How much should the PCs know?


Kingmaker


I will soon be runing the 2nd chapter in the Kingmaker path and I am curious what others did about the kingdom making rules. Should I let the PC's read the rules so they can make the their decisions or should I just give them the basics of the rules.


For the Kingmaker campaign that I'm currently running I gave the players access to all of the kingdom making rules, including the random events. I did not include any of the special events from the 2nd chapter (we're playing in that book now). I haven't regreted giving out this info, although I guess that it wouldn't have hurt to keep the random events a secret.

Scarab Sages

I posted all of the buildings and basically all of the rules (other than the events) to my group's wiki.
Half of my group is extremely interested in the fine details of the rules, and the other half thinks the mechanics are boring and just likes suggesting buildings.

As for what would be best for your game--you know your group.

Do you think your group would have fun with micromanaging the development of the kingdom? Do you think that they would like being able to save lots of money by building things in a smart order? Do you think they would enjoy planning ahead and budgeting, and having a timetable for their vision of the kingdom's development? Then maybe open rules are better.

Do you think that your group would get bored spending the time to deal with the complexity of the system month after month? Would you be concerned that they would try to cheese the system and build really illogical kingdoms to get their Economy, Loyalty, and Stability as high as possible? Regardless of whether they cheese or not, do you want a chance of failure that is higher than 5%? Do you want to create a sense that the PC's aren't in as much control of the development of the kingdom, and that they aren't exactly expert city planners? Then maybe just the basics.


Greetings, fellow travellers.

I have thought longer about that, because I see kingdom building as more of a fluff thing - an important fluff thing! - and I do not want it to degenerate into number crunshing and min/max.
So, I will not let them allow to withdraw funds from the treasury and I down-scaled the amount of magic items generated by the different buildings.

I let them know:

*about what seats are in the council - nothing else
* a general overview of how a turn of kingdom building looks like
* a list of edicts
* price list of the various buildings and improvements they can make (including roads, farms, clearing and claiming hexes, etc.); not the effects, but how much BP they cost, how long they take to build, in terms of clearing hexes and such, and how many of each they can do per turn
* some general information about the effects of buildings
* a list of what buildings result in the creation of magic items (building those opens up a new subset of the rules)
* a list of the buildings that add to the gp limit of their city
* a list of buildings that INCREASE and that DECREASE unrest

Ruyan.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 8

I let my players have the rules with the caveat that while they are the rulers, I am god. They were really eager to try it out, though, and roleplayed it well, building like buildings together (bakery and a miller, etc.) and discussing if the kingdom would ever have brothels or a black market which they decided against (being a very lawful good kingdom). As the GM, I didn't feel like I had to intervene. It also helped speed up play, having them versed in the rules and they corrected each other more than I did when it came to a rule. They actually decided to do 3 and half years of kingdom building right at the start so they have a pretty respectable kingdom going right now before they even start any of the encounters in book 2. There's a couple of magic items sitting in their shops right now that they are salivating over but have no personal money to buy so they realize they need to do some adventuring.

The Exchange

I gave them everything but the spoilers (kingdom events etc). I sent them out with the caveats below. I highly recommend this. You don't want to do the admin for the Kingdom. My players went with the optional building upgrade rules. Thus far the Kingdom has progressed at a steady rate with lots of ups and down. It's been a lot of fun. Feel free to steal and modify as you like.

--------

Here are the rules. I'm sharing them with you because:

* I don't want to have to be the rules expert

* You guys as players have the right balance of roll and role playing.
That is, you will choose roles within the Kingdom that you are interesting in exploring rather than just min/maxing the kingdoms rolls. I was open at the start about the fact that one of your stats will heavily influence the rolling so this shouldn't be an issue. Similarly with your choices of buildings, I hope that it doesn't just descend to a numbers game and flavour is forgotten.

* You understand that these are new rules that may need some tweaking as we go along.

The rules themselves seem to switch from GM only to Player open type language and intended audience. I've removed some spoilers from the doco is a very unsubtle fashion, hence the blacked out sections.

There is a mention of Mass Combat rules. We don't have to worry about them until you decide to invade your neighbours or you get big enough to attract attention and be worth invading, which I don't anticipate will happen during your first few founding years. However, the defence modifier will play a role here. Obviously the higher the number, the more impervious to attack you are.

There has been suggested changes and points of order by James Jacobs and Jason Nelson (rules author):

* Graveyard increases loyalty +1 only (economy +1 removed).

