Indraea's page

My interpretation had been 'no', but reading the rules as written, it does say to "choose a third Kingdom attribute" at size 101+, and if you can't take the same attribute multiple times, then there's no choice for a third attribute. Therefore, it appears that, as written, the answer is 'yes', even though that doesn't feel correct/intended.

3) The region based kingdom management. Especially if you're making this as a PF2 product and have a chance to redesign from the ground up, claiming and upgrading hex by hex turns kingdom management into a spreadsheet simulator. Instead of claiming 50 hexes 1 at a time for 1 bp each I'd rather see claiming a region for 50bp. The CRPG's...

Quoted only part of the post, because I really agree with this, but had been thinking that this would be a great way to incorporate a form of feudalism. Basically, in order to 'claim' an additional region, you appoint a character or NPC as the 'duke' of that region, pay 50 BP plus any other requirements, and then give the new duke/duchess their own treasury with which to build up that region. That way, if some players really like the kingdom management, they can become lords of their own land, owing fealty (and taxes) to the primary ruler, and can then manage those lands however they like, rather than needing consensus from the party. And, since most players should be familiar with Game of Thrones, they'll be aware that having their own lands and castle far to the north doesn't mean they can't still be Hand of the King...

My personal thoughts on the tournament: Have Mivon host it first, sometime during Book 2. Then let it rotate through some of the more distant river kingdoms, like Daggermark, with the players maybe just sending representatives or something. (Great way to establish some notable NPCs in the players' kingdom!) Then, for Book 5, it's Pitax's turn to host the tournament, and with it being so close, the players have a good reason to attend again, but now everything gets dialed up to 11 from the first time. The players are more experienced and more likely to win, and maybe some of the competitors can be champions who defeated them back during Book 2 when they were far less capable and just trying to prove they belonged!

The way kingdom events are implemented in the game feels far more interactive than how they were implemented in the original AP or in Ultimate Campaign. I like the idea of each event being a tangible thing that one council member needs to take point on solving, with multiple possible outcomes, which can be affected by which council member takes on the task. The main trick would be to balance the system with party members wanting to use downtime for other stuff, and needing to spend time adventuring, but in the CRPG, you could go adventuring with a party member who was working on an event and it would still complete... and that kinda implies that each council member has their own organization underneath them. The high priest(ess) can delegate tasks to other clerics, the spymaster has a network of spies, etc.

Korreds and Spriggans are two other options that make perfect sense as armies/warbands. Svartalfars are another option, but I tend to associate them with Count Ranalc, so I wouldn't likely utilize them unless I was playing up Nyrissa's connection to him.

Nepotism could also play a big role, but allow it to swing both ways. There should be both advantages and disadvantages. Maybe Perlivash starts delegating work to other faeries so as to have less to get done, but those faeries now own those responsibilities for good or ill. Maybe some Pooka is now the only being who can decide where to place magical academies, and anyone else attempting to do so will curse the land they choose so that foundations crumble and nothing can be built.

Playing as a paladin of Abadar, my faith has come up a handful of times, but mostly with the other NPCs, but it doesn't seem to have opened up any meaningful options/opportunities. Personally, I feel like faith should guide dialog options sometimes just like alignment does. I mean, the 'typical' LN alignment choice for a given decision isn't going to be the same as the Abadarian choice, which might not even be strictly LN. A paladin of Abadar should be focused heavily on building infrastructure and promoting trade, whereas a paladin of Shelyn is going to care more about endeavors like Linzi's print shop, or sponsoring an acting troupe by building a theater for them to perform in. But that feels more or less completely absent from the game so far.

I think I somehow managed to do everything right AND everything wrong for the Lizardfolk Village, since I saved Tyg, but had to fight (and slaughter) almost the entire village.

I only just defeated Vordakai last night, because the loading times can take several minutes at times, and because I took chapter 2 extra slow and focused on getting my kingdom stats leveled up as much as I could before I somehow triggered the Varnhold Vanishing quest line.

There's definitely some bugs, but aside from some missing items for the collection quests, I've not come across a single bug that couldn't be fixed by reloading my most recent save. For me, it's the ridiculously long load times that are cutting into my enjoyment the most, especially when something going wrong means waiting 5 minutes just to load my last save so that I can start over again. It's one thing to be set back to your last save. It's another to be set back *and* have time to go make dinner and use the toilet before you can even get started.

Forced March rules only cover movement, not activities like exploration, which are much more mentally strenuous. If you spend 20+ hours straight exploring, you're going to be way less observant towards the end and could miss landscape features that might otherwise be automatically noticed.

I mean, if a player has somehow gotten their character turned into an iron golem, it might be reasonable for them to ask to use the full 24-hour day for adventuring/exploration/travel, but so long as they're still mortal, they need to eat and sleep, and it takes time to make a campsite for the night and then break it down in the morning, and I would be all too happy to apply morale/exhaustion penalties to someone who was just sleeping on the ground, eating nothing but hard tack, etc. (Not to mention that they would likely contract scurvy/rickets/etc eventually, and would take huge circumstantial penalties to diplomacy checks for looking like the murder hobos they clearly are at that point.)

Personally, I feel that there is a lot that is missing from the rules, even the improved set from Ultimate Campaign. For example, there's plenty of references to sieges, but no actual rules, so it's not like there's some stat that you could add a bonus to for resisting a siege better on account of unlimited freshwater.

