[RPG] How many BP do I give to the PCs to start a kingdom

pathfinder-1erealm-management

I'm currently running a Pathfinder play-by-post game with some friends, and I decided to try the Kingdom Building rules from Ultimate Campaign.

The PCs are goblins who saved a bunch of other goblins from other tribes from a labor camp, and they decide to found a new tribe.

What's a good amount of BP to start the kingdom ?

By good I mean :

  • players should be able to have fun
  • goblin tribes don't use gold coins but rely on barter
  • it should feel like the kingdom couldn't have been without their effort and good will and wise decisions

I'm afraid giving them too much would diminish PCs' value but giving too little would result in an unwinnable situation which could be frustrating, unless I end up giving DM-fiat cash just to avoid the kingdom falling apart because of my mistake.

Best Answer

In the Kingmaker Adventure Path, the PCs start with 50 BPs but this reflects a specific amount bestowed by the swordlords of Restov on the PCs to get them started.

In general, when you start you'd estimate how many BPs you want to grant. Ultimate Campaign describes BP:

Build points are an abstraction representing the kingdom’s expendable assets, not just gold in the treasury. Build points include raw materials (such as livestock, lumber, land, seed, and ore), tangible goods (such as wagons, weapons, and candles), and people (artisans, laborers, and colonists). Together, these assets represent the labor and productive output of your citizens.

And also that

In general, 1 BP is worth approximately 4,000 gp; use this value to get a sense of how costly various kingdom expenditures are.

So in your case... Goblins. The approximate worth of most goblins and goblin settlements frankly approaches zero in raw materials, capital, and skilled labor.

Providing a seed amount of BP at the start of kingdom building means your kingdom isn’t starving for resources in the initial months. Whether you acquire these funds on your own or with the help of an inf luential NPC is decided by the GM, and sets the tone for much of the campaign.

So your campaign, your vision, but if I were starting out a bunch of goblin PCs trying to wreak a kingdom from a goblin tribe the answer would be "0 BP to start with." Unless the PCs have managed to get enough treasure to cash in for some starting BP.

I'm somewhat concerned by your statement that you'd be "giving them DM-fiat cash just to avoid the kingdom falling appart." You shouldn't bother using a ruleset if the option for failure is not there. If you intend for it to succeed no matter what, then just make it succeed. You should use these rules if failure is an entertaining option (and with Pathfinder goblins, it certainly would be IMO!).

If I were taking We Be Goblins or something and extending it into a kingdom-builder I'd be tempted to reskin the rules and use Junk Points and restate all the buildings and whatnot as the degenerate ridiculous crap goblins would come up with. I bet your players would be super entertained in participating in that process.

Though I think an "Unrest death spiral" is the expected outcome for a goblin city, you could bootstrap this by using the Downtime rules, also from Ultimate Campaign, to do some building and organization development at higher resolution and then once there's some starting points that would be equivalent to BP, move into the larger kingdom building rules. (In fact, here's a sidebar where they discuss the interaction between those two rulesets.)

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