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I'm actually impressed that this adventure path was so good that people 10 years later are still posting about it! And, after many years, I'm rebooting Kingmaker for a new group in a new state after moving for work (albeit using 5E rules). It's a labor of love no matter the edition.
Amongst many questions I might have depending on who's still around, what did people who ran this thru completion find worked best for Kingdom management?
Years ago, I ran the path thru #6 and posted a crapload, but we never finished as we lost two gamers to real life demands. By #5, the math had gotten insane. We needed a computer program to resolve each kingdom turn. It was a blast, early on, but bogged down some time after Varnhold Vanishing. Also, the whole point of a big kingdom appeared, game-wise, to be to support a large enough army to resist attacks. Otherwise, 6 settlements or 12 settlements, it really didn't seem to matter. By #6, there was no point at all.
Did anyone turn to something simpler?
I'm actually impressed that this adventure path was so good that people 10 years later are still posting about it! And, after many years, I'm rebooting Kingmaker for a new group in a new state after moving for work (albeit using 5E rules). It's a labor of love no matter the edition.
Amongst many questions I might have depending on who's still around, what did people who ran this thru completion find worked best for Kingdom management?
Years ago, I ran the path thru #6 and posted a crapload, but we never finished as we lost two gamers to real life demands. By #5, the math had gotten insane. We needed a computer program to resolve each kingdom turn. It was a blast, early on, but bogged down some time after Varnhold Vanishing. Also, the whole point of a big kingdom appeared, game-wise, to be to support a large enough army to resist attacks. Otherwise, 6 settlements or 12 settlements, it really didn't seem to matter. By #6, there was no point at all.
Did anyone turn to something simpler?
Honestly I would consider ditching the kingdom management system entirely. It's too complicated for what it does model and it doesn't really model the bits that are important. It also doesn't work very well with the given scenario - without significant outside pressures (not present in the published adventures aside from perhaps the month of blooms in book 6) the PC kingdom will quickly reach a state where they can ignore events and build most anything short of Colossal armies of high-level NPCs with magic arms & armor. There's some more details about the system's failings here.
I've thought about ways of correcting the issues but I don't think it's possible. I think at the very least the DC of kingdom checks needs to be divorced from the size of the kingdom and set using some other metric. Instead of 1 potential event/month, there should be multiple chances for events, maybe one for each settlement and another for each significant swath of hexes. Some solid guidelines for what level and size of armies can be recruited would also be welcome.
But in any case, I feel like a better approach would be to create a list of the internal factions to the kingdom and external threats. Set long-term and short-term goals for each. Maybe rate each with a small collection of bonuses (Influence, Money, Spies, Military, Loyalty - something like that). The PC kingdom would be rated similarly, and the PC bonuses would be determined by where they spend their influence (a limited resource/month) and also by external events. Finally each month there would be a chance of some number of events where each is either a random occurrence (fire burns down most of a town) or based on one of the factions' goals. Events would require PC decision making and possibly the expenditure of influence, or delegation to others which possibly costs more influence? and allows the situation to be resolved with a check.
But that's just off the top of my head.
The application home page is here: https://daddydm.wordpress.com/software-apps/the-kingdom-manager-app
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DaddyDM you pretty much plucked the words from my head and experience. Kingdom building was a blast at first, fresh and new. By Varnhold Vanishing, it was a chore. If I require a computer or Excel spreadsheet to figure it out, it's too much. Yet, I don't want to abandon the idea entirely. If there's no legacy to fight for, it renders future adventures meaningless!
I will say I did get a fair bit of mileage out of having rivals (and the First World) lay waste to the players' kingdom. But aside from dictating what was where, the kingdom management rules didn't contribute a tremendous amount to that.
Not to disagree with what anyone is saying in this thread (I also abandoned the Kingdom rules after a while), but I want to point out that the disconnect between the adventure and the mechanics is by design. Paizo recognized that the mechanics of the kingdom wouldn't be for everyone, so they made sure that the adventure didn't rely very much on the size or status of the PCs' kingdom in case any group wanted to drop those rules and just run the AP as a more standard AP.
Not to disagree with what anyone is saying in this thread (I also abandoned the Kingdom rules after a while), but I want to point out that the disconnect between the adventure and the mechanics is by design. Paizo recognized that the mechanics of the kingdom wouldn't be for everyone, so they made sure that the adventure didn't rely very much on the size or status of the PCs' kingdom in case any group wanted to drop those rules and just run the AP as a more standard AP.
Which was a mistake, IMO. Is there an option in Wrath of the Righteous to play without the mythic rules? (there may be, I dunno, but I'm guessing not since you'd have to redo all the monster stats) If you're going to do a domain management AP, do a domain management AP. If people aren't into it they can wait for the next one.
Making the rulership part optional just means that the players' kingdom can't really interact with the published scenarios. Which in this case resulted in a complete lack of diplomacy and a lack of warfare until it's irrelevant (as the PCs are a group of walking nukes by WotRK).
