Looking for a bit of advice on a big hack/addon that I’ve been tinkering with for a while. I’m going to be making a set of campaign rules for creating, expanding and managing a kingdom, inspired by Pathfinder’s Kingmaker rules. It’s very much in the theory stage still.
Currently, I’m thinking that most kingdom improvements are made by completing Projects, sort of a hybrid of positive, player driven Fronts and the Need Clocks from No Country For Old Kobolds.
However, I also like the idea of the kingdom gaining XP to spend on improvements. The kingdom will have its own character sheet, with advanced moves available, either way.
Any ideas on how to keep both and have them both add something distinct to the game, or is it a one or the other kind of situation?
I would give the kingdom XP based on extra questions you add to the End of Session Move.
That’s kinda what I was thinking, perhaps along with misses on any rolls the kingdom makes. Generating XP is a separate issue, though; right now I’m wondering what to do with it once the players have it, if Projects are staying in (and I think they should).
I think the question I would ask is what purpose does the kingdom serve in the game.
It’s something else the players can engage with which is neat but how do they engage this kingdom, what is the kingdoms function in the game, how does it impact the characters, and how does it impact the fiction?
I think after you understand those answers as it relates to the dungeon world game you’ll have a much easier time crafting the mechanic.
Christopher Sniezak Good questions. What I want the kingdom to do is to give the players and characters something they have a stake in.
They engage with it by taking ownership of it in some form or another, and building it into something they can be proud of.
It impacts the characters because it gives them a home to defend, or a power base to build, instead of being wayward vagabonds. It impacts the fiction by giving Fronts a more personal framework to build on; there’s a very real difference between saving the kingdom and saving what’s in a very real sense our kingdom.
That said, I think I’ve got it actually. Feedback on this idea:
Each character gains a free compendium class which represents their stake in the kingdom; Sovereign, Guildmaster, Judge, General, etc. You spend kingdom XP on the advanced moves for this compendium class.
So, Projects are about building the kingdom up, while the XP is sort of like your contribution rank in Age Of Rebellion, a measurement of what you’ve done and what you can get out of it.
Sounds like a good idea to me. They build something that gives them both a narrative and mechanical connection to and then it’s another thing you can threaten to make their lives more adventurous.
Thanks, good to know I’m not totally nutters here. 😛
I like the compendium class idea. It gives you a little bit of crunch to connect the players to the kingdom. You may consider having treasure convert to Kingdom xp. That way the random adventures the players may end up on will still generate power for the kingdom.
Steve Wallace I was thinking contributing treasure would mostly help Projects along, but I like that idea too. Thanks. 🙂
In one iteration of Seed, the ncfok scifi hack, I also had xp for the seed ship as a function of player xp. So 1 xp for every level gained by players or something like that. It makes kingdom xp far more rare but gives a decent curve.