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First Off,
Hello Paizoland, I'm Ross the new Venture CPT in Southern Alberta. I'm looking for GMs with experience running campaigns that included Kingdom Management.
I'm help a GM in my region with a project outside of Society play, but I thought I would post here.
If you have experience, and are willing to share. Drop me a Note, or post here.
Cheers,
Ross
So you are wanting to get into the larger kingdoms type game?
I can tell you they are very rewarding, and I ran such games for about three years. Not with the pathfinder rules of course, with my own homebrew a group and I developed over four games.
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I've run a Kingdom Building game before and I have to say it was heck of a lot of fun.
I do believe it requires a certain kind of playstyle to enjoy however.
This type of campaign can be very rewarding! Feel free to ask again when you have specific questions. Until then, here are some general suggestions.
•Don't overload the players with too much world info up front. Let it come out piece by piece.
•Take notes. You'll often have to improvise details, and your players will appreciate consistency.
•Read over the PCs sheets for skill point allocations. Plan opportunities for skills they have to be useful.
•Allow the PCs to experience setbacks on their path to power. It makes victories all the sweeter!
I'm running Kingmaker, and here are a few things I do to make the kingdom building rules run better.
1) Spreadsheet. Having the kingdom and city stats in a spreadsheet that automatically calculates things makes it run a lot quicker.
2) Pre-role and plan kingdom events. That way you have time to add some role-playing elements in for some events, rather than it just being a loyalty check.
3) Communicate Expectations. Kingdom building rules can be twisted and min-maxed. I told my players I wanted them to build a kingdom, not just max the numbers and that as they were building a kingdom that seemed organic, I'd minimize any really terrible events and help them grow. They still pay attention to the numbers, making sure loyalty, stability and economy are all growing, but they don't just focus on how to squeeze every drop out of the system.
So far the experience has been positive, with my players really enjoying building the kingdom and watching their cities and towns grow. Some sessions though it does take a majority of the game time when we go through several months in a row. Make sure all the players are willing to play in that sort of environment or some might get pretty bored and frustrated with the game.
Some suggestions
*A random table of kingdom events. This keeps everyone on their toes and makes the game feel more random and alive. There are no railroads here!
*Piece by piece world info as suggested above, and have a lot of hidden secrets that can be uncovered by spies or contacts (long live the queen did this well).
*There must be plots, rebellions and usurpers.
*Don't prep too much as the dm, the amount of work that can involve can destroy a game before it starts. Especially if the dm is a perfectionist and everything has to be set in stone. This won't work, because in this type of game the players really could try anything and you can't prep for everything. I ran three games and before my fourth, another dm was meant to step in, but he over-prepared and burned out.
*Add pvp options, split holdings amongst the players and they themselves will make a story to remember.
*There are a lot of possible scenarios for a large politics game. Be sure the gm knows what they are playing, what is the central issue and focus on that. Draft up a list of major events and base the game around at most two of them. I can provide a lot more here, but only if you want it.
*Roll back the magic a bit, make spellcasters independents that are difficult, but not impossible, to control and bring to heel.