Hey Folks! So I've been running a unique Kingmaker Campaign for about a year now, unique in that there are several dozen players. I'm looking for more! Read on!
Its Chris, head Game Master//Story-Teller at Final Frontier!
What is final frontier you ask? Final Frontier is a collaborative living world where players take on the role of Citizens of Kanach, a kingdom formed by adventurers out of the wilderness of the Stolen Lands. As you can surmise, these adventurers are Player Characters themselves, taking part in the Kingmaker Adventure Path!
As an adventurer, you will join in a vibrant and fun experience. While we started out slow, we now have regular roleplaying events (usually every week) for our players to participate in, as well as an adventure every few weeks for those that wish to sign up. These games (especially the adventures) are often played in real-time using Roll20 and voice programs. However, they are optional for citizens, and you can choose to garner power and ability in other ways, if you so choose.
Next, players will also have the option to participate in a complex economic system that revolves around a modified version of the downtime rules created by Paizo. Not only would you be able to design taverns, stores, and other businesses to your liking, but you could build yourself a proper palatial estate. With enough money and investment, you could build a business empire.
Maybe adventuring is not your thing? Maybe your character doesn't dream of swimming through a vault of gold? Maybe your ambitions are grander. The game include a fun and interesting political simulation, whereby you can be elected to a Grand Council that helps oversee and rules the nation itself. Providing wise council to the Queen, while helping to crack the various mysteries that I've woven into the game world!
Does this sound like you? There are two positions you can join:
Citizen Simply join the link given below. When you join, the system automatically will send you a link to our new player orientation video. You will be creating a level one character and need to get it approved to join. Then its a matter of working, networking, and waiting for elections and adventures!
Lord of the Realm Interested in a bit more? Lords of the Realm are granted special dispensation to construct either major institutions in Kanach or whole new realms for the fledgling Kingdom to interact with. However, in order to earn such a prestigious and powerful position within the game, you must be willing to contribute. Lords of the Realm will be enlisted into our Junior Storyteller position, and should be expected to go through training to become game-masters/administrators for the campaign.
We are currently into Book III out of VI, that being said, this game will continue on even after the Kingmaker AP has ended. Eventually a second arch will begin, which I've termed 'Fallen Frontier II'. So join today! Build your legacy!
Taking a brief 3 month kingdom building before diving into Varnhold. Party is as follows:
Frank Underwood - Human Rogue 8
Shia Ledouche - Human Rogue 8 (Queen and descended from a long line of whores)
Pezz - Human Wizard 8 (Has Kobolds worshipping him as a divine agent of their dragon god)
Tripod - Gnome Bard 8 (Uh...we won't go into that)
Needless to say, we have a few lesser PCs who the players invite over pretty regularly now, to serves as meatshields. As the party is noticably without. Its funny that we have two rogues and a cult-leader...3 of the 4 are cops. Are bard is an engineer who wishes he was a rock star.
Yeah. It gets pretty horrible. They went full murderhobo in the first session and killed Oleg. After they realized how much I was about to wipe the party and restart they straightened up.
I came to pathfinder because all of my 3.5 s@#! became trash. They should focus on new and innovative intellectual properties if they can no longer mine the 'new rules' gold vein.
To help with the spoiler explanation, here is an example. Imagine a grassland tile with a river, a road, and a bridge connection the road over the river. The bridge is well designed by an ancient empire of Giants and is considered a local landmark. The river is known for a particular breed of craw-fish which are a local delicacy, and thereby make up a resource. This area is inside of a claimed kingdom. The Kingdom is a human kingdom, and the government has passed no edicts restricting settlement.
Grassland: 4% Base
River: +10%
Natural Resource, Edible: +10%
Landmark: +5%
Road: +1%
Bridge: +5%
Claimed: +0%
No Edicts: +0%
Total: 35%
The GM should watch this position, and it will likely spawn a random settlement in 3 turns. Even if this hex were unclaimed, it would still have a 25% chance, and would likely spawn a settlement in 4 turns. Such a settlement of crawfish eating, giant-bridge worshipping wierdos might make for good campaign as well. :D
I think for my first reveal, I'll give you my proto-rules on population popping. See the spoiler below, if interested.
Population Popping
popping:
Random Organic Settlement Generation
Previous Rules
The previous rules on claiming a hex remain largely unchanged. A claimed hex drastically affects the chance of a random settlement being developed. However, if you prepare a hex that is within two tiles of a city, it creates a 'Town'(see below) as opposed to a city-district.
