I haven't thought about that Conspectus in years--I can't even imagine where you found a copy. For the record: I was appalled when I first opened it up and discovered the giant header that said "A Tactical War-Game with Role-playing." In the R&D group we understood Birthright to be a D&D setting first and a strategic game second, so whoever wrote that header pretty much got it exactly backwards. But that wasn't unusual at TSR--the executives and marketing folks generally didn't trust us creatives to write "important" messaging copy, and didn't give us the chance to review it or comment on it before they sent it out.
The Minotaur, Cyclops, and Medusa were all examples of singular beings that were either wholly unique or apart of a bigger race. Only now, in the do we view these creatures as types of monsters.
@@Barquevious_Jackson to be honest, Cyclops were a race of sorts; there were Cyclops that helped olympians to defeat titans (they created Zeus's lightnings), and there were Cyclops that lived on islands and were shepherds (including Polyphemus)
"The Slightly Less Remembered Realms" was the best line of this video - I saw a GM have his campaign plans fall apart because another player knew more about the novelized Forgotten Realms than he did, and was demanding to know *when* in the timeline we were to determine if stuff was even where the GM said it was. That moment really solidified for me why I wanted to make my own setting when I started running - I as the GM only had to stay consistent, but not bound to the books if my players would have expected to play in a novelized setting, and everyone was "balanced" in regards to how much of the world they knew (except me as the GM since it was my world, but I enjoy worldbuilding a great deal, so it's not too difficult for me) I managed to get my hands on a pdf of someone's homebrew conversion of the Birthright mechanics and was like "Hey! Strongholds and Followers has stuff like this! Neat!" and then was like "Ooo, these bloodline abilities are also neat!"
Birthright was my favorite setting for 2nd Edition. I ran it insanely, using all the stats as boxed, and then built upon it. I consider myself an expert on this setting. One thing is the numbers. 5/0 is a place that has province level of 5, with max level of 5 for law and guild, but a 0 level source. A 2/3 is a place that has province level 2, max law and guild 2, but a source of 3 (wizard magic, "realm spells"). Some provinces had a max of 5 source, some 7, and special places had a max source of 9. Raising the province level (basically the population of people) reduced the max source. A place that was a max source of 5 could be a relatively unpopulated 0/5 or a nicely populated 4/1. Once the province level of 5 it no longer has a source holding level. It can increase to 6/0 or higher, it just will never have a source holding level again. This is why the City of Anuire was 10/0.
Your enthusiasm for the Birthright campaign, which I've taken bits and pieces of for my own long-designed campaign world, is one of the reasons I decided to back your kickstarter. This setting should have succeeded, but alas was different enough it only became a niche.
I take personal offense at all this gnome hate. I've been playing gnomes since dinosaurs roamed the earth. My mother was a gnome, and her grandmother was a gnome. I was a gnome in the gnreat gnome gnosh of 1915. Bonus INT squad. Tinkerbois 5ever.
My svirfneblin bard will sing songs about the evil colville and his attempts to commit lore genocide of our entire race. We must band together and make our voices heard! Down with tyranny! Time for an all gnome campaign where every character npc and monster is a gnome of some variety! And we will force Matt to dm for us! And he will learn the error of his ways through our cheery dispositions and lovable chubby gnomish cheeks!! Stand with me!
My DM asked me to describe my gnome and I PROUDLY illustrated his armor, potions and vials on his belt, oversized backpack and most importantly the pointed red hat atop his head. Gnome arteficer gang.
Funny enough for me? I never really think of Gnomes as "the tinkerers". I mean I guess that came from Dragonlance because I can't think of a setting that did that before Dragonlance off the top of my head. When I think of Gnomes I think of well.. Forest gnomes. They talk to animals and live like druids, and are kind of isolationist "get of my lawn" like dwarves just replacing rude and drunk with "It's just a prank, bro" shenanigans. Mostly at the tables and groups I played over the years Gnomes were hated because well... the same deal with Halflings. Every Halfling player ran a thief. And every Halfling Thief was a net handicap to the party. they'd steal from their teammates. Lie about what they saw when they scouted. Loot places before the players got to them and stash the treasure so it was all theirs. Basically having one inside your party was a net handicap not aided by Trolling abilities like "Taunt" to make ambivalent NPCs absolutely try to murder the party. Gnomes were like that just with illusions and "Pranks" instead. You didn't want one in your party because it was going to harm your party about three times as much as the enemy. And it didn't matter who was playing them, what group I was with, etc. Just kept happening.
Catagory of people who love lore: "Lorehounds" - seen this applied often in a videogame context for people who root into every nook and cranny for details about the world.
You're the best, Matt! I'm a new Dm, with a group of new players. Your Welcome to DnD video from a year ago really hooked my crew. They are all video gamers and I told them you were lead writer on Evolve and every head nodded and sat back and listened. Keep up the amazing work!
there are a couple of high res maps available heres a link to the post with the dl links www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?28280-Hi-res-map-of-Cerilia-recreated
I like the distinction between Mindflayers, and THE Mindflayer. Thats often how I view monsters in the manual. They have such cool lore and themes attached that I often like to keep them confined to one or a few creatures, not an entire society. I can see the appeal but my worlds tend to be more on the low magic side so it helps to keep these creatures special and impactful when they do arise.
"The world this dude built for his novels" so we now totally expect MCDM to put out a campaign setting for your novels Matt. i would drop decent money on that, definitely.
Whenever I see one of these new vids, I go back and watch the full version on twitch. I love all the stuff you cut for TH-cam. I know why you do it, but I like all the fluff tangents. Bummed I missed it live. PS, I know you don't have an interest in other DND TH-cam creators, but you and the WebDM guys have so much in common as far your gamine history and philosophies go, it seems a huge shame to not try and get you guys to collaborate on at least 1 video or podcast.
thank you so much for making this series, i ran my first session and introduced two players to the game two days ago, and it probably wouldnt have happened if it werent for you:)
I found a game on roll20 for birthright and had no clue what I was getting into. This is the first setting that I truly fell in love with the races, holdings, controlling provinces or just being a court member to a regant. I've never had so much fun with a setting.
