I think theres a way to make it like MTW in the length without making each reign too long. First off we set a mandatory retirement date, I propose 50 or 55. Since i'm guessing average heir age will be mid 20s, this is the equivalent of a 50-60 year reign more or less. Also, by mandatory retirement I mean killing the char off. Which can easily be done by a console command, so the char is out of the story and his heir takes control.

Now in addition to this we could set up a inheritance system. Make it so the first-born son of the ruler is considered the true heir and will always be set as so. If he dies, then its his younger brothers/uncles/cousins/etc... This would help with continuity and not really hurt the game any since leaders don't seem affect faction stuff faction-wide like in MTW.

With both of these in place and the mandatory retirement age I think PBMs would progress along better while still keeping the MTW feel of actually playing out a reign. The only bother would be knowing that you were going to have to end soon, but then you could feel that in MTW and VI too. Anyway, what does everyone think of those restrictions? I'm getting the urge to play a PBM myself, one of the smaller barbarian factions I think.