Topic: Castles/Dominions

[mpicart]

I like the Birthright D&D Expert rules, where it had Dominion rules; it would say 1 24-mile Hex would make you a Baron, 2 would make you a Viscount, etc, and it had things you can do in 3-month turns as a Dominion ruler.

I wanted to do something similar in Rolemaster.  In "Castles and Ruins," it states that a castle can control a 10-12 mile radius area; beyond that, your control is lessened because your knights would take more than a day to make a round trip to the castle. Then there is a chart that gives you the taxable population per Acres (and also gives suggested noble title).

And that's where I'm having a problem: that the scale is in Acres.  A Town is approx 1,250 acres; a small city, 12,500 acres, a country 12,500,000 acres.  The chart indicates that a Baron would own 12,500 Acres (a small city???).  Even so, unless you have a campaign map scaled to 1 or 2 miles, I can't see how one can manage it this way.

Most people (I would imagine) has their campaign map scaled to 24 miles per Hex, making each Hex is 319,251.2 acres.  If you make a PC a Baron you can't just give him ownership of a Hex -- the area of control would be too large; according to the chart, owning 1 entire 24-mile Hex would make him a Prince (owning a large Territory).

It's a bit fustrating, because I know that most campaign maps have entire countries composed of many, many 24-mile Hexes; using the Castles and Ruins, there would be hundreds of Counts, Dukes, Barons just in one country!

Is it easier to just scale of the charts up from Acres to a square miles?  Has anyone done something similar to what I want to do?  Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way?

[Cory Magel]

My initial thought is that the map of a 'kingdom' may largely be only representational... meaning they don't truly 'control' the entire area, but if an army or something invades the area they would take action.

This is, effectively, how I handle the map for my game world.  There are large areas of claimed land which are really undeveloped/unsettled.  They are just the drawn borders of what they claim is theirs.  Thinking of it partially in this manner would eliminate a lot of the extraneous 'royalty' (Counts, Dukes, Barons, etc).

However, what I would likely do if I were you is just overlay a differently scaled hex grid over the existing map.

[intothatdarkness]

Claiming and controlling are two vastly different things. In my campaign many realms claim fairly large territory, but that works out to some patrols along the stated border and the like. Controlled area is usually settled, farmed, or some combination thereof and is actually in a smaller radius from either a castle or transportation center. Most castles extend their reach by using garrisons at the edge of their span of control, meaning that after your 10-12 miles there would be a larger village with its own garrison (perhaps controlled by a senior knight) that would then cover another 10-12 or so miles out. This means your realms usually fan out from the original keep or central holding in a somewhat random pattern based on access to water and good farming land, and that they'd stall from time to time for any number of reasons. But that land's still claimed as part of the realm.

Remember, also, that titles historically were often granted for areas that were not yet controlled or had just been brought under control by the person who's getting the title. You'll have your pockets of civilization and then wide areas of unpatrolled (and possibly not fully explored) territory that your new noble has to secure if she really wants to control it. Your character could also start out as a garrison or keep commander and work from there. It would still require longer turns to account for some activity, and that would keep your noble ranks from filling too much.

[jdale]

Why does the area of control need to map to a hex? That seems very arbitrary and artificial. Few medieval domains were hexagonal. I'm guessing the scale of 24 miles per hex comes from some particular game system or setting.

Personally, if I were to give the PC a domain, I would describe it and perhaps give them a map of the area. I would pay no attention whatsoever to what its scale on the world map would be. And the maps we use don't have hexes or a grid printed on them anyway.

[Cory Magel]

Why does the area of control need to map to a hex? That seems very arbitrary and artificial. Few medieval domains were hexagonal. I'm guessing the scale of 24 miles per hex comes from some particular game system or setting.

I think it's simply for ease of measuring an individuals importance.  And I'm guessing the 'domain' would be made up of small hexes (just like the large scale maps many of us would use for our gaming worlds) not be one big hex.

[mpicart]

Good points, everyone.
I will make a separate smaller-scaled grid for my campaign map (I'm using Campaign Cartogropher), for use with these "Dominions."