In addition, the rules for preparing a hex and building a city remain intact, with a few slight changes. When you prepare a tile for a city, any dominant economic infrastructure (farms, mines, etc) is removed. Land not used by the city is kept as farms and reduces upkeep by 1. (Essentially, you have half a farm left) Next, the cost of preparing a tile for settlement is increased. Multiply the cost by two, and then add 3 to this number. As such, the preparation cost for plains is now 5, while mountains now cost 27 BP. When a city is first built it automatically comes with a free house. The city is considered complete immediately in your edict phase (and thus affects the % chance of random population generation for that turn). As well, you may immediately construct one new building within your city, this construction does not count against your limit for that turn.
Lastly, if you are preparing the hex for a 'town' the cost is reduced and special rules apply. Firstly, a town can coexist in a tile that has other dominant economic activity (farm, mine, etc). The cost of preparing a town in certain terrains is the cost listed in table 4-6 of Ultimate Campaign. A town functions as a smaller city district that has 4 blocks (and 16 lots). In addition, a town cannot grow beyond this first initial district.
Random City Appearance
Every turn, there is a percentage chance that any hex will randomly spawn a settlement. This can happen inside a player's realm or outside of it. The GM should roll each turn for any qualified hex. This roll should be made in the Random Events phase, before a random event chance is rolled. If any settlement appears, the chance for a random event is reduced by 10% for that turn.
A qualified hex has to meet two conditions. Firstly, it has to have a minimum percentage chance for settlement spawn. Inside civilized (claimed) areas this is 6%, while outside of (claimed areas) this is 16%. As the percentage chance reflects the likelihood of a population center developing there, it can also reflect a number of settlers living there already. Players can assume this limit exists, because if such a low number of settlers were to band together, local bandits or other hazards might present a threat to the settlement. So even though there are enough people there to maybe form a settlement, they fear for its immediate safety afterwards. It can also be assumed that such low numbers might represent low favorability of natural resources, and settlers might know: "This is a good place for a settlement, but not as good as over there." or "This is a good place for a settlement, but we would kill off all the deer in two months." Any combination of these explanations might be used, but the real reason is the reduce the number of dice rolls the GM has to make each turn. Instead, the GM just needs to keep track of a few 'optimal' areas each month.
The second condition, is that the area has to have significant settlers or natural population. It doesn't matter how good an area is, if there are no people nearby to inhabit it. In the context of the Stolen Lands, you can imagine that many of the tiles just have too small of a population to 'pop'. Both of these are designed to limit the number of rolls a GM has to make to a select few per turn.
Modifiers to Random Settlement Spawn Base Terrain Chance of Spawn
Every terrain has a base percentage change of spawning a settlement. This represents the terrain's natural appeal for people to form a community there. If two or more terrain types occupy the same hex, use the higher percentage chance. For example, Marshy Hills would be seen as a large area of marshy lakes with small 'islands' made up of elevated hill lands. The population of the city would likely live on these islands.
Cavern* 0%
Desert* 0%
Forest* 2%
Hills* 2%
Jungle* 1%
Marsh* 1%
Mountains* 0%
Plains* 3%
Water* 0%
*Races that find this terrain favorable would treat this percentage chance as 1% higher than listed. A small sample list of favored terrains is given below. GMs are free to modify this list with custom races or to meet non-standard racial archetypes that exist in their world.
Cavern: Drow, Druegar
Desert: Halflings, Humans
Forest: Elves, Gnomes
Hills: Gnomes, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins
Jungle: Lizardfolk, Elves
Marsh: Lizardfolk
Mountains: Dwarves, Orcs
Plains: Halflings, Humans
Water: Sahuagin
Natural Features Modifiers
Natural features make a large difference in terms of whether or not a hex is decent for habitation. Add these percentage chance modifiers to the base terrain modifier, for any natural features that apply.
Coast: +5%
Lair: -5%
Landmark: +5%
River: +10%
Resource: +5%
Resource, Edible: +10%
Ruin: -5%
Man-made Features
These features function exactly the same way as natural feature modifiers, except that they are either constructed by players, or found by them. However, they are not naturally occurring.
Building: +1%
Bridge: +5%
City Center*: +5%
Road: +1%
*City Centers are large, powerful buildings that provide bonuses to both the settlement that they are in, and the Kingdom as a whole. A single city-center (and its resulting chain) usually dominates a single city through a diseconomy of scale effect in their construction. However, some city-centers actively prevent others from being built. City centers can be built outside of a settlement or town, though their effect on economy, stability, and loyalty are halved and any upkeep doubled for as long as they are outside of a settlement.
