Hello all,

I have recently bought the book of the estate and now am confused as to which ruleset to use for my party.

I have two players knights with more than one manor: One has three manors, the other one has two. This is a new development, and I have not decided yet if they are gifts or grants, enfoeffed or demesne or on their income.
Now, my players (including those with only one single manor) would like to tinker with their land and build improvements. We also tried out the book of the manor including the full economic rules but players found the system too tedious.

I've collected the following questions while reading through the book:


As I understand it only my three-manor knight (worth about 30) about would apply for the rules described in Estate. Are the other ones out of luck? Can they build improvements at all? Does a single-manor knight still collect the 2% actual income?

Both knights received one additional manor through marriage. Is this manor a demesne manor or is it enfoeffed? If it is a demesne manor, does the 10 additional pound go straight to the knight, or should I treat it as a 20 estate?

Estate says that I get to build one improvement per year per 25 income, but I suppose that the knight must still pay for it from a separate fund (his 2% or from ransom money or similar). Is that correct?


I am pretty much confused and would appreciate your help and advice!

Personally, I like the rules of the Book of the Manor (BotM), but the big thing here is that your players found the full economics system too tedious (can't fathom why, as it is only one Concern (my commoners) and one Stewardship roll for them... GM can do the calculations). Full Estate accounting is even HARDER in my quick opinion from going through the estate sheets. Not so much year to year, but to set it all up.

Easiest fix IMHO:
1) Make all manors provide £6 in income as the norm in the rulebook and in BotM. Do not do any rolling.
2) Bit more complicated: you could tie this to Stewardship, either with or without the simplified 1d6 weather roll (1 = Terrible (£1.5), 2 = Bad (£3), 3-4 = Normal (£6), 5 = Good (£9), 6 = Excellent (£12)).
2a) Simple system: On a Successful Stewardship, you get extra £1 to spend, on a fumble -£3, on a crit success+£3. That gives players some incentive to have good stewardship.
2b) More complicated system with the Weather roll: Allow a successful Stewardship cover for the bad weather; this way a good stewardship helps to cover the problems, but doesn't lead to big loads of cash. Fumble -1 step, Critical +1 step (or Normal, whichever is higher).

Since they like to tinker with their lands, I would continue using the BotM, which is geared more towards the single manors. It is well able to handle two or three manors as well, though. In our campaign, having multiple manors has caused no problems, even though we haven't enforced the 'capital manor' rule from the Estates that you can only improve your primary manor.

As for your questions:

1) Like said, I would recommend that you use the rules from BotM and ignore Estates. If you use Estates, however, then I would use the same rules for all knights, including the £10 single-manor ones. And yes, they would be able to make improvements and get 2% of their income as petty cash.

2) This question gets asked in the forums all the time. The problem is that 'demesne' has been used in two ways: manors controlled directly by your knight without vassal knights of his own and manors which do not require a knight service (and thus are 'free' income). The latter are practically non-existent and you should pretty much forget about those. Now, since the manors were gained by marriage, the likely scenario is that the two damsels are heiresses, right? So the manors were held by their own fathers, who are now dead, but still require a knight to be provided. The PKs would administer those manors, but owe another knight service from them, in addition to their own manors, so they would need to hire a household knight. Since household knight is £4 and assuming that the manors are close enough to their old manors to be administered by their wives, this would net a benefit of £2 / extra manor / year. Now it would be possible that the manor would be already enfeoffed with its resident vassal knight, in which case the PK would only gain the fealty of that vassal knight. In NEITHER case should the PK get £10 extra spending money per year. Not even if it would be a 'free' manor, as some of the money would go to running the estate. The best he could do is get £6 / year for it, but even this would be too generous IMHO, as it robs the liege lord of a knight. And as you can see from Estates, you pretty much always need to provide 1 knight / £10 (a manor).

3) That is correct. The improvements are not free but have to paid for with money gained from adventures/war/good harvests. The 1 improvement / £25 income rule is to allow you to 'pool' your workforce of a large estate to do more in your primary estate. Note that it is possible to do more improvements than this, but additional improvements cost 50% extra as you will need to hire extra workers. A single manor (£10) is still able to build one improvement / year. I use GM fiat to decide how long it takes to build some of the bigger improvements/enhancements, such as big churches and stuff.

Many thanks for the explanation!

You say that BoE would require full estate accounting, but I got quite the opposite impression while reading the book. As I understood it, the only numbers used are the total income (or render, the terminology is still fuzzy to me) and the army size. In the chapter on changing the budget, the rules even state that "the only thing necessary to know is the size of the army". Full accounting would then be left as an exercise for zealous players.

