Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by StevenH

2) How often do the powerful lords poach our mages?

3) If they don’t poach...

4) What’s the global economy like...how does that affect the economy?


5) Are there any “orders from on high” ...

7) What is keeping the mages loyal to the manor...


8) What is keeping the mages from becoming lords in their own right? Are there “mage collars” that enforce loyalty?


12) What kinds of warfare are our manors going to get into...

I think finding all these out is kind of the point of this project. lets run it and see.


For #7, my initial answer is "Family, Friends, and good treatment". People did get up and leave under the manorial system, but there were a lot of incentives to stay if you could. Travel was dangerous. Support systems for non-nobles leaving their homes were sparse. And your Family all lives in the same place, your childhood friends live there too, and its likely your spouse's family is from there as well, or at least nearby.



But we'll see what the incentives actually are. I suspect the first run will be "proof of concept".

11) Are mages second class citizens? If so, what keeps them from staging a revolt?

Sort of. They aren't nobles. Yet. We'll see how this plays out. Remember that engineers don't control the modern world. I intend to make my mages fairly wealthy... as a reward for enriching me.

13) How do our manor lords pay for the political power they have? Contacts? Allies? Enemies? Legal Enforcement Powers are part of it, but how do you buy the amount of influence a US Senator has? Or the President? Granted, our lords are petty nobles, but they are competing with Barons, Counts, Dukes, and the King (not to mention all of the other layers of feudal bureaucracy).

This has been answered here:

Originally Posted by hal

Instructions for the building of characters to represent the Lord are to build the character on 175 points, but to avoid paying for the cost of wealth as an advantage, and social status as an advantage.

That post has some other good stuff in it, including a base-line gurps$ to harnpence of $350 to 24p --- it'd be nice if that were 25 instead, so I could say $14 to 1p, but oh well. Maybe I'll pretend its $15 to 1p. This is mostly for cost of living, but its a fair reference.

[ericthered]

Nice to get the mages. A few issues:

Originally Posted by hal

The population size is 279 people excluding your Noble's family. Let's say for the sake of argument, you have 5 in your family.

There is no argument. Zeedrick's family is below his character sheet on post 101.

Household:
Zeedrick, Fiefholder, 45

Isabone, wife, 39
Safira, daughter, 18
Thedor, son, 13
Lilanta, daughter, 10
Jonas, son, 8

3 domestics
chamberlin
cook
alewife

That's about 284 people. At 2% of the population being mageborn, that leaves us with a total of 5.68 mageborn. Let's not split hairs (or people!) and call it 6 mageborn total.

Names            ST    DX    IQ    HT    Magery    Social    Gender    Age    Death    Skill Points
Cathaoir Rodway        10    10    12    10    0    Noble    Male    42.402    74.548    62
Garritt Hazell        9    11    8    10    1    Serf    Male    50.868    56.124    79
Ressie Till        10    12    12    10    0    Serf    Female    42.223    59.373    62
Llenlleawg Symon    9    10    11    9    1    Serf    Male    27.864    34.672    33
Giles Hoar        9    12    10    9    0    Serf    Male    34.821    52.287    47
Janette Rowley        12    9    10    9    0    Freeman    Female    45.095    65.689    68

awesome! glad to have them. However, I see something odd: All my mages are between the age of 27 and 50. This is great in the short term, given that this is the prime time to get work out of mages. But I feel like there might be something wrong with your age distribution process. According to Harn Family trees this ages come from 20% of the population. What's going on here?

It'd also be nice to have the mageborn assigned to specific families... it matters if their father is a bowman, a smith, or the reeve.

Gross Acres: 1820
Woods Acres: 182
Cleared Acres: 1638
Tenant Acres: 1136
Demense Acres: 502
Labor Pool: 35,000 (note - labor pool days is an estimate)
Land Quality: 1.01
Fief Index: .90
Trade Index: 1.00

So according to the book I should have a tenant household for each 40 acres of cleared land (modified ever so slightly by my land quality). I've got 70 families over 1820 acres ... a crowded manor, all lent out to tenants. Is that intentional? I'd have expect about 1,000 more acres.

