Pathfinder 1E Do we care about what it's doing? Ultimate Campaign

[MerricB]

I think that's kind of a gatekeeping statement: "X is what D&D is, Y is not!" is rarely categorically true.

You're absolutely right there, and you make some great points. The fact is, I know from my own experience that there are people who love character backgrounds, who love keeping track of downtime, who love kingdom building, and who love mass combat. At various times, I've certainly fitted into those four categories. My players and I enthusiastically adopted the Stronghold Builder's Guide back in 3E, and we lamented the lack of rules for actual kingdom building. And we were all enthusiastic about playing Kingmaker.

However, running Kingmaker showed me what actually having these rules could do - and it wasn't all positive. So, I'm now interested in exploring the options. I don't have a settled position; my first post was just that, a first post, and I'm fascinated in the feedback I get. Yes, my posts will be clumsy as a result, but it's a topic I consider worth exploring.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Ultimate Campaign is one of the best RPG purchases in years. My players love the background generator, retraining is a good system, downtime rules are a system I've been seeking since 1st edition. Additionally, kingdom-building & mass combat needed refinements over Kingmaker given its popularity... It's not for everyone and certainly not for beer-n-pretzels games, but it greatly enhances my games.

I'm really, really, really glad to hear that.

Incidentally, the very first downtime system I saw and used was in the Cities book by Midkemia Press (later republished by Chaosium). I abused that system massively.

 

[MerricB]

Who hasn't had a character in a campaign take ownership of a business somewhere along the line?

Taverns, mostly. An entire chain of taverns, over all the continent. My players can be so predictable!

 

[MerricB]

The bigger problems probably come from their intersection with the kingdom-building rules. You could do some very wonky things in Kingmaker when building armies (they read very much as an afterthought rather than a properly integrated set of rules). I'm hoping that they're better integrated in Ultimate Campaign.

Curiously, upon looking at Ultimate Campaign, they seem even less integrated - no mention of training times, you just pay the cost of the army and it appears (or so it seems). However, this probably isn't a bad thing, as it leaves more room for the DM to say, "that's stupid, you can't have an army of 1000 level 10 fighters!"

Cheers!

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Was it really? I know that the earliest days of D&D, coming as they did from wargaming, had that as part of play, but was that approach also used by everyone else?

I'm not saying it *wasn't*, mind you, but I've seen a lot of reports of dungeon adventuring and very little on owning a castle.

I agree with you, [MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION]. The rules were in the books - yes - but none of the groups I was involved with bothered using them.

Back to your OP, for our group I cannot see a use for the rules but, I must admit, they're nice to have on hand should we ever decide to go that way. (We're actually playing 4E rather than Pathfinder but I am sure the rules could be ported across.

 

[Henry]

I know that for my part, My DM would have found these rules handy about two years ago, when I was trying to build an alchemist's shop in our Pathfinder Crimson Throne campaign. In the end, he hand waved it, and we worked together to establish a "baseline" of money outcome so that it turned a profit, but not so much that it broke the wealth by level. One of the other players took over a brothel, and had similar issues (though his types of business problems were certainly a little different from mine.)

 

[Wicht]

Sometimes I want those things sometimes I don't.

When I am busy using a hammer on nails, I never look at my small phillips screwdriver and think, "do I really want to keep that," because experience shows that when I need a small phillips screwdriver, I need a small phillips screwdriver, no matter how often I use the hammer. Which is also why I have large phillips, small phillips large flathead screwdrivers, small flathead screwdrivers, little eyeglass style screwdrivers, regular wrenches, socket wrenches, pliers, needle nose pliers, adjustable wrenches, etc. The right tool for the job is always pleasant to have at hand.

Ditto for game books.

 

[Kinak]

I come from a strong 2nd Edition background, which means a lot of things "are D&D" to me. Sailing among the stars and fighting beholder hiveships? D&D. Blessed by the blood of gods and trying to reunite a fallen empire? D&D.

I'm not sure if I'll actually use Ultimate Campaign when I get around to running a Pathfinder Birthright game, but it's certainly nice to have a set of rules out there to fall back on. And it would have come up a number of other times for me.

And downtime rules/retraining will be amazing.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Umbran]

Was it really?

It was part of the class descriptions, even! This was part of becoming "name level" in 1e - you got to build a stronghold and gain followers. Wizardy types got the short end of the stick, as they were "allowed" to build a tower, but didn't get people showing up. Fighters and clerics got small armies to play with. Rangers got a band of merry men (and women, and creatures).

 

[Jacob Marley]

It was part of the class descriptions, even! This was part of becoming "name level" in 1e - you got to build a stronghold and gain followers. Wizardy types got the short end of the stick, as they were "allowed" to build a tower, but didn't get people showing up. Fighters and clerics got small armies to play with. Rangers got a band of merry men (and women, and creatures).

Indeed. Those were the rules that inspired me to play D&D. It is why I picked up D&D; it is why I bought into Birthright; and it is why I think that Ultimate Campaign is a good book.