Basically, I'd like to know how to handle a situation like in "old school" D&D, where a character would be able to claim a stretch of wilderness, clear it of monsters, establish a stronghold and gather followers. The obvious choice would be the kingdom building rules from the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I have those rules, but am unsure of exactly how to apply them to this situation.
Obviously you'd start by exploring a hex, and then claiming it. Presumably you'd also assign leaders right before actually claiming a hex. But then what? Would establishing the stronghold be part of the establish and improve cities step of the improvement phase? Does it matter that the stronghold really isn't technically part of a "city"?
Also, I enjoy the game Dwarf Fortress, by Bay 12 Games (aka Tarn Adams). It's a really excellent game, and amazing that it is developed and programmed by one man. The subject of the game pretty much what the title says, the establishment and development of a Dwarven settlement, or Fortress. You start with a small amount of Dwarves who establish an outpost and the settlement eventually develops into a village, town and city depending on how well you do.
I'm wondering what kind of adjustments to the Kingdom Building rules would you suggest if you were establishing a subterranean kingdom? One thing is the possibility of vertical cities. City blocks might be below or above one another in addition to being next to one another. Another consideration is how to determine what kind of soil and stone in in a particular area, as well as what you might find down there, like caves or dungeons, what kind of minerals are there etc. There's also the consideration of the necessary labor in delving out the necessary space for all this.
I've been blundering around with stuff like this myself for a while.
What's missing in the equation is the middle step where you go from Adventurer to Land Owner. Establishing and running a keep first and then building up a town. I figure once Paizo gets a "run your own castle/business" rule set out we can really go crazy.
You can kinda do this with the Kingmaker rules, only it takes a fair amount of the player's own resources to keep the lash-up running until it can be self=sustaining.
Using the Jon Brazer Enterprises collection "Book of the River Nations" kinda helps.
Upkeep Phase can be skipped until you actually claim a hex. This lets you go right to the Select Leadership and Deposit steps. 4,000 GP to 1 BP. With the Leadership feat you can install your cohort and other NPC followers in those positions and thus have a stable government out of the gate.
For underground modifications, I would look at the old Dark Lands setting supplement. One of the things it detailed were the "types" of tunnels. I believe there were 3, main, secondary, tertiary.
Another "easy" solution is to treat the terrain types above ground as "terrain" types below. Having equivalent to grassland, large inter connecting caverns which are easily accessible. All the way to the most difficult, narrowly constricted and maze like "mountains".
Given the fantasy nature of Dark Lands ecologies there isn't a reason to make the rules or setting up farms and such harder in use. The biggest difference is how you setup the hex map of the Dark Lands. "Grasslands" will be much fewer in the Dark Lands then the surface. If I was just going to do this off the cuff so to speak I'd begin by talking the map of the Stolen Lands, assigning different terrain to a "scale of difficulty" and then inverting it. Make Mountains Grassland, Forests become Swamp, etc.
I've considered trying to expand upon the Base Camp rules in one of the Serpent Skull APs to use those rules as the bases for running a Keep.
I never thought that the KM rules were expansive enough. It was just too simplistic to appeal to my strategic desires.
Some things you may want to consider:
Having the party go out (OFTEN) for trade agreements or securing resources (like mines, forests, etc) without getting harassed 4 times a day.
Recruiting monsters or people from the area for armies or workers.
The old Companion and Masters sets have a lot of material you can mine for this sort of thing. Dominions, growth, confidence, and a fair bit of economics.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think about those. Thanks!
I'm thinking that the stronghold would start out as it's own entity, unless the PC is building it as a result of having been granted land and resources by a higher power. Later on the PC might actually attract settlers to the nearby area and thus claim the settled hexes in a Kingdom Building rules sense.
Isn't this pretty much pre-WoW Warcraft?
REIGN.
Isn't this pretty much pre-WoW Warcraft?
Maybe... but does that observation help me any? What I'm saying is how would I actually apply the similarity to Warcraft to my actual game? Is there anything Warcraft does that I could include in my game?
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There could be plenty of ways to take a subterranean land claim:
* Could someone else claim the surface if you hadn't?
* Now that you're in charge, you could hire adventuring bands to deal with raiders or any ancient sealed evil you've uncovered!
* Use Craft Construct to build your own Bronze Colossus!
* Thanks to Golarion's comparative lack of bigotry, happily bring in elven or gnomish immigrants and try to accommodate all races who want in.
...I do play Dwarf Fortress, and even thought of playing a crossbow-fighter Marksdwarf with the catch off-guard feat, but I don't know if it'd be worth it.
(The succession forts are always fun)