As the title suggests, I really want to play Kingmaker. I've gotten into two games and both died mostly due to players falling out.
I'd love to play in a Kingmaker game with a GM who is interested in doing a 1/day post requirement during the week at least from their players...and enforce it. Now, it's one thing if players give GMs a heads up why they can't make it for a short period of time but honestly, it is only 5 minutes out of the day to check a website, read, and write a response.
Not a must: Personally I prefer random rolling for Stats as it does sound the most like what is reality...which is life is unfair and sometimes you just aren't that strong. Otherwise, I prefer 25 but can handle 20 at the lowest (I don't find 15 pt buy to be fun.)
I understand playing optimized but I prefer other players who aren't Munchkins. Good Roleplay is always encouraged and appreciated and for something where you are asking players to post 1/day personally I think a program like Discord is almost a must. Having an alert can really help others know that the game has updated.
I'm perfectly content with a GM doing their own twist on things and producing a unique version of Kingmaker. (I also completely understand using the updated system from Ultimate Campaign to help take away from some of the bad baggage this game slightly suffers for in it's minigame.)
I appreciate anyone who even reads this post, let alone considers running it.
That said, I prefer to leave most of the requirements for players up to the GM who feels the urge to take up this heavy mantel.
Last Note: I do not necessarily wish to be the king, if the dice roll that way, then that's how they roll but I think with this game in particular it's more important to get a group the GM feels would be active enough and willing to commit and then sit down and discuss what we wish from the Campaign before building actual characters and setting up roles. This game is about cohesion of a group, and with the starting setup it uses it would make sense for like minded individuals to have come together and discussed things rather than a bunch of random people signing a piece of paper and winning a lottery.
Definitely interested as a PC! I have ran it as a GM before and would love the chance to experience it from the player's side of things.
I would also love to join!
I've considered running a character-driven kingdom builder type game. I think it would be neat to get 14 players to fill every leadership role and have long discussions about how the kingdom should run. Have multiple threads discussing different topics. Assign players responsibilities for knowing/researching certain parts of the kingdom building rules etc etc. Make full use of the strengths of playing by post.
You could take votes or use online polls to determine policy. Or you could just give certain executive decisions to certain players. what are taxes like? thats upt o whoever is magistrate? General doesn't have enough money to feed his troops. He has to take it up with the magistrate, not the GM. etc etc.
The gameplay/combat part of it is where it would get tricky. You'd have to split into multiple play groups with different GMs to bear the prep-load. but say two of the players wanted to run a scenario, they could each take a separate party of 6 players and run adventures simultaneously.
I've mulled it over but i haven't sat down and done the real legwork. You'd need a LOT of players dedicated to the task of running their part of the kingdom. I guess anyone could do it within the framework of the Kingmaker AP but I've always preferred character-driven and player-suggested content to pre-written. Plus the commitment to finishing over a years worth of content intimidates me.
@SkaTalon I love the idea, but it's really hard enough to get 4 to 6 players to agree to things, stay active on the boards, and to not get upset and possibly leave.
One of the reasons I want to do this AP is because it's political intrigue but sadly as far as I know it's also one of the most often abandoned APs.
The reason I feel a lot of PCs drop from Kingmaker is because there is no clear Mary Sue. People get used to having the carrot-on-a-stick approach and have a difficult time making decisions when the burden of progressing the story falls on them.
Not only that, but most groups I saw at tables do not form a concrete idea on who will be king, what kind of kingdom they want, et cetera so, when the time comes, more than a few players want the crown and even more fundamentally disagree with each other on how to run the kingdom.
My solution when I ran the game was to take a no-nonsense approach and asked the group from the get-go what they wanted in a kingdom, how they would run it, and then began working out with them who would be king. This not only helped me keep inter-party strife to a minimum, but also to help shape a coherent narrative better by restructuring some encounters, adding more depth to certain NPCs, and offering more opportunities for them to just play out what they would like to play out.
It turned out the PCs wanted to be esoteric, mysterious rulers of the Stolen Lands. To that end, I played up the fey angles in the campaign, added more mystery (and horror) to a certain keep, and had the River Kingdoms situated on a powerful ley convergence. I let them reflavor certain structures to better match what they wanted and the kingdom itself came to be very unique.
I guess what I'm saying is that, no matter who picks up the game, they need to be willing to sit down with the players and work out a lot of the big decisions early on, like who will be king, what kind of kingdom they want, and how they will run it. Adding in questions to that effect would probably work wonders.
I would love to get in on some Kingmaker goodness. If a game forms, I'm there.