castle in heroic context

[steph]

Hello to all, A question for GM, I'm going to start a campaign this summer and I'm working on it. For the sake of history one of the players will play a considerably powerful noble, a viscount. When players decide to play noblemen, how do you manage their possessions? For the currency and the titles, the players pay in charaters points but for its castle for example, how do you proceed? The player pays with his character points the castle ? Or castle enter in the category of equipment?

 

Steph

[archer]

My personal opinion only.

 

To be nobility of some sort, you would need to purchase Member of the Nobility at whatever level is appropriate for your title and/or family connections.

 

To be a member of nobility who has access to wealth, you would also need to purchase the wealth perk. Many times in the past, being a member of the nobility and "being wealthy" did not necessarily go together. They might have been fantastically wealthy compared to a peasant but other than an ancestral home, some weapons and armor handed down through the ages or won on the battlefield, and some land which they couldn't sell, many of them weren't wealthy in terms of being able to throw money around. You can have quite poor noblemen who have trouble putting food on the table for their household (much less purchasing armor for their sons who are coming of age) or you could have quite wealthy noblemen. And many times both wealthy and poor nobility existed within the same kingdom.

 

So I agree with you up to this point.

 

As for a castle, if the character is going to both own it and the castle is going to function as a base, the player(s) needs to purchase it as a base (then use the base's points to purchase the various people and lands which make a castle a functional living place).

 

Now if some elderly relative is still alive, still actively owns the castle, and remains the person with the highest title within the family line, the castle and the relative would function as plot hooks to get the PC's involved in various adventures rather than a PC's base.

 

But once the PC becomes the guy in charge and the castle is his, it's his responsibility to come up with the points to pay for it. And the PC being responsible to pay character points includes knocking off his elderly relative or allowing someone else to kill the elderly relative so the PC can inherit the place. (I would attempt to make this clear to the PC's during character-building. Inheriting a title and lands is both an advantage and to some extent a drawback because the PC could very well be on the hook for laying out more character points in the future than he might want to be putting into having a title and all the perks that go with it.)

 

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Once a PC commits to being a viscount and having lands and a castle, I would think it would be much cheaper to buy the castle/land as a base then use the base's points (aka "whatever character points the player wants to commit to it" times five) to buy servants, fealty-sworn knights and various men-at-arms as followers than it would be to for the PC to buy all of those followers directly with his own character points.

 

A GM note on castle servants:

 

Servants in a castle were many times considered to be part of the household which gave those servants many rights and privileges which someone who worked only for wages didn't have.

 

1) People who were of the household would "eat from the lord's table". Not literally but the lord made sure they were fed, even during the lean times or in famine.

2) They had the right to take shelter in the castle during times of distress even if their actual living quarters weren't inside the castle.

3) The lord might take special note of the sons or daughters and arrange marriages, apprenticeships, becoming a squire (rarely), etc. which might give the kid an advantage in life which she might not otherwise have.

4) Visitors would know that the lord's household was under his protection and not take liberties as they might with mere hirelings.

5) Members of the household who became disabled or elderly would be assigned lighter duties rather than be fired. Those who became too elderly to be of any use at all were still allowed to eat from the lord's table, which was a real benefit in an era with no governmental social services.

6) In a fantasy setting, a lord might arrange for a priest to heal people of the household who became sick or injured.

 

That's not an exhaustive list but you get the idea. (That's a recounting of an ideal situation and the reality would vary according to the personality of the lord. But some lord who stayed too far from that would gain a negative reputation among both nobility and commoners.)

 

Anyway, the point is that each servant will know whether the lord considers him or her (and their family) to be part of the household or whether they're just working for wages. Someone who is part of the household will show a certain amount of loyalty to the lord because the lord has shown loyalty to her. Someone who is working for wages in an occupation which would normally be filled by someone who is part of the lord's household will be wondering what's going on in the lord's head...they'll be wondering why the lord has no loyalty to them.

 

Now that might not be the lord's mindset at all, he might just be a clueless ( no KS: Responsibilities of Being a Member of the Nobility, so to speak). But those people who would rightly consider themselves to be nothing more than (disgruntled) hirelings would be more open to bribery, being spies for some other noble, to steal items from the castle, embezzle, etc. than someone who knows she's part of the household.

 

So if the PC tries to cheap out (ironically, "cheaping out" by using his wealth perk to pay wages) and not purchase the people who work inside the castle as being followers as well (or doesn't at least explicitly clarify the status of each of the people who work in the castle to them), feel free to use that against him.

 

[assault]

Pretty much "what archer said".

 

For me, the question of paying points or not boils down to "what function will the castle play in the game?"

 

If paying the points for it does little or nothing but act as a tax on the character, effectively making him or her weaker than the other characters, then it should be a zero point thing. If it makes the character more powerful, then they should pay points for it. If it's essentially a plot hook and convenience for the GM, no points should be charged.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Generally a castle/town acts as a superhero base in a heroic game.  Its just a safe place to sleep, train, put your treasures, etc.

[Christopher]

"Hello to all, A question for GM, I'm going to start a campaign this summer and I'm working on it. For the sake of history one of the players will play a considerably powerful noble, a viscount. When players decide to play noblemen, how do you manage their possessions? For the currency and the titles, the players pay in charaters points but for its castle for example, how do you proceed? The player pays with his character points the castle ? Or castle enter in the category of equipment?"

 

A castle in general would fall under the "Base" rules construct. I mean it is literally a book example, so it will not get clearer then that:
"Vehicles range from a barbarian warrior’s chariot, to the souped-up coupes and sportscars driven by pulp heroes and Dark Champions spies, to the faster-than-light spaceship of an intergalactic smuggler. Similarly, Bases can range from a medieval castle, to the sprawling underground headquarters of a supervillain, to Space Station Gamma-9"

 

However, that asumes it will actually be usefull during adventuring. If he is a wandering Adventurer and the castle is not wandering as well, it would usually be out of reach. Unless there is some instant access via Teleportation or what no - the effective reachability most of the time maters here - it is not usefull during adventuring. And if it is not usefull during adventure time, it might simply fall under the "What not to spend points on" rule.

As usual it can still be brought up by the player once or twice per campaign. And as the GM, you are allowed to make it the center of any numbers of adventures. But at large it might be so little worth for the player, it is not worth accounting for it.

[IndianaJoe3]

1 hour ago, assault said:

For me, the question of paying points or not boils down to "what function will the castle play in the game?"

 

If paying the points for it does little or nothing but act as a tax on the character, effectively making him or her weaker than the other characters, then it should be a zero point thing. If it makes the character more powerful, then they should pay points for it. If it's essentially a plot hook and convenience for the GM, no points should be charged.

 

Exactly. If it's just a base of operations between adventures, it doesn't matter that it's a mighty fortress with a large garrison. When the character is out adventuring, he doesn't have access to those resources and shouldn't need to pay points for them. If the character wants to bring a few bodyguards along, he only pays for those guards, not the whole garrison.

 

Of course, this assumes a conventional heroic fantasy campaign. If you are playing more of a military wargame, the character will be using those resources and you'll need to build it with the base and follower rules.