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Randalor posted:But... Rogr and Allina leveled up in the first actual update? I meant with my own experiences with the game, way back when. Kid me generally just grabbed the highest level characters available to throw at problems. Also don't think I had any of the patches that were mentions, those might have helped. Goodness knows wonky XP would hardly be the worst bug in 90s AD&D games I ran into back then. PurpleXVI posted:As far as I can tell there is no limit to Ioun Stones per character, not even in the base 2e AD&D DMG under the entry for Ioun Stones. I imagine that, at some point, you either have so many it's hard to see through the increasingly massive cloud, or you have to constantly stop and pick a bunch of them up off the ground because they keep unavoidably bumping into things. Update notes: Pretty sure provinces being Blessed can occur as a random event. Also vaguely recall that random events only occur on certain provinces, though I'm not wholly sure of that. Outnumbering your enemy four to one in total numbers is supposed to trigger an auto-rout. Whether or not it actually triggers is a bit... finicky. If you're trying to trigger this to do... certain things, I find it best to not rely on rely on the given numbers and just keep heaping in troops until it goes off.
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May 23, 2022 04:14
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For the record, Ioun Stones were inspired by the story "Morreion" by Jack Vance - where the IOUN Stone (yes, it was in all caps) was an incredible rarity that negated magic and was harvested, with no small amount of risk, from the hearts of dying stars. You can, if you're so inclined, find "Morreion" as the third section of a collection titled Rhialto the Marvellous (ibid); I quite enjoyed it myself, especially the bit in the second story where Rhialto's fellow wizards get pissed at him so they loot his house and when he comes back he's all 'you broke wizard law' and they go 'nuh uh, prove it' so he goes to the place where they keep the wizard law (actually the Blue Principles but whatever) and finds they've been replaced with a forgery, so he does the logical thing and time-travels to get the original back. Anyways, the Rhialto stories were effectively the tail end of Vance's Dying Earth universe, and while the Rhialto stories don't feature it heavily, those stories also introduced the idea of wizards who have access to just a shade over one hundred spells of incredible power, which must be carefully studied and fixed in the mind until ready for later use, and a wizard is judged by how many such spells he can have prepared at one time - 'Vancian magic,' in other words, or 'the way spells work in D&D.' EDIT: Also, several D&D spells are directly lifted from Dying Earth spells, such as Prismatic Spray. Apparently when the IOUN Stones were reworked into magical items for use in D&D, they actually did get Vance's permission, but because (for D&D, not in the original Strategic Review article that came up with the idea) the number of stones was going to be broadened and their effects made more varied, they dropped the all-caps lettering. They're fuckin' great DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 05:46 on May 23, 2022 |
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May 23, 2022 05:43
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Unoriginal One posted:I meant with my own experiences with the game, way back when. Kid me generally just grabbed the highest level characters available to throw at problems. That is going to be at least partially the issue. Higher level characters require significantly more XP to level up. For the first several levels it basically doubles each level on most classes. The amount of XP it takes to get a wizard/thief/bard just from level 11 to level 12 (or 12 to 13, or 13 to 14, etc.) is the same as how much you have to earn to get to level 11 from level 1. The same can be said for warriors and clerics, though they hit that point earlier (9-10 = 1-9). Take a high-level character on an adventure meant for low-level parties, and the XP they're getting will be orders of magnitude down from what they need to level.
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May 23, 2022 09:53
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I guess the idea was that new pcs would catch up quickly with old ones
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May 23, 2022 10:17
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Unoriginal One posted:I imagine that, at some point, you either have so many it's hard to see through the increasingly massive cloud, or you have to constantly stop and pick a bunch of them up off the ground because they keep unavoidably bumping into things. There's also the risk of someone just snatching them out of the air. Granted, when that happened to me, it was because the DM was an rear end in a top hat who thought it would be funny to let another player take the one magic item I'd found that campaign, not even so they could use it, but just to be a prick (that was actually the session that finally caused me to leave the group, though if I hadn't been both a first-time player* and also a dumb teenager, I probably would have bailed much sooner). Personal anecdotes aside, compared to most equipment, ioun stones are distinctly vulnerable to being swiped, particularly in oldschool D&D. Pathfinder actually implemented rules to govern stuff like grabbing an ioun stone, and 5e followed suit, but in 3.5 and earlier, there's nothing I'm aware of that says a person can't just reach out and pluck the stone from around your head, put it in their pocket, and walk away. *not counting video game adaptations, like Baldur's Gate.
