Kingdoms module question

[SailorLovins]

Do any of you use the Kingdoms suppliment by Jason Nelson? I would love to see examples of how you Track and record Settlements, kingdoms and Armies.

[superteddy57]

What system is this in reference to?

[SailorLovins]

This is in reference to the 5E system. The book outlines details for players settling hexes and turning improvements into sprawling cities.

[Trenloe]

Please don’t post things like this in the armory forum. The armory is specifically for people sharing their community created content. We don’t want people's cool content getting lost among unrelated threads.

I have moved the thread. In future please post things like this in the RPG specific forum. 5E in this case.

[superteddy57]

Cool, wasn't aware of this. One extension that comes to mind would be this. This is without reading the supplement. Helps in organizing my game.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?53692-World-Builder-Extension&highlight=worldbuilder

[SailorLovins]

Please don’t post things like this in the armory forum. The armory is specifically for people sharing their community created content. We don’t want people's cool content getting lost among unrelated threads.
I have moved the thread. In future please post things like this in the RPG specific forum. 5E in this case.

got it. Sorry about that Trenloe and thanks for the extension link! I’ll take a look at it.

[superteddy57]

No problem, I was going to move the post, but Trenloe beat me to it! :)

[damned]

World Builder is superseded by Player Agency

[GavinRuneblade]

Do any of you use the Kingdoms suppliment by Jason Nelson? I would love to see examples of how you Track and record Settlements, kingdoms and Armies.

I tried a few things with it, but I found it extremely unwieldy.
Here was my original creation of a domain with one of my players:
https://gavinruneblade.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/caer-rothi-domain-rough/

And here was the first domain action phase for the whole party:
https://gavinruneblade.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/domains-month-1-of-magi/

And here are the spreadsheets, etc we used for tracking:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuIUqBU3GjVMtmawk1np0-ca9QCW?e=401gNr

I also have the updated version of the rules, but they didn't add any major improvements in my opinion. My issues with it are that the DCs to take actions get too high too fast making it impossible to rule a territory at all unless you massively powergame your ministers n a very metagamey and unsatisfying way. It is really not built for 5e where bonuses stay small as you can potentially end up with a kingdom DC over 100, and easily end up over 45, which you have to beat on every action or the action fails, which means your ruler does nothing. This makes the players want to abandon their domains and just go back to adventuring.

I also tried the Strongholds and Followers from Mat Colville, which is a bit better in the sense of being simple, but also runs into the problem that it doesn't have kingdom rules at all, just fortresses. The Kingdom rules only recently finished their kickstarter and are in development now.

In the short term I've reverted to using the BECMI domain rules with a bit of added flavor from Kingdoms:
I really liked the alignments and other modifiers for cities. And instead of building out every single little structure, just care about the 1/size of city that make it noteworthy. So if there is an Inn, then the settlement is famous for that inn. This feels a bit better because realistically the lord doesn't pay for everyone's housing, but in Kingdoms you do. Every hovel, everything, is bought and paid for by the lord. My only having 1/size of settlement, it just means the city council (and the local lord) are supporting those but the town is growing on its own. This is much faster and easier and still has flavor.
I also love the edicts from Kingdoms and need to find a way to make them work with realistic DCs, ideally all the way down to a DC of 5 and 10 just like the 5e table of difficulties.

One piece of advice: Think about how realistic you want to be. Every D&D system I am aware of uses (including Kingdoms) 1500s/1600s-era military processes but with 700s-1100s social and technology and organization and this is super weird. They all assume everyone has a large standing army. No one in the middle ages had a large standing army, and many had no standing army at all. They all assume no villages or cities are walled, unless there is a fort there. Right. Hordes of goblins and orcs, the occasional owlbear or troll and villages don't have walls? Um, no. I assume walls are everywhere. They all assume that the lord arms their troops. This didn't happen until after the middle ages with the rise of professional armies. If you don't have gunpowder weapons in your game, and you use a generic European flavor for your world, then the soldiers are expected to provide their own weapons and armor. If theirs breaks then the cost of the replacement comes out of their pay. There were times and places where kings passed laws mandating specific weapons, like when the king of England required every male have a bow and practice shooting. Before that a spear was fine. Also, soldier pay is miniscule. Half or less what a laborer gets. They are paid in shares of loot. They only are gathered into an army when needed. The rest of the time they are farming, especially during sowing and harvesting seasons.

