Day 5: Dungeons & Dragons Birthright

Game: D&D Birthright
System: 4th Edition
Quickie Bite: You may wield sword and shield with proficiency but can you wield the rule of law justly over your Domain? Your blood is tied to the land and its people…you are their only help, my liege.

I’ve mentioned Birthright a few times on Abulia Savant. It’s a world that I’ve always had a soft spot for. At the surface it’s fairly unremarkable; your typical fantasy heartbreaker in most respects. What really differentiated Birthright was the ability to mechanically run your own Domain or country. When released this was pretty new ground that TSR was delving into, especially in the AD&D days. Most characters were scions of a bloodline, tied to a Domain that they had rulership over. Birthright was pretty unique in that rulers weren’t some unreachable level of power either; many were under 10th level in experience. Power could ebb and flow and the rules were built to encourage this with a megagame component of taking Domain Actions. This is where you spent actions to raise the rule of Law in a province, create a trade route, or move your armies. Lots of mechanical funky bits that we normally handwaved in the past. Birthright took this to the next level by statting out every province of every Domain—including the NPC-controlled ones—so that you really did have a living, breathing worth. The borders of countries changed, your Domain may be attacked not through force but through rival factions establishing Law in your provinces. It was this metagame component that we really haven’t seen since Pendragon.

At the table Birthright tackles this topic in a few different ways. The most obvious is that every player controls a Domain. The rules certainly support this and there is a very Highlander-esque way of gaining more blood power to increase your Regency. Conceptually there’s nothing preventing the players from working together or undermining each other, even if it’s through random happenstance. (“Hey, I wanted that magical Source in that Domain!”) Since running Domains essentially turns Birthright into a wargame, the adventuring component is done with either the Regents (rare) or more often their vassals. So in most games each player has two characters: their common adventuring character that owes some fealty to their Regent and the Regents themselves. On occassion there is need for the Regents to meet and typically that results in some nice political role-play.

Other components are the shadowy, twisted NPC Domains that scheme against the players, the looming threat of the Gorgon prince and his mighty armies, and the lack of any one, central ruler for the entire realm. Something to shoot for, perhaps?

Where Birthright becomes enjoyable is that rise in power. Be it a lowly adventurer with just a hint of royal blood or someone with greater aspirations, it is that big picture meta component where Birthright becomes a game in a game. Players can certain be unblooded as well, working together to rule a Domain or content to be simply “normal” vassals to an Regent PC or NPC.

The idea looses some of its luster, however, when coming fresh off of our world-building D&D 3.5 campaign where the players—technically one—carved out their own political system and rulership. Granted this was through backstory and raw power, but even so Birthright at this juncture has a little bit of the “been there, done that” component. One big difference would be giving each player their own Domain, spreading the love a bit, if you will. Alternately multiple rulers of the same Domain, all of the same bloodline. Mechanically both are easy to do. But this gets back to the preference of having a game this time where everyone works well together.

I’m not too keen on the two character aspect. With limited time I’d rather drive the story towards one set of PCs and leave it at that. Mechanically converting to 4th Edition really isn’t that big of an issue; at first I was hung up on dragonborn and such but at the end of the day sided on the “who cares?” line of thinking. Really the only conversion that would be necessary would be the blood powers, easily handled by using the framework for the Spellscarred from the new Forgotten Realms.

From a DM standpoint controlling all the NPC domains is a very large task. Some research would need to be done for that to take the load off. Sierra had an excellent PC game, “The Gorgon’s Alliance,” which was a turn-based Birthright strategy game which could be re-tasked for this.

Worth mentioning are the really awesome player aids that exist for Birthright. All the major PC domains have their own fold out screen detailing the domain, a map, notable NPCs to draw upon and more. The line was really well done prior to the demise of TSR. 

Pros: Domain-building with mechanical rules; fresh take on not just being another adventurer; larger metagame within the game adds a new twist to your typical D&D campaign; dungeon delving plus political intrique.

Cons: Just came from a D&D game with some of these elements; some conversion required; out of print; lots of DM work in doing NPC Domain actions.

Don’s Interest: 

Any old school fans of Birthright around? It’s the one campaign setting I’d like to see Wizards of the Coast bring back!