My Yeoman "points" are super high. I'm supplying 10.5 worth of light infantry (actually three bow and a medium infantry), plus a heavy horse. Is there a reason for that?

My original fief index was 0.80; you've given me 0.90. which is right?

[hal]

Hi ericthered,

The table I used to generate the famlies was different than what HARN MANOR uses in its rules. Mine was a modification of their rules based on the Hundred rolls of around 1200 AD. There, they had over 25,000 households listed. If you want, I'll try and hunt down the actual reference and page numbers. Christopher Dyer's "Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c.1200–1520". This is almost my BIBLE where it comes to digging up material for use with a medieval campaign. My other go to is Gies and Gies LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE. There, you will find over 110 familes living at Elton Village of 1872 acres of land. If you want to read some good material about life in a medieval village, I can't recommend this book enough.

There is a book out there that combines the "Life in a Medieval" series that includes Town, Castle, and Village. I don't recall its title off hand, but it is a hardcover book and big.

Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel is another good book worth reading by those authors.

But I digress...

The ages of the people involved were rolled against the table for ages of NPCs mostly - no modifications. That they all hovered around adult ages is the luck of the draw. Note too, that each child born from this point onwards, has a basic 2% chance of being born a mageborn.

There is nothing to keep you from detailing your families down to the last drop - and making sure that random rolls do NOT create "things that don't make sense". For example? All the household heads in the Manor should be adults. If you have the time to detail the entirety of the family - you can not only generate the ages of the parents of the household, but also when their children will be born, their ages, and if you select a given year to be the present, you can go far enough into the family tree to generate those who have yet to be born.

So - pick up the free PDF FAMILY TREES from the Lythia.Com Harnworld forums (I'll send you the link to that if you don't already have it).

You already have HARN MANOR, which gives you about 80% of the material I work off of (save for the modified "historical tenant table" that I use:

This by the way, is the original table for generating families in Harn Manor:

Case 1 To 10
    GetTenant = "Craftsman"
Case 11 To 25
    GetTenant = "Farmer"
Case 26 To 60
    GetTenant = "Villien"
Case 61 To 80
    GetTenant = "Half-Villien"
Case 81 To 90
     GetTenant = "Cottar"
Case Else
    If Kingdom = "Slave-owning" Then
        GetTenant = "Slave"
    Else
        GetTenant = "Cottar"
    End If

This is what I derived from the Hundreds rolls of over 25,000 famlies:

Case 1 To 10
    GetHistoricTenant = "Craftsman"
Case Is = 11
    GetHistoricTenant = "Virgate Farmer Plus"
Case 12 To 13
    GetHistoricTenant = "Virgate Farmer"
Case 14 To 16
    GetHistoricTenant = "1/2 Virgate Farmer"
Case 17 To 18
    GetHistoricTenant = "1/4 Virgate Farmer"
Case 19 To 25
    GetHistoricTenant = "Small Farmer"
Case Is = 26
    GetHistoricTenant = "Villien Plus"
Case 27 To 44
    GetHistoricTenant = "Villien"
Case 45 To 71
    GetHistoricTenant = "1/2 Villien"
Case 72 To 78
    GetHistoricTenant = "1/4 Villien"
Case 79 To 90
                GetHistoricTenant = "Cottar"
    Case Else
        If Kingdom = "Slave-owning" Then
             GetHistoricTenant = "Slave"
        Else
             GetHistoricTenant = "Cottar"
        End If

As you can see, the ratios of families who hold a given amount of land has changed so as to give the serfs overall, LESS land than what HARN MANOR allows for.

As a point of interest, I was initially part of the original playtest for Harn Manor - so much so that the playtest files are on my amiga 500. That computer was retired in 1995 for when I picked up my first windows machine. So those playtest files predate 1995. They were patterned more after ENCYCLOPEDIA HARNICA #3 than they were the present form you see now. Even had material on land requirements for Horses - which the present form of HARN MANOR left out.

