How is the City running mechanic? Have your players ran their city for a long time?
Would you have any advice for me and my players who have just completed the first Adventure Path of Kingmaker?
Thanks in advance!
I have not, but I want to.
There are several campaign journals describing campaigns that have gone all the way to completion.
I'm playing in a group that has been on this AP for some time. I don't know how long it runs for, but I'd say we're at least halfway through. The city building can be fun depending on your players. I like it (I like maps), but it becomes burdersome if too many people have opinions on what to build and every month turns into a long discussion. Also, when your region grows to a large enough size, some flaws/holes begin to appear in the mechanic. Be on the lookout for that, and don't let the group metagame or optimize the kingdom building portion of the game more than you are OK with.
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All the way but for a couple of boss encounters at the end.
City building can be fun, but only if everyone is into it.
If your group is more numbers & tactics driven, be prepared for huge swathsnof graveyards, dumps, and the like.
If you have a more simulationist group, it'd be more...realistic I feel.
Also be prepared for your party to outpace the CR system quickly. Practically unlimited time & money means the pc's will have custom tailored gear to optimize themselves to the nines. Know this going in, and check both Turin's and my campaign kournals for suggestions on how to provide reasonable (or sometimes less than reasonable) challenges.
Alexander Kilcoyne had a "6 person upgrade" thread going as well, check it bmp out for some gems to harvest.
This is great, thanks guys. Just the kind of information I was looking for.
Ha!
I thought this thread was referring to the propensity for people to go "off the rails" so to speak after the second book in the path (maybe the third) and just become a custom campaign.
Which is what I'm planning on doing with it, along with setting it in Birthright and playing it E6.
Our group played through most of Kingmaker, kind of ended things at the end of the second last adventure, which completes most of the Kingmakery stuff.
I wasn't on the DM side of the screen, but our DM let us know there were a few things that felt a little grindy in the rules.
One thing the DM did was streamlined the items gained from the magic shops, since we ended up selling them anyways, he just took that assumption and gave us an automatic bonus.
I think there were a few other tweaks that helped streamline a bit of the city bonuses, and I think we were given some extra bonus to some factors based on things like gaining a gold mine and whatnot.
There's points where you'll have like... a year's worth of city building between APs, which can be a bit boring of a session even for those interested in the stuff.
In that regard, our DM and myself (who was the Baron/leader) sat down outside of a gaming session and did most of the year's worth of building, as the others weren't really wanting to get into it as much.
The kingdom building system wasn't terribly robust -- players could game the system without trying too hard, and they could eventually milk their kingdom for thousands of gold. I'm not terribly against the possibility of gaining money from the kingdom, especially since there's a lot of exploration and random encounters that wouldn't normally grant treasure; but when you're going to link a subsystem to the wealth system, you have to really, really scrutinize how they're going to interact and make sure it isn't quite that profitable.
My players agreed not to milk the kingdom -- great. They took an efficient but suboptimal route to building the kingdom, and still passed every check on a roll of 2 besides loyalty, which was going to take a few more phases.
One player did most of the kingdom building. She did the rolling, she made a lot of the decisions. The other players usually stood by, watched, and waited for an interesting kingdom event to come up.
Kingdom events were too mechanical for me. Stuff like "[Blah happens]! Make a Stability check or lose 1d6 build points." Eventually I started pre-rolling the kingdom events and writing up a paragraph of what happened, or outright turned it into a fleshed-out encounter or adventure. At the end of my game, kingdom building between chapters took one to two game sessions to complete. I liked this a lot better, and I certainly hope it made the players feel like their community was more real and enduring genuine threats.
As a GM, I really want to see more limitations on building a single super-city, and more incentives for building multiple cities. I want to see more reason to expand your kingdom, and scaling benefits for claiming resources like precious metal mines. Maybe even unique locations that give your community strange benefits. I want there to be a greater need for using taxes and a greater benefit from using them. My players decided to rule a country without taxes, and this led to a lot of complaining and confusion when their citizens opposed them on any matter.
I feel multiple ways about the time element. Players can get a hell of a lot of kingdom building done in a month -- it can grow tremendously in the recommended year of building between chapters of a book. I was really interested in seeing more time pass during the duration of the campaign; if my King player wanted to have a son, I wanted the opportunity for him to grow up, at least several years. Similarly, there was a child NPC that was tortured by what would become the PCs' allies, and I wanted the chance for him to grow up and become a revenge-driven antagonist. But I couldn't effectively stretch the game out to that kind of time-frame.
