Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

[ArthurFronz]

Rules are presented in "the Ultimate Base" (6th Edition) for the creation and play of kingdoms. I've haven't tried these yet, nor seen them discussed much in the forum. They seem extremely cool to me.

 

The ability to "zoom out" into a broader level of play, complete with character to kingdom interactions is awesome. Provides a whole new dimension to metaplots. An entire set of player adventures could therefore impact one "turn" at the kingdom level with modifiers based on the player's success (or failure) at the tactical level.

 

Anyway I'm using the Kingdom rules to define a Fantasy genre campaign setting and was looking for any examples published by others. Anyone know of any supplements that contain them? Some writers for the "Kamarathin: Kingdom of Tursh" supplement published by D3 have mentioned Kingdom rules online. I'm wondering if they actually use them in that book or any others.

 

Any "Kingdom Rule" sitings would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Mystic Pilgrim]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I completely agree, this seems like an EXTREME cool idea to me.

[ArthurFronz]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I completely agree' date=' this seems like an EXTREME cool idea to me.[/quote']

 

Great

 

My friends and I recently finished a lengthy 2nd Edition Exalted campaign (White Wolf system). It's an incredibly fiction rich system that emphasizes the development of God-like powers where PC's can take on, and lead entire nations. There are mass conflict resolution mechanics (both physical combat and social). But while I always loved the fiction, I found the rules system (d10 die pools of attribute + skill) too abstract for my taste; especially when "scaling up" adventures. At the high end you get "perfect offenses" opposing "perfect defenses" and die pools so large you end up ROLL playing rather than role playing. I found Charms (the basic unit of all Exalted abilities) cool when your PC has Essence-2 or 3 (modest supernatural abilities). But charms have MANY interaction problems when your PC grows to Essence-6 and beyond (able to challenge Gods in celestial bureaucracy and take on entire armies).

 

That's where Hero comes in. To my way of thinking it's toolkit provides robust mechanics with a STRONG degree of internal consistency. And it's all balanced at high power levels (given it's roots in Champions). That's such an awesome basis from which to "scale up" into the Kingdom level. I think this is an enormous competitive advantage to the Hero system in this regard. For those who want to learn how to "swing a sword" and progress to greater levels where they provide modifiers to their father's Kingdom level rolls and eventually playing actual Kingdom turns themselves as they run everything from criminal organizations to cities and nations.

 

Wondering if anyone else has made published forays in this direction. Does anyway remember the old MERP Supplements by Iron Crown (e.g. Arnor, Mirkwood, Minas Tirith, Moria)? In the back they always had a "military table" that showed you "kingdom level" troop organizations and strength. Thought that was very cool. The old Pendragon system has sourcebook called Nobles. It provided a method of diagramming and managing the economic and military development of your feudal holdings. You fleshed out your castle, surrounding towns, economic resources with a neat notation system. "The Ultimate Base" has provided the best framework for this genre of thing I've ever seen. I hope people "run with it" and enjoy it!

[Egyptoid]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

my copy is in the mail to me.

hopefully I can join in this discussion.

[The_Patriot]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I'm currently working on the second book for the Inceptum Terminus: Chronicles of the New Confederation, which is centered around wargaming. I've written up each of the Corporate States and other factions as kingdoms to allow people to play at the strategic level, but when two or more opposing forces meet in the same area on the strategic map the game shifts to tabletop wargaming complete with unit lists. The role playing elements will drive the objectives for when the two or more sides meet on the battlefield, so there will be a lot more objectives then what is normally found in current wargames. I've worked up all of the naval units, plus added more ground and air units. I hope that people will like what I have in mind for using Hero System to unify both role playing and wargaming.

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I was actually looking at these rules, and trying to find a way to bridge them with the mass combat rules in Fantasy Hero. I think the missing piece is that you need to create a "Strength" table for kingdoms that shows the total number of points that some kingdom's strength value represents in manpower or vehicles. This could be setting-specific, so that a fantasy strength table would have a different number for 10 STR than perhaps a sci-fi or post-apocalyptic strength table would. It would be good to keep the five point doubling convention as well, so that a 10 STR represents roughly twice as much manpower as a 5 STR.

