One of the most interesting to me was the whole take on bloodlines and land. What I am unsure about is how the bloodline powers work and how the land turns opperate.
Bloodlines
What abilities do you gain?
How do you gain/improve on them?
Land
How do the 'turns' work?
Does all the 'administration/maintance' of the land take time away from adventuring?
Anyhow just a few questions I was curious about.
Delvesdeep
Bloodlines
What abilities do you gain?
How do you gain/improve on them?
The abilities you gain depend upon your bloodline strength (a numeric value which is determined randomly when the character is created) and the derivation (which of the "dead gods" the character inherrited his/her bloodline from)
Typical abilities include bonusus to certain types of spells or resistance to heat/cold, spell like powers (e.g. minor healing ability), animal affinity (see through the eyes of wolves for example), ability to see into the past, distinctive marks that identify the character as being blooded, divine wrath (ability to enter into a berserk-like state),etc. Many powers have obvious benefits in terms of game mechanics while others confer less obvious role-playing advantages.
The only way to improve/gain powers is to add to your bloodline score. This is generally painfully slow to acomplish without resorting to "bloodtheft". Bloodtheft occurs when a blooded character is slain by another blooded character by a fatal wound to the heart. A proportion of the slain charater's blood power transfers to the character performing the bloodtheft. Of course serial bloodtheft doesn't do much for one's reputation...
Land
How do the 'turns' work?
Does all the 'administration/maintance' of the land take time away from adventuring?
The turns you refer to are called "domain turns" and each is 3-months long in the campaign. Each turn consists of "3 action rounds" where each regent (characters who run a realm of some sort) can take any one of a number of actions to further his holdings (i.e trade, diplomacy, war, improve holdings to generate greater future income, raise armies, build castles, expand your domian, etc). Of course, many actions may be needed to neutralise the hostile intention of your neigbours and the success of any given action is rarely certain as the chances of success can be modified by the intervention of neighbouring regents!
All of this admin/domain maintenance of the land DOES take time away from adventureing. To go on an adventure, a ruler must spend a valuable 'action'. However a single "adventure" action may actually be a series of adventures since the action officially costs a month of the regent's time. Many adventures can/should also have indirect benefits that may even be the equivalent of a successful domain action anyway. e.g. instead of the outcome being based on a die roll and cash from the character's treasury it can be played out as an adventure scenario.
We have played BIRTHRIGHT campaigns since about 1997 although we took a few years off between 2000 and 2002. We found that when all the PCs have their own holdings/interests and are each rulers in their own right, the game can tend to bog down into a book-keeping exercise as well as being quite a challenge for the DM.
Our best campaigns have been played where the PCs are lieutenants/advisors of an NPC regent and get to do his dirty work and be involved in the running of a realm without the responsibility of being a ruler.
Other options include simply using the setting as is and simply playing a "standard" Ad&d campaign where even if some of the characters are blooded, none of them are rulers of anything in their own right. It is this flexibility in campaign style, along with the general "flavour" (generally low-magic middle ages to renaissance cultures) of the setting that makes it our favourite campaign setting.
hope that wasn't too long of a rant. Any other questions and I'm happy to help out a fellow Melbournian.
cheers
The FAQ pinned thread on top of the BRCS forum has links to the documents.
In games I've run and played there was usually a main landed regent (or 2) and everyone else had holdings of some type. They were all independent but it was in theri best interest to work together, because there was usually a Big Bad guy NPC planning on threatening them. In the domain turns are best done via e-mail and outside tabletop gaming. I liked to reserve the tabletop sessions for role-playing and not bookkeeping. I used an excel spreadsheet (a common practice from what I've garnered over the discussion boards) to keep track of holding levels and assets (e.g., GB, RP, troops, ships, etc.)
Many of the tabletop sessions involved adventures, some revolved around diplomacy matters (there were a lot of large parties going on) where alliances were made, etc. and some were actually resolutions of wars - too ahrd to do over e-mail, IMO.
I personally tried to not have players roll for diplomatic resolutions. If they maintained a sufficient court and role-played what they wanted to do I let it happen unless it was absolutely against the principles of the NPC their PC was interacting with. I had one player propose to the Regent of Arenwe that she allow him to deforest the Erbannien - well she pretty much snubbed him from that point on and wouldn't back him on anything. No rolls, she would never have agreed to anything on those lines.