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I think Birthright was a setting ahead of its time. I only read one of the novels but I was struck by how similar it was to Game of Thrones (which I first read a few years later)

I have been gaming for 30 years and Greyhawk is still my got to setting when I GM. I am currently running the original Temple of Elemental Evil mega module converted to pathfinder rules. I have tried to go to other fantasy settings but Greyhawk is the only one I use consistently.

Loved playing Birthright, added new things to the game. My 1st experience into D and D was ToEE, yes my DM was a cruel bastard. But oh the memories of that series of games.

Loved Birthright and its art..

I get those old grognard nostalgic memories, too. I cut my teeth on Greyhawk; it was the setting the DM was using the first time I played (A)D&D, so it has always enjoyed a warm place in my heart. And finally, after decades of owning the books, I'm finally running a 2nd Edition Birthright campaign; it's been my longest-running campaign, having lasted around a year now. It remains, I think, my favorite D&D setting. Also, though it was ignored in 3e and 4e, at least it got a mention in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide! Greyhawk's "The Grand Duchy of Jeff" [Geoff] still bugs me to this day, though.

I was introduced to D&D with FR but after learning about Greyhawk I cant go back to FR. Its so much more pure fantasy, and I love that its much more darker.

Thank you, Kurt, for those nostalgia episodes. Nothing really dies, it only reemerges in one form or another. We don't need a reprint or conversion of Grayhawk or Birthright anymore - they served their purpose by igniting our imagination and integrating into our subconsciousness. We will see new lands and new lords at the right time, when creativity will achieve it's critical mass and burst through a crack in someones mind into our world. And I bet as we are made of stars, it will be made of such legendary old school settings as Grayhawk, Darksun, Glorantha, Planescape, Spelljammer and even Forgotten Realms.

Makes me wish i played Birthright more, but i still have fond memories of my planescape and ravenloft campaigns.

I also love Borthright! It was the game that got me into AD&D. Great video!

almost forgot about game geeks and the hours i'd spend rolling through the videos looking for campaign ideas. then i discovered woodwwad and the rest of the youtube rpg brigade, half hour videos on elf ecology? yes please. still have fond feelings for mr wiegel. he may not make long or detailed vids and he may not make them often, but he has the best production values and over 200 of them to scroll through, with lots of different genres and systems represented.

Nice to hear about the Birthright setting. Been interested in it since I read about it years ago.

I remember fondly those years of the late 90s, I just completed Baldur's Gate and I was quite curious and interested about D&D's campaign settings. I was already into pen and paper RPGs, but was introduced into it trough Iron Crown Ent. Lord of the rings, WoD and CoC so after playing that PC game I when into a local game store (now long ago out of business) and acquired three books of the Greyhawk setting and the Forgotten Realms box set, which introduced me into many weekend evenings full of pulp fantasy fun.

My exposure to most of this art was via TSR trading cards. Very cool to see the actual rule books! Classic reviews rock.

Funny enough I am gonna play birthright for the first time this weekend, nice review. :D

Love, Love, LOVE Birthright. I, too, have all of the official stuff and a few of the novels (for background info). There was an unofficial 3.0/3.5 edition out there on the Birthright website, but it didn't gain momentum. Ah well, this is my favorite setting, it always will be. Thanks for making the grump trip, it was a blast! EDIT: I forgot, the one that came the closest (at least for land management and spooty magic) was Empire from AEG for 3.0/3.5, and I bought a few Pathfinder indie titles that had the Birthright residue as well. The Birthright god exploded, but there are blooded titles out there in the wild.

I adored Birthright as a setting and was also very surprised that it was not followed through with a campaign setting for 3.0/3.5 and 4th edition. I liked the scale of it and the notion that you could play it as either the full campaign with all the PCs being nobles or one as a noble and the other as their loyal retainers and even simply a group of adventurers using Cerelia as the default campaign world to go questing in.

My various groups were weaned on Greyhawk for nigh 20 years, and just recently..I have plans to bring my Pathfinder group to the Flanaess.

Thanks so much for this. I'd love to see more classic D&D (1st and 2nd Ed., possibly some BECMI stuff?) on your channel, especially with so much of this stuff being available for download now!

Birthright is on DriveThru RPG now.

Hi Kurt, great to see a piece on Birthright. Definitely my favourite setting as well. Artwork, backdrop, new angle of being rulers, it was a bright sprakling gem in its time. You know what, I feel like I might just get my old group back together and into this. All the best from Europe, God Bless,

Long overdue! Thank you Kurt! Excellent idea, and very nostalgic.

Settings were usually just a background that had little to no effect on our games. It was neat to have a map of Greyhawk and say "We are here," but that was about as much impact as it could have. that said, Greyhawk was the most used published setting for us. One guy loved Birthright but he was mostly ignored.

Thanks for sharing. Birthright was really cool I wish they would bring something similar to it back . Greyhawk was a great setting.

I used parts of Greyhawk. We all used parts of Greyhawk. But never *clicked* for me. I preferred Forgotten Realms. Birthright isn't old. Birthright is *new*. I've heard it said that 1E/2E was a post-apocalyptic game. Fallen from a Great Age. Where the heroes dig up the treasures of the past that we can no longer create.

