How is the kingdom building going?

[Deriven Firelion]

My group is about to establish their kingdom and start kingdom building rounds. This system is a lot more involved than the previous system. I'm wondering for those groups that have already reached the kingdom building phases, how is it going?

Any major issues? Any good fixes? Are the players enjoying it?

[VanceMadrox]

I've been doing some sims of Kingdom building with someone and the basic framework is solid but you can tell the rules were not actually playtested.

There's definitely some flaws.

Once we finish this current sim I plan on making a large post about it.

[Phntm888]

I simmed a few Kingdom Turns, as well. Two things I intend to change:

1) At least until the PCs' Kingdom catches up level-wise with the PCs, I would change either the XP reward for excess RP from 1 XP per RP to 10 XP per RP or lower the amount of XP needed to gain a Kingdom Level. Otherwise it will probably take 4-5 in-game years for the Kingdom to reach level 4 and be ready to start Book 2.

2) I would allow the PCs capital to either have an influence sphere of 1 or to grow into a town before Kingdom Level 3 so they can get an influence sphere of 1. That way they don't have to wait until level 3 before they can build farms.

[Deriven Firelion]

I ran some turns last night. I am thinking of increasing influence values. Villages should be able to have farmland reduce their consumption. That was an odd choice as most villages survive from farming without the need for purchasing outside food. It seems strange to me that villages would have to work so hard to obtain food regardless of how long they exist.

[drav11]

My group is at level 4, after defeating the Staglord they were excited to start the Kingdom building process. We play online I'll state, so that has it's own challenges. I've watched a few videos on Kingdom management and ran a simulation round with one of my players. That all said when we sit down to play for 2-3 hrs a week, the Kingdom management has turned into more of a campaign break, from the adventure. The players really like doing the events and roll playing of the kingdom management, but after a few Kingdom turns they're done and really don't want to do anymore it feels forced. They would rather go out and spend the 2-3 hrs a week we have to play adventuring and having me create situations in the Kingdom that their pc's can interact with.

We've decided to run the Kingdom in the background at this point. What we found was the Kingdom management turned into a ton of page flipping for me and looking up skill checks, the players also didn't like how their pc's were basically not included in the roles. I'm trying to scramble now and figure out how to run this in the back ground and move the campaign forward.

[VanceMadrox]

So you have a couple options then.

1.) Run it truly in the background and don't use the Kingdom Building rules at all.

2.) Do the Kingdom Building turns entirely yourself outside of the game.

3.) Do the Kingdom turns yourself outside of the game but ask your players for a few specific inputs. Like what Hex should we claim, which of this short list of buildings should we build etc?

4.) Use discord or something equivalent to do full kingdom building but outside your normal sessions.