I don't know if this is the place to request future Running the Game episodes; but I'd like to hear your thoughts on a horror themed campaign, and how one would go about making things creepy as opposed to just gory. And if you've ever been in a game or run a game that had genuinely creepy sections, I'd also love to hear those stories!
A good friend of mine once ran a horror campaign in which the main antagonist was an Ilithid thief that stole memories. It started out as a type of murder mystery and ended with a lot of political intrigue. It was sufficiently terrifying.
I have stolen from Call of Cthulhu before, but it's nice to hear about something like this (tone and setting) from an experienced DM who may have done it before, and probably better.
Birthright seems like a really cool setting, i might homebrew my own setting inspired by it, been thinking of running (or playing) a campaign where the players were all rulers of their own little slice of land, will have to do some research into Birthright and incorporate useful ideas into my own.
Great video, personal favorite setting. The 1st number given in province is law holding, the 2nd number is source power. Just had to clarify. Also, they made a computer game, lol.
Birthright wasn't the 1st place for those Mass Combat rules. TSR put it out as its own thing around 1987. They even had a Ral Partha line of minis representing units. Basically, you'd have 3 little guys on about a 25mm base. For comparison, modern DnD minis are made on a 28mm base for medium creatures. My friends and I tried the system out, but never really took to it. We set up a ping pong table with a map in my garage and they took turns declaring maneuvers. Way too slow, but, if you like the PBM (Play By Mail) games, you'd probably love the system.
K McD battle system is an update of the WARMACHINE from the basic set boxes, I think. Those were really fun, though I never got to use them. I’m surprised they’ve moved on to 28mm bases though; 25mm as 5’ is the default scale, so a 28mm tall dude would be six feet, or some such. I remember the minis getting slowly larger across 3e though.
I'd thought that Dark Sun was the first attempt at a mass combat system- I'd done a little internet sleuthing and it was published first (the big arc in Dark Sun leads to a war). I wonder if TSR had adapted those rules into Birthright?
The Dream Syndicate Art Dolls, the dark sun setting had no mass combat, but did have a 10th level of magic comparable to the realm spells of birthright
Stirrups are seen in Eastern Europe from around the 7th century, earliest adoption in the west is a little more uncertain, but it is likely that Frankish/Caroligian heavy cavalry used them in the C8th, and certain that English stirrups existed by the C10th. Further, the use of the couched lance is mostly determined by a cantled saddle, not the use of stirrups, and the latter are more important for stability on the horse in later mounted melee and for ease of mounting, especially in maille or harness, but other adaptations can also ease this (such as the assistance of a page).
Ravenloft, Al-Qadim, and Dark Sun... those are my top three campaign settings, in that order from top to bottom. :) The very first time I played ANY tabletop game at all - 1995 at the age of 14 - used the Al-Qadim setting, which was my then-DM's preferred one. He also sold me his Ravenloft and Dark Sun box sets for a little discount when I showed great interest in DMing myself (which started only a year after I started playing because he moved away and I had a whole group of other relatively new players who needed a DM). I did pick up a keen interest in Birthright, Dragonlance, and eventually Planescape as well in the next couple of years, but sadly never got around to running or playing any of them. I'm sure I'll eventually run a game that spans the planes, but sadly I think that the Birthright and Dragonlance ships have sailed for good - unless I luck out and find a group running/playing either one.
When I made my pantheon, we generated a whole bunch of names and titles, matched them up and thought of reasons why those gods have those titles, how they're viewed by the people, what their goals are and what their relationships are with the other gods. That gives you somewhere to start and leaves room for adding lore as you go and react to the characters.
"I think that's what everybody wants, people just want to fall in love. Give them that opportunity." Such a good quote for D&D settings and just like, life in general.
After successfully binge-watching for several days, I am finally caught up with the "Running the game" series. Thanks so much Matt for the inspiration and concepts discussed so far. Can you elaborate on how many rounds you think various combats should last? I don't want a bullet-sponge, but I also don't want my boss to be a paper cut-out.
All my players ran a domain too. It wasn't an option not to have a domain, because to me it was the whole point of the setting. Poltics played a huge part of the game, and adventuring of course was a big part too. The was a domain action called adventure that was heavily used, but sometimes once in a while, with rule actions etc being the rest. Time passed quicker in birthright than other campaigns I've run because each domain action took a month of time.
Stirrups came to Europe via the Avars during the 6-7th century. The Romans picked it up from them, and thence it went west to the Franks. They were certainly around by the Norman Conquest of England, and basically the entire High and Late Middle Ages saw stirrups in use by everyone. For the Early Middle Ages, an argument could be made that only the Romans and the eastern Franks would have them in quantity, but even then by the 8-9th century you'd probably see stirrups throughout Europe. Late Antiquity (Diocletian to Mohammad) was pretty much the time period when you had medieval-style cavalry in its nascent form but without stirrups (Frankish proto-knights, Roman cataphracts and clibanarii, Persian cataphracts, and so on).
Mystara/Known World/Hollow World had detailed history complete with migration paths of various peoples. The tower map is from the adventure: Sword & Crown
Mystara is near and dear in my heart, it being the first setting I played D&D in, back before I started playing AD&D 2nd edition. I even converted some things from 1st and 2nd edition D&D into OD&D. I had all of the OD&D boxed sets, and all of the Gazetteers. I've run 2nd edition campaigns, and 3rd/3.5 edition campaigns in the setting. Now I'll be running a 5th edition game in it. I recently found a birthright 5e conversion guild so I'll be running a game in it as well in the future ^.^
We played the full game :) found it really easy with the paper work they provided but then I and a computer programmer so maybe my mind ran that way. We had also previously run a Pendragon campaign in which all the players became lords. We had 6 players at the time and did the Norse based campaign where you forge your own kingdom. Four players took those roles and 2 kept control of factions back in the home country (church and thieves guild I think).
Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but the stirrup started seeing use in most of medieval Europe by the 9th century, not the 13th century as Matt mentions in his video. Still an ace video about a great campaign setting. I was going to use 3.5 conversions of Birthright in my Pathfinder games before I discovered Ultimate Campaign. Kicking into Colville's book so I can add his ideas to Pathfinder's already robust system.
National borders as we know them now are actually a fairly recent construct. People previously could tell you what village they came from but not necessarily "nation". What we know as nations today is only about 150 years old. Those maps of the ancient world so meticulously demarked in our modern depictions did not so literally exist in their time.
Nice video Matt! I loved the Birthright setting, but did not use it as much as I would like. I did run a game set in a province in Brecht, where we did use the rules for managing a domain, mixed with a lot of normal D&D rp/adventuring. We tried out the mass battle rules from the game once, but like you said, it was not a very good system and if there had been another need for mass battle, I would have figured something else out. I believe WoC has been missing a great opportunity to rerelease Birthright given the popularity of Game of Thrones.
Orogs are an orc variant in 2E, included in the loose leaf Monstrous Compendium published in 1989. They are the tougher orcs who run roughshod over the normal orcs.
Alot of people in chat are talking about gnomes and halfling. In my campaign halfling are half human half dwarf and gnomes are half elf half dawrf. This makes them fit into the elf human dwarf dynamic of tropes as halfway points between two races but still keep their distinct identities. It works wonders for roleplay as player immediatly understand what makes a halfling a halfling and a gnome a gnome. A little of this and a little of that that both blends in and isn't accepted everywere! That and it provides better community between races in game world!
As for the problems that arise from mixing these different races such as Elvin purity or dwarven heritage... Well theirs a reason settlements have small halfling or gnome populations.
Yeah, I've always seen the difference between gnomes and halflings as the difference between elves and humans (and the difference between firbolg and goliaths, for that matter). It's whether you're fey or not. I see dwarves as their own race (without a fey/non-fey division), and orcs as well. When I explain it to my players that way, they all seem to get it. One of the campaigns I'm running (my first, in fact) is all Small creatures (a gnome, a halfling, and an awakened cat), which makes goblins and kobolds feel like more of a threat, as they're the same size. So I think having a lot of Small options is great!
David Kestler the issue is that dwarves are taller than halflings and gnomes. It doesn't make any sense to me that a short race and a tall race make a shorter race.
Alan Brockhaus sure I can see that, but image a dwarf without their stone element. What they gain in flexibility they loose in durability. Thus they shrink because they have lost the meaty constitution of the dwarves. Of course this isn't going to click for everyone. But for my setting it let's the gnomes and halfling fit into the societies of the more populous races of humans elves and dwarves! And branches the gap between them instead of just widening the field.
Wow, timing. I recently started a Pathfinder game based on the Birthright setting. I've tweaked a bunch of stuff and tried to convert the system over, fix the problems I had with it, and generally drag it kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat. The characters have started at 1st level as Scions of domain-ruling families attending a very exclusive military academy / finishing school.
With all your money, you should invest in some lapel microphones. It'd really help with your sound problems when you hold stuff up to the screen and block your current setup. I don't know how much you know about lav mics, but it'd just go on your shirt collar.
While at times there was a slight disconnect between being a Regent and being an Adventurer, it could work. What made Birthright so cool to me was that it was a believable, low-fantasy setting. Magic was rare, yet powerful and the story was really about humans. Domains, Churches, Guilds all had a stake in what went on. For my gaming group, Birthright has been dormant for many, many years having been replaced by Forgotten Realms and Pathfinder. Now, after my friends have been watching shows like Game of Thrones, The Last Kingdom and Vikings, they're craving for something with that political intrigue vibe that Birthright did so well. We're heading back to Cerillia after a near 20 year absence!
Finally, finally, FINALLY I see someone else who loves Birthright! I really hope WotC brings it back one day. There is just something about a chosen leader carving out a kingdom with sword and shield that appeals to me.
I picked up Birthright when it came out but I was a fairly new GM and wasn't sure how to make it work with D&D as I understood it at that time. Then it just became one of those settings which I often referenced in small ways in other games but never really got back to. I'd love to say that this will inspire me to take another look but honestly, I've just too many games in my queue to believe I'll ever get to this one. I collect game settings the way other gamers passionately collect dice, so I've more settings in my ever expanding collection than I'll ever get to run in my lifetime. I have to say, though, that I never once ran Forgotten Realms - the very concept of a default setting causes me to lose interest. (played in it a couple times and that didn't change my mind) As an aside, weren't Kits - as we saw appear in the handbooks - really more of a genesis for things like feats and prestige classes than this? Or even the Faction abilities in Planescape? (::pushes up his glasses:: "Um, actually ...")
1) Congrats on the amazingly successful campaign! 2) I fucking loved Birthright, even though I hated the majority of the 2ed system. I wish they would adapt it to 5ed, though I suspect you could do it fairly easily.
I'm actually playing a Birthright 5e game atm. There is a conversion. Not sure if you've found it in the year since this comment, but if not I can confirm it exists.
The game's problem is the amount of time that goes buy on the realm level as opposed to the adventure level. Trying to do both in a single campaign you run into having to take long breaks from adventuring to do realm stuff or the realm just kind of doesn't change for a long time and the realm part doesn't really exist for you. A good DM could do it though and make it sort of a generational campaign where you play a character for a while with time jumps and you pass on and play your children in the next campaign and intersperse it with maybe 2-5 years of time jumps where your players just do realm level stuff. DM runs what happens in surrounding realms and can determine when a new adventure type campaign is necessary or would fit well.
Matt, you asked about the "invasions" of your campaign world. The original Greyhawk boxed set did have that. Pathfinder, does it very well. Forgotten Realms eventually did it in second ed. with a book call Forgotten Realms Atlas. But that last book was tough to find and I only ever saw one printing and my brother had/has it. But I agree with you. The reason I never liked the Forgotten Realms setting, it seems that there was just stuff jammed onto a giant continent without any thought about how those cultures/countries interact or effect with each other.