What I would go with, without adding all new rules and other complications, is that it has no inherent effects, but provides water for up to X buildings that require water to function (such as a brewery or public bath), and that you need to either be adjacent to a river/lake, have an aqueduct/canal, or one of these fountains to build those buildings.

For a sense of scale, however, 50 gallons/minute works out to 72,000 gallons per day, whereas an Olympic-size swimming pool contains ~660,000 gallons of water.

It would take slightly more than 9 days to fill just a large swimming pool, which means that as long as the water is able to flow out into the local river system, you should be just fine unless you're adding large numbers of these fountains, in which case there's a point at which you could cause flooding downstream and invite declarations of war from very upset kingdoms. If all you want to do is have a purified source of water for drinking, with any excess then being utilized by your public bathhouses before being used to flush out your sewer system, you should be all good, but stick to the Kamelands, which are hilly enough to support natural drainage.

I rather like the idea that Nyrissa has been carefully laying claim to the Stolen Lands so that the Inevitables would recognize her as the rightful owner and thus wouldn't interfere in what she is doing. The players are just upstart squatters on her rightful land, and as long as she can successfully evict them, then her claim remains strongest and the Lhaksharuts have no cause to intervene.

Book 2 does an awesome job of foreshadowing book 3 also, and the game overall does a great job of including Varn and Drelev early on, but completely omits the Iron Wraiths. Overall, I would say that playing the game is going to spoil a lot for players, but should give a wealth of ideas for a GM.

Much as I like the Summoner and Witch, I feel that a revamped Investigator would be much more interesting, especially if they dropped the spellcasting mechanic to focus on solving problems and analyzing the weaknesses of monsters. With a bit of effort, this could even work to effectively add in other classes, since an Inquisitor could be represented by an Investigator multiclassed into Cleric.

I'm extremely late to the party, almost certainly to useful to help out OP, but for any others in a similar position, I wanted to point out that a Skeleton animated from the remains of a Juvenile Silver Dragon (13 HD) would be CR 6, and would also be highly thematic.

Maybe have them encounter destruction along the way, signs of a massive creature rampaging through, headed north towards their capital. Then, if they return fast enough, perhaps they can pursue the beast back to its lair, catching it out in the open? The path of destruction left in its wake should make finding its lair trivially easy even after killing it, so it's not like they would necessarily miss out on the treasure there.

Any time!

Regarding your aqueduct comment, due to an unfortunate bit of mapping, my players (not in a Kingmaker game) have a kingdom of almost entirely plains hexes, and they have farms. Everywhere. And fisheries in every hex of the river. Players will optimise. Just roll with it and have fun with NPCs commenting on “the longest aqueduct in the world!”

Strictly speaking, it doesn't have to be an aqueduct per se. I mean, a 'farm' could represent pastureland for herd animals, orchards, vineyards, or any number of other agricultural products... so why couldn't an 'aqueduct' represent something like an advanced irrigation network?

The Diplomat bit is also a great point. If you go off script and have an 'adventure' that involves a bunch of political intrigue with another realm, there's no reason the Diplomat (and maybe even some other roles, depending on circumstances) couldn't count that towards their 7 days, which means that even if other party members still need to get in their seven days that month, the Diplomat can now use that time for downtime activities like crafting, retraining, etc. It rewards players for thinking about how their character can be performing their role even as they go adventuring, which should hopefully increase their investment in the role.

PRD wrote:

Responsibilities of Leadership: In order to gain the benefits of leadership, you must spend at least 7 days per month attending to your duties; these days need not be consecutive. This can be roleplayed or can be assumed to run in the background without needing to be defined or actively played out. Time spent ruling cannot be used for adventuring, crafting magic items, or completing other downtime activities (see Chapter 2) that require your full attention and participation. Failure to complete your duties during a turn means treating the role as thought it's vacant.

Per the PRD and Ultimate Campaign, you only need to spend 7 days per month attending to duties, and they don't need to be consecutive. That means the party can spend a week doing Kingdom building, spend 6 weeks exploring, and then come back to do 2 weeks of Kingdom building (2 turns in a row) before going and doing 6 weeks of exploring in a row. As long as they leave themselves time to travel back, they should be able to get a decent amount of exploration done between Kingdom building turns.

Basically this.

So, you'd do something akin to:

Month 1
- Week 1: hang around for a week somewhere inside the Kingdom, doing kingdom management stuff.
- Week 2: do whatever!
- Week 3: do whatever!
- Week 4: do whatever!
Month 2
- Week 1: do whatever!
- Week 2: do whatever!
- Week 3: do whatever!
- Week 4: hang around for a week somewhere inside the Kingdom, doing kingdom management stuff.

So you have two weeks of back-to-back kingdom management, which is probably a good way to run things anyway, and then you have 6 weeks for downtime, adventuring, whatever, which should be plenty even if you have to do a lot of travel between locations. (And honestly, 6 weeks is a long time to be away from a proper bed, bath, and kitchen.)

Mivon isn't too far south of the area from Book 2, so reorienting the map might allow you to include that River Kingdom as well, which opens up new possibilities for trade, intrigue, etc.

Am I correct that, under UCam/UR, it's feasible just to build a canal in the hex where Oleg's trading post is (not adjacent to any kind of river/water) and the water requirement for farms is taken care of?