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May 23, 2022 12:15
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EclecticTastes posted:Personal anecdotes aside, compared to most equipment, ioun stones are distinctly vulnerable to being swiped, particularly in oldschool D&D. Pathfinder actually implemented rules to govern stuff like grabbing an ioun stone, and 5e followed suit, but in 3.5 and earlier, there's nothing I'm aware of that says a person can't just reach out and pluck the stone from around your head, put it in their pocket, and walk away. In 2e: "Whenever ioun stones are exposed to attack, they are treated as Armor Class -4 and take 10 points of damage to destroy. They save as if they were of hard metal—+3 bonus." So presumably grabbing or netting one of them would be an attack against that AC -4. Though this also seems to indicate that if you just drop a heavy weight on the wearer or expose them to a large AoE spell without one of the spell-absorbing stones being present, they'll likely get wiped out. And even then the spell-absorbers have a max limit before they permanently "burn out," so sufficient fireballs should handle it.
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May 23, 2022 12:39
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to be fair, "sufficient fireballs" is a solution to a lot of problems in early D&D
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May 23, 2022 13:22
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Update 05: Real Birthright Battles What makes the whole Gorgon's Alliance mass battle system so much weirder is that Birthright as a pen and paper game had a notably better system that could be effortlessly translated to a videogame, is relatively easy to understand and has mechanics that could all be displayed rather than making it a baffling mess of under-the-hood rolls with unpredictable results. I suspect that it might have been disdained because it was strictly turn-based(being a pen and paper game, it rather had to be), and it feels like the era starting around the mid-90's and up till the mid 2010's assumed that turn-based games would be too dull and boring for ADD-riddled gamers. They needed FLASHY EFFECTS and RAPID ACTION. Sure, you still got some turn-based games, but they were niche and often a bit grognardy, while we got trash like the Might and Magic series going real-time, the Baldur's Gate games being real-time-with-pause, Arcanum seemed to idiotically assume that its terrible and unmanageable real-time combat was what you'd want by default, etc. and it didn't feel like I saw a big-name, big-budget game with actual turn-based combat until something like Divinity: Original Sin. So how did the Birthright PnP mass combat system work? Well, first you flopped one of these suckers on to the table:  Your BATTLE MAT. Consisting of a five wide, three tall grid of field areas, and in addition each side had a "reserve area" for stacking all their not-in-battle-units which technically isn't part of the battlefield, as it can't be targeted by anything. The defender starts out first, deploying their units as they please in any of the five squares on their side of the field. In addition, depending on the sort of terrain the province has, they also get to deploy a Terrain Card, indicating that they've chosen the battleground, which can be on either side of the field or even in the middle of it.  The scan of this section of the Birthright core book is inexplicably terrible and the right side of some pages is cut off. Unit cards are only slightly more complicated than terrain cards.     My one complaint is that considering the amount of unit types that have special terrain interactions, it's odd at only one out of fifteen squares on the battlefield get to have terrain at all. Mind you, battlefield wizardry can create more(or even delete existing terrain cards).   Once all units are on the field, the attacker moves any or all units not engaged in combat, then the defender moves any or all units not engaged in combat, missile and magic attacks are resolved, combat engagements are resolved, and it loops from the top like that. Any time someone moves units into a square occupied by enemy units(any number of units may be in a square, unlike the max of one from each side that Gorgon's Alliance gives us), the defender picks which unit(s) meets them in combat. It's obviously advantageous to dogpile enemies, because you get more rolls to clown on them, but unengaged missile units can give melee units supporting fire, and if you dogpile all your knights on a single unit of goblins, any further goblins