I really liked Birthright, but I haven't read through a lot of the materials for it as of yet. They were recently given to me by a friend and they are gorgeous.

I love Greyhawk. I played it with AD&D (1st) back in the early 1981-1984 era. I grew up loving that map! I still have all my AD&D books but I never own Greyhawk as it was a friends. Unfortunately.

Greyhawk... such fantastic memories Great upload !

Eddie is/was from Iron Maiden, not Quiet Riot. :-}

Oh awesome! Elder sign on his wrist! :D

For me, Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, and Jeff Easley will still be my favorite artists for D&D.

Thanks for this. Before I was drawn into the ever-hungry maw of FR, Greyhawk was my favourite setting. I loved plotting out where we were whenever we played a 1st Ed. module. And Birthright was the first time I ever used a campaign setting to run a world-spanning kingdom running campaign, with each player taking on the rule of a particular county and scheming/cooperating (mostly scheming) to become rulers of nations and empires. I was disappointed when Birthright didn't get the 3.0/3.5 upgrade along with everything else.

This is by far my favourite vlog: concise, interesting, informative and entertaining. Thank you, Kurt! I recently started running a AD&D 2e campaign set in my old love, Greyhawk, and the unapologetic mix-and-match nature of the setting has lost none of its charm. There's a lot of fun to be had just figuring out how to get all the disparate elements make sense! In hindsight it's a pity I got estranged from AD&D when Birthright was running - I love the focus on sacral kingship and the idea that Leaders Are Special. Then again, considering how fed up I was with AD&D's mechanics, I probably saved myself a lot of grief. Now I can't help but wonder if 13th Age might be able to scratch that age-old itch.

What do you think of the idea of making birthright into a miniature war game but keeping its role playing aspects intact?

Heh heh. Nice review. Brought back memories.... Eddie is Iron Maiden's mascot though.. :)

I love Greyhawk, and always have. Birthright was really interesting, but didn't click with my group for whatever reason. I know Blackmoor came out in 3.5 and 4e, but didn't have huge runs from what I remember.

Thanks for your thoughts Kurt. Mention BECMI Mystara & Spelljammer for me sometime. I can't find the strength of will or the crowd to run these older settings these days, but I sure still love them and think about them.

Birthright was epic setting.

Your description of Greyhawk sounds more like Mystara to me.

Birthright was fantastic.

My GM is a fan of Birthright and loves the DM screen from it showing off to the new person whenever a new one starts with the group. Those games came right before the big upheaval in the game community. M:tG just came on the radar and would severely damage RPGs since then. I was more of a Mystara fan growing up but that is more because that is what all my friends play. Of you really want to see some messed up games try and find stuff like Chatue d' Amberville. I think old games might be fun for a couple of nights but the old system is clunky and full of holes. SW and Unisystem are about the only thing I play now. There are times when I miss all the crunchy goodness but then realize I am old, stupid and math hurts my brain. Love to see some more old stuff but keep up with the new as well.

Me and my group are actualy doing a modern setting of Birthright (Using pathfinder rule set with kingdom building rules) and reworked the bloodlines.

Some would say "Randomness" is central to fantasy concept.

There's a fan made and slightly improved version of Birthright available online www.birthright.net/forums/showwiki.php It's free and contains pretty much everything apart from the maps to play it. Oh, and it's for D&D 3.5.

How did you get such excellent sound with all that wind? Good job sir.

Tony Szczudlo is pronounced Throat-Warbler Mangrove

please don't let that be the only reference to the Wu Tang clan!

I recommend you to play Crusader kings 2 with the mod Birthright!Same map same characters with diffrent kind of game but you'll like it.

I'm currently running a 2nd edition campaign. After a couple of storylines, I'll be switching to 3rd edition (mostly to keep my 2nd ed books in decent condition :p)

Did you ever play any Living Greyhawk? Also some fans have continued it once the RPGA dropped it as Greyhawk Reborn. If you have not seen them, take a look. Living Greyhawk got dark, at least it did in Geoff where I played. Cool vid

Being rather new to Role Playing Games, I've personally never got to play or use the Birthright setting. I've looked at it and found it interesting but most of the people i game with are unwilling to play anything other than 3.5 or pathfinder because of the rather lame argument of "I don't want to learn a whole new set of rules" and then claim that 2E is complicated because they can't understand wanting to roll low for some things and high for other things. I do personally want to play more 2E and i want to at least try Birthright but it seems unlikely that i will get the chance.

I wish the boys and I would have bought modules instead of always writing our own loosely written campaigns, seems like the stories were always we'll written and fun.

Can you do a video on Dragonlance?

So what do u think of Werewolf Apocalypse 20th I really want a new Bone Gnawer book

Do you play on Roll20

Wu Tang Forever!!!

we dont have artwork like that in rpg-s anymore :( Just look at pathfinder - damn childrens book

I thought Iuz was supposed to be pronounced:" aɪ.uːz"

;)) Wu-tang clan and rpgs.. hehe ;)