 

If you can get STR built as "X number of total points of characters in your army," then you can then build basic characters for use in your army, buy vehicles for them, etc., and use the mass combat rules to fight engagements (with the characters involved) with the kingdoms.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

Suggestion: Have 1 STR represent the smallest strategic unit in a game(a company or battalion of infantry; 1-3 batteries of artillery; a couple dozen aircraft; etc.), figure out how to scale it up to 5 STR, then simply scale as above, every +5 STR equals twice as many units, and/or units of twice the capability(OR you could have STR modifiers for "elite", "veteran", "battleship", "heavy tank", "5th generation fighter", etc.). I might suggest 5 STR= about a brigade or regiment worth of infantry, which would make 15 STR = a division, 25 STR = a corps, and 30-40 STR = an army, maybe 50 might be an army group, 55 the forces in the entire theater of operations, and maybe 60+ would represent the entire armed forces. Something like that.

[ayinde]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

why not equate character points with kingdom (organisation ) strength maybe a 40 : 1 ratio this way a 400 point character is equal to 10 strength kingdom

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I was suggesting that kingdom STR would be just that: some total of character points that could be used to generate characters for an army. If a standard normal soldier is 25 points, then a basic small unit size could be 8 men, or 200 points. Let that be STR 1, then track the normal progression you'd find on the STR chart for kg, but kg x 25 is what your army points budget is. Want air forces or navies? Spend some portion of your points there instead. Not sure how that ultimately scales to, but it seems intuitive at least.

[Egyptoid]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

...a standard normal soldier is 25 points' date=' then a basic small unit size could be 8 men, or 200 points. ..[/quote']

 

are they bought at the follower rate?

does a loyalty modifier apply ?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

It's been my experience that the +5 for double the followers standard falls apart when dealing with armies. For the points it takes to build a squad of superheroes at that rate, you can build several billion regular soldiers, which doesn't really work when you're trying to balance a Golden Age Champions type scenario....

 

For national armies, I recommend counting a point as a point, whether it's used toward a soldier, his equipment, a vehicle, or what have you. Use the discounts only when dealing with PCs and their much smaller retinues of followers.

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I wouldn't use the follower rate because you're buying STR as a characteritistic. If you want an army of 50,000 men, that's going to cost you about 13 points, which is relatively cheap. Buy some vehicles with that points allotment and you've got air forces and a navy too. One thing that did occur to me was to buy vehicles as perks for driver and pilot personnel, so that might make the 475pt Abrams M1 a little cheaper and would let you represent larger armies.

 

In any case, there's at least one easy metric for how to translate Kingdom STR to fantasy mass combat.

[ayinde]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I like the ideas put hear we should build a sample army. I say we start small say a street gang and see what we get

[The_Patriot]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

Here's how I broke down the STR from one of the factions. I've also included the Organizational Chart from Inceptum Terminus: Chronicles of the New Confederation. I went with a more concrete approach that used flat cost per unit type based upon the size of the unit.

 

Organizational Chart Size of Unit Designation

10-12 troopers or 1 vehicle Squad

4 Squads Platoon (40-48 troops/4 vehicles)

4 Platoons Company (160-192 troops/16 vehicles)

4 Companies Regiment (640-768 troops/64 vehicles)

4 Regiments Brigade (2,560-3,072 troops/256 vehicles)

4 Brigades Division (10,240-12,288 troops/1,024 vehicles)

 

Characteristic/Category Value Allocation Cost

Strength: 84 21 points

Artillery: 109 Regiments 7

Armor: 109 Regiments 7

Air(Aerial +1): 109 Regiments 7

Infantry, Mechanized & Airmobile (Fast +1/2): 110 Regiments 11

Special Operations (Stonewall +1/4): 219 Regiments 18

Covert Operations: 219 Regiments 14

Transportation: 109 Regiments 7

Supply: 109 Regiments 7

Dreadnought Battle Group: 1 1

Battleship Battle Group: 0 0

Carrier Battle Group: 0 0

Coastal Patrol: 5 1

River Patrol Force: 10 1

[Kevlyn]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

My copy of UB is in the mail too. Looking forward to seeing these rules!

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

Here's how I broke down the STR from one of the factions. I've also included the Organizational Chart from Inceptum Terminus: Chronicles of the New Confederation. I went with a more concrete approach that used flat cost per unit type based upon the size of the unit.

