Advice About Running Kingdoms and War?

[unseenmage]

So I just found Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign material Kingdoms and War material (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCampaign/kingdomsAndWar.html)and was wondering if anyone here had any experience using it? What are its drawbacks, its strengths, its weaknesses?

Cool stories about times you've used it or seen it used more than welcome as well.

For my part I'm looking to use it to upscale my table's regular Monster Fights (Think fight club where everybody builds a monster encounter via CR, sometimes 1v1 sometimes groups.)
Entire Kingdoms of Awakened Undead and Constructs, Dragon ruled democracies, theologian Celestial invaders... So yeah, Monster Kingdoms Fight Club is definitely in our future.

[BWR]

When I first got Ultimate Campaign I was really eager to try it, but in practise I have found I'm not particularly fond of the kingdom rules. There are several reasons, but the major one is that it's hard to fail. Once you've filled out the admin roles, you will be set. Also, doing monthly rolls and checks means expansion goes way too quickly, and rolling monthly events means you never get a moment's rest. I cut it down to quarterly rolls, which still goes a bit quickly for my taste, but is better than monthly. I had problems that a lot of things aren't addressed, like the building types - there are lots of basic or common ones that aren't listed. Sure, you can just treat them as another type of building, but it's still annoying.

The major stumbling block I found was that there were no real rules for vassalage or taxation. It seemed to assume that PCs were their own bosses and the closest you came was treating subordinates in the same way you'd treat a friendly nation. A third party product called Ultimate Rulership adds a lot of new rules, including how to handle vassalage. I haven't had a chance to actually pick it up yet, but it seems to be a very nice addition. I have mostly given up bothering with the rules and just let my players run their domains mostly without oversight.

If you're interested I could list every problem I've had with it, but this is the gist of it.

[unseenmage]

When I first got Ultimate Campaign I was really eager to try it, but in practise I have found I'm not particularly fond of the kingdom rules. There are several reasons, but the major one is that it's hard to fail. Once you've filled out the admin roles, you will be set. Also, doing monthly rolls and checks means expansion goes way too quickly, and rolling monthly events means you never get a moment's rest. I cut it down to quarterly rolls, which still goes a bit quickly for my taste, but is better than monthly. I had problems that a lot of things aren't addressed, like the building types - there are lots of basic or common ones that aren't listed. Sure, you can just treat them as another type of building, but it's still annoying.

The major stumbling block I found was that there were no real rules for vassalage or taxation. It seemed to assume that PCs were their own bosses and the closest you came was treating subordinates in the same way you'd treat a friendly nation. A third party product called Ultimate Rulership adds a lot of new rules, including how to handle vassalage. I haven't had a chance to actually pick it up yet, but it seems to be a very nice addition. I have mostly given up bothering with the rules and just let my players run their domains mostly without oversight.

If you're interested I could list every problem I've had with it, but this is the gist of it.

I definitely wouldn't mind reading every problem you had with it. Forewarned is forearmed after all.
And thanks for the feedback, it is appreciated.

[unseenmage]

Where in Eberron would be a good place to run a kingdom building game? Where would be a terrible place for it?

Same as above but in Faerun?

[Coidzor]

Where in Eberron would be a good place to run a kingdom building game? Where would be a terrible place for it?

The Lhazaar Principalities are probably the best bet... *if* it can handle islands, which I don't recall one way or another. The Demon Wastes or the Eldeen Reaches might have some room for someone to carve out a fiefdom for themsleves as well as maybe some of the hinterlands of Droaam. Maybe Q'barra or the Talenta plains may have some opportunities as well.

Xendrik is probably the worst because you can't really have a stable state if you can't have reliable travel between point A and point B, plus the Giants, Dragons, and Drow would be a bit of a hazard as soon as one started to make headway. Xendrik would be followed by Sarlona, because the only place I can recall that isn't Riedra or Kalashtar-Tibet is basically a desert and if you unified it, Riedra would just conquer you with overwhelming force because they've been working on annexing it for a while and the principle thing keeping them from doing so is that the territory isn't really cohesive enough to annex formally without a lot of settling being done.


Same as above but in Faerun?

Plenty of wasteland and wilderness in Faerun. But, then, it's wasteland for a reason. Some of it is just basically abandoned territory due to orc infestations and the like, though I don't know the setting well enough for anywhere in particular to stand out as the cream of the crop though.

Without some way to restore life to the desert, Anauroch is probably pretty bad real estate. If you're talking about Toril as a whole, then the continents even more inimical to humanoid life than Faerun might be more generally worse.


That said, the ideas for where to have the Red Hand of Doom (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?171284-The-3-5-Red-Hand-Of-Doom-Handbook-for-DMs-Major-spoilers!-WIP-PEACH!)in those settings may also help give you some ideas as to where kingdom building would work.