Birthright Maps

Plain

For the past 10 years or so I have been playing in pbem/pbp Birthright D&D games and it continues to be one of my favorite settings.  This setting does not quite seem to die, and it indeed has its own subculture - especially in Europe for whatever reason.  Probably because it is as close as D&D will get to Europe without being Hârn.

With Provinces

I am currently playing in Empire's Twilight and Dawn of the Second Golden Age. They mostly have European players and honestly I think they keep inviting me because it is much easier to have a player be your villains instead of having to role-play one yourself.  Europeans, not to be overly stereotypical, are all pussies.  They are quite content to be the honorable Duke who is very slow to anger, but once you rouse it, he pretty much hates you the rest of the game yet rarely does anything about it.  To them, it is very much a game of wordplay, small slights, and a gradual build-up to confrontation.  Some call this maturity in RPing, I call it boring.

With Provinces & Text

To me.. well, its more of one atrocity after another, and half-assed attempts in blaming someone else for the horrible amounts of destruction and chaos that I bring to Cerilia.  My regents usually last 1d4-1 turns before they perish, but let me tell you that is one Blaze of Glory - cities of fire, holdings reduced to ash, peasants nailed to the trees, and a whole lot of dead armies.  The Europeans just hate that, let me tell you. But they know I will do it, and continue to invite me anyhow, so what does that say about them, eh?  I think they just secretly like to beat the shit out of a stupid American - but I don't mind since I usually get to take a few out with me when I go.

Anyhow, it is all in good fun and I can assure I am exaggerating on the race baiting and chaos.  The thing that strikes me the most is the setting is usually starts exactly the same.  Same realm, same regents (usually), same tensions, same dichotomy between war and peace.  Yet every game is quite different in actual play.  Imagine Star Wars if you had different actors and the script was malleable.   Al Pachino as Han Solo (which he almost did incidentally).. well that would change the story quite a bit now wouldn't it.  He would freaking go out like Scarface before he even left Mos Eisley.

I babble.. back to maps.  After looking at the same maps for 10 years, I decided to work up a few, enjoy. Click for larger.  The Europeans made me put the distance in metric in the last map - commies.