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I'm starting a new campaign tonight spanning a dozen modules, multiple adventuring parties, and years of in-game time. The one common tie between the various groups and scenarios will be the Umbra Carnival; all of the PCs will be members of the carnival, and each adventure will take place when the carnival travels to that location.
As such I want the carnival to be a living, breathing thing...more of a small, dynamic city-state than the settlement statblock presented in Murder's Mark allows. I like the idea of the PCs taking on more responsibility and growing the carnival as they go, with the end goal of eventually making it so large and so famous that it finds a permanent home.
I remember having a really hard time with the caravan rules when I ran Jade Regent, and the carnival already seems too big for those rules to accommodate. But the Kingdom building rules are too broad and seem hard to apply to a single settlement.
I'm guessing I'll need to create a hybrid of the two, but I was wondering if anyone had advice on either system as I go. If you were me, would you start with the caravan rules and build on with kingdom building rules, or vice-versa? Is there a third option I haven't considered yet? Any ideas I can steal would be greatly appreciated.
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In the Rise of the Runelords game I am a player in, my character started his own carnival. We used the rules for Buildings and Organizations from Ultimate Campaign to run it...
The Big Top tent is basically a portable Auditorium; all the circus games, etc work out to be a Game Room. The concessions and souvenirs are Storefronts, backed by a Kitchen and Bar. I used a Habitat for the various animals on display and Trophy Room for the other various exhibits. The wagons were used for the above, but also carried Storage, Offices and Bedrooms.
I had various Teams for the carnival workers, all being led by a Manager that I used as a combination of Stage Manager and Smuggler.
It works very well...