Only if you can convince the GM that the act of digging canals will cause them to automagically fill with water despite not being connected to a river or other water source. There's a lot of stuff in even the UCam rules that assumes that the GM is going to adjudicate things in a sensible way, such as not letting the players build a 'city' comprised entirely of 12 breweries, 12 libraries, 12 mills, and nothing else in order to get +24 to each of economy, loyalty, and stability.

Indraea wrote:

I'm mostly interested in this because this sounds like a game I would also like to run. I would love to see how this looks a good month or so after it gets started and maybe start up a similar recruitment of my own.

I've run kingmaker a bunch, including solo (I let the player have to PCs and filled out with a rotation of NPCs.) No 2 games have been remotely the same.

In my opinion as an AP it has enough "whitespace" to make for an adaptable chassis for almost any game. I've pillaged bits and pieces from all sorts of sources. It is also a bit more work for a GM as you need to punch up most of the encounters in order to make them remotely threatening.

-I had one where an NPC villain's head was kept in a jar and questioned often enough that they made a custom magic item out of him.
-I had one flame out but the gist was a werewolf that shows up early escaped the PC's attention and infected several allies.
-I even mixed it with Reign of Winter once.

I think as a GM Ivory is going to have a tough time until the PC gather's some allies. The power boosts will make a superman level PC but that only makes up for the lot action economy so much. These PCs might be able to go toe to toe with the BBG but it's the high number of minions chipping away at the uberPC that will cause problems in my opinion. The smarter ones will build around this with good crowd control. No matter what happens as a GM I'm intrigued.

What I would really like to run is a Kingmaker campaign that is a lot heavier on roleplay, with a focus especially on exploration, intrigue, and investigations/mysteries. I'm sure there's some other solo Kingmaker campaigns I could take a look at if I looked hard enough, but I mostly wanted to see how this goes because it's relatively similar to how I would set up a campaign to make sure the character was likely to at least survive any combat encounters that take place in spite of low action economy.

Callum wrote:

Indraea wrote:

I suppose the issue for me is that I bought all the products from my FLGS to support them, so I get no discount at all, which means essentially paying for my entire collection of books again in order to run those games on FG.

You don't need to buy your entire collection of books again. You can run games just fine having only bought the base software. There are plenty of community-created modules with loads of Pathfinder content in (thanks to the OGL), and you can add your own material with a little work. You don't even need to buy the Fantasy Grounds version of an AP in order to run it - I ran a whole AP myself while only owning the base software. All that needs is some time from you to put the necessary material into FG before the next session.

I think they meant if they wanted to use FG's modules. I mean, you can fill things in roll20 as well just as I've been doing since I can't pay Paizo to do that for me :p I have no clue how hard it is to fill stuff in FG, but its not that hard in roll20 at least, so it isn't really selling point for FG "oh, you don't need to buy paizo's material in FG, you can just manually fill them in!" when conversation topic is about whether its worth buying FG's paizo materials.

This is exactly what I was trying to say. If my option is to either pay full price for all of this content again or simply input the content manually on either Roll20 or FG, then what is the advantage of FG compared to Roll20 to me? Especially since I tend to modify campaigns by adding additional content, swapping out monsters for stuff I feel is more thematically appropriate (especially for older APs that rely heavily on just Bestiary 1 content) and generally make enough edits that even with the pre-made content, I'm still going to have hours worth of prep work to do.

Now, if I could get reduced cost for the assets based on buying the books from my FLGS, that might be enough to get me to at least look at FG. If the content were offered on Roll20, and I wasn't going to have to learn a whole new VTT just to use it, I might even pay full price for stuff I know I would get a benefit from. But having to pay full price and learn a new VTT for something that won't even eliminate more than about half of my prep work is just too steep to be worth it to me. I am 100% glad that it's worth it to others though. GMing is a tough job, and anything that makes it easier gets the thumbs up from me.

I'm mostly interested in this because this sounds like a game I would also like to run. I would love to see how this looks a good month or so after it gets started and maybe start up a similar recruitment of my own.

I suppose the issue for me is that I bought all the products from my FLGS to support them, so I get no discount at all, which means essentially paying for my entire collection of books again in order to run those games on FG. That's a really hefty pricetag to stack on top of learning an entirely new virtual tabletop interface. Yeah, the pricetag would likely be the same for Roll20, but honestly I'd be happy just buying all of the Bestiary content (even at full price) and then managing the game mechanics and AP stuff myself if that were an option on Roll20.

This same issue was raised by my players sort of out of game, and I explained the lack of expansion as a preference for fighting a war with Pitax with all its opportunity for glory in battle as being preferential to carving out a section of wilderness. Plus the mayor doesn't want expanding houses to have free reign to grow beyond what he already has plans for.

This of course didn't stop Mivon IMC from annexing a bunch of hexes in the southern portion of the players land grant once they had cleared them. To complicate things even more, the mayor issued these as rewards to several different houses, which makes negotiating their return or physically annexing them back more difficult.

