Nation Builder extension (automation for new kingmaker ap for pf1,pf2,5e and more)

[sgtwhy]

Hello everyone, welcome!

I wanted to announce my recent “side quest” … a set of tools intended to automate and streamline game play for the latest nation building rules from Paizo.

Like many others, I sponsored it years ago as a kick starter and have waited patiently for its eventual release in physical format. As well as the later adaption for Fantasy grounds unity.

However, during gameplay we realized the rules are complex, scattered and it requires a lot of record keeping to manage throughout gameplay. Seriously, I tried to manage the campaign for the first few months via a spreadsheet and it was painful. Initially, it was about 2 hours to complete a given kingdom turn and required a lot of digging up/cross references to the various rules. As a result, the players were quickly losing interest.

I picked up the digital version of the AP from the FGU store and was sad to realize, there is zero automation included (or planned) for helping manage the nation's metadata. It’s great for all the updated maps and story content (if running PF2 at least) but falls short imho for nation building.

Since our group regularly plays online via Fantasy Ground unity, I got the crazy idea of building my own automation to streamline gameplay. Both for myself as GM, to minimize the crazy amount of record keeping, as well as to speed up gameplay with my players.

Now, in comparison -- it's almost a trivial effort. We can complete a new kingdom turn in about 15 minutes, without leaving fantasy grounds at all. Plus the toolset is tracking results of every check attempted, calculating all of the bonuses, etc -- which has turned our game around.

For maximum compatibility, I decided to build it from the start using the core RPG ruleset. This means it works the same regardless of the rulesets and includes full support for Pathfinder 1, Pathfinder 2 or even Dungeons and Dragons 5e. In fact, it will work for any ruleset based off of core RPG.

So, just to be clear -- this toolset makes use of the OGL data from the new Pathfinder Kingmaker Adventure Path. However, it is not meant to replace the need for the actual core material. GMs will need all of the actual source materials, while players should be able to get by with the “free” players guide provided by Paizo.

Currently, the toolset supports all of the new nation building rules and methods, while automating as much as is possible behind the scenes. But managing armies will be another, separate toolset … since it's not needed until half way through the AP and others might want to use it outside of kingdom management.

Armies aside, this will automate the majority of efforts from starting your nation, streamlining and tracking each step during the monthly turns and be useful all the way to the late end game.

PS. Here is a quick link to the relevant Forge "store" page:
https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/1180/view

[sgtwhy]

Current state (4/24/2023)

The toolset is currently in Beta / QA stage … with full feature set included but some tweaks and bugs to work out.

Toolset is broken up into (3) utilities, each with its own Icon and accessible to the entire party. However, edit permissions are restricted to GM on most fields (except rolling for skill checks).


*Setup Wizard
This colorful popup helps set up new nations, managing all of the math and metadata for you.



Nation Sheet

[Main]
The front page / character sheet of your Nation. Has all of the main metadata at a glance.

[Skills]
Tracks all of the kingdom skills, calculating proficiency bonuses, vacancy penalties, etc.

[Feats]
For the earned nation features as well as kingdom feats recently added just for this AP. The top section also helps track the ongoing state of diplomatic relations with nearby factions.

[Inventory]
This page tracks each of your settlements and all of the buildings constructed within your entire nation.

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[sgtwhy]

Nation Turn
Tracks all of the metadata involved with each kingdom turn.

[Commerce]
Initiates the start of a new turn. Checks for unrest, vacancy, etc and adjust the penalties with each new turn. Automates the resource dice calculations and much, much more.

[Leadership]
All the possible leadership actions, their DCs auto-computed, required skills and best of all - all the contextual data for the various levels of success.

[Region]
The top section can hold any map / image (I dropped the overland map in there for our campaign). It also supports dropping links, tokens, etc.
The bottom section has all of the relevant region related actions, fully automated and with context included.

[Civic]
This section does a TON of work for us. It tracks all of the building construction efforts in progress for your nation. This is invaluable as many structures take multiple turns to gather all the required resources, often exceeding the “max storage” limit of your kingdom.
Once assigned to a settlement and all the steps completed, they are moved into the [Inventory] tab and removed from this section.

[Events]
Nations can have random events occur each month. There is a need to track any of the ongoing events that might occur, especially events that might take multiple months to resolve. As well, “resolving” an event will add the relevant XP to the nation’s total for you based on the event’s difficulty.

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[sgtwhy]

Nation Data
This last set is intended to help the GM with managing the game play.It puts all of the metadata in one location and greatly speeds up prep time.

[Actions]
A full list of all the kingdom actions, so GM can update as they see fit. It's possible to create, delete or modify any of the actions - even the skills they depend upon, etc. This is helpful when dealing with certain feats that do things like “use MAGIC in place of Engineering”.

[Building]
This is a full list of every possible building type in the new system. The popup includes all of the available metadata, prerequisite skill training and build requirements.
There is also a quick button to ADD any of them into the CIVIC section, to make planning out settlements much easier.

[Logs]
This last section was most recently added. During game play, we realized we needed a simple method for tracking what actions were taken each month. Some actions have penalties or cannot be done if you completed them in the previous month.


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[damned]

Well done Sgtwhy

[Morenu]

Nice! bought.

Now could someone put links to the materials that are needed/should be used for PF1e campaign? our campaign is heading this direction so would love to surprise the DM with this.

[MrDDT]

Wow this look epic. Im going to have to try this out.

[Trenloe]

As this is a paid extension I've moved this thread to a "Paid Creations" sub-forum.

Great looking extension @sgtwhy, I may look into it for my PF2 Kingmaker game...

[dsaraujo]

This looks awesome, congratulations!

[Atreides Ghola]

Nice extension! Perfect for Kingmaker.

Is it possible to get support for Sir Motte's Hearth theme? Pretty tough to read.

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