Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Sadly, GURPS doesn't really have any rules for running a nation (though those would probably be far too complex anyway), so those of us who want to do something like this have to resort to other rules.

In my campaign, I plan on using the Kingdom Building rules for Pathfinder, which have the advantage that they are available for free online. My goal was not to convert these rules to GURPS, but to provide an "interface" between the two systems - so the charcters will be GURPS characters, but whenever rules matters move to the Kingdom level we'd be using the Pathfinder rules.

One important interface concerns the "roles" in the government of the nation. Normally, each role gives boni to one or more "kingdom attributes", depending on a specific attribute modifier of the character filling the role (as well as a lesser bonus from an appropriate proficiency). Since GURPS is a skill-based system, I decided to base these bonuses on the character’s skills instead.

It works like this: Each role has three associated skills. For the purpose of calculating kingdom attribute boni, the character picks the best of the three skill. If the role is filled by an NPC (which is likely - there are too many roles for them to be all filled by player characters), or the player is absent, then the bonus depends on the skill level - a +1 bonus for each two skill levels above 10 (i.e. +1 for a skill level of 12, +2 for 14, and so forth).

For (present) player characters, the bonus is calculated each month anew based on a skill roll:

Critical Failure: The role suffers the penalty for being “unoccupied”, and Interesting Things happen.
Ordinary Failure: +0
Success: +1 bonus, with a further +1 for each 2 points of Margin of Success.
Critical Success: +3 on top of the bonus for an ordinary success.

The roles and their associated skills are:

Ruler: Administration, Leadership, Politics
Consort: Diplomacy, Public Speaking, Savoir-Faire (High Society)
Councilor: Current Affairs (Own Nation), Politics, Propaganda
General: Savoir-Faire (Military), Soldier, Strategy
Grand Diplomat: Current Affairs (other nations), Diplomacy, Intelligence Analysis
Heir: Diplomacy, Public Speaking, Savoir-Faire (High Society)
High Priest: Propaganda, Public Speaking, Theology
Magister: Administration, Research, Teaching
Marshal: Area Knowledge, Intelligence Analysis, Law
Royal Enforcer: Criminology, Law, Interrogation
Spymaster: Cryptography, Intelligence Analysis, Streetwise
Treasurer: Accounting, Economics, Market Analysis
Viceroy: Administration, Leadership, Politics
Warden: Criminology, Law, Streetwise

Note: I intend to add two skills to each of these lists, and turn them into a Talent appropriate for each role. Do you have any suggestions on what skills to add?


For conversion purposes, each Build Point is equal to 4,000 gp… which is equal to 40,000 GURPS $/silver pieces.

Not included in the original campaign are salaries - the PCs draw salaries depending on their Wealth levels and pay according to their Social Status. The ruler of the smallest nation should probably start out as Social Status 2 (town mayor), and the characters with other roles should likely have a Social Status one level lower. In my campaign, I gave the PCs an additional 10 points in the Wealth advantage, and Social Status for free - and the non-ruler PCs got additional character points to spend on social advantage to compensate for their lower status. Each player could decide whether they wanted their wages to be “formal” (i.e. fixed monthly income) or “informal” (i.e. variable monthly income). Their job roll is based on the lowest of their three role-associated skills.

The players also asked me if they could fill out two rolls at once at the beginning of the game if they spent 14 day each month on running things, instead of 7 like the rules suggest. I allowed this, but enforced a -1 penalty for each hex grid field (defined as a hex with a distance of 10 miles from side to side) the nation has, which means that if they expand they will want to hire some additional guys in a hurry.

Finally, to encourage their megalomaniac tendencies, I promised the players one additional character point for each 2 hex grid fields they incorporate into their nation, to be spent on social advantages only (including Wealth).


