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Ha! Well I guess if I do some decent work on it, I will share whatever stats I work out. At least it'd be something.

But yeah Armies of Golarion and Kingdoms of Golarion would be *very* much (as in $$) appreciated, Paizo, if you are reading (and I know your all-seeing eye is :P).

I like the idea. You'll need to ensure that you have some solid rules in place for damaging buildings, and I would strongly recommend that you have a solid kingdom in place, with rulers and so forth, before the campaign begins. Run the kingdom for a year or so before the PCs start tearing it to pieces, to make sure it's viable and won't just collapse on its own.

Also pay very close attention to the available city guard and city watch, since those will be the people the PCs will have opposing them a lot of the time.

Yeah that makes me think of the rules for Catastrophes! included in the Council of Thieves AP that dealt with things like collapsing buildings and the spread of fire within them.

I was actually thinking of using a kingdom from Golarion's map, such as Taldor, Cheliax or one of the River Kingdoms. Ive found several hex maps of Avistan that might work to that end. The trouble is I wish those nations had their kingdoms already "statted" out so to speak, as it will require counting the hexes to determine Control DC, looking at individual cities by population and determining percentages of city guard and garrison and a lot of guessing at which improvements the City Squares possess, except for obvious ones on any available city maps.

So was looking for advice on any warnings, problems or suggestions on using the updated Kingdom rules from Ultimate Campaign in reverse for a group of PCs who are using guerrilla attacks as part of their conspiracy to abolish the kingdom they are in and strip it of its power to rule over the people.

The normal rules are:

"Unrest increases by 1 for each kingdom attribute (Economy, Loyalty, or Stability) that is a negative number. If the kingdom's Unrest is 11 or higher, it loses 1 hex (the leaders choose which hex).

If you lose control of a hex because of Unrest, you lose all the benefits of any terrain improvements in that hex. All settlements in that hex become free cities with no loyalty to you or any other kingdom.

If your kingdom's Unrest ever reaches 20, the kingdom falls into anarchy. While in anarchy, your kingdom can take no action and treats all Economy, Loyalty, and Stability check results as 0."

So, given that the bonuses to Economy, Loyalty and Stability are generated by institutions and structures in the City Squares and Hexes in the countryside, if the PCs started successfully carrying out attacks against them which resulted in their destruction and/or the deaths of their officers, theoretically, couldn't they slowly drain the kingdom of its access to resources and cause Unrest to rise little by little till it reaches a tipping point and is thrown into anarchy?

Example: A Bureau grants +1 to Economy and +1 to Stability. If the PCs hatch out a good plan to magically bomb the place and get away with it to read the papers, not only should they have caused 10 BP worth of damages to the state (approx. 40,000GP!) but then when the Upkeep Phase rolls around for the Kingdom, it would no longer have those benefits to its Economy and Stability, unless the Kingdom invested the BP necessary to build another one in time.

So, provided the PCs use clever planning, relentless attacks and determination, they could, perhaps with some NPC allies gathered along the way, slowly overthrow the Kingdom 1 Unrest point at a time, right?

My questions are: Is this TOO easy and does the Unrest threshold to put a Kingdom into anarchy need to be higher with these considerations? Since, if you cause enough damage and kill enough people it doesn't seem like it would take too long to reach Unrest 20. One idea I had as DM was simply to rule that every time they increase Unrest by another 11 points the Kingdom loses control of one hex but does not go into full blown anarchy until they have caused it to lose control of ALL hexes under its control (so if the Kingdom controls 20 hexes the PCs have to cause 220 Unrest over all).

This sounds to me like a very fun campaign concept which lets the PCs sandbox it for a bit as freedom fighters while using the mechanics to fairly track their actual progress overall rather than just fluffing it.

Thoughts? Problems? Ideas for refinement?

To craft magic items you need raw materials worth a certain amount - and one interpretation of this is that the raw materials aren't good for magic, unless you paid the appropriate amount of money for them...From this it becomes clear that all non-capitalist paradises don't have a magic item economy to speak of.

I'm sorry but this doesn't make any sense to me from the setting or rules, nor is it acceptable for my campaign.

Taking this, you would think tribal societies are unable to possess any homemade magical items, and I do not think that is the case.

there is bartering as an economic system, which I would imagine among many tribal people would be the main system of exchange of goods.

Are you just suggesting that as an example or indicating it has been worked out somewhere in the rule books? Like how would you establish equivalent value for bartering such things anyway? Just use the GP? Might be difficult to find things worth the exact same GP.

