MEMORIES

Birthright is special to me for many reasons, but two stand out most of all. First, it was the first game line I worked on when I came to TSR from West End Games, and I was lucky enough to join the staff while the setting was still being finalized. My earliest credit on the line is actually as an additional proofreader (!) for Cities of the Sun. That might seem scary to most of my colleagues, but I was an editor for five years before joining TSR; it was only there that I became a full-time, paid designer.

The other thing that was really special to me has to do not so much with the Birthright line, but with the people involved. I worked very closely with the Birthright team before, during, and (most especially) afterward, and it was really the first time I had the opportunity to collaborate with a lot of really talented, really motivated professionals. I learned a lot about designing material for an always-developing world, and about what others found fun and interesting in a campaign setting. I especially enjoyed working with a group of people who all cared about the same things I did.

Why did I like working on Birthright? The people. The game world was interesting, and the stories we told were certainly fun, but it was really the people. From the Birthright message board, where we talked to fans on a daily basis, to the people in the office -- especially my primary editor, Carrie Bebris. Even when we were wondering whether or not Birthright would continue, it was fun working on the line because I got to run ideas by her every day. I'm really not sure my enthusiasm for the line would have held up if not for her, and for the fans, who were always ready to listen to new and -- in my opinion -- exciting ideas.

The most fun I had with BR fans was the first year we utilized the Birthright "Legacy of Kings" board game at Gen Con. We had this huge painted map of Anuire -- which we had finished at 9:30 a.m. the day the show opened at 10 a.m. -- and the whole demo was made to showcase (with very simple, hastily-written rules) how Birthright characters did more than go on dungeon crawls. It was meant for the D&D player who hadn't played Birthright, and the casual roleplayer in general.

Well, before the first day was through, we had to start turning people away from the demo -- and most of them were experienced Birthright players who just loved playing the "strategic" game we'd invented to show a less-complicated version of what they could do at home! At one point, I thought we'd have some disappointed fans, because we were really asking these folks to step aside from a fun activity so that we could "reach" the audience we were trying for.

We received a pleasant surprise, however. The Birthright fans -- the ones who really knew what was going on -- understood our problem and chipped in to help. They started to assist us in running the game, assuming the roles of advisors to the novice "kings" and helping us set up and break down the game as necessary. A few lent their voices to the evil awnsheghlien that occasionally showed up to wreck havoc on the board! The game became more than just a demo and was, in my biased opinion, the hit of the show. That's probably why I revised the rules and brought it back the next year as a full-blown event. 

--Ed Stark, Birthright designer

I started working for TSR just as the staff was gearing up for Birthright’s launch. My first day on the job, I was assigned to the Birthright team. "What’s Birthright?" I asked. "A new line," came the response, "a combination roleplaying and war game."

Horror seized me. I’d be working full-time on a war game? "Risk" was the closest I’d ever come to playing a war game, and that experience was compromised by my penchant for negotiating peace treaties with my fellow players. But I plastered a first-day-on-the-job smile onto my face and said, "Sounds great."

My first assignment was proofreading the boxed set. I spread the Atlas of Cerilia on my empty desk (the only day it was ever clear again!) and began reading. Within minutes I’d fallen in love -- with the land, the cultures, the stories, the heroes, even the villains. This wasn’t so much a war game, I realized, but a blend of strategy and roleplaying in the richest setting I’d ever encountered: a place where diplomacy could prove as powerful as military might, where the blood of the gods ran in the veins of heroes, where commoners could adventure with kings.

During Birthright’s run, I sometimes spent more of my waking hours in Cerilia than in the real world. Far from my initial misgivings, I feel fortunate to have been a part of the Birthright team. The setting still lives very much in my heart, and I’m sure it always will.

One of the things that made Birthright so much fun to work on was the deep involvement of Tony Szczudlo, the line’s primary artist. Tony wasn’t content to merely receive a written art order and go off to paint in isolation. He participated in concept meetings, read the products, sought us out to exchange ideas, showed us his works-in-progress to get our feedback. Tony was as much a member of the Birthright team as any of us wordsmiths. I was, and still am, in awe of his ability to give form to our wildest imaginings.

It was a two-way street: Often, Tony’s visual ideas inspired us to create characters and events we otherwise wouldn’t have thought of. Usually, this happened early in the planning process, but not always. When The Book of Magecraft was in production, Tony went to work on the cover painting with his usual creative fervor. He produced an electrifying sketch of a wizard raising undead as the ground erupted beneath him. We enthusiastically approved it, and kept in close contact with him as he applied paint to canvas. Somewhere along the way, the decision was made to make the wizard Khinasi. It made sense to put a Khinasi on the cover, given the culture’s high tolerance of magic compared to other races; the choice also put another race in the spotlight for a change, as most of our early releases had focused on Anuire.

Tony finished the painting -- if you saw it on display at Gen Con a few years ago, you know it looks even more spectacular in person than it does on the cover -- and we were all standing in front of it gushing our admiration. That’s when Sue Weinlein, who had just finished editing Cities of the Sun, reminded us of a little fact that had slipped all our minds the whole while Tony had been creating the painting: Khinasi wizards can’t raise the dead, because doing so would violate the Five Oaths they are all compelled to take at the Temple of Rilni.

You can imagine the looks on our faces. Especially Tony’s -- the paint was barely dry! That was the day Quirad al-Dinn, the renegade Khinasi necromancer hunted by the Temple elders for refusing to swear the Oaths, sprang into being. We had to explain that cover somehow. . . .