Which was a mistake, IMO. Is there an option in Wrath of the Righteous to play without the mythic rules? (there may be, I dunno, but I'm guessing not since you'd have to redo all the monster stats)
I believe I read that there is an option to run it without using the mythic rules.
If you're going to do a domain management AP, do a domain management AP. If people aren't into it they can wait for the next one.
I think that in a business like Paizo's, you're more likely to see them drop the kingdom mechanics so that the AP is more accessible to everyone rather than go all-in on the mechanics NS publish an AP that they think a lot of people won't enjoy. This two-systems-that-never-touch approach is most likely the best we could have gotten.
Toward the end of my campaign, I tried to zoom out the lens a little bit. The players were no longer handling the minutiae of building houses in Varnhold. Instead, they were grappling with fey who wanted to ruin the kingdom they built, making sure the civil war in Brevoy did not encroach on their lands, and managing the relationships in their immediate court to prevent civil war AND to keep the ruler's consort (one Casper Irovetti) from undermining the duchess's diplomatic work.
I think that over the years you've repeatedly demonstrated that this AP (probably every AP) can be improved by not feeling the need to strictly stick to what's been published and adding (or taking away) as makes sense for your group always benefits play.
"over the years." I spent six years running Kingmaker.
Don't make me feel old, man. I am still having trouble accepting that this AP came out a decade ago. I just now that you and a few others were already pretty active on this forum when I started checking it, regularly.
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...The problem with the kingdom-building rules, IMO, is the granularity. I found that my players would get into extended discussions about whether to build a library or a temple in a settlement. That was fine when you had one three settlements. Not so fine when you have around 10-15 settlements across the kingdom..."
That's my tentative plan: to arbitrarily reduce the # of major settlements in a demesne. The CRPG version got my attention when it limited settlements to 1 per region, and from there only a handful could grow to a certain size.
After some homework, been looking at Nelson's "Ultimate Rulership" (the Legendary stuff is amazing and wish I'd had it on hand when I ran this many years ago) in which a Village is 4 lots, a Town up to 16, and a City up to 36. If I cap the # of major settlements, might be able to preserve our interest and keep cities from getting absurd. I haven't a clue how this would affect army building, but perhaps the PCs could get a loan or make a deal with another nation if low on BPs.
Realistically, villages aren't always growing. Most don't. The small town I grew up in had roughly 300 people when I moved there and 15 years later when I left, roughly 300 people. So I'm not too worried about the # of those.
Finally, I'm also thinking Colville's "Stronghold and Followers" could be implemented for when they build a Caster Tower, Castle, etc. Something to look forward to.
Which was a mistake, IMO. Is there an option in Wrath of the Righteous to play without the mythic rules? (there may be, I dunno, but I'm guessing not since you'd have to redo all the monster stats)I believe I read that there is an option to run it without using the mythic rules.
Well, I got curious so I looked it up. Apparently there are some notes in the 2nd adventure that amount to "maybe hand out non-mythic power-ups like stat boosts and free Leadership feats to the PCs." But the DM is still stuck using the mythic rules for the NPCs or re-doing their stats.
If you're going to do a domain management AP, do a domain management AP. If people aren't into it they can wait for the next one.I think that in a business like Paizo's, you're more likely to see them drop the kingdom mechanics so that the AP is more accessible to everyone rather than go all-in on the mechanics NS publish an AP that they think a lot of people won't enjoy. This two-systems-that-never-touch approach is most likely the best we could have gotten.
But that's not how the APs work. Are you a subscriber and don't like Lovecraft? You still get 6 months of Strange Aeons. Don't like mixing tech and fantasy? (a sentiment I've seen expressed often online) You still get 6 months of Iron Gods. You absolutely do not allow evil PCs? (another common one) You still get 6 months of Hell's Vengeance. And so on.
I imagine that, as Kingmaker was a relatively early AP, they didn't have the confidence that they had for later APs that their audience would stick around. If they did it today I'd like to think they would have done it more like Wrath where the subsystem is baked in and groups that don't want to use it have to make some extra effort.
I found a simpler version the Kingdom building rules on these forums (I'm afraid I've lost the link, and so all credit is really due to the originator of these rules!), which I then further house-ruled for my 2nd Edition game. It's been fairly simple to run so far, with a major focus on rural developments rather than block-by-block towns.
The rules are on the campaign website here, if anyone would like to see them. I've also got a Google Sheet to track the kingdom stats, which is here.
We're approaching the end of Varnhold Vanishing, and the Barony of Greenhaven is 30-odd hexes in size. A kingdom turn probably takes about 15-20 minutes to run, but a lot of that tends to spent dealing the monthly events. The actual mechanics part is probably 5 minutes per turn?
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Ah, I found the links for where I got the basis of my kingdom building mechanics:
Hassy, kingdom building rules and mass combat rules, plus a revision by Vlad, includes rules for armies and mass combat.
I made some fairly minor editorial changes, plus a few tweaks to adjust to PF2 scales for character skills/attributes.