PCs build an Empire - how did it happen?

[Tulon]

Hehe, well, there were only two times, the PCs were able to achieve control over a territory.
First, they were once from a noble rewarded with a painting "worth a barony". It said so in the official text of that adventure. However, the players started the same evening already to study maps of the game-world and plot out possible locations for such a barony. *g* And found it on the border of one of the continent's largest realms, which they decided could be their patron. Unfortunately, not much later, they got news that the nearby orcs started invading remote human outposts in the area (the creators of the game give out official news about their world to keep it "moving") , so they decided to delay this plan.
The next time was, when (again during an official adventure) one of the PCs achieved a position as the local Protection-Praetor (something like the city's police chief) in a small semi-independent harbour-city in the south of the continent. That PC immediately assigned the two other characters of the party with positions (Lieutenant and Sergeant) within the city guard.
Right now two of them are plotting an intrigue against the city's mayor to completely gain control over that settlement - which is definetively not part of the adventure, but it sure is fun and exciting what the PCs do with their authority and with which ideas they will come up next.

 

[Zappo]

LOL - yeah, that sounds about right for Ravenloft. I ran a Ravenloft game for a while - I loved it - it had all sorts of interesting twists. But I would never attempt to build anything in Ravenloft. Though I can see a certain dark poetry to your story - only in Ravenloft, I'd expect the final stanza to be more along the lines of you making it back to town to see they already were made undead and then the party slowly, sullenly sinks bank into the wilderness, yet another disheartening blow from the mists.

It was kinda supposed to be so. We were eavesdropping on the evidently-badass necromancer casting Create Undead, who also had this big blood elemental as a bodyguard. We fully knew that going against someone capable of casting that spell would have been a very tough fight - plus, the blood elemental, capable of basically destroying anything within melee range in one round. Plus, a bunch of skeletons and zombies. I quickly devised a plan, we attacked, and we managed to interrupt the ritual, destroy the elemental, and force the necromancer to escape without any of us getting killed. It would have been nice to nail her, too, but you can't have everything. Later, the DM told me that he didn't think we would have attacked; I think the total EL was at least 4 above the party level. He thought we would have witnessed the reanimation of the village's corpses and then flee. But hell, if I play good, I play good; letting my people getting turned into wights isn't on the menu, odds or not. Sometimes even the mists take a blow.

 

[Altalazar]

It was kinda supposed to be so. We were eavesdropping on the evidently-badass necromancer casting Create Undead, who also had this big blood elemental as a bodyguard. We fully knew that going against someone capable of casting that spell would have been a very tough fight - plus, the blood elemental, capable of basically destroying anything within melee range in one round. Plus, a bunch of skeletons and zombies. I quickly devised a plan, we attacked, and we managed to interrupt the ritual, destroy the elemental, and force the necromancer to escape without any of us getting killed. It would have been nice to nail her, too, but you can't have everything. Later, the DM told me that he didn't think we would have attacked; I think the total EL was at least 4 above the party level. He thought we would have witnessed the reanimation of the village's corpses and then flee. But hell, if I play good, I play good; letting my people getting turned into wights isn't on the menu, odds or not. Sometimes even the mists take a blow.

Yes, it can be satisfying to get a victory out of a seemingly hopeless situation, especially in Ravenloft. My players were good about "cursing the darkness" so to speak. So what eventually happened to the town?

 

[Zappo]

The town is still there, and it is a ghost town (only metaphorically, thanks to us). We camped there for a while to bury the dead and search it for the necromancer, but we couldn't find her and eventually we went away. Currently, we have even bigger problems on our hands, so the reconstruction will have to wait.

Just to save this thread from total hijacking - my PCs managed a fairly big island back in my OD&D days, on a homebrew world. It was a tropical, wild, "lost world" place, and the source for heaps of adventures as the party tried to make some portions of it civilized and safe. I remember writing a QBASIC program which implemented the OD&D domains rules, with taxes and everything, and using it to run the place. 3E should have something about domains (and mass combat) in the core rules. After all, ruling and warring are staples of fantasy.
Eventually, the campaign was abandoned when we switched to 2E and Planescape; the players were getting tired anyway.

I was completely astonished a couple of months ago when a friend of mine ICQed me saying that he found the program on some web site. After some thinking, I remembered that I had put it online for some time. I made it when I was 13 or something like that, and someone actually saved it and placed it on his website. I hope this won't come back to haunt me when I seek employment. "Mr. Polo, we found this on the web. Is that how you code? A schoolboy could do better!" "Well, actually...".