I will still take your advice and give BotM's full economic system another try before taking a final decision. If that doesn't work, I'll progressively dumb the system down until I have found a compromise that my players enjoy.

On another note, I really like the idea of BoE that the income of the knight is fixed and independent of the actual harvest. I'm now thinking on how to tie this system into the hate(landlord)/concern(my commoners) dynamics of BotM, maybe by having bad weather effects influence hate(landlord) instead of the knight's income. Since hate(landlord) is tied into the full economic system, consecutive years of bad weather would have a reinforcing effect that would lead to a spiral of hate against the lord. Even better, some knights would stay completely oblivious of these effects as their income and status would remain unaffected by the plight of their peasants.

Yes, if you are not going to mess with it, then you only need to know the size of the army, which is given to you by the worth of the estate. However, as I understood it, your players wish to fiddle with their manors/estates. And then it can get a bit more problematic. This can be just my own personal bias talking as I have played with BotM for years now and only read once through BoE so far.

Then again, when you start going into the 'money you never see' BotM starts to become more difficult, too. It is simply abstracted away with having BotM manor income at £6 instead of £10: you basically ignore all the servants and only keep track on the additions to the entourage. Which is I guess what you can do with BoE as well. Also, there is nothing stopping you from giving a steady income with BotM, too.

Many thanks for the explanation!

You say that BoE would require full estate accounting, but I got quite the opposite impression while reading the book. As I understood it, the only numbers used are the total income (or render, the terminology is still fuzzy to me)

Render = the amount of income from food raised on the holding. Total Income = total amount of income from all estate assets including taxes, tolls, investments, etc.


and the army size. In the chapter on changing the budget, the rules even state that "the only thing necessary to know is the size of the army". Full accounting would then be left as an exercise for zealous players.

Correct. Which makes Morien's comments about the system being harder to set up a curiosity to me. Would like to understand that better. I mean, one can take one of the ten estates provided and not set up anything. Then there's no harvest rolls, no peasant revolt, etc. Of course, one could always take one of the example estates, change the name on it, and plop elsewhere in the kingdom. Greg's merely provided guidelines for people who like to customize and tinker.


I'm now thinking on how to tie this system into the hate(landlord)/concern(my commoners) dynamics of BotM, maybe by having bad weather effects influence hate(landlord) instead of the knight's income. Inevitable in this hobby, eh?

Since hate(landlord) is tied into the full economic system, consecutive years of bad weather would have a reinforcing effect that would lead to a spiral of hate against the lord. Even better, some knights would stay completely oblivious of these effects as their income and status would remain unaffected by the plight of their peasants.

Keep in mind, Greg says peasant revolts don't really happen in the Early Phase. They're too dependent on their lord's protection. In truth, the infamous Peasants' Revolt in Elngland didn't take place until almost the 14th century. The book is intended to be most appropriate for the Uther Period, although Greg backed away from that somewhat since publication — but still he had the Eary Phase in mind, totally, when writing it. That ad streamlining the bookkeeping.

Correct. Which makes Morien's comments about the system being harder to set up a curiosity to me. Would like to understand that better.


Ask and you shall (eventually) receive. Maybe. If I feel up to it. :)

Let me start by repeating my two caveats:
1. I have been using BotM for years now.
2. I have read through BoE once through, and leafed it a bit.

Lets start with what BotM 'manorial setup' looks like:
GM: "Here is your manor. It provides £6 per year, subject to the Fate vs. Stewardship contest, if we want to use it. If not, it is just £6 per year unless I tell you otherwise, and by a crazy random happenstance, your knight needs exactly that £6 for the maintenance of himself and his family, horses and squire. So don't worry about it."
Player: "Cool, thanks."

The Fate roll vs. Stewardship roll was apparently too complex for the OP's players. Yet they wished to tinker with the manors. Keep that in mind.

