Traits For A New Baron

[AlexanderHowl]

Wealthy is not high enough to support Status 3 (the Status not supported by the Feudal Rank). In reality, a Baron should probably have Very Wealthy in order to support their Status (a Wealthy Baron is probably Status 3 after adjusting for Feudal Rank).

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Humabout

Btw, I looked up my actual write-up and here it is:

Baron/Baroness

53 points

Male Honorific: My Lord, Your Lordship, or Lord London.
Female Honorific: My Lady, Your Ladyship, Lady London, or Baroness.
Consort Honorific: My Lord/Lady or Lord London/Lady Mary.

You are the lord of a small territory called a barony; there are usually seven or so baronies in a county. Thus, you rule a stretch of countryside that usually encompasses one large village or small town. Some cities are baronies in their own right.

Advantages: Feudal Rank 3 [15]; Legal Enforcement Powers [10]; Legal Immunity [10]; STatus 4* [10]; Wealth (Wealthy) [20].
Disadvantages: Duty (Monarch; Quite Rarely, 6 or less; Involuntary) [-7]; Duty (Barony; Fairly Often, 9 or less) [-5].

* This includes +1 from Feudal Rank 4 and +1 from Wealth (Wealthy).

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Note: The Duty values are relatively arbitrary and largely dependent on the individual baron's relationship with his monarch and the neediness of his barony. Also, I would allow Status and Wealth to vary by 1 level in either direction, and both to possibly be much lower than listed.

Note: This is purely a function of his position within the nobility; it does not reflect any military, administrative, or religious rank, and it does not take into account how people feel about him (Allies, Contacts, Dependents, Enemies, and Social Regard). These things are all either the subject of separate lenses or too personal to bake into any single lens.

Debt and/or Patron are likely.

[hal]

A baron's rank is different than that of a Baronet or a Knight by virtue of how much land he holds, how many knights hold land from him, and is a relatively complicated series of contracts between himself and those who are part of the feudal government.

For example, suppose you have a Baron who holds a small down in his domain. He owes fealty to his Liege, so that's one duty. Then, in addition to his direct holdings, he has say, 15 knights who hold land from him. Each and every one of them owes him service and loyalty by decree rather than by "intent" in the sense that they are obligated by contract to never betray his interests etc.

When a holding Baron dies, all of the contracts for the land holdings do NOT die with him. The terms of service tend to be based on "for me and mine" (meaning for the lifetime of the person with the contract and for the lifetime of all of his heirs). Then there are holdings that are held for the lifetime of the holder ONLY, and the land escheats back to the original owner of the land (in this case, a Knight's holding held from a baron, would go back to the Baron). Barons are generally speaking, the lowest order/rank that holds their land in perpetuity (for their lifetimes and for the heirs lifetimes).

The problem with GURPS in general is that there is a one size fits all approach, such that there is functionally no difference between a Baron holding 15,000 acres of land, and one holding 225,500 acres of land. The material size of a feudal fighting force will be different. The wealth generated by the lands will be different, the feudal obligations (and cost of living associated so to speak with just the land contracts alone) are different.

If you want to use something that goes into more detail, and grants more granularity than what GURPS does, I would suggest getting your hands on HARNWORLD and HARN MANOR. HARNWORLD for its detailed backgrounds including monthly wages earned by various job types, buying power of coins for various products, as well as grabbing HARN MANOR for its ability to detail holdings for individual Knight's fees, and consequently, the income owed to the Baron assuming he holds say, 16 manors, 8 of which are held by knights, and 7 of which are run by Bailiffs - who in turn, owe the baron more of the manor's output. So now that Baron is earning income from roughly 8 manors held by knights (and has 8 knights who owe him service), 7 manors held by bailiffs, and one manor held by himself directly (or he can pawn off the duty of running that one manor to his own bailiff or Senechal etc).

In all, it largely depends on how much effort you want to put into your manor(s).

Email me if you want a sample village sent to you via email. Such a sample village would detail not only how much land is cultivated and with how much and what type of grains - but also how many sheep or goats or pigs, cows, etc.

Each family can be as "detailed" or left vague as you want it. Want to know how many yeoman you have on your fief? That's available. Want to know how many free men families you have, how many craftsmen families you have etc? Yup.

On that note, catch you later...

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

Another good source for aristocracy in GURPS is GURPS Traveller’s “Nobles”.

One interesting aspect of Imperial nobility is that a lesser noble doesn’t owe fealty to the noble above him, he owes it to the Emperor Himself.

All patents of nobility are issued by the Emperor and the noble swears fealty to the Emperor. Knights can be created by Archdukes but even then are created in the name of the Emperor and still swear fealty to the Emperor and not the Archduke.

It also goes into the differences between social titles and members of the Peerage, who wield actual governmental authority.

In fact, the original meaning of 'baron' , at least in France and in the Holy Empire, is a noble that held his fief directly from the King.

