" at that point (and the other player stopped playing RPG's) so no further input...:o
shame that...
I've been through it a few times in a couple of editions, but when I'm DM I usually use the rules from the Rules Cyclopedia.
As youngsters I remember a few of the PCs having their own domain and it got sort of messy. Since this was an option fairly early in the leveling scheme, they got restless too. So at times they just appointed heirs or seneschals to oversee things when we wanted to get back to traditional adventuring.
I remember a much more successful attempt using the RC rules bolted onto AD&D. In this case, only one PC actually "owned" a domain and the other PCs occupied offices, the thief guild, etc., respectively. The scale of that campaign wasn't nearly as vast, so it was much easier to go back and forth from administering the realm and adventuring.
I guess I've used the rules more or less a handful of other times, but the above two are the extreme examples of my failures and successes. :)
In my RC D&D campaign, the PCs got strongholds (or rather, some of them did) after hitting 9th level. The cleric had a stronghold in Darokin and the halfling had one in the Five Shires. The system worked pretty well, and it made those regions (on the borders between the two countries) the "home territories" of the PCs.
RPGPundit
Yeah, we also used the Mentzer stronghold/dominion rules for "AD&D," for the most part. But we did use the AD&D table for personal followers attracted.
Quote from: Cole;416936Yeah, we also used the Mentzer stronghold/dominion rules for "AD&D," for the most part. But we did use the AD&D table for personal followers attracted.
Indeed. That's exactly what we did as well.
A few times.
And in the current long-term disaster, yes.
Though it is never based on arbitrary rules or levels. It si earned through political and social acumen.
And one of the nice things is that it puts some older PCs in a state of 'semi-played' status. Some of these PCs go back to the genesis or near the beginning of the campaign.
AS with the Bishop, the other leadership offices have mattered. The Head of the Alternative School of Magic in Igbar, one of my primary campaign loci, is a PC (and his wife) from back in the original 1984 group. The Red Eye of the Eye of Igbar (One of the largest multinational thieve's guilds) is a PC from a group that started in 1989. Garcellenti Euridious, Head of the Order of the White Paladin in Igbar, is also a member of that group.
ETC.
PCs that survice to a certain point normally collect a certain amount of political clout. And they can increase the integration of the PCs into the campaign.
Quote from: winkingbishop;416834Have you run or played in campaigns that featured a PC(s) with land and a dominion? Did everyone have a stronghold or was the dominion shared amonst the party?[/IMG]
It was in my very first campaign. This means around 1985-87, in Greyhawk, just after the Mentzer's D&D characters (with no explanation at all) were teleported from Mystara to Greyhawk and became AD&D characters.
We didn't even bothered to "conquer" the fortress or anything: it was a given. It was near Veluna on the Greyhawk map...
[...Real time interruption: I'm going to check where. Ah, the memories!...]
...On the gap between Veluna and Bissel. We designed the fortress and the surrounding lands, but we never "ran" it or whatever. The two eldest characters (a human fighter, Elendil, and an Elf fighter/magic usr, Gil-Galad - yes,
those were the days :D] retired and became the former the lord of the fortress, and the latter the Lord of the elf community living in the woods near it.
So, basically, our Elven fief was the base for the strike group who went adventuring, but not much else: each player had two or three characters, and before every adventure we assembled "The Team". I remember fondly how we played "Desert of Desolation 1-3" (the original one, of course) in the Sea of Dust. The campaign ended when "The Strongest & The Bestest" gated to Krynn to tackle the War of the Twins (written by me, with only the books as reference). I threw in that Strahd von Zarovich was Raistlin & Caramon's true father, Empire Strikes Back-like, and even bits from "The Hunt for the Red October". The resulting adventure was so beyond anything that we actually burned out: what could have topped it? At the end the two continents (which were on the same planet) were joined in an "alliance pact".
Wild times. It was 1988, we called it a luster, and I though that my RPG days were over. Never felt the need for other "fortressess, anyway, and political intrigue at ruler level is usually boring - better to be the one tasked to put the sand in the vaseline of the king on the first night of the "important political marriage"...