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Let's assume the PCs build their capital in the same hex where the CRPG has them doing it...
That is a hex that has both the Landmark and Resource traits. (p. 73)
Your kingdom starts as a Level 1 kingdom, and thus can only have Villages. Villages have an Influence of 0 (p. 542). This means that its influence is limited to the hex that it's built on.
The hex's Resource trait makes it a great place to build a Work Site, to get double Commodities. A Work Site is a Terrain Feature (p. 537). The section on Terrain Features states: "A single hex can contain only one terrain feature. If you want to construct a feature in a hex that already contains a feature, you must first Clear the Hex unless otherwise specified in the text."
Besides Work Sites, Other examples of Terrain Features are Farmlands and Settlements.
Since the capital city is a Settlement, it cannot have a Work Site (a 2nd Terrain Feature) in it. Nor can it have a Farmland.
At the same time, a Farmland can only be built (and it can reduce the Kingdom's Consumption), only if it is located in the area of influence of a settlement. (Establish Farmland activity on p. 522, you reduce Consumption by "the number of Farmland hexes you have within influence range of your settlements" p. 538).
The fact that Villages have influence of 0 means that Farmlands cannot be built before the kingdom advances to 3rd level (2000 XP later), when a Settlement can become a Town to get an influence of 1. In the meantime, it looks like the kingdom is limited to Harvest Crops, Go Fishing, and Gather Livestock to meet its food needs.
Also, given that the kingdom starts 1st level and the party may be at around 4th level at that time, unless I'm missing something I don't know how the party viably gets that first 2000 XP. All the milestones assume some growth ("expand a village into your first town"), and the start is precisely when it's hardest to convert Resource Points into kingdom XP, when you're poorest.
Am I misreading anything here, or is there something I'm forgetting?
If not, is this all intended?
Creative Director
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That is the intended effect—the hex that you start your kingdom in should be a significant decision in which you have to weigh a lot of elements and factor in a lot of choices. Starting in a hex where you get a free Town Hall, though (which is what happens if...
...gets you a very important structure immediately, which will give you a pretty significant advantage even if you have to spend more time looking for food.
That said, it'd be interesting to see if some sort of meta-kingdom-placement thing arises as folks compare notes and suss out which hex in the Stolen Lands is the BEST hex to start your kingdom. Personally, I hope folks don't take that to heart and instead look to start their own kingdom where they prefer to begin rather than feel like they're forced to follow the only best route—had that been the intent, there wouldn't be 100 pages or so of how to build different kingdoms. We would have provided all of those details for you and there'd be no player agency at all!
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That is the intended effect—the hex that you start your kingdom in should be a significant decision in which you have to weigh a lot of elements and factor in a lot of choices. Starting in a hex where you get a free Town Hall, though (which is what happens if...
** spoiler omitted **
...gets you a very important structure immediately, which will give you a pretty significant advantage even if you have to spend more time looking for food.
That said, it'd be interesting to see if some sort of meta-kingdom-placement thing arises as folks compare notes and suss out which hex in the Stolen Lands is the BEST hex to start your kingdom. Personally, I hope folks don't take that to heart and instead look to start their own kingdom where they prefer to begin rather than feel like they're forced to follow the only best route—had that been the intent, there wouldn't be 100 pages or so of how to build different kingdoms. We would have provided all of those details for you and there'd be no player agency at all!
I am both heartened that it was the intended effect, and challenged by the implications this has for kingdom building! It reminds me of some strategy board games that put a lot of importance on initial decisions.
So long as I might have the team's ear, did the team have a chance to playtest these rules and see how long it would take to reach 3rd level? And the adventure says to let the players get more kingdom turns to get the kingdom level to at least 2 levels below the party's level (preferably closer even). I was surprised that Farmlands are closed off at the beginning, as that runs counter to my years of playing Civilization-type games.
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So long as I might have the team's ear, did the team have a chance to playtest these rules and see how long it would take to reach 3rd level? And the adventure says to let the players get more kingdom turns to get the kingdom level to at least 2 levels below the party's level (preferably closer even). I was surprised that Farmlands are closed off at the beginning, as that runs counter to my years of playing Civilization-type games.
