So I've been wondering how other people's kingdoms are developing? Currently my group just hit fifty something hexes and started in on Book 3.We're using the rules as is, with no changes as of yet.
Right now they currently have five cities, with one or two close to needing another city district map. They are selling magic items out of each city (4xMajor, 1xMinor). They just laid the groundwork for city six.
The scores for the checks are hovering between 70-90 for the various three stats.To speed up the checks, I'm allowing them to take 10s as long as they have no unrest or it's not an event check.
Farms are currently enough where they don't pay consumption on any of their holdings.
Every hex has been roaded over.
For unrest, they had some trouble during book two when a certain troublemaker came to town and they got some bad events rolls. I think it got up to five or six at one point.
Just wondering how things are developing in other games?
We've only just started book 2 and had one foray into the southern part of the greenbelt. At the moment we're at 10 hexes with only the initial city at Oleg's. They're trying to get to Tatzlford but are claiming hexes faster than they should and some of their rolls are needing some good numbers to pass. With some recent bad events (and the troublemaker coming soon) I expect they'll have some serious issues on their hands.
Oh and I forgot to mention, they are in month 36-40 of kingdom building for my guys. Total time in game so far something like 4 years. Took them a while to explore in the first book and they made a couple trips back to Restov if I remember right.
Oh and I forgot to mention, they are in month 36-40 of kingdom building for my guys. Total time in game so far something like 4 years. Took them a while to explore in the first book and they made a couple trips back to Restov if I remember right.
My group only took a couple months to finish book 1 but had a year's worth of kingdom building before starting book 2. Right now, I think they're about 17-18 months in from the start of the AP. I expect they'll take the winters "off" to do kingdom building and only do their exploration in the summers. We'll probably be somewhere on the order of 4-5 years before getting into book 3 (assuming they last that long).
Just finished Book 2 with 30 claimed hexes, month 31 since the start of the campaign. We're talking of doing a year of kingdom building like the book suggests.
I like hearing how everyone's campaign is going haven't started ours yet. I can't wait though and my group is pretty anxious also.
Thnx,
PJ
My group is about a quarter of the way into book 2, and has done 16 kingdom building turns so far (in general, we do two kingdom building turns per session) . In book 1, they made a beeline for the Stag Lord's Fort, nearly resulting in a TPK, but giving them the opportunity to start kingdom building before completely clearing out book 1. Stumbling back and forth between exploring the northern and southern Greenbelt has consistently set them against opponents nearly too tough for them, resulting in plenty of close calls and great entertainment for a sadistic GM.
They've claimed 14 hexes, have 8 road hexes, and too few farms to adequately offset their consumption. They have two cities, a capital at the Stag Lord's Fort (that cheap castle was too much for them to pass up), and another city at Oleg's.
While they've managed to keep their unrest at 0, the net increase of their treasury has been about 2 BP per turn, which is starting to frustrate the players.
After a difficult encounter with a will-o-wisp on a frozen river in a blizzard, the group is considering taking winters off from adventuring.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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My group is likewise deciding that winter adventuring is absolutely not the most wonderful time of the year. Maybe it was the ambush by a barghest with worg-mounted spriggans along a frozen river. That, or having to blow all their low-level spells on endure elements.
My group has played through, I believe 25 kingdom turns. We actually rarely run the kingdom turns at the table. Usually the player running the ruler talks to the other players, then he and I run through the kingdom turns by IM and/or email. Email updates are sent out about magic items in the city queue that are being sold through the city districts. The kingdom has three cities - one at Oleg's, one at the Temple of the Elk, and one at the Stag Lord's fort. They have been very conservative in terms of building tons of farms and doing all they can to avoid having any consumption and keeping their rolls maxed. As a result, they usually only fail kingdom checks on a 1.
The group has finished #2, but they are doing a sidetrek to explore Candlemere, which I have expanded by plopping a leveled-up Foxglove Manor from Skinsaw Murders onto the island... along replacing the ruined tower with a certain Shadow Clock from the same adventure... :) It's been a fun and interesting diversion and seemed to fit well with the crazy/creepy vibe of Candlemere.
They have also negotiated a border treaty with Varnhold, and after meeting the baron in person in Restov one of the PCs became pregnant with Varn's child and is engaged to be wed to him. A leveled-up version of the Goody Niska event (we just never got around to it) and KM #3 awaits... (poor girl)
... a sidetrek to explore Candlemere, which I have expanded by plopping a leveled-up Foxglove Manor from Skinsaw Murders onto the island... along replacing the ruined tower with a certain Shadow Clock from the same adventure... :) It's been a fun and interesting diversion and seemed to fit well with the crazy/creepy vibe of Candlemere.
