The Kingmaker path was a dud in my group but my players did really enjoy the kingdom building aspect of it . We're going to start on Ruins in a few weeks and I was thinking about expanding the role of the colony and making building up and curating the colony a more important part of the story . But the kingdom building rules aren't an exact fit for building a colony . I was thinking of maybe trying to do a little more with the camp-rules from Serpent's Skull but there's not a lot there .
Being lazy I wanted to see if there was any material already out there a step below the kingdom rules focusing more on a single city/town/what have you .
Thanks
Ultimate Campaign's downtime system (as opposed to the kingdom building) is a good match for what you want.
I am currently in the process (ie I just started today) of converting Talmandor's Bounty to both the settlement and Kingdom building rules. I only plan on half using the kingdom building, mainly for morale and such.
For downtime rules Talmandor's Bounty qualifies as a Hamlet.
I too am considering using Downtime rules and kingdom building, but I have concerns that it will be just a bunch of record keeping and not much fun. Has anyone used these systems successfully so far? What did you adapt to make them fit better? What rate of influx of new colonists did you have on incoming supply ships? It seems like this whole venture colony is very risky and doesn't merit the huge investment by Andoran and Bountiful Venture Co. to send tons of supplies and colonists very frequently.
Also, they keep mentioning lumber as a major export, like pine and such, but really, how realistic is this? Would they really make a profit shipping heavy, bulky lumber from a small island when there are plenty of forests on the mainland? I plan to make much of the lumber profit from Teak or some exotic wood, rather than common types.
I guess the challenge is balancing the urgency of figuring out what happened to the missing colonists with building a successful colony. The kingdom building rules and such kind of imply lots of downtime, but the adventuring aspects of the story seem fairly urgent.
There is quite a bit of, uh, downtime in the first few books. Stuff like, this takes place weeks after the previous encounter.
I would say don't follow the downtime rules explicitly. Use them as a sort of delivery mechanism for handing out the many many side quests in the first couple of books.
I don't plan on loading up on newer colonists for a bit. For one thing, word has to make it back to Andoran that things are looking good for more people. Then they have to be gathered up and shipped out. That's about a 4 month time frame there.
Yes, I agree that additional colonists are unlikely to be sent until more word is sent to Andoran that things are going well for the colony, both in safety and resources.
Anyone implemented downtime rules for colony building successfully yet? My group has just got to the point where colony building might begin (part 2 of book 1).
I'm torn whether to invest any effort into this. My group seems interested in crafting and decision making for the colony, but not to the point where they want to invest much time learning the mechanics.
If I don't use these systems, I'm still wondering about a default, 'average' progression of the colony. How fast will they grow reasonably? I'm still of the opinion that Andoran will be reluctant to send more colonists until the mystery of the original colonists is solved and the area deemed safe enough to send more people. I could be persuaded otherwise, I suppose.
I have never used the downtime rules in actual play and I'm a bit overwhelmed on how to organize it all. I imagine with initial time investment and organization, it won't be such a burden later on?
As the outpost won't be playing a major role (mechanically), I wouldn't bother to use a strict ruleset.
Just let their creativity flow and see where it's going. Be cautious with handing out rewards as the AP presumably isn't balanced around them and typically having a cooler outpost should be enough of a reward. Small stuff like better shopping possibilities is always an option of course. Also make sure to mention their progress. The sailors of the supply ships might be in awe how far the colony has come for example. Some players love stuff like that.
So instead of giving them a list of options to do each downtime, I'd just let them decide on their own what they want to do. If they spend time to improve the outpost make sure people appreciate it. If they just want to skip to the next part of the main story that's fine as well.
We rewrote the entire &^%$ kingdom-mechanics system and hand-tailored it for Ruins of Azlant. We've done five two-year playtests and things develop maybe too fast, but it's mostly working, so we just started the actual game.
It's a difficult mesh with the structure of the AP, which already has the problem that 3 should come immediately after 1 but can't. I hope it works. The first two sessions were fairly fun, but we're not yet into kingdom-building.
We added a tech tree a la _Civilization_ so that the PCs can make decisions about which parts of Azlanti or aboleth technology they want to develop in their colony--I anticipate that that will be the major focus of interest. I think my player, to my private disappointment, likes ioun towers and clockwork warriors, not fleshwarping labs and mind-controlling plants. (Someday we'll trade sides of the board and I'll create a horrifying little kingdom based on stolen aboleth technology.)
We are now two months into the kingdom building and have basically just finished Module 1 in terms of the regular plot (they hit Spindletop yesterday). I am actually really liking how Azlant/Kingmaker is working out. The PCs already see that they are going to *really* want some of those tech-tree advances, in particular something that will help them treat victims of prolonged mind control (they are hopeful that they will eventually find the missing colonists, and concerned about their psychological state after at least 4 months in captivity). And I think I have the dovetailing between kingdom and plot more or less working.
The first two months had a lot of hexploration by the PCs and by a colony team (Lyra, Anya, and Milo)--the colony team takes a first look and sends the PCs after anything that's trouble. It's time consuming but seems fun, and the island is definitely developing a personality. (I made it bigger; I don't think it's nearly big enough for Kingmaker even with 1-mile hexes instead of 7-mile hexes. So my version is about 20 miles the long way instead of 6.)
We also had the start of the stalker action from module 2, which, as expected, my player caught onto *fast*. (He is a Detective at heart: give him a few clues and he goes to town with them.) The stalkers have fallen back to regroup, which works well with the kingdom pacing. They took 6 months to nail the first colony, after all. I am imposing a kingdom-rules penalty for keeping the colony on high alert (everything is done by groups of 3, every household has an all-night watch) and the stalkers will figure that the colony can't keep that up forever.
I was very worried before we started but I am enjoying running this so far, and I think I much prefer the kingdom version to the standard version. In the long term I am looking forward to seeing whether it ends up as an Azlanti-tech kingdom or an aboleth-tech kingdom; the PCs greatly favor the first but the scenario wickedly encourages the second as well. I love that kind of society-building detail.
My biggest worry remains that they will go after the Flooded Cathedral while too low-level to handle it. They captured the skum commander, who must know where it is. (Next session starts with questioning him.) I guess it also knows how tough it is; hopefully they will take that into account. They're six 4th and 5th level characters right now, and Flooded Cathedral is supposed to be for four 7ths; I doubt they can do it even if I give them another level soon.
We're nine in-game months into the colony building now and it's still working okay. Next session will be a major attack by Onthooth's forces, trying to get a prisoner for questioning and generally probe the town defenses.
We had to add a building focused on healing crazy colonists, there are so many!
It's a pacing challenge but I think it's working. One huge advantage of the colony building plus tech tree approach is that all the places in this AP where it drops information about Azlanti tech in the PCs' laps, they can actually *use* it. It's not just a tease.
Incidentally, has anyone got ideas about what the orrery in Nal-Shakar does? It's an artifact, and my PCs won't leave it alone, but there is *nothing* on what it does except one line about improving your prophetic abilities. I ended up running a sideline where the science team they parked there got taken over by disembodied intelligences from a distant world....