that move into that square are free to just move through or do whatever until the melee ends one way or the other and your knights are disengaged to get into a fight again. On the other hand, your units can also be targeted by enemy misile units in adjacent squares, and if they are engaged, then the enemy also has to target their own units in that engagement, so it gives you some degree of cover if your opponent has an archer-heavy army. So, you know, there are tactical considerations to make when you get into fights. You also want to keep your back lines open because if any of your routing units are blocked by enemy troops, they just instantly get destroyed. But how do you actually resolve any of this? Who decides who wins when you start mashing your action figures together and making karate sounds? Thank you for asking, myself, I just so happen to have an explanation. They are resolved...  With Battle Cards(tm)! Let's say that my Anuirean Scouts get into a fight against my opponent's Anuirean Pikemen. They have a Melee of 2 and the Pikemen have a Defense of 3, meaning that I, the attacker, am at a -1 disadvantage. Then we draw a random Battle Card(tm), let's just say the first one at the top of the image above. We refer to the Shield-Swords line, because the Scouts have a Shield icon and the Pikemen a Swords icon, then go along to the -1 column... and get a "defender takes one hit"-result. When this happens, we flip the Pikemen so their "1 Hit" is upwards, as we can see this reduces their Melee rating to 2. Since they have no 2 Hit or 3 Hit positions, a further H result will destroy them. Afterwards, the Pikemen then get to retaliate, using their(now reduced) Melee against the Scouts, and so on, until one of them is destroyed or flees. Note that units cannot voluntarily disengage from combat, they can only disengage if they Fall Back, Rout or their enemy does the same(or is destroyed). If a unit Falls Back, it just has to move out of the combat square, if it Routs, then it has to move back towards their friendly reserves by the fastest, enemy-free path possible(though they cannot move closer to the enemy reserves when doing so). If they cannot make a move due to enemies in the way, they're destroyed. Routed Units which reach the friendly reserves then have to make a morale check each turn(draw a random unit card, if the unit card's symbols match any of the Morale symbols on the routed unit, it gets to act again, otherwise it's locked in the reserves, demoralized). And that's the simple way to resolve engagements. Missile rating is obviously used when making missile attacks, and the Charge rating is used when you engage on the same turn that you move into a square with defenders. The only small addendum is that missile units that haven't moved on their turn, get to use their Missile rating in place of Defense for their first round of defending, to simulate that they pepper the charging enemy with arrows or sling stones or whatever as they close in. If PC's hop on to the battlefield, they join units as Adventurers(not individually, mind you, the Adventurers are an entire party), giving +2 to all the joined unit's offensive ratings(and +1 to their defense) and then popping out as a squad with 2 in all ratings if their "host" unit is destroyed. This seems insanely busted as something like a skeleton unit "piloted" by adventurers would be practically invincible unless someone hit it with a magical artillery strike. But anyway, there you have it. Birthright Mass Combat, it's loving simple. Hell, I'd argue it could easily be adapted for smaller scale mass combat just by tuning down the imagined sizes of the groups involved(though I don't think Birthright ever specifies the exact size of a troop card, I feel like it's something between 50 and 100 units each, possibly more).
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May 23, 2022 13:46
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Well, I can at least explain some of the "sudden victories" in the computer game's battle system. You see, the game actually keeps track of troop counts for each unit. This is important because if you manage to have five times the troop count of the enemy on the field, you instantly win. This is also yet another reason why the generic spider units are terrible: The reduced troop count on them makes them extremely vulnerable to getting outnumbered. There are also other stuff they do with that troop count, too: Notably, when you have two units with less than half troops at the end of a battle, the units will "fuse together", essentially killing one after the battle ends.
