Anyone's group have a hard time with starting their kingdom ?

[LordClammy]

hey everyone,

the group I am running this for (who love this AP so far, as do I)have just finnished the first part. now moving into RRR. I did some simulations and both of my attempts ended in with unrest running high enough to spiral out of control.

now I am using Jason's suggestions about what to give the players (IE. not giving them what the buildings do, but just their cost, etc), however, I knew what the buildings did for the kingdom, and both still failed.

anyone else having an issue?

I know my players will likely surprise me and rock this part, but I am a little scared for them. lol.

[Grendel Todd]

We've effectively played two groups through about two game-years in my campaign, and I certainly understand your worries. If folks aren't careful, or have a run of bad luck, Kingdoms can run into a death-spiral amazingly quickly. Our saving grace seems to be the optional "Knuckle down" rule that was suggested in the consolidated rules/errata list as a possible house rule, whereby PCs can add +4 to their leadership bonus to the kingdom if they focus on only Kingdom management for that month (ie. no adventuring, crafting, Profession checks, etc). There seems to be several "plateaus" in Kingdom development that can get dangerous (for us it was right around Size 10-12), which, if the party isn't careful about building their cities up in line with their overall kingdom growth, they may run into trouble.

[LordClammy]

I hadn't seen that knuckle down rule. that may be what helps them in the early years. thanks.

[powerfamiliar]

My players spent too much money on Festivals and Promotions early on while focusing on economic buildings. This didn't quite work out and they ran out of BPs really fast. They now cut down on festivals/promotions, but because they focused on mostly economic buildings they are failing their stability check very often.

They do seem to be doing better now, being net positive on most turns.

[PJ]

powerfamiliar wrote:

My players spent too much money on Festivals and Promotions early on while focusing on economic buildings. This didn't quite work out and they ran out of BPs really fast. They now cut down on festivals/promotions, but because they focused on mostly economic buildings they are failing their stability check very often.

They do seem to be doing better now, being net positive on most turns.

I haven't started our campaign yet. I too was concerned that kingdom building was going to be a catastrophic failure.

[Caineach]

The test kingdoms I ran got off to a smooth, steady start that continued to build. Even dropping half the money on repairing the castle first thing, none dropped below 20 before becoming stable. If you don't expand every round, build farms, and fill all the rulership positions, I'm not sure how it is a problem, unless you get hit with a couple particularly nasty events early on. Its even been shown that with 5 BP starting capital you can get steadily growing nations.

[Warforged Gardener]

Our group did have some issues with bad luck and a very expensive town hall right off the start, but after a year of drudgery and making careful decisions, they leveled out and can finally start their second town. Make sure they're mindful of vacancy penalties, and that their checks get harder the more they expand. Sometimes it takes a few months of slow growth in the treasury before adding more hexes or buildings is advisable.

[LordClammy]

what info did you all give your players ?

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Remember to introduce NPCs who they might be interested in granting leadership roles, having someone in the role (even just to remove the penalty) is a handy thing to have.

Also if they're running low on BP putting a rumour out about a fabulous treasure might be an idea. 4k worth of treasure = 1 BP, so figure out how much BPs they need and then send them a-questing.

[thenovalord]

mine struggled for a bit with some bad event rolls, i think an early disaster caused havoc

dont expand too early as u just dont have the farmland

now they have a building that produces a major item and are about 25 hexes big. finsihsed RRR so will start TVV before they have got anywhere near 50 hexes

[Gallifrey]

half my players are from noble houses... so they decided that building themselves a castle was the most important thing, so there went half their BP right away. from there they kept going, about half way through their first year they gained unrest from negative BP. all in all though that was the best way for my party to learn, they then cut back and balanced their books, got a bit of surplus going, and then they managed to get enough farms to reduce consumption to 0. Still the best thing was that I ruled that they could use their hero points for kingdom rolls, the general rolls stability, the baron rolls loyalty, the marshal economy, and I roll out event rolls. So my players actually had a good surplus of hero points at the start of the year and then they had to use them to bail out the kingdom.

[molten_dragon]

My group's kingdom is actually running away in the other direction. They are about 25% done with the Varnhold Vanishing and have spent about 3 years in-game time building up their kingdom. They've been wildly successful right from the start. Their kingdom stats are:

68 hexes, all with roads
6 towns, one of which has expanded into a second city grid
consumption is almost nil, due to smart farm building
Their control DC is 88, while their kingdom 'saves' range from 101-109 (i.e. they can't fail except on a 1)
They're averaging a BP income of around 120 BP/month, mostly due to their ability to automatically sell the large numbers of major magic items that their cities generate.

I think in the future I would do what was suggested in the OP and not give them exactly what each building does, just what they are and what they cost. My PCs had full access to what each building did, and two of them are hardcore RTS gamers, so they talked a lot out of game and came up with an optimized growth path for their kingdom (I wish I was kidding) that led to what you see above. They're having fun with it though, so I can't really complain. I think I am going to buff up the mass combat fights in War of the River kings to challenge them more though.