The PCs got distracted with other events in Brevoy up north, and lost about 6 cleared hexes to the south to a perfectly timed Mivon expansion when their armies were committed to the north. You have what you hold is the law of the land for the River Kingdoms :)

That's an excellent way to play things, and I think I would do the same thing in reverse if I were running a campaign based out of Mivon, with the Swordlords of Restov snatching up lands in the northern Greenbelt, then handing those lands over to refugees fleeing from the civil war. Or, alternatively, just tossing in a bunch of minor lords similar to Maegar Varn and Hannis Drelev. Let them opportunistically seize on the moment, and the players have all sorts of options available to them. They could recognize those fiefdoms as minor kingdoms and open diplomatic talks, they could demand or negotiate fealty, go to war, or come up with any number of plans that I could never hope to anticipate.

Is it really any much worse of a system than strange women lying in ponds distributing swords?

I should think that the threat of war with Brevoy is the main thing keeping Mivon from expanding north, since Brevoy claims that land even though they've done nothing in decades to actually enforce the claim. If not for the civil unrest in Brevoy, such a move would probably be treated as an act of war and you'd have armies marching down through the Greenbelt to lay siege to Mivon.

The lack of loyalty issue could actually be turned around into an opportunity. The houses of Mivon could simply offer to recognize the party as founders of a new major house, complete with the right to compete for a position in the Mivonese government. Whether the party accepts or declines, the nobility of Mivon win, either by being gravely insulted so they have just cause for war against these upstarts, or by making them a pseudo vassal state.

I'm going to take a shot at this based on my own interpretation:

1. Lord Mayor Ioseph Sellemius is in an interesting position, because it is strongly implied that House Rogarvia reserved eastern Rostland as their person duchal fiefdom. (ie, the King of Brevoy would also be the Duke of East Rostland, or possibly would assign the title to their designated heir) What this means is that with the disappearance of all known members of House Rogarvia, there is no actual Duke of East Rostland, so Sellemius no longer has any clear feudal overlord save the king, and the Swordlords are refusing to recognize Regent Noleski as their king, on account of him being from House Surtova.

The implication here, to me, is that Sellemius is justifying his actions because he regards Noleski as an usurper, thus making Sellemius a 'faithful patriot' upholding the interests of House Rogarvia. The Stolen Lands would be regarded as rightful property of the crown, and so empowering adventurers as magistrates-at-large to put an end to brigands and other lawlessness in the region would indeed appear as a faithful execution of the 'best interests' of House Rogarvia. The problem comes when the Swordlords grant funds for establishing independent realms within the Stolen Lands. At a bare minimum, the Swordlords should require the players and other groups to swear fealty in absentia to House Rogarvia, because otherwise there is no validity to any of the claims, and the Swordlords would now be in open rebellion against both Regent Surtova and House Rogarvia, since they would have financed the theft of crown land from their own kingdom.

2. The Swordlords themselves are seemingly the closest thing that Restov has to a landed gentry, and many operate as mercenary captains or serve with the local military in fending off attacks from the south and east. However, their also a bunch of rabble-rousers who detest House Surtova and would prefer to seek independence rather than swear fealty to Noleski. I would assume that the Swordlords would be the source of funding for the initial 50 BP, rather than the city of Restov providing those funds, since they have money and are interested in agitating for civil war. Ultimately, it might help to think in terms of the American Revolution: there were plenty of Americans with wealth and a desire to break from England, and a strong desire to let someone else do the fighting for them so they could focus on enjoying getting to run things themselves.

3. The Stolen Lands were originally settled by the same Taldan settlers who also founded the city of Restov and make up much of the population of Rostland. The name 'the Stolen Lands' refers to this ancient claim that Brevoy/Rostland has on this region, which they regard as rightfully theirs, in spite of the notable absence of any actual presence in the area. It is partially because of these claims that the region remains unsettled, as the petty lords of the River Kingdoms don't want to risk incurring the wrath of Brevoy, so they generally stay away from the region, though Mivon and Pitax are slowly encroaching. (Mivon is ruled by Swordlords who fled Brevoy rather than face the red dragons of Choral the Conqueror, so they have a weak claim on the lands, and Pitax is ruled by a megalomaniac with an ambition for world conquest.)

4. The River Kingdoms aren't actually a united realm, but rather a whole bunch of petty kingdoms, most of which are simply a town and all lands within a day's walk. The ruler of Pitax is certainly interested in expansion, but does not have the strength to actually prevail in a war with just the city of Restov at the start of the campaign, much less the full might of Brevoy. The same is also generally true of the other petty kingdoms, most of which were founded under similar circumstances and would have to consider that marching off to war with one of these upstart fiefdoms would invite a neighbor to do the same to them.

Maybe the perception check was to notice a black dragon flying over the Narlmarches near the horizon, or to spot some tracks that if followed could have led to a small band of bandits/kobolds/mites ranging far from their normal locations. There's any number of reasons that a failed check doesn't mean that you missed something in that specific hex, and the sheer size of each hex (~100 square miles!) means that there's always plenty of room for additional things to find aside from what's officially there. Pick a couple of relatively high DCs and let the party find stuff even if there's 'nothing there'. Reward them for being highly perceptive by noticing a camouflaged hunter camped out in a blind, or an overgrown ruin of a house from when the region was settled, or just an encounter with a benign type of fey or other such creature (perhaps a pooka or mockingfey?)

