Yet another Kingdom building spreadsheet?

[Shieldknight]

In my ineptitude of excel ability, I have tried to make a spreadsheet that tracks the monthly decisions made by the players in their kingdom phases. What I have created is a time consuming spreadsheet that takes away from the roleplaying and rollplaying. I know there are spreadsheets out there to track where the kingdom is at-a-glance, but they don't keep track of what was accomplished each month. For instance, when the temple was built, or when the tavern was added to the city. Or maybe when the hex with the radishes was added.

What is everyone else doing for keeping track of this? Are you just writing it down in a notebook? Or are you just bypassing this and adding stuff to the, very awesome, spreadsheets that are available as they happen and not keeping track of when they happen?

Here is a link to my inept spreadsheet. It's at the bottom of the page. Take a look, and let me know what changes I should make, if any. Or maybe I'm just making it harder than it is supposed to be?

Thanks in advance.

[Zoetrope]

Shieldknight wrote:

Take a look, and let me know what changes I should make, if any. Or maybe I'm just making it harder than it is supposed to be?

Thanks in advance.

I can see the interest in tracking kingdom growth month-by-month, but I also think it's quite an onerous task and one which would suck up a lot of time. I think you've already come to that conclusion, too!

Some of the process could be automated, using drop-down lists to look up building stats/costs and then tallying the results monthly. Unfortunately, a lot of the data would need to be entered manually, such as magic items bought/sold and impact on BP.

This kind of thing could be integrated into one of the current kingdom spreadsheets, but it would take a lot of work. You could have a Monthly Update sheet which is completed, you hit a button and that months updates are then summarised on a separate sheet which is continually added to.... rinse and repeat.

One alternative is you use one of the existing sheets to do all the grunt work and keep a very basic side-sheet with just simple info, such as buildings added/changed, farms, hexes, etc, etc. I wouldn't track all the stats though - that's probably where most of the tedium lies!

[Archmage_Atrus]

I would question why you're doing this. Is it honestly that important to remember that the hex with the fangberries was annexed on CAlistril of 4712, but the hex with the Swamp Witch was annexed two months earlier? What possible purpose could that serve?

[Shieldknight]

So, how do you do it? How do you keep track of what was done for the month? And keep a total of BP and other items.

I had a player who was keeping track of it, and would have conflicting totals with what I had, so this came up as a solution.

[Robert Brambley]

That seems way over-laborious as you have it.

To answer your question, there's three ways about it.

1.) Have two seperate players keep track independanty of the math - so that you can have a check and balance.

2.) Use a spreadsheet that does all the math automated, such as the various ones on here.

3.) Have one player do all the math and a second player keep the records that you're wanting.

This helps keep track of how much BP is there etc. Its not really all that important to know which month a hex was claimed vs another or when a building was made or item was sold. But I can understand the need for verifying the resource amounts.

However, if it's simply a desire of you and your players to remember, reflect etc on when things were done (build, claimed, events etc), then my suggestion would be to have a very simple spreadsheet that only listed "Month" and "Changes" (i.e. hex added, building made, city founded, and "event"

Then use the automated one for your math. Have either a different player manage each part or you manage one and have a player manage the other.

Robert