Hi All,

I have a question about Saxons and their Lordly Domains. On pg 130 it equates (roughly) thegns to knights or bannerets, aethelings and ealdormen to bannerets or barons, and cynings to counts or dukes. First, in the Saxon outfits section, the best aethelings, ealdormen, or cynings can get in hides is 60. With some incredible luck in your luck rolls you might be able to up that a little. Since five hides = 1 POP, well the math means that these holding are ridiculously small for men of this stature (IMO). So, my house rule ups the d6s to d20s. Which leads me to my questions. First, does this make sense?

But second is actually a rule question, how do you calculate a Saxon's demense and how big are Saxon towns and cities (as laid out in Lordly Domains)? Also, does a Saxon Banneret equivalent still get a "town" (I would assume mostly rural steads with a large village by Saxon standards) of seven and three POP more in other holdings for a total of ten POP (roughly 50 hides) while the rest of his land is distributed to his underlings or is this strictly a Cymric (and other "civilized" cultures) custom? Does the same ratio as in Lordly Domains hold true for an aetheling if he is a baron equivalent?

I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong place as I am relatively new here and I'm looking for answers to my questions rather quickly. I will be deployed shortly and I'm trying to get my campaign in order. If I can't get a copy of The Book of Knights and Ladies before I deploy I plan on hosting a predominantly Saxon campaign. Thanks.

1)Upping the fiefs seems to make sense-at least in comparsion to the fief sizes prior to Lordly Domains.


2)I for one would assume that they would get the same POPs and towns as Fuedal landholders. THe Saxond did have large population centers too.

I can't find my copy of Saxons, but this might help:


In KAP 1, fiefs were parceled out in hydes, with a landed knight getting 2 hydes of land.

A hyde was a variable amount of land, based upon how productive the land was. So 2 hydes of non-productive rocky hillside would be much larger than 2 hydes of rich, fertile, land. If so, I'm not sure why they switched to 5 hydes = 1 POP when the ration used to be closer to 1-1.

In case it helps, here are typical estates (they get larger), and personal demeses (in parentheses) of the various noblemen from KAP 1 Nobles Book.

Banneret: 10 hydes (3d6 hydes)
Baron: 44 hydes (4d6+10 hydes)
Count/Earl: 130 hydes (10d6+40 hydes)
Duke: 314 hydes (10d20+80 hydes)
King: 416 (10d20+160 hydes)

So if a Cyning has holdings equvialent to a Earl, in NB he could have a 10d6+40 (max 100 hydes) personal demese.




Economics Gobbledegook:

Note that these fiefs are about 50% larger than the POP values given in Lordly Domains, so you might
roll a total POP in Lordly Domains for the Feudal equivalent and then increase it by 50% to get a number of hydes. i.e. a Cyning could ruled 75-95 POP, or about 113-143 hydes.


I hope some of that is helpful.

Very helpful indeed. I have just a few more questions that your post brought to mind. It seems that the personal demesne in KAP 1 are much larger than in Lordly Domains (LD). Is it a baron's typical domain is 44 hydes and his personal demesne is an additional (4d6+10 hydes) of land? That would make a very, very lucky baron the ruler (rolling 4 sixes) of about 78 hydes of land. Of course, as you said they do get larger. That would make his POP 52 which would be pretty much in line with LD. This also makes it possible for a demesne to be quite a bit larger than those listed in LD. Lastly, does a hyde produce roughly the same as a POP does in LD. I either never bothered to read or forgot about this in KAP 1. I think I have KAP 1 around here someplace but my house is a mess due to my packing, and believe me my wife is letting me know about it! If I can't find it and take it with me it seems I may have to do more shopping than just trying to find The Book of Lords and Ladies before I deploy. Thanks.

They probably aren't any larger.

Sorry, I erred in using the term "typical" rather than default. The way it works in the Nobles Book is that if a player is not using a land record he get a fielf of the size and income indicated. If the player is using a land record, the GM assigns him a fief, either by using some of the random tables given in the sidebars, or by writing up a custom fief, or through a combination of both.

