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Has anyone worked out a good way to do kingdom building while away from the gaming table (by email or online posts)? I'd prefer a way that does not require dice rolling to speed things up. The kingdom needs to be over double in size ideally before we resume play, and ideally taking years of game time.
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Either have a forum, or run the building with those who are interested on a different day. What I have found is the building is interesting at first, and then it gets boring....fast. After a couple of sessions with kingdom building I noticed that over half my PCs (have 9 players) become bored, with one-two taking active roles in kingdom building. The fun part were the random kingdom events that made things interesting.
My advice is as soon as things become tedious to break away from active kingdom building. Get the overall plan that the PCs have in mind that they want to do with the kingdom and go in that direction. That way the game flow isn't broken, you can still have the kingdom rp going on, events occurring, etc. without it taking a few hours of seeing what occurs in a given month. The magic item generation phase grinds things to a halt.
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The magic item generation phase grinds things to a halt.
So true, it holds up our kingdom building and while folks are interested to see what's available, they're not going to buy things anyways. Been using the forum-modified rule for magic economy (selling minor = +1 econ, moderate = +2, major = +5 for the turn). I use a much expanded events table, and that's a big kick.
Main goal is not to take away control of kingdom building but somehow adjudicate off-table.
Edit: just posted this proposal to my players
■Rolling dice isn't an option. Way too many rolls.
■The magic item replacement phase is tedious.
■The DM can't roll 1s due to the possible instability that should be handled by players
■Ideally the kingdom will be double its current size before proceeding. That's a lot of work and shoudl take game years! Hex size determines how big an army can be fielded.
■There are low-level adventurers out there who might do some exploring for a slight fee.
■For 2 BP per hex, you can get "hexes" cleared in Varnhold's area with maximum 5 per month. Only unsettled areas can be cleared. Any remaining "dangerous" spots will be avoided.
■For 3 BP per hex, you can get the same for the more dangerous areas around Fort Drelev. Again, dangerous spots will not be explored or cleared.
1.Players submit a "wish list" for their cities, and coordinate with one another on priority projects (e.g. waterfront in Haven). Players will also submit where they'd like the kingdom to go (connecting Drelev is not an option currently because many areas are not explored and cleared for settlements). This should always be ongoing.
2.The DM will use a system that assumes 1/2 the minor items provide an economic boost each month (since the roll is roughly 50/50 to get an item that is valuable enough to sell). The current system is designed to give players a chance to buy items that might not otherwise be in the value of their kingdom, so we'll assume no players are buying.
3.The DM will "take a 10" on rolls, assuming a "golden age" in which 1s are not being rolled and everything is moving all right.
4.Random events will be modified to not require rolls (due to the possibilty of severe negative consequences) and instead will be replaced with roleplaying opportunities. These will have effect based on decisions, not rolls.
5.Every 3 months the DM will send a "quarterly report" to the players and update our mapmaker every few days.
6.The next time we pick up, the players will resolve the last 2 months of kingdom building to get "back on track."
7.Kingdom discussions would take place on the "Council Proposals" forum to avoid clogging up the "Announcements" page.
The goal is to avoid the tedium of kingdom building "catch up" at the table, which could take several live sessions.
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Sounds like a plan.
My group had contracted Jubilost to do the exploring. Giving him the title of Royal Cartographer, a stipend of 100 gp a month, and access to any materials he might need in order to produce accurate, quality maps. If he is still alive in your campaign I would recommend something like that. Sadly in mine the PCs, after meeting him with these terms, stumbled upon a troll hunting party, and over the course of two days unknowing led said trolls back to Jubilost (they forget how slow wagons can move without a proper road in the wilderness). I am sure you can imagine the rest.
I'm a little unclear what your goal here is with this. Is the ultimate goal just to narrate over a big period of no real adventuring to get things to a nice size before starting a new chapter?
I mean, if you're skipping out on all the random events, and the chance of unrest and lack of income from botched rolls, AND the party isn't running around exploring every little thing and dealing with random encounters, and all you want is a nice time lapse and a lot of territory... screw the bookkeeping.
Point at the map, say "claim X more hexes on here, and tell me where you're connecting roads to them from." Then pick some arbitrary number of build points that seems fitting (it would help to know how big/built up/far along you are. 50? 100? 200? Maybe 500 if you're really far along? Let them spend that value on whatever new cities and buildings they'd like. Add everything up to get the rest of the post-timeskip kingdom stats (if you're anything like my group, edicts and positions are stable, so only the new construction/size should be changing things). Say 5 years have passed. Done.
It should be within the realm of plausibility for the BP math to have worked out between economic downturns and other disasters, or bumper crops and other such boons. Don't sweat it too much, just enjoy how you've saved yourself a good real-time month of bookkeeping, and move on.
If you really care about all the specifics, make a truckload of magic item rolls on your own time, jot down the important stuff and how many rolls it took to get them, along with pre-generating a long list of events, and with those to speed it along, sit everyone down and just blow a few sessions on pounding it all out the old fashioned way.