I'm stealing that. :D
I've been looking for ways to make Candlemere more interesting and since we're never likely to play through RotR I may as well lift some of the elements of that and lightly season Kingmaker to my own taste.
... a sidetrek to explore Candlemere, which I have expanded by plopping a leveled-up Foxglove Manor from Skinsaw Murders onto the island... along replacing the ruined tower with a certain Shadow Clock from the same adventure... :) It's been a fun and interesting diversion and seemed to fit well with the crazy/creepy vibe of Candlemere.
I'm stealing that. :D
I've been looking for ways to make Candlemere more interesting and since we're never likely to play through RotR I may as well lift some of the elements of that and lightly season Kingmaker to my own taste.
I'm doing something similar as well though with a more "ancient evil" feel to it. Using the haunt rules in the GMG, I have a small (4-ish room) complex that is complete with visions of tentacled horrors, insane cultists and the like. The only "real" creature besides the will-o-wisps is a gibbering mouther in the lower level.
Yeah I'm really finding that with the xp in the books, it's pretty difficult to add anything extra into the game. They got to Varnhold and they are maybe 4k from leveling to 8 and still haven't finished exploring the town. Although the rest of book 3 looks like an area where things might slow down xp wise, so maybe I'll throw some of my own concoctions in to the book.
Just wondering Jason, how many cities are your guys planning on building? My guys weren't planning on that many, but then decided to build on top of the abandoned ferry south of Stag Lord's fort, then the Tazlford city showed up, and now they are building a city to be closer to the Varnhold area (for a relief column, to spur trade, to provide a good base for the conquering army...all three ideas are getting thrown around!)
Along with the three you mentioned, those three ran the total up to six pretty fast. Once those major items start selling,things just start rolling!
Also, what are some of the names people have come up with for Kingdoms and Cities? Mine are below.
Kingdom: New Freeland (Don't ask why it's new when there wasn't an Old one...)
Cities: Fort Javelin (Stag Lord's Keep), Stag's Rest (Old Temple of Erastil), Olegton, Tazlford, Fey Wild, and Freehold
I run two groups, but the second one hasn't finished part 1 yet.
My first group (two players with two PCs each) has finished 16 months of kingdom building and has the following:
Alignment LN
Size 15
3 cities: Oldport (Stag Fort, capital), Beta (Oleg's), Charlie (Tatzlford). Beta and Charlie will probably get named eventually.
Oldport has 3 districts with the Shrike running through the middle one for flavor reasons.
They have enough farms to not have much/any consumption and almost every hex has roads.
It's not so much of a kingdom though, it's more of an empire with power shared by the party sorcerer and the wizard. The sorcerer fills the ruler role and the wizard the magister one. The party barbarian is general and the cleric fills the role of councilor. Of other known NPCs they have Oleg as treasurer, Kesten as warden and Happs as marshal. The remaining roles they filled with NPCs they recruited from Restov as they didn't want any NPC who didn't want the role they were offered. (Thus Akiros, Svetlana, Jhod etc were told they weren't wanted).
Party just hit lvl 6 while doing PF Module City of Golden Death which I placed on Candlemere. (Party has also done Crypt of the Everflame and Mask of the Living God earlier.
We're using some of the house rules Jason Nelson shared (thanks!) and have added some of our own. Since there are quite a bit of useless hexes we've ruled that they can "claim" a hex for free, but it doesn't add anything and you can't use anything in it until you pay to claim it (meaning a claimed hex is actually settled, but a "claimed" hex is just saying "this is our land" without settling it). This is is mainly to make a prettier map of the Empire's borders.^^
We also have a rule that there's a 5% chance any item below 4000gp gets sold each month without requiring an economy check.
I use CC3 to map their progress with the Paizo maps as background and place the map icons provided in the AP as they explore. Since I can't share it with Paizo's stuff included here's a stripped down version.
Map
The Stag's Fort is in hex 3603, Oleg's in 3701 and Restov in 5200. X marks explored hexes.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Yeah I'm really finding that with the xp in the books, it's pretty difficult to add anything extra into the game. They got to Varnhold and they are maybe 4k from leveling to 8 and still haven't finished exploring the town. Although the rest of book 3 looks like an area where things might slow down xp wise, so maybe I'll throw some of my own concoctions in to the book.
My PCs were around 4th-5th level when they started the AP due to running Crypt of Everflame, a little bit of Masks of the Living God, then a good slice on (I kid you not) Keep on the Borderlands! Some stuff I've up-leveled (or just ad-hoc added an advanced or giant template to), some things run as is. I'm not really tracking xp, though; we just level up whenever I feel like it (though I did put the brakes on at 8th level until they "finished" Rivers Run Red with the owlbear). So, they are 9th now. The Skinsaw stuff I've mostly run as is, though increasing the DCs and effective level for the haunts by 3. They also just met a string of 4 will o'wisps in the manor while dealing with one of the haunts, and there are more down below.
