D&D Kings, Counts, and Barons, Done the Right Way

"My Lord, the peasants are revolting!" "Of course they are revolting. That is why I decreed that they had to bath at least once a month."

Based on what you said about separation of church and state, it'd be a fun surprise to pull on the players to get into combat with an evil noble and discover he's a cleric.

It's also incredibly important to remember that outside of their small group of men at arms and archers, a nobleman has no standing army. And town guards aren't going to be these men at arms, who are often knights themselves. Instead towns are guarded by young freemen in a rotating cycle. Of course, in later medieval periods, there were more professional soldiers/household troops, but in a more high medieval based setting, mercenaries and the small group of household men are the only professional soldiers around.

One thing I'd like to add. The dramatic effect that magic would have on governance. For example Sorcerers. A Sorcerer's power comes from their bloodline. Bloodlines were important to nobles. This could be one of the reasons why - at least for some kingdoms within the setting. Having the right bloodline gives you literal magical power. Power to help you better persuade those at court (Enhance Ability), fight large groups of enemies during war (AoE damage and CC spells), escape coups and mobs (Invisibility, Dimension Door, Circle of Teleportation), learn what a group of raiders are doing and potentially located (Scrying), and so on. An invaluable power, which their entire bloodline could possess, if they were able to secure a certain marriage. Wizardry offers similar, but requires magical institutions and more dedication to learn. However nobles are rich. A magical education is well within their means. It's stereotyped that nobles spend a great deal of time learning the blade while learning governance. Within a fantasy setting, at least in some places, this could easily be magic instead. Magic offers protection, cantrips are always available, allows them to be always armed, and has tons of other benefits. Because of how powerful Wizardry is it's possible that nobles attempt to restrict access to it, limiting this access to those they trust. This access could even be a reward for deeds performed instead of the traditional granting of land and such. Clerics and Warlocks also adds an interesting spin. Divine right used to be a thing. Many Clerics and Warlocks are being given power from supernatural beings. That power allows for wondrous things such as ensuring harvests are always good (Plant Growth), that far fewer or no people die from sickness (Lesser Restoration), that the realm is more stable due to fatal accidents and assassinations being less successful (Resurrection spells), that everyone is more safe (all the combat spells). Usually this is given to priests, but it could easily be also given to the ruling nobles. Possibly under the expectation that they use their authority and armies to further their patrons' interests. When people say where does their authority come from they can literal display their divine powers and say it's from so and so. However this comes with a potential catch. It's given under the expectation that it's used in certain ways. So if the ruler does something bad, or allows something to occur, they, their families, and their local nobility, might lose that power. That power that also acts as their legitimacy for their rule. In other words they lose their divine right/favor of heaven. Imagine all the nuance these things can add to kingdoms that had some of these things going on.

If your campaign takes place in a more late medieval setting, add some cities to the mix, for good measure. They are either ruled by a noble, making him probably much wealthier than his neighbors ruling only over peasants. Or they were free cities, in the Holy Roman Empire this was called imperial immediacy meaning they were directly an only under the authority of the Emperor (or King). Therefore they were on the same level of power as high nobility, and often had way more money. This changed the balance of power considerably.

This is an excellent dissemination of the complex Feudal system that is often oversimplified in tv, movies, books, and games for the sake of the story. Unless you play Europa Universalis IV or Crusader Kings, those games got it down of how complex the medieval world was. For many of my own homebrew nations, I work from the local government up and try to establish the powers, and leadership that would be found at those locations. Even if my players never learn the system or how it works that is okay because it allows me to be able to come up with a reasonable response of how all the other characters are going to react. For long-term world building, I think that this video helps get a grasp around the foundations of a working medieval kingdom and all the crazy stuff that can happen.