So it would be really interesting to have some kind of Slow advancement for kingdoms. But I also realize that could cause new complications -- that would make magic item creation even less restricted than it already is, and players who invest in Perform or Profession skills could make ridiculous amounts of money over five or ten years.
I have my opinions on the war rules, but since we didn't get that far, I'm going to politely keep them to myself. I do regret not bringing them into play earlier, especially since the players were all ready to use them and had a kingdom that could support building an army. I don't think the proper rules were printed until the ... fifth book?
I want to see more reason to expand your kingdom, and scaling benefits for claiming resources like precious metal mines. Maybe even unique locations that give your community strange benefits. I want there to be a greater need for using taxes and a greater benefit from using them.
I agree with a lot of your post, but wanted to comment on this. I figured out a few years in (game time) that that was no point in increasing the gp value of any towns except the capital. We're trying to avoid cheesing out, but our gp value is stuck in one place if we build those types of buildings in new towns. Recently, when buying armor we had to choose between enhancement bonuses and special materials, even though we could afford both. It would be nice if the nations's gp limit was the highest one plus half the value of the others.
I would absolutely re-use the exploration mechanics again, I just think I'd have to modify the kingdom building and probably army rules. Maybe Ultimate Campaign will offer me tantalizing rules >.> I hope they get a good facelift.
One thing I'd like to see is something like the magical locations from DMG II. IIRC, one of them was -- I love this visual -- a large magical lens on top of a mountain that could fire off huge beams of fire. I'd love for Ultimate Campaign to have a section on magical locations like that, that could be captured and used with the army rules.
I have one group in booklet 4, and one group in booklet 2.
They are loving it, and so can you if you are willing to take it up a notch, while being strict with the rules aswel.
I am the DM of this game, and my number one point is this.
Your players will make a totals mess of your plans!
that beeing said, I suggest that you look into picking up a copy of Book of the River Nations. This book has all of the new rules, and then some, that you need for kingdom building all in one place
I played this AP and nearly finished it (we ended it a little way before the final BBEG), my advice is BAN the item creation feats (give a free spell focus to the wizard) because they can really mess the game's balance, also do not allow the players taking money from their kingdom, seriously it's an unlimited money making machine.
On the kingdom building thing, well it was kinda fun until we fineshed the 3rd book but after that it really became more trouble than it was worth (if we had one of the spreadsheets the forum has made maybe it wouldn't be so, maybe not) and we ended up with only 2 players out of 4 playing the kingdom phases.
So i suggest turning to kingdom in the background unless either the ultimate campaign or the book linked above really makes the kingdom building system better.
Yeah, I had difficulty problems, but I don't how much of it was caused by; the one-encounter-a-day scenario; item creation feats; experienced players; a group coordinated and built by one player to work together well; access to several books. The problem is kind of a hydra. If I banned item creation feats, she probably would have just chosen something else.
Still, I was increasing CR by 2 and modifying feat / class selections around the end.
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You should really check out the kingmaker subforum about the adventure path. You will see A TON of advice there about all the different adventures in the AP. I've also flagged this to be moved there, since it could end up with some spoilers and you are more likely to get informed responses from the people in the specific ap's subforum.
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oh, and even though will muck with your plans (duh, that is part of being a dm) I really like being the DM for the game so far
For the kingdom building, my players use Jon Brazer's "Book of the River Nations." There is an excellent Excel sheet in the Kingmaker forums that incorporates the data from that book and does all the math for you. I also have them use a random magic item generator I found on the web. Rolling for magic items that their shops produced was the biggest time suck the first time they used the kingdom building rules. With the Excel sheet and the magic item generator, they can generally get through a "month" of kingdom building in about 10-15 minutes.
My guys aren't really into the minutiae of city running - they like the overall concept and have fun generating ideas and concepts - but don't much like the mechanical stuff behind it. But then we are a very rules light group - builds e optimised for RP rather than combat and characters will often take bad decisions to stay more in character and make it more 'fun'. Nor are they all about maxing out their magical possessions. So we have RP settlements rather than rules specific settlements
I do a few, loose, calculations in the background and tell them how much they will have to spend over the next few months. They then give me a rough plan with areas they would like to annex, buildings they want etc then I go away and do the donkey work. Rather than city grids, I draw maps of our cities, towns and settlements (because that is something I enjoy). The main buildings all have brief descriptions, we know who lives in them and the PCs interact with them (on occasion). Anything that is uses a map, has some background added and a few people we know about - and is likely to recur.