Great video. Slight historical quibble here: 11th century Europe absolutely had access to the stirrup. "European" cavalry (depending on how you frame the Byzantine Empire) had introduced a kind of stirrup to their cavalry as early as the 7th century (likely adapted from steppe peoples), and they were certainly prominent in Western Europe by the 8th and 9th centuries. Certainly stirrups were *refined* quite a bit by the High Middle Ages, which allowed for better balance on horseback, especially while heavily armored, but the basic technology was already in place. The point is well-taken, though. Cultures without good stirrups will not have heavy cavalry. Environment will also shape this. The Inca had access to a number of technologies and agricultural advances unfamiliar to Europeans, but did not utilize the wheel. Using animal power in the form of llamas, wheeled carts would not have been practical in the steep highlands of the Andes.
Cultures without stirrups had excellent heavy cavalry for millennia before the things were invented. The Companions in Macedon were heavy lancers in the time before both stirrups and Roman-style saddles. Cataphracts (literally men who are armored all around) existed in one form or another from antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages (both before and after the introduction of stirrups, and in fact being the first heavy cavalry known to the West to begin using stirrups).
cant watch all of it just now. will need to come back. so far 17 minutes and i am reminded of the civ games. also just purchased a copy from drivethru rpg
Even though it's remarkably unplayable by most people, I really enjoy Artesia: Adventures in the known world (Same world as the Artesia graphic novel, both works done entirely by one guy). It is a human only (as far as playable character's are concerned), low-magic, high-fantasy setting that is set in a world where very different cultures come together to fight against enemies that go against their mutual self-interest. Character generation has a "lifepath" setting (the system is a Fuzion+TriStat monster) where you roll to determine what culture you're from, what "stock" your parents are from, their careers and then you go through your characters life year by year and determine what everyman, cultural & trade skills your character knows through yearly skill point allotment. It's definitely not for everyone but it is easily one of my favorite RPG books of all time.
Birthright's setting is wide enough in scope, and granular enough in details specific to classes, races, economy, and populations that it can absolutely be run as a smaller-scale roleplay adventure game like any other setting. The Tactical Wargame aspects can also be incredibly over-whelming to constantly be keeping track of as NPC factions fight between each-other and the players, so it's quite a cumbersome game if you play it's primary game, the war game.
One of the things I liked about Forgotten Reralms is that there is room to place your own content. Some settings name and have an entry for every square foot of the map and there is no room for your content. What I don't like about FR is that it is poorly laid out so information isn't where it is needed so you have to dig through 3 or 4 books to find all the information about a given region. Every published setting I've read through has some things I really like and some things I really don't care for.
There were some bonkers bloodline abilities. I had a fighter with divine wrath, and there was another pc, a wizard who had the ability to teleport wherever she wanted as long as she traveled from one fire to another.
Have watched every video in this play list so far. Amazing content, Im super new to D&D but plan on being a DM and player for my family group. Btw you look 30 tops. I must know your secret!
I haven't thought about that Conspectus in years--I can't even imagine where you found a copy. For the record: I was appalled when I first opened it up and discovered the giant header that said "A Tactical War-Game with Role-playing." In the R&D group we understood Birthright to be a D&D setting first and a strategic game second, so whoever wrote that header pretty much got it exactly backwards. But that wasn't unusual at TSR--the executives and marketing folks generally didn't trust us creatives to write "important" messaging copy, and didn't give us the chance to review it or comment on it before they sent it out.
It's like a God reached down and touched the head of a great priest....
It is pretty cool taking a race of monsters and making them a single being. Imagine THE Minotaur. Wait...
The Minotaur, Cyclops, and Medusa were all examples of singular beings that were either wholly unique or apart of a bigger race.
Only now, in the do we view these creatures as types of monsters.
@@Barquevious_Jackson to be honest, Cyclops were a race of sorts; there were Cyclops that helped olympians to defeat titans (they created Zeus's lightnings), and there were Cyclops that lived on islands and were shepherds (including Polyphemus)
Best line in the twitch chat: “Matt Colvilles dating pickup line - Tell me about your conquests.”
Matthew Schmoll
Matt is Cleopatra reborn! That explains the cat too! 🐈
"The Slightly Less Remembered Realms" was the best line of this video - I saw a GM have his campaign plans fall apart because another player knew more about the novelized Forgotten Realms than he did, and was demanding to know *when* in the timeline we were to determine if stuff was even where the GM said it was.
That moment really solidified for me why I wanted to make my own setting when I started running - I as the GM only had to stay consistent, but not bound to the books if my players would have expected to play in a novelized setting, and everyone was "balanced" in regards to how much of the world they knew (except me as the GM since it was my world, but I enjoy worldbuilding a great deal, so it's not too difficult for me)
I managed to get my hands on a pdf of someone's homebrew conversion of the Birthright mechanics and was like "Hey! Strongholds and Followers has stuff like this! Neat!" and then was like "Ooo, these bloodline abilities are also neat!"
"Is this live?
No, no this isn't live"
Suddenly matts sassy answer is just literally accurate
Haha, it's very post-modern!
Birthright was my favorite setting for 2nd Edition. I ran it insanely, using all the stats as boxed, and then built upon it. I consider myself an expert on this setting. One thing is the numbers. 5/0 is a place that has province level of 5, with max level of 5 for law and guild, but a 0 level source. A 2/3 is a place that has province level 2, max law and guild 2, but a source of 3 (wizard magic, "realm spells"). Some provinces had a max of 5 source, some 7, and special places had a max source of 9. Raising the province level (basically the population of people) reduced the max source. A place that was a max source of 5 could be a relatively unpopulated 0/5 or a nicely populated 4/1. Once the province level of 5 it no longer has a source holding level. It can increase to 6/0 or higher, it just will never have a source holding level again. This is why the City of Anuire was 10/0.
Your enthusiasm for the Birthright campaign, which I've taken bits and pieces of for my own long-designed campaign world, is one of the reasons I decided to back your kickstarter. This setting should have succeeded, but alas was different enough it only became a niche.
