Kingmaker: Your City and Kingdom

[Nimloth]

1. Where your group built your first city and why;
We built our 1st city at Olegs. We had a bad experience at the Staglords fort (almost ended the game) and we didn't want to build there until we had some time to ease the memories. Since most of our initial settlers would be from the north, Olegs was a better location for them.

2. The name of your first city and why;
We called it Olegstead, to encourage Oleg and Svetlana to join our government.

3. The name of your kingdom and why you chose it;
The Greenmarch, a combination of Greenbelt and Narlmarches.

4. What you developed/built first;
Our 1st few buildings were a stable, shop, inn and shrine(Erastil). We concentrated on economy and religious buildings (for roleplaying reasons).

5. Whatever else you deem relevant, such as the locations of any subsequent cities or important structures.
We eventually founded a city at the Staglord's fort and made it our capital (due to it's central location).

 

[Drowbane]

Update: Last night the party went out to explore Hexes we hadn't yet been to and we went to go check on the Stag Lord's Fort, thinking we would at least build there for our next town. Well as we near we see new construction and find out that the ex-PC of the DM's wife had begun building there right after she quit the game.

Yeah.

She quits the campaign, as she isn't all that into D&D (cause it has rules, and doesn't cater just to her) and then her ex-PC steals the Fort out from under us.

I was... not happy. I might drop the game, not sure yet. What would you guys do?

 

[TarionzCousin]

Update

Drowbane and I are in the same game. This was a big and unpleasant surprise.

We think we can co-opt the Stag Lord's town--the wife is supposedly not playing this game any more--eventually. But if not it looks like we would go to war and burn it down if the reactions of the players are any indication of what the future holds.

Also, Drowbane can't quit; he's our king.

 

[Kaisoku]

The party should be getting a stipend from Brevoy to found your kingdom there. By rights, and by charter, this land is yours.

I'd try diplomatically to annex the place, and kick them out by force if they were decidedly hostile.

However, to be frank, it sounds like the DM is playing the metagame on your group. The behavior smacks of favoritism and ego stroking. I'd probably watch to see if the DM was going somewhere with it and play along a bit, but if it's apparent that he's going to go this way, I'd bow out of the game and wait for another time to play Kingmaker.

The AP is a great one, and toying with the players like this would make me feel cheated of the experience.

 

[Lwaxy]

Maybe he is just using a dropped PC as story tool. I do that all the time. Would also explain why you couldn't settle there.

 

[Drowbane]

ahem...

we received our build monies from Brevoy, but that location was "off the map". I asked about it at the time and it just got glossed over.

This DM is a bit of a jerk at times, but maybe he thinks this is a "cool plot point" or something. All I know is it pissed some of us off.

 

[Kaodi]

It says that in the second book that introduces the kingdom building. The Varnhold book then also says that some of those top hexes can't be claimed for same reason.

I have been looking for where it says this, but so far with no luck. I mean, I can believe it makes a certain amount of sense, but I have to see it to believe it.

 

[Kaodi]

Actually, looking over a big Q & A thread on Paizo, and I did come across this so far:

The actual border between the Stolen Lands and Brevoy may look like a straight line on the big scale map, and on some maps in world I would assume that overly-ambitious cartographers might fudge borders... the fact is that there's very little of the maps in Kingmaker that are officially in Brevoy. Only the top row of hexes in the rightmost map area (the Nomen Heights, in Pathfinder #33) are officially part of Brevoy.

An element of this actually does pop in on the map for the Nomen Heights; if the PCs try to claim any of the top row of hexes (which includes areas like Restov), they're basically declaring war on Brevoy. That takes the AP in an entirely different direction than what we're building it to do.

 

[Crothian]

I have been looking for where it says this, but so far with no luck. I mean, I can believe it makes a certain amount of sense, but I have to see it to believe it.

In the Varnhold book pg 11 under the Expanding your kingdom section.

 

[Crothian]

Gencon 2010 we stared Kingmaker and this past week we finally fished it. It was a lot of fun, and the last book is just brutal as the combats in there were so much more powerful then anything else we had faced and unlike most of the campaign those encounters happened a lot more then one or two a day.