hermes421 wrote:
I must confess I would like to see the limits of the duchies and counties in the map (or maybe a second map) . For me, Baron Aldred should be a duke (his lands are so extended...) and Baron grisaille a count (baron is the smallest title when you are noble...).
That's true in terms of the modern peerage, and, of course, you are free to do what you wish in your own campaign, but if we consider that Albion is based on medieval England (which I think is a given), I have loosely based the conception of noble titles in my games on what was in place in England during the early middle ages.
And the noble titles in use were more limited than they are now.
The title of Duke only really came into use in England in the 1300s and was initially only given to royal Princes. The idea of Duke as a particular noble title is even later in England. In my own Dragon Warriors campaign, I have two Dukes in Albion - and both of those are titles created fairly recently by the King for very specific reasons. Neither hold large amounts of land of their own - but they have a lot of Barons as vassals who have to pay a fee to them.
The title of Earl does have an older history in England, but again in my campaign, I've limited it to quite a small number in Albion - there are eight of them. The original Earls in my campaign were Barons who were promoted by the King to serve as overlords for particular regions - the current Earl Montombre's grandfather was made Earl in an attempt to bring the squabbling northern barons under some sort of overall authority - it didn't work (Aldred and Grissaile both utterly refuse to accept Montombre's authority and are powerful enough to do so). It has had somewhat more success in the south.
The most common landed title by far is Baron - I have about sixty of those. Some are immensely powerful and hold large amounts of territory -Aldred, in particular, is one of the three greatest landholders in the country - others hold much smaller territories. These Barons do not regard their titles as being in any way, minor. Aldred, in particular, would not want to be an Earl or a Duke - he's proud that his family have been Barons for centuries, unlike these newer titles (he is somewhat annoyed that Montombre technically outranks him by some measures - in all honesty, he'd probably get on better with Montombre if Montombre stopped using the title.)
(I also have Court Barons in my campaign - basically people who are given the rank of Baron by the King but don't get any land to go with it - these mostly work in and around the capital in various official roles - they get the rank so they can deal with other nobles as near equals and will be listened to by other people - but the title is generally not passed on when they die - although their immediate offspring remain the children of a Baron which has some status, with the boys nearly always being Knighted and the girls being referred to as 'Lady' (the girls can also seek to be knighted if they bear arms as trained warriors)
In my own games, there also aren't firm borders for baronies, etc - at least not ones you can easily draw a line on a map for. It's more about feudal control of particular towns and villages. As an example - in my campaign, there are two villages, West Erin and East Erin, about 8 miles apart. Everybody currently agrees that West Erin belongs to Aldred, and East Erin belongs to Montombre - but nobody would be able to say exactly where the border between them is. If you asked Aldred, he'd say his territory extends right up to the edge of East Erin. Montrombre would say his territory extends right up to the edge of West Erin.
My map is nearly ready to share - maybe even later today.