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May 23, 2022 14:13
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PurpleXVI posted:In 2e: The issue with that is the ambiguity between an attack and grabbing an object. You wouldn't make an attack roll to pick up a mug from a table or take a book from a shelf, and that was the dubious logic behind plenty of people who would just go up to a dude with some ioun stones and just grab one the way they might pluck an apple from a tree. Later stuff was more explicit about what does or does not interact with the ioun stone's AC (it was also more explicitly defined as part of a character's equipment to clear up similar ambiguity related to AoE spells; the ioun stones are attended objects and thus safe). Even 3.5 follows 2e's lead in just giving out the AC without really defining what does or does not require a roll (though IIRC third edition is where the "ioun stones are attended, fireballs will not wreck them" rule debuted). This is a common issue with older editions of D&D, and also many other older RPGs, is that they wrote rules in ways that allowed for many different interpretations of a given rule (i.e., does just calmly taking the ioun stone count as an attack?). That's why there's been a shift from just describing everything with plain language to a mix of using bespoke terminology to define everything and setting thorough boundaries on certain actions. In Pathfinder, you need to make a Steal combat maneuver to take an active ioun stone, cut and dry. In 5e, part of the ioun stone's rules text states clearly that an attack has to be made to take hold of an orbiting stone. They don't just state the ioun stone's AC and expect players to determine the rest themselves through common sense, which sounds good on paper, right up until you actually get to know a certain stripe of player.
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May 23, 2022 14:14
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Oh, yeah, absolutely. Part of the issue with 1e, 2e and the D&D of that era was that rules weren't so much designed to give a framework with the intention of hopefully covering most of the bases players and GM's would need covered, or with the intention of conjuring up a specific world, feeling or challenge. Instead, rules were designed because someone asked Gygax a question once or tried to do something, Gygax made an off-the-cuff ruling, and then it got enshrined as His Holy Word. Instead of building a base mechanic, a foundation, and then stacking everything on top of that stable bottom level, they built fifty rickety shacks next to each other, tenuously connected with crumbling rope bridges. Though I would argue that's not really "gone" after 2e, it's just different. A lot of things are as they are, just because that's how they were. It feels like a game designed without anyone ever sitting down and asking: "Does this rule help the game be more fun?" or "what do we actually want the game to be? what feelings do we want to conjure? what is the intended gameplay?"
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May 23, 2022 14:24
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The narrative I've always heard around the shift to primarily real-time stuff is that a lot of devs only did turn-based gameplay because it was too hard to manage real-time versions of what they wanted to do with the technology of the time, and so it was then "obsolete" when the tech advanced. (Although also, in fairness, I absolutely see plenty of people arguing that turn-based play is too boring.) I was very glad when XCOM and Kickstarter between them seemed to finally alert people making games that there was, actually, substantial appetite for turns.
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May 23, 2022 15:03
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Felinoid posted:That is going to be at least partially the issue. Higher level characters require significantly more XP to level up. For the first several levels it basically doubles each level on most classes. The amount of XP it takes to get a wizard/thief/bard just from level 11 to level 12 (or 12 to 13, or 13 to 14, etc.) is the same as how much you have to earn to get to level 11 from level 1. The same can be said for warriors and clerics, though they hit that point earlier (9-10 = 1-9). Take a high-level character on an adventure meant for low-level parties, and the XP they're getting will be orders of magnitude down from what they need to level. I'm well aware of that, I'm just saying that when one player never sees level ups and another has their Wizard regent go from five to ten in a few turns and a handful of mass combats, there's something going on. Getting any actual info on the game's XP rewards is something of a pain, but during a brief look I did see mention of one of the patches fixing some XP sources, so I'm assuming it has something to do with that. Also wouldn't be especially surprised if there's bonuses for repeatedly walloping that Spider fellow.
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May 23, 2022 18:18
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malkav11 posted:The narrative I've always heard around the shift to primarily real-time stuff is that a lot of devs only did turn-based gameplay because it was too hard to manage real-time versions of what they wanted to do with the technology of the time, and so it was then "obsolete" when the tech advanced. (Although also, in fairness, I absolutely see plenty of people arguing that turn-based play is too boring.) I was very glad when XCOM and Kickstarter between them seemed to finally alert people making games that there was, actually, substantial appetite for turns. Death of turn based was a general thing at the time as RTS was the genre of the future in the 90s. X-Com was in on the trend: Apocalypse had real time with pause as its default mode, a year after Birthright. REAL TIME ACTION for games that didn't need it was a delusion shared with the entire industry. There are a lot of different factors to that trend reversing: the novelty wore off, RTSs as a genre mostly died, spillover from the rise of board gaming during the noughts, the enduring success of Civ, etc. PurpleXVI posted:Arcanum seemed to idiotically assume that its terrible and unmanageable real-time combat was what you'd want by default, etc. You mean you don't think clicking Harm on things as fast as your index finger would allow was the developer intended optimal strategy? I should try to dig out and iso-fy my beta CDs for Arcanum while I have a computer with a working CD reader somewhere. It's still a fascinating game, so very good in some ways and so very bad in others. I also think Troika would agree with you on the real time argument, given how Temple of Elemental Evil was basically Old School Turn Based D&D: A 3.5E Love Letter.