I take personal offense at all this gnome hate. I've been playing gnomes since dinosaurs roamed the earth. My mother was a gnome, and her grandmother was a gnome. I was a gnome in the gnreat gnome gnosh of 1915. Bonus INT squad. Tinkerbois 5ever.
My svirfneblin bard will sing songs about the evil colville and his attempts to commit lore genocide of our entire race. We must band together and make our voices heard! Down with tyranny! Time for an all gnome campaign where every character npc and monster is a gnome of some variety! And we will force Matt to dm for us! And he will learn the error of his ways through our cheery dispositions and lovable chubby gnomish cheeks!! Stand with me!
What are you going to do? Fight us?
My DM asked me to describe my gnome and I PROUDLY illustrated his armor, potions and vials on his belt, oversized backpack and most importantly the pointed red hat atop his head. Gnome arteficer gang.
Funny enough for me? I never really think of Gnomes as "the tinkerers". I mean I guess that came from Dragonlance because I can't think of a setting that did that before Dragonlance off the top of my head. When I think of Gnomes I think of well.. Forest gnomes. They talk to animals and live like druids, and are kind of isolationist "get of my lawn" like dwarves just replacing rude and drunk with "It's just a prank, bro" shenanigans.
Mostly at the tables and groups I played over the years Gnomes were hated because well... the same deal with Halflings. Every Halfling player ran a thief. And every Halfling Thief was a net handicap to the party. they'd steal from their teammates. Lie about what they saw when they scouted. Loot places before the players got to them and stash the treasure so it was all theirs. Basically having one inside your party was a net handicap not aided by Trolling abilities like "Taunt" to make ambivalent NPCs absolutely try to murder the party.
Gnomes were like that just with illusions and "Pranks" instead. You didn't want one in your party because it was going to harm your party about three times as much as the enemy. And it didn't matter who was playing them, what group I was with, etc. Just kept happening.
Hell yeah, Gnome-Artillerist rocks! I set ablaze and exploded all oversized fuckers who decided to mess with me and my team...
Catagory of people who love lore: "Lorehounds" - seen this applied often in a videogame context for people who root into every nook and cranny for details about the world.
Thanks for putting this video back up. It's one of my favourites ^^
What happened?
@Ragitsu not sure, sadly. It was down for a while.
I love when Matt gets excited about stuff. Super and entertaining 😃
You're the best, Matt! I'm a new Dm, with a group of new players. Your Welcome to DnD video from a year ago really hooked my crew. They are all video gamers and I told them you were lead writer on Evolve and every head nodded and sat back and listened. Keep up the amazing work!
Thank you. That's a great overview of the product. I had always wondered about it and if it was anything like the Battle system in BECMI. Now I know.
map-link: www.birthright.net/tmp/cerilia-huge2.jpg
ElderberryEnt thank you!
The hero we knew we needed but didn't want to be
Thank you!
there are a couple of high res maps available
heres a link to the post with the dl links
www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?28280-Hi-res-map-of-Cerilia-recreated
!map
It's always nice to see what creators like yourself have as their favourites it gives insight into any future projects you might create.
I like the distinction between Mindflayers, and THE Mindflayer. Thats often how I view monsters in the manual. They have such cool lore and themes attached that I often like to keep them confined to one or a few creatures, not an entire society. I can see the appeal but my worlds tend to be more on the low magic side so it helps to keep these creatures special and impactful when they do arise.
"My tiny house lion" How am I supposed to plan my first DM campaign if you reduce me to a melted flesh puddle?!
I love the bloodline thing. You may be born a peasant, but by hunting nobles you can gain extrodinary abilities.
... Eat the rich?
Claude Wicked Exactly what I thought, too!
"If you want Matt Colville to fall in love with you, you need one these" *cat pops up*
"The world this dude built for his novels" so we now totally expect MCDM to put out a campaign setting for your novels Matt.
i would drop decent money on that, definitely.
Greetings from the future: they’re doing that.
WOOT Birthright is the best campaign setting ever!!! Damn that Gorgon!
Watching this to see Matt's inspirations and divine a little more than what we already know about Kingdoms & Warfare because I am i m p a t i e n t.
Great ideas here, thank you. To anyone running yawning portal this is a good way to give characters a feeling of growth between dungeons.
hey matt! just wanted to say that i love these long vids, keep up the great work!
Well I was already going to bed late anyway, I guess I have time for a short Matt Colville video
Congrats on an epic kickstarter campaign
Whenever I see one of these new vids, I go back and watch the full version on twitch. I love all the stuff you cut for TH-cam. I know why you do it, but I like all the fluff tangents. Bummed I missed it live.
PS, I know you don't have an interest in other DND TH-cam creators, but you and the WebDM guys have so much in common as far your gamine history and philosophies go, it seems a huge shame to not try and get you guys to collaborate on at least 1 video or podcast.
14:50 I knew how to pronounce all the names. .. meteor. .. medeair...
Haha!
Love your content. Love your humour.
thank you so much for making this series, i ran my first session and introduced two players to the game two days ago, and it probably wouldnt have happened if it werent for you:)
I found a game on roll20 for birthright and had no clue what I was getting into. This is the first setting that I truly fell in love with the races, holdings, controlling provinces or just being a court member to a regant. I've never had so much fun with a setting.
"Dwarf Fortress esqe battle with a dragon" ... sooo... the dragon was grappled by his left big toe at some point?
I don't know if this is the place to request future Running the Game episodes; but I'd like to hear your thoughts on a horror themed campaign, and how one would go about making things creepy as opposed to just gory. And if you've ever been in a game or run a game that had genuinely creepy sections, I'd also love to hear those stories!
A good friend of mine once ran a horror campaign in which the main antagonist was an Ilithid thief that stole memories. It started out as a type of murder mystery and ended with a lot of political intrigue. It was sufficiently terrifying.
Id lke to here about stealing from call of cthulhu
I have stolen from Call of Cthulhu before, but it's nice to hear about something like this (tone and setting) from an experienced DM who may have done it before, and probably better.
