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In the Kingmaker 1e forums, I saw a bunch of posts that came up with this idea of the PCs having to make deals with various groups to actually get the funding for their kingdom to go through. I decided to take the work done there and reimagine it for 2e. I'm not as familiar with the Kingdom rules, however, and was wondering if people had better ideas.
I was inspired mostly by this thread and this really great blogpost.
My version is here.
This is truly fantastic, well done.
Thank you very much! It was your various posts on how to spice up Kingmaker that got me to want to run it, so it's nice to hear that you approve. My players are just about to finish fighting the Stag Lord, so we'll see how they respond to this particular idea. Hopefully they'll find the politicking interesting!
@VanceMadrox, your deals look awesome and should provide lots of role play complications for the party. I noticed that several of the deals have notes about Kingdom alignment. If this a feature that you kept from the first addition rules?
Kerenshara and I took your deals and updated/expanded it for our campaigns.
You can find our version here: (it's 37 pages total)
Very nice. This is quite solid. I like the Medvyed deal. The choices may be a bit hard to make for indecisive parties, but they do have ways they can go.
I would add more for Iobarians and Dwarves.
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@VanceMadrox, your deals look awesome and should provide lots of role play complications for the party. I noticed that several of the deals have notes about Kingdom alignment. If this a feature that you kept from the first addition rules?
The only deals that have alignment in them are from the Churches. The 1e Venture Capital thread had terms like this and I thought it made sense for Churches to require/prohibit certain alignments. Alignment might be going away in the remaster but Kingmaker was written before than and my group still wants to use alignment.
That said, you can remove the Alignment clauses if you want and leave the rest of the deals as is.
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Very nice. This is quite solid. I like the Medvyed deal. The choices may be a bit hard to make for indecisive parties, but they do have ways they can go.
I would add more for Iobarians and Dwarves.
Anyone's welcome to homebrew their own Venture deals too but I won't be adding anymore.
All of the deals are from groups that have significant resources and an interest in the party's new Kingdom.
Note I didn't include any of the lesser Nobles in House Rogarvian lands. They'd have interest but not enough resources to warrant seeking the party out to make an official deal.
There is no unified Dwarven group in Brevoy. The closest would have been the Golushkin Dwarves but they've vanished. The remaining Golushkin Dwarves who didn't vanish are allied with House Garess anyway and would fall under that deal.
Iobaria might technically be close but the Mountains between Brevoy and Iobaria make actually crossing by land extremely. Politically Iobaria is nothing more than a small group of decrepit city-states, there's no group in Iobaria that has both enough resources and enough interest to make an offer.
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Very nice. This is quite solid. I like the Medvyed deal. The choices may be a bit hard to make for indecisive parties, but they do have ways they can go.
I would add more for Iobarians and Dwarves.
Anyone's welcome to homebrew their own Venture deals too but I won't be adding anymore.
All of the deals are from groups that have significant resources and an interest in the party's new Kingdom.
Note I didn't include any of the lesser Nobles in House Rogarvian lands. They'd have interest but not enough resources to warrant seeking the party out to make an official deal.
There is no unified Dwarven group in Brevoy. The closest would have been the Golushkin Dwarves but they've vanished. The remaining Golushkin Dwarves who didn't vanish are allied with House Garess anyway and would fall under that deal.
Iobaria might technically be close but the Mountains between Brevoy and Iobaria make actually crossing by land extremely. Politically Iobaria is nothing more than a small group of decrepit city-states, there's no group in Iobaria that has both enough resources and enough interest to make an offer.
The lesser nobles in Rogarvia seem perfect for little adventures, forays, and dungeons. Taking their land would cause too many problems, and player destruction when the Brevoyan armies turn up, but I think a trip north can be good for side adventures, pick at their scabby weaknesses, or helping them and absorbing/recruiting them later. Plenty of depth here, so happy to use it.
On the Golushkins, yeah I renamed them the Dwarves of Old Grognard (playing with some old Grognards, so I did that for them), and placed almost all of those still living as refugees in Brunderton, the rest in Restov (renamed Aldoria). Various sites in the stolen lands like Bronzeshield fortress are Grognardian (Bronzeshield being as far west as they settled). Have a subterranean Dwarven road dungeon to use as well that would connect to Dwarven roads on the surface, and below Varnhold to Silverstep which was their central home region, and the Tors of Levenies the south of the old realm. Elves were a huge deal last campaign, so Dwarves are up this time, and the players can clear and resettle Grognardians if they want to be loved by fanatically loyal Dwarves for evermore.
Politically Iobaria only has real strength far to the north. Close to the Stolen Lands we have homesteaders and wildmen, but you can get into Iobaria via the plains NE of Restov, you swing right around the mountains. Restov is a little exposed to Iobaria actually, classic Muscovite problem of being exposed by plains, and Iobarians are neighbours to Rogarvia given they live in Medvyed.
Also added a centaur faction to spice it up and not just make it about humans and dwarves, but that's not all!
Iobarians matter with what I am running, as Iobarian is one of the three main human races in Brevoy (Issian and Rostlanders being the other two), since Medvyedians are mostly Iobarians as well. I am making them distinctly different to pale flaxen Issians, and giving them bright orange/hazel eyes. More importantly, while the city states are further away and to the N & NW, the Iobarians nearby are, in my games, dominated by lycanthrope clans that are at war with Brevoy, and assisted by Jamandi (yes, she has interesting friends). Jamandi never seemed active enough for my tastes, so she is waging a proxy war already with lycanthropic Iobarians. They are the northern plan to exhaust Brevoy. The pcs are her southern plan.
This also presents a Brevoyan ranger faction they can join that hunt lycanthropes. They would turn against Jamandi if they ever found out the truth (otherwise they are apolitical). This faction of the Shattered Moon loves to take over cleared dungeons as bases, securing and making boltholes lycanthropes would struggle to penetrate. Thus the party can sell dungeons they liberate to them, or join up and rank up over time. Iobarians and those against Iobarians will thus be significant.
Just a fantastic idea! JUST starting the AP, and my players will enjoy this aspect! Sweet! I wish I could contribute to this thread... but I'm just thrilled with these ideas! Thanks all!
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These were fantastic! My players were all Political Science majors back in college, so coincidentally this was much like a course they all had to take, where they each roleplayed a nation & had to negotiate with each other terms & agreements. We’ve had a blast. It’s been a surprisingly elegant way of providing lore, roleplaying opportunities, free resources, & the puzzle aspect of figuring out which factions work best together. The final trick was by offering them resources & buildings, it meant they all had to start reading those pesky kingdom rules to know how substantial each offer was.
I tweaked a few things, changing some scenes to reduce NPC-bog, shifting meeting times to have less free time (it became evident that they wanted more meetings faster), adjusting the contracts to fit into 11 pages so that it’s easier to print for myself, making a valuable color-coded chart to illustrate which holidays fell into which months, & rewriting the churches alignment limitations. With alignments gone, I instead used each religion’s edicts & anathemas to influence the budding nation to the south, picking ones that I thought would subtly shift how my players would play.
Something you can’t always plan for but I’d recommend is reading up on the holidays. We’re only 6 months into playing Pathfinder, & I love the world-building they do for the smallest things. Coincidentally, Taxfest aligned with the party’s time in Restov; it just made it all the more magical.
Good to haz some free Venture Capital stuff out there for PF2e+ Kingmaker, BaconAlex, VanceMadrox, and Kerenshara. ;)
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What would be a good price for breaking a term or condition later on? Should it be an immediate revoking of bonuses, culled relations with the faction & increased DC to reestablish, plus a level of unrest proportional to the offer tier (1d4 for lesser, 1d6 moderate, 1d8 greater offer)?
Should it be 3-strikes you’re out situation, or the punishment depends on whether the broken term was originally a “non-negotiable” vs “negotiable” term, like a small broken promise is a mere slap on the wrist, some unrest, & increased DCs for activities concerning that faction?
Would other factions respond to seeing the terms for allies broken as well?
I don’t plan on being TOO mean to my players (I am compiling their agreements into something they can have access to on the gaming table) BUT it’s nice to have an idea for how, say, the church of Abadar would respond to a missed holiday versus the Church of Pharasma catching wind of Jaethal being elected for Emissary.
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I'm planning on imposing a penalty on specific activities or events the offended party would be interested in or capable of meddling in, such as Trade Commodities or Establish Diplomatic relations for certain noble houses or Celebrate Holiday for certain religions.
I may tell the players the source of the penalty if it's as obvious as a chruch not sanctioning an event or sending a representative or keep it a secret if it's the meddling of politicians. A successful Intrigue activity should reveal the source if it's hidden.