One of my players is having to drop out of my regular group for reasons of school and sleep, but is still very invested in the game, so we discussed it, and I've agreed to set up a side-game for him involving him taking over one of the Kingdom's settlements as a vassal-state to the primary Kingdom. Now this isn't something covered well (if at all) within the Kingdom-building rules, despite said rules being built theoretically on the feudal model, so I thought i'd field thoughts from my piers here while tossing out how the experiment is going.
As those who may have noted some of my prior posts, I had started out with two excessively large groups and using troupe-style play, but with the advent of school and life and such, one group combusted and the other has since shrunk to a reasonable (if classic) four player party. The large pool of npcs they've encountered has helped keep multiple courts stocked, and thus should help in filling out the new vassal court, but I'm wondering if all the posts really need be filled if the client state should be considered less than a barony, or just follow the rules as stated and see how it goes.
Personally, I don't see any conflict in the rules for what you propose.
The PC controls a city and a some hexes around it to maintain supplies. Perhaps the greater realm grants a particular area to the barony that it can't grow out of - say 10 hexes or so at max. The Baron can do whatever he feels like in those hexes (within the greater laws), and must come support the greater ruler whenever needed (up to a certain number of weeks per year). In return, the greater realm protects the Baron with the larger armies it can support.
Oh, and I'd have the Baron need to pay some BP to the greater ruler, whether that payment is monthly, every 3 months, 6 months, or whatever. That can be worked out as part of the negotiations. Personally, I'd take no less than a tithe as the liege lord. It's good to be king. :)
One point that occurred to me is the idea of the "Knight's fee," the minimum period of service a liege-lord typically expected from his knight, and using it as an excuse to have the Vassal lord being sent off on adventures, diplomatic jobs, a little spying now and again (he was the parent state's Spymaster & Royal Assassin at various different points, before his elevation in station), rather than burdening him with BP payments (a practice Kings came into later on, which ultimately is one of the causes of the feudal system's collapse) - once he gets his kingdom up and running I was thinking of giving him the option of "buying off" his service so he can focus on his own goals more, but I don't want to burden him too much at the start when BP is tight. I like the idea of capping expansion - given he's starting with the city established around the Elk Temple, I was thinking of letting him expand into the north and west (at least as far as the Hooktongue Slough) plains from the Narlmarches. Once the kingdom is making more than it needs, I can see the parent state imposing taxes & licensing fees in leu of odd jobs.
His biggest challenge starting out will just be recruiting his courtiers & retinue. Being only 4th level, Leadership is right out, so he'll have to play diplomat with the major factions remaining in that area - the Erastil worshipers and the "repentant" bandits currently acting as "city watch." That, and coming up with enough money to support himself month by month (I've been watching a lot of historical miniseries where the aristocrats are perpetually near bankruptcy, so I'm quite happy to apply those particular thumbscrews to the assumption that just because you rule the state will support you).
This is a really cool way to keep someone who is otherwise sidelined for a time in the game, even if they must be remote from the group.
Please feel free to let us know as much information as possible, as I always like minigame sorts of mechanics for PCs in the organization/empire building and/or strategic side of things.
As to be expected with a solo-game, the mini-barony of Elkholm is now running about a month ahead of the main group, and another player (who has no interest in joining the regular game) has signed on as his First Knight and taken a classic 1200 acre fief outside the settlement in return for service, which brought me to another quandary.
The rules as written allow for a hex to be established as only one thing at a time. You can have a farm hex, or a city hex, but not both, but a city hex can have as many districts as it can hold (roughly 144 districts, given 1 district = 1 square mile, and each hex is roughly 144 square miles). Not so, of course, for the farm hexes, which is more of a generalized effect on the hex itself, not affected by subdivision of hex.
Now I can understand the rule that you can't stack both for purposes of encouraging Kingdom expansion, but any serious reading on the subject (and I've been doing a lot of reading... what can I say, it's a hobby) shows that medieval/feudal farms are almost always set up around settlements, not generically spread independently across a region. You get that pattern in Iron Age europe and other parts of the world, but not in medieval europe or England, where farm settlement patterns center around manorial estates & castles, usually with a small village surrounding them (which sounds allot like most starting Kingmaker settlements to me). Add to that the fact that frequently settlements would be about a day's walk apart, and that in a fantasy setting like Pathfinder you have high odds that monsters, bandits or wild animals will harass the unfortunate likely at least once a month (1-5% a day in settled lands still stand good odds that within 30 days some poor peasant will find something nasty sooner or later to fret about), and it makes even more sense that most pioneers would prefer to settle as close to protection as possible, rather than live free and comfortable off by themselves where they could be gobbled by Trolls & none would be the wiser for days or weeks later.
Given all that, I'm considering the following changes: rather than disallowing city & farm hex sharing, I’m thinking of making it a requirement (possibly extending it to requiring that all farms must be within one hex of a settlement). If a hex gets half-filled with districts, I’d cut the Consumption reduction to 1, and remove the farm quality from a hex is maxed out in districts. Upshot, I’m anticipating a lot more mini-settlements (appropriate for minor lordlings and their manorial estates, small towns, etc) rather than a small number of super-cities that spring out of nowhere, and more realistic settlement distribution.
I’m also considering jiggering the costs on Mills, Granaries and other settlement essentials. At this point the Kingdom rules, at least in how they’re being used, establish a magic item-based economy as the way to go for getting bps, as opposed to something more realistic, like food production. Perhaps giving such buildings a quality to increase farm consumption by one for the first one built in each district? Anyway, that’s where my thinking is on changing things around to make the rules more feudal, and less magic-item sell-dependent.
Thoughts?
You could break down the one-hex fief into sub-scaled stuff - say that the settlement takes up (x) "mini hexes" (out of the 144) with the rest of the hexes being available as 0.01 versions of the norm.
You could break down the one-hex fief into sub-scaled stuff - say that the settlement takes up (x) "mini hexes" (out of the 144) with the rest of the hexes being available as 0.01 versions of the norm.
Given that cities are the only part of the KM system that subdivide well (outside of establishing smaller maps for adventuring purposes), there's not much benefit in getting too clever with the math.
This sounds amazing. I like what you're doing!