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May 23, 2022 18:24
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I like what they did with spells/spell cards in Birthright tabletop. From what I have seen, magic seems very powerful and consequential without being ridiculous. I've always felt that magic in most D&D editions didn't seem to scale to mass battlefields very well, but this does. The fact that 100 or so random level 0 troops don't seem to get saving throws against these spells helps a lot.
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May 23, 2022 19:49
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Xerophyte posted:Death of turn based was a general thing at the time as RTS was the genre of the future in the 90s. X-Com was in on the trend: Apocalypse had real time with pause as its default mode, a year after Birthright. REAL TIME ACTION for games that didn't need it was a delusion shared with the entire industry. Yeah, I specifically mean Firaxis's X-Com reboot, hence XCOM rather than X-Com.
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May 23, 2022 22:51
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Hey I almost never post anymore on these dead forums but I had this game as a kid and it was my favorite strategy game at the time! The competition was between Birthright and Lords of the Realm 2. I have played this a lot and won campaigns as pretty much every playable nation, but I'd never tried to play like this, "roleplaying" my regent. This idea is very cool and a great way to show Birthright instead of just blazing through the campaign abusing all the janky bugs to completely stomp the AI. As a suggestion for the next campaign, if the OP is doing one, is to play as Tuarhievel, the more dickish playable elves. They usually must use every magic trick they have to avoid getting flattened by Gorgon, their next door neighbor. Makes for a very fun campaign, I think.
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May 24, 2022 13:53
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Kanthulhu posted:As a suggestion for the next campaign, if the OP is doing one, is to play as Tuarhievel, the more dickish playable elves. They usually must use every magic trick they have to avoid getting flattened by Gorgon, their next door neighbor. Makes for a very fun campaign, I think. There will almost certainly be at least one second playthrough, if only to show off some of the realm magic more(since Rogr rather lacks the Source access to do it, and since most decent Sources in the game are already pre-owned by powerful mages, it would require some big conquering or vassalizing one of the NPC, non-landed regents), so it's entirely possible! Also yeah, starting as the Gorgon's neighbour would be... interesting. 
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May 24, 2022 13:58
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Having just finished the recording for another update, it is my heartfelt wish that whoever signed off on these dungeons as being "completely done, okay, totally fine, yes, ship it," be tarred, feathered and rolled down a steep hill with a leech-infested pond at the bottom.
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May 24, 2022 15:56
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I think the same of the font choice, good lord that's densely packed and terrible to read at 640x480. I imagine it was different full-screen on your sick2nasty 14" CRT back in the day, but still. on the other hand, this is a fascinating game, in a lot of ways, so i'm happy to see this. I'd never in a million years have played this myself.
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May 24, 2022 19:34
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PurpleXVI posted:Having just finished the recording for another update, it is my heartfelt wish that whoever signed off on these dungeons as being "completely done, okay, totally fine, yes, ship it," be tarred, feathered and rolled down a steep hill with a leech-infested pond at the bottom. ... did you fall into Daggerfall's voids? Please tell me this game doesn't suffer from Daggerfall's void problem.
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May 24, 2022 19:37
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Randalor posted:... did you fall into Daggerfall's voids? Please tell me this game doesn't suffer from Daggerfall's void problem. I didn't fall into a void, no, but falling does feature into it.
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May 24, 2022 19:59
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PurpleXVI posted:Having just finished the recording for another update, it is my heartfelt wish that whoever signed off on these dungeons as being "completely done, okay, totally fine, yes, ship it," be tarred, feathered and rolled down a steep hill with a leech-infested pond at the bottom. It sounds like I saved myself a lot of pain by deciding early on to avoid the dungeons. Thank goodness; the realm management and battles were bad enough.
