Hi, all. I've been working on a variation on the kingdom building rules that allow you to "zoom out" to higher levels where you don't worry about specific buildings or hexes any more. I don't know that it's mechanically much simpler than the original rules, but it's certainly less fiddly.
A number of people have said that they found the existing rules a bit cumbersome with larger kingdoms, but that moving to "kingdom in the background" felt like they were giving up. I can see from my experience that the day will come when building stables in the fifth settlement from the left will be too much detail, too. Hence, rules that allow rulers to manage their kingdoms at higher levels.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16299287/Kingmaker/ScaleableKingdom.pdf
You can manage your kingdom at four different scales. To copy from my rules:
- Building scale This is the scale of the existing Kingmaker kingdom-building rules. Each settlement is improved building-by-building, and terrain hexes are individually upgraded with roads, farms and other improvements.
- Local scale At this scale, settlements are treated as atomic entities, without worrying too much about what specific buildings are within. The kingdom's rulers invest BPs into a settlement to get a particular outcome (such as to improve its defences, bolster its economy or decrease unrest), rather than choosing from a list of possible buildings. Improvements to terrain hexes are still individually
tracked.
- Regional scale At this scale, rulers manage all the hexes within entire regions of their kingdom (such as the Kamelands or the Narlmarches) as a single entity. Much like settlements at local scale, BPs are invested into a region to get a particular outcome, without worrying too much about which specific hexes are claimed and improved. Settlements within the region are still handled as individual entities.
- Kingdom scale This is the highest-level view for the rulers of the kingdom. Settlements within a region are "rolled up" and managed as a single entity. Spending on settlements in the region is done without worrying about which specific settlement is being improved. At the
most extreme, the entire kingdom can be assigned to a single region.
In order to scale in and out, some of the details from the normal rules are abstracted. There are no lists of buildings or terrain improvements with unique features - for example, +1 Economy costs 3 BP whether it's bought as part of a magic shop, a castle or a market place.
I've done some playtesting of the changes for a small kingdom using kingdom scale and found that it works. I'll continue to do the playtest and see that they still work for larger kingdoms, but I thought I'd share now in case anyone is interested.
Rob,
What an excellent idea!
Please keep us updated as, I for one, can see myself getting to this point.
Thanks, Philip!
Have you had a look at the rules in the PDF I linked? How do they look to you?
This seems like an awesome idea, which I'm all for. I'm away for the weekend but I'll be checking this out when I get back. Dotting.