If you find that it's taking too long to level up the kingdom, feel free to increase the XP rewards—one good way to do so might be to increase the XP granted for leftover RP to be 10 XP per 1 RP. You can also just award large story XP for the PCs as they go, or even just abandon the Kingdom XP system and have it auto level up to match the party's level. That last method is the best solution if you find that your players are frustrated with the rate the kingdom is growing XP.
As for a playtest... not really, alas. I did the best I could with a bit of help here and there, but the development of the entire project was mostly just me.
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Thanks. Well my first runthrough of a first turn makes me think that, if I were to run the AP, I would skip forward a year or so (would love to hear from others how long it took them to bring their kingdom to Level 4), and then at some point during each session, handle 1 or 2 kingdom turns so that they're not all back-to-back.
Just an idea. If anyone has experience simulating a kingdom, I'd love to hear how long it took!
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Kingmaker is 100% for sure an Adventure Path that benefits from a long term passage of time, and taking a year to run 12 kingdom turns between chapters (or even between parts in chapters) so that the kingdom has a chance to grow is sort of the way this campaign feels like it wants to be played, rather than have the PCs go from one encounter to the next non-stop to try to hit 20th level in a month. ;-)
The MAIN thing that should drive the length of Kingdom turns is the players' interest in them. It's very much an optional part of the campaign for a reason, and one that doesn't directly interface with the PCs stats themselves as well, so that if folks want to play with it some sessions and others just skip forward levels, you can do that without impacting the core play experience of the campaign itself.
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So it looks like the "Resource" tag on a Hex (in Chapter 2 at least) just means there's Terrain Feature in that Hex, not that the Hex actually gives a bonus on Commodity production. The rules for the Resource Terrain Feature (on pg. 536) say that the Hex's encounter text will state what Commodity will be doubled if a Work Site is established there, and the vast majority of Hexes with the Resource tag don't say they double the production of a Commodity, but instead say they give a Kingdom a different Terrain Feature. In the case of the specific Hex in question, the Terrain Feature granted is a Structure Terrain Feature, not a Resource Terrain Feature.
So long as I might have the team's ear, did the team have a chance to playtest these rules and see how long it would take to reach 3rd level? And the adventure says to let the players get more kingdom turns to get the kingdom level to at least 2 levels below the party's level (preferably closer even). I was surprised that Farmlands are closed off at the beginning, as that runs counter to my years of playing Civilization-type games.
Not Dev team, but I ran through some (very) basic math in the Kingdom XP thread that, following RAW, you're probably looking at at least 18 turns to go from level 1 to level 2. I didn't math it, but level 2 to 3 will likely take longer as 1/3 of 1-2's XP was from one-off Milestones. Later levels can go somewhat faster, if desired, due to larger RP production, but there are a lot of potential variables that can speed up or slow down how long it takes.
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So it looks like the "Resource" tag on a Hex (in Chapter 2 at least) just means there's Terrain Feature in that Hex, not that the Hex actually gives a bonus on Commodity production. The rules for the Resource Terrain Feature (on pg. 536) say that the Hex's encounter text will state what Commodity will be doubled if a Work Site is established there, and the vast majority of Hexes with the Resource tag don't say they double the production of a Commodity, but instead say they give a Kingdom a different Terrain Feature. In the case of the specific Hex in question, the Terrain Feature granted is a Structure Terrain Feature, not a Resource Terrain Feature.
This is an important point to keep in mind—the hex description is where you want to go to find out exactly what sort of benefit that hex gives you if you incorporate it into a kingdom, and as far as I know, there are no hexes that give multiple benefits in this way.
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Not Dev team, but I ran through some (very) basic math in the Kingdom XP thread that, following RAW, you're probably looking at at least 18 turns to go from level 1 to level 2. I didn't math it, but level 2 to 3 will likely take longer as 1/3 of 1-2's XP was from one-off Milestones. Later levels can go somewhat faster, if desired, due to larger RP production, but there are a lot of potential variables that can speed up or slow down how long it takes.
