Encouraging Roleplay in Kingdom Leadership

[Sect]

I'm going to start with an example: in the last session of Kingmaker that I ran, the party began recruiting NPCs to temporarily fill slots for their fledgling kingdom's leadership until they could either find someone better suited, more willing, or until they decide that they want to keep them. For the treasurer position, they asked a travelling merchant who was a cousin of one of the PCs, who agreed to do so for a short while.

After the game, though, the players came back to me and said that they wanted to replace him with the PC played by a guest player, a witch who, after the first two sessions, stayed near Oleg's creating and selling alchemical items. From a roleplay perspective, this is, frankly, illogical, but the fact of the matter is is that the PC grants a higher modifier than the merchant.

So, what can I do to encourage players to build their kingdom less around optimization, and more around roleplay, aside from not giving them the rules in the first place (which I already have)? Can I grant bonuses if a leader is well suited in their position, or penalties if that leader knows jack all about what he's doing?

[wraithstrike]

Sect wrote:

I'm going to start with an example: in the last session of Kingmaker that I ran, the party began recruiting NPCs to temporarily fill slots for their fledgling kingdom's leadership until they could either find someone better suited, more willing, or until they decide that they want to keep them. For the treasurer position, they asked a travelling merchant who was a cousin of one of the PCs, who agreed to do so for a short while.

After the game, though, the players came back to me and said that they wanted to replace him with the PC played by a guest player, a witch who, after the first two sessions, stayed near Oleg's creating and selling alchemical items. From a roleplay perspective, this is, frankly, illogical, but the fact of the matter is is that the PC grants a higher modifier than the merchant.

So, what can I do to encourage players to build their kingdom less around optimization, and more around roleplay, aside from not giving them the rules in the first place (which I already have)? Can I grant bonuses if a leader is well suited in their position, or penalties if that leader knows jack all about what he's doing?

If the guest was not meant to be a permanent party member then they should decline the offer, since they are an NPC now you can do that. For future characters they might not have an interest in ruling, and if the players insist there should be clause such as payment(who wants to do something they don't enjoy for free?), or they may have heard about the way the other NPC was replaced, and they may not agree unless they get a contract that says they can't be fired for so many months or years unless they do something wrong. There could also be a clause to buy the contract out.

In short, just because the PC's want a certain NPC that does not mean he has to readily agree.

[Caineach]

From a roleplaying perspective, you can have these characters offer suggestions to the party. The witch, for instance, may be good at getting the money (economy bonus) but may insist that that money be spent in certain ways that are not bennefficial to the overall kingdom. She may leave if she is ignored enough, since no one wants to stay in a position where they are not wanted. That merchant on the other hand could insist on roads, shops, and give solid advice. Remember, these positions are kind of the advisory council and city leaders, so they are people who should be listened too.

Annother thing I am adding (but still working on) is the ability for leaders to use relevant skills to mitigate negative effects. Allowing something like a DC20 proffession merchant to reroll a kingdom event roll that would be detrimental to the ecconomy. Proffession soldier could allow annother stability check against bandit raids. My players are already taking skills like this, so I am looking for ways to reward them, but as you have just pointed out to me I should give the NPCs these too. The ability to reroll something could easily offset a +1 or +2.

[tlc_web tlc_web]

I can give you some advice that have worked well for me in keeping the PCs focused on roleplaying the recruitment. But bear in mind, the PCs are going to always try to optimize.

1) OOC make it clear to the players that when they reach the kingdom building section they need to have some reliable trustworthy NPCs in mind to fill positions. The reason I did this is that gamers can sometimes have very weird decisions in what details they remember, and NPCs names and personalities are often the biggest losers in situation. Because I pre-warned my PCs that they would need to keep this in mind they were watching NPCs for potential value as leaders from the start.
--- This bit of advice may be too late for you, but very useful for some just starting.

2) Make the players roleplay the recruitment of each NPC. You might handwave someone like the easy going and helpful Svetlana, but Oleg is a CG hater of the oppression of civilization and Kesten is likely a bit of a rich military brat who is very self interested. Neither of these guys should just sign up. And if the PCs introduced new NPCs based on their background, then use what PCs provided in the background to determine what they would do. Do not rely on the PCs to tell you that the NPCs would jump all over this oppurtunity.