So the actual size of the fief and the lord's personal demesne would vary depending on random rolls and (especially) how many knights he has to support (at 2 hydes per knight). You can "reseve engineer" an apoximate PD size by taking the total fief and subtracting 2hydes/knight. It sould end up beinbg less than this is practice since some knights would have greater holdings than the minimum.

What is says in the description for Counts and Earls is that "on the average" they control 50-100 knights, and 300 hydes. That is about 3 times the size of the "default" of 130 hydes.

Average Holdings (knights)and mimimum vales are:

Baron 80-100 hydes (40-50 knights)-minimum 44 hydes (9 knights)
Count, Earl: 300 hydes (80-100 knights)- the minimum is 130 hydes (30 knights)
Duke: ??? hydes (100-200 knights)- the minimum is 314 hydes (75 knights)

So you can see that the default holding are quite a bit smaller than the average holdings.


The easiest way to make sense out of this is by converting fiefs into manors.

In KAP 1 a typical knight's holding was 2 hydes, worth 2L.

In KAP 3+, a typical knight's holding is 1 manor, worth 6L

So you could divide the hydes given by 2 to get manors, or triple the hydes given to get KAP 3+ income. So someone with 60 hydes could support 30 manors, worth 180L income.

So what you could do is assume that a saxon with 60 hydes has 30 manors worth 1D3 POP each. That works out to 4-13L per manor, or an average of 8.5L per manor, 255L total. (Lordly Domains gives out more L, but also increases expenses). This would be the income IF the entire population were spread out in small POP 1 and POP 2 villages.

What makes Lordly Domains tougher to work with is that it bases it's economics on PO, and that POP and income vary by rating. This means that two Earls, both with the same total POP and number of towns, could have widely different incomes depending on the POP ratings of the individual towns.



So the income could be much greater, and you'd probably be best off to just use the equivalent title in Lordly Domains to work out Saxon income.



It can be very easy to make of a fief in either NB or LD that can't support itself. So GM intervention and improvements are really vital.





For what it worth, I prefer NB over LD, but the incomes are too small for KAP 3+. So what I did was have each manor generate 2d6L for the "harvest roll", halved all the modifiers and applied them directly to the 2d6 roll. It worked just fine for a knight's fief. Scale up the modifiers by the number of manors and it handles larger domains reasonably well. And it's not very different from how KAP 5 does it.

I hear the Book Of Manors has a new/updated system that is better than LD. but I don't own that yet.

Thanks a bunch for taking your time here. I really appreciate this. If you ever need anything...

If you ever need anything...

I'm fresh out of supermodels. ;D

I hear the Book Of Manors has a new/updated system that is better than LD. but I don't own that yet.


Indeed it does, however it is focussed on manor-level holdings. You can use it for baronial and bigger estates, but it isn't meant for that so you may have problems. Bookkeeping for 100 manors when you normally track each one individual could be tedious, unless you just treat bunches of them with a single set of rolls.

I hear the Book Of Manors has a new/updated system that is better than LD. but I don't own that yet.


Indeed it does, however it is focussed on manor-level holdings. You can use it for baronial and bigger estates, but it isn't meant for that so you may have problems. Bookkeeping for 100 manors when you normally track each one individual could be tedious, unless you just treat bunches of them with a single set of rolls.


I've read that Greg is working on something to handle larger estates.


Personally, I've used the 2d6 income per manor and found it to be the simplest method for handling a knight with a few manors. I halve the standard harvest modifiers and apply them to the roll. For multiple holdings just multiply the modifiers by the number of manors.

So a knight with 4 demese manors (I wish) would roll 8d6 and add 4x the modifiers to the final income.


