Forums of the Megaverse®

What are some ways for a player character to establish a tribe, a clan, and a noble house?

I need to present my players with some options.

ShadowHawk wrote:What are some ways for a player character to establish a tribe, a clan, and a noble house?

I need to present my players with some options.

All three of those terms are family-oriented political groups, but they tend to imply different things.

Tribes are generally associated with more primitive cultures/civilizations. All you really need to start a tribe is to get a group of people to take up common cause with each other to the point where they identify with each other and have some measure of loyalty to the group. A player character could start up something like this in many ways; one way that could be interesting from a storytelling perspective would be to have the PC lead a large group through difficult circumstances into a new land.

Clans are somewhat synonymous with tribes, but a clan often signifies a family relationship. In this context a player could either be adopted into a clan or make a family the old-fashioned way.

A noble house requires a few more things: Ownership of land, a position of authority over people who live and work that land, some form of publicly-recognized title (lord, baron, duke, prince, king, chieftain, etc), and a legal structure to pass this ownership and authority to descendents/heirs. That, and you have to have an actual family/clan.

Claim a piece of land with a bunch of friends, hold it against all comers, and start makin' babies. That starts a tribe (a group of semi-unrelated individuals working towards a common livelihood), a clan (a group of related individuals who rely on kinship bonds as a form of community support), and, eventually, a noble house (the individuals and kinships descended from a single, notable, ancestor).

Since all of those words reference family units..... Have children is the 1st step. For the Noble House the char needs to pay off a king to buy a patent of nobility, then have children.

Do they have a following already? If not, 3.5 words for you...it's bard time! Bards are great PR reps. Or do they have land and want to keep the fuss to a minimum? If so, have them take in refugees and establish a "patroonship".

Not sure what resources they have.

Easiest one that gets you to ruling is marrying into the house and then offing a few key other family members and blaming it on one of the other family members, but marrying in also gets you access to the loot as well, so you can rob em blind and scarper.

Running a family adventure over long periods of time isn't the easiest thing to do, especially if the pc's aren't of the same family.

Or you can do it the time honoured way of claiming some land and then killing everybody who naysays you. After your family has done this for a few generations you can call yourself king as no one will argue and it eventually sticks.

Well, for role-playing sake I think starting a clan or tribe is a no-go. That is, unless you plan on having the PC's play successive generations of a family, or group of people. Now, if they join a clan or tribe and take over leadership, that could work. A noble house could work. The easiest way is for the PC's to do something extraordinary for a lord or king, and to receive the area as a gift or promotion. The Romans would often gift warriors with lands.

Another option is to start a mercenary group. The benefit of this is that you have the opportunity to move around. If you're a noble house, you are pretty much sitting in a keep, collecting taxes, upholding the law, and running off brigands.

-Vek
"Politics is a lot of work for a GM."

Hey ShadowHawk,

I would also look at WHERE your player wants to start his ascent to "imperial glory"; political circumstances and setting will influence the possibility and hindrances to any "house-foundation" as well as what meaning/honour/power is generally accorded to such tribe/clan/house and what customs/traditions/laws regulate the foundation and upholding of these structures.

If you have a strong central power - like an absolutist monarchy - or a feudal system, the "clan" can make babies like rabbits, but they will not be accorded a higher, let alone noble, status without either the placet of the monarch, the support/sponsorship of one or more sufficiently powerful nobles or having so much power that it is better to accord you status than to fight you.

In a more primitive environment it will be only power that makes the group into something special. If you do not aim for special status but just for a coherent group travelling, fighting and/or living together, tribe or clan or "band" is what you aim for.

Kindest regards
Hendrik

In the last campaign I ran one of my players was part of a new Noble House. In the western empire, his father had been raised to nobility by imperial decree after thwarting an assassination plot against the new emperor.

The player in my campaign was the nobles second son. His eldest brother had embraced nobility and enjoyed the game of houses but the player was a wild one who craved adventure and resisted his fathers attempts to make him a responsible bachelor.

Suicycho wrote:In the last campaign I ran one of my players was part of a new Noble House. In the western empire, his father had been raised to nobility by imperial decree after thwarting an assassination plot against the new emperor.

The player in my campaign was the nobles second son. His eldest brother had embraced nobility and enjoyed the game of houses but the player was a wild one who craved adventure and resisted his fathers attempts to make him a responsible bachelor.

Who was he so desperately hoping to marry him off to?

The reason I ask is I've done a game where the 3rd son of a baron advance first to a Baron for what amounts to services above an beyond the call of duty in uncovering a plot by the Grand Duke of Arkon, then to viscount when oldest sister married the king's (Actually, the Duke that married our Queen) youngest brother, then to Earl for saving the life of the queen's nephew who had been kidnapped. and then lastly to Marquess when he married the queen's nephew that he again saved. It was the 3rd son and 1st sister who raised the status and title of the family. The other 2 sons were twins who loved the political scene, elves women, fast houses, and drink a bit too much on the last 3 and not enough on the 1st.

pblackcrow wrote:

Suicycho wrote:In the last campaign I ran one of my players was part of a new Noble House. In the western empire, his father had been raised to nobility by imperial decree after thwarting an assassination plot against the new emperor.

The player in my campaign was the nobles second son. His eldest brother had embraced nobility and enjoyed the game of houses but the player was a wild one who craved adventure and resisted his fathers attempts to make him a responsible bachelor.

Who was he so desperately hoping to marry him off to?

The reason I ask is I've done a game where the 3rd son of a baron advance first to a Baron for what amounts to services above an beyond the call of duty in uncovering a plot by the Grand Duke of Arkon, then to viscount when oldest sister married the king's (Actually, the Duke that married our Queen) youngest brother, then to Earl for saving the life of the queen's nephew who had been kidnapped. and then lastly to Marquess when he married the queen's nephew that he again saved. It was the 3rd son and 1st sister who raised the status and title of the family. The other 2 sons were twins who loved the political scene, elves women, fast houses, and drink a bit too much on the last 3 and not enough on the 1st.

It’s been 12 years since I finished that campaign so I can’t remember all the details. But I did keep detailed notes for the campaign. I will try and dig them out sometime and give a good write up of everything.

I basically ran 4 campaigns over an 18 year period. The first three were basically the same campaign but different characters from different settings (PF & Rifts/BTS) that eventually crossed over with one another. The final one was a stand alone PF and dealt with the Noble House.

Thanks so much everyone.

I am going to use the Scots as the primary example.

So how do you see that working? Your playing group considers themselves "family", get married, settle down, defend their land?