Let’s start delving into some of the proposed mechanics for the manor system. The first step is step-dice. We’ll use the various die types – d4, d6, d8, d10, and 12 – to rank a few key facets of manors.

Holding size:

• d4 is a virgate of land, typical to a single peasant family
• d6 is a hide of land, the very minimum to support a lord and his immediate family.
• d8 is a vill. It’s the typical amount of land given to a knight as a fee for his services.
• d10 is a parish. Basically a larger version of a vill and a respectable size for a single manor.
• d12 is a hundred. A division of a county/shire. Generally only bishops and earls would hold this much continuous land.

If you have four of one particular rank of land, they can be combined together to form the next rank up. So four d4 vigrates makes a hide, four hides make a vill and so forth.

Population:

• d4 is a family – husband and wife, maybe a sibling or parent or two who lives with them and a few children.
• d6 is a large extended family or a group of neighbors.
• d8 is a small village worth of people.
• d10 is a largish village of people.
• d12 is the resident population of a town.

Like holding size, each rank is made up of four of the rank below it.

Tools:

Step-dice will also be used to rank the tools available to the manor. This works basically as a technology level. Each manor starts with d4 tools, but various implements will increase the rank by one step. These implements are: oxen (or work horses), a forge, and a mill.

Holding size is effectively a cap on how much population can work on the land. Various manor endeavors are resolved by rolling the die appropriate for the population working on the endeavor and including the tool die in the pool. So just like core CF resolution, but with population replacing skill. Various aspects can then be invoked to enhance your chances or endured to make things tough.

These are various elements of feudal and manor life that I’m interested in having some level of representation of in the system.

• The difference between free peasants and villeins. The first pays rent to the lord in goods, the second pays in work on the lord’s demesne.
• The manor calendar: plowing, sowing of spring crops, harvesting, more plowing, sowing fall crops, winter.
• Survival and condition of the villagers. Are harvests good enough to feed everyone?
• Who gets the surplus in the case of a good harvest?
• Lords being able to demand higher rents at the cost of peasants’ condition, or forgive rents to improve peasants’ condition.
• Employing laborers and experts. Quarrying, lumbering, and mining. Masons, carpenters, and smiths.
• The time and resources it takes to build important structures like castles and cathedrals.
• Being able to build structures out of different materials. Wood vs. stone, cost vs. strength.
• The size of your retinue is based on the number of people you can feed by the income of your holdings.
• Providing equipment for men-at-arms and knights.
• Granting holdings to vassals in exchange for their loyalty.
• Inheritance, marriage, and loyalty as means to gain land.
• Conquering and adventuring as a means to gain land.
• Battle on the open field as well as siege warfare.
• Generational play: former characters become mentors for future characters. Holdings and status are passed down.

Now the issue is how to incorporate all of those elements (and I am sure there are more) into a clean, elegant system.

These are the intentions and desires that I think are important goals for the design of the Chronica Feudalis Manor System.

1. Provide a fun, engaging set of rules to enhance strategic-level play of the core Chronica Feudalis system.
2. The system should feed into role-playing, providing story seeds and inform how various people are faring.
3. The system should be fed by role-playing. The rewards of personal quests should affect manor play.
4. Explore facets of feudal society in a tactile way: lord and vassal relationships, treatment of peasants.
5. Continued use of design elements from core Chronica Feudalis: step-dice and aspects especially.
6. Avoid using charts. The system should be procedural and performed with minimum references to the book.

What other high-level concepts do you feel are necessary in a strategic, resource-management system such as this?

I’m hard at work ironing out the mechanics and translating more scraps of Middle English scribbles for the as-of-yet untitled first supplement for Chronica Feudalis. This book will detail rules for ruling lands and people – a knight’s fiefdom, a monastery’s holdings, an earl’s county – and add themes of power and responsibility in a very tactile way to a CF campaign.

What our intrepid cellarer and brothers Adam, James, and William left us with is a very incomplete and contradictory set of notes for mechanics that resolve peasant husbandry, the building of cathedrals and castles, warfare, and leaving your holdings to your inheritors. This is not to say that they were not prolific: there are plenty of words. They paint a fairly clear picture of their intentions and the results, but the methods by which they implement this leave me with many questions. And the answers appear to have been lost to time.

So, as with Chronica Feudalis itself, I am being quite liberal with my translation and making up answers as I go along. This process – that is, what I am contributing to the design of the manor system – I will journal here. Feel free to read along and even comment and participate if you so desire. I will tag these posts with the acronym CFMS (which stands for Chronica Feudalis Manor System) until I devise a title for the new book.