:(

In any event - now you know why the numbers aren't quite what you might expect with Harn Manor. The number one complaint about Harn World is that it is way underpopulated than it should be. Almost as if it were post Black Plague than true medieval, but that's a discussion for private on another day. ;)

[StevenH]

1) What is the kingdom these manors are a part of like?

Originally Posted by hal

Since Harn World is loosely based on England, does that help? Much of my reading and book purchases etc, are largely based off England as well. I tend to go with what I know best, if that helps.

It doesn't, really. England didn't have any mages. So I still have no idea what an English king would do if magic was real.




2) How often do the powerful lords poach our mages?

Originally Posted by hal

The answer to that question largely depends on any game world design by the GM, but if you want my gut instinct based on a more historical based medieval set up...

Any person who is born a freeman, could easily be "poached" because their tie to the land tends to be in terms of "Rents" or contractual obligations to the land they hold freely. Put another way - they're not serfs obligated to stay with the land, and their rental agreements with the Lord tend to be for a finite set period of time (generally, no more than 7 years). Lords could, and later on did - raise their rents for their free tenants, but were obligated to KEEP the original agreement on rents and the like LONG into the future - even when such rents were (due to inflation etc) way too low.

Serfs on the other hand, were bound to the Lord by their original contracts to the lord by their forefather(s) (depending on how many generations you go back!). As such, they were not free to leave the land, etc. Any more than a Lord was obligated to set free (manumission) any of his serfs. In theory, any serf mageborn would not be free to leave the land he was born on.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. By “poaching” I didn’t mean headhunting only. “Abducting”, “Enticing” and “paying them so well they just up and leave” are also included. A sufficiently motivated warlord who just happens to be the local Duke (or King) isn’t going to just leave a useful mage alone to do stuff on some podunk Knight’s manor. He will want them for his own use.


3) If they don’t poach, why don’t they? A powerful lord would naturally want to gather as many mages under his control as possible. What keeps them from stealing mages from the manors?

Originally Posted by hal

Social constraints (see above). But if that were the only issue, that's one thing, but the other thing is - nobility have a finite amount of resources. The more the spend on mageborn, the less they spend on other things. Sometimes, hiring a man at arms is more important than hiring a mageborn. Note too - that the feudal obligations of historical times, did not include mageborn because said individuals did not exist. Perhaps in a magical medieval time period, such mageborn WILL be included in the obligation a lord has to the liege who granted him his lands. I'll let YOU ponder that question...

Feudal obligations wouldn’t stop this. Laws are just words on a page. Or the laws would be rewritten to “The King gets all the mages”.

The point is, if I train up some mages, and they aren’t kept secret from those higher on the food chain than me, what can I do to keep them from being taken away by the bigger fish?

How do I stop the King from sending 5000 men at arms (and a few war mages) from taking all 6 of my mageborn away from my manor of 300 or so people? Because what is going to stop him from doing this?

Or are we handwaving humanity’s lust for power away for the sake of the experiment?

I’m not too worried about another Knight taking my mages away (it’s possible, but as you said, there is only so much money, and Knight’s likely didn’t have a lot extra to spend bribing/abducting another manor’s mages). But a Duke or King has all kinds of resources, and if they spend even 1% of their revenue on attracting mages (by whatever means) that’s likely more money than any single manor could produce.

In a land where mageborn exist, they would likely be part of the feudal obligations. Much like the whole “when I need you to, you will call up your men at arms and go to war for me”. Except in this case it is “you will send your mageborn to my magic academy to be trained for my use.” Which means I would have to keep my mages both secret, and not useful enough for him to want. Which likely also means “not terribly useful at all.”

