Size of a Barony

Shouldn’t a Baron’s realm in 6-mile hexes be marked as either “1/2” or “Less than 1”? I’m trying to build the starting realm for my ACKS campaign, and it only seems to work if I ignore the “Barony=1” value in the “Realms by Type:Realm Size(6 Mile Hex)” table.

How else can a March with 3-4 six-mile hexes have 4-6 Barons? That’s not even possible, not to mention leaves nothing for the Marquis.

If the Baronial realm size was 1/2 a 6-mile hex, then a Marquis could have this 4-6 Barons and always have a hex left over for himself to tax. If Barons really get a full hex to themselves, each of the Lords above them need a much bigger realms (a March would be 6-8 (not 3-4), a County would be 30-52 (not 15-30), etc.).

On a similar note, are there assumptions about where the “missing urban population” lives? Each realm gets a largest settlement, but even in the example in the book much of the realm’s urban population are not in these settlements. Is there assumed to be a number of towns in each realm which simply aren’t the largest?

The example in the book specifies that the realm has 60,000 urban residents, but if you add up all the towns specified there are still 14,000 people unaccounted for. I get similar numbers (if smaller in scale) for my homebrew Duchy of Lus.

Oops, nevermind - I see the last sentence now. Hamlets. Got it.

First question about Barony size still on the table.

Maybe you would consider this as a House Rule, but I decided that 20 Families would be found inside the walls of each Baronial Keep (like the Keep on the Borderlands). There are no other settlements in the Barony.

The Baronial Keep is assumed to be a single stone central tower with a wooden curtain wall.

So subtracting out the populations on the 1 Small City, 5 Villages, 1 Small Village, and 220 Baronial Keeps sprinkled around the Duchy, that leaves enough urban population for 55 Hamlets with 60 families each.

And you know what’s cool about that? 55 Hamlets is very nearly exactly the number of 53 non-Baronial Domains (1 Duchy, 8 Counties, 44 Marches). So each Domain gets their “largest settlement” plus one hamlet. Except the Baronial Estate, which has three hamlets - “suburbs” of the Duchy’s single city. Pretty neat how that works out.

Also I’ve decided that a Baronial Keep is a “Class VII” market - which means a Class VI market, but food only, and everything else very discretionary by the DM (or 10%).

Hi Irda!
If carefully you do the math, Baronies will be less than 1 hex, yes. I rounded up on the table. The actual value is between 1/4 and 1/2 a hex depending on whether its a borderlands, wilderness, or civilized hex.

Your suggested house rules are very cool. I love it when sleek emergent properties develop!

When I developed the domains of my campaign, I used 1/2 hex for a Barony (Marquis get 1 full hex as personal domain and Counts 3 hexes, for example), and everything “fits” this way.

I’m still working in the political map of my campaign (using Hexographer), but as soon as its finished, I’ll post it here. I’m sure some examples of developed realms using ACKS rules would be great to have as a free download in Autarch’s website :).

Carlos, I was thinking of getting Hexographer for this purpose. Do you find it works well with ACKS? Or are there things you have to ignore?

Also, how easy is it to tell the hexes apart on a map when you print them on grayscale?

I think it’s a great tool for making maps suitable for an ACKS’ campaign. I’m working in a political map of the region, but right now I’ve done the physical map and it’s working great for us :).

Concerning grayscale, I can’t say for sure; I printed it in full color ;).

Gracias!