I haven't paid too much attention to the magic economy - but then my guys haven't pushed that area at all.
One thing I will say, as we moved into book two/three, I was disappointed with the lack of existing settlements in the mapped area. Those bandits need someone to rob! So I built a pseudo-trade route from Retov south along the banks of the River. There was a very small settlement at the Gurdin Ford and a working ferry at the old ferry station and a 'faint' mule trail running between them. I also set Jovvox in the very bottom of that map - it partially gives a boundary for the PCs and gives some excuse for trade along that way.
They added a lot to the fun of building the nation.
Jovvox is from the Book of Gnomes (or what ever it is called) and is Gnome settlement that makes cheap weapons in bulk and (from what I can see) should be located fairly close to this point anyway.
The ferry is a strange Gnome chain ferry armed with heavy repeating crossbows and exploding bolts (for use in extremis). It was built and is operated by a mad-cap gnome inventor who comes up with stupid ideas. Last time my party were there they tested a diving helmet attached to a piece of hosepipe that was kept afloat by a model duck. Unfortunately it didn't work very well ...
Gurdinford just a few commoner families who have been consistently 'taxed' by the bandits and Kobolds. They went from being suspicious to making a brilliant overnight stop. Especially as Tig, Arven Fisher (NPCs from book 3) live there. I our game - Tig is a right little scamp and is currently training a pet weasel he wants keep down his trousers! He also keeps a pet centipede, that the party are convinced is a young 'giant centipede' and are quite concerned about :)
Thanks again for all the great info guys, I really appreciate it.
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Hey Edward
I played through this adventure path and loved every minute of it.
While the system can become cumbersome and can be broken easily...I recommend finding a way to restrict two things.
1. The amount of magic item sales that they can do. This is by far the biggest economic multiplier.
2. Have the NPC's they select for the other positions request that they build certain buildings. If they refuse or don't negotiate on duration...have that NPC act up more, maybe slack in his duties...find interesting ways to use this as a guiding star for your group as to how you want to see the city develop.
3. Also...don't be afraid to mess with their city or run off the page adventures. Party building too many dumps? Goblins love dumps! Too many graveyards? Aspiring necromancers love graveyards! Too many marketplaces? Sczarni love marketplaces! If they build the city too heavy in one direction...they attract too many of a "thing" in one direction as well.
Always remember that a city is never static, there should always be a problem in the city...big or small...always a problem someone is complaining about. Getting them to view leadership as a choice of where to put out fires by their size is important. If they focus on the knucklehead issues like "The water tastes funny from the well" vs. "ZOMG TATZLEWYRMS ARE DESTROYING THE CROP FIELDS!" ...I think they'll make the right choices ;p
I think that's what I really wanted to present in my Kingmaker game, and I'm sad that didn't really get through. They had fun, but they didn't really have hard choices.
Heh, have to admit I'm the opposite. The kingdom building is really just a backdrop for the big fey-centric story and giving Nyrissa something to threaten that the PCs feel like is worth protection because it's their kingdom dammit.
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We ended at the end of book 3. But not because we wanted to, but most of the players got new jobs and are getting ready to move away. But I will say that this AP was really fun for us. Kingdom building was a blast for half the group and they said that they could have done entire sessions just on that, while the other half thought it was a boring slog that didn't warrent the paper it was printed on. Needless to say, it got difficult balancing the desires of half the players for kingdombuilding with the other half never wanting to even bring it up.
That's why I do separate sessions...
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I don't know if you're still looking for more information on how people used the kingdom but, if so, my group and I summarized our take on it here after we finished the campaign last fall.
The bottom line is that the kingdom building, just like the exploration, was fun for a while until it got somewhat boring and we pushed it to the background after a couple of books of play.
Played trough all of it, and loved it.
We really got into the citybuilding/kingdom building, but we got a bit tired of that mechanic and didn't do much with it for the last book or two. Our cities were pretty much all built up at that point anyway.
We did exceed WBL by as much as 4 times I think on some of the characters as a result of some of the economy aspects of this AP, but the GM was very good at adjusting the challenges. So things never got easy.