| ahmorse |
I'm really looking forward to using the Kingmaker rules for building kingdoms. I've been thinking about how to extend them to support dominions within a kingdom--let's say the king makes a PC a baron and gives them several hexes as a barony to rule. How should that work out?
Here's my current background thoughts. (1) For realism/to produce nice medieval feeling kingdoms, it should be advantageous to create dominions within a kingdom (or to expand by granting a noble the right to settle a march on the borders); (2) At the same time, not every dominion within a kingdom should need to be self-sufficient--some dominions can be built around farmland, supporting other dominions need for food through trade in exchange for worked goods, etc.; (3) nobles should be able to hold council posts in the kingdom; and (4) it should be possible to pass Build Points up and down from the kingdom level to individual dominions and vice versa, but possibly inefficient to do so.
My current thinking is that the rules can mostly be used as-is. Hexes that are part of a subdominion don't count as part of the larger dominion for purposes of determining Command DCs, so it makes it easier to administer a large kingdom to break off chunks as baronies or counties or whatever. They do count for contiguity requirements. (I'm not sure if they should count for purposes of the increased benefits of being a duke/duchess or king/queen--I'm inclined to think not, but I would be happy to hear other people's thoughts.)
Typically, the feudal grant of land would require a payment of BP from the servient dominion to the larger dominion. So a King might give a countess a county on the condition that she give him 10% of the BP that her dominion generates, or a fixed number, or whatever else he wants to insist on. I assume that there would be no enforced mechanism to transfer those BPs, however; if the countess decides not to pay her feudal duties, the King would have to take action to compel the payment, or let them slide. (Perhaps there should be consequences to stability/unrest? If the Kingdom is high loyalty, then it might produce penalties if the king issues an edict? I'm not sure if there should be rules here or not.) Likewise, sometimes a King might want to transfer BP down, in particular in the same way that the PCs start with BPs in Kingmaker--"here, have a grant of land and X BPs to get you started. Build it into something useful."
I figure that if a ruling noble (say, a baron) is also holding down a royal council position (say, as the kingdom's general), then they would need to appoint a steward/seneschal who would act as the "ruler" of the barony while the actual baron is busy performing kingdom-wide duties. Perhaps there should be a penalty to the steward's stat to represent the lack of authority? Or perhaps the baron should be permitted to apply their own stat-modifier at a penalty? Not sure. Obviously, a co-ruler spouse could act as ruler without any penalty (unless the spouse is also a member of the royal council).
Trade within a kingdom should be possible, at whatever rates the respective rulers agree to. So if the Barony of Farmland wants to trade 12 points worth of consumption to the County of Crafts for 4 BP, that's fine as long as they agree on the price. Some events (or high instability) might disrupt trade, though, and you need to have a road connection. Other nobles can apply tariffs and such, but that's all up to the individual nobles, whether PC or NPCs.
Are there other major things I'm missing (besides military duties, which I assume will make more sense to discuss after the mass combat rules come out)?
I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts about these ideas.