* Exotic Craftsman (10 BP): 1 minor item, +1 Economy, +1 Stability.
(Economy replaces Loyalty).

* A Barracks is a pre-req of a Watchtower at a rate of 1:6. Nowhere to house your city guards, no guards to watch in the towers. Doesn't have to be adjacent. This is a house rule I've put in after it was pointed out that the return on BP invested didn't exactly make sense. That
alternativewas to flip the costs which I'm not in favour in doing.

* Unrest from a new building is not ongoing. People get use to it and get on with their lives.<an in-joke after one of us copped some real life bad press about a proposed building>

* Note that there is a difference between exploring/clearing the hex of baddies and claiming a hex. Claiming hexes are the point at which you start sending settlers and citizens and city watch into that hex and they start building homes or whatever. Your can certainly say that you rule over all of the hexes on the map, but until they're officially "claimed" during the proper point during kingdom construction, you are just blowing hot air.

* The "buildings" are meant to be representational. A single "block" in the city grid is ~700 feet to a side so there's a LOT of buildings in there.

* Some building have pre-reqs of adjacent buildings. Anything counts as adjacent; left, right, above, below, diagonal, or even across streets but you can't "double duty". Once it's used as a prerequisite for another building, it can't serve as a prerequisite for a second building.

* There are no limits to the number of districts you can have, but I want a good rational reason for building another one (like all the others are mostly full).

* We'll keep an eye on how we mix BP and Gold. BP isn't just coin in coffers.

* Your first round of kingdom building will skip the upkeep phase. Seems obvious but confused some people.

* Other Kingmaker campaigns seemed to have problems with players using Magic Shops as the PC's personal slot machine. There would obviously be consequences of such heavy handed intervention in the economy by the rulers of the state...

* Depending on how your city expands, I may impose a law of diminishing returns. Too many graveyards and the citizens get creeped out, too many brothels may cause morality crusaders to destabilise the city, too many walls stop the flow of trade and start hampering defensive efforts. You get the idea.

* There are some optional rules for upgrading buildings balanced with the need of further prerequisites for buildings. They were left out for reasons of simplicity. I've attached them as a separate PDF. They do add a layer of complexity but they also add some flexibility and
verisimilitude. If you guys are up for it I'd be happy to use them.

* Note that some people have ignored all these rules entirely and have gone
for a 'kingdom in the background' approach and just got on with exploring
and quests. I suspect you guys will want to get stuck into these new
rules, but if after a time we aren't having fun, I'm happy to put these in place.


I started them slow with the basics of the rules and expanded their knowledge as the kingdom grew. This was partially because I house-ruled a bunch of stuff with BP and wanted to be able to adjust behind the scenes, and partially because I have a serious rules-abuser and wanted them to think like kingdom rulers, not mathematicians. As soon as they bought a new building, I gave them the information about how the building worked.

At this point, they have three cities and access to all the rules, my house rules included. They're cranking away at the kingdom building on their own, with very little input from me.


Thanks for the feedback and input. It helps alot.

Liberty's Edge

I believe that people playing a game should know the rules of the game, and that hiding some of the rules from them is... sort of sleazy.
-Kle.


My players powergamed kingdom building. They've only been failing events on 1 ever since somewhere middle-end of VV. We have a gentleman's agreement that they won't withdraw funds for their characters, but I feel uneasy about whenever war breaks out and they can vanquish armies with ridiculously high numbers.

Sovereign Court

Our kingdom building is very interactive. I've let them know the rules but, at the same time, I've told them that the rules are an 'in the vacuum' sorta thing. In real life (well... in in-character life, anyway), things don't always work out like that.

They're not very happy with the 'fetch quests' so I've added more kingdom affecting events that require their direct intervention. They don't even like exploration and hired adventurers to map out the region (leaving any dangerous sites alone).

We're moving into book 3 shortly so my PC's are making nicey nice with Varnhold. This coming winter, they'll have to deal with bandits closing off the trade route through Varnhold Pass...

Next spring, Pitax will make its presence known (also making nicey nice).
Following that, 2 or 3 other local kingdoms may also make contact with the PC's kingdom... and that's when some serious intrigue will start as each tries to see how this new kingdom can be exploited...

So their having the rules and knowing exactly how things works merely becomes a ame within the game. It doesn't take center stage and they're never really sure enough about their actions that they can truly exploit the rules. They can try... but there are enough wrinkles around that it rarely works.

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