In my setting there are five Duchies in the kingdom. The first Duchy is reserved for the king's heir. The second Duchy is reserved for the king's Spare. The other Duchies are led by Dukes that once expanded the kingdom through conquest. Each Duchy has five Counties or Marches led by a Count or a Marquis. The area around the Capitol is called The Original Province, and is about the size of a Duchy too. It has five Counties. Each March or County contains five Baronies. Each Baron divides his Barony into Manors, held by a Manor Lord. A Manor contains 4-12 farms. The farmer is a free man, but he has plots that are farmed by others. They receive a portion based on the yield of their plot. Near each Manor is a small Hamlet, the officially answers to the Baron, but practically answers to the Manor Lord. They have a few tradesman and woodsman that live in the hamlet. Villages answer to the Baron. Towns may answer to the Baron, but may instead answer to the Count or Marquis. Knights may have land or not. A noble (knight) without land is an unlanded noble. They are nobles and generate income by serving in the place of other nobles in the army. When you are a noble, you owe money (duties) and service to your Liege Lord. Many Manor Lords pay knights to perform their service. Then they just have to "manage" their Manor, which they hire out to a Foreman. In the Baron's court there will be a Chamberlain to manage domestic affairs, a Cpt of the Guard, a treasurer, a Steward and a High Sheriff. Instead of paying the top members of The Court, the Baron gives them Estates (land immediately outside the seat of power in the Barony) to derive an income for themselves. Like Manor Lords, they hire a Foreman to run the estate, and workers come from town to work the fields for pay. Manor Lords have to pay duties, but Estate Lords often do not. However, Estate Lords can be easily replaced, so they make sure to stay in the good graces of the Baron.

When you have a DnD world, the question of what to do with spellcasters needs to be addressed. But the easiest way to do it would be to fold them into existing feudal systems. It's what existing nobility would do, anyway. Wizards are particularly amenable to this, because Wizardry is an education-based form of magic. You have to be learned to be a Wizard. Now "learned" can mean a lot of things - you could just as easily be a rural "witch" living in the forest, reading from a grimoire passed down many generations, and still be a Wizard - but in practice most of them will need (and desire) formal education. Especially since Wizards are highly protective of their magic, and thus charge high prices for teaching. So, on average, most Wizards would already be from wealth or in service to them, and thus a large percentage would be Nobles by default. They have the wealth, not to mention time, to learn Wizardry. Members of the priesthood would also fall into this category, so would have a surprising number of Wizards. Speaking of the priesthood, Clerics of course would exist within whatever religion operating in the setting, and thus be beholden to those power structures. This makes these religious order(s) powerful within the feudal system. Not only can they hold the threat of excommunication over the heads of nobility and royals, they can leverage their magic, either using harmful kinds or withholding beneficial ones from those in power. When the priests hold the power of resurrection, or even to mend injuries and cure diseases, you don't want to get on their bad side. Even if a spellcaster doesn't have a noble title or church position, it behooves the Powers That Be to fold them into the feudal system wherever possible. Errant Wizards, as well as Sorcerers, Bards, and Druids, may be made into court magicians for nobility or royals, kept on retainer and granted privileges in return for loyalty and exclusive use of their magic. Such individuals, especially Sorcerers, may be married into noble lines, to firmly secure their magic for the use of the powerful. (Warlocks, meanwhile, are often looked askance at by most folks, because of their divided loyalties. Setting aside that those loyalties might be to explicitly evil beings. But Warlocks can always lie about where their powers come from, so they might fall into other categories. Albeit with the eternal threat of being found out. Moreover, noble families may have acquired power through secretive dealings with otherworldly patrons, or dabble into it after gaining their title).

One of the interesting things that strikes me often throughout history is how often political change only comes when a ruler dies and there's a succession crisis. So what happens in a world where the reigning monarch could live for hundreds or even thousands of years?

The addition of Magic and Spellcasters does add a new wrinkle to Feudalism, as magic adds a power dynamic not entirely linked to land wealth or military power. Not only can you add guilds of working class spellcasters, but some nobles might also have magical power, either from innate sorcerous powers or the study of wizardry.

Service guarantee's citizenship? I WOULD like to know more.