What am I missing here? Why would a King who understands the uses of mages let me hold on to any and not take them for himself? I can buy that my manor lord can get the loyalty of his mages, given that he can get them early enough, but that wouldn't stop the hypothetical warlord king who wants my mages.

[StevenH]

"8) What is keeping the mages from becoming lords in their own right? Are there “mage collars” that enforce loyalty?
What ever you can find in GURPS MAGIC - will be your answer, but enchanters will be few and far between. In a population of 1111 mageborn, there will be 1 magery 3, 10 magery 2, 100 magery 1, and 1000 magery 0 mages. Since that accounts for 2% of the entire population, to produce 1111 mageborn, you need a population of 55,550 people. In England circa 1200 AD, the breakdown would be...

40,000 mageborn for a population of 2 million. Of that 2 Million people, a roughly EQUAL number would be Noble born (ie, roughly 2% of the 2 million population were nobility. That leaves the rest..."


So, basically nothing. Well, the Oath spell would be the most likely, but even that one has quite the prereq list. I don't think you can build a reasonably flexible enchanter mage for less than 200 character points. So enchanting items for controlling mages wasn't really a viable option.

The Oath spell, if it were known, would likely become part of the Oath of Fealty, which might actually go a long way to both stabilizing the kingdom by limiting Game of Thrones style backstabbing among the nobility, and provide a methodology to keep mages "local" instead of being taken away by more powerful nobles.

[StevenH]

"13) How do our manor lords pay for the political power they have? Contacts? Allies? Enemies? Legal Enforcement Powers are part of it, but how do you buy the amount of influence a US Senator has? Or the President? Granted, our lords are petty nobles, but they are competing with Barons, Counts, Dukes, and the King (not to mention all of the other layers of feudal bureaucracy).

When you say "Pay" - are you talking meta-game with character points, or are you talking from the viewpoint of a Noble born "Knight" who pays to his liege in the form of gifts and his own payments owed (be it labor or kind or cash)?"


Character points. Meta game stuff.

I know that we don't need to pay for wealth or status. But I was assuming we were just lords of a manor, not someone with Status 8. But even high status doesn't necessarily confer political power. Kings have Status 7, but some kings have more power than others, even if their status is the same.

How do we model (pay for with CPs) access to the Special Forces, secret service, a network of spies, men-at-arms, etc? Contacts? Allies? Or is it all assumed under "Status" (which for us is 3, I assume, which is Manorial Lord)?

[StevenH]

Two more meta game related questions.
You (Hal, that is) have said not to worry about Wealth and Status.

Does that include Rank (Feudal societies often had Rank=Status), Legal Enforcement Power (level 3), Reputation, and Social Regard?

Also, with Status and Rank comes Duty (to our feudal liege, presumably). Is that part of the "Gift Package" as well?

Status 3, Rank 3, and Legal Enforcement Powers 3 cost 45pts. A Manorial Lord would have all of these things.

All three of these also usually include some kind of Duty, likely -5 pts (Frequency 9-, and would likely include hosting higher nobility when they visit, traveling to confer with higher ups, and being called to war; I also wouldn't call it Extremely Hazardous or Involuntary, or Nonhazardous. Just a run of the mill bog-standard Duty.)

Third question: what is the penalty for ignoring the Duty to the higher ups? I'm assuming any lord I make has given his Oath of Fealty in good faith, and actually supports the Baron above him, and the King above him. (Although that leaves open his allegiance to the Count and Duke above him.)

But what about the Lord who DOESN'T give his fealty in good faith? Is there any likelihood of the Feudal Duty being Involuntary? Such as "swear fealty to me or I will kill your child that I am fostering"?

Are nobles treated better because they are nobles (Social Regard)? If so, by how much? Reputation is a personal thing, but Social Regard is a societal thing, and thus not under personal control. Although, I suppose, like Reputation, you can zero it out by making the SR affect different groups and balancing it by using Social Stigma from other groups.

