If you are familiar with the Kingdom Building rules (and if you aren't, none of this is going to make much sense), you know that they are a set of rules designed to let your adventuring party control and grow their own realm. Each member of the party can take a leadership position ranging from Ruler to High Priest to Spymaster, with plenty more positions open for NPCs. They manage the creation and expansion of settlements, issue edicts, develop the land, and collect taxes. It's basically a whole other game - I recommend setting up a facebook group where your players can discuss affairs of state so that it doesn't take up too much of your tabletop time.
My adventuring group in the ongoing but long-stalled Graverobbers campaign is about to begin ruling over their newly forged barony, but as I was going over the Kingdom Building rules I realized that there wasn't a lot of incentive for some of the characters. If you know history, you know that people like to use positions of power to increase their personal wealth. This was a major aspect of feudal society, but it is sadly lacking in the Kingdom Building rules. So I whipped up the following optional rules that will allow characters to draw a salary from the kingdom's treasury, or even control their own fiefdom and manage a small settlement.
The following material given in gold text is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.
Salaries
The ruler may grant any of their allies or subjects a
salary derived from the wealth of the kingdom.
Such salaries may last as long as the ruler desires. Typically, a salary is granted for a period
of no less than a year, but they can be granted for periods of multiple years,
for a lifetime (reverting to the ruler after the character’s death), of in
perpetuity (with the salary being paid to the heir of the character after that
character’s death).
A salary may be
revoked by the ruler at any time, but at a cost. The ruler must make a Loyalty check, with
failure increasing unrest by one for every character drawing a salary from the
treasury in that way (minimum 1). A
successful check only increases unrest by 1.
There are
several forms of salary that a ruler might choose to grant their allies. They may choose to give them a fixed amount
of BP per month. This counts as an
expense of running the kingdom, and does not result in unrest as withdrawing BP
from the treasury for personal use does.
They may also choose to grant the revenues of one or more terrain
improvements, such as mines, quarries, or sawmills, to an ally. Instead of the BP from these improvements
going to the treasury, they instead go to the designated character and are
converted to gold pieces at the usual rate.
Personal Holdings
Instead of a salary, a ruler may decide to grant a
personal holding to an ally. This is
often more lucrative for both parties in the long run. A personal holding consists of a single
settlement within the ruler’s territory.
Responsibilities of Leadership: In order
to assure the smooth running of your holding, you must spend at least 7 days
per month attending to your duties; these days need not be consecutive. If you also hold a position of leadership in
the kingdom, these 7 days are in addition
to the 7 days you must spend attending to those
leadership duties. The same restrictions
apply for time spent ruling: these days cannot be used for adventuring,
crafting magic items, or completing other downtime activities.
As ruler of a
personal holding, you can choose any one ability score bonus to add to your
Economy check (see Income and BP
below). It is assumed that you are
primarily using this ability score in your management of the holding (e.g., using
Strength to do manual labor and conduct repairs, using Intelligence to manage
the estate, using Charisma to grease the wheels of business, etc.).
If you fail to
spend the requisite number of days managing your holding, its control
temporarily reverts to the ruler of the kingdom, and any Economy buildings
contribute to the kingdom’s Economy as normal.
Alternately, you can designate a Steward to manage the holding in your
absence. For each month you are away,
the Steward has complete control over how BP is gathered and spent. Your Steward chooses one ability score bonus
to use in place of yours for the purpose of Economy checks, but they contribute
only one half of their bonus. Be sure
your steward is someone you trust, for they can easily line their pockets from
your treasury, and you will
ultimately bear responsibility for any mismanagement that occurs under their
watch.
Buildings and Economy: As the holder of
the settlement, you decide how that settlement develops and what buildings are
built there unless restricted by the ruler (see Taxes and Restrictions below).
New buildings can be constructed in a personal holding during the Create and Improve Settlements step of
the Edict Phase of the Kingdom Turn Sequence. Building modifiers to Loyalty, Stability, and
Unrest (and Fame if you are using the optional Fame and Infamy rules) apply to
the entire kingdom as usual. Building
modifiers to Economy do not apply to the kingdom as a whole – they apply only
to your holding.
