William Brandes Stoddard
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Titles and Honors to Award Your PCs
🕑 Added 2024-10-24 13:27:20 +0000 UTCI’ve been a huge fan of Robin Pierson’s History of Byzantium podcast since… whenever I finished listening to Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome (I also talked about Byzantine history here), and the part where Robin explains court titles and the importance of honors to the power dynamics of Eastern Rome fascinated me.
Pretty much every DMG ever printed has suggested awarding PCs lands, noble titles, and other honors instead of or in addition to fabulous cash and magic item prizes, but they never discuss what that looks like. Settings, likewise, do nothing for this; it’s only in adventures that you might see specifics.
So I’m doing specifics. There are some nominal bounds are what kinds of titles and honors even appeal to characters along class, background, or cultural lines. (This also touches on advancing backgrounds generally—for more on that, check out Level Up Your Background!) I’m leaning more on instructive examples than on a structural approach to creating new titles and honors.
For my European readers, some of this is going to seem very basic and obvious. Gently keep in mind that I’m an American and, other than military honors and a rare few presidential medals, we don’t have some of these things. The order-of-precedence stuff is unfamiliar to any of us, like me, who don’t attend a lot of state functions. I’m sure Emily Post could explain it all a lot better.
Another use of these might be Aspects in a Fate game or your One Unique Thing in a 13th Age game.
Warriors
Knighthoods, military command commissions, governmental or bureaucratic positions, and so on are exceedingly well-attested, not least of which is because it brings this expert purveyor of violence (and the loyalty of their soldiers) into the regime, where they might be less interested in causing trouble. This tends to work for awhile, if only because the monarch or other governing body can also legally strip you of those dignities.
Stratelates (Greek)/Magister Militum (Roman): It means “leader of the army” or “master of soldiers,” but wasn’t an officer’s commission in itself. A higher honor is Protostratelates (“first stratelates”), and it gets diluted as emperors need ever higher honors to award.
In a fantasy setting that doesn’t have Greek or Latin, you could imagine using Battlemaster, Warleader, or Cavalier in a similar context, with First, Chief, or High appended once you’ve handed that title out a few times and you need something more grandiose. Exandria and Azeroth may hear those as “real” positions of battlefield command, but in real-world history that’s not a given at all. On the other hand, maybe the Uncle Sam/Emperor Basil Needs You! and you’d have to erase something from your character sheet if you try to say no.
Guardian, Defender, and Warden are great titles too, especially as rewards for protecting a specific location or person—or as an assignment to begin defending that person or place. The Defenders of Daybreak (Daybreak is the name of a town) remains one of my all-time favorite Story Hours from the EN World forums.
Guardian of the Purple (implicitly, the defender of the royal or imperial family, or of legitimacy itself)
Battlemaster of the Nine Rides (I’m imagining something like Phidippides or Paul Revere)
Knight of the Plum Flower (this seems like it could be a moniker awarded in Camelot)
Provincial Governor of Tyrema Ridge (Tyrema Ridge is a province in Aurikesh; under normal circumstances it’s a very cushy administrative post with a lot of room for some casual graft, but there’s a revolt in progress, so suddenly it matters quite a lot)
First Rider of the Grand Army
High Warden of the Trencher (responsible for conducting traffic in royal banquets and enforcing the official order of precedence)
Sword-Champion of the Vineyard (probably earned in a tournament; presumably Lance-Champion and Mace-Champion were also awarded that day)
Overseer of the Star Ruby (recapturing stolen crown jewels, maybe)
Sable-bearer of Halsethil (responsible for dressing the Amethyst Queen, Meadhbh of Empire of Oak, before official religious ceremonies; because of the implicit vulnerability and the magical power of the Sable, this is a dizzyingly high honor)
For the Eastern Romans in particular, a lot of their cool imperial titles came with a cool imperial stipend. My PCs in Aurikesh would love a stipend that defrayed or covered their weekly upkeep costs!
Priests
With an even more developed sense of ritual, I’m sure these honors all obey a strict precedence within their own community or cult. For several of these, I’ve made up new words so that I’m not explicitly aping a real-world religion.
Revered Lioness (…lions are important or sacred in plenty of religions, I’m not taking anything away from that)
Ascendant Beruyor (I’m imagining this a high honor for someone without a fixed area of ministry, as PCs usually don’t have)
Emerrai (inspired by “emeritus,” but could mean anything you need it to mean)
Arch-Mianast (probably a high honor reserved for senior, semi-retired clergy)
Defender of the Outer Chancel (doesn’t take any translation! A reminder that many organized religions have their own holdings and armed guardians)
Wreathed One (conceptually the same as wearing a laurel)
Sublime Servant
Keeper of the Great Cycle (presumably a historian, but maybe someone who just performs the once-a-century rites)
Chief Architect of the Lost Temple (that is, they plan to rebuild it, and they’re putting you on the hook for it)
Gloried Seeker
Scoundrels
A difficulty, of course, is that these may be underworld-only titles, not ones you can use in ordinary society—or they are nicknames, code names, names more often made up by poets eighty years after you’re dead. All of the rules of precedence are unwritten and negotiable, at knifepoint.
The Low Exchequer (something about a crime boss’s accountant)
The Devil’s Right Hand (did I name a pistol this in Fallen Earth? You bet your ass I did.)
The Rook of Graves
The High Hangman (sounds like an enforcer to me)
Knight of Spades (resurrection man… not that it’s necessarily easy to get respect in that line of work)
Ghost of the Silver Tower (title probable comes with a cool lair in a part of the Silver Tower no one else can get to)
The Wyvernwing Baroness (borrowing titles of legitimate society, and I expect “Wyvernwing” is the neighborhood or district she runs)
The Pit Fiend (could be about barbecue, could be a gladiator, little of both maybe)
Scholars and Mages
As we all know, in academia, tenure and a corner office are where it’s at. (I stopped at a bachelor’s degree in English, what the hell do I know?) But the structure and (dys)function of wizardly society has always been of the greatest possible interest to me, all the more so after reading Jack Vance and the heavily Vance-inspired Sepulchrave’s Tales of Wyre.
Warden of the Aelirian Mysteries
Scrivener of the Moon (I especially like this one as an obscure academic title or honor)
Distinguished Professor of Applied Cosmogony
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Limited Wishcrafting
High Researcher of the Unnameable (I think the university reports you to the government and local religious leaders as soon as you gain this dubious honor)
Wisdom of the Great Injunction
Chief Seer of the Inverted Pentad (I’m imagining the Inverted Pentad as the cabal-that-isn’t-a-cabal; mages of all these different groups strive to join the Inverted Pentad at all)
Honored Magister of the Bythalic Manuscript (I assume the Bythalic Manuscript is really bad for you, and other mages are very impressed if you demonstrate some command over it)
Serpent-bearer (maybe that’s a special arcane tattoo that you earn in some complicated way)
I have this additional idea that mages have contrived an alternate meaning to monarch: master of one art. Naturally following from that (at truly mind-boggling levels of power and study) are diarch, triarch, tetrarch, and so on.
I hope this has sparked a few ideas in you, whether that means giving some of these titles (or ones like them) to your PCs, or to NPCs to help sell their concept on first introduction.
Comments
William Brandes Stoddard
I see these as a reward of social capital that you can apply (maybe not numerically, but apply all the same) in social interactions. I think the DM should be taking these into account when thinking about NPCs' starting disposition and the responses they give to Interaction checks (successes and failures alike). I don't have a *further* mechanical meaning than that, though.
mAc Chaos
Are mechanical benefits supposed to accrue with these, or is it more about the pomp and circumstance?