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May 25, 2022 01:22
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EclecticTastes posted:This thread makes me wanna play in a Birthright campaign. Though I'm not sure whether I'd prefer the original 2e with all its endearing jank, or the more streamlined, but somewhat sanitized, experience of one of the 5e conversions. Perhaps having the adventure layer run more smoothly via 5e would let the management layer stand out even more, but on the other hand, you lose a lot of that oldschool charm that comes from indecipherable nonsense like THAC0 and constant risk of instant death via Gygaxian Naturalism. Tough choice. It's an academic quandary, anyway, since nobody's running either. Actually, there's a pretty drat good version of the rules called Seed of Wars, made in part by a few of the folks that wrote the original ruleset. It's very easy to use modularly, though I prefer using my own heavily curated set of AD&D rules for playing games of that type in general. You could certainly add the regency rules of the AD&D ruleset, or Seed of Wars, to most any other ttrpg ruleset. PurpleXVI posted:One of the issues 2e, and D&D in general, have is that they are very poor about support for anyone being less than 100%, if that makes sense. If you have a henchman, he can't just give you a bonus of some sort(maybe his assisting attacks add 1d4 to your hits, or him keeping pressure on the enemy gives you +2 to hit, or something like that), and enemies can't be one-shot-kill mooks or abstracted "mobs." Individual scenarios and modules sometimes have rules for abstracting this, but none exist overall. This means that adding more people to the battlefield, as in the form of henchmen or the like, easily makes the maths of the entire thing crumble like brittle chalk in a hydraulic press. You forget BATTLESYSTEM 1 and 2e! 1e was more of an outright wargame with weird and unbalanced rules while 2e was more of a skirmishing game and was a lot more fun. Man I love Birthright, AD&D 2e, and this thread. Oh, you mentioned earlier Turn Undead wasn't a battlefield spell: it IS a Battle Spell, which was added in the Book of Priestcraft. Battle Spells are OP as hell though, not something I'd generally allow. Fireball, cloudkill, and so on are what one should be casting not "rain of magic missiles", which is a level 1 battle spell that can tear up an entire unit and yet be cast by any level 1 magician or mage. Thurazor is actually a reasonable group of goblins who are actually ALLIED with one of their human neighbors, sharing some of their goblin troops as an honor guard and generally having pretty good relations with them! Anuire is, sadly, the LEAST developed of all of the regions of Cerilia because it was in the first boxed set. It's still a fantastic region rife with all kinds of adventure, high and low, but compared to Vosgaard? The Khinasi Highlands? Brechtur? It's nowhere near as developed. The Player's Secrets line of books did help develop a few of those realms, at least (and are good reads mostly), but in general the other regions got a lot more attention paid to their development. Out of all of Anuire, I'm most interested in Mieres and the colonies in ancient Aduria, since it was left completely unstated what kind of situation it was in. Even in the details of Mieres it's very sparse! One thing that this game doesn't touch on at all is the Shadow World and it's heavy influence on the setting (or bloodtheft, but we can't have you bloodthefting major awnshegh and then turning into one yourself, can we?). The Shadow World is a VERY major part of the setting, and especially the metaplot that was supposed to develop before the setting got brutally murdered by WotC's takeover of TSR. It's also where this setting's halflings come from, which are badasses that can jump through shadows and shift between the Shadow World and Daylight World with relative ease. They're one of two possible races that can be a Ranger/Priest of Ruornil, which would let them benefit from every possible holding type! Rogr himself is an interesting character: he was unblooded, a trained magician under a true mage master who inherited the bloodline from his master. He learned magic the hard way and had experience with the 'lesser' magic of magicians, so he became a decently skilled wizard in general. A reasonable goal for him, if you are playing as him, is to explore and settle the mysteriously unclaimed islands in the Strait of Aduria, such as Alibiele, Caelcorwyn, and Baerghos. Low settlement, low population, high source potential! And it would let Ilien become a naval power (another thing not included in the core set but added later in a Dragon supplement as well as the Khinasi and Brecht boxed sets). The Brecht boxed set also added the awesome GUILDER class; levels as thief, gets 1 NWP every single level, as well as read languages, can wear any armor and use any weapon, and bonuses on certain realm actions (useful even as an unblooded lieutenant, therefore!) 'Guilder' Kalien would easily be a change to that, as would many of the guild owning regents that make no sense as thieves. I love Birthright, and hope this thread continues to be as awesome as it has been.
