Review: Birthright Campaign Setting

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.

LARGE SCALE BATTLE SIMULATION IN D&D

Dungeons and Dragons and wargaming have a long history together.  D&D grew out of wargaming.  Fantasy armies are very much a part of D&D and fantasy literature.  There have been multiple products to address the issue of how does a DM simulate a battle between opposing armies without using the individual combat rules which would not work right and would take far too long to resolve.

Basic D&D:  A moderately complex calculation is used to determine a number from roughly 60 to 140.  60 (or lower) tends to be really weak poor quality troops, 140 tends to be elite troops.  (Elves and dwarves are rated highly under these rules).  The two armies face off, modifiers are added or subtracted to each force's number.  (For example defending homeland gives a +10) Then each side rolls a d100 and a chart is consulted.  There are about 15 different outcomes possible in terms of battlefield results.  It has rules that tie-in to player character actions before the battle to give a role-playing option prior to the fight.  It looks simple and probably would work very well with a few adjustments to bonuses and penalties.  The rules work well if you need to quickly simulate a battle and prefer to have random results rather than a DM judgment call about who is the winner.  It also works well with the gazetteers as many but not all of the gazetteers have already determined the 60 to 140 quality number for the armies in that particular realm.

1st and 2nd Edition:  Both have versions of the Battlesystem rules.  I would describe Battlesystem as Risk meets D&D.  There is a lot more dice rolling involved than with the Basic D&D War Machine rules.  Tactical movement on the battlefield is important.  Battlesystem was also written with miniatures in mind. To properly run a Battlesystem fight, lots of miniatures are needed.
 
The 1e rules center around the Forgotten Realms "H series" of modules.  4 modules around a classic good vs evil fantasy battle.

With 2nd edition, the Dark Sun setting was written with the idea of having a significant Battlesystem tie-ins.  Many of the accessories and modules were written with Battlesystem in mind.  Other products (for example the Castles boxed set featuring campaigns against fortresses in Taladas, the Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk) also featured the Battlesystem rules but the Dark Sun setting was written with having a significant tie-in in mind.  I am not sure that the tie-in was very successful since after a few years they moved away from the Battlesystem focus in Dark Sun products.

 
Birthright:  The Birthright setting also has rules for playing battles that are self-contained within the Birthright setting.  The self-contained rules feature a battle map and 3x5 index cards with unit information on them.  The cards and map are used to simulate battles.  These rules are less complex than Battlesystem but more complex than War Machine.

CONCLUSION: Each of these products has its strengths and weaknesses but overall I think that individually each product accomplishes its goal of simulating a battle between two armies.