Claimed vs Unclaimed Areas
Claimed areas are considered generally more safe as a system of (at the very least) non-professional patrols and citizen reporting is in place. Unclaimed areas are unsafe, and recieve an automatic -10% penalty to their chance to spawn a random settlement.
Settlement Edicts
A new set of edicts is able to be issued by the government. The cost to issue this edict is 25 gold. This cost must be paid for each tile this edict is used on, and this cost continues each turn. This edict can either declare land to be a reserve or a future community. Declaring a preserve decreases the random chance of a community developing by 10%. Declaring the site of a future community increases this same chance by 10%. If a community is built here, the players may take actions against the trespassers with little or no unrest penalties. Concepts regarding jurisprudence are beyond the scope of this dossier.
Existing Settlements
An existing settlement creates a 'buffer zone' around itself for two tiles in every direction. There is a -10% chance of random settlement generation within this buffer zone. In addition, should a random settlement be generated in this buffer zone, it will automatically become a town.
Random Settlements
If a random settlement forms, it immedietely starts with a free house. The GM rolls 3d6. He can then either use this to construct some basic random buildings in the settlement, or give to the players. If the city pops in an area with an intact building or city center, that is added to the city for free.
1) I had initially thought the popping chance would be once a month. In terms of KM itself, I am thinking in the Random Event phase, before a Random Event is decided. Maybe a successful pop reduces the chance for a RE; because any potential pop is a whole new situation for PCs to deal with. Or maybe not, because I do like to challenge my players.
2) Well, that one is a bit more complicated. I plan to have a popping chance modifier in 'uncivilized' (unclaimed) areas that makes cities popping to existence outside of a nation's zone of control nearly impossible. Only those places with the best conditions possible will pop settlements in unclaimed areas, and if that should happen, an NPC power structure will emerge in that city. It would then be up to the GM to determine if/how many other hexes that city claims if it pops to existence...and if that new settlement behaves like an independent nation or more like a Tatzlford neutral settlement.
As for settlements in claimed areas, they automatically defer to the rulers of those areas. A formal petition will be sent, usually framed as 'act of incorporation' or something similar, where the settlement tells the leaders that they exist. After that, the city (or small town/settlement) behaves like any other.
3) As long as the settlement is built in their territory, then yes. And again, there will be a severe % chance decrease that settlements form outside of claimed territory, so it would make it far less likely that players get 'hemmed' in.
City Centers
I see what you are saying, and before I respond, I'd like to clarify my stance on city-centers. I remember reading once on this forum (and in several accounts) that players really have little incentive to build other cities aside from the main one. This was especially true during the Kingmaker AP Proto-Rules, where the only reason to build a second city was to allow a canary in a coal-mine type of situation.
Ultimate Campaign did a few new things, which essentially solved this problem. The existence of buildings that could only be built once per city and the existence of the stockyard now made building multiple cities not only likely, but probably part of an optimum strategy.
City Centers were thought up to further incentivize building more than one settlement. And indeed, to differentiate the settlements. I want players to have to make a choice when they plan for a city. If they put the 'Grand Bazaar' building here, they are essentially giving up the 'King's Court' building.
That being said, in terms of RP, there really is no reason why such a bazaar cannot exist in the same city as a court. I can only think of a handful of ideas that might be mutually exclusive for one reason or another.
The only thing I can think of, is that these buildings represent a large portion of the dominant economic activity of these early cities. So, a new city-center will get geometrically more expensive and will require a new district per city-center. Then the challenge would be if players want to create a jack of all trades city, or if they would rather focus on the activity that the initial city center was concentrated on. Many of the subsequent buildings that might arise from the city-center might function in the same way, requiring the central slot from a new district, essentially competing for space with the other city-centers.
Essentially, this would make the optimum choice be to create a new settlement for a new city-center. However, this would still leave opportunity for players to get more than one city-center per city, for example, if they have a land constraint.
As a last note; these are just the beginnings of my ideas. As you can see, I'm leaning towards having nations specialize in different tactics and means of combat.
Currently if two KM nations go to war, dice will play a large role, but the largest role will be played by the starting positions of the two nations. These should have an impact, but the game should still be competitive on a lot of factors.
For clarity, imagine if this was Magic, or one of these highly competitive card games. Then imagine that the only strategy was to build a deck of red creatures. See how choice disappears?