However, bartering still works from the same principles as money exchange (that's why early bartering economies usually identify what is most valuable, easily measured, and transferable and use that as standard currency), that is, the concept of private ownership of land, the source of production. In a socialist society, the whole people share the land and its resources, every person having the right to work it to obtain what they and their communities need. Those with different skills and passions produce arts and craft based on what will benefit the society and exchange their surplus freely with others doing the same thing.

So there would be nothing contradictory about bartering fine crafts like forged weapons or magic items with the PCs, but also no reason the PCs couldn't simply go to the land and obtain the raw resources they need and craft it themselves.

Alright, so in the Pathfinder game system (and we can thus presume in the game setting itself) all weapons, magic items, spells, materials, goods and services are given a cost in gp (or sp/cp for very mundane items) that PCs must spend in order to purchase, craft or research the particular thing in question.

This is a rather basic form of market capitalism for the PCs, in that there is a standard reserve currency acting as tender for exchange and which everything is valued by. I know its a convenient abstraction for play, but since the PCs are actually doing this in the game (acquiring and spending the money) it has ramifications to the setting as well.

Thinking of most of the nations in Avistan, for example, this makes sense. Most seem to be basically feudal or even mercantilist economies. But there are a few strange ones I am really not sure how such standards would exist like Galt, the revolutionary terror, or Hermea, the autocratic paradise island, for example.

However, say a GM put the PCs in a region where the people didn't use gp as currency, didn't believe in the exclusively private ownership of capital, magic or land. A kind of libertarian socialism with communal land, abolition of money, 'the market' as little more than a free exchange potlach, etc.

How could a GM meaningfully reflect this conscious rejection of economic inequality with regards to the PCs obtaining items, goods, land, magic, etc. in this region with the system? Obviously you do not want to give the players everything literally *for free* because it will imbalance the game. And resources are still, of course, limited.

Can anyone think of any good ideas for alternative rewards to give PCs in such an area in lieu of money (perhaps one of the PCs *themselves* is a firebrand who refuses to use money and thus participate in economic exploitation of the masses or something), mechanics to use for simulating a socialist, classless economy and how this affects the item crafting and spell creation/research process without using GP.

I suspect this question might have even bigger ramifications than I realize, but I am eager to here ideas for this because it is something that I have been wondering about lately and need to come up with something.

Thank you so much for the replies thus far.

I do like the idea of the PCs using really powerful magic (like an artifact summoning a tarrasque or something) as a gambit to force the Empire's hand and weaken them at some point. It might even be a really hard decision depending on what it does, as it might endanger innocent lives too. Only other thing is just I want to be careful not to make the imperial scenario/backdrop *too* fantastic, in the sense that players can still relate and drawing a few real world parallels on the nature of authority and greed and the difficulty of revolution and being hunted like a terrorist.

For the opening act idea, at first it sounded a lot like the Council of Thieves opening, but I like what was written about the "cleric figure" (probably wouldn't be an *actual* cleric as the 'good' Pantheon is actually aligned with the Empire through "Aroden" now with the exception of Desna, so maybe an illegal magic user), especially the idea about that person 'running a shelter for those orphaned by the empire's wars, with some or all of the PCs being raised there.' That would be a great way to get maybe a lot of the poor local community involved into some kind of potential riot, which, the local Imperial forces decide to massacre. That leads to a great tipping point for the PCs and the community once the NPC assassinates the Viceroy (think V from V For Vendetta) in retaliation for his injustices and the simple fact that, in the new anarchist philosophy, he has no justification to rule or resist the people's desire to be sovereign individuals.

Killing the local Royal Viceroy temporarily forces the military to run things until a new Viceroy arrives to root out the rebels, leading to some brutal repression in order to maintain control in the River Lands which will engender sympathy and support from the angry populace.

So I know it has to start near the Stolen Lands, as that will be their first community example (like the castle in Suikoden) where they and the peasants, ex-slaves, ex-bandits, outlaws, workers and drop out nobles get to set the tone and see if the new libertarian socialist practices and philosophies can really work.

What decently large sized city in the River Lands would work well then for the opening location of the conflict then and everything?

I figure that besides whatever things the PCs plan to do, the players can choose groups of skilled and somewhat powerful NPCs who have joined them or been recruited and send them out to accomplish various guerrilla actions with percentages of success or failure in the background based on their picks and how well planned out they have the operation as well as how much intelligence collected in the area. Not sure how to make a mechanic for that though.