GURPS 2E Horror is a good book for running the Horror genre. Lite on rules, heavy on design aspects.
Rich Baker is a combination of Rich Burlew and Keith Baker, who came second and first place respectively in the setting contest.
Man I loved your videos but now even more! That is my favorite Campaign world, just introduced my kids to it using the 5th edition rules.
I loved the Birthright setting. We didn't play it with the mass-combat rules much either. I still loved the idea of RPing at a domain level.
Birthright seems like a really cool setting, i might homebrew my own setting inspired by it, been thinking of running (or playing) a campaign where the players were all rulers of their own little slice of land, will have to do some research into Birthright and incorporate useful ideas into my own.
Big ups for tiny house lion. Every time.
Great video, personal favorite setting.
The 1st number given in province is law holding, the 2nd number is source power. Just had to clarify.
Also, they made a computer game, lol.
Thanks for giving this setting some love & attention!
You're a pretty knowledgably guy Matt. Neat stuff ya got going on.
Birthright wasn't the 1st place for those Mass Combat rules. TSR put it out as its own thing around 1987. They even had a Ral Partha line of minis representing units. Basically, you'd have 3 little guys on about a 25mm base. For comparison, modern DnD minis are made on a 28mm base for medium creatures.
My friends and I tried the system out, but never really took to it. We set up a ping pong table with a map in my garage and they took turns declaring maneuvers. Way too slow, but, if you like the PBM (Play By Mail) games, you'd probably love the system.
K McD battle system is an update of the WARMACHINE from the basic set boxes, I think. Those were really fun, though I never got to use them.
I’m surprised they’ve moved on to 28mm bases though; 25mm as 5’ is the default scale, so a 28mm tall dude would be six feet, or some such. I remember the minis getting slowly larger across 3e though.
I'd thought that Dark Sun was the first attempt at a mass combat system- I'd done a little internet sleuthing and it was published first (the big arc in Dark Sun leads to a war). I wonder if TSR had adapted those rules into Birthright?
The Dream Syndicate Art Dolls, the dark sun setting had no mass combat, but did have a 10th level of magic comparable to the realm spells of birthright
Stirrups are seen in Eastern Europe from around the 7th century, earliest adoption in the west is a little more uncertain, but it is likely that Frankish/Caroligian heavy cavalry used them in the C8th, and certain that English stirrups existed by the C10th.
Further, the use of the couched lance is mostly determined by a cantled saddle, not the use of stirrups, and the latter are more important for stability on the horse in later mounted melee and for ease of mounting, especially in maille or harness, but other adaptations can also ease this (such as the assistance of a page).
Stirrups were used in Europe in the 11th century. The Bayeux tapestry depicts the Normans using stirrups in the battle of Hastings in 1066.
Ravenloft, Al-Qadim, and Dark Sun... those are my top three campaign settings, in that order from top to bottom. :)
The very first time I played ANY tabletop game at all - 1995 at the age of 14 - used the Al-Qadim setting, which was my then-DM's preferred one. He also sold me his Ravenloft and Dark Sun box sets for a little discount when I showed great interest in DMing myself (which started only a year after I started playing because he moved away and I had a whole group of other relatively new players who needed a DM).
I did pick up a keen interest in Birthright, Dragonlance, and eventually Planescape as well in the next couple of years, but sadly never got around to running or playing any of them. I'm sure I'll eventually run a game that spans the planes, but sadly I think that the Birthright and Dragonlance ships have sailed for good - unless I luck out and find a group running/playing either one.
When I made my pantheon, we generated a whole bunch of names and titles, matched them up and thought of reasons why those gods have those titles, how they're viewed by the people, what their goals are and what their relationships are with the other gods. That gives you somewhere to start and leaves room for adding lore as you go and react to the characters.
Obligatory mention of Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance for PC. A little quaint, somewhat buggy and rather easy, but pretty cool!
Buggy af but really fun. Still play it every now and then
"I think that's what everybody wants, people just want to fall in love. Give them that opportunity." Such a good quote for D&D settings and just like, life in general.
20:35 - I'm twenty minutes in, but have saved thirty minutes - thank you for the edit Matt!!
After successfully binge-watching for several days, I am finally caught up with the "Running the game" series. Thanks so much Matt for the inspiration and concepts discussed so far. Can you elaborate on how many rounds you think various combats should last? I don't want a bullet-sponge, but I also don't want my boss to be a paper cut-out.
Birthright was my first AD&D campaign. My domain was Roesone. My DM didn't give us an option for NOT running a domain.
All my players ran a domain too. It wasn't an option not to have a domain, because to me it was the whole point of the setting. Poltics played a huge part of the game, and adventuring of course was a big part too. The was a domain action called adventure that was heavily used, but sometimes once in a while, with rule actions etc being the rest. Time passed quicker in birthright than other campaigns I've run because each domain action took a month of time.
Stirrups came to Europe via the Avars during the 6-7th century. The Romans picked it up from them, and thence it went west to the Franks. They were certainly around by the Norman Conquest of England, and basically the entire High and Late Middle Ages saw stirrups in use by everyone. For the Early Middle Ages, an argument could be made that only the Romans and the eastern Franks would have them in quantity, but even then by the 8-9th century you'd probably see stirrups throughout Europe.
Late Antiquity (Diocletian to Mohammad) was pretty much the time period when you had medieval-style cavalry in its nascent form but without stirrups (Frankish proto-knights, Roman cataphracts and clibanarii, Persian cataphracts, and so on).
Mystara/Known World/Hollow World had detailed history complete with migration paths of various peoples.
The tower map is from the adventure: Sword & Crown
Mystara is near and dear in my heart, it being the first setting I played D&D in, back before I started playing AD&D 2nd edition. I even converted some things from 1st and 2nd edition D&D into OD&D. I had all of the OD&D boxed sets, and all of the Gazetteers. I've run 2nd edition campaigns, and 3rd/3.5 edition campaigns in the setting. Now I'll be running a 5th edition game in it.