Income and BP: During the Income Phase of the Kingdom Turn Sequence you can make the
same decisions for your personal holding as the ruler makes for the kingdom, with
some slight variations, as summarized below.
Step 1 - You can choose to withdraw BP
from the holding’s treasury at the normal exchange rate. This does not increase Unrest in the kingdom,
but each BP you withdraw imposes a penalty on the taxes that you collect (see Step 4 below).
Step 2 – You can add your personal
wealth to your holding’s treasury, including gold, gems, magic items, and other
items as long as they are individually worth 4,000 gp or less. For every full 4,000 gp you add, the treasury
increases by 1 BP.
Step 3 – You can attempt to sell an
expensive personal item worth 4,000 gp or more in your settlement. You can sell one item per settlement district
per turn; each item you sell counts against the total number of such items that
can be sold in the kingdom that turn (and vice versa). The item cannot be worth more than the base
value of the settlement. Divide the
price of the item in half (as if selling to an NPC for gp), divide the result
by 4,000 gp (rounded down), and add that many BP to your Treasury.
Step 4 – Make an Economy check (1d20 +
total Economy score of the personal holding + Holder ability score bonus -
Unrest in the Kingdom - BP withdrawn from the treasury in Step 1 - 10), then divide the result by 3 (round down) and add a
number of BP to your treasury equal to the result. After taxes are collected from your holding,
pay any taxes required to the ruler of the kingdom (see below).
Taxes and Restrictions: Personal
holdings are rarely granted with no strings attached. Usually the kingdom’s ruler will demand an
oath of loyalty in which the holder of the settlement pledges to support the
ruler and provide military support when called upon to do so. In addition, the kingdom ruler can stipulate
a tax that must be paid by the holder each Kingdom Turn. This tax may be a set number of BP, a certain
percentage of the total BP earned from the holding, or a percentage the
settlement’s base value. The kingdom
ruler should keep in mind that the higher they make their tax, the more
difficult it will be for the holder to develop their settlement and the less
loyal they are likely to be to the kingdom ruler.
The kingdom
ruler can also, optionally, stipulate what buildings can or cannot be built in
that holding. Usually this is done to
ensure that the settlement complies with the laws or character of the kingdom
as a whole (e.g., “No black market shall be constructed in this settlement,” or
“The first religious building constructed in this settlement must be dedicated
to X god.”). It can also be done to
ensure that it is harder for the holding to revolt (e.g., “No castle can be
constructed in this settlement.”), or to maintain the kingdom ruler’s monopoly
on certain powers (e.g., “No mint shall be constructed in this
settlement.”).
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These rules are currently untested. I will be employing them in the near future, and may need to revisit them here if there are any major problems. If you run these rules in your own game, make sure to comment below and tell me how it went!
Historical Pedant's Note: Feudalism can be a touchy subject in historiography (the study of the study of history, or as I like to call it: meta-history). The term didn't exist in the Middle Ages, and it does not represent a defined government type but rather a varying and somewhat nebulous system of personal ties, land grants, military service, and titles. Some historians have written articles saying that 'feudalism is an obsolete term because how things really worked was...' [and then they just describe what we generally understand to be feudalism]. Personally, I think feudalism is a fine word that can evolve and change as our understanding of medieval rule and vassalage evolves and changes.
The optional rules described above are not designed to perfectly simulate a feudal system. That would be entirely too complicated. My goal was to create two systems - one simple and one more complex - that would give players more of a vested interest in kingdom building and an economic incentive to see that kingdom flourish. The Salary rules roughly simulate the granting of salaries by medieval rulers to friends and supporters - for instance, a king might grant the income from a series of mills to someone in exchange for much needed military support or as a reward for loyal service. The Personal Holdings rules could very very roughly simulate infeudation (or subinfeudation), but for the most part it is just a way to give players their own town to mess about with and reap the rewards thereof.
-your subinfeudated d20 despot
OH! And make sure to come back here on the first of April to see how d20 despot will be celebrating our 3rd anniversary!!
OH! And make sure to come back here on the first of April to see how d20 despot will be celebrating our 3rd anniversary!!
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