A baron as described by Hal in the post above is accurate for France, X to XII century. (like most of the 'feodal' tropes)

In other times and places, it is either the highest nobility rank after the rulers (Bretagne, Hungary I think), or one of the lowest (UK, later France, most modern nobility scales).

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

In fact, the original meaning of 'baron' , at least in France and in the Holy Empire, is a noble that held his fief directly from the King.

England, too. The stuff they taught me in high school about a feudal hierarchy in which barons held their land from earls and earls ruled counties was bunk. Also, when a lord owned the right of low justice or of high justices that meant an entitlement to the revenues of the courts, not law enforcement powers.

[Michele]

I am not sure there would be a "Feudal" Rank Advantage. Rank, as I see it, belongs to hierarchical, compact organizations, such as an army, a church, or a bureaucratic entity. Rank lets you issue orders. That's its main point.
In such organizations, I might not be allowed, save in case of emergency, to issue orders to a Rank 2 guy if I'm Rank 3 but he is in another unit, diocese or department. However, he still has to defer to me, I take precedence over him, etc., and, as mentioned, in an emergency I can still pull my rank.

In a feudal society, a knight who owes fealty to another baron who is friendly with me will bow to me because of general social courtesy (Status), but in no case, not even in an emergency, he's obliged to take orders from me (he might do so at his own discretion). A knight owing fealty to a baron who's unfriendly to me will be even less forthcoming.

That said, if one really wants to use both Status and Feudal Rank, then in a feudal society there's a huge overlap, and therefore the point cost of either should be discounted.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

England, too. The stuff they taught me in high school about a feudal hierarchy in which barons held their land from earls and earls ruled counties was bunk. Also, when a lord owned the right of low justice or of high justices that meant an entitlement to the revenues of the courts, not law enforcement powers.

Quite.

The feudalism concept is a mix of political, military and cultural trends, with parts coming from various time and countries, and codified well after the concerned periods. I doubt there ever was a specific time and place were it was fully accurate in all aspects.

Add the various history rewrite for propaganda reason, mostly during the French (and to a lesser degree American) revolution period, and you get the current "feudalism" memes (just for fun, compare the FR, EN and DE Wikipedia pages on the subject...)

Still, the web of reciprocal duties at the core was a real concept, mostly in Europe early in the second millenium, and is, imho, well represented in Gurps with a construct such as Humabout above, minus feudal rank that doesnt really exist but to which I would add debt and Patron.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by hal

The problem with GURPS in general is that there is a one size fits all approach, such that there is functionally no difference between a Baron holding 15,000 acres of land, and one holding 225,500 acres of land. The material size of a feudal fighting force will be different. The wealth generated by the lands will be different, the feudal obligations (and cost of living associated so to speak with just the land contracts alone) are different.

The way I take it, GURPS is simply modular.
The difference in income is represented by different Wealth levels.
The difference in men bound to serve militarily is represented by larger or smaller Ally Groups.
And if it comes to costs of living, which in GURPS are ruled by the Status level, then let's remember that Status tables are an indication. Status is a collective construct. If everyone in society knows that Baron A is more important than baron B, then Baron A will be introduced first at the court banquet, and will have more social clout; game-wise he can be assigned a functional Status 4 level by the GM even though he's a Baron, because everyone knows he's as important as an Earl.

[Celjabba]

And lets not even start with subtleties like wether the title is bought, hereditary, come with a high function or was granted for personal merit.
(roughly in ascending order of status)
A mix of wealth, +1 status, personnal reputation, social regard or courtesy rank if you use rank allow to distinguish between people of the same title, along with an heraldic or current affair roll ...

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Michele

if one really wants to use both Status and Feudal Rank, then in a feudal society there's a huge overlap

That's why there's a "Feudal Rank" Advantage. The only point for it is to enforce that bundling for societies that don't make the distinction between the various sorts of rank (military, governmental) and social status.

You could, of course, just buy the facets separately, and have a house rule that says "you must always buy these together at equal levels". Some people like bundling things, some people prefer breaking them apart and bundling them with those unwritten rules.

If the setting doesn't have a society with that sort of coupling, you wouldn't allow the Advantage at all.

Social Engineering prices Feudal Rank the same as the sum of its components. If you think there should be an "overlap" discount, that's likely because one or another of those components isn't actually worth its base price in your game. A game focused on individual heroics is likely to undervalue any of these kind of social traits. Heroes don't sit at home and order people to solve their problems for them; they get out there and do it themselves! In that kind of game, Status and Rank are likely overpriced compared to other means of solving story problems*, precisely because they're not supposed to be used to solve story problems. In a lot of stories, being "Baron Inventedia" is just background color with perhaps a reaction Perk. In one of those colony-building / empire-managment sorts of games, those traits are vital and the core of a character's ability to influence the course of nations.

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* which is, after all, the basis for relative CP costs, not in-setting difficulty or expense, or demographic scarcity.