Anyone tried combining the economic system of The Book of Manor with The Book of the Estate? Does it suit well to use one for single manors and the other for large estates? There are a lot of minor discrepancies (for instance, investment costs and the fact that some fortifications maintenance is now included in the estate economy). If I use the detailed economic system from The Book of Manor, do I use the investment costs from The Book of the Estate or those only apply to large estates? Why the change in costs from one book to the other?

Anyone tried combining the economic system of The Book of Manor with The Book of the Estate? Does it suit well to use one for single manors and the other for large estates? There are a lot of minor discrepancies (for instance, investment costs and the fact that some fortifications maintenance is now included in the estate economy). If I use the detailed economic system from The Book of Manor, do I use the investment costs from The Book of the Estate or those only apply to large estates? Why the change in costs from one book to the other?

Changes from book to book are generally due to my having learned new stuff. The later book is always right.
However,
Several corrections to the BoE economics will be found in the new BoW, and we will shortly have a united system that covers all three books correctly and in a united manner.

Anyone tried combining the economic system of The Book of Manor with The Book of the Estate? Does it suit well to use one for single manors and the other for large estates? There are a lot of minor discrepancies (for instance, investment costs and the fact that some fortifications maintenance is now included in the estate economy). If I use the detailed economic system from The Book of Manor, do I use the investment costs from The Book of the Estate or those only apply to large estates? Why the change in costs from one book to the other?


The two systems are not designed to be mixed together; and one predates the other by several years. You should use one or the other, depending on player or GM preference. I can't speak to the disparity in the cost of some items as the Book of the Manor predates my experience with the game. But I can say, the system in the Book of the Estate is the one Greg endorses. That said we've modified that system once more in Warlord to arrive at the definitive economics system for PENDRAGON. In fact we like it so much we're going to retrofit some of it to the Book of the Estate in the next errata for that tome in order to create a more seamless transition, and to avoid yet another economic iteration for future players. The improved system scales much better and we've playtested it on everything from £10 manors to £1,000 honours.

But remember, these are all optional systems. If you like the Book of the Manor better, use it!


T.

Thanks to the wonders of the new economy system showcased in Book of the Warlord, the two systems are not as far apart as one might first think. Especially once we overhaul the Book of the Estate like Taliesin said.

The differences are as follows:
1) Book of the Manor is simply looking at the money that the Knight uses for his own (+ family) consumption, which is £6 per manor. Also, BotM has rules for the Harvest rolls, which may result in the income varying wildly (perhaps a bit too wildly for my taste, but to each his/her own).
2) Book of the Estate uses £10 assized rent model of a manor, which then adds another £10 of production income from all the work done at the manor by the manorial staff. This results in the manor actually having a total income of £20. However, you will have to pay out all the salaries for the servants and such, and in the new economy system of Book of the Warlord, this results in £6 being left over for the knight's family's upkeep + £1 of discretionary funds. NOTE: this is extra £1 over what the Book of the Manor gives! Also, instead of Harvest rolls, BotE assumes that the income is steady, as any poor harvest simply means the lord collects what he needs as usual and the peasants suffer. Book of the Estate's investments are very poorly balanced, in my humble opinion, and it is something we might get an opportunity to fix down the road.

I have been a vocal advocate on this Forum for using Book of the Manor, since in all honestly, I found BotE riddled with inconsistencies, changes from the main rule book without, it seemed to me, a good reason, and a loads of calculation errors. And the investments, as I said, are very poorly balanced. In short, Book of the Manor seemed like a better choice. Now, with the new economy system in Book of the Warlord, a host of those inconsistencies and rules-shifts are fixed, and this new system will be propagated to the new edition of Book of the Estate, fixing it, too.

So my current preference is rapidly changing to (at the moment):
1) Use the new economy system of BotW.
2) Use investments from BotM (once revised with houserules to bring the prices and benefits to a balance).
3) Fix the Random Harvest results a bit to take into account the new +£1 Discretionary Funds for the £10 manor knight.

How to do 2) in above whilst using Book of the Estates (or BotW)?
Here is what I would do:

Step 1. How big (i.e. its assized rents) is your estate / caput major / chief manor where you are building this investment? Remember, BotM was meant for single manors (£10 assized rent in BotE & BotW). So if your estate is, say, £50, it is five times as big.
Step 2. Multiply the cost, income and maintenance of the investment by the multiplier from Step 1. In this case, by 5. So for instance, an investment that cost £5 for one £10 manor, would cost £25 for the £50 estate. Income £1d2 -> £5d2, Maintenance £1 -> £5
Step 3. Since it probably is too much of a pain to do 5d2 or something like that each year, especially if you are not using a random harvests anyway, I'd just take the average. 5d2 is on average £7.5 - £5 from maintenance = £2.5 profit per year.
Step 4. So now I have an investment X for my estate, costing £25 and producing a profit of £2.5 annually. Done!


So how about 3), the Harvest Results?
For single manors, here is what I would do with those (but see an upcoming discussion on the houserules section re: Raids, Pestilence & Wasteland):

Incredible: +£6 excess (+100% to normal) + £1 DF = £6 + £7 surplus
Excellent: +£4 excess (+67% to normal) + £1 DF = £6 + £5 surplus
Good: +£2 excess (+33% to normal) + £1 DF = £6 + £3 surplus
Regular: Normal harvest (£6 for the knight's upkeep) + £1 Discretionary Fund.
Meager: Normal harvest (£6 for the knight's upkeep), no Discretionary Funds this year.
Bad: £4 harvest (-33%), no Discretionary Funds.
Very Bad: £2 harvest (-67%), no Discretionary Funds.
Negligible: £0 harvest (-100%), no Discretionary Funds.


For a couple of manors, I'd probably just keep rolling for them individually, especially if they are in different counties and have different stewards. The results would average out and likely come up with reasonably liveable results (in our campaign, the usual result seems to be that two manor knights tend to fluctuate between - £3 and +£3 in surplus, using BotM).

However, for large estates (£60+ definitely, maybe even smaller), if I wanted to have some variance due to the harvest, I'd do the following:
I'd simply roll once for the whole estate, but rather than using the result as a modifier to the £6 upkeep, I'd use it for the Discretionary Funds of the Estate. So for example, if I had a £90 estate with Discretionary Funds £9 / year, I'd do the harvest roll... and if I come up with Good, I get extra 33% of £9 = £3 to my DF: £9+£3 = £12. If I get Very Bad, my DF is £9 - £6 = £3. I am still able to pay for all of my knights and my higher standard of living and all that; the harvest just makes my DF fluctuate a bit rather than bankrupt me with a bad roll, or make me as rich as Croesus on a good roll.

This got a bit Houserule-y, so I will take the rest of my comments, these to do more with the problems that I have with the BotM harvest rolling rules, to the houserules section. Once I have some free time to type them out!

It's early and I haven't had my coffee so I'll make this short.

Morien's smart. Follow where he leads.

For me, the BoW really brought everything in BoE together. I was not a fan of it. But after seeing it work in BoW, I am completely sold on it. It's an excellent system and will really start to show its power/flexibility when we begin drilling down on specific locations.