I recently found a birthright 5e conversion guild so I'll be running a game in it as well in the future ^.^
We played the full game :) found it really easy with the paper work they provided but then I and a computer programmer so maybe my mind ran that way. We had also previously run a Pendragon campaign in which all the players became lords.
We had 6 players at the time and did the Norse based campaign where you forge your own kingdom. Four players took those roles and 2 kept control of factions back in the home country (church and thieves guild I think).
Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but the stirrup started seeing use in most of medieval Europe by the 9th century, not the 13th century as Matt mentions in his video. Still an ace video about a great campaign setting. I was going to use 3.5 conversions of Birthright in my Pathfinder games before I discovered Ultimate Campaign. Kicking into Colville's book so I can add his ideas to Pathfinder's already robust system.
Thanks for uploading! Tried to watch/listen to the twitch replay but the ads were so painful!
Greyhawk has invasion/migration maps, I think. At least the 3e-era gazetter did.
Crazy that his kickstarter is already so close to making 1 mil...you rock Colville.
"We now return you to your normal skulduggery." *WHO TOLD YOU I WAS A PIRATE?* Was it STEVE, perchance? Steve...
Just wanted to say thanks, because of you I've gotten into DnD. My second session is this Monday.
Man, this is a blast from the past.
Matt! You cut out the rant about your friend Brian and how he was dyslexic! Seriously my favourite part of the stream!
I hope that gets uploaded, but as a separate video. Could be very inspirational to a lot of people.
National borders as we know them now are actually a fairly recent construct. People previously could tell you what village they came from but not necessarily "nation". What we know as nations today is only about 150 years old. Those maps of the ancient world so meticulously demarked in our modern depictions did not so literally exist in their time.
Nice video Matt! I loved the Birthright setting, but did not use it as much as I would like. I did run a game set in a province in Brecht, where we did use the rules for managing a domain, mixed with a lot of normal D&D rp/adventuring. We tried out the mass battle rules from the game once, but like you said, it was not a very good system and if there had been another need for mass battle, I would have figured something else out. I believe WoC has been missing a great opportunity to rerelease Birthright given the popularity of Game of Thrones.
Wakes up>Makes toast>Goes on TH-cam> New Colville video>watching right now
Dyslexo wakes up? Not in the states I take it? XD
I love when a Matt Colville video serves as my morning paper while I coffee.
I too would like to know the outcome of the toast- the fate of the universe hangs in the balance!
Dyslexo Your name has inspired me to make a new Super villain in my Superhero campaign.
Bryien Thats how I start most mornings - I’m still 18 months behind, but learning a ton!
Totally stealing aspects of this setting for my next campaign.
I'm gonna throw some stuff into my current Campaign, this is a gold mine!
Matt Colville keep doing these amazing videos!
I love Birthright! I only got to play it once when it first came out but I love the build an empire style of game.
Orogs are an orc variant in 2E, included in the loose leaf Monstrous Compendium published in 1989. They are the tougher orcs who run roughshod over the normal orcs.
Fun video. Though you edited out my favourite aside from the twitch chat - you enjoying the name of my first D&D character (and the game Bang!).
Alot of people in chat are talking about gnomes and halfling. In my campaign halfling are half human half dwarf and gnomes are half elf half dawrf. This makes them fit into the elf human dwarf dynamic of tropes as halfway points between two races but still keep their distinct identities.
It works wonders for roleplay as player immediatly understand what makes a halfling a halfling and a gnome a gnome. A little of this and a little of that that both blends in and isn't accepted everywere! That and it provides better community between races in game world!
As for the problems that arise from mixing these different races such as Elvin purity or dwarven heritage... Well theirs a reason settlements have small halfling or gnome populations.
Yeah, I've always seen the difference between gnomes and halflings as the difference between elves and humans (and the difference between firbolg and goliaths, for that matter). It's whether you're fey or not. I see dwarves as their own race (without a fey/non-fey division), and orcs as well. When I explain it to my players that way, they all seem to get it.
One of the campaigns I'm running (my first, in fact) is all Small creatures (a gnome, a halfling, and an awakened cat), which makes goblins and kobolds feel like more of a threat, as they're the same size. So I think having a lot of Small options is great!
David Kestler the issue is that dwarves are taller than halflings and gnomes. It doesn't make any sense to me that a short race and a tall race make a shorter race.
Alan Brockhaus sure I can see that, but image a dwarf without their stone element. What they gain in flexibility they loose in durability. Thus they shrink because they have lost the meaty constitution of the dwarves.
Of course this isn't going to click for everyone. But for my setting it let's the gnomes and halfling fit into the societies of the more populous races of humans elves and dwarves! And branches the gap between them instead of just widening the field.
Wow, timing. I recently started a Pathfinder game based on the Birthright setting. I've tweaked a bunch of stuff and tried to convert the system over, fix the problems I had with it, and generally drag it kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat. The characters have started at 1st level as Scions of domain-ruling families attending a very exclusive military academy / finishing school.
Kickstarter's hit the $937k mark, slowly creeping towards $1 million! Congrats, Matt!
17:43 Ah, the Warrior, Wizard, Priest, and Rogue.
With all your money, you should invest in some lapel microphones. It'd really help with your sound problems when you hold stuff up to the screen and block your current setup. I don't know how much you know about lav mics, but it'd just go on your shirt collar.
While at times there was a slight disconnect between being a Regent and being an Adventurer, it could work. What made Birthright so cool to me was that it was a believable, low-fantasy setting. Magic was rare, yet powerful and the story was really about humans. Domains, Churches, Guilds all had a stake in what went on. For my gaming group, Birthright has been dormant for many, many years having been replaced by Forgotten Realms and Pathfinder. Now, after my friends have been watching shows like Game of Thrones, The Last Kingdom and Vikings, they're craving for something with that political intrigue vibe that Birthright did so well. We're heading back to Cerillia after a near 20 year absence!
Fuck, an hour long video at 3am?
Thank you.
Finally, finally, FINALLY I see someone else who loves Birthright! I really hope WotC brings it back one day. There is just something about a chosen leader carving out a kingdom with sword and shield that appeals to me.
