Kingmaker or Ultimate Campaign Kingdom rules?

[Matthew Boehland]

Just seeing what people recommend for a Kingmaker campaign that hasn't started yet (and to be honest, is likely a year or more away, but I like reading in advance...)... The kingdom building rules in KM2 or Ultimate Campaign?

Is there any converting to be able to use the UC Kingdom rules in Kingmaker (preparation/changes to the module other than just learning the UC rules instead of Kingmaker)

Leaning towards UC rules just because of forum comments about an abusable Magic Item loophole with the rules in Kingmaker.

[redcelt32]

UC all the way. They are really the same rules, its just that UC fixed a lot of problems along the way.

Magic item exploiting has been repurposed by adding other sources of income, including upping the return on successful kingdom rolls. There were some excellent additions in the way of new construction options too like fish farms, etc.

You might see if you can get your hands on Book of the River Nations Players guide to Kingdom Building by Jon Brazer Enterprises as well (the PDF actually, the soft copy is long sold out) since there were some really good ideas in there as well which were not all picked up by UC.

[T.A.U.]

Use UC Kingdom rules.
If you need more options (not only about buildings, but also with edicts) you could also use the Legendary Games's Ultimate Rulership or as redcelt said, Book of the River Nations.

[Matthew Boehland]

I was easily convinced and ordered the Ultimate Rulership book.

[redcelt32]

Yes I second what was said about the Legendary games books, I have most of their offerings and they are excellent. I had forgotten about Ultimate Rulership because we only recently added it to our Kingmaker game and we have been running with the JBE book for almost two years now.

[pennywit]

Definitely Ultimate Campaign. They got rid of the magic item exploit. Also, there are options for more interesting things to do with your kingdom, including diplomatic edicts, trade routes, vassalage edicts, and (my personal favorite) exploration edicts.

[Spatula]

Has Book of the River Nations been invalidated or made obsolete by the UC update to the kingdom building rules? How compatible is it with Ultimate Rulership?

[pennywit]

I would be hesitant about using Ultimate Rulership. I looked through it, and it gets really complicated, really quickly.

[redcelt32]

The Book of River Nations somewhat got replaced by UC. It was basically a published version of the kingdom building rules in Kingmaker Book 2 with a ton of extra wonderful stuff added. This means some of the things in BoRN don't apply anymore since the rules crunch has changed a fair amount with UC.

The hex, city, and castle improvements that can't be found elsewhere are still great, as is the latter half of the book, with expanded combat and kingdom based feats, etc. They are definitely worth the cost of the PDF if you are running Kingmaker.