[hal]

Originally Posted by StevenH

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. By “poaching” I didn’t mean headhunting only. “Abducting”, “Enticing” and “paying them so well they just up and leave” are also included. A sufficiently motivated warlord who just happens to be the local Duke (or King) isn’t going to just leave a useful mage alone to do stuff on some podunk Knight’s manor. He will want them for his own use.


If they don’t poach, why don’t they? A powerful lord would naturally want to gather as many mages under his control as possible. What keeps them from stealing mages from the manors?

The pity answer to your question is: Oaths of fealty were such that they obligated both parties of the oath to specific behaviors. Most included obligations of mutual defense. Attack a knight, and his liege is obligated to come to the knight's aid. Attack a baron, and his liege is obligated to come to the Baron's aid. If the King is the liege of a noble or knight, and orders them to attack others within their own "structure", he is asking them to be foresworn - and they're going to want to know why and possibly tell the King "no". Telling a Baron whose vassal is a knight whom the King wants to attack "Because I said so" is not enough.

Problem the second: If mageborn existed in the time of historical periods where feudal oaths were being considered, the question arises "might not the services of mageborn, like those of yeomanry and knights, been part of an obligation? The answer then becomes one of "how does one rate a mageborn in comparison with a Knight or a yeoman or even a simple soldier?

If a Knight can't supply a mageborn, where does he find a mercenary mageborn to cover his required obligation?

I would suggest that if you engage in a few scenarios where you take a single yeoman up against a single mageborn limited to Magery 0 - and see what the net result is. Then run the same scenario versus a magery 1 mageborn, etc - until a single mageborn can reliably beat out a single warrior. With GURPS MAGIC as written, I would bet that the answer will be mageborn aren't reliable enough in a combat situation, to be the equal of a warrior.

So, the shoe is now on your foot. Rate the mageborn relative to the yoemanry and decide if a mageborn is the equal of a light foot soldier, a medium foot soldier, an archer, or even a sergeant (mounted infantry). Chances are, a single mageborn will not be the equal of any of the above. Keep in mind, the BULK of mageborn will have magery 0. This of course, presumes the 10:1 ratio of lesser magery to the next greater level of magery. If magey can change with time - that throws a whole different problem into the mix - and will change the demographics of how many of any given magery exists within the general population.

Originally Posted by StevenH

Feudal obligations wouldn’t stop this. Laws are just words on a page. Or the laws would be rewritten to “The King gets all the mages”.

The point is, if I train up some mages, and they aren’t kept secret from those higher on the food chain than me, what can I do to keep them from being taken away by the bigger fish?

How do I stop the King from sending 5000 men at arms (and a few war mages) from taking all 6 of my mageborn away from my manor of 300 or so people? Because what is going to stop him from doing this?

Or are we handwaving humanity’s lust for power away for the sake of the experiment?

Much of the thrust of questions above - envision a life where there aren't checks and balances. King John in 1215 AD was forced to sign the Magna Carta Libertatum after a civil war - mainly due to excesses of the King abusing his feudal rank over that of the Barons of England. A King whose oath of fealty requires that he come to the aid of any of his barons who are attacked, would likely require him to step in if Baron A were to attack Baron B for any reason (not just kidnapping mageborn).

The number ONE thing that people fail to heed is that an oath of fealty is a two way contract, not a one way contract.

Originally Posted by StevenH

I’m not too worried about another Knight taking my mages away (it’s possible, but as you said, there is only so much money, and Knight’s likely didn’t have a lot extra to spend bribing/abducting another manor’s mages). But a Duke or King has all kinds of resources, and if they spend even 1% of their revenue on attracting mages (by whatever means) that’s likely more money than any single manor could produce.

In a land where mageborn exist, they would likely be part of the feudal obligations. Much like the whole “when I need you to, you will call up your men at arms and go to war for me”. Except in this case it is “you will send your mageborn to my magic academy to be trained for my use.” Which means I would have to keep my mages both secret, and not useful enough for him to want. Which likely also means “not terribly useful at all.”