What do you think of this conversion?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

This looks great! I look forward to updates about how the actual game plays out! I'll be sure to test it with my group as soon as I get a chance.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I think I've asked this before, but what about City Stats and the city management rules in Pyramid #54?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I've tried going this route a couple of times, but couldn't make it scale very well (my fault, evidently), and it quickly became too complicated. I'd pay a lot for something official, as I'm sure many would. *nudge nudge wink wink*

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I'm one of those people Qhaysh is talking about. Sure, we've got city management rules, and farm-management rules, and mass-combat rules, and do any of them actually mesh with each other on a campaign scale? Grand Unified Kingdom Generation and Running would be money out of my pocket.

In the mean time, Jurgen's goal might not to be to convert these free rules (thanks Paizo!) to GURPS, but I just might... Anyway, my first comment is that almost all of these roles are administrators, so I'd say that Administration can be a complementary skill on any roll that isn't against Administration. So, add Admin to the skill list for most of the roles it's not on, and to flesh it out...

Ruler: Administration, Current Affairs (Several), Leadership, Politics, Public Speaking
Consort: Administration, Diplomacy, Housekeeping, Public Speaking, Savoir-Faire (High Society)
Councilor: Administration, Current Affairs (Own Nation), Politics, Propaganda, Sociology
General: Administration, Tactics, Savoir-Faire (Military), Soldier, Strategy
Grand Diplomat: Current Affairs (other nations), Diplomacy, Intelligence Analysis, Politics, Savoir-Faire (Several)
Heir: Administration, Diplomacy, Leadership, Public Speaking, Savoir-Faire (High Society)
High Priest: Administration, Propaganda, Public Speaking, Religious Ritual, Theology
Magister: Administration, Research, Teaching, Writing... Speed Reading or Savoir-Faire (Academia)? Something focused in a field?
Marshal: Administration, Area Knowledge, Intelligence Analysis, Law, Survival
Royal Enforcer: Criminology, Law, Intimidation, Interrogation, Streetwise
Spymaster: Administration, Acting, Cryptography, Intelligence Analysis, Streetwise
Treasurer: Accounting, Administration, Economics, Finance*, Market Analysis
Viceroy: As Leader
Warden: Administration, Criminology, Law, Savoir-Faire (Commoners), Streetwise

*Finance is probably better than Economics for the original. "It is a practical application of Economics (p. 189), much as Engineer skill is a practical application of Physics."

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

City Stats is very good at what it does (describing cities/settlements carefully designed by the GM), and I think it can be expanded to a more general system. But it is quite hard and frustrating to do so ad hoc for an GM. This is really more a task for a game designer and a playtest group.

Scaling City Stats down (i.e. for city quarters) is the easiest, but it relies heavily on GM fiat (e.g. what is the combined Corruption Rating? The average of all quarters? The one of the government quarter?).

Scaling City Stats up for nations is much harder. E.g. in City Stats you just pick a number for the population and there are some vague hints about the area this city then covers (CS p. 12). In nation building you often have the area first and have to come up with an appropriate population number. I bolted on the Carring Capacity rules from Space p. 91, but those are very granular and incorporating Environmental Quality ratings would make a big difference especially at low TLs.
I would also like some kind of system for natural resources (e.g. silver mines, etherwood forests, etc) and other physical/social features (natural harbors, way point at the silk road, etc).
And the RAW system of 'taxes depend on CR, CR depends heavily on Society Type' is a bit constricting for players and too granular for domain play.

Also: player often want to build their domains, since they are basically an extension of the PCs. A build system would be of great help: 'You have 100 City Build Points/12M$/whatever to build your barony, normal mana only, max TL3!'

On the other hand GMs often need to come up with several NPC-domains, so a random city/domain creation table would be GM-stress reducing.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

This is why I'm pulling for that Grand Unified Kingdom Generation and Running ruleset. I can pretend to be a game designer and a playtest group, but I'd love for the professionals to do it.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Well, the other reason why I am using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules is that while I am running most of this campaign with GURPS, I want to eventually release it as a Pathfinder product.

But yeah, a nation-building system for GURPS would be of huge interest to me as well.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

It might work to run a Kingdom, but as each plot is 750 by 750 square feet, creating a small town seem to give results that doesn't fit with the small fantasy towns I've seen created for RPGs.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

The population for a fully occupied district - one square mile - is about 9,000 people.

