Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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I'm doing some testing of the kingdom and city building rules from the AP, and I'm checking what I come up with versus the listed city stats for various cities in the campaign. As the title of the thread indicates, I've honed in on Tatzlford. Its Kingmaker Kingdom rules relevant stats are under the spoiler tag.
NG Village
Population 186
Base Value 2,200 gp
Purchase Limit 2,500 gp
Minor Items boots of the winterlands, ring of counterspells
Medium Items -
Major Items -
Kingdom Increases Economy +8; Loyalty +9; Stability +6
Buildings Brewery, Brothel, Houses (4), Inn, Library, Shop, Smith, Tavern, Temple, Town Hall, Tradesman
My questions stem from what would these numbers and terms would look like if I had built this city using the Kingmaker rules and had all the stuff the stat block lists.
1 - The "village" designation I think comes from the chart on page 205 of the GM Guide. This influences its Purchase Limit, making it 2,500 gp. But, if it's base value is 2,200 gp, it should be a "large town," at which point its purchase limit would be 10,000 gp. What is correct?
2 - Base Value: If I have the buildings in my city that Tatzlford lists, it's base value should be 2,000 gp. Where does the extra 200 gp come from?
3 - Items With the listed buildings, this selection of only two minor items is correct. Looking through various Kingmaker Kingdom Construction threads, however, I'm under the impression that more should be listed, due to it's designation as "village" or due to its purchase limit and/or base value. It could even have multiple medium items. What's correct?
Kingdom Increases Again, correct with the buildings listed. However:
4 - Buildings Five buildings require houses to be adjacent. In the Kingdom Building thread, James Jacobs said that a single house can only fill that requirement once. I.E., no building a house then surrounding it with 8 "house required" buildings. Did this change?
5 - Population 186? With that many buildings on my city grid, they take up 16 blocks. According to the city rules on page 58 of Rivers Run Red, that translates to a population of 4000. I understand that population has no impact on any of the stats, but that's a pretty big difference. If we're tracking population "for curiosity's sake" then, if Tatzlford gets annexed and we start a grid, what do we do with the population numbers? Leave the population listed, even with that many blocks filled in? Suddenly 3800 people move in to Tatzlford? Either option is a little weird...
I ask all these questions because, like I said, I'm testing the kingdom building rules so I know what I'm doing. When I sit down with my players to do this for the first time, I want to be able to go through things quickly so they don't get frustrated, like I am.
Any help understanding this is appreciated.
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1) I believe in Kingmaker purchase limit is a property of population whereas base value is a property of the buildings you have. Therefore the population makes this a village with a purchase value of 2,500gps and a Base Value of 2,200gps (see answer 5 however)
2) Base Value starts at 200gps and goes up. Therefore 2,200gps is correct.
3) Magic items are based off the buildings in a settlement. This overrides base value and population.
4) According to the rules from KM32 there should be 5 houses not 4. Just add another house.
5) Yup this has been commented on elsewhere. The way I ran it in my game was that Loy Rezbin only had a small number of followers- hence the low population. But he had always looked to join the PC's kingdom once he had settled in. Thus the houses and facilities represent a much larger settlement. Once Tatzlford is annexed the influx of settlers will push the population up to the level of a small town (increasing the purchase limit accordingly) and Loy and his followers will reap the benefits of increased trade and commerce, becoming rich in the process. basically it's a win-win for everybody.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Answers...
Thank you, sir.
So, a mix of rules use, arbitrary decisions, and errors. I can get behind that.
Makes me want to tinker with some of this, though, so that I don't the "WTF?" questions from my players. The biggest issue I see is the population numbers. Restov, in existence for hundreds of years, has a population of 18,000. A Kingmaker group's capital city is likely to leave that behind within a matter of a few years. That strains my sense of realism (which no one needs to jump on - I realize this is a fantasy game; leave my desires for realism alone).
Has anyone seen any threads where people have suggested adjustments to these numbers? I'm not finding anything.
Creative Director
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Tatzleford was not built using the city building rules in part 2 of Kingmaker—that's what's causing the confusion. The city building rules were designed at the same time the fourth adventure was being designed, and by the time we got to the fourth adventrue we decided to NOT rebuild Tatzleford (or any of the actual cities in the AP) using the special city building rules presented in part 2. At the time, remember, we weren't sure how folks would react to the really unusual and different and experimental city/kingdom building rules, so we sort of intentionally kept them "quarantined" in the second adventure. That way, if they turned out to be a huge failure, the rest of the adventure path would still work fine since we used the normal rules for building cities.
Which means that if you want to go whole hog and convert the settlements of Tatzleford, Varnhold, Drelev's Keep, and Pitax into city grids, your best bet is to rebuild those settlements as city grids from the ground up, using the information in the various articles and adventures about those cities to make choices and build things to closely approximate things. You'll have to decide if you want to use the maps you make yourself using the city grids or the maps of the cities we printed, of course.
The adventure works fine either way.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Tatzleford was not built using the city building rules in part 2 of Kingmaker—that's what's causing the confusion. The city building rules were designed at the same time the fourth adventure was being designed, and by the time we got to the fourth adventrue we decided to NOT rebuild Tatzleford (or any of the actual cities in the AP) using the special city building rules presented in part 2. At the time, remember, we weren't sure how folks would react to the really unusual and different and experimental city/kingdom building rules, so we sort of intentionally kept them "quarantined" in the second adventure. That way, if they turned out to be a huge failure, the rest of the adventure path would still work fine since we used the normal rules for building cities.
Makes sense. Seeing as they proved popular, wouldn't you love to go back and apply the rules to them, though? You know you want to...
If you want to go whole hog and convert the settlements of Tatzleford, Varnhold, Drelev's Keep, and Pitax into city grids, your best bet is to rebuild those settlements as city grids from the ground up, using the information in the various articles and adventures about those cities to make choices and build things to closely approximate things. You'll have to decide if you want to use the maps you make yourself using the city grids or the maps of the cities we printed, of course.
This would be a fun exercise with Fort Drelev. I like FallofCamelot's suggestion for Tatzlford, though. And Varnhold has obvious reasons for having differences from the rules. Pitax is too complicated, and I have different plans for it.
The adventure works fine either way.
Absolutely. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't doing something wrong, and Tatzlford seemed like the logical place for the actual rules to have been applied. Your explanations and suggestions make perfect sense, though. Thanks for looking in. Every day I get more excited about playing this AP. You will be hard pressed to outdo this one, for me.