What am I missing here? Why would a King who understands the uses of mages let me hold on to any and not take them for himself? I can buy that my manor lord can get the loyalty of his mages, given that he can get them early enough, but that wouldn't stop the hypothetical warlord king who wants my mages.

And this is where you run into issues of demanding something that may or may not be socially acceptable. A serf is not something for another to command just because their oaths are held by a King's vassal. A king can't say "I am your liege's liege, therefore you are MINE". At best, during times of war, a King may demand the services of his vassals to the tune of 2 month's labor (so to speak). After that, the king has to PAY for their labor. Likewise, Mageborn who are born with that special "thing" aren't necessarily going to be obligated unless the law flat out states "You are a slave". The laws were VERY specific in feudal times regarding the status of a child born to parents who are servile (serfs). If even ONE parent is a serf, the child is a serf unless the parent who is noble recognizes their bastard. A serf may not marry a noble - largely unless the contract that is owed by the serf is rendered null and void (ie manumission). A noble who manages to secure the right to marry a serf, because the owning noble gave permission to the serf to marry, automatically (by law) results in any child of that union to be considered a serf! A freeman father who sires a child on a serf wife, will find their child to be serf. If a Freeman woman bears a child of a Serf father, the child is serf.

In the end? Society itself will police its own social mores (pronounced as So-shall more-rayz) by socially punishing those who violate the social customs or social mores.

[Inky]

1)

It doesn't, really. England didn't have any mages. So I still have no idea what an English king would do if magic was real.

Well, England frequently thought it had mages, so I suppose you could get some possibilities from that, though some of them might not be applicable in this scenario. Apart from that, they might be comparable to other rare skilled professionals.


2) As Hal implied, basically, Magna Carta, possibly.

A lot seems to have revolved around agreements between the King and the various nobles, by which they would serve him as long as he kept to certain agreements. Kings could and did break those agreements, or try to change the laws to be more in their favour. But doing that too often might result in the nobles all worrying that the same thing might happen to them and rebelling in a body, and the king couldn't take on all of them at once. Even an officially absolute monarch needs to keep the support of a certain amount of his people (and particularly, the ones providing his army) at any one time.

In this setting, the agreements might well include something like "this manor undertakes to provide 10 man-days of mage-work a year to the king". (There might be haggling over whether a manor had deliberately sent its most useless mages).

If we're roughly using mediaeval England as a template, things seem to have been pretty Wild West among the "nobility" (it seems like there was frequently only a generation or two between "successful bandit" and "aristocrat" and it showed), so kidnapping each others' mages seems like it might well be part of the normal round of dirty work at the crossroads. However, this might be limited by the same factors that prevented them from just upping and declaring war on each other (at least not too often). If it was a more powerful noble who did it, and you didn't have the firepower to stop him yourself, you could appeal to the King (results depending on which of you he likes better and how anxious he is not to have a war right now). If it was the King, you might be out of luck, but he might be wary of breaking pre-arranged deals with his knights too often in case they all rebelled at once for fear that the same thing would happen to them - he could squelch one knight, but he couldn't take all of them on at once.

(It sounds like Hal is thinking of using a random table of outside awkward events that might happen to manors from time to time, and trouble from other nobles or the king might be included in that).

10)

Originally Posted by hal

But - ask yourself this: how well can a person hide from a Seeker spell?

To be fair, Seeker has prerequisites of Magery 1+ and IQ 12+. That means that less than one in 20 mages will be capable of learning it (I'm not sure of the exact IQ distribution Hal's using), i.e. less than one in 1000 people. Anyone who does learn it, though, might have a very profitable job!

13)
The omission of Wealth, Status, Duty, etc. might be a question of "these things are omitted from the sheet to be replaced with Hal improvising stuff that seems applicable for the circumstances, rather than using GURPS stats". How many men-at-arms you can command, for instance, seems like it would be a direct function of how many men-at-arms you actually have on your manor spreadsheet. The "Duty" seems like it would be basically just recording formally how often Hal's RNG is expected to mess with us in the category of "orders from higher up" :-D

How do we model (pay for with CPs) access to the Special Forces, secret service, a network of spies, men-at-arms, etc? Contacts? Allies? Or is it all assumed under "Status" (which for us is 3, I assume, which is Manorial Lord)?