But not all of this may work for you. D&D systems like Kingdoms use the rules they do use for reasons not related to realism. Just like the nobility titles are from a time vastly later than the game is set. For a good chunk of the early middle ages England had two titles: Earl and King. Baron, Count, Duke, Grand Duke, Baronet, and all the others got added later and one at a time. It is something to think about.

The BECMI rules I use are here:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17165/

And they are also included here:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17171/

[SailorLovins]

This is extremely helpful. I thank you for taking the time to post your advice and experiences. I will take it all into consideration. I am purchasing the BECMI rulebook and reviewing it to see how it fits in my campaign. The last thing I want to do is bog the players down with "JUST" managing settlements and cities. I want them to have the options to manage them during downtime if possible or to use the events tables to create new adventure hooks.


I tried a few things with it, but I found it extremely unwieldy.
Here was my original creation of a domain with one of my players:
https://gavinruneblade.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/caer-rothi-domain-rough/

And here was the first domain action phase for the whole party:
https://gavinruneblade.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/domains-month-1-of-magi/

And here are the spreadsheets, etc we used for tracking:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuIUqBU3GjVMtmawk1np0-ca9QCW?e=401gNr

I also have the updated version of the rules, but they didn't add any major improvements in my opinion. My issues with it are that the DCs to take actions get too high too fast making it impossible to rule a territory at all unless you massively powergame your ministers n a very metagamey and unsatisfying way. It is really not built for 5e where bonuses stay small as you can potentially end up with a kingdom DC over 100, and easily end up over 45, which you have to beat on every action or the action fails, which means your ruler does nothing. This makes the players want to abandon their domains and just go back to adventuring.

I also tried the Strongholds and Followers from Mat Colville, which is a bit better in the sense of being simple, but also runs into the problem that it doesn't have kingdom rules at all, just fortresses. The Kingdom rules only recently finished their kickstarter and are in development now.

In the short term I've reverted to using the BECMI domain rules with a bit of added flavor from Kingdoms:
I really liked the alignments and other modifiers for cities. And instead of building out every single little structure, just care about the 1/size of city that make it noteworthy. So if there is an Inn, then the settlement is famous for that inn. This feels a bit better because realistically the lord doesn't pay for everyone's housing, but in Kingdoms you do. Every hovel, everything, is bought and paid for by the lord. My only having 1/size of settlement, it just means the city council (and the local lord) are supporting those but the town is growing on its own. This is much faster and easier and still has flavor.
I also love the edicts from Kingdoms and need to find a way to make them work with realistic DCs, ideally all the way down to a DC of 5 and 10 just like the 5e table of difficulties.

One piece of advice: Think about how realistic you want to be. Every D&D system I am aware of uses (including Kingdoms) 1500s/1600s-era military processes but with 700s-1100s social and technology and organization and this is super weird. They all assume everyone has a large standing army. No one in the middle ages had a large standing army, and many had no standing army at all. They all assume no villages or cities are walled, unless there is a fort there. Right. Hordes of goblins and orcs, the occasional owlbear or troll and villages don't have walls? Um, no. I assume walls are everywhere. They all assume that the lord arms their troops. This didn't happen until after the middle ages with the rise of professional armies. If you don't have gunpowder weapons in your game, and you use a generic European flavor for your world, then the soldiers are expected to provide their own weapons and armor. If theirs breaks then the cost of the replacement comes out of their pay. There were times and places where kings passed laws mandating specific weapons, like when the king of England required every male have a bow and practice shooting. Before that a spear was fine. Also, soldier pay is miniscule. Half or less what a laborer gets. They are paid in shares of loot. They only are gathered into an army when needed. The rest of the time they are farming, especially during sowing and harvesting seasons.

But not all of this may work for you. D&D systems like Kingdoms use the rules they do use for reasons not related to realism. Just like the nobility titles are from a time vastly later than the game is set. For a good chunk of the early middle ages England had two titles: Earl and King. Baron, Count, Duke, Grand Duke, Baronet, and all the others got added later and one at a time. It is something to think about.

The BECMI rules I use are here:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17165/

And they are also included here:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17171/