Have you looked at Ultimate Intrigue
A complete system of influence, providing new goals and rewards to challenge players and link their fortunes to ...organizations.
If that isn't what you're looking for have you tried 7th Sea?
One idea might be to go the other way have some sort of a computer grand strategy game running and have the players make decisions that you then put in as moves and let the computer 'simulate' what the results are. (Civ maybe, one of the Paradox games perhaps?)
Obviously this would work better if you were very very familiar with how the game works so you could make it work for you and you could take screenshots to provide to your players so they can make decisions on what they want to do.
You might look up Lords of Creation here.
Atlas, Savage Worlds seems promising but I can't find an expansion that quite fits what I'm looking for. Got any recommendations?
If you mean specifically "kingdom building," you can try taking a look at Hellfrost: Resource Management (medieval-esque fiefdom management) or Beasts and Barbarians: Tricania: Land of Princes and Demons (medieval-esque kingdom management).
I'm a big fan of Savage Worlds, so if you decide to use it, I'll definitely sign up!
I'd be interested in a Savage Worlds kingdom building game of some kind, I think.
Or Birthright.
Sounds fun!
While I do not know of any actual rpg systems for this kind of game ... I can certainly recommend the Total War computer game series. They are doing just that (but usually single player only).
Maybe those games can inspire a homebrew systems or add-on to savage world or GURPS or anything. I love those games (especially Medieval 2 saw me dumping hours upon hours of game time into it with all its great mods) but they are really high-level, so resource management beyond gold (which is generated by a multitude of sources like taxes, trade, mines, farming, looting, ...) and well construction time is quite off the charts - while later incarnations of the Total War games started so somewhat include strategic resources as well.
[Edit:] So it will be PvP focused game, or rather PvE, so the player's fractions against the world / some evil overnation or something along the line? I'm usually not a big fan of PvP.
Don't care about the system. But love the idea of leading a kingdom, and of navigating a complex political landscape! Ultimately, doesn't story trump... well, everything?
(And doesn't Pathfinder have entirely suitable rules for kingdom management and troupe battles?)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Back in the day, back in the origins of D&D, using the Chainmail rules, the Game master would create a map and all the players would take a country. Each week you would build your economy, recruit and send your troops out and send political messages. The Game master would collate all of this and at the end of the week let everyone know the results. If two countries had troops in the same province, there would be a table top battle using miniatures to decide the victor. We called this a Campaign game.
The interaction between these leaders and heros/monsters is the backdrop to how Gary Gaygax and Dave Arneson (Blackmoor) came up with the idea for D&D.
I"m sure there are rules out there for random generation of kingdoms, provinces. You would have so much wealth to start with to build your economy or have a balanced randomizer (ie. cities, mines, lumber, etc to produce gold). Could all be human (ala Game of Thrones) or Fantasy kingdoms.
Not sure what rules you would use to run the big battles but like Amergin pointed out, I'm sure Pathfinder has something or you might have something in mind.
I've always heard the stories from my game mentor, Mike Reese (who was part of TSR back in the day - Tractics) but never got to play myself. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Diplomacy is a good board game for the general feel of this sort of thing too.
I used to play a number of play by postal mail games in this genre. Not only was all of the above true but there were also monster lairs spread through out the map where your heroes could go and discover magic texts, weapons, treasure, etc...
I have the newer version of Divine Right. There's supposed to be one coming out this year which may suit the purpose because they expanded the rules heavily once again.
Here's a link to the Warhammer Fantasy Battles Campaign and Mighty Empires rules. It's missing rules for NPC provinces, Monster Lairs and such but it may be a good start...
Grand Strategic Campaign Rules
http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/4753/campaign.htm
Strategic Campaign Rules
http://www.ricks-warmaster.com/MightyEmpiresCampaignRules.pdf
DM Arad if any of this sounds interesting let me know. I would be happy to work with you and make this happen.