Now, lets look at the FULL BoE 'estate setup':
GM: "Here is your estate. Oh, by the way, a manor doesn't produce £6 anymore, but £10. Well, actually the income is £20, but you'll have to take out the expenses."
Player: "...OK. I think I got it. So I have £4 more per year?"
GM: "Nonononono. That is expenses as well."
Player: "Where did it go then?"
GM: "Here is an example of a £10 estate." *hands over a sheet*
Player: "Holy spreadsheet, Batman! Too much math! I am a history student, not a mathematician, Jim!"
GM: "Deep, calming breaths... They can't hurt you, they are just numbers on a paper. Look, the bottom line is that a '£10 estate' AKA '1 manor' is just enough to support your knight at normal level, same as before."
Player: "OK. So... it is the same as £6 per year for the knight?"
GM: "Yes, but we don't roll anymore, so it is always the same."
Player: "So... same procedure as last year?"
GM: "Same procedure as every year, James."
Player: "So what was the point of changing to this system?"
GM: "Now you can see where all the money goes!"
Player: "And can I make changes? Like have a bigger army? Get a bard to sing of my great deeds?"
GM: "No, it is fixed. You can't mess with it without causing your income to plummed and reducing you to penury over a couple of years."
Player: "... I repeat, what was the point?"
GM: "It is a simpler system."
Player: *eyeing the spreadsheet with suspicion* "Riiight."

:)

Now, you can just declare:
"You have an estate valued at £60 which gives you yourself as Rich Knight, 5 additional knights, 12 spearmen as your field army (one of whom is a more experienced sergeant-of-the-foot) and 6 spearmen to stay to garrison your principal manor. In addition you get £1.2 spending money."

But then again, you could have declared that without BoE just as easily:
"You have 6 manors, requiring 6 knights (one of whom is yourself) and which provide an extra 3 footmen per manor, 12 of whom are your field army (with one sergeant) and 6 are your home garrison. After paying for the 5 household knights, you have £10 left over. £3 to make you a Rich Knight, £6 for the extra 6 spearmen, and you have £1 left over to spend as you wish."
(Granted, this assumes you use the 1 knight + 2 footmen / manor model.)

Point is, BotM is no more complicated than BoE unless you wish it to be, and the FULL BoE can be overwhelming to a (new) player. Heck, the first glance was unnerving to -me- and I have been GMing BotM for years, like I said. And it gets worse if you don't use one of the sample £10, £50 or £100 estates. What people do you actually start dropping/adding when you go to £30, for example? If you simply say: "It doesn't matter, you just have 3 knights (incl. yourself) and 6 spearmen as field army and 3 spearmen as garrison." then what is the point of all those rosters and breakdowns? And if you do use the rosters and income breakdowns and whatnot, then I think I am objectively correct in saying that it is more complicated than BotM setup. :)

Now, there are things that I like about BoE. For instance, I think it is nice for me to know that the knighted estate officers tend to be married knights. Not that I am quite there yet with the PKs, but it is good to know with the NPC lordlings. And so forth. I didn't happen to check if the knighted estate officers count for the field army, but I think they do, which can be dangerous if the steward vanishes of to a long campaign. (If not, then you have a couple of extra knights in your garrison, useful.)

I am less than happy about the way the income is handled. Especially the clothiers and the armourer. Now, the armourer is explicitly reigned in on the text by the dearth of iron. You just can't hire as many armourers you like and buy as much iron as you like to take advantage of the 10:1 conversion rate (alchemists look on with envy...). But the clothiers? In the middle ages (and much later), England was the primary exporter of wool to Flanders, where it was turned into cloth. So fine, I guess in the dark ages, you can state that long distance trade is pretty much dead (save for the wine, apparently), and that the listed clothiers are already spining all the extra wool in your estate. Alright. How about I invest in more sheep? After all, I can invest in horse herds and such, why not in sheep? And that should give me extra wool, which I can then spun into silver with the 1:6 conversion factor (1:3 if you pay £1 for the clothier's wages). Why not? It is these sorts of arguments that do not crop up using BotM. I am also having a bit of hard time believing that the majority of the income is actually clothing, rather than food. But I admit, I didn't check the bibliography to see the sources for that, nor am I a professional historian. Lets just say that I was very surprised by it.

To summarize, BoE is simple when the GM keeps the rosters to himself and simple tells the player what the army is and what 'player's entourage slots' the player can fill with his choice. And then tell the player to not worry about the rest. But as I keep saying, this was basically what was done from the first with £6 manors. So I don't really need BoE for that.

And if you use BoE and wish to tinker... sorry, you can't. Your tinkering room is in practice just the investments, many of which are the same as in BotM, just with fixed average income instead of a roll. You get the same or more 'open entourage slots' by taking £2 per manor with a household knight and spending that money on higher maintenance and the entourage. Or simply doing something else with it. So BotM ends up being simpler and more flexible tinkering platform, again, in my humble opinion, especially when you are talking about a few manors per player.

I hope this answered your question, Taliesin? :)

Thanks for your feedback; we always appreciate hearing from players, wether they agree with what we're doing or not. Helps us do better next time.

