SAKE RPG tips: My players want to build a Kingdom

Geek Native invited Rainer Kaasik-Aaslav, the author of SAKE, a tabletop RPG currently on Kickstarter, to tackle the situation when players prefer to build kingdoms rather than go on adventures.

Update: SAKE is back on Kickstarter for attempt 2, and at the time of writing, they’re well ahead of pledge goals.

Why? It’s not uncommon, and it’s very much in them, along with what SAKE (Sorcerers, Adventures, Kings, and Economics) covers. As a bonus, we also get a peek at the book.

Welp! My players Want to Build a Kingdom and Not Adventure at All!

By Rainer Kaasik-Aaslav

From time to time, these sorts of threads crop up here and there. Of course, the first answer is to talk with the players about where the campaign is going. However, this article is here to ease your concerns and discuss why it’s a good thing – even when it doesn’t happen as planned. Sometimes, while playing an open-world campaign or as a consequence of PCs clearing out a corrupt government in their starting town or bandits ruling over some fort, a power vacuum emerges, wherein the new heroes taking ruling into their own hands seems natural. The famous Pathfinder adventure path, Kingmaker, starts with that exact premise – PCs conquering a bandit fort.

Concerns

But won’t PCs get too rich too quickly?

Yes and no. Of course, your ruler PCs probably don’t have to worry about their own (!) starvation or buying basic equipment, but anything more special, like magical equipment or special rides, could still be expensive for them. Let me explain.

During most of medieval times, and in some areas out of Western Europe for much later, most of the taxes from serfs were levied as corvée (unpaid labour of tenant farmers) that would be used to tend to the lords’ fields or build something (for example, fortifications, public roads, etc.). So that wouldn’t translate straight to money PCs can use to better their equipment.

Many of the medieval and early modern kings in our world were famously not rich at all when compared to their contemporary merchants and bankers. The bureaucracy to levy taxes was poor or even nonexistent in some cases. Also, the way feudalism worked made large parts of the kingdom tax-free from the viewpoint of the king, as feudal vassals were expected to show up in the case of war but not always pay taxes. Of course, it has to be said that feudal contracts were individual and very different from each other.

Negotiating a feudal contract, be it the PC as a vassal or the senior side, could be an interesting social encounter in itself.

A good comparison of a ruler’s coffers and the profit from a successful merchant trip or adventure comes from late 16th-century England – a pretty centralized state by its time.

Frances Drake’s pirate adventure, which ended with circumnavigating the globe, brought in loot with an estimated value of around £600,000 – which is comparable to the entire annual revenue of England – a kingdom with 3 600 000 subjects at this time. Adventuring, trade, and pirating were clearly more profitable than kingdom governing.

So, in conclusion, there is no reason to worry about PCs getting too rich too quickly – especially when comparing the kingdom with the profits from, for example, raiding a dragon hoard.

But PCs will now never go adventuring, and the whole game becomes just about accounting?

On the accounting side of things, yes, probably more of that happens when compared with just adventuring in the wilds. But when wanting to go the kingdom-building route, then maybe that’s the thing they enjoy also.

As for the adventuring side of things, that probably also changes when their kingdom grows larger – but at the start, maybe not so much. Somebody still has to take care of all the more dangerous threats a small state encounters, and now they become more personal. The undead in the forest are a threat to the whole state that PCs can’t just walk away from – their people count on them to take care of it, and if they don’t, they may find that the people don’t want them as rulers anymore – generating a new threat – rebellion.

Also, all sorts of wars, diseases, etc., that mostly play the backdrop of the campaign now become more personal, with players having their whole kingdom at scale and also having the power to decide how things work out.

When taking inspiration from history, we find a lot of adventuring kings who just didn’t sit in their palace:

• Lots of medieval rulers packed their bags and went crusading, which was basically a traveling campaign similar to Lord of the Rings – getting mixed up in lots of different adventures on their way to the Holy Land and of course having no plan for what to expect when arriving there (if they arrived there at all).
• The Viking Age is filled with rulers gathering their retinue and going on raids and trade adventures all over Europe.

So, there is no reason why your players couldn’t do the same when wanting some variety from kingdom management type of adventures.

Why PCs Building Their Own Mini-state is a Good Thing

1.

Building something of their own raise’s player investment in the campaign. We, humans, have an inner need to create something – to build – and when we do it, then we want to protect our creation, even if it all happens in a fantasy game.

2.

Which leads to more interesting BBEG – as now you don’t have to threaten the PCs directly, but can threaten their small state and people living there. The BBEG can be a nearby rival kingdom as a whole, a plague, crop failure, struggles between different classes in the kingdom, etc. – things that at an individual scale wouldn’t threaten PCs at all or that regular adventurers would never have to think about.

3.

Potential for new types of adventures rising, for example:

3.1) PCs as rulers of land would have to be judges.

3.2) Managing different interest groups of the kingdom.

3.3) And of course – dealing with the adventurers from the perspective of the ruler.

But there aren’t any rules for any of it?

The more common games have official and/or third-party add-ons for kingdom building, but I would advise just using a game that’s designed with kingdom building in mind, of which there are many. My own game, SAKE (Sorcerers, Adventures, Kings, and Economics), that has a Kickstarter running just now, being one of them.

Quick Links

• Kickstarter: SAKE.