I'm not saying that choices otherwise don't exist, but they usually arise from other aspects of the gameplay; espionage etc. Which is great. I'm just trying to add a few more interesting things to the mechanics to allow more flexibility.
Hello. Long time lurker, first time poster. Be Patient. :P
Anyhow, I played Pathfinder for a while, and found KM sometime later. I immediately fell in love with it, I've always been the type of player to love to become king, rule nations, etc.
Alas, most of my players want me to DM. Indeed, I am DMing KM with a my regular biweekly group right now. About to head over to Varnhold and what went down there. Fun, fun.
I've decided to run an online campaign, taking place on a homebrew world (largely made up of islands). Think Trek meats high fantasy. An inordinate number of players (I use co-GMs) is divided between 2 (and eventually 5) 'nations'; each set on a different island group.
Then I got thinking about the nitty-gritty of KM. The idea of player versus player competition got me to evaluate almost in an academic manner. Essentially, for any given game of Pathfinder, there is a dominant strategy and it will be approximately the same for all nations. Ancillary factors to have an impact and these will largely determine the outcome of a conflict between two KM nations.
I also read a review where one player complained that after the initial fun and interest of learning how to build the Kingdom, the game fell apart. Its a unique and novel idea, but after about twenty turns in, the process of every turn is about the same. This specific review felt there were no actual choices to make, and from the point of view of optimization; this is true. This can be exemplified that the common argument is whether a kingdom should be min/maxed or developed organically (i.e. via roleplay). So you are either an efficient kingdom, or a 'realistic' one. I think a game will gain legs when it allows a player a choice, many actually, and he feels that he genuinely has opportunity cost when making the decision. If your decisions is to either build the brothel/dancehall (or whatever efficient building is next on the list) or play your kingdom inefficient for the sake of roleplay...this isn't a choice at all.
Not to say that there aren't choices to make. But whether we should build the gold mine on turn four as opposed to a farm isn't really a choice. The other will be had eventually.
Thus, I've started my own homebrew alternate rule-set to expand on the groundwork initially laid for KM. And as such, i'll be coming here to air it out and see if there is any constructive things to be added.
Also, before anyone jumps down my throat, this so far has been my experience and my opinion. If you don't agree, thats cool. I would like to hear why. I'm pretty copacetic about listening to opposing viewpoints.
With that out of the way; here is my first idea, for submission to you the community at large.
City Placement
Alright, so my first idea is to change how city placement works. For my system, I've done this in two ways that I think already making my system distinct enough from standard KM to make it seem like a new game.
Firstly, I decided to go against my own design and actually remove one choice from the players. I thought it might be interesting to have city placement not be decided, but happen organically. Players can influence it via their actions; but ultimately the dice can be screwy sometimes.
Essentially, every hex has a percentage chance to pop a settlement in that tile. The type of terrain plays a role, as well as any terrain features. In addition, players can help influence this by constructing minor improvements. As well as the City Centers (see below).
Once a city pops, it prevents other cities from popping in a two tile radius by causing a negative modifier to the pop chance in that radius. Those tiles that have enough good features to still be eligible pop will instead pop a minor settlement. I read someone mentioning something about small settlement/town with only four tiles. I liked the idea and thats probably what this will look like.
The important thing, is the characters will have a lot of impact on where their initial city lands. It just may cause them more significant resources to clear and prepare the tile than it did before. However, I am hoping this system will be interesting and sort of simulate organic growth.
Again, this first rule is still in limbo in my mind. I think its fun, but certainly not in line with what I was thinking with about changing rules.
The second thing I would change is the creation of what I call city centers. These are specifically powerful buildings, which there can only be one of for a settlement. I have a few worked out on paper, but the idea is that the city center could be upgraded and allows access to some special buildings that enhance its 'flavor'.
City centers are powerful and mutually exclusive. So, deciding to build the 'Flea Market' city center will prevent you from building the 'Lord's Freehold' city center. The idea here is to have city specialization actually be a thing, and to force players to make a choice in terms of not only what investments they will be putting into the city...but in the event of war where might they defend.
IE: Should I have all my forces at the 'Flea Market City' which is the economic center of my empire? Should I put them at the 'Lord's Castle City' which is my diplomatic center and key to my control of vassals? Should I split them?
These are initial choices that I want players to decide, but also will be the fundamental building blocks to having different strategies. I can imagine a city center for producing excellent cavalry, as well as one for infantry, and another allowing magical research or economic production.
Thoughts? Just looking for some feedback goodness.