Let me say that there are generally two kinds of gamers — ones who prefer to micro manage things and those that don't. It seems to me the Book of the Estate system is better for either of these. The idea behind the "spreadsheet" approach is that we will inevitably get these sort of questions from the first group, so the idea is we'd nip those in the bud by showing those who care, as transparently as possible, how the economics worked. For those who don't, they need never even see the detailed model.

But I think the simplicity really comes into play in the Winter Phase. With Book of the Manor, you have to have a spreadsheet to work out all the calculations for the Harvest roll (which includes figuring Normal Income vs Anticipated Income, Fortune, Weather, Conflict, Pestilence, Wasteland, and annual events from the GPC) to determine your annual income. All of that goes away with Estate. You also have to track Peasant Hate and roll for the likelihood of a rebellion. Since those didn't occur in the Early Phase analog, the idea was this was one complication that could be dispensed with as well. So now I just have my Estate sheet and it tells me what my annual income is, the only variable being my investments. That's a hella lot easier, IMO, than the Manor system.

So, yeah, I get that exposing the models gives the appearance that the system is more complicated to set up — but that's really only for folks who love to tinker, and to ask questions on these forums about how the economics work. We laid bare the model in all it's detail so people who liked to deconstruct things and remake them in their own likeness could grasp the foundations of the system. It was never the intention that one had to go through this much detail to set up a manor. But for those who like that sort of thing, they can custom-built the Estate of their dreams.

Hope that helps. It is not intended as an argument, but an explanation. Greg has said the two systems can live side-by-side in the same campaign, if the players and Gamemaster agree. Estate certainly makes it easier to manage larger landholdings (with multiple parcels), which is something the Book of the Manor does not address at all, IIRC. Plus, the Estate system provides the scalability to go all the way up to Honours, which is what you'll see in the forthcoming Book of the Warlords.


T.

You are aware, Taliesin, that there is the Narrative Economic System (BotM, p. 38) AKA 'GM Tells Me'? Which is literally that, the GM tells you what kind of a year it was and how much extra money, if any, you made or have to spend to make up for the lack? So in short, there is already the 'simple' system in place in BotM.

All the 'spreadsheet' stuff in BotM is something the GM can relatively easily track, because it is his roll. And, if so preferred, he can drop stuff off. Manorial Luck for example. Pestilence and Wastelands are way way in the future and can generally be skipped. I'd be tempted to use the Hate/Like Landlord as a modifier to the Fate roll, rather than do a separate Concern (My Commoners). Or, like said, you can ignore that altogether, if you don't feel like bothering what your peasants think. So we are left with Weather, Reign modifier and Conflict. Well, I roll Weather for the whole county, so it is the same for all PKs, usually (well, not quite since some of them have manors in a neighboring county as well, so that is 2 Weather rolls, but this is for non-number-crunchy people). The Reign modifier is a straight +- some 1d6s. So you can actually fold that into the Weather roll. So in the end, if you wished for a simpler system, you are left with:
1. Roll Weather (with Reign modifier)
2. Add Conflict roll for each manor.
3. Roll contest of Fate (Weather+Conflict) vs. Stewardship in each manor.
4. Read the result.

Want still something simpler? Go back to the rulebook and use the 1d6 roll for the manor, with the Stewardship roll allowing to patch up a bad harvest into a normal one. Two rolls and you are done. Have more than one manor and everyone is feeling lazy? Just imagine it is one big mega-manor and roll for it. Bang, done.

I have used basically the normal £6 rulebook manors to model clusters of 10 or so manors (£100 in BoE parlance) and up to a small county of 40 manors (£400 in BoE parlance). Sure, I might not get all the detail that you are able to put into the Estate spreadsheets, but then again, neither is the guy who is simply getting the army numbers. It is not that hard.

I am not trying to be mean about it, Taliesin, but an 'expansion book' that tells me to throw rules away is not really an expansion book for me. I am quite able to ignore rules that I dislike on my own. :) Like I said before, I do find some value in BoE... but simply not enough to justify its purchase for me. For me, BotM already did most of BoE set out to do and, again for me, did it better.

I like both books, but my preference is BoE.

I like being able to detail and build on my holdings, but I'm not really interested in the vagaries of the economics in BoM. I don't want to roll to see if my dairy produced a profit or not. I just want the economics to run in the background. Granted, one could simply ignore all that in BoM, and I often did.

There is no reason you can't use BoE with a single manor. It is just a £10 'estate'.

As for the spreadsheets, I like them. Much of BoE is 'fluff' to give some 'flavor' to your holding. I don't really care what the "staff" is for a £67 estate, but the general detail of the household I like.

