Blood Royale Revisited

[Magni's Hammer]

Settlement Phase

Spoiler: Outlaws

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Outlaws: Rulers that lose their settlement become roving bands of outlaws and suffer numerous penalties.

• In the dynasty phase, all outlaw characters suffer -1 to death checks and -1 to birth checks.
• In the festivals phase, outlaw rulers can only host marriages, celebrations, and recruitment events.
• In the campaign phase outlaws get a single mercenary unit, more if they held a recruitment event, and no resources; these are placed together with the outlaw characters anywhere on the map, but at least one space from all settlements and within six of where they ended last campaign phase.
• In the settlements phase outlaws do not roll for growth but do generate income and can try to build a new settlement.

Growth

• Each settlement has a growth value, a positive number indicating how large the settlement has grown. For every ten points of growth the settlement has it gains one development slot.
• Each settlement gains growth points equal to the number of campaign turns in the previous campaign phase, minus the number of its troops lost and developments destroyed by sack during that campaign, minus a 1D6 roll result.

Income

• Each settlement then generates income equal to the total leadership of its characters, ignoring those currently in captivity.
• Each unit of ransom or plunder captured by the settlement is consumed and added to its income. Other resources will be similarly consumed, but to different effects.
• Income is then spent on developments, technologies, and institutions for the settlement.
• Income cannot be saved between rounds, but it may be invested into upgrades without completely buying them out. The purchase can then be completed in later rounds.

Developments

• Developments are physical structures within the settlement. Once bought, they can be removed by a sack or by the ruler destroying them to make space for a new one.
• Each settlement has a limited number of development slots available, one slot per ten points of growth. An incomplete development still takes up a slot and can still be destroyed; it just provides no benefit to the settlement until finished.
• When a new slot becomes available, the ruler may take it to place a development of his choice (a ruler’s slot), or he may roll and place a random development there (a public slot). Some developments can only be gained through a ruler’s slot, and some by the public.
• In addition to sacking, a ruler may choose to destroy any developments in his settlement to clear space for new buildings. However, this does not provide plunder, and depending on the development there may be negative repercussions.
• If the settlement’s growth drops such that it actually loses a slot, the ruler must either destroy developments of his choice (and suffer the consequences) or destroy them at random.
• Some developments, like walls or the keep around which the settlement is built, do not occupy slots; they are otherwise normal, and most settlements can only have a few of these.

Public Religion

• Since the kinds of developments, technologies, and institutions available for upgrades are dependent upon the ruler’s religion, they can be said to have a religion themselves.
• A settlement’s religion is whatever faith constitutes the plurality of upgrades in the settlement.
• Public-slot developments are rolled according to the settlement’s religion, not the ruler’s, and having a religious mismatch between the ruler and the settlement may cause penalties.

Technologies

• Technologies are new inventions for the settlement. Once bought they cannot be destroyed, though they may require regular investment of income to prevent them from decaying.

Institutions

• Institutions represent political and social changes for the settlement. Like technologies they are not physically present and cannot be removed by a sack, but in addition to the potential for decay, institutions can often be unbuilt or replaced by new institutions.

New Titles

• Settlement upgrades may allow the ruler to grant titles to other characters in his court.
• Whatever else they do, titles grant the character a leadership score and thus allow him to contribute income to the settlement, though there may be restrictions on what he can buy.
• Titles may be assigned at any time as long as no character has multiple titles and the prerequisite structures still exist.

New Settlements

• New settlements can be created by spending a combination of income and growth from the old settlement.
• New settlements must normally be placed at least one space away from all other settlements, but no more than six spaces away from your settlements.
• New settlements are effectively under occupation (see below) and are unproductive until granted to another character as a new vassal.

Occupation

• Settlements occupied by enemy troops at the end of the campaign phase remain under their control, and if you don’t want to give it back to its original ruler you must occupy it.
• Occupied settlements still experience growth but produce no income. Should any new slots appear they are always public, and should its growth drop such that it loses slots they are lost at random. The occupiers may spend income from their settlement on the occupied settlement, but only to establish certain institutions like a garrison.
• Occupied settlements often gain dangerous institutions, like rebel factions.
• Festivals cannot be held at an occupied settlement, and they generate resources but no troops (except for the garrison) in the campaign phase.
• The best thing to do with occupied settlements is to grant them to a character as part of kneeling, thereby creating a new vassal ruler.
• Once a settlement gains a new ruler it is no longer occupied and can act normally; it often loses the rebel and garrison institutions.

Spoiler: New Players

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The game of Blood Royal has no real “victory” condition, but it is quite possible for a player to lose the game by having no more characters under his control. Such lost players, and any new players that may wish to join, may (re)enter the game at the start of the round by either creating a group of adventurers to roam the map as outlaws, or taking control of an existing character ready to rebel.

Adventurers are a party of between one and six characters of any age, sex, and religion you like, with random traits and no titles expect the one that is the ruler. The adventurers may be connected in any conceivable way: relatives, friends, even enemies. Otherwise they start with nothing. If you control characters but no rulers, you can always declare one of them the ruler of an outlaw band at the start of the round, taking him and any other characters away as outlaws. Rulers may also allow any outlaw attending his festival to join his settlement.

New players can take over any character, even a vassal ruler, that is either the enemy of his ruler/liege or has a higher leadership than his ruler/liege and isn’t his relative or friend; the player also takes control of all characters subservient to his own (such as his descendants and the rest of his court) except those that are the friend/relative of the old player’s ruler/liege and aren’t also the friend/relative of the new player’s new character.