Oh, that sounds like a clever idea. The baseline Wealth and Status may be handwaved, but spending some of your points on, say, Contact (spy at court) might be a legal move. That might give you an extra advantage to rolls or whatever if Hal does have the high mucky mucks try to cause trouble. Other possibilities like that that might affect your relations with other nobles might be a Favour (for instance, the king owes you for having foiled a plot against him - or, at least, convinced him you did) or, on the negative side, Reputation (suspected of being a plotter yourself).

Are nobles treated better because they are nobles (Social Regard)? If so, by how much? Reputation is a personal thing, but Social Regard is a societal thing, and thus not under personal control. Although, I suppose, like Reputation, you can zero it out by making the SR affect different groups and balancing it by using Social Stigma from other groups.

Isn't that normally covered automatically by the reaction bonus for Status?

[hal]

Originally Posted by StevenH

"13) How do our manor lords pay for the political power they have? Contacts? Allies? Enemies? Legal Enforcement Powers are part of it, but how do you buy the amount of influence a US Senator has? Or the President?

OK, nooooowwwwww you've done it, you woke the dreaded Analysis Cyclops.

**teasing grin**

Keep in mind, that GURPS suffers from Mission creep like many fourth and fifth editions of games. Things that were built in the Early days of the game system's life, may not be 100% logical by the time the next edition is printed, let alone one that is about 3 editions later and nearly what, 20 year later?

Take Social Status. In the olden days, take Status 3 for a landed knight and you were done.

But what precisely is the difference between a Knight and a Landed Knight? Wealth? Land? Obligations? advantages in return to the obligations?

So, let's see how things work out.

If you read social regard, it ALMOST seems perfect fit for the differences between:

Unfree (Slaves)
Servi (Serfs)
Freeborn
Noble Born

But the reality is, Social Regard is pre-empted by the "where one is in the social ladder" that is the domain of Status. Being born noble puts you in a social order, not a social regard order.

So, let's leave out social regard largely because of what perks being born into a social class grants.

Were I to price the package for a Noble:

• Status (Noble born) 1 (5 pts)
• Status(Knighthood) +1 (5 pts) Note that baseborn could become squires and GURPS treats status 1 for squires as normal. Social conventions changed later to where one must have noble blood to become a squire. On he whole, being taken as a squire amounted to entering the lowest possible rung of nobility - but until you gained outright knighthood, you remained "Esquire".
• Wealth(land): Wealthy or better (20 points or more) This grants a +1 status free of charge. Multi-Millionaire grants a +2 to status, which for a larger baronial holding, may work out pretty well.
• Legal Immunity: Exempt from certain laws applied to baseborn, but not nobility (5 pts)
• Legal Enforcement Powers (Manorial as jurisdiction, low justice only): 5 pts
• Duty to Liege (Involuntary, on a 6 or less): -7 pts. Note - the threat of losing one's lands for being foresworn aka breaking the rules regarding fealty obligations etc - is a real one. A liege has every right to declare his vassal an oath breaker - but not just causally. The concept of trial by combat extends to judicial trial by might of arms in battle. Put more succinctly: If your lord goes to war against you and you win, it was God's championing the right that permitted you to win. Lose and well, you lost because you were wrong in God's eyes.

The template above is what I think I'd use were I to run a campaign today. As you can see, the overall price tag for such a noble is a hefty 33 points versus the original 15 from the early editions of GURPS. Does it play any differently either way? Not really. Any GM who runs a campaign in which the nobility were largely exempt from laws affecting the base born, was already giving the player the advantage as part and parcel of social status 3. GURPS made it more costly later.