There are also a lot of opportunities during the adventure itself to earn Kingdom XP (as well as additional resources) in the same way you earn PC XP and treasure by doing adventures. So actually playing through the adventure will shorten the number of turns it takes as well.
It's very much an optional part of the campaign for a reason, and one that doesn't directly interface with the PCs stats themselves as well, so that if folks want to play with it some sessions and others just skip forward levels, you can do that without impacting the core play experience of the campaign itself.
I like the fact that it doesn't interact with player stats. The 1e implementation was very mechanical ("Who has the best Charisma?") instead of it being an RP choice. And this way it is also RPG system-agnostic.
There are also a lot of opportunities during the adventure itself to earn Kingdom XP (as well as additional resources) in the same way you earn PC XP and treasure by doing adventures. So actually playing through the adventure will shorten the number of turns it takes as well.
Ah! I'll take a look through the adventure for that then. (A brief scan tells me that about 280 Kingdom XP can be earned while the party is Level 4.)
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I'm worried about the pacing of the kingdom turns too. First read does feel a little slow, and it's a little concerning that it wasn't playtested much, but like James said, if your group is getting tired of it there's nothing stopping you from increasing the XP to RP conversion, or even reducing the kingdom xp to level from like 1000 to 750. Could even start at like 500 xp to level 2. 750 to level 3. 1000 to level 4. And then evaluate to see how the pacing is.
I get where the development was going. It wouldn't make sense to go from a 1 hex village to a multi hex kingdom with several settlements in the span of like a year. That would break verisimilitude. (I guess as much as a player going from a newbie adventurer to a level 20 champion of the multiple planes of existence in a period of a couple months like some other APs.)
I do feel like this AP is going to take extra work and adjustment from the GM to get just right. Also, I think it would be very helpful to check in with the players often and ask how they feel about the kingdom stuff. If the group is bored of the micro management, it might not be a bad idea to just ask them what their plans are at a high level and then you the GM run the kingdom stuff off screen and report back to the players with problems their individual PCs need to step in and handle. I think the AP actually suggests running the kingdom in the background if you can tell the players are getting bored with kingdom management.
Also, I think the players should know what they are getting into, and if you the GM are planning on running the kingdom management RAW, I think you owe the players a session 0 where you set that out and tell them the type of game you're running so they aren't all of a sudden shocked when they show up to game night and it's 4 hours of planning towns, gathering resources, and handling kingdom events.
At the end of the day, I think this AP is going to require a lot of adjusting to the individual group. I can see some groups out there that are Civ 5 buffs who would want to spend their entire time playing kingdom management and not adventure as much, and other groups who don't want to manage the kingdom at all and just want to do traditional adventuring. Check in with your group early and often imo.
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We're including the full kingdom rules and warfare rules (minus spoiler content, such as the quest sidebars and the details on specific random kingdom events and the unusual armies the PCs might encounter) in the Kingmaker Player's Guide, so every player will have access to those rules for free so they'll be able to know what they're getting into, and will be able to work with the GM about their interest and desire to use the rules in play.
The practice of doing a "How are folks enjoying the campaign so far? question after every session is a good bit of generalized GM advice on its own though. That's something I try to do when I run games—so that if something isn't playing the way I thought it would I can try to adjust things for sessions going forward.
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Here's another potential solution—you could simply hand out an arbitrary amount of kingdom XP at the end of a turn, regardless of how things went. For example, by handing out 250 XP after every turn then you set a kingdom's growth at 1 level per 4 months. You can adjust that XP award as you go as your players get more or less interested in the kingdom building aspect of the campaign. This ends up being a pretty simple mashup between the XP method and flat out milestones.
I am hoping the game has some way for the kingdom to start off with at least some commodities?
