Troll Lord Games

What do you think of having guild/order affiliations giving possible mechanical advantages?

For example, I am basing/inspired by the orders in Gygax's LA books. In there he gives mechanical type boosts to the Avatars in that game.

So what would you think about giving such things as plusses to hit, or damage, bonuses to SIEGE checks, and even stat increases? Bonuses to skill/knowledge checks would be one type of SIEGE check.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

I've always been a HUGE fan of having orders in my home brew worlds.

I've not had a chance to read the LA books -they were delivered yesterday & real life has gotten in the way of reading- so I'm not sure what is there.

I don't have access to my old notes but I remember a few of them at least the basics.

One was the "Knights of the Gray road" historically limited to only knights/paladins sworn to defend certain key cities & the roads in between. but in the last 150 - 200 years (after a collapse of Rome type series of wars & invasions) they have started allowing all good & some neutral people who try to 1 free or repopulate the cities 2 police the roads or defend the few caravans traveling through the darkened north. They were given -a few- safe castles to operate out of & more help from certain villages etc. All members had limited tracking ability, woodland & winter survival -not as good as a ranger but they weren't clueless in the woods either-. I guess that would be siege bonuses in C&C

An other was the "crimson brothers" a medieval version of the Spartans. It was mainly fighters but there were supporting thieves clerics paladins and assassins. None had training with horses, but all had a +1 with any weapons & +2 with spear & there was a bonus to using the shield but I can't remember what it was.

I never thought about adding stat increases but for some very specific brotherhoods I'd say it is a good idea.
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

Knight Errant & Humble C&C Society Contributor
C&C Society

If a player can actively roleplay it.... yes, sure. Otherwise, its a "prestige class" for dummies. And, that means "hell f' no"

Not for all those bonus, but mostly a class-like Order/Guild ability.

Like, the Trashcan Lid Thieves Guild allows members to hold and use shields with no penalty.
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The Rock says ...

Know your roll!

serleran wrote:
If a player can actively roleplay it.... yes, sure. Otherwise, its a "prestige class" for dummies. And, that means "hell f' no"

I agree on that. I made mine back in the old days before 3.e. I'm not sure I'd allow it to someone that just wanted to min/max. It has to be -in my outlook anyway- either a part of a GREAT player back story or a goal for them to work toward.
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

Knight Errant & Humble C&C Society Contributor
C&C Society

Lurker wrote:
I've always been a HUGE fan of having orders in my home brew worlds.

One was the "Knights of the Gray road" historically limited to only knights/paladins sworn to defend certain key cities & the roads in between. but in the last 150 - 200 years (after a collapse of Rome type series of wars & invasions) they have started allowing all good & some neutral people who try to 1 free or repopulate the cities 2 police the roads or defend the few caravans traveling through the darkened north. They were given -a few- safe castles to operate out of & more help from certain villages etc. All members had limited tracking ability, woodland & winter survival -not as good as a ranger but they weren't clueless in the woods either-. I guess that would be siege bonuses in C&C.

i would consider that the order would be intact but start recuting a common base of members then they set up an inner order of members who still adheer to the ways of the order. and the rest would be considered outsiders but still privy to some of the information of the order. and the benifits they would grant would be not much more than they knights templars did in the dark ages. or what they were reported to have done, "protect the pilgrims" and so would probably provide quality equipment and beter training than normaly avaliable and of cours a good hot mean and extra men when needed ect. but for any secret training i doubt they would train any outside the core beliefs, also keep in mind that a paladin gets his abilities froma diety suposedly so they would at a minimum need to be inline with the diety they are suposed to represent. unless the diety just wants more followers so ARE willing to grant thier powers to thoes of oposing alighnment ect. but that would be a up to the gm on that call though since as you said they did loose alot of members

this is just my to bits on this.

I plan on including guilds & orders in my game,in fact I'm working on oneright now.It's a group of Nationalistic "freedom fighters" aka sepratists

who want to free their land from the Empire they a part of.The core members of the order are local nobility,military & mages,supported by outlaws/privateers & other agents to help bring down their "oppressors".

They won't get much in the way of bonuses in the way of mechanics,but I haven't finalized my thoughts on it yet.

There will be some Orders n' guilds specialized enough to earn such bonuses but I haven't worked them up yet.

Iam Who Iam

I am trying to come up with a clerical order or two, and an order for Bards, and even theives, but I can't think of anything that would work outside fo being a guild.

I've got the seeds for more Paladin orders and Knightly orders in the Greyhawk Boxed set and the Erde Codex, so I'll be doing a few more of those.

Plus I also have one for Runemarks bouncing around in my head, and will hopefully have it written up in the next week or two.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

I like the idea of bonuses based on orders and guilds, but in a slight way. For example if you are playing C&C BTB and a character manages to get a +1 to hit because of being a guild member, I think that bonus might be a bit to extravagent. This would probably work if you had a bunch of other, CK added in rules.

Back to the +1 noted above. I think this could work BTB if the +1 was against certain creatures, or in some other limited capacity.

-O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

I was thinking, since C&C doesn't specifically cover it, that specific orders gives you specific skills. Like the Order of the Phoenix can obviously give you crafting armor, weapons, and even artisan type skills.

The Order fo the Stars obviously gives you a lot of knowledge type skills.

So the orders can be used as a "in game way" to define what skill bases a character has.

Maybe further use them as in game explanations why those skills would be treated as Prime even if the relevant stat isn't.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

That's a good idea. Each order, when fully joined provides the character with a skill set. That could be as simple as a roll of the secondary skills from the 1E DMG, or 2 skills from 2E D&D, or 1 skill from the Yggsburgh document, etc.

A worthy idea and not a huge effect directly on the C&C mechanics.

-O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Just came accross this thread. Great ideas. I love using/having various Orders/Guilds and such in my campaigns, adds alot to a Campaign IMHO.

In an old Campaign the party went on a mission for a religious order called the Grand Temple of the Celestial Sai. They had to abort the mission to save a town and soon ound themselves in disfavor with the order. They discovered the Grand Temple were far from being Celestial in outlook. They were tormented by assassins and visciousness from the Order for the duration of the Campaign.

Treebore wrote:
What do you think of having guild/order affiliations giving possible mechanical advantages?

For example, I am basing/inspired by the orders in Gygax's LA books. In there he gives mechanical type boosts to the Avatars in that game.

So what would you think about giving such things as plusses to hit, or damage, bonuses to SIEGE checks, and even stat increases? Bonuses to skill/knowledge checks would be one type of SIEGE check.

Treebore,

I know we jhave talked about the epic rpg but do you have the atlas of elsin? If not the book is full og guildes that you may need to look at.

mordrene wrote:
Treebore,

I know we jhave talked about the epic rpg but do you have the atlas of elsin? If not the book is full og guildes that you may need to look at.

Yep. Been looking at that for inspiration as well.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

I too have been using the atlas for inspiration in making guilds for greyhalk. Its slow but I want to create enough guilds for a demo for my gaming group.

Brutorz Bill wrote:
Just came accross this thread. Great ideas. I love using/having various Orders/Guilds and such in my campaigns, adds alot to a Campaign IMHO.

Just wanted to call this thread to your attention:
http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames