So I want to gauge peoples thoughts of a Pathfinder Strategy game here on RPOL. Players start with a Level 7 Character with leadership and attempt to "Build" their own setting. Start them out with kind of a blank slate, let them design their followers and Cohort, design their leader, have a map that is several hundred miles...

I really hate running games though... but this idea sounds so fun and so cool. Randomly generate the world as you go....

The problem is that I want to play this game not run it... Ugh this sucks.

Set up a game for it... though I do not know if I will be running.

Post in the GMs Wanted forum.

Fascinating idea. Have a hex map and randomly generate each hex.

Need to expand the race maker for this though.
This message was last edited by the user at 09:05, Thu 02 July 2015.

I posted in Wanted - GM so that I can find more GMs for the vital positions. I dont know how to make Hex maps on RPOL though I guess I could just draw one or rip one off the net. I just made a map of squares. Using some rules i found on the SRD so this should work out well.

I gave some serious thought to doing this as a sort of post-magi-apocalyptic thing some time ago, but gave it up as too much work.

If things are really unexplored and new, you do have to come up with a reasonable method for settlers to appear, though.  There are all sorts of cheats in a fantasy setting (the gods made them!), though, so it's not a deal breaker.

I honestly want players to say what they want their civilization to believe for how they got there. Whether they were carved from stone, ripped from the belly of the earth, or what. In the setting I am the World Egg and everything that comes after is based on players.

Ah, I think I misunderstood something.  Are you talking about using the Ultimate Campaign rules for city/kingdom building?

My comment was directed toward how the people that fill your new city or kingdom appear as it grows. The system doesn't work well for natural birth rates since even goblins don't breed fast enough at first to sustain growth at the pace the system moves.

I am (Kind of). I am running off of the SRD so I cant cite books or anything, but I found rules for kingdom building (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamema...les/kingdom-building)

As far as populating cities I guess it accounts natural birth and settlers.

The PRD (the version of the SRD hosted by Paizo) breaks things up by books and can be easier to use if you want to filter out third party junk.  http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

The timescale for the kingdom rules is simply too fast for natural births to be the main source of new citizens.  Clearly, they do that on purpose to make the system relevant on a character-level, but the birth rate would have to be insane to keep up with their monthly turns.  If you made each turn a year, it would actually work alright with human birth rates.

swordchucks I love you for introducing me to the PRD

Now the thing is that I nee to be able to micro and macro scale because some people are going to want to play Adventures where others want to build kingdoms. If you want to talk about this check out my Wanted - GM post join the game I will accept your RTJ and we can have a thread for discussing the rules.

I'm in a weird spot right now for games, but I'll check it out after the holiday weekend.

---

My experience on the matter of multi-level games is that they don't work that well.  Someone else might have more experience than I do on the matter and can offer specific tips.  In general, I'd suggest trying to make the focus of your story either on the adventure level or on the kingdom level, but not both.  You can still have both, but the bulk of your planning and effort should be on one or the other.

For instance, if you want to run it as a real kingdom-level game, then the PCs should all be rulers.  They might get involved in an adventure here and there (especially when it's something related to the kingdom like dealing with a dragon, fending off an invasion, or trying to diplomance a neighbor), but the focus on the game is up high.  You cover a lot of kingdom turns with this kind of focus (and I'm pretty sure there are rules for tossing out xp for kingdom actions that you can tune to your needs).  What you don't do a lot of is dungeon delving or other such activities that take up large swaths of RL game time.

A high level game actually works really well with something like E6 where you cap levels to a lower point and don't have PCs that are world-shattering forces of destruction.  The king or queen rises to power over the first couple of years of their reign, and then personal power acquisition more or less stops in favor of the acquisition of power for the kingdom.

If you do it the other way around, it works better for more traditional dungeon delving and adventuring, but you're not going to cover a whole lot of kingdom turns.

These two scales don't work together simply because of time-frame.  A kingdom turn is typically a month, which is a loooooong amount of time in adventure terms.  On the other hand, that adventure that takes six months to play out on RPOL only represents about 1/4 of a kingdom turn.

The troupe style play from Ars Magica would help address the different pacing from kingdom building to adventuring.
http://www.redcap.org/page/Troupe_style

Basically the players would have a couple characters and would assemble a team together for an adventure from their pool, the other characters would be attending to business as usual.  In Ars Magica the focus of play can become the covenant (mage tower, town, townsfolk, etc) where everyone lives.  Every player has a Magi, Companion (highly skilled person), and can draw from a pool of Grogs (grunt warriors) for the mission.

Magi often want to stay in their labs/libraries (and are considered to be 'in charge' of the covenant) so normally only one or two go out on an adventure.  Companions are often specialists of some sort so are only suitable to some adventures.  Grogs are the rank and file warriors and each player might bring more than one.  The 'kingdom level' adventures in Ars Magic would be based on lab/library work, deciding covenant issues, and engaging in politics.  Many of these things are based on seasons of time.

Now this wouldn't address at all the issues with RPOL time making the adventure run six real life months before you can get back to running the kingdom.

That's the real issue here.  Troupe style play addresses an issue of scale, not pace.  It would let you have all of the players participating in an adventure, but the price you pay there is that one or more players would be forced to go months without playing their "real" character.

Personally, I think the most successful approach is still to pick a level and then focus on that level (either kingdom-wide or adventure) with occasional forays into the other where it makes sense.  There's no need to play everything out, either.  If Bob the Fighter wants to go kill some gnolls or something, you can narrate it as a part of the kingdom-level stuff.  Wars can certainly be fought at that level.