Published in 1995. Written by Colin McComb and Rich Baker with help from several other TSR employees. Birthright is one of my favorite settings. It has a lot of good ideas but the execution of those ideas does not always work well.
Birthright includes the rules and a setting for running characters as rulers of the realm. There are four types of holdings that correspond to each of the four major classes. One party can control one realm or each character can control his or her own realm. Also included are rules for warfare and the economic simulation to run such realms.
Rather than starting with rules such as BECMI's Companion Set or the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, new rules are made from scratch. The economics of running a realm are complicated and the rules are faced with avoiding the problems that the characters have too much or not enough money.
I wish that TSR had released a generic supplement first that had the core rules really solid with one sample realm with a only 2 or 3 neighbors. Then in the first supplement the sample realm and neighbors are located on the setting world which focuses on atmosphere. By combining the setting and rules into one boxed set, the end result is not enough detail for either one.
If a separate rulebook had been released first, the rules could have had the rules option for rich, average and stingy economies. This would have been nice because many of the sample realms in the TSR-designed world of Cerelia have hopelessly flawed economies that do not work the way that they are described. These countries lose money every turn and have no way to prevent such loss until bankruptcy and anarchy occur.
Conclusion: Birthright has lots of potential and I am sure that the market is still there for a successful kingdom simulator in D&D. Get Birthright but be prepared to have to adjust the rules to make it work.
2 out of 5 stars. Lots of great ideas hurt by terrible game mechanics that do not work.
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