Maybe look at subsystems in the gmg to get an inkling. That's the only thing I can really think of.
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I've already had to rebuild the entire system for my own kingmaker campaign, i'll link the thread here:
Kingmaker pf2e rules by AlastarOG
My take on it is that I dissociated kingdom stats from ability scores, and I've linked advisors to ''key skills'', advisors take the ''administer kingdom'' downtime activity that takes 1 week, then make a skill check vs a Hard DC of the kingdom's level.
This administration check will then influence the appropriate kingdom stat rolls in the kingdom phase.
Kingdom stats have been taken to the following:
Economy
Loyalty
Stability
Relations
Espionnage
It gets complex, read the rules and tell me what you think ?
I've already had to rebuild the entire system for my own kingmaker campaign, i'll link the thread here:
Kingmaker pf2e rules by AlastarOG
My take on it is that I dissociated kingdom stats from ability scores, and I've linked advisors to ''key skills'', advisors take the ''administer kingdom'' downtime activity that takes 1 week, then make a skill check vs a Hard DC of the kingdom's level.
This administration check will then influence the appropriate kingdom stat rolls in the kingdom phase.
Kingdom stats have been taken to the following:
Economy
Loyalty
Stability
Relations
EspionnageIt gets complex, read the rules and tell me what you think ?
These look interesting. I started trying to come up with rules or a system for growing a Mercantile Empire as some PCs in my nautical campaign are constantly standing up ventures in the areas they adventure in or visit.
I thought of assigning general downtime actions they could all participate in (which is basically the rules for a ritual) but I like the idea of assigning roles and checks for that role that you have.I figure there would have to be checks for how much of something could be produced, what may happen during shipping and then making contacts/prices in various cities. So Production, Shipping and Sales downtime activities.
My other campaign just started with the PCs taking over an abandoned town and building it up so these rules should help with creating some roles and checks they can make as they start producing grain and lumber. Of course, now they are reaching out to merchants in the area to try to sell these resources so I'm back to trying to come up with some economy downtime activities.
I like the idea of Build Points especially as a place holder for economic growth and to spend on increasing the town or organization instead of straight up currency.
The Leadership subsystem has worked pretty well so far but its coming up with these victory points rewards to spend on growth/items/buildings vs activity check DCs that is challenging to me.
Pathfinder is about combat and exploring but would be nice to have some minor rules for permanent settlements or non combat challenges that their characters want to grow and maintain. I guess its like crafting or player housing in a video game (garrison management was too much however). This seems like what they did with the Age of Ashes AP and I was just looking over the Branches subsystem in Strength of Thousands which is great but I dont think that applies as an Empire Builder ruleset
Seems my campaigns always wind up with some sort of management activity be it a town, airship, trade empire, tavern ownership, etc that my PCs want to do. Its great and facilitates a living world their characters influence and shared story experience but the rules just aren't exactly always there
I'm glad my system was of some use to you :)
And yeah maybe they're not really super well edited but I have rules for trade routes under the grand diplomat actions in there. They're a function of target kingdom and initiating kingdom and distance between, as well as if there's roads or somesuch.
I agree that having some complex yet understandable official system would be nice :)
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Well how I would do it would probably be a smidgen differently than how Paizo may end up doing it.
I would want to put the PCs more in the driver's seat - they make choices about how to set up the kingdom, which in turn determines which potential crises are no big deal and which are transformative. But this means that I can't really predict where the adventure will really head in the long run - so I can't lay out a clear six book plan for the campaign.
One computer game that I think does kingdom building especially well is Egypt: Old Kingdom. You start out with some hunter gatherers on the banks of the Nile, eventually consolidate into a small tribe, assimilate/annex other tribes, found Memphis, and begin to expand your kingdom along the Nile and into the rest of Egypt and the Middle-East. But all the time, the complexity of what you're doing doesn't really increase very much; controlling twice as much land doesn't mean twice the management work. Remote areas are done more abstractly than your capital region. This is quite different from games like Civilization where more cities means more micromanagement. I think for Pathfinder the Old Kingdom model is better: as the campaign progresses, the kingdom management minigame shouldn't grow much in how much work each "turn" takes.
I also think the "random events" feature is very important. A kingdom has a big "surface"; lots of weird things are happening at all sides and some of them are dangerous, some are just an interesting historical footnote. But it's a wider panorama compared to a typical campaign that's more focused on a single key storyline. In a kingmaker game the random event that you neglect and that festers and becomes worse, could actually become the next big chapter, not originally planned.
Player agency is very important. The players decide things like their style of government, where they expand to, what they want to build and so on. This creates strengths and weaknesses. If they invested heavily into a navy then a crisis with pirates is not going to be as hard to deal with, while the desert raiders may require much more hands-on intervention by the players instead of their subjects.