Birthright interest check

One of my favorite settings is the old D&D Birthright setting. For those unfamilliar, the gods exploded and their magic imbedded in the blood of some people. These blooded are magically tied to the lands and people they rule. A king to the land, or a guild master to his guild members.

The setting attempted to combine a strategy turn based nation scale wargame with adventuring. It didn't do very well commercially for the poor mechanics. However, the setting is rich with lore and ripe for a game where players want "Stronghold" or domain rules of some sort.

Who would be interested in a game like thus? Birthright specifically as a setting, but likely some other mechanics for the domains. (I am thinking of A Song of Ice and Fire house and warfare.) If I ran this tho, it would be 5e with all kinds of house rules for the domains.

Edit: If you have never heard of Birthright, Matt Colville recorded a stream on the setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaIKTUkjZd8

I'd be interested to try this out. Almost got into a game a while back, they'd done a solid upgrade/conversion to 5e D&d. Might wanna check out their rulebook below.
link

This sounds pretty cool. Do we still make our own personal characters as the leaders of these domains, or does the domain itself act as the 'character', so to speak?

dibs

err i mean intersted :P So its kinda like fariy tail with the guilds and the magicks

I've heard lots about Birthright, but never had a chance to get in on a game. I'd love to throw my hat in the ring on this one.

I don't know CJ - I feel like I almost have to say no on behalf of your better interests. Can one person really run and play in over 350 games? ;P

Just kidding, of course dude!

@bleak - yeah, you make your own character. Then on top of the normal D&D game you have a "domain turn" once per game month to improve your holdings, fight battles, etc.

im only in 5 active games and running 3 and a half lol my discord games dont count... ... ... /shiftyeyes

6 i lied my bad..

This is pretty nice. Thanks for the link!

Feast yer eyes, captain :D

This would be awesome !! I'm really interested !!

Same! Consider me interested. Would we all be ruling the same domain, then (Like, playing various members of the hierarchy etc.) or have one each?

If this is the game I'm thinking of I started playing a game of it a few years ago and got a good character created but the game never got off the ground. I'll send along a bit of the character write up and you can tell me if it fits.

Wow, I am surprised at the interest actually!

I'll get started on working through the rules for 5e (not sure I like the conversion mentioned above) and setup of the campaign. No promises on speed or timeline here, but I'll be sure to post as I make progress. Feedback from y'all as things get set up would be good.

@alsrusian, I think that character is for a Kingmaker campaign. Which is pretty different, but does align with some aspects in that the characters build up a domain and go adventuring to improve the domain's standings.

I'd be interested in trying this out! Is divine magic still a thing if the gods are gone?

Yes, divine magic is still a thing. New gods were created in addition to the now divine rulers. Many common people also worship their kings, nobles, and other blooded persons. As a ruler, you may be casting divine spells driven by the power of your people that worship you.

That sounds really cool. Another question, would Necromancy (full-on raising mindless Undead) still be classed as "always an evil act" in that world? Because if it can at least be Neutral, I'd have some interesting concepts regarding it...

This sounds great

I'd like to get in on this! Sign me up if you have space available when the time comes!

In my Pathfinder days, I had spent much free time creating some awesome necromancer builds but never played because of the evil thing. I feel like I missed out on some good fun tho because of it. Sell me on why it wouldn't be evil.

As I see it, if its inherently evil or not depends on how the whole "souls" part of undeath works. If mindless undead don't have souls and don't disturb the souls of the used body, then why would it be inherently evil? It might be a social taboo, but 'evil' is a cosmic force. Negative Energy in 5E isn't described as being Evil anymore either, and Good-aligned Clerics can cast Inflict Wounds which uses the exact same power source that would animate a dead body into a zombie or skeleton. (Though also speaking from my own Pathfinder experience, I'm VERY disappointed that WotC still hasn't given us any way to animate the bodies of non-humanoids. Seriously, a zombie bear or skeletal horse COULDN'T ever cause issues with souls since they don't HAVE souls, yet that option isn't there...)

So as long as you could get around that pesky morality issue (by, say, leading a Necromancer guild that has taken over a place slowly and uses their servants to actually help the populace with cheap labor), I don't see why the creation of mindless undead should be evil if you don't intentionally let them loose into a city to murder everyone.

Intelligent undead are another matter depending on if they twist/corrupt/capture the souls of the body in some way. A Lawful Neutral view could still be that forcefully turning a murderer into a Mummy to protect the city he terrorized before for a century is actually a just and proper punishment, though. Also, Necromancers tend to be especially skilled at taking over and exterminating uncontrollable intelligent undead, such as vampires.

Something about necromancy just feels evil, or wrong at least. Yet similar acts, like animating plants, animating simple objects, or even creating intelligent magic items is not generally considered evil nor do they really smell like they could be. Life, and things that were once alive, simply have a value attributed to them that is hard to quantify. Mutilating a corpse, whether human or animal, is frowned on. There is much more gray area here than you would find with something like outright murder, and certain purposes are justified for most people - dismembering an animal for fun is evil. Dismembering an animal for a feast is fine.

Animating dead itself wouldn't be evil. You would have to contend with the perception of others. Animating a corpse into a skeleton seems like it could be ok, especially if that skeleton was tasked with protecting a town against raiding goblins. You could probably convince many people in the town that what you have done is ok. What if the mother of that corpse watched you raise it? I think you'd be very hard pressed to not have her see the act as anything but horrific. Maybe you could change her mind, but you'd have to do lots of work persuading her well ahead of time, gradually working her up to the idea and somehow spinning it as an honorable act.

Maybe there is something to be said about necrotic energies. Necromantic spells almost universally deal with the destruction of life. Nearly all undead have a mindless drive to destroy life. Maybe it is these things that make it such a bad deed. In that case, wouldn't all spells dealing necrotic damage be looked on with dismay? Would people start shunning magic-users that cast spells from the Necromantic school?

tl;dr: Raising dead isn't itself evil. The vast majority of the cultures of the world view raising dead as a thing of evil and will act accordingly.

Woo inspiration... a city where their honored citizens are buried in tombs near the city walls. Necromancers call on the dead there, raising them as skeletons and zombies in times of need. Once the need has passed the dead are returned to their tombs. It could be a great honor to have a family member selected to serve in the Everlasting Guard

Progress update: I spent some time this weekend looking up 5e warfare rules. This is one of the things we'll want squared away since clashes between armies is one of the cool things we want to include in a campaign like this.

Military units will basically just be swarms. This allows us to use all the mechanics we are used to without having too many things moving around on the battlefield. We can scale up and down these swarms as necessary. Here is my first draft of the Mass Combat rules: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/S1seEK63X

We'll be using the following conversion along with the mass combat mentioned earlier:
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L4h_QHUKh2NeYhgD96A#p48

Please become familiar with as much of that document as you can.

Soon I'll set up the actual GP game and forums. In the mean time, lets get some ideas flowing. To start off, PM me your ideas on what you want to see in this campaign, what you don't want to see, and what your vision of the PC party would be. I'm intentionally leaving this open ended and vague to see where each of you want to take it.

If you have never heard of Birthright, Matt Colville recorded a stream on the setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaIKTUkjZd8

Second call - If you are still interested in joining, please PM me something about what you want to see in the game.

Birthright touches on a lot of different levels of game play. We will want to make sure everyone is on the same page with expectations to give our game the best chance of success

I sent a PM. This feels like a majorly different take on the genre and I am excited to dive into the world.