We are currently in a very adventure heavy part of Kingmaker (Drelev > certain barb. > ..) so we haven't rolled for the kingdom in a long time.
However, I am thinking about a way to indeed speed up kingdom building. I have two groups, and they have different attitudes.
> Right now, it helps that they plan out ahead of time what they are going to build. This speeds things up nicely.
> Secondly, I removed the "selling magic items" phase, because it proved too much of a hassle. I gave them a static bonus on Economy, which shouldn't make them suffer too much in the end. This worked like a greater rod of quickening :p
> I also use a laptop to keep track of it on an excel sheet.
> Last but not least, do this at the end of the evening. Players wo are really not interested in this, can start packing up :)
Also helps you prepare in case of an assassination event, for example.
> I also use a laptop to keep track of it on an excel sheet.
/sign
If you run Kingmaker, grab a old Laptop or tablet it's sooooo helpful|
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I'm a little unclear what your goal here is with this. Is the ultimate goal just to narrate over a big period of no real adventuring to get things to a nice size before starting a new chapter?
Pretty much. I treasure our face-time at the table, but we've fallen far behind in kingdom building. Despite the players enjoying seeing the kingdom grow, rolling 50+ economy, stability, and so on checks can get tedious. I've kept it in small doses to keep the excitement up.
I want to catch us up to Book #5 standards (we've still got book #4 side quests, but the main stuff is done) so we can get back to the action, which is the main preference of the group. But they also want control over the kingdom building and as noted do enjoy it in small doses. I guess we've just done it in too small of doses!
I'm also looking to RP random kingdom events over a forum due to the holidays keeping us away from the gaming table for a week or two.
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We try to run Kingdom turns with current events going on in Brevoy and the kingdom thrown in. This helps keep things interesting and fresh since it seems to work out to about 3-4 months of building and usually a RP or combat encounter of some kind. Keeps the bean counting Civ players happy and the adventurers entertained enough not to fall asleep. :)
I prescript everything for about 2 years out, including plagues, city fires, invasions, spies, etc. The big stuff is all planned out in advance either by a date or kingdom size. This way I have fully fleshed out major events and the party can short-circuit them if they prepare for such an occurrence. I usually foreshadow the bad ones a little bit to help out.
For instance, some mercenary dwarves just moved down into the middle of the party's charter and laid claim to the gold mine. The party was focused on claiming other strategic hexes and didn't plan on taking this one until about three or four months later. The captain of the town guard reported seeing a group of new dwarves in town several times recently (foreshadowing), but the party was distracted and didnt really pay attention. Since it was the dead of winter, the dwarves were able to construct a crude building around the cave and start a fair sized mine shaft before being discovered. The advantage of pre-planning came when the party went to negotiate with them, and I had the NPC personalities, names, and agreeable terms all pre-written.
I made a separate random kingdom event table that only has things minor color type events like a new minstrel in town (+ to economy) or a group of halflings move into the city and start a craze of rooftop gardens(reduce consumption in city by 1 that turn only).
Just thought I would put in my suggestion of mixing it up if you have to do a lot of kingdom turns.
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@ Tryn: Got the kingdom saved on an "excel" document, so able to update conveniently. A must-have.
@ Duskrunner: ah Jubilost! He's been quiet of late, will have to use him.
@ Rick: magic item phase is biggest drag on time, thinking about a flat econ bonus as no player is seeking to buy those items anyways. Been using a + bonus to econ rolls already but still rolling each turn to see what is there and if it sells (automatic except on a 1 by now).
@ Red: Not a bad idea, especially for off-table event gaming, and keeps players from having to check in hourly to respond to events who might otherwise be travelling.
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Magic Item Phase:
I rolled 100 random magic items (thanks to nethys generator^^) and put them in a list.
If the phase come up, I simply read them down and if someone want's one item, they buy it, otherwise they sell them for BP (which is an auto-success as soon as the Eco is ~ 50). Only Problem we have are the items we can't sell due to the district restriction (thanks for it!!!!!). Most times we simply "junk" them (at the moment only minor items)
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As an update, we just played it out at the table, but more quickly:
- No magic item generation phase. Players rolled color-coded dice once for all "minor" item districts, assuming 1/2 generated BPs, once for medium and once for major (easy to figure since their Economy only fails on a 1 for these).
- Random encounter every-other turn
- All rolls at once (stability, economy, magic item sale)
- Players come with wish-lists (each player is overseeing a city) so we don't have to flip pages of "what to build"
- Jubilost was hired at 1 BP a turn to "explore" hexes. If he encountered danger, the hex was not explored but a general idea given, though this could be a random encounter, etc.
Not perfect, still took 1.5 hours to get through a year of kingdom building, though much of that was due to role-playing chances, having to explain to the council about the Brothel being built in the capital, celebrating a child born to Oleg and Svetlana, etc. This session was with two of my less-involved kingdom builders, so it was great to let them have the full say while the rest were away on holiday ventures.
All in all,
1,5 hrs for a year? hell you're fast. As we play every council meeting we need ~ half a hour per month (at least). Good thing: my players like it this way :D