Indraea wrote:

I am curious if anyone has done anything with Wilendithas the Eternal Hag? As another lich present in the Stolen Lands region (in the southern area of the Narlmarches, just past the edge of the map, I would assume), I feel like it could be rather interesting if Vordakai straight up ignored the players' kingdom initially and instead started raising an army to march against Wilendithas so as to establish himself as the undisputed undead ruler of the region. With the players' kingdom thus located in between two powerful liches intent on going to war, they would have to deal with at least one if not both or their kingdom would inevitably become the battleground on which the undead would fight each other.

Huh! I'm shocked that this is the first I've heard of her. I mean, her territory is basically just off the south edge of the 1st Kingmaker map. I had my players go up against a coven of "legendary" hags back in book 2, and they've already killed Vordakai, so I dunno if I can do anything with her. But I like the idea of her and V coming to blows and the PCs being caught in the middle.

She's not actually described at all in the Kingmaker AP books, but rather makes an appearance in the appendix of the final book of the Carrion Crown AP, where she gets a half page blurb and a picture, but no stats. Given the lack of stats and how hard it is to even stumble across her, I'm not at all surprised you've not heard of her before now. I'm putting a lot of effort into crafting a 'living' campaign world, so I want to have high level enemies even in low level areas... who are unlikely to try and murder low level PCs before they have a chance, and dragons, liches, and vampires are all perfect for that.

I am curious if anyone has done anything with Wilendithas the Eternal Hag? As another lich present in the Stolen Lands region (in the southern area of the Narlmarches, just past the edge of the map, I would assume), I feel like it could be rather interesting if Vordakai straight up ignored the players' kingdom initially and instead started raising an army to march against Wilendithas so as to establish himself as the undisputed undead ruler of the region. With the players' kingdom thus located in between two powerful liches intent on going to war, they would have to deal with at least one if not both or their kingdom would inevitably become the battleground on which the undead would fight each other.

Regarding how Vordakai 'fits', the change I'm making on that front, aside from foreshadowing and stuff, is to have him worship Zon Kuthon instead of having a vague relationship with Abaddon. Your first reaction might be to wonder how that ties him more closely to the campaign, but remember that Nyrissa was in love with Count Ranalc, who like Nyrissa was banished from the First World, and vanished into the Plane of Shadow, which is home to Zon Kuthon.

Basically, the idea is that Count Ranalc fell prey in some way to Zon Kuthon, and Vordakai, as a powerful worshiper, was tasked with keeping an eye on Nyrissa, lest she recover Briar and come looking for her lost love. Except Vordakai has been slumbering and is much weaker than he once was, and is no longer quite a match for Nyrissa, so he needs to re-establish a kingdom of his own to even have a hope of keeping his ancient pledge.

My own plan for Candlemere was to make it into a ruined wizard's tower situated on top of an ancient cyclops library. The upper areas would be mostly deserted aside from perhaps a haunt or a 'trap' (weak floor that gives way under the weight of an adventurer, stuck door that causes a cave-in if forced, etc) and would be clearly built for the comfort of human occupants. The lower floors, however, would be a maze of corridors filled with ancient tablets containing works of writing from thousands of years ago... and would contain the tortured ghost of the wizard who was studying them, who would need help in finally passing along to face Pharasma's judgement.

This would serve to introduce the idea that there was once a cyclopean empire in the region, and provide research material once the characters encounter Vordakai and want to find out more about him.

I would strongly consider beefing up the effect of a number of highly thematic mythic spells. Mythic Animate Plants, for example, when cast by Nyrissa, should animate as many large plants as she has hit dice, allowing her to potentially animate multiple colossal trees, which in turn should make for a much more memorable encounter, even if such creatures are 'trivial' for the party to defeat now.

I think I'd need a very programmed excel sheet or custom app to track that.

The idea was to take advantage of the fact that you already need a spreadsheet to track kingdom building rules, so you might as well go all the way. I'm not fixing that problem, since spreadsheets are something I'm naturally good at. All my efforts were focused on fixing issues with: runaway control scores, lack of balance for city-building, and events that lack interactivity.

I don't know your kids, but I would scrap a lot of the math heavy components of kingdom building and incorporate as much other play as possible into the campaign. If they like Legos, for example, have them actually build their town and toss out most of the mechanics, focusing more on what sort of town they want to rule over and how they resolve 'random' events that come up.

I would especially take it as a great time to go over civics, politics, and philosophy with your kids. Something completely ignored by the game's mechanics, but which ought to be really important, is what the laws of the new kingdom are going to be. Do your kids want their kingdom to harshly punish thieves by lopping their heads off in the town square? There's also plenty of issues that can be discussed in more abstract forms than you might normally encounter, like religious freedom, how to respond to protesters, or even just racial issues. (If your kids decide to ally with the Sootscales, that's great, but how well exactly will all the Brevic settlers get along with a bunch of kobolds?)

Much like Canadian Bakka, I've gone the route of just collecting as many portraits as possible, from the entire range of PF products and beyond, and if there's no portrait available or I don't like the one provided, I just go looking through my stash and pick something that fits how I envision that character in my head.

The main problem with fanart is that the vast majority is going to be iconics, PCs, or recurring characters that show up all through the entire adventure path... especially ones that show up in the very first book. A lot of groups never make it more than halfway through an adventure path, or if they do, a lot of storylines get discarded as the GM either condenses things down or rewrites stuff to better fit the interests of the party.

