Player Castles & Lands

[MrWakka]

I am thinking on possibly allowing my players to take over a area of land and essentially be lords of it.

However i was hoping to find some help in regards in how to manage this, the players tend to enjoy having some depth to it and i expect it to be a long term thing.

Any books/game supplements that anyone can think of that has anything useful on this subject? (Running a D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms campaign, but anything that has a good base i can convert if need be.)

Hopefully this was the right forum for this, wasn't sure.

[Paul Ackerman 70]

I'm not sure off hand as far as a book.

But, google heroforge and check out their castle forge. It might help you build the lairs etc.

[Blood stained Sunday's best]

MrWakka wrote:

I am thinking on possibly allowing my players to take over a area of land and essentially be lords of it.

However i was hoping to find some help in regards in how to manage this, the players tend to enjoy having some depth to it and i expect it to be a long term thing.

Any books/game supplements that anyone can think of that has anything useful on this subject? (Running a D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms campaign, but anything that has a good base i can convert if need be.)

Hopefully this was the right forum for this, wasn't sure.

I just picked up Fields of Blood - The Book of War from Eden Studios. It's D20. Unfortunately I haven't had time to give it anything but a cursory glance but the book details a system of domain and mass combat rules. It appears from my brief flip through that it uses a realm based turn system similar to Birthright.

Oh you might want to try The Book of Strongholds and Dynasties from Mongoose and there is another resource which name eludes me that detailed running a more historical correct medieval kingdom. What the heck was the name?

[MrWakka]

Thanks for the help, i'll be checking them out.

[Bill Mead]

Been away for a while, so I am scanning some older posts to catch up...

There is a book called Power of Faerun that details how to manage this and other types of lordly play without to many really restrictive rules that suck the life out of you...Even though it is based in Faerun, it can be used for any setting by just changing names (which may not even be necesary with the chapter on the Border Kingdoms).

[Gene 95]

If they're going to be building I recommend the Stronghold Builder's Guide. Do note, however, that it is a 3.0 product (there are a few things needed conversion (such as the few new monsters they add) but the majority (I'd float out an estimate of around 85% of the book) runs just fine in 3.5 with no changes.

[Grezgurt]

The Stronghold builders guide is great for actually building their Keep.

As for managinf their lands etc two books you can probably get real cheep 2$ to 3$ are The Cavaliers Handbook & The Nobles Handbook both are published by Green Ronin Press. I bought them last year when Paizo had a big sell on Green Ronin books.

Nobles hand book has nice rules on establishing a house hold (non combatabt followers servants etc .. as well as how to advance your house holds fame or popularity etc..

The Cavaliers handbook has a feat and rules that allows a character to establish an Order and other things... gives rules on maintenance for your Order the land and holdings etc..

[Dread]

Harn had some excellent rules for that, check on Ebay. You should be able to find it cheaply.

[Rezdave]

MrWakka wrote:

However i was hoping to find some help in regards in how to manage this, the players tend to enjoy having some depth to it and i expect it to be a long term thing.

I had something similar develop at the end of my previous campaign, where the PCs were given stewardship over lands by the local noble lords. The estates were in ruins due to war and the previous owners lost or dead and the legitimacy of various claimants needed to be sorted out, so the PCs became Lords Warder of the lands until that time. Several also took jobs as sheriffs of territories that included their estates and those surrounding, and a couple married into minor noble lines and produced heirs so that they could actually be granted estates.

Here are some suggestions from my experience:

1) Go into only as much detail as your Players require, or as much as you enjoy so long as they aren't put off by it. Don't go into greater detail than they demand if you don't have to, and never force them to go into more managerial detail than they want;

2) Stronghold Builder's Handbook will give you a good guideline for the cost of constructing and managing a household. You many need to make adjustments for world-economic reasons (as I did in my low-economy home-brew);

3) If your PCs are claiming domains on the borderlands, then much like the post-war domains that mine were granted there will be little in the way of established population, infrastructure and so forth. The lands will initially require great investment and may require decades to return any profit. My PCs had to keep adventuring simply to pay their mortgages;

4) In addition to civil and economic infrastructure (roads, farms, markets, clerical staff, household staff, etc.) there will need to be some sort of legal infrastructure. If the PCs don't do this themselves they will need to appoint and support a sheriff and regardless will need deputies. They will need men simply to collect taxes, in addition to the ones who hunt bandits and monsters. All these troops will need to be armed, equipped, boarded, fed and paid. This is costly business. My Sheriff PCs were taking in over 10,000gp/year in taxes and sometimes still in the red;

