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I love sword and sorcery worlds and bronze age settings a lot, but I'm not a fan of early modern settings, like Golarion. So it's often some converting and adjusting of adventures and APs for me. The Kingdom Building system from Kingmaker is an interesting idea, but I think there could be some changes made to make it more fitting to represent the small domains of a chief.
Unfortunately, Ultimate Campaign, in which the rules will be reprinted, will be released only two weeks and it might even take a bit longer until they will be accessible in the PRD. So if you don't know the rules but want to understand the specifics of the system, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for a bit more.
To summarize, you control a certain area of territory in which you can found major settlements. In each of these Cities, you can invest Build Points from your treasury to create new buildings for merchants, craftsmen, and all kinds of public services. Once per month you roll dice to see how much income your settlements generated and how much you had to spend to maintain them. If you make surplus, you can invest the profit into new buildings, but those also consume additional resources every month, so you need to find a good balance of what special buildings you have in your kingdom.
You can also fill certain public offices with NPCs or even other PCs in the party, and then you add one of their ability modifiers (often Int or Wis) to the rolls you make every month to see how well the economy performed and if the locals are still happy. If they get too unhappy, the economy suffers and you might lose parts of the territory you control.
Now since some barbarian with his companions and their followers can hardly be called a Kingdom, I suggest calling these territories simply domains for the purpose of this thread. Similarly, not every major settlement would actually be a city, but mostly relatively minor towns, so I'd say let's call them just towns.
But the bread and butter of the system are the special buildings you can get for your town.
I suggest that the following buildings should not be available at all, or at least require that a town has a minimum of 50 already existing special buildings.
Academy: There simply is no formal education in a town of barbarians.
Cathedral: There might be one in the primary religious center of the entire culture, but an individual chief should not have one in his town.
Library: Like an Academy, it would be rather out of place.
Luxury Store: Could be feasable in a major trading center with contacts to distant lands, but usually there wouldn't be much of a customer base for their goods.
Magic Shop: In a setting leaning towards Sword & Sorcery, these would be out of place.
Monument: Might work, but I don't have much of an idea for what would seem apropriate in this context.
Park: Doesn't seem to make sense.
Theatre: Neither does this. Bards and minstrels would rather perform in Taverns or the chiefs keep.
Town Hall: Since the whole government would take place in the chiefs home, there is not much need for it.
That said, there are a number of special buildings that I think are still missing and should be added to the list:
Heros Grave (4 BP): The resting place of a famous hero, often the founder of the clan. A smaller version of the monument. Loyalty +2, Unrest -1.
Keep (27 BP): A smaller version of the castle. Usually the home of the chief or one of his most loyal followers entrusted with governing the area. Economy +1, Loyalty +1, Stability +1, Defense Modifier +4, Unrest -2, limtited to one Keep or Castle per town.
Palisade (3 BP): A much cheaper alternative to stone walls. Defense Modifier +2, Unrest -1.
Town Square: A central meeting place where the elders and leaders of the town gather to discuss matters of public concern and where the chief adresses his people. Loyalty +1, Stability +1.
Warrior Hall (20 BP): A central meeting hall were the accomplished full time warriors of the clan gather and train. Since this is basically the headquarter for military forces in the area, it makes the town a lot more secure. It also promotes pride in the clans might and displays the forces that the chief commands. Defense Modifier +2, Loyalty +1, Stability +1, Unrest -1.
Witch Hut (10 BP, may not be adjacent to more than one building): A lesser version of the casters tower. A witch can provide vital services, but is generally mistrusted. 2 minor items; Economy +1, Unrest +1.
Another thing that needs to be adressed is alignment. Alignment really doesn't work at all for Sword & Sorcery games. But like character alignment can be very well replaced with Allegiances, so can the alignment of a domain be replaced with a certain type of society.
Here some ideas:
Hunters: This clan uses a lot of hunting and also trading over agriculture. +2 Economy, +2 Loyalty.
Druidic: The people of this domain live under the protection of an influential group of druids or shamans. While not rich, such clans are less at a risk of famines or uprisings against unpopular rule. +2 Loyalty, +2 Stability.
Traders: These clans gains their wealth from trade. While they are often wealthy, their fortunes are fickle and hard to predict. +6 Economy, -2 Loyalty.
Raiders: This clan relies heavily on stealing goods and riches from their neighbors. While they often live well and can easily compensate for a bad economy by increased raiding, people of these clans are prone to turning against each other. +2 Economy, +4 Stability, -2 Loyalty.
Cult: This domain is populated by deeply devoted followers of a minor deity, ancient horror, or demon lord. The isolation of the people makes them poor, but they rarely turn against their leaders and perform their work as it is expected of them. -2 Economy, +4 Loyalty, +2 Stability.
This was all brewed up rather quickly but I still, and even because of it, I'd want to hear peoples oppinions of where I could add to this and how I might adjust the modifiers and BP costs a bit better.
My homebrew setting has a lot of settlements along these lines, so I dig it. Thanks for sharing!
I like these additional building options. We're just getting started on the building portion of the Kingmaker AP and this is the first DMing I've done since 2.0. I'm looking for even more options for the building stuff and mods to the kingdom rules etc. Did you ever add any more to these lists?