Remember, there is absolutely nothing wrong with tossing out entire plot arcs if they go in directions the party isn't interested in. If your players want to get involved in the Brevic Civil War, then maybe make that the entire focus of books 5 and 6. Sure, it's more work for you, but it will be far more rewarding than railroading them through something that just simply isn't as interesting.

Been working on a massive overhaul of the Kingdom Building rules, and thought I might post my notes here in case anyone else might be interested in it. As soon as I've actually finished it, I'll post a link to a pdf or something in a thread of its own, but since I'm also massively overhauling the campaign itself, that might take me the rest of the year or longer.

Notes

• I am using a base 100 currency system, so 10,000 cp = 100 sp = 1 gp, so that the new silver piece replaces the gold piece from the standard currency system. Among other considerations, this allows the new gold piece to be the standard unit of taxation in my new system, since 100 people earning 10 cp/day for 30 days works out to 3 gp, one third of which is 1 gp.
  
• Also, I am using the automatic bonus progression and scaling item systems from Unchained, so magic items will be a little more important and assumed to stay around from book to book, as any magical item found it book 1 will still be useful and difficult to replace even in book 6.

Major changes

• 12-mile hexes replaced by 2-mile hexes, in a configuration which results in 36 ‘new’ hexes for every 1 ‘old’ hex. This allows more accurate mapping of current party location, since even forested mountain hexes can be traversed in a single day on foot, but also allows for more static locations, more localized terrain (such as the swamp that the Old Beldame lives in), and a faster-paced approach to the Pursuit rules from Ultimate Intrigue. It also makes exploration and travel the same thing, since physically traversing a hex allows it to be counted as ‘explored’, discovers any ‘automatic’ features, and allows discovery of ‘hidden’ features. The party can always ‘see’ adjacent hexes, including any major landmarks (ie, things you could see from 2 miles away, like a massive lone tree atop a hill or a tall tower), and can ‘see’ two hexes away across open terrain (plains, water, or if the distant terrain is at a higher elevation than the adjacent terrain, such as mountains on the other side of a hills hex).
  
• Each hex will have a population of 100 people when settled unless it contains a town or city, with towns consisting of a single 36-acre city district but being able to coexist with a regular hex improvement such as a farm, and cities consisting of up to 56 city districts. (2/6/8/8/8/8/8/6/2 hex configuration, allows adjacent city hexes to merge seamlessly and generally follow the overall shape of the underlying terrain)
  
• A new mechanic for Rank has been added, with a default of Knight (1) -> Baron/Baroness (2) -> Duke/Duchess (3) -> King/Queen (4). Rank is determined solely by vassals sworn to you, requiring a pyramid shape and that rank 4 nobles not be anyone’s vassal. (ie, if you have two knights as vassals, you are now a baron/baroness, otherwise you are the same rank as your highest ranked vassal) Rank affects what sort of events you will get each month, how many court positions need to be filled in order to not take penalties, and gives a bonus on various checks, as well as determining certain upkeep costs.
  
• Control DC is now equal to the total hexes under your control, plus the number of city districts, plus the number of direct vassals sworn to you, and to make the control check, you simply roll a 1d20 + your leadership score, with each member of the court (General, Magister, etc) able to make the same roll against a DC 15 to give a +2 bonus on the control check.
  
• Above two mechanics give an incentive to develop a feudal system of rule, whereby vassals are expected to pass a certain amount of income up to their liege, but are otherwise free to administer the lands granted to them as they see fit. This has two important effects: firstly, it allows each character to be a lord in their own right, such that the party might eventually consist of (for example) a queen, duchess, and two dukes, whilst still maintaining a single cohesive kingdom. Secondly, it allows the party to focus their attentions on whichever aspect of kingdom management they want, handing off responsibility for tasks they are not interested in to vassals who can simply be abstracted by the GM. (ie, Baron George provides X in taxes/tribute each month, and isn’t really an issue unless an event makes him an issue, so the GM doesn’t even have to figure out how exactly George is administering his lands, since the party only cares that he remains loyal to the crown, pays his taxes, and lets them know if orcs invade or something.)
  
• BP mechanic is now split into 3 separate values: BP, GP, and food. BP are generated by quarries and logging camps, and either give a discount on any buildings built that month, or can be saved up in a storehouse for use in future months. Food is now required to meet the Kingdom’s consumption, with specific costs and/or penalties for failing to generate enough food each month to keep everyone fed. GP is generated primarily by population, with more generated by some hex improvements and buildings, and is used to pay soldiers, to pay for the completion of ‘public’ buildings, to promote the construction of private buildings (ie, encouraging people to move to your kingdom by offering to pay x% of the cost of building a new inn for them to run) and to pay the living expenses of the ruler and members of the council.
  
• Several improvements require soldiers in order to get the benefit, with 1 gp paying for 10 soldiers per month (30 cp * 30 days = 9 sp, with a squad leader earning twice as much). This price assumes peacetime employment, and treats soldiers, town guards, and other such positions as effectively interchangeable.
  
• Rulers have monthly upkeep costs which increases their kingdom’s consumption by their current rank (ie, a duke ‘consumes’ 3 additional food each month), as well as a typical standard of living cost, which must also be paid towards their council. While party members are certainly free to refuse this stipend and pay out of pocket for their living expenses, NPC council members will expect an amount equal to twice the standard cost of living for a nobleman one rank below the ruler, unless the ruler is a knight, in which case they expect to be paid a stipend equal to the cost of living for a knight. Paying more than this amount will often foment unrest among the citizenry, whereas paying less will invite disloyalty from council members, who might slack in their duties or even turn traitor!
  