So, in short, it's easier to add in extra stuff when you aren't counting every xp. The players are fine with the advancement rate, so it's all good.
Just wondering Jason, how many cities are your guys planning on building? My guys weren't planning on that many, but then decided to build on top of the abandoned ferry south of Stag Lord's fort, then the Tazlford city showed up, and now they are building a city to be closer to the Varnhold area (for a relief column, to spur trade, to provide a good base for the conquering army...all three ideas are getting thrown around!)
The ruler is a number cruncher and wants to be extra-cautious with avoiding consumption and so is reticent to add cities. They started at Oleg's (Northgate), added the temple in the forest as a city (Elk Run) which Jhod and his Erastil followers cleared for them for free due to some things they did in the campaign, and then built their capital at the Stag Lord fort (Caer Sego). They've been stuck on that number for over a year in game terms, but are getting ready to plant a few more cities:
- the "free piers" hex at the river junction
- Lake Silverstep (where the river hits it; Varnhold has built a city on the other side of the lake)
- the fey-haunted ruined keep in the forest (the BP bonus for killing the trolls was turned into a targeted grant from Restov to built some kind of fortification in the southern Narlmarches to keep the area pacified)
- they have long considered building a city on the island in Candlemere, but that will take clearing the hex first, of course, which is currently in progress...
They aren't big expanders but are actually starting to worry about Mivon on the southern border. None of the regular players, except for one new guy, are really Paizo-ites, so they don't follow the boards or have any real expectation of what the plotline of the AP is other than "build a kingdom." They are also concerned that Grigori was sent by rogue elements in northern Brevoy looking to mess with the colonization efforts by southern Brevoy. Misdirection aplenty!
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Yeah I'm really finding that with the xp in the books, it's pretty difficult to add anything extra into the game. They got to Varnhold and they are maybe 4k from leveling to 8 and still haven't finished exploring the town. Although the rest of book 3 looks like an area where things might slow down xp wise, so maybe I'll throw some of my own concoctions in to the book.My PCs were around 4th-5th level when they started the AP due to running Crypt of Everflame, a little bit of Masks of the Living God, then a good slice on (I kid you not) Keep on the Borderlands! Some stuff I've up-leveled (or just ad-hoc added an advanced or giant template to), some things run as is. I'm not really tracking xp, though; we just level up whenever I feel like it (though I did put the brakes on at 8th level until they "finished" Rivers Run Red with the owlbear). So, they are 9th now. The Skinsaw stuff I've mostly run as is, though increasing the DCs and effective level for the haunts by 3. They also just met a string of 4 will o'wisps in the manor while dealing with one of the haunts, and there are more down below.
So, in short, it's easier to add in extra stuff when you aren't counting every xp. The players are fine with the advancement rate, so it's all good.
Just wondering Jason, how many cities are your guys planning on building? My guys weren't planning on that many, but then decided to build on top of the abandoned ferry south of Stag Lord's fort, then the Tazlford city showed up, and now they are building a city to be closer to the Varnhold area (for a relief column, to spur trade, to provide a good base for the conquering army...all three ideas are getting thrown around!)The ruler is a number cruncher and wants to be extra-cautious with avoiding consumption and so is reticent to add cities. They started at Oleg's (Northgate), added the temple in the forest as a city (Elk Run) which Jhod and his Erastil followers cleared for them for free due to some...
sounds fun!
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My players have just finished book 2 and have about 28 hexes of kingdom. They've been expanding slowly, as in their opionion it's more efficient to claim few hexes and build up a city rather than sprawl out. They're up to the point now where they're feeling comfortable enough to have some proper expansion, so they'll hopefully be increasing their size quite rapidly at this point. They have three cities, Stag's End (Capital, Stag Lord's Fort), Dragon's Tail (Oleg's) and Gladewall (Temple of the Elk). They've also made their way over to Tazlford, but not actually annexed it as yet. Due to a few custom events they're a bit ahead of the XP curve (maybe about half a level or so) but I'm not sweating it. The progress will even out eventually, and I can always power up encounters if I feel like it.
We're using some of the house rules Jason Nelson shared (thanks!) and have added some of our own.
Interesting... Link?
We're using some of the house rules Jason Nelson shared (thanks!) and have added some of our own.Interesting... Link?
Sure, I was talking about these ones in the thread here.
Sure, I was talking about these ones in the thread here.
Thanks!