And now I am wondering: What is the population density for pseudo-medieval towns?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Pseudo-medieval fantasy towns? Can be what you like. Actual historical settlements? Varies a lot and is exceptionally problematic. There's a possibly interesting paper here which discusses the issue of estimating civic populations, but it's best read not as a source for hard numbers so much as an overview of methods which are used to that end.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Which is my problem. If I count the number of plots I need, the town will cover more than two square miles, but with a population of less than 2000 people. So the plots are way too big.

Do you want an inn or a caters tower on a plot covering 562,500 square feet?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

It should be assumed that the lots generally aren't filled by just that one building, but also generic minor housing and businesses.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

If that is what they want us to assume, they should say so. For housing they do. And ifw we do assume this, what is "generic minor housing and Businesses"?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

GURPS has some material on that. There is GURPS Fantasy and GURPS-Low Tech (or the Companions).

There is also "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" by S.John Ross.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Just a note of interest if anybody would like to host a game like this on SJG PBP I would be soooo intrestested.
Otherwise the worked out systems and alll the logs you could care to make public would really be appriciated by me.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I would like that too. I'm considering going through process as i create the small town I've been talking about. Though the size of the town and actual population compared to the buildings i need may skew the results.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Thinking about that a little, and considering that each lot represents about 250 people, I agree with you that it's not just the one building. You only get the bonus for the building you pick, but there is other stuff there too.

Unfortunately, d20pfsrd.com is not a Paizo administered site. Perhaps they have released an SRD like Hasbro did for d&d and someone reformatted the pathfinder SRD on their own site, like the d&d SRD was reformatted on d20srd.org, but this could be pirated information.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

You may want to look at RUNEQUEST EMPIRES for something like this.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

As far as I am aware, these rules are a direct copy of the rules from Paizo's "Ultimate Campaign" for Pathfinder, which I also own.

Pretty much all of the Pathfinder rules were released under the OGL license (which they had to, since they created those rules based on the OGL rules released by Wizards of the Coast). Unless I am very much mistaken, the site I linked to is perfectly legal.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I just wanted to make sure we had all our ducks in a row.

And yes, I just found the Pathfinder site where they've published these rules. But the site you pointed to has made some minor changes, mostly cosmetic, but they've added some rules not in the original Paizo document.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

As far as I am aware, that is third-party Pathfinder content also published under the OGL.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

That is what I believe too, I guess this thread is just one of those times that the Lawful part of my alignment shines through.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I was targeting a small town and what it would look like after 40 years, but allowing the rules to direct its growth in whatever way. The only house rule I made was to increase the chance of an event to 100% if there wasn't an event in the previous month.

After 25 years it has reached the upper limit of a large town and if I continued it would likely turn into a small city. But 300 turns should show you something of how these rules work.

I should probably add that changes to stats listed in parenthesis are temporary and changes listed in brackets are permanent.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Where do you get the settlement size - from hamlet to small city etc. By the number of housing plots?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Yes. The easiest way to find the data is to click on Jürgen's link and search for "small town" without the quotation marks. The second hit is a nice little table going from number of lots to settlement size.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Interesting. How large was the Treasury at the end?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I started with 50 and ended up with 3,076.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Dunno why there is administration everywhere. Some changes, which, in my humble opinion, better represent roles:

General: Intelligence Analysis, Tactics, Savoir-Faire (Military), Soldier, Strategy
Spymaster: Current Affairs (something), Acting, Cryptography, Intelligence Analysis, Streetwise

And some questions:

Marshal: I don't understand what this roles intended to stand for.
Treasurer: Same. Looking at suggested skills, it is an attempt to merge into one an actual treasurer and an economics counsilor.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

You can find info on the roles on Pathfinder's site, http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemasterin...adership-Roles.

So I would call that head of the kingdom's police and customs.

And this head of the kingdoms organizations for treasury, taxes, and central banking systems.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Okay, so that:
"Warden: Administration, Criminology, Law, Savoir-Faire (Commoners), Streetwise"
is good as it is from my point.