But is it feasible, with the Kingdom Building rules, to do it in reverse and by destroying the Buildings cause the Unrest to rise and imperial Hexes to fall into anarchy without it being too fast or too negligibly slow?

Is there a way to write a mechanic to deal with how successful their anarchist commune will be? I thought of reskinning the Kingdom mechanics to Mass Movement mechanics or something, like instead of Economy, Stability and Loyalty you have Equality, Liberty and Solidarity or something. It's just different because the PCs have to be careful *not* to take power over the NPCs and act like equals.

So I am trying to plan out enough for a PF pbp campaign to get started but am running into a creative block when I try to work on it. The basic premise is roughly an alternate future for Golarion after both someone with enough power *at least* pretending to be Aroden returned and becoming the King of Taldor and then (after some Alexander the Great style conquests) causing a World War, the aftermath of which leaves a near Continental (Avistan) empire under the control of Taldor in which all the Human Azlanti-descended nations and colonial territories are rejoined into the empire (including the before-hand impossible taking of Absalom). This results in, among other things, the restriction of high level magic to imperial use, occupations ruthlessly controlled by greedy guild cartels, the enslavement of demihumans, the imposition of the Human Pantheon as the true religion with Aroden Incarnate as the Emperor at its head. Even for the lower class humans under it, its a pretty tyrannical system of exploitation and magically-aided police-statism.

Additionally, the devastating world war in which magic was heavily used against civilian targets by rival nations has left a populace receptive to the radical ideas espoused by mysterious pamphlets which appeared touting classical anarchism (similar in concept to the still anonymous pamphlets which appeared in Europe promoting the semi-mythical Rosicrucian Order).

I want to set it in the former River Kingdoms and have the PCs start out as regular people oppressed by this system who are directly faced *somehow* by its brutality when the Viceroy of the province is assassinated by a mysterious NPC who gives them a map of the former Stolen Lands (it could become their remote guerrilla base and eventual refugee commune') and essentially recruits them to become anarchist revolutionaries to fight against the Empire and help liberate the people without allowing another state to replace it. So land and liberty for the people essentially. Also there will be a new Zeal mechanic to encourage the PCs to act with ideals and challenge them not to become callous terrorists but stay pure freedom fighters whereby if they lose too much zeal they become disillusioned and either fall to corruption or die in a blaze of glory (similar to that in the Polaris RPG).

Essentially the PCs should become anarchist guerrillas who will make their own plans for assassinating officials, destroying infrastructure, robbing the rich and helping build and protect an emerging mass rebellion movement based on the principles of true freedom and equality for all. So like there will be some dungeon crawl except instead of dungeons it will be barracks and banks etc. with the reward material and magical items both for them and eventual allies.

I was thinking of inverting the Kingmaker/Ultimate Campaign mechanics in that by destroying various buildings in the City Square they can slowly take away those points from the Provincial total and eventually if they knock down the Economy, Stability and Loyalty enough raise Unrest till the people are able to throw off the Empire in the local area completely, of course leading to counter-attacks etc. I am curious about the mechanical difficulties and merits of this idea? Eventually the more "hexes" the revolution succeeds in the stronger the Movement as a whole will be.

I figured I could pull some stuff from Kingmaker, Council of Thieves, and Jade Regent (similar themes of movement building, sandbox campaigning, and rebellion) and reskin if needed where appropriate.

Now my questions are:

What would be a good first scenario to get PCs embroiled in the conflict and give them that push?

Is there a kind of "Adventure Path" framework that would make a logical transition from scrappy band of guerrillas (little more than bandits in the eyes of authorities, a la the Price of Freedom RPG) to powerful exemplars of a massive and widespread anarchist movement which can successfully take on the Empire (long term) and actually carry out a general insurrection? The closest successful historical analog I can think of (not anarchist) would be Mao's original guerrilla's becoming the People's Army and then eventually winning the conflict to make China a new nation. Preferably so that it doesn't become too monotonous with assassinate this person, raid this base, bomb this guild hall or temple, distribute this aid, protect this riot etc over and over again. Just wondering if there's a way to do it really.

Thank you so much in advance to anyone who can offer any ideas of value. I apologize for the lengthy post just wanted to give a good explanation as I cant get the idea out of my head but keep running into a block for how to do it well.