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May 25, 2022 01:31
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I found a copy of this game abandonware and EZ-install shortly before this thread started, and I can say with absolutey certainty that this game is making me want to play it and making me want to avoid it all cost all at the same time, which is an interesting set of sensations.
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May 25, 2022 05:55
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Chronische posted:Man I love Birthright, AD&D 2e, and this thread. Oh, you mentioned earlier Turn Undead wasn't a battlefield spell: it IS a Battle Spell, which was added in the Book of Priestcraft. Battle Spells are OP as hell though, not something I'd generally allow. Fireball, cloudkill, and so on are what one should be casting not "rain of magic missiles", which is a level 1 battle spell that can tear up an entire unit and yet be cast by any level 1 magician or mage. Thurazor is actually a reasonable group of goblins who are actually ALLIED with one of their human neighbors, sharing some of their goblin troops as an honor guard and generally having pretty good relations with them! I'm a bit less clear on what's in the supplements than what's in core Birthright, since I've only ever run a couple of games of it, one in Brechtur, the other in the Khinasi regions, and since it was the first time playing in Birthright for both groups I didn't want to overload them with extra content. But yeah, there are a lot of undeveloped sections of the world of Birthright, old Aduria and also the far-east continent, the polar regions, etc. probably stuff we would've gotten if Birthright had been more successful or had been picked up by later editions.
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May 25, 2022 11:08
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I don't suppose there are any other computer games similar to BR, are there?
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May 25, 2022 13:50
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm a bit less clear on what's in the supplements than what's in core Birthright, since I've only ever run a couple of games of it, one in Brechtur, the other in the Khinasi regions, and since it was the first time playing in Birthright for both groups I didn't want to overload them with extra content. Thaele is a weird one since it has city-state colonies from Rjurik realms but basically no information or content except that "it is cold". About the same information about what lies in Torova Temylatin, but that place is clearly intended as gm fiat in terms of what might reside there to thwart or hinder exploration and colonization. As for Aduria you can extrapolate that it is certainly a hotter climate, as lions are a symbol of the old god Anduiras, but not much more. Then there are, as you say, the mysterious Dragon Isles and the lands beyond from whence came the Magian and his armies, the distant lands of Djapur where the Khinasi of Cerilia fled from... but even in Cerilia there are many places left either half baked or intentionally unfinished so the GM can decide what to do with them. The Mistmoors, the Giantdowns, and the Tarvan Wastes are barely given a paragraph of information to work with! At least the Awnshegh book expands on all the major Awnshegh, except for the Swordhawk for some reason. DGM_2 posted:I don't suppose there are any other computer games similar to BR, are there? Nothing that even comes close, but there IS a CK2 mod for Birthright that is pretty extensive with custom events.
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May 25, 2022 13:52
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Chronische posted:Nothing that even comes close, but there IS a CK2 mod for Birthright that is pretty extensive with custom events. Did that get updated? I thought it stopped getting updated around Holy Fury. Played that mod a bunch, can recommend, has the whole Cerilia map. I remember one wild game where I wound up married to the Gorgon's daughter. She kept trying to kill me, and failing.
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May 25, 2022 17:56
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Chronische posted:As for Aduria you can extrapolate that it is certainly a hotter climate, as lions are a symbol of the old god Anduiras, but not much more. Then there are, as you say, the mysterious Dragon Isles and the lands beyond from whence came the Magian and his armies, the distant lands of Djapur where the Khinasi of Cerilia fled from... but even in Cerilia there are many places left either half baked or intentionally unfinished so the GM can decide what to do with them. The Mistmoors, the Giantdowns, and the Tarvan Wastes are barely given a paragraph of information to work with! At least the Awnshegh book expands on all the major Awnshegh, except for the Swordhawk for some reason. Apparently one of the designers, Richard Baker, worked on a map of Aduria but never got much farther than that:  According to some folks from a Birthright fansite, anyway. Also while I work on the update, have a .gif that looks like a guard is doing a funny dance.  And yeah this is how loving stupid the combat looks every time.