I loved this video and I think I'll be able to use quite a bit of it. Im a Roman Catholic and I had comment about the way you talked about excommunication though. Two things: every excommunication is revocable. If someone chooses to publicly repent of the thing they were excommunicated for, they would be let back into the fold. Second, Purgatory is not a place of Damnation. if a soul is in purgatory they are on the way to Heaven, even if they have a lot of work to do to get there. Someone who is justly excommunicated and remains unrepentant until death would damn themselves and go to Hell. There was a lot of unjust excommunication like the example you gave in the video of a Knight becoming a bishop, demanding more money in tithing out of spite and excommunicating anyone who says no. In that case, the wicked bishop is the one in actual moral peril. I say all of this so that we can have an understanding of how the system is supposed to work so we can recognize when it is being abused.

This got me thinking about the relationship between the "church" and the state in a polytheistic dnd setting. I've often seen DnD campaigns where there is a singular "church" to match typical medieval settings without considering that there are multiple worshiped gods that can invoke direct change in the world. If you take this into consideration, what changes in the relationship between all the disparate religious beliefs and the state? Likely only popular deities would have actual temples, as their parish would be large enough to collect enough tithes to maintain such an establishment and pay for monks, priests, clerics, paladins, or shamans. Honestly, governments would likely collect taxes on these establishments, not the other way around. This would also mean that religious groups would be invested in the political dynamics surrounding them, since if they can get a follower in a position of power and wealth, then they could receive greater tithes and political favor. It would also mean that until a religious group managed to elevate a member to such a position or they had enough members to be an economic or military concern, they would have little influence over law and policy.

My character's backstory was the local Duke was excessively taxing everyone... Turned into a side quest, with the Lords of the area unknowingly all being manipulated by an organisation trying to resource the resurrection of an Arch-Lich!

Yes! 🙌 Dude, Baron, this is excellent! I’m stoked for the channel launch, and this video is a great kickoff. Really clean and informative breakdown of the nobility and royalty. Well done, man. 🤘❤️👍

The region I'm DMing for my Greyhawk campaign, the Gran March, is a weird mix of proto-America and constitutional monarchy. It started as a duchy offshoot of the main kingdom, lead by a general/duke and has barons that hold the land and collect taxes. But after an incident about a century and a half ago where the general/duke asked for all his subjects could give and then some, he was deposed by the barons, and they basically set up their own country with its own constitution while still remaining loyal to the crown. The barons are still barons, but the leader, now "commandant", is a sort of "high-general" that is elected... by the nobility, and almost always a member of the knight's order that founded the country, the war god clergy, or part of the military (optimally all three) to serve as the leader with very few benefits of being a king. He's the leader of the whole country's military, sure, but that leadership is passed through the barons. The only place he has jurisdiction in is the capitol (which was ceded by the noble house that holds the region and led the revolt, though they still live there and remain popular), and so the commandant and "high-baron" stations keep each other's military power in check. He gets a predefined salary based on a percentage of the economic prosperity of the country with a tithe inversely proportional to that percentage (as penned by the merchant god clergy), so is incentivized to avoid undue strife, make calculated risks to improve the country's standing, and maintain the country's military might (have to keep the God of War and Justice happy) while improving its economic might. Conscription is also mandatory for males (females can volunteer) aged 14-21, serving for 7 years and making it so that damn near every other citizen is no mere commoner, but has at least one class level, while the ladies are either similarly strong or powerhouses on the blue-collar labor front. Between that and the election process (more specifically, the "qualifications" to be elected), this leaves the door open for a massive rise in station if you prove yourself in both the armed forces and the political spheres. In fact, the most recent commandant has risen to power at a relatively young age under strange circumstances and proven to be a good and just leader, despite being assassinated twice. Being friends with the clergy is POWERFUL, especially in D&D!

