One of my players has the Book of the Manor, and wants to be able to use it to be able to improve his starting manor. My understanding is that Book of the Estate supercedes Book of the Manor, and that there are improvements in the Book of the Estate to use instead (pages 75-97).

I do not own Book of the Manor, so I am not sure what to answer here.

Advice would be useful

Which version of BotE do you have?

If it is 1.3 (I think 1.3.2 is the newest), then you should be using it, IMHO. Those improvements have been vetted and scaled carefully, while BotM & earlier editions of BotE were much less rigorous. With earlier BotE, one big problem is that it is scaled for £50 estate, and thus causes some issues with £10 manors. If I had my choice between earlier BotE and BotM, I'd go with BotM in that case for £10 manor specifically.

I put this in the wrong forum, sorry about that. I have the revised version of Estate, 1.3.2

I have the revised version of Estate, 1.3.2

Then my recommendation stands. Use BotE v1.3.2.

One of my players has the Book of the Manor, and wants to be able to use it to be able to improve his starting manor. My understanding is that Book of the Estate supercedes Book of the Manor, and that there are improvements in the Book of the Estate to use instead (pages 75-97).

I do not own Book of the Manor, so I am not sure what to answer here.

Advice would be useful

I see nothing wrong with using BoM Improvements

I see nothing wrong with using BoM Improvements

Weeellll... There are some significant issues with BotM investments in particular, Greg, mainly the infamous rate of return of the investment. BotM is still more generous than revised BotE, and this was deliberately scaled down in revised BotE to keep the PKs from spending all of their loot to build investments and hence upset the financial balance of the Campaign. In particular, the problem is that it is exponential growth. You build one investment, and then use its profit to build another one, and now you have two producing even more income, and then you have four...

That being said, BotM is not horribly out of whack (by and large). Just a bit more on the generous side. For example, Melisarium (Apiary) is £6 to build and income £1 in BotE. In BotM, Apiary is £2 to build and income £1d2 with a maintenance cost £1. So in the end, two apiaries in BotM will cost £4 and produce an average of £1 per year. However, unlike BotM, BotE is explicit on the space limitations on how much you can build on the manor's lands, which helps in keeping that exponential growth under control.

Since the GM has BotE v1.3.2, my recommendation is to use it. The Player can use the BotM for inspiration, and then check with the GM what the updated numbers are. That's what I'd do.

Morien is right here, of course.
I just remind everyone that when numbers in books conflict the latest book always supersedes the earlier. Book of Estate is the latesr of those books.

Weeellll... There are some significant issues with BotM investments in particular, Greg, mainly the infamous rate of return of the investment. BotM is still more generous than revised BotE, and this was deliberately scaled down in revised BotE to keep the PKs from spending all of their loot to build investments and hence upset the financial balance of the Campaign. In particular, the problem is that it is exponential growth. You build one investment, and then use its profit to build another one, and now you have two producing even more income, and then you have four...

That being said, BotM is not horribly out of whack (by and large). Just a bit more on the generous side. For example, Melisarium (Apiary) is £6 to build and income £1 in BotE. In BotM, Apiary is £2 to build and income £1d2 with a maintenance cost £1. So in the end, two apiaries in BotM will cost £4 and produce an average of £1 per year. However, unlike BotM, BotE is explicit on the space limitations on how much you can build on the manor's lands, which helps in keeping that exponential growth under control.

Since the GM has BotE v1.3.2, my recommendation is to use it. The Player can use the BotM for inspiration, and then check with the GM what the updated numbers are. That's what I'd do.

If I haven't got either of these two books, am I right to think that I should just get the Book of the Estate and I wouldn't be missing out on anything?

If I haven't got either of these two books, am I right to think that I should just get the Book of the Estate and I wouldn't be missing out on anything?

Book of the Manor has variable harvests (horribly so, I'd say), random manorial luck, peasants' Hate Landlord, and different raiding rules (raids can destroy investments/buildings) rather than the Long-Term damage mechanic that is in Book of the Estate. Book of the Manor also has a short list of entourage members. In short, Book of the Manor goes a bit deeper into the management of a single manor with its ups and downs than Book of the Estate.

However, I'd go with Book of the Estate. It is all-around more complete take on the estate management, better balanced (investments, fortifications) and conceived. It also has more information on the society (including an updated Glory table for titles) and the updated family survival table, which I heartily recommend instead of the extremely brutal child survival roll in KAP 5.1. And while it doesn't explicitly introduce the extra entourage members (who would be in Book of the Entourage), it does a much better job listing out what the households would actually look like, who are part of it, and what their duties are. Assuming that is something you are interested in. Oh, I did mention fortifications, didn't I? You can even build (early phase) castles with the rules you have in Book of the Estate, making it superior in that regard over Book of the Manor, too.

Pretty much the only thing of worth that you are missing is Hate Landlord mechanic, but the Squeezing results in Book of the Estate cover for that very well, in my opinion, with the peasants voting with their feet.