 

Organizational Chart Size of Unit Designation

10-12 troopers or 1 vehicle Squad

4 Squads Platoon (40-48 troops/4 vehicles)

4 Platoons Company (160-192 troops/16 vehicles)

4 Companies Regiment (640-768 troops/64 vehicles)

4 Regiments Brigade (2,560-3,072 troops/256 vehicles)

4 Brigades Division (10,240-12,288 troops/1,024 vehicles)

 

Characteristic/Category Value Allocation Cost

Strength: 84 21 points

Artillery: 109 Regiments 7

Armor: 109 Regiments 7

Air(Aerial +1): 109 Regiments 7

Infantry, Mechanized & Airmobile (Fast +1/2): 110 Regiments 11

Special Operations (Stonewall +1/4): 219 Regiments 18

Covert Operations: 219 Regiments 14

Transportation: 109 Regiments 7

Supply: 109 Regiments 7

Dreadnought Battle Group: 1 1

Battleship Battle Group: 0 0

Carrier Battle Group: 0 0

Coastal Patrol: 5 1

River Patrol Force: 10 1

 

I think if you're going this way, then adding the modifiers for air units, fast units, etc., would be double-counting since you're already going to use the increased cost of the actual vehicles themselves as the relevant cost multiplier.

[Egyptoid]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

man what would it take to these stats into Hero-Designer ?

or dare I say it, Army Builder

[The_Patriot]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

I think if you're going this way' date=' then adding the modifiers for air units, fast units, etc., would be double-counting since you're already going to use the increased cost of the actual vehicles themselves as the relevant cost multiplier.[/quote']

 

It's not double counting since those are advantages for the Strength attribute. How I'm handling it is that each step on the Organization Chart is x amount of points of Kingdom level Strength. Due to the sheer size of the factions it was necessary to use the stats as an abstract within some definite constraints to keep it balanced for when the world grows beyond the first setting book. Kingdom Strength really doesn't have anything to do with the tabletop wargaming side at all. For the wargaming aspect, each of the units uses a different formula to determine the point cost. What I did was take the base soldier and multiplied them by the unit size then added in their leader's cost. Equipment and other upgrades are additions to the base unit then I took the final total and divided by 10 to make the handling of points simpler. A squad of standard soldiers with no upgrades is 168 points for purposes of the wargame, but the full cost for individual combat/role playing would 1,680.

 

My design goal is to make it as seamless to go from role playing up to theater level of operations. The way mass combat and the Kingdom rules are written have streamlined the process quite a bit. My take is that instead of letting the random tables for kingdom actions take precedence, but the players play it out as a wargame using the units provided or they created. They can set up the objectives for the game as they see fit and roll with it. In my playtests the scaling is perfect and the ability to use a combined arms force is perfectly balanced. Gameplay was very quick for the wargame section with most battles only lasting up to 30 minutes with about 1k points per side.

 

One of the things I added for the wargaming part was the inclusion of tactical formations. Currently, I have written up infantry squad and platoon formations plus ground vehicle formations. Company sized and larger formations are currently in the works. The formations give modifiers to OCV, DCV, movement, tactics, and morale rolls. One of the requirements for the use of formations in the squad and platoon sized games is that the miniatures must be positioned on the table in order to receive the modifiers for the formation. It rewards player tactical thinking and makes it more dynamic.

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

Sorry, to clarify: if you're thinking of using the idea we'd been discussing--a STR table that describes unit sizes where 1 STR is roughly eight 25pt soldier NPCs, and vehicles are bought for their price from the same pool--then paying for the vehicles and paying an extra +n cost multiplier for STR to account for the vehicles' capabilities is double counting. If you're not using that STR table idea, then yes, you're doing it exactly as written it appears.

[The_Patriot]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

Sorry' date=' to clarify: if you're thinking of using the idea we'd been discussing--a STR table that describes unit sizes where 1 STR is roughly eight 25pt soldier NPCs, and vehicles are bought for their price from the same pool--then paying for the vehicles and paying an extra +n cost multiplier for STR to account for the vehicles' capabilities is double counting. If you're not using that STR table idea, then yes, you're doing it exactly as written it appears.[/quote']

 

Sorry, for the delay in replying. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to work up a conversion of kingdom STR to units. The more I thought about the problem the more I'm leaning towards something akin to followers for kingdom's but the pricing would be along the lines of 1 STR=1000 character points for the unit in question. This way you keep the numbers manageable on the kingdom level. Just my 2 cents on it.