5) Great for them if they can find some frontier lands away from anyone else, but it's possible the PCs will be granted lands on the edge of some kingdom and owe taxes to a higher noble, thus cutting into their own take. Even if they are independent, they may need to forge an alliance with a more powerful neighbor to either keep said neighbor from annexing them once they've impoverished themselves building infrastructure or else guaranteeing the aid of said neighbor's powerful military in the event their other powerful neighbor attacks. Regardless, they can expect to part with taxes, tribute, bribes (to local goblinoid tribes or whatnot) and so forth to keep their lands and keep the macro-political peace;

6) Unless they're swimming in cash, SBH prices add up fast. Feel free to mortgage their castles from moneylenders in the major city of an ally to whom they're paying tribute (perhaps that was part of the deal). Go with some type of annual simple-interest loan payable over 10 years or so, just for the sake of easy math;

7) Remember that equipment breaks. Even if they equip their men-at-arms and other household staffs (using PHB average values for Fighter, Rogue or whatever starting gear) that equipment will eventually wear out, break, get lost or otherwise need to be replaced. Assume they will need to entirely re-gear their staff once every 3-10 years, depending upon how roughly treated the gear is (e.g. mine rebuild a smithy every ten years and re-gear their tax-collecting men-at-arms every five but their bandit-hunters every three).

8) I did go to the trouble of building a mathematical model of the estates that factored infrastructure development, population growth, demographics (subsistence farmers vs. craft-folk vs. professionals) and even seasonal variations into productivity. In addition to their initial investments, the month-to-month costs of upkeep and continuing investment put my PCs in the red every month for nearly 2 years before they began to see a monthly profit, much less a real return on their total investment, and this was with their noble lord giving them a break on taxes during the post-war reconstruction. As I mentioned, some were so heavily mortgaged they still needed to adventure to make ends meet at the end of the year or lose their lands, if not their heads.

Anyway, those are a few things to think about.

HTH,

Rez

[Iziak]

If the characters are planning to build a castle, I'd recommend the "Keeping the Keep" article in Pathfinder #3. It's got some interesting information on the costs to keep workers around and a list of events that could happen at the castle.

[yellowdingo]

Yay! Someone who loves castles and estate incomes...

Are we talikng 13 acres of Windsor Castle here?

ESTATE RULES

1. Taxing the Locals
You need to know the local population, and the economic viability of what they produce to be able to tax them. Then there is that whole issue of subjugating them, and having your troops stuff a sword in the face of the local peasants and demand tithe.
So count up the number of farming families and tack on 1cp per month in tax.

2. Farming the Land
Annual crops like to produce about 30 bushels (@100% yield), and as agricultural conditions decline, they become harder to produce.
An oxen/cow requires 1/2 a bushel of grain, chaff(hay), and green graising feed per day to survive so a 100% acre feeds your cow for two months - thats say 6&1/2 acres of grain (at 100% yield) to cover storage losses.
The Same acre feeds four people for a year their grain needs.

Conceivably 19&1/2 acres (a Tennant Farm) will support Farming Family and Oxen/cow for a year at about 50% yield efficiency. Had the farmer been alone he might produce surplus for three other people.

3. Consider an estate
So your Estate has about 3-200 Tennant Farms (average 20).

[Samuel Weiss]

Try Birthright. It is for "kingdoms", has a specific bloodline mechanic, and is for 2nd ed, but it is a fun starting point.
There are a few downloads for it available lost in the WotC archives, including the Book of Regency which focuses on ruling.

[Arakhor]

You can also go to the official Birthright site, which has lots of downloads to support the game, and you can buy the BR campaign on PDF from RPG Now very cheaply.

[Davi The Eccentric]

Arakhor wrote:

You can also go to the official Birthright site, which has lots of downloads to support the game, and you can buy the BR campaign on PDF from RPG Now very cheaply.

Fixed the links.

[Ian Hewitt]

I did exactly this in a long-term 2e campaign that DMed. My greatest resource was a Dragon magazine - I do not remember the number, but it would have been in the 1990's and it was a Castles-special.

There were a couple of castles detailed with floorplans, and several articles - IIRC - with new equipment and spells, magic items and the like, but the greatest article had tables of encounters that would happen at the castle. Things like, food stores have gone bad, bad morale among the villagers, bumper crop in the village, War! and the like. This pretty simple article inspired tons of material for my game and I'd use it again if I could find it.

They might be some conversion required here and there, but that just adds to the fun!

[Digitalelf]

Ian Hewitt wrote:

My greatest resource was a Dragon magazine - I do not remember the number, but it would have been in the 1990's and it was a Castles-special.

Was this the issue: Dragon Magazine #145?

With such articles as:

"Holding Down the Fort"

"A Castle Here, A Castle There"

"Strongholds Three"

A "Bazaar of the Bizarre"

And...

"Your Home Is Your Castle"

-That One Digitalelf Fellow-

[MrFish]

Try Lythia.com as well for pre-made villages, manors and castles, I've found it very helpful indeed. Admittedly it's made for the Harn system but the npcs and local economics are very well worked out, it's a good time saver.