Kingdom building rules - Of races and demographics

[AlastarOG]

Greetings all,

I just started the kingdom building portion of my kingmaker adventure, and already my players are adding demographics to their kingdom like crazy.

since mixed races is a strong theme for their kingdom, i would like to develop a subsystem that allows them to develop more the involvement and special features of each race they add.

Here is what I have in mind, but this is a thread for advice, please feel free to tell me how you'd do it or how you've done it.

New demographic:

Stability check to incorporate into kingdom:
Success by 5: -2 unrest (for monster races, core races generate no unrest on sucess by 5)
Success: -1d4+2 unrest
Failure: 2d4+2 unrest

Initial bonus (upon race incorporation)

1 year bonus (requires 10 BP investment)

3 year bonus (requires 50 BP investment)

Random events (3) to be put in the random events roll (I just put it as 50-95): these are small events relating to the race in particular and that affect the kingdom either positively or negatively, try to have a good one, a neutral one and a bad one.

So with these rules I would have the following demographics:

Kobolds:

Initial bonus: +1 to economy

1 year bonus:
EITHER
Mining mastery: Economy bonus goes to +2, mines cost 1 less BP, can build roads on mountain hexes
OR
Kobold harriers: can field colossal kobold armies, kobold armies add either burn, poison bleed or trap sense to their list of powers.

3 year bonus:
EITHER
Kobold forge: Unique building, acts as a foundry but also allows you to create weapons and armor assets for armies at half cost, and allows 2 mines to be enhanced by foundry.
OR
Kobold mining village: Each mine on your map is also considered a small village with 4 hexes available to build and that does not count as a district towards your control DC. This small settlement does not require a viceroy and does not have leadership positions, it only serves to give slightly more space for buildings.

The bonus not taken can be bought after the required time span has passed again (so in this case, you could buy the two 1 year bonuses before you buy the 3 year bonus).

Events:
Good: A kobold discovers a new vain of minerals in the closest mountain range
Neutral: several kobolds are complaining about the housing in mines, stability check for 0/-1/-1d4 unrest
Bad: A kobold is found murdered in the street under some hate filled language scribbled with his blood. Make a loyalty check to find the culprit, -2/-1d4+2/-2d4+2 and kobolds leave the kingdom demographics on failed check.

Fairies:

Initial bonus: -1 BP to the build cost of any magical building or city enhancement (such as eternal lanterns or unending fountain) or any building that has magic item slots.
Unlocks faery buildings (specific to my game, some faeries such as tyressa give them special buildings such as a dryad grove that allows them to build lumbermills without chopping down trees)

1 year bonus:
EITHER
Faery Whimsy: -2 to loyalty (permanent) but on each turn, add 1d6 to either economy or stability (flip a coin to determine which).
OR
Faery agents: a lot of faeries live in your kingdom and bring you items, when you roll for a magic item, roll twice and take the highest value result.

3 year bonus:
EITHER
Faery armies: You've attracted a lot of faeries, enough to field your own host, see with your Dm what kind of faeries are in your kingdom and what kind of army you can field with them.
OR
Faery court: Special menagerie building, costs 20 BP, gives +2 stability, +special loyalty, +2 economy, -1 unrest, +2 city defense.

Adds +1/2 the CR of the highest CR creature in the menagerie. Automatically starts with a CR 6 magical beast inside.
add the following random event to your random event table:
ESCAPED CREATURE! a creature has escaped the fey menagerie and destroyed 1d4+2 city block, on successful stability -5 check, only 1 city block is destroyed.

Good event: The feys of your kingdom have blessed your farms and sawmills , add 1 to their consumption reduction for this turn.
Neutral event: PRANK FESTIVAL!! -1d4+#level of holiday eddict unrest to the kindom, reshuffle all magic items in the kingdom.
Bad events: Cold iron hunters: A group of fey hunters razes one of your fey buildings unless you pass a stability check to prevent them.

tell me what you think, also I'd love some ideas for lizardfolk and centaur demographics.

[Meirril]

In our Kingmaker game I think we had all of those races represented in our kingdom, without introducing any special rules to take advantage of them. We actually put the Dryad in charge of the Lumbermill.

However, making those races be a significant percentage of the population seems unlikely. The fay are a scattering number of NPCs. Honestly, there were more werewolves around than Fay. Unless you want to consider making Mites citizens? We exterminated them.

Centaurs were another tricky problem. GM told us there were a grand total of 50 centaurs in the tribe we were friendly with. While there were other tribes beyond them, we never contacted them since our attention was drawn to the other side of the Kingdom.

The Kobolts were firmly a part of our Kingdom, but the tribe mainly stuck to the mines we opened. We did construct an 'embassy' for them in the Kingdom's capital, but mostly we didn't encourage them to do anything other than mine and trade.

The Lizardmen wanted nothing to do with us after we "helped" them. That might be different in your campaign, but its difficult to believe since Lizardmen as a race are xenophobic. Again, I can see there being exceptions but imagining hundreds or thousands of Lizardmen volunteering to move to a mixed race settlement is difficult to imagine unless they were conquered and forced to relocate.

Also, forming a Fay army seems to be against the nature of the AP. Shouldn't the army be able to provide enough spoilers about the end encounter to get the PCs involved long before they are ready to be involved with the end boss? Also any army formed needs at least half of the members to be a single creature type or class. In our campaign we had armies of rangers, fighters, cavaliers and a golem army. We had a lot of casting institutions and a NPC that could create golems so conceptually we created 1 ice golem under the control of 1 soldier for a 100 man unit of 50 ice golems with 50 wizards controlling them, but rules wise it was a 100 ice golem unit.

The kingdom building rules are suppose to be abstract and flexible. What is there can represent any influence you want it too. But hey, if you want to introduce special new options to your campaign I'm sure you're players will like it. I just think trying to push populations of creatures beyond what the module introduces would be unwise. Also, the Fay should remain mysterious creatures, not the guys that they deal with every day hiding some terrible secret from the Players.