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

To be sure, I think you can create your STR table to taste. In fact, the APG has just such a suggestion for character STR (p. 7), and I see no reason why one couldn't adjust the way the table scales to meet the setting or "feel" desired.

 

The reason I picked out the number I did was because because you can substitute "characters" for "kg" on the normal STR table and get a nice progression upwards from small units to national militaries. For example, if the Roman legions totalled roughly 50,000 troops, then their Kingdom STR would be about 50, or about 13 points out of perhaps a 300pt Kingdom (assuming Rome was at the upper end of Low Fantasy). Even a modern nation-state like the United States, assuming we field about a half million people in our armed forces (just to pick a number) pays only 27pts out of, say, 500-600 points for a STR or 105.

 

Now that's just infantry, but if we throw in vehicles and double our numbers with 5 more points of STR, we've still just spent only 2 more points to create a vehicle budget of roughly 12,500,000 points. If our vehicles cost (on average) about 500 points (an M1 tank is 475), then that's a fleet of roughly 25,000 vehicles more or less. Elite units would bite into that budget further. So suppose we wanted some special forces, knights, space marines, or whatever your chosen flavor of elite is. Let them be 100 points a piece instead of 25 for the poor bloody infantry, and keep 500 of them for special occasions. That's 50,000 character points allocated from (take the Roman number) 1,250,000 character points worth of infantry, and the headcount of the regular infantry shrinks by 2000 troops.

 

Thing is, all this is what you get if you use large STR values (we're imagining nation states, Rome, etc.), but it makes a LOT of sense to use the standard STR table for raiding bands, border skirmishes between petty kingdoms, or other small military elements because STR 1-30 covers anything from an individual squad up to a small army of 1,600 soldiers. That seems sufficiently fine-grained for lots of the kind of small unit action that involves player characters in the intrigues of border princes in a fantasy game, the petty warlords or insurgent groups in a modern game, or marauding alien fleets in a sci-fi game.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

 

To be sure, I think you can create your STR table to taste. In fact, the APG has just such a suggestion for character STR (p. 7), and I see no reason why one couldn't adjust the way the table scales to meet the setting or "feel" desired.

 

The reason I picked out the number I did was because because you can substitute "characters" for "kg" on the normal STR table and get a nice progression upwards from small units to national militaries. For example, if the Roman legions totalled roughly 50,000 troops, then their Kingdom STR would be about 50, or about 13 points out of perhaps a 300pt Kingdom (assuming Rome was at the upper end of Low Fantasy). Even a modern nation-state like the United States, assuming we field about a half million people in our armed forces (just to pick a number) pays only 27pts out of, say, 500-600 points for a STR or 105.

 

Now that's just infantry, but if we throw in vehicles and double our numbers with 5 more points of STR, we've still just spent only 2 more points to create a vehicle budget of roughly 12,500,000 points. If our vehicles cost (on average) about 500 points (an M1 tank is 475), then that's a fleet of roughly 25,000 vehicles more or less. Elite units would bite into that budget further. So suppose we wanted some special forces, knights, space marines, or whatever your chosen flavor of elite is. Let them be 100 points a piece instead of 25 for the poor bloody infantry, and keep 500 of them for special occasions. That's 50,000 character points allocated from (take the Roman number) 1,250,000 character points worth of infantry, and the headcount of the regular infantry shrinks by 2000 troops.

 

Thing is, all this is what you get if you use large STR values (we're imagining nation states, Rome, etc.), but it makes a LOT of sense to use the standard STR table for raiding bands, border skirmishes between petty kingdoms, or other small military elements because STR 1-30 covers anything from an individual squad up to a small army of 1,600 soldiers. That seems sufficiently fine-grained for lots of the kind of small unit action that involves player characters in the intrigues of border princes in a fantasy game, the petty warlords or insurgent groups in a modern game, or marauding alien fleets in a sci-fi game.

 

Indeed. I'd assume that someone like Istvatha Vhan or Tyrannon would have military STR ratings in the hundreds(essentially limitless by terrestrial standards). But you could also use it to simulate, say, a special forces battalion or a company of advanced mecha with veteran, elite pilots.