And that guy:
"Treasurer: Accounting, Administration, Economics, Finance*, Market Analysis"
is in desperate need of Current Affairs (Business). Though there is no need for that to be included in talent.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Sorry for necroing this thread, but it is very relevant to my current game and I like what you're doing here.

Question: in the original PF rules, Control DC for a check is "20 + the kingdom's Size in hexes + the total number of districts in all your settlements + any other modifiers from special circumstances or effects" - this makes larger kingdoms much harder to control. How would you reflect this using GURPS mechanics since we want lower numbers instead of high?

Friend of mine also had a neat idea regarding the kingdom stats: treat them similarly to a Stability Roll as in vehicles. So if you are just starting out and have a Stability of 6, then a control roll that fails by less than that is just a minor fail (increase Unrest by 1?) but a fail of greater than this triggers some sort of Unrest event?

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

It's only from 3 months ago. It's not like everyone will have grown old and died since then.

Turn it into a penalty, rather than an increase to DC (which amounts to the same thing). Maybe -1 per ... 3? That sounds about right, off the top of my head.

That's a very good idea.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Something that is harder is a penalty to a skill roll.

A DC 10-12 of is about the same as no skill penalty in GURPS(Ie a minimally trained but still have skill average person will fail half the time if under stress) and a -2 is about DC 15, as a "normal person professional skill" is about 12 in GURPS and a "non adventurer professional skill" is about +5 in D&D, so the -2 and DC 15 will cause failures half the time under stress for a "basic professional"

After that it gets tricky as the scaling factor depends on your view of the power levels. But in lower power campaigns maybe half the DC raise works best so each +2 DC over the base is -1 to rolls.

In high powered campaigns(like my current fantasy campaign) I go with 1 to 1, that is each higher DC is -1 to the roll.

But note that a DC 25+ is something that in D&D/Pathfinder will "never" succeed for the average minimally trained person and DC 20 is failing almost every time.

In my own games I have a "fail by 5+" rule, so in any situation if you fail by 5 of more the result is worse than normal failure, but less than a critical failure. That has worked fairly well. So it might work for you too.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

This may actually be the way to go. Using a spreadsheet that auto-calculates this mess, I did the following: [d20 Kingdom Attribute]-[d20 Control DC]/3, which can then be applied to a simple 3d6 roll for kingdom attribute checks ...

Which sounds really convoluted when I type it out...

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

My campaign using these rules ended earlier this year. Since it was requested by Private Message, here is some feedback.

First of all, the bookkeeping was too much. One of the players created a custom spreadsheet for this, but making domain turns took a lot of time out of the game, for little real gain. Furthermore, the colony quickly accumulated massive bonuses that made it pretty much impossible to fail any rolls - they built up their settlements while keeping their territorial expansion small, at least initially.

The problem was not so much with the GURPS rules interface, which IMO worked reasonably well, but with the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules. These rules have a lot of good ideas, but in the end I wouldn't use them again.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I have actually been writing something similar recently and have peeked at the Pathfinder rules for inspiration. I'll present it soon enough. It uses City Stats, a few extra values to track civilian moods, and I try to use invention rules for construction projects.

We'll see where I get.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Many thanks for the feedback!

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

Paizo has an official Pathfinder Reference Document. Of the two I generally prefer to use the PRD. However for the d20 rules the d20 SRD is the gold standard.

Re: Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS
 

I tend to agree. I've sort of been using these with my Casus Belli campaign and the PF rules have turned out to be really, really klunky for it. I already dialed down the frequency of kingdom checks to four times a year (seasonly) instead of once a month, but even then, it was hard to maintain Player interest in this because it was just so clunky, especially since (in my case) the PCs were not all Leaders, which is interesting cause I'm playing in the Pathfinder: Kingmaker adventure path that uses these rules and it works wonderfully there. My own campaign is about to go onto hiatus after one more session and I think I'll probably phase out use of these rules and maybe replace it with something else. Really digging the HarnManor stuff ...