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May 25, 2022 17:59
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PurpleXVI posted:
Dance party! WOO!
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May 25, 2022 18:13
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DM it All has a pretty nice overview of AD&D released today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VI2ONHJ7GE
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May 25, 2022 18:17
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Were I foolish enough to play this, what would be a good, easy starting faction/position? Part of me wants to play a high-level mage for the obvious shenanigans, but perhaps I should start of with a faction that's peaceful and relatively far from the main antagonists.
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May 25, 2022 19:31
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JustJeff88 posted:Were I foolish enough to play this, what would be a good, easy starting faction/position? Part of me wants to play a high-level mage for the obvious shenanigans, but perhaps I should start of with a faction that's peaceful and relatively far from the main antagonists. Roesone is an ideal start, I believe, as you have several natural allies adjacent and only one significant enemy directly north, which is a natural expansion direction. Vassalizing Colin/Ilien is also a strong move to get a good mage ally, and then you can work to grow in both land power and in stabilizing/seizing internal conflicting regencies (temples and guilds). It is a strongly recommended starting domain for the tabletop, too, and even has a unique and extra-detailed map in the core boxed set! 
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May 25, 2022 20:01
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JustJeff88 posted:Were I foolish enough to play this, what would be a good, easy starting faction/position? Part of me wants to play a high-level mage for the obvious shenanigans, but perhaps I should start of with a faction that's peaceful and relatively far from the main antagonists. I always found Endier with Caine as the ruler to be a really good choice, you're an economic powerhouse, Caine starts out with a level 7 Source right from turn one, you can expand into the Spiderfell and Diemed if you want two small, money-filled nations to crunch into for starters. Caine also starts out with the spell selection to dunk on most adventures effortlessly.
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May 25, 2022 20:09
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So did everyone declare war on you because your act of beating the Spider basically flags you as being a much stronger threat than you actually are? I remember some 4X games like Master of Magic could get annoying with diplomacy since the game had cumulative penalties for you as you got stronger and did things, making alliances close to if not outright impossible at some points.
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May 25, 2022 23:54
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Evil Fluffy posted:So did everyone declare war on you because your act of beating the Spider basically flags you as being a much stronger threat than you actually are? I remember some 4X games like Master of Magic could get annoying with diplomacy since the game had cumulative penalties for you as you got stronger and did things, making alliances close to if not outright impossible at some points. Well, as far as I can tell the AI is either completely random or very simple and direct. If it's not random, it seems that it has a pretty clear understanding of what gives it victory points, and beelines for those things in the following order: Get Alliances Get Vassals Conquer the hell out of people So in relatively short order, all the possible alliances and vassalizations are forged, and only conquest remains, at which point war just breaks out violently in all directions. The victory point source of artifacts seems unavailable to NPC regents, and I think there are some un-labelled ways of getting more victory points, because what we end up with when I check them in the next update absolutely does not match the official calculations from the manual.
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May 26, 2022 00:02
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JustJeff88 posted:Were I foolish enough to play this, what would be a good, easy starting faction/position? Part of me wants to play a high-level mage for the obvious shenanigans, but perhaps I should start of with a faction that's peaceful and relatively far from the main antagonists. Besides what others suggested, I'd consider Taline, as well. They are a big realm with good regents. Ally Boruine and try to fight Thurazor and/or Five Peaks to reach a strong positon.
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May 26, 2022 01:19
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwxOVo0tDU
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May 26, 2022 01:19
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 16:39 |
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Achernar posted:I remember one wild game where I wound up married to the Gorgon's daughter. She kept trying to kill me, and failing. The foundation of any strong relationship. Anniversaries and Valentine's Day must be really special for you two. 
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May 26, 2022 01:24
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