A similar argument could be made of any "save the world/kingdom"
campaign.
Well, exactly. Practically all such campaigns since 3.0 suffer from the fact that the world doesn't want to actually be saved, as evidenced by its refusal to actually finance its saviors. This is stupid and immersion-breaking. And I find appaling that people are suggesting to punish the players who finally found their way around that.
Also, in realities of DnD, kingdom is the ruler's property. This is even admitted for NPCs, like Irovetty (or really every bad guy out there). They might not be able to do absolutely everything they want, but they have rather easy time using their kingdoms to fuel their personal ascension schemes. Even Ileosa, who cannot initially just force her will (although eventually she becomes able to). Insisting on treating PCs otherwise is both artificial and unfair.
Finally, not keeping a standing army and instead vasting everything by themselves or with magically-created death squads are just signs of an adventurer-ruler who knows how the world works. He will still want to establish a police force for day-to-day lawkeeping, but spending money on army that, practically by definition, cannot contribute to conflicts which matter, instead of on personal enhancement, which can, is stupid.
You still get any help monetary wise. Now from a RL point of view if there were a group of people trying to save the world I think people would be more than happy to help, but from a game balance point of view I think the players should do it on their own.
You know what? If game balance demands something obviously insane, then the game balance should be fixed, and not everything else. As decoupling wealth from power in the rules is too much work, probably the simplest fix is to admit that PCs can raise as much gold as they need (within reasonable time contraints; scratching the money/item-related kingdom rules, if the kingdom rules are used), but limit magic items they can buy (as item crafting is a perpetual wealth engine in PF anyway, not like restricting other sources of income will matter for it - it will require a separate solution).
Not only do the rules state that kingdom rolls fail on a natural 1, they also state that if unrest exceeds 20, the kingdom breaks apart, and the players LOSE. That one rule has kept my group, who take full advantage of the magic item economy (needed it for the army part of the AP), but used the withdrawal only to round out purchases where they were a few K short.
Sure, they knew that anything but a 1 meant success, but no one was ever willing to bet that they might be the person to roll the 1, thus ending the campaign.
If faced with a rule so bad, I would have kept making rolls, just to see whether the GM has more balls or good sense.
Now, some 50 months into things (kingdom size of 102), they produce 8 major items and 28 medium items, and have 13 city districts in which to sell said items (well, 13 items at least). Barring the odd under-4000gp items which pop up, selling items generally nets them 100+ BP per turn.How LONG does it take to generate all of those items? This is the problem I am running into, interminable hours spend rolling back and forth on the horrid charts. My guys are just getting rolling here, but it takes up a lot of table time to just generate 7 minors and 2 mediums.
Is there a generator out there that speeds this up? It's getting to the point where we just don't care enough about the kingdom to go through the pain of generating all the items. If we were trying to do 25+ items, when would we get to play Pathfinder?
The random item tables from the Gamemastery Guide also help out immensely.
Got you covered. :)
Thank you! :)
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When you first posted this you said a Mac version was in the works. Is it finished?
Got you covered. :)
Unfortunately, I started getting hit with 60-80 hour work weeks almost immediately after I said that, so I have had only an hour or two at home each night since. As soon as my work lets up again, getting a version converted to Mac is next on the list. :) Apologies for the delay!
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Unfortunately, I started getting hit with 60-80 hour work weeks almost immediately after I said that, so I have had only an hour or two at home each night since. As soon as my work lets up again, getting a version converted to Mac is next on the list. :) Apologies for the delay!No apologies needed. Half my group are code monkeys so I'll jst have to crack out my riding crop and whip them into doing it.
If one of them knows some easy instructions for taking a C# windows app and making it mac compatible, have them email me :)
karuikage@karuikage.net
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Unfortunately, I started getting hit with 60-80 hour work weeks almost immediately after I said that, so I have had only an hour or two at home each night since. As soon as my work lets up again, getting a version converted to Mac is next on the list. :) Apologies for the delay!No apologies needed. Half my group are code monkeys so I'll jst have to crack out my riding crop and whip them into doing it.
Just so y’all know, a Mac version of this is highly anticipated. :D
The PC version of this works great, just thought I would let you MAC guys know...
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I personally recommend everyone throw this problemsome step out of your system. I was lucky enough to read the forum and hear all the complaints about this step. So when I ran Kingmaker, I just removed it. I allow my players to cycle out the magic items if they so can find one they want to buy. But that is it.It did not cause trouble in my games, so I am against the "everyone" statement. My advice is to what you need to do for your group. Some will try to cheese the system, and some won't.
This is why I'm not letting the PC's see the sheet for their kingdom. I tell them what buildings provide which bonuses and I give them a rough idea of their BP and consumption. If one area starts to slip, an NPC suggests that they take a certain action to correct it.
Here's where we've made changes. I'm a political science major, and I'm sorry, if your 'score' is really high on things like stability or loyalty, the equivalent of a '1' doesn't fail IRL. Your system is well set-up and it works. Since our DM really wants us to fail on 1's, we also get extra benefits on 20s. So for Econ, a 20 nets 4 extra BPs. For Loyalty, if the roll is for pulling out BPs, we gain no unrest (instead of the little bit that always occurs). For Stability, a 20 also reduces unrest by 2 I think; we haven't ironed everything out yet.
Wish you well on your political science studies. That was my major back in the Stone Age, and I've been able to parlay it into meaningful work in the field for 20-some years.
That said, applying game concepts to real life and vice versa is never going to be terribly satisfying. The fit just isn't that great. In this case, I think your analysis is a bit off. A kingdom failure on a one only occurs of you have significant unrest, which means, by definition, that your system is not terribly well set up and working, at least not for everyone. If you have both high loyalty and stability scores and significant unrest, I visualize that as the majority of the people being reasonably content, but a vocal and signficant minority being unhappy. Kind of like the Tea Party, if you want to apply an unnecessary real life analogy. To use another analogy, there is a real life term for continually borrowing from the public treasury to finance personal purchases. It's called embezzlement and, strangely enough, taxpayers tend to get annoyed by it. While a case can certainly be made that purchasing more powerful magic items for the rulers is in the country's best interests, do you really think your country's equivalent of the Tea Party would be likely to agree? Thus the unrest, and if the unrest gets high enough, the kingdom might fall. Seems reasonable to me.
All of that aside, the reason the rule of failing on a 1 is there is to prevent abuse by those who game the system, which is a brand new ruleset with a lot of exploitable loopholes in it. Removing that rule would open another huge one.