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So with impending public release of kingmaker 2e, if the kingdom building rules turn out to work great in practice that means it'll be fun to use them in home campaigns as well whether in homebrew or Lost Omens setting :3 So I figured out it'd be fun to ponder where would be good locations for such. (nice thing about kingmaker kingdom building rules is that rules themselves don't assume specific setting per say, though they are missing advice/rules for arctic and desert terrains as those aren't in kingmaker)
I'll just get it out of the way, Sarusan would be good location if we had bigger map of it that would be easier to split into hexes ;D But yeah gm only land aside
I think most obvious locations would be Ironbound Archipelago and Iobaria. Ironbound Archipelago because devs have noted few time it could be fun kingmaker spiritual successor location and it indeed would be :D There are 13 islands with five of them being taken by Linnorm Kingdom, so both provides you a sponsor to settle on other islands, enough space for rival charters and enough self contained location that you could fit entire thing in hex map and not feel like "wait so what about our neighbor Mivon?" since while sea trade being included would be cool and such, geographical isolation makes ignoring wider international politics much easier campaign wise.
(Rest of the Linnorm Kings right now don't have super good space for new kingdom being built since now in 2e two regions don't have linnorm kings, one of them has de-facto ruler who is linnorm king in all but title since he isn't interested in slaying linnorms as he has important border defense thing going on and second is Grungir Forest aka place where Fafnheir lives. So no real new region to build up kingdom in and then cement your place as king by dueling linnorm at higher levels)
Iobaria on otherhand makes sense as its decentralized wilderness region with several small city states and three factions that explicitly want to unite it into a nation. So that's three potential sponsors or rivals if you are founding fourth faction that wants to unite the region and build national identity. Plus the whole history of several different people trying to do so previously builds up lot of regional history and interesting roleplaying moments to party's group trying to do so again.
Azlant would probably also work more or less, Ruins of Azlant didn't have players involved much in building up Talmandor's Bounty or such much since that one had more of optional "you can use downtime rules for creating business or building home" thing going on, but logically if Ironbound isles could work Azlant could too yeah. Main problem doing it on Azlant would be logistics stuff(like, population growth wouldn't really be that high, it kinda feels that Azlant would fit more of settlement builder than nation builder) and that I think Ruins of Azlant are interesting as locations for underwater campaigns which I suspect doesn't really mix well with kingdom building.
Less obviously, I think Five Kings Mountain's would sort of work due to similar themes of "there are only couple city states and there was strong dream of united culture among dwarves that died out", but that one has bit of issue in that unless campaign lasts for hundred years its hard to be convinced that this time it won't collapse in few dwarven lifespans like previous ones did(very Dwarf Fortress-y). Granted maybe its less about what happens in distant future and more about what happens now and giving local dorfs hope about it. *shrugs*
Besides that uh, I can think of few "local people decide to centralize" ideas but I'm not really happy about any of them. 2e kingdom building rules do include Yeomanry as government option, so you CAN represent decentralized nation, but I'm still bit iffy on whether that would fit. Like kingdom building in Mwangi Expanse would feel bit weird since region is much more interesting that decentralized. In Varisia you could build case for them uniting in response to new thassilon and such, but becoming new city states that unites other city states into varisian nation sounds bit off to me and still comes with the "settlers vs natives" problems and Shoanti deciding to unite into one nation doesn't seem like their interest either. One such idea I could actually see is a mammoth lord trying to unite realm of mammoth lords, but that would be more of a possible Quest for Frozen Flame continuation campaign if party decides to break away from traditions as its one of possible campaign continuation ideas. Sarkoris Scar I'm bit unsure about, I could see that one also working concept wise, but that's a lot of demon pollution so seems bit of like hard mode campaign :'D
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A "Kingmaker in Tian Xia" campaign would probably focus more on the politics angle than the original did or one in places like the Ironbound Archipelago or Azlant where there's a lot of wilderness someone can stake a claim on. It'd most likely be something like founding your own successor state to Lung Wa and then establishing your legitimacy as a claimant to the throne, much like how according to legend Emperor Gaozu quit his job as a lawman for the Qin Dynasty and turned to banditry until more people relied on him for protection than his former bosses, resulting in him founding the Han Dynasty, and we of course can't forget the Three Kingdoms period that ended THAT Dynasty. Less focus on hexploration and more on the city-building and military aspects. The Empire has been long divided, so it must unite, as Luo Guanzhong famously put it.
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My main thought for Tian Kingmaker would be to set it on the border of Shenmen and Shokuro. The latter has kind of a weak state; one PFS scenario paints the government as too focused on fending off invasion from the Successor States to protect villages from bandits. The former is a haunted land of cruel monsters and undead. So…
Early on, you’re doing the Seven Samurai thing of protecting a village who has no one else to turn to. You blunt the advance of mundane threats (maybe a local warlord who takes tribute from nearby towns), turning into protectors of a small frontier region. Something sinister from Shenmen decides to make your lives hell, with the rest of the AP being about skeletal samurai and cunning jorogumo needing first to be driven off, and then pursued and destroyed. The end part of the AP probably involves purifying a portion of Shenmen from all the curses and death stuck to it, with your humble kingdom moving onto that sanctified soil.