Towns and cities

[X-Roesone/ARR (Robert)]

I'm wondering about the strength and distribution of towns/cities as opposed to villages in RoE. In the "canon" there are only a few proper "cities" like Imperial City, Ilien or Endier, but, if we look at PS Roesone, for instance, Proudglaive is close to being, if not already a city, as is Haess in Tuornen.

Late Medieval towns were already a major force in politics as the "free royal cities" were used by kings/emperor as a leverage against the higher nobility who in turn, tried to subjugate the cities to their own rule. This was mostly because towns started out as "property" of the king or nobility and later "bought their freedom" when commerce and manufacturing made them weathy enough. They would usually buy the privilege to have their own courts and thus be juridically independent, then the privilege to have a fair and so on. The end result was that there was a division into "free" royal cities, royal burgs and noble burgs.

Might make for an interesting dynamic in the game.

I just noticed that towns/cities were mentioned in the P&H

[X-MOC/Leman States (Even)]

Are you proposing to separate the towns/cities from the rest of teh province from a game mechanics perspective?

[X-Roesone/ARR (Robert)]

No, no, nothing like that. Bjorn already stated that there are no "urban provinces" in this game and I don't think they're necessary.

What I'm referring to is more of a "fluff"/random event kind of thing. For example, when I look at Roesone and the cities entry (under the province name) I get the following  Proudglaive (3), Ghoried(2), Abbatuor(2), Fairfield (2), Duerlin(1), Edlin(1), Danaroene(1), and Bheline(1) where the number in parenthesis represents the named cities/towns in the province.

So, a conclusion would be that Proudglaive is more urbanised than Ghoried or Abbatuor who are in turn more urbanise than Edlin or Danaroene.

In certain random events, like for example nobles vs king, cities vs king, or nobles vs cities it might come in handy to know how a particular provinces would stand in such a conflict. Also, it would help when determining whether army units (if you read my army unit suggestion) are feudal or citizen in origin.

In the game "Crusader Kings" by Paradox Interactive, in which you play a dynasty you frequently get random events like "Nobility demands more power" or "Burgers demand more power" in a province, and then you have to decide who to support. Random events along those lines could spark the dynamic of a society without any kind of game mechanics change. A strongly urbanized province might request privileges or the nobility might want to subjugate their freedoms and such, and depending on how the regent deals with this he could get bonus RP/GB or might have to deal with a rebellion

[DM B]

Are you proposing to separate the towns/cities from the rest of teh province from a game mechanics perspective?

Definitely not; this would complete change the socio-political-economic makeup of the playing area. So its completely out of the question. Besides, at the scale we're operating on, this is calling for too much detail.

In the past I've tried out such a concept in a P&P game, and it was an interesting twist, but it would not work in RoE.