But I wouldn't want to use that to hadle something like all of Salisbury (150 manors and 300d6!). I suppose it would work with 3d6x100 through. From past experience I would certainly work better than NB or LD did for us in the past. A bad harvest in the "all or nothing" old rules is much more devastating to a lord than to a vassal knight (We once had some PCs sneak a sizable fortune into their lord's keep so the steward could "find" it tucked away later. Just how 12 suits of plate were left in a room that had not been opened since 500AD has yet to be explained.)


Fortunately, I don't for see any of my players owning enough land, anytime soon to "outgrow" the Book Of Manors.

I hear the Book Of Manors has a new/updated system that is better than LD. but I don't own that yet.


Indeed it does, however it is focussed on manor-level holdings. You can use it for baronial and bigger estates, but it isn't meant for that so you may have problems. Bookkeeping for 100 manors when you normally track each one individual could be tedious, unless you just treat bunches of them with a single set of rolls.


I've read that Greg is working on something to handle larger estates.


Personally, I've used the 2d6 income per manor and found it to be the simplest method for handling a knight with a few manors. I halve the standard harvest modifiers and apply them to the roll. For multiple holdings just multiply the modifiers by the number of manors.

So a knight with 4 demese manors (I wish) would roll 8d6 and add 4x the modifiers to the final income.


But I wouldn't want to use that to hadle something like all of Salisbury (150 manors and 300d6!). I suppose it would work with 3d6x100 through. From past experience I would certainly work better than NB or LD did for us in the past. A bad harvest in the "all or nothing" old rules is much more devastating to a lord than to a vassal knight (We once had some PCs sneak a sizable fortune into their lord's keep so the steward could "find" it tucked away later. Just how 12 suits of plate were left in a room that had not been opened since 500AD has yet to be explained.)


Fortunately, I don't for see any of my players owning enough land, anytime soon to "outgrow" the Book Of Manors.


This seems like too much.( Average 24 x's 4=96 Libra of profit per year) if they get lucky it could be a LOT more.And thats with only 5 manors. An earl owns hundreds. Greg has stated that an EARL that owns a county only has between 20-30 Libra in profit yearly. The rest cancels out as expenses, etc... So while a knight may make some money on his manors he must assume that the majority of it is cancelled out for expenses. At least thats what I believe Greg said. I Might be wrong( This is becoming my default statement as of late! ;D) , but thats how I understood it.

Note that the income generated is gross income, not profit. It doesn't factor in for the knight maintaining himself or other things. In terms of profit, it gives an average knight about 1L profit after expenses, a bit more than average (0L) but not an obscene amount. If you look at the way manors work in the KAP5 book, the grades of maintenance are a fairly close match.

Likewise, while the knight with a bunch of demese manors is stinking rich, in reality few knights get that many demense manors and enfiefed manors have to support other knights. In the case of the lucky knight with a bunch of demese manors, he would definitely need to provide some additional defenders, and that would soak up a bunch of the wealth.

In a similar fashion an Earl estates would generate a lot of wealth, but most of it would be soaked up in the expenses.So in the end it probably isn't much different. If we go with the idea that you double the number of manors to get the total number of knights, then Salsibury, with 75 knights, would have 150 manors. At 6L per manor that works out to 900L/year for average wealth. But obviously that's not profit. By the time the Earl supports himself, all his knights and other retainers, he probably has spent 875L or so.

Fortunately, I don't for see any of my players owning enough land, anytime soon to "outgrow" the Book Of Manors.


The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away :)

I one campaign I did "give" (actually it had to be earned) away a small Kingdom. It was a small independent "kingdom" that was not really much more than a bannerecy. Smack dab in the Perilous Forest. While I'm not planning on being that generous this time around, I will say that it didn't really disrupt the campaign too much.

The guy with Lance 27 who hit the tourney circuit doing his William Marshall impression was the one who throw a wrench into the working of the economics. At one point he had a couple of dozen suits of armor and as many warhorses, and several hundred L from ransoms. Not bad for a knight with two manors. He eventually got to the point where he began upgrading his footmen to mail.