I like the idea of extending your range of control through adding a garrison to a fort or to a town -- though, if the town were not already there, I don't think you would be able to just have one created; I think that a charter was needed, probably by the king.

[Cory Magel]

I always liked some of the ideas behind Birthright even though it came out after we'd stopped using D&D.  Maybe I'll have to go see if I can find some of the materials that cover how it handled domains and such.

[mpicart]

It's not as nicely organized/printed as what I have, but all the information I am reffering to can be found on the link below, scroll down to the section "Part 2: The Fantasy World."  Too bad RM never had suggested rules for ruling dominions.

http://www.krivda.net/books/-companion_rules_boxed_set

[GrumpyOldFart]

I can see the sense in a 24 mile hex, as it's a 12 mile radius, which jives well with the castle zone of control mentioned above. However, as also noted above, there is a large difference between claimed and controlled. I'd hazard a guess that during the supposed time of Robin Hood, Nottingham claimed Sherwood Forest, but quite obviously did not control it.

If it were me, I'd put the baron's castle in a suitable spot near the center of the hex, but only count the acreage that has taxpayers living on it as "controlled." All the hills too barren or steep for the shepherds... they don't count. The forest the witch lives in? Considering how many people live in it and how much land they work, that 50,000 acre forest counts as... maybe 5 acres, 50 acres tops. A thousand acres of swamp? Zero acres considered controlled, because nobody is making a taxable living off any of it.

So basically the baron controls the town (if any), the villages, the farms, and possibly as much as 1% of the remainder.

That and I think I'd check the math on those acreages for population centers. I live on just under 10 acres, so I have a good visualization for how much that is... and it's hard to imagine something that takes up 1250 acres in a medieval setting being considered merely a town. I could easily see a village as being no more than 5-10 and a small town as no more than 50. Keep in mind, a square 1 mile on a side is 640 acres. In a culture where hardly anyone except the nobles ride horses, and everyone else walks everywhere, a mile on a side is a pretty big town. Humans tend to crowd one another before they're willing to spread out that much.

[VladD]

All the values given in the sets of rules is not at all how it worked in the real world.

Acreage: first off: an acre feeds a family for a year. Second: not all land is arable. Third: not all arable land is in hexes, or even next to each other.

Baronies and towns would have a certain number of peasant families, as this was a commodity. Each family tended a certain number of acres with arranged marriages bringing some families more than others, allowing them to hire landless peasants.
The number of acres of arable land in a fiefdom gave the maximum of people that could live there and those people would generate income for the lord/ town: so Acres = People = Taxes.

Castles would be a sort of last ditch defense for whole regions. Not every hex in England has a castle, not every town in Germany high walls and hill forts are few and far between. You don't need a castle. A strengthened farm would do just fine: in England called a manor house and in France: Chateau.

Only the richest and most powerful land owners would build a castle and actually only until the 13th century or so, as castle building in England was declared a matter for the crown only. In Germany there were a lot more fiefs as it, at one time, consisted of over 100 kingdoms. There kings decided where to build a castle and some baron; although they would probably enfief a castle to a baron. Such a castle had a specific purpose: such as the toll castles on the river Rhine.

[intothatdarkness]

Good points, everyone.
I will make a separate smaller-scaled grid for my campaign map (I'm using Campaign Cartogropher), for use with these "Dominions."

I like the idea of extending your range of control through adding a garrison to a fort or to a town -- though, if the town were not already there, I don't think you would be able to just have one created; I think that a charter was needed, probably by the king.

This varies depending on your world, actually. If a garrison is built, a town will grow up around it (to provide food and services for the garrison). Smaller centers (trading posts, small walled inns for travelers, etc.) could grow into villages with some sponsorship. They might then later be recognized and granted protection by a charter, and granting a charter isn't going to guarantee the creation of a community.

I've never been a huge fan of fixed tables for this sort of thing, actually. There are just too many variables (or there should be). In my setting, each culture really has a different way of developing communities, and thus this expansion won't happen the same way for all of them.