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I had expected the kingdom building portion of Kingmaker to bring its own special type of fun to the Adventure Path, much like building up forces in an RTS or the Villa in Assassin's Creed 2, but so far it's just been really, REALLY boring! Everyone likes constructing a kingdom, but whenever we get to the actual process the game grinds to halt.
Has anyone else had similar issues or found ways to spice up the process?
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Use an excel sheet to handle most of it?
I run two KM games (currently on hiatus), but only one group has come to the building part.
One of my players (who's also my GM in SS) came up with the idea to have a city grow more naturally, instead of PCs having to decide every single district. And perhaps only intervene in certain processes.
I'm not sure if we'll ever come down to it, but we played with the idea of rewriting the whole kingdom building and ruling rules to be more similar to how it's handled in Paradox games like the Europa Universalis, Victoria or Hearts of Iron series.
Then you can have (depending on your type of rule) capitalists fund and decide what should be built (kinda like kingdom in the background), ruling PCs give guidelines, or whatnot.
Either way I think it's a process that should be discussed between players and GM on how they want to handle it.
edit: as for the boring part... I'm sure it can be acted out, have NPCs become more involved. Bring in factions or similar to influence various decisions etc.
There is actually an excel sheet already made, that does about 90% of the work for you. If you want it I can get you a link to it.
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There is actually an excel sheet already made, that does about 90% of the work for you. If you want it I can get you a link to it.
Saw it, loved it, got it ;] Thanks for the help though. I think not having to spend so much time with pencil and paper will help, but I was mostly wondering if anyone had any role play-oriented tactics they liked to use to make things fun.
There is actually an excel sheet already made, that does about 90% of the work for you. If you want it I can get you a link to it.Saw it, loved it, got it ;] Thanks for the help though. I think not having to spend so much time with pencil and paper will help, but I was mostly wondering if anyone had any role play-oriented tactics they liked to use to make things fun.
During certain events such as the assassination or monster attacks I let those be played out just to add some action if it is needed. My group does not mind the building, but if they did, that is what I would do.
We delegate the kingdom building to one player who loves it. The GM runs about 4 months at a time between sessions with the player and others give him feedback on what to do. It allows for a pace that can keep up some interest. Also, the GM makes the kingdom events generally grow out of what's going on in the kingdom- so the player will generate the events, then the main group will deal with them.
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We delegate the kingdom building to one player who loves it. The GM runs about 4 months at a time between sessions with the player and others give him feedback on what to do. It allows for a pace that can keep up some interest. Also, the GM makes the kingdom events generally grow out of what's going on in the kingdom- so the player will generate the events, then the main group will deal with them.
This is pretty intriguing, as we'd had some vaguely similar ideas recently. Do you get feedback from other players during your sessions, or do you just keep in touch with them in-between to find out what they might like to see? What to build next is basically the ONLY thing the rest of my group is really interested in :p Doing a few months between games seems like a great idea, as we've had a tendency to clump the kingdom building into few-and-far-between marathon building sessions.
What I've mostly done is to relegate the kingdom building to in between sessions. We use email extensively, and the Kingdom sheet is up on a wiki site for everyone to see/edit (though that being said, they've left the editing up to me the DM). It gives us something fun to do during work hours, since it takes all of 2 minutes to respond to an email, and allows for extensive discussion without bogging down the game or eating precious session time.
Every once in a while, we have to do a kingdom month in the middle of the session, but it's worked out quite well for us. We can usually cover about a month per day - sometimes two if there's no events that need handling. (Obviously, for these off-session events, I avoid ones that require direct PC intervention, such as the assassination event. Should one come up, I'll be sure to pause the kingdom growth there and save things for the next session.)
Feel free to check out how it is going on our PBP, a tabletop game should go much quicker, but we have all been interested:
>>This is pretty intriguing, as we'd had some vaguely similar ideas recently. Do you get feedback from other players during your sessions, or do you just keep in touch with them in-between to find out what they might like to see? What to build next is basically the ONLY thing the rest of my group is really interested in :p Doing a few months between games seems like a great idea, as we've had a tendency to clump the kingdom building into few-and-far-between marathon building sessions.
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Feedback usually comes from emails or during the "debriefing" after a session is finished. The people who want to head back for the night leave and the rest talk for about 30 minutes more about what they want done.
Good luck!
I ran into this problem with my group as well, but mostly due to lack of player interest in kingdom building. I was the one who had the interest in that aspect, but our original DM and one of our more outgoing role-players moved out of state at basically the same time so I had to take up the reins with one excellent player, two passive players (good players, but more interested in action and diversion rather than in-depth chracter development), and a first time role player. This made the kingdom building process rather boring because only one PC wanted to do anything with it and the rest didn't care.
The first thing I learned with the Kingdom building rules, you have to break it up into smaller parts. Have them do two months and then run an encounter tying in what's happened in the last couple months. Maybe bandits hijacked a shipment of raw material needed by the armorsmith you just built? Maybe an archbishop coming to visit your new cathedral was waylayed by an opposed cult or an evil extraplanar monster? Anything to stop the cycle of abstract rolls. There's a good thread on here that has alternate kingdom encounters, you might find those useful as a starting point to liven up the kingdom building.