As written it doesn't. However, the players acquire a fair amount of treasure at the end of Chapter 3 that's noted as possibly being useful to start their Kingdom (that they found at the start of Chapter 4), so I think it'd be reasonable to either swap some of the treasure for one of each Commodity or to allow them to use the Capital Investment leadership activity (normally unavailable until at least Kingdom level 5) on their first Kingdom turn (or first few turns) to convert some of those treasures into additional RP.
Iirc the 1e AP did give you BP, so I'm surprised to hear 2e gives nothing. Seems like an oversight?
Kingmaker 1e gave the PCs 50 BP to start, but the Kingdom turn order also had you generate income after all of your expenditures so it would have been otherwise impossible for a starting Kingdom to do anything of value (like claim their first hex and found their first settlement) on the first turn.
2e's rules have you generate income at the start of the turn, and any leftover RP is converted to XP at the end of the turn, so gaining a bunch of additional RP turn 1 is less useful since there's an effective cap on how much RP a Kingdom can spend in a single turn (they only have so many actions). I think it's still a bit of an oversight given how necessary Commodities are that the Kingdom doesn't start with any, so a GM could pretty comfortably have Rostland give them a few of each Commodity starting out since it'll be at least turn 4 before the Kingdom is seeing production in all of Lumber, Stone, and Ore.
As far as I can make out the 5D4 RP that you get at the beginning of each Kingdom turn are the equivalent of the 50 BP from 1st Edition, representing Labour and Colonists, representing Labour and Colonists, My problem is that there is no way with the RAW that you start with the other half of the equation, which are the Commodities (Lumber, Ore, Stone, Food and Luxuries) and with no way to purchase any prior to the Command phase of the 1st Kingdom turn (Purchase Commodities). Also, if the PC's start their village at the Stag Lords Fort, the nearest source of Lumber is in an unexplored hex, and Lumber and Food are the two most important commodities at the start.
In 1e terms that 5d4 RP is actually the Economy check you'd make at the end of Step 3, being the recurring "income" your Kingdom generates for further development. There's no equivalent in 2e to the BP gained in 1e, because there are no story-based awards of resources for the Kingdom starting out.
I wonder if the rules would benefit from splitting the Kingdom into "baronies" under the rulership of each PC that can work together in order to form a kingdom...
I think that could be interesting -- probably not 1-per PCs, maybe 1 per 2 PCs could work though. Especially if using the Companions to help flesh out some of the ruler positions in the baronies. Can be a bit of "we have different ideas as to how to run a kingdom, lets each experiment" before merging into a single one later when the need more leaders/etc
In their defense, they have mentioned that they have seeded numerous encounters for boosting the kingdom's XP into the Adventure Path, especially early on.
I would guess this was a deliberate choice -- specifically, how to balance growing your first settlement (your capital) quickly in the beginning, but =without= also speed-growing your subsequent settlements later on. Hence, the rules giving you that delay, but the adventurers encountering lots of kingdom XP.
Checking through the AP, it looks like there's only 3 quests that award Kingdom XP that PCs can reasonably complete before Part 2 of Chapter 4 kicks off (by which point the Kingdom is expected to be at least level 3), and they award 30 Kingdom XP each.
Even if those quests awarded 10 times as much XP, it's still likely to take several years in-game for a Kingdom to reach level 3.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In their defense, they have mentioned that they have seeded numerous encounters for boosting the kingdom's XP into the Adventure Path, especially early on.I would guess this was a deliberate choice -- specifically, how to balance growing your first settlement (your capital) quickly in the beginning, but =without= also speed-growing your subsequent settlements later on. Hence, the rules giving you that delay, but the adventurers encountering lots of kingdom XP.
Just my two coppers' worth. ;-)
Franklin
I hear what you're saying, but I have done the math for the early Kingdom chapters of the AP, and it's not looking good. There is only about ~1500 XP worth of quests, milestones and kingdom events in chapter 4, and 4.1 already assumes your kingdom is level 4 before triggering some of those events. The bulk of your XP as an early kingdom comes from Kingdom Events that occur on average every 2.5 months and grant 30 - 190 XP (Event +4) each (but most will be ~70 XP). Even when converting all of your RP into XP at the end of turn and successfully claiming a Hex each turn, you will still be spending a significant time (2.5-4 years) before reaching Kingdom Level 3.
