My party never goes back to the city?

[jasonthelamb]

Just wondering what people do for the planned encounters if the party never goes back to the city?

[Tacticslion]

"A lot. (Unless you're okay with it, or the campaign presumes it.)"

The point is: being in the wilderness is a dangerous, cost-consuming affair. There are only so many charges on your wands, and if your cleric is handling all the damage, than either they're not facing many of strong encounters, are very high level for their relative location, or you just play the game in a manner different from Core Rulebook (which, to be clear, some officially published APs do, and many tables do as well, so this isn't inherently a bad thing, but can be, if the GM has plans for a city and not a wilderness).

That said, if you e plans for a city, and they don't go back, no matter how many hints or suggestions or clues you've dropped, I see two options.

1) Rebuild the campaign around where they want to be: the wilderness
2) Have the bad things happen "off screen" (because they weren't there) and the spill-over inform even wilderness-dwelling hicks of the badness.
(There's also scrapping this game, but I didn't think that one should actually be on the table unless no one is having fun.)

But the real question is: why are the party preferring the wilderness to the city. Answer that, and you may have a solution to your problem (if any) handed to you, directly.

EDIT: hm. Just noticed this was in Kingmaker. Oooooooops. I thought it was a general thread (it came up on the left hand board, so I didn't see what it was). I'm a player, so I'll be stepping out, now... that said, I added one word to the above. Also, I find it weird that Players wouldn't want to go back to their own city. Also, also, remind them in- and out-of-character about the vacancy penalties for not being the rulers often enough. Roads are great for enabling faster movement over all sorts of terrain. Very useful.

[Queen Moragan]

I'm assuming the city is Oleg's Trading Post, which is meant to be the PC's base of operations at least until they found their capital in about book 2.

If the PC's never return to Oleg's after their first visit;

Did they solve the bandit problem or not?

Did they establish another base or are they constantly roaming?

If they solved the bandit problem, you can have Oleg find them and invite them to stay. If they didn't you can have the bandits take over Oleg's or drive him out, perhaps down the road to Ft. Serenko or Nivakta's Crossing.

If they established another base that's ok, you can have Oleg's and others in the area, hunters, trappers, and settlers converge on the PC's location and start building things.

If they're constantly roaming you might want to target their mounts, ammo, and supplies so they will need to go back to the nearest outpost of civilization, i.e. Oleg's.

[Chemlak]

Start enforcing encumbrance.

[pennywit]

jasonthelamb wrote:

Just wondering what people do for the planned encounters if the party never goes back to the city?

Which city?

[Chuckbab]

You could also apply some kind of incremental penalty for staying in the wild for too long (for example, minor ability damage each X day that can't heal, but is automatically removed after a few day's in the comfort of a city).

[RealAlchemy]

Make them roll survival checks to avoid running out of food, craft checks to avoid running out of arrows, etc.

[kadance]

Eventually, they'll be running a kingdom, and failure to return to the city to actually run the kingdom carries very stiff penalties.

[pennywit]

If you're talking about their kingdom's capital city ... politically, that means that somebody's going to start ruling the place because they can't bother to show up. If they start spending a lot of time away from their cities on tasks that are not kingdom-related business, then after about a month of that, in addition to the usual penalties, I would start rolling weekly Stability and Loyalty checks. If those checks fail, then add 1 Unrest for each check the kingdom fails ... and let the players know you are doing this.

Although if you're players have started building their kingdom, I find it odd they wouldn't want to return to their city. My players have established (as I recall) four or five different settlements in their kingdom. When they're not doing kingdom business, they live in different communities. The Chaotic Neutral wizard particularly likes living on a creepy island with a wizard school.

[Spatula]

If we're talking about the kingdom's capital, the kingdom collapses pretty quickly. The leaders have to be present for one week every month for the kingdom turn. With the positions vacant, unrest racks up very rapidly. At 20 unrest, the kingdom falls into anarchy.