Also, it helps to move things along if the players write down a list of what they want to build beforehand so that when it gets to the building time they can just look at the sheet and figure what's most important at that time. It might also help to set up an egg timer and let the players discuss each phase of the kingdom building for only the allotted time and at the end they have to either decide or forfiet the benefits. This might add an extra dimension of reality to the kingdom running as your players realize that not working together makes the government grind to a halt.
One of the ways to liven things up might be to have them actively participate in construction of something their character would like. Even if it's just as simple as getting the cleric to bless the site of a future store or a bard to cut the ribbon at the grand opening it's usually enough to get them a little excited.
I tied in a lot of NPC interaction with the kingdom building times too. Some players liked playing out criminal trials so I started to come up with at least two cases that needed to be tried each month. It needn't be complex, just something that the playes can debate about for five minutes and come to a verdict. I encouraged (in some cases pushed) players to set down roots and start a family or set up a house or business. The PC's managed to save Kundal from his [non spoiler affliction] and I had him start to court one of our female PCs (a ranger/barbarian) by bringing back fresh kills and hides for her. Another PC married his childhood sweetheart and they're trying for children.
Come up with some of the festivals that the kingdom celebrates and have a mini encounter associated with that during the kingdom building times.
Have an NPC approach the PCs and ask them to invest in whatever his business is (i.e. build the associated building), this way they feel like they're actively helping the community because it's got a face and a personality attached.
The most important thing that I can say is to try and make the kingdom building sections as much like normal play as possible. Obviously there is more book keeping and different considerations in mind, but if you've got the spreadsheet you've eliminated one of the chief bogs of the new rules, the rest depends on how well you can integrate them with your style of play.
What I've mostly done is to relegate the kingdom building to in between sessions. We use email extensively, and the Kingdom sheet is up on a wiki site for everyone to see/edit (though that being said, they've left the editing up to me the DM). It gives us something fun to do during work hours, since it takes all of 2 minutes to respond to an email, and allows for extensive discussion without bogging down the game or eating precious session time.
+ 1 for my group. We run monthly games which gives us ample time between each session to play Sim-Kingdom 4700. Weoriginally had it as a part of our game session and it thrashed our entire time allotment so in the interest of finishing the campaign before the age of 60 we have started doing more blog related work and emailing. The additional benefit is that my players keep up the interest in the game between sessions and are ready to really cut loose when we meet up.
Another thing that helps keep the flow going in-game is that we have assigned various NPC's to the tasks of running the kingdom and my players work through those folks between our sessions. That way our adventuring group is still integral to the events transpiring but we don't have to figure out a way to get King Humpty Dumpty out of his tower to adventure in between beet tax season and founders day. Additionally it has made my group very invested in the health, wealth and goals of what I originally planned to be minor background NPC's.
Just curious, but have you tried the Kingdom in the Background (handwave-ism) rules?
I also try and do most of the kingdom building through online, through play-by-post. Seems to work wonders, and the players seem to enjoy the city and kingdom rulership aspect of kingmaker.
I do try and draw the cities/settlements myself, as the standard grid is a bit boring, and that is also appreciated and gives a nice environment for village/city adventures.
There is actually an excel sheet already made, that does about 90% of the work for you. If you want it I can get you a link to it.
Actually, can I get a link to this sheet please? :)
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While we try to work a bit of roleplaying into it, the thing that seemed to draw the most interest is when we started awarding towns to players. The king decides on what goes in the capitol city, but by now we are up to six cities, for six players.
just out of curiosity how many are in your group and where did they build the cities? This sounds like the way to go to give each player a little attachment to the whole kingdom building - like you I play with with a group of 6 and would be a little concerned about "crowding"
At the end of the day, combat's a likewise sort of exercise in math and moving squares around that can equally get boring. The difference is, to my thinking, players understand the risks and drama of the situation. You may need to push the players to see it, either by spicing up the descriptions or incorporating management-specific quests.
While I haven't gotten to do it in KM yet, when dealing with management in other RPGs, the #1 way to get players interested is to let them see the results of decisions they've made.
the economy works in a funny fashion tho.
Ignore farms, they are useless. (Or worse..)
Instead nothing but citydistrics.
Especially important to make it all one big citystate with ultimately 200+ districts.
Another thing to consider is allowing room for that one magic shop in each district, thats what generates the income. Economy is nothing but maintenance + a pittance.
Ofcourse for the magic shop you need atleast one major investment, the academy. Worth considering to do the cathedral first. Yup, right next to the starting castle... funny looking city that ;) Only after castle, cathedral and academy are the two first houses built, with that magic shop.
The key is to have the econ save to handle magic items, but i guess with two rulers and the other officers (fey preferbly) generating hefty bonuses.
Oh and feel free to do overwhelming taxes, 3 monuments cover that.. lol
not what ikki says if you want to make it feel sensible
lots people misread how the economy works IMO
we discuss on a froum what we would like the kingdom to build etc then the 2-3 really keen builders do the donkey work and the less keen roll the dice