Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS

[Terranaunt]

Originally Posted by McAllister

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...

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.

[Dragondog]

Originally Posted by Terranaunt

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.

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

Originally Posted by Pathfinder

The Marshal ensures that the kingdom's laws are being enforced in the remote parts of the kingdom as well as in the vicinity of the capital. The Marshal is also responsible for securing the kingdom's borders. He organizes regular patrols and works with the General to respond to threats that militias and adventurers can't deal with alone.

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

Originally Posted by Pathfinder

The Treasurer monitors the state of the kingdom's Treasury and citizens' confidence in the value of their money and investigates whether any businesses are taking unfair advantage of the system. The Treasurer is in charge of the tax collectors and tracks debts and credits with guilds and other governments.

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

[Terranaunt]

Originally Posted by Dragondog

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

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

Originally Posted by Dragondog

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

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.

[Rigil_Kent]

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?

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

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

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

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?

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.

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?

That's a very good idea.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

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?

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.

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?

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.

[Rigil_Kent]

Originally Posted by The Benj

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.

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...

[Jürgen Hubert]

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.

[GodBeastX]

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.

[kendall]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

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

Many thanks for the feedback!