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I couldn't think of a snappy title.
Kingmaker basically assumes that the realm the PCs will found over the course of the Adventure Path is a hereditary monarchy like the majority of kingdoms we think of when we think of the Middle Ages, like England around 1066 in real life, or Westeros in fiction. But the average Pathfinder player is pretty darn imaginative, so I imagine many of us have thought outside that rather narrow box.
So! Have any of your PCs formed realms that operate by different setups? Mercantile republics like Venice or Novgorod? Constitutional monarchies like the modern UK? Liberal democracies like Andoran in Pathfinder? Theocracies? Magocracies?
And on a related note, how have GMs of Kingmaker handled players who have different ideas on how to set their realm up, like someone wanting a democracy while another wants kings? How did you and your players decide what a nation means in your Kingmaker game (James Joyce's Ulysses reference!)?
I am on my second Kingmaker based game.
The first game was a TT game – the group had access to all of the kingdom building rules - decided they didn’t like the titles and by the end of the game had a count as ruler for the whole area. However, he was very much a ‘first among equals’ ruler - a fairly weak hedonistic character who could generally be swayed by the other players. Each of the others finished up as Nobles running their own towns/cities estates.
I am running it again now as an online game at RPoL.net – but fI switched the ‘government’ focus from a Kingdom to a ‘marches’ style game. Each character has been invited to set up their own more-or-less independent stronghold (borrowing from the old 1st ed rules) within the March. An NPC March Warden will control the space between the various city states and strongholds. So long as they don’t mess with other Marcher Strongholds - they can set their own stronghold up as they wish. While we are at the early stages of the game - the first two strongholds I expect to develop will be a traditional semi-feudal style stronghold (two PCs are already planning their wedding to each other and the establishment of a new noble House) - and a ranger wilderness estate, based on hunters trappers and woodsmen (and taking care not to upset the fey)
I have also added some of the bits from the downtime rules, so characters can build a merchant empire instead. I was hoping the PCs would build a capital city between them, but I think the March Warden will establish a City (as his personal holdings) and let the PCs develop their own merchant-empires there. So far I have one PC who wants to be a shipping baron, a PC who wants to run the ‘entertainment’ industry (brothels & gambling dens as opposed to theatres) and a cleric of of Abadar who has set his sights on building a merchant empire (and being arch-priest of the Marches at the same time).
I also have a druid who plans (at some point) to build a Disney-like paradise where she lives in a tree-house with with mice doing the sewing, squirrels making the beds and small birds folding the sheets etc. We also have wastrel who I (half) expect to build things at random and then lose them in card games to the other players. Not to mention the woman who wants to be the power behind the throne and a couple of others who don't have any real idea yet.
Altogether I have ten pcs, split into two parties of five that are working semi-independently of each other. They are advancing at close to fast track speeds. Cross time-zone play-by-post style games can be slow :)
It is going to be fun ….