Knights we’re considered the lowest of the nobility, and it’s something that we’re achievable through military service, albeit most knights will origin from the aristocracy. Many knights would no be granted lands, but they would have small pockets of land that they administrated on the behalf of the king called manors. A single knight could have the responsibility of multiple manors sometimes. Look up manorialism! Knights were usually rich… really rich! (You’d ofc. get some that’s bankrupt). Modern historians estimate that their equipment alone is the equivalent of $500.000 - $3.000.000 perhaps more, and usually that was easily affordable for knights. They were also considered walking tanks, so they were really sought after and effective. How you can think of the feudal system is; the whole country belongs to the King. A king can’t govern large distances of his own, so he has people that does it for him. He’ll make a hereditary lease of his land to a duke (can also be counts, barons that answer directly to him, but dukes would be the link below him, usually if you see prince as a title with holdings, they don’t have a king to answer to, like in the HRE). In return the duke has to repay first and foremost in utmost loyalty to the crown (muhahahaha) and in men (that’s trained locally, so you won’t see a barracks training standing soldiers really in feudal society, probably were exceptions, probably the Byzantine empire) and taxes that was more likely to be in kind. The duke will get continue the chain of nobilities and get Counts etc. because he too, weren’t able to govern and develop the land that was given to him, but that dynamic is important, because leased land means that the one above them can revoke it as well. A king needed ofc. the necessary authority and power to do it, which in this case means, he has the men and ressources to execute his will. A weak king is a king that can’t exercise his authority, and many kings once anointed will travel through the kingdom to show the people that they’re in fact the king and stop rebellions which also tend to happen quite a lot during shift of power. Ofc. if they have huge amount of lands, it may not be possible to traverse their entire kingdom. With feudalism you get castles! And castles very much so is linked to the economic, logistics and administration of the feudal society. Many castle were wooden! Early on at least, but they funnily enough didn’t last. And what’s a castle good for? It’s a fortified home essentially that has multiple functions. Really effective of protecting you, that goes without saying, but it’s also as stated before, the place where administration of the realm took place. You could usually house a lot of soldiers as well, and it has enormous defensive purpose. When in war, time is an essential asset. You don’t want to do war at winter.. never! And a castle will be use to stall the enemy for getting reinforcements as well. War campaigns is roughly divided in (just to make it tangible): 10% pitch battle, 20% siege and 70% skirmishes. If you have a band of knights smashing into the enemy on horseback and then retreat, a castle is where they want to rest, and the majority of a war were hit and run and guerrilla warfare. Bonus info: A hospital also origines from medieval times. At its basic form the service that a hospital provided was not for tending wounds, but people weren’t allowed to sleep in the streets, but if you were sick or couldn’t afford anything or whatever reason why inns may not take you in, you could go to a hospital, and because many of them were sick, you’d get people like monks to treat them, and then it evolved from there. Tavern: that’s your pub/restaurant ish. Social hub, you don’t sleep there! Inn: You sleep there, there will be served food usually, but nothing special, better go to a tavern. Inns usually had large beds that strangers tucked into together. A bed could have like 3-5 sometimes. They wouldn’t bother with 5 rooms, that would be waste of money, but set in a fantasy world where travel is different and it can be beneficial to an innkeeper, then it ofc. will be provided for, probably more expensive as it has to cover and beat the constant money generated otherwise.

This is a great fun and informative video. I like the idea of a group of PCs being sent in to a Monastery by a compromised noble to steal damning evidence without leaving any sign of the heist. Who knows what else the intruders might stumble upon.

Awesome video. I think it's important to note that most kings also hold territories and fiefs as "lesser" titles. Louis XII of France was, for instance, also the Duke of Orleans (as well as Milan) and it was in this capacity that he held Territorial power, and, more importantly, held feudal authority, over a large military body of lesser nobility and their attendant men at arms. I really like your comparison of a king to a treaty org like NATO, very apt. As a DM, I've also found myself having lesser nobles, ie. Barons and Counts, be independent rulers of isolated territories. This is great for a mid level villains for PC's to work up to, a convenient way to not have bad (murderhobo) decision have far reaching consequences, and giving higher level characters something to branch out into. The BECMI companion rules are helpful in this regard.

So as a baron, how many serfs were used to create this video? And if this is a homage to "masterpiece theatre", do you plan on creating feudal public television? Or is this one of those "i own 5 square feet of scotland" Baron titles?