Multi Group campaigns, PvP, kingdom building, and play by post. Need DM advice


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


My friends and I have been discussing a rather high concept challenge for D&D. Because Pathfinder has downtime and kingdom building rule sets(not exactly compatible but could be), and they are both turn based, it seem's like with a couple of DM's or maybe play by post you could play something like 4x game in Pathfinder with multiple play groups. PvP between groups general doesn't happen just because 8 people in one combat instance would take forever, but it if the focus was less on single characters, and more on building organizations and intrigue maybe it could work?

Anyway, this is far out there, but I wanted to see if anyone had ideas or critiques about this. Thanks!


Best advice I can give... plan out the tech tree in advance and make sure everyone knows it.

I once tried playing in a game like this (before PF so the rules were very handwaved) and it was horrible. I was trying to build up my economy first, and the GM as it turned out favored military development. So the players who focused on that made several breakthroughs early on giving them advantages each time, while those of us who went a more peaceful route kept spending our turns building "prerequisites" to what we wanted, none of which actually gave any benefits.

For example:
Player 1 develops sharpened stone, giving bonuses to attack! Player 1 develops unit tactics giving bonuses to attack! Player 1 develops armor giving bonuses to defense!
Player 2 develops the idea of digging. Player 2 develops the idea of harvesting raw materials. Player 2 develops the idea of using raw materials. Player 2 develops the idea of making simple huts, finally giving a bonus to survival in cold climates.


I've putzed around with a similar idea before, so hopefully I can help out a little.

1) Use the kingdom building rules from Ultimate Campaign. The stuff from Kingmaker is quite buggy and easy to break. If you're into 3pp, Ultimate Rulership is a fantastic resource that expands and improves the kingdom-building rules. There are also other supplements by the same publisher that focus on mass combat.

2) This type of campaign can be played in two scopes: organization-level and civilization-level. The first uses the downtime and building-construction rules and is focused on individual characters. The latter uses the larger, kingdom-building rules and caters to a Civilization-esque gameplay style. Don't mix the two; the systems aren't built for that, and it's easy to break.

3) For a competitive "every man for himself" game, I'd recommend the larger format. The GM creates a world map, each player gets an equivalent amount of BP and is placed in a separate location, and then the game kicks off! If things stall, the GM can throw in encounters from the downtime rules.

4) PbP is the easiest way to run a game of this type. The slower pace helps with the complex turns, and it's easy to keep the players from spying on each other.

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