I picked up Birthright when it came out but I was a fairly new GM and wasn't sure how to make it work with D&D as I understood it at that time. Then it just became one of those settings which I often referenced in small ways in other games but never really got back to. I'd love to say that this will inspire me to take another look but honestly, I've just too many games in my queue to believe I'll ever get to this one. I collect game settings the way other gamers passionately collect dice, so I've more settings in my ever expanding collection than I'll ever get to run in my lifetime. I have to say, though, that I never once ran Forgotten Realms - the very concept of a default setting causes me to lose interest. (played in it a couple times and that didn't change my mind)
As an aside, weren't Kits - as we saw appear in the handbooks - really more of a genesis for things like feats and prestige classes than this? Or even the Faction abilities in Planescape? (::pushes up his glasses:: "Um, actually ...")
1) Congrats on the amazingly successful campaign!
2) I fucking loved Birthright, even though I hated the majority of the 2ed system. I wish they would adapt it to 5ed, though I suspect you could do it fairly easily.
I'm actually playing a Birthright 5e game atm. There is a conversion. Not sure if you've found it in the year since this comment, but if not I can confirm it exists.
I am the master of my domain.
I'm out!
"These two guys..."
/holds up four fingers.
The game's problem is the amount of time that goes buy on the realm level as opposed to the adventure level. Trying to do both in a single campaign you run into having to take long breaks from adventuring to do realm stuff or the realm just kind of doesn't change for a long time and the realm part doesn't really exist for you. A good DM could do it though and make it sort of a generational campaign where you play a character for a while with time jumps and you pass on and play your children in the next campaign and intersperse it with maybe 2-5 years of time jumps where your players just do realm level stuff. DM runs what happens in surrounding realms and can determine when a new adventure type campaign is necessary or would fit well.
Matt, you asked about the "invasions" of your campaign world. The original Greyhawk boxed set did have that. Pathfinder, does it very well. Forgotten Realms eventually did it in second ed. with a book call Forgotten Realms Atlas. But that last book was tough to find and I only ever saw one printing and my brother had/has it. But I agree with you. The reason I never liked the Forgotten Realms setting, it seems that there was just stuff jammed onto a giant continent without any thought about how those cultures/countries interact or effect with each other.
Haircut looks good dude
Great video. Slight historical quibble here: 11th century Europe absolutely had access to the stirrup. "European" cavalry (depending on how you frame the Byzantine Empire) had introduced a kind of stirrup to their cavalry as early as the 7th century (likely adapted from steppe peoples), and they were certainly prominent in Western Europe by the 8th and 9th centuries. Certainly stirrups were *refined* quite a bit by the High Middle Ages, which allowed for better balance on horseback, especially while heavily armored, but the basic technology was already in place.
The point is well-taken, though. Cultures without good stirrups will not have heavy cavalry. Environment will also shape this. The Inca had access to a number of technologies and agricultural advances unfamiliar to Europeans, but did not utilize the wheel. Using animal power in the form of llamas, wheeled carts would not have been practical in the steep highlands of the Andes.
Cultures without stirrups had excellent heavy cavalry for millennia before the things were invented. The Companions in Macedon were heavy lancers in the time before both stirrups and Roman-style saddles. Cataphracts (literally men who are armored all around) existed in one form or another from antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages (both before and after the introduction of stirrups, and in fact being the first heavy cavalry known to the West to begin using stirrups).
I'm so proud of myself for earning this bonus content.
This is my favorite campaign to this date.
cant watch all of it just now. will need to come back. so far 17 minutes and i am reminded of the civ games. also just purchased a copy from drivethru rpg
I ran Birthright the way it was in the book and I loved it.
No gnomes!? Looks like my home brew game's getting a new setting! :)
The Plane of Shadow goes back to 1st Ed. and Gygax is on record talking about a Shadow Land idea that he wanted to publish had he stayed on at TSR.
Even though it's remarkably unplayable by most people, I really enjoy Artesia: Adventures in the known world (Same world as the Artesia graphic novel, both works done entirely by one guy). It is a human only (as far as playable character's are concerned), low-magic, high-fantasy setting that is set in a world where very different cultures come together to fight against enemies that go against their mutual self-interest.
Character generation has a "lifepath" setting (the system is a Fuzion+TriStat monster) where you roll to determine what culture you're from, what "stock" your parents are from, their careers and then you go through your characters life year by year and determine what everyman, cultural & trade skills your character knows through yearly skill point allotment.
It's definitely not for everyone but it is easily one of my favorite RPG books of all time.
greyhawk has some stuff about invasions, migrations
Rhuobhe Manslayer is an awesome as f*ck name and I’m stealing it for my wood elf rebel leader.
My favorite setting is Mystara also known as the known world from the basic d&d expert set and the BX modules.
Birthright's setting is wide enough in scope, and granular enough in details specific to classes, races, economy, and populations that it can absolutely be run as a smaller-scale roleplay adventure game like any other setting. The Tactical Wargame aspects can also be incredibly over-whelming to constantly be keeping track of as NPC factions fight between each-other and the players, so it's quite a cumbersome game if you play it's primary game, the war game.
One of the things I liked about Forgotten Reralms is that there is room to place your own content. Some settings name and have an entry for every square foot of the map and there is no room for your content. What I don't like about FR is that it is poorly laid out so information isn't where it is needed so you have to dig through 3 or 4 books to find all the information about a given region.
Every published setting I've read through has some things I really like and some things I really don't care for.
ah yes, dwarven bards... the source of all the best drinking songs.
Oh, silly Matt. It’s always Cat Time when the Cat decides it to be so. You know that~
There were some bonkers bloodline abilities. I had a fighter with divine wrath, and there was another pc, a wizard who had the ability to teleport wherever she wanted as long as she traveled from one fire to another.
Have watched every video in this play list so far. Amazing content, Im super new to D&D but plan on being a DM and player for my family group. Btw you look 30 tops. I must know your secret!