NT

Ah, well — your mileage may vary, Morien. The most important factor in the genesis of Estate is that it's the system Greg wanted after years of using Manor, his additional scholarship in the field, and fan feedback. He was inspired and compelled to write it and offer at this time. It's an alternative way to manage one's holdings, and the foundational work that will be brought forward in future supplements. But folks can always choose to use Manor, if they prefer. but putting the system aside, what I like most about Estate is all the other information about how households run that have application even if you prefer Manor — like how land is awarded, and how you recruit knights for your household, etc., etc. A ton of good detail in the nuts and bolts of landholding makes it worth the price of admission, IMO.


Best,


T.

Eothar, Taliesin, like they say, different strokes for the different folks. I like the tinkering of BotM, being able to build up the estate and needing to consider cultivating the peasants' good will, balancing that against the need to squeeze them on bad harvests and so forth. I know that is not for everyone, but seems to work nicely enough for us. :)

I think I found a small 'problem', though, with the ratio of household/vassal knights question. It has been stated that it doesn't matter as far as the army size is concerned, and that is correct, but it does influence the staffing. Let me explain this...

Lets say that the estate, in its entirety, is £100:

1) Now, taking the example £100 estate, you end up with the Lord with his wife, 3 knight-level officers with their wives, and 6 unmarried knights, with all the assorted entertainers and servants.

2) Alternatively, what if the estate is composed of 5 £10 vassal manors + £50 directly controlled by the Lord, for a total of £100 estate? Each of the £10 vassal manors has more of an overhead, than if they were supporting a household knight. Thus, the Lord wouldn't have the money to keep a £100-estate court, but his court would look like that of a £50 estate.

Again, not a problem as such, but just a caveat that the ratio of vassal-to-household knights does matter, once you start talking about the court. It is easy enough to fix, though. Just calculate the actual staffing of the manor caput (or whichever the primary manor was called) based on the demesne estate, rather than including the enfeoffed manors, and then it is internally consistent again. (And internal consistency makes Morien a happy GM/player.)

Good observation, Morien, thanks!


T.

Morien -

Yes, different strokes. BoM vs BoE is largely preference. I think the whole point of Estates was to have a landholding system without sweating the details like in BoM. Got £100 in lands, get 10 knights. Bang, done, don't worry about the weather.

I like BoE. I'm not that interested in dealing with peasants when I play, and I mostly want the economics side of things to be in the background. Others might be more interested in their peasants and running estates etc. There are certainly good story-lines there. That said, one could certainly port in some of the ideas from BoM to BoE. One could farm out some lands and manage others directly etc creating a bit of a hybrid system.

As for the households, they are just examples. One does not actually work them out and they don't specifically affect the mechanics in any way. If you have enfeoffed a bunch of lands, your absolute income will be lower and household smaller, but it doesn't really matter. You still get 1 knight per £10.

I agree, however, that I like internal consistency.


NT

2) Alternatively, what if the estate is composed of 5 £10 vassal manors + £50 directly controlled by the Lord, for a total of £100 estate? Each of the £10 vassal manors has more of an overhead, than if they were supporting a household knight. Thus, the Lord wouldn't have the money to keep a £100-estate court, but his court would look like that of a £50 estate.



What if you don't sub-enfeoff? Those 5 manors don't need to be enfeoffed to another knight, you can simply have a household knight taking care of the place, with more money going to you. I don't remember the details. Does it match BotM that way?

What if you don't sub-enfeoff? Those 5 manors don't need to be enfeoffed to another knight, you can simply have a household knight taking care of the place, with more money going to you. I don't remember the details. Does it match BotM that way?


If you don't sub-enfeoff, then you will have the £100 estate from the BoE, as in the option 1) that I mentioned.

BotM doesn't really go into all that much detail as to what people are actually in your manor, but it fits in the extreme case of 1 demesne manor + 9 enfeoffed manors => the 'knight lord' will end up living as a regular 1-manor knight just as in BotM. Also in BotM, if he has 10 manors with 3 married knight officers and 6 unmarried household knights, he would end up on average £12 extra to be used to hiring an entourage and upping his lifestyle, mimicking the effects of the £100 setup in the BoE. So in conclusion, basing your estate Court on the size of your demesne estate, ignoring the enfeoffed manors for that calculation, is both internally consistent (your enfeoffed £10 manorial estates act as £10 estates in the BoE, and you have exactly as much 'extra' for the court as your demesne estate would state) and in agreement with BotM (you only get extra income from extra demesne manors, not from enfeoffed ones).

Thanks, Morien.

all good reasons to understand why subenfoeffment is so rare