3) EVERYONE OF THE LEADERSHIP POSITIONS HAVE THE POTENTIAL FOR EMBELZEMENT, CORRUPTION, OR PORK BELLY SPENDING ON PET PROJECTS!!! If the PCs are just picking NPCs based on stats and not a through interview and investigation. Even good NPCs could do this (they would more likely do it because they want to give it to charity or pet projects). Start rolling the Economic stat secretly and taking a few BP out every month if the PCs sloppily recruited an NPC. You should send them rumors that lead back to the NPC. But above all make it clear to your PCs that if they recruit the wrong NPCs their corruptive behavior could cost them BP Here are some examples of how it could happen:
--- Councilor: As the go between the rulers and the people the Councilor could be telling the citizens to donate all their spare money to a Crusade in another land.
--- Grand Diplomat: The Grand Diplomat basically handles all the details of hosting envoys. The Grand Diplomat could tell the Teasurer that doing this cost X, when it really cost 1/2 of X and pocket the difference.
--- Magister & High Priest: They could do the same thing as the Grand Diplomat, but with librarys and ceremonies
--- Spymaster, Royal Assasin, Warden, and Marshal: Thieves could be bribing them to look the other way as they rob your peasantry. Because the thieves are stealling the community's resources this could manifest itself as reduced BP production.
--- Teasurer: He could just outright steal it.

[Erik Freund]

In my game, changing out the leadership board causes unrest. (Namely, 1 for Baronies, 2 for Duchies, and 3 for Kingdoms - smaller communities can handle change more easily.) Some might consider this punative, but *shrug*.

I also tie the event table to specific PCs. They can use various skills to assist themselves in making rolls. For example, our Treasurer gets a lot of use out of Appraise when the relevant check comes up.

One other thing I do (that admittedly I'm reconsidering) is that characters can use their action points on the relevant kingdom rolls. So my aforementioned Treasurer burns through some d6s when she really wants the Economy roll to pass for the month.

Finally, I give out bonus feats every winter (yes, inspired from Pendragon). These feats are pretty restricted (Fighters can't choose combat feats, Wizards can't choose metamagic feats, etc) but in addition to miscellanious feats, I also allow special kingdom-specific feats (cribbed from another thread on this forum) that they would be unlikely to consider taking otherwise. Here a PC can effectively "learn to be a better Treasurer."

It's all about tying a PC to the role, and making her feel invested in it, rather than it being plug-and-play. Once you get her identity wrapped up in "being the Treasurer" she'll naturally start to RP it out.

From a fluff POV, whenever the PCs are back in town, I throw in little descriptions about "so-and-so complains to you about taxes" or "so-and-so thanks you for building a park so he and his wife can go for walks there." This helps reinforce the player's identity-as-Treasurer, and she responds in-kind.

[J.S.]

I'm not sure if I can put this properly without sounding like a jerk, but if it's illogical from a RP perspective, then it is illogical, and should be treated as such.

Give them the bonus, then shove it down their collectives throats.

If it's an RP problem, the only real solution is an RP one. I don't know why it's illogical, but whatever that is should come up and become a problem, challenge, or event for the PCs to deal with in an RP sense.

[Wrath]

I'd also not tell them the stats. Any position not being run by a PC can be run by you instead, including all dice rolls. That way they can't optimise as they have no clue how good or bad a stat is until events start unfolding on the way a person is managing things.

The other thing to consider is how much effort you want to put into the kingdom running side of things. If the roleplay of that is immportant, then having good roleplay reasons for employing NPC's should be there also. However, if you're just brushing over the Kingdom running stuff, then maybe worrying over roleply reasons and logic behind NPC hiring isn't that big a deal.

In my RL group, when we play this AP they'll just brish over the kingdom running part, so I'll randomly assign stats to areas being run by NPC's. For my PbP game though, I reckon there'll be more roleplay involved.

Cheers