• Hex improvements like roads and aqueducts are now an improvement to a hex boundary. (ie, a road exists connecting hex A to hex B, rather than all of hex A having ‘roads’)
  
• The Farm improvement now generates a default of 2 food, similar to how it normally functions, thus providing 1 excess food after feeding its own hex, but this amount can be increased, allowing larger amounts of food to be generated in order to feed large cities, using a mechanic whereby a Farm that has access to fresh water (via river/lake/canal/aqueduct) and is connected by a road to a Mill in a town/city no more than 2 hexes away will produce 3 food per month.
  
• The Fishery improvement is now a town building rather than a hex improvement, and allows the collection of 1 food for every 2 ‘exclusive’ water hexes within 2 hexes of the hex the Fishery is located in. (exclusive meaning that no other Fishery is benefiting from that hex)
  
• Towns/cities are now more focused on providing services to the inhabitants, with private buildings chosen by the people attracted to the city via promotion edicts. (ie, when you first attract 100 people to your new settlement, they might choose to use the funds to build either an inn, or a general store, or something else, but the Ruler won’t typically have any say unless they take a penalty on their promotion edict, which typically means either spending more or accepting a risk of failing to attract settlers.) Instead of focusing on building shops and such, the focus is instead on attracting settlers and then keeping them happy by building Shrines and Temples dedicated to their preferred deities, Walls and Watchtowers to keep them safe from marauding armies, or Cisterns and Granaries to ensure the stability and health of the settlement. Some buildings, like an Academy or Bardic College, will instead unlock events for the kingdom and allow settlers to choose to construct buildings that give bonuses, such as Exotic Artisans and Theaters.
  
• Events are now focused heavily on party interaction. Even events that ‘simply happen’, like a natural disaster, still give suggestions for how they might be interacted with and resolved. (Perhaps the High Priest could deal with a flood event by researching a ritual that would appease Hanspur, whereas a General might mobilize the kingdom’s soldiers to erect sandbag barriers, and a Councilor might be more focused on how to prevent future floods by constructing dams and levees along the river.) Some events will be easily dealt with by a single member of the council, such as the Marshall conducting a pursuit (Ultimate Intrigue) to track a group of bandits back to their hideout so that the kingdom’s soldiers can prevent the event from becoming a recurring issue that plagues the kingdom for months on end. Other issues will require several members working together, or may even represent a small side adventure that the party needs to go deal with, such as a wyvern preying on livestock. All events will have at least two suggested methods of resolving the event, as well as likely results in case of success/failure. (Yes, the party could simply ride out and deal with undead spewing forth from an ancient tomb on their own and be virtually assured of success, but sending their troops to deal with the problem can have far more beneficial effects if they succeed, since that sort of choice will generate veteran troops and reassure the citizens of the kingdom that the troops can handle problems when the party is all off adventuring in the mountains.)

"Here's what all I changed in Kingmaker!" Is perfectly fine to post to these boards as elsewhere, as long as you don't try to make money off of it ^w^

Well, yeah, but that's far from what is implied by a 'rewrite'. Still, I would love to see Kingmaker fully updated and reworked with all the rules from Ultimate Campaign and Ultimate Intrigue, with the new classes and beasts worked in where appropriate, and a lot more focus on the kingdom as actually being a meaningful part of the story, rather than just a side minigame.

Would that be permissible? It seems like you'd either have to refer to the books constantly or re-write almost everything to not run afoul of their rules, even if not attempting to earn a single penny.

Working on a variation of Kingmaker that starts in Mivon instead of Restov, and I'm actually planning to use the Sootscales as a replacement for Hargulka and the monster kingdom. Instead of there being just one tribe, there will be several, ruled over by the Sootscales, with the mites having recently been defeated and made into a slave undercaste. I really wanted to play around with the four extremes of alignment, and kobolds seemed a great way to introduce lawful evil's approach to taming the Stolen Lands, and their low CR means that I can either add lots of minions or plenty of class levels to make each encounter unique and challenging, rather than being constrained by the limitations of encounters with trolls that won't wipe a group of level 4-6 characters. It also seems a great way to introduce mass combat, since kobolds just simply aren't going to be as formidable on the battlefield as trolls when present in numbers large enough that the party won't try to kill them all on their own.

(I am still leaving open the possibility of a diplomatic solution, but I wanted to make it clear that the kobolds are evil, and dealing with them is likely to have consequences.)

All the discussion about Mivon got me thinking... wouldn't it be particularly interesting to start a Kingmaker campaign that originated in Mivon rather than in Restov? The Stolen Lands aren't considered 'stolen' at all by the nobles of the River Kingdoms, and Mivon would likely see the territory as rightfully theirs, and the brewing civil war in Brevoy could be just the sort of distraction needed for them to finally press that claim and settle the lands before anyone could stop them.