Now I personally am fine with it taking a year per level, as long as the gameplay is interesting, but all these limits on the early levels (number of structures, no farmlands, low commodity storage) just turns those early turns into very boring ways to waste time. You can't really expand too fast by claiming hexes, because your DCs will go up. You can't stockpile commodities for later turns, because you can only store 4 of them each. You can't build Farmlands, because your Town has 0 influence. You can't build structures. All you're doing for 30-50 Kingdom Turns is hunting/foraging/trading for food to pay consumption and rolling for kingdom events.
Let's also consider what the progression of the Town looks like from the outside. In the first month, the old fort is converted into a Town Hall and we build some...
Agreed. This was not well play tested at all. I like the spirit of the rules and what they were going for, but it’s very clear that these rules, and really the AP as a whole, was not well play tested. The treasures awarded doesn’t even comply with the general rules in the GM section. This is going to take a lot of work to run.
Ah, I think this is something that should be clarified, but I think you get XP for an event TWICE. Once for experiencing it (30 XP), and once for resolving it (30-160 XP based on the Event Modifier). This little piece of information is "hidden" in the "Kingdom Event Descriptions" section: The kingdom’s event modifier is the value you apply to the kingdom’s level to determine the event’s level, for the purposes of determining XP rewards (so if a 1st-level kingdom is experiencing a +1 event, that event’s level is 2).Checking through the AP, it looks like there's only 3 quests that award Kingdom XP that PCs can reasonably complete before Part 2 of Chapter 4 kicks off (by which point the Kingdom is expected to be at least level 3), and they award 30 Kingdom XP each.
Even if those quests awarded 10 times as much XP, it's still likely to take several years in-game for a Kingdom to reach level 3.
Yeah, that's still kinda unclear as it doesn't actually say that the event awards the Kingdom XP instead of awarding XP for the players, while all other mentions of Kingdom XP awards I can find are explicit that the Kingdom is the one earning XP.
Secondly, I'm referring to encounter/quest rewards that require actual PC involvement, not Kingdom Events that can be resolved with just a d20 roll. Hex encounter KL1 (pg. 78), and chapter 4 part 1's "Event 1" (rewards on pg. 191) and "Event 3" (rewards on pg. 196) are the three quests I was referring to that have Kingdom XP as part of their rewards that the PCs can be expected to do before the Kingdom reaches level 3. And, reading more closely on it, "Event 3" isn't supposed to happen until the PCs are basically ready to start part 2 (by which point the Kingdom is technically supposed to be at least level 3 to stick within the PC level -1 or -2 assumption), so it probably shouldn't have actually been included in the count.
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Ah, I think this is something that should be clarified, but I think you get XP for an event TWICE. Once for experiencing it (30 XP), and once for resolving it (30-160 XP based on the Event Modifier). This little piece of information is "hidden" in the "Kingdom Event Descriptions" section: [i]The kingdom’s event modifier is the value you apply to the kingdom’s level to determine the event’s level, for the purposes of determining XP rewards (so if a 1st-level kingdom is experiencing a +1 event, that event’s level is 2).
I think this is something we should definitely try and get clarification on.
If a 1st Level Kingdom experiences a Level 2 event, what XP/Rewards does it get?
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Perhaps the easiest solution is to simply have the kingdom auto level up to the party's level—this puts the pacing of the game squarely back on the PCs' progression and doesn't "force" a GM to take in-game years off to have the players play through several kingdom turns. Unless, of course, that's something your group is into! :)
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I increased the influence of all settlements by one.
I am giving xp according to the event level off the experience table as James Jacobs indicated was the intent.
I'm giving experience for resource points spent. 10 xp per resource point spent levels 1 and 2. Then dropping it to 5 levels 3 to 7 or something. I planned it by the resource dice both quantity and measure.
I like using resource points spent as it simulates learning from building and managing a kingdom.
So far it has improved the experience gain. It was far too slow at the early levels.