I think the strategy aspect of Birthright -- the opportunity, for those who are interested, to run a realm in addition to merely playing a character -- adds a whole new dimension to roleplaying that appeals to experienced, mature players. Birthright took RPGs to the next level. It’s a setting that offers tremendous flexibility and potential, supporting so many different types of campaigns. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me that they’d strayed away from D&D until Birthright rekindled their interest.

One of the true pleasures of working on the Birthright line was (and continues to be) interacting with players. Though Birthright has been on hiatus for a while now, I continue to subscribe to the game’s online mailing list simply because I so enjoy the intelligent, creative discussions that take place among players. It’s a wonderfully diverse group of people from all over the globe, in all sorts of professions. But what nearly all these players all have in common (besides their interest in Birthright) is their generous nature. I am continually impressed by the willingness of these players to share their knowledge, ideas, time, and talents. The wealth of resources available at the birthright.net fan www.birthright.net website is a perfect example.

In 1997, facing a staffing shortage at Gen Con, Ted Stark and I solicited volunteers from Birthright’s online community to run demonstrations of the game for convention attendees. Seven volunteers came forward: Dax, Randy, Rick, Laura, Robert, John, and Steve. We didn’t know a thing about them, yet we placed a tremendous responsibility in their hands: representing Birthright to thousands of potential new players.

They did not disappoint us. While other demos experienced problems with volunteers, our magnificent seven ran that Vosgaard roleplaying scenario with professionalism and enthusiasm that had attendees lining up to play. Some might say we got lucky, but I think their performance reflects the high caliber of Birthright fans. Other players that I’ve met in seminars have similarly impressed me. Now, seeing and catching up with familiar fans, especially those awesome volunteers, has become a Gen Con highlight for me.

A favorite Birthright memory is of Gen Con ’97. We had a whole slate of Birthright activities going on all weekend long, from a "Council of Kings" live-action roleplaying event, to games run by members of the design team, to a contest to win the cover painting for The Book of Magecraft. For Birthright fans, it was the place to be, and I met numerous players that year whose names still bring that weekend to mind.

Sunday morning we had scheduled a Shadow World seminar in which players had the opportunity to tell us what they would like to see in upcoming products. I was looking forward to it in a bittersweet sort of way -- it would be my last official session with designer Ted Stark before he moved to Seattle to work for Wizards of the Coast and I stayed behind to launch a freelance career. Ted was the designer I worked with most closely during Birthright’s run. Author–editor relationships aren’t always smooth, but Ted and I made a good team and I knew I’d miss our daily interaction.

Anyway, I arrived for the seminar . . . but Ted was nowhere to be found. Puzzled, I started the brainstorming discussion without him, hoping he was merely running late. It turned into a terrific session. The sizable crowd generated some outstanding ideas for Cerilia’s parallel realm -- in fact, I wound up incorporating a number of them into Blood Spawn. But Ted never showed.

Afterward, I headed back to the exhibit hall and ran into a couple familiar Birthright players whose absence at the Shadow World discussion had also surprised me. To my bewilderment, they asked me why I hadn’t shown up for the seminar. "What do you mean?" I asked slowly. "I was just there . . . with about thirty other people." It was their turn to look astonished. "But we just came from Ted’s seminar and we never saw you," they said.

It turns out that a program book printing error had listed the seminar in two different locations. So while I was in one room, wondering where in the world Ted was, he’d been in another room with a whole ’nother group of people wondering the same thing about me! We still haven’t settled the debate on whose seminar was the "real" one and whose was the Azrai-induced Shadow World version.

--Carrie A. Bebris, Birthright editor

Back when we were still writing the Birthright boxed set, I drew the job of working out all the domain rules. I've been a wargamer for years, and I had a few ideas for tackling the rules for governing kingdoms. After a month or two of hacking away at the domain rules, I was ready to run a big playtest, so I shanghaied a dozen or so of my coworkers and handed out positions for the game.

This playtest wasn't about making up characters or checking out adventure story paths. I specifically wanted to test out the domain rules, so we threw out the roleplaying elements and played a monthlong game of Birthright using nothing but the kingdom rules. Every day we executed a new realm turn, trying to just fly through as many turns as possible. It was a pretty good test of the kingdom rules.

So, here's the funny part of the story. The players in the test included designers Monte Cook, and Colin McComb, and editors Anne Brown, Jon Pickens, Thomas Reid, and Roger Moore. I remember that Monte was the Mhor of Mhoried, Anne was a wizard, Jon was the ranger-king of Tuornen, and Roger played the wizard-lord of Alamie. And right from the get-go, Roger went berserk. Instantly declaring his intent to become the Dark Tyrant of All Cerilia, he began casting the undead legion realm spell over and over again, raising vast armies of skeletons and zombies to subjugate his neighbors.

That might have worked out okay -- but the scenario was basically balanced. No matter how much Roger wanted to believe that his overwhelming might was destined to overcome all of Anuire, well, his kingdom really wasn't up to the task. And all he really succeeded in doing was scaring about six of his nearest neighbors into an alliance of powers that preemptively marched into Alamie and razed Roger's capital to the ground, dragging off the would-be Dark Lord of All in chains, much in the same way that a few neighbors might get together to quietly put down a rabid dog. The best part of it all were Roger's increasingly unbalanced declarations and proclamations, posted on the office walls.

An important safety tip for would-be Dark Lords: First, grow incomprehensibly strong, then begin to terrorize your enemies. It doesn't work out well when you do it backwards.

--Rich Baker, Birthright co-creator and novelist