Alternatively, the GttRK suggests that the Mivonese nobility are already building keeps to guard against Pitax, and the players' kingdom could start out as a small grant of land at the northern edge of Mivon and funds to raise a keep to guard the area against further bandit/monster incursions. This would then allow the party to decide how to deal with the desire to expand further: to just ignore Brevoy's claims, to offer support to Restov in exchange for relinquishing any claim to the land, or perhaps even allying with Regent Surtova. (And hey, they're PCs, I'm sure they could come up with options I'd never even think of.)

Regardless, since none of the Houses of Mivon formally swear fealty to anyone, independence wouldn't be an issue, and mostly you would just need to swap encounters from book 2 down to book 1, re-balance the CR of encounters, and/or encourage players to avoid the Narlmarches initially and stick to the hills of the Kamelands.

Part three:

Cloistered Cleric. Scroll Scholar. Merciful Healer. Undead Lord. Clerics get the short stick when it comes to archetypes, it seems...

Aldori Swordlord Fighter. One of the only ways (some say THE only way) to actually be good in the prestige class of the same name, it's still kind of lacking for a supposedly unbeatable fighting school. Dragoon fighters try to be a cavalier, but the mount... is lacking.

Oh, the Titan Mauler for Barbarian. It just wants to be so cool....

It seems to me that what would really fix the Aldori Swordlord archetype is to just move it over from fighter to swashbuckler, since that seems to be the obvious class for 'dex-based 1-handed fighter', and it's patently clear that if the archetype had been released after the ACG, that's what would have happened.

A couple of things that help to better illustrate the difference between downtime buildings and kingdom buildings:

A city grid is 1 square mile, and has room for 36 buildings, each of which represents over 17 acres worth of that 1 square mile of space. Even we account for very large boulevards, courtyards, and space for an enclosing city wall, you're still going to have at least 10 acres for each building. One acre, in turn, is enough space that even with 20' roads and 'blocks' that are 1x4 buildings, you are going to end up with 20 buildings that each have space for 8 10x10 rooms on each floor, plus space for 5' corridors up the middle of each floor, with a spiral staircase at one end. Multiply that by 10 acres, and you get 200 houses per 'building' in the city grid.

If you use the maximum values for each of the rooms included in a house, you get 42 squares, or 10.5 10x10 rooms. We already established you get 8 of those per house, but that's for a single story dwelling, so let's throw in a second story and a basement, and now our houses can have additional bedrooms, which increases their cost, but also makes them a bit more realistic. Let's throw in four extra bedrooms, which makes for a nice sized family residence, and a new cost of 2,490 gp per house.

Now, remember, there's 200 of these things, so that works out to 498,000 gp, or 124.5 BP. Doesn't look like you're saving all that much money by building individual houses now, does it?

Now, some players will then ask why a house is so 'cheap' in the kingdom rules, when other buildings, like a wizard's tower, are so incredibly expensive compared to how much it would cost to build using downtime rules. The answer of course, is that BP doesn't represent actually paying for the construction of each and every building, it represents promotion and assistance. You're spending money to attract people to come live in your new settlement, and that's a lot more expensive when you're trying to attract a wizard than when you're trying to attract commoners. Also, that wizard is going to want something FAR nicer than the basic setup you get from the downtime rules, and is certainly going to expect you to chip in for the whole cost, which is how you're convincing him/her to move to your kingdom in the first place.

After less than half an hour more of pleasantries, Lord Kaijitsu politely calls an end to the meeting so that he may go check on his wife. Tsutamu returns, bearing four bronze medallions, each marked with the same set of characters in a foreign language, suspended from simple leather lanyards. He explains that the stablehands will recognize these and allow you to take four horses, saddles, saddlebags, and a week's worth of feed. The stable where Lord Kaijitsu's horses are kept is not far from the villa, so he can actually point it out once you leave the Kaijitsu estate.

By the time you return to Breakbottle Villa (with or without the horses) a message will have arrived from Lord Foxglove, stating that he would be happy to meet with the party if you could meet him down in Dockway near the Bazaar of Sails. His letter describes his store as having a sign depicting an Osirian scarab beetle, and that he'll be stuck there all day dealing with a recent shipment.

That was my plan. Hopefully we've got just one last detour and then off to the Lost Coast, unless you all have something in mind beyond talking to young Lord Foxglove about his family estate.

Lord Kaijitsu looks about ready to begin an explanation on the sorts of rocks useful to glassmaking and how to find sources of them, but Zindelo's expert knowledge shows that this is unnecessary, "My, I wouldn't have guessed you to be so scholarly, and yet here I am mistaken! You are quite right, and I am much comforted to know that this endeavour shall be carried out by such astute and knowledgeable persons."

He smiles and then sips his tea some more while hearing the various arguments for loaning horses to the party. Setting his glass down on its saucer, he looks back and forth between Arduinne and Jubal, "You have certainly made an excellent case, but I suspect my interests would be ill-served by loaning you the horses. Therefore, I shall instead gift them to you for a period of not more than one month, trusting that, as you have said, you will take good care of them and return as many horses as I have granted. I look forward to breaking ground on a new glassworks once you have surveyed the site for the new settlement."

He then claps his hands and a young serving girl, her features a mix of Chelish and Tian, rushes in with a platter laden with small round cakes, each topped with half of a strawberry and proving to be filled with strawberry preserves. "Now, please do eat, and I shall see to it that you are escorted to the stables where my horses are being kept. It is not far, but they will want to know that you are properly authorized."