Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS

[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.

[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!

[Rigil_Kent]

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.

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.

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 ...