When I conceptualized it, it was a given in my mind that I'd use Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign rules for downtime. It's quite a bit to digest, but it's fairly intuitive in my mind. It basically introduces new resources: "capital", which is divided into Goods, Influence, Magic, and Labor. These can be used to perform certain activities, which primarily revolve around business operation and construction, research and development, discovery of secrets through different methods, and of course, making money.
Use Goods as material for building and fueling operations.
Use Influence for special services, reputation, and gaining followers.
Use Magic for crafting, divination, and security.
Use Labor for construction, earning money, and operations.
The system translates easily (simply reduce skill checks and costs). I believe it was created with Pathfinder: Kingmaker in mind, but provided the players don't go about trying to make a kingdom, the GM should be able to handle the system without the player's direct understanding of its mechanics, simply explaining "it will take X gold with Y days of elbow grease and a casting of Fabricate to build an alchemist shop".
Shops generally generate Goods. A scrying room generates Magic. A sauna generates Influence. Followers and the PCs generate Labor. Several activities generate multiple kinds of Capital, and all sorts of capital can be bought, so long as the NPCs can provide it (and are willing to).
When the PCs go about trying to find someone unique, I translate their abilities and time spent to determine the results. If they hire help, that also gets translated to Capital which then influences their chances of success. Should they continue to do everything on their own, I expect the campaign will take quite a while. So far, at least 1 PC has hired help, and I hope to see others recruit more mercenaries.
This does change the way some skills are used, but the system doesn't take away those abilities, and allows others to accomplish the same, albeit with more effort.
So my question comes to this: is operating this system in the background a fine idea? Its not too late to axe this intention out and simply use muddled, simple skill checks, but it really was my intent to proceed with a robust handling of downtime activity. Thing is, I didn't exactly announce that as my intention as seen in the recruitment thread, as I did mean to do it in the background. I have mentioned this is my intent since then but nobody said anything about it.
It seems like it could work, but are you sure it will be in the background? My hesitation is that it could overwhelm the adventuring part of the game and force the PCs to worry more about min-maxing their henchmen to buff their town. Personally if I had lots of downtime, I’d spend it crafting myself piles of magic items so I can live longer next time I leave town. I guess that’s my question, how does this advance my character? Is it like the video game model where if I upgrade the shops enough they’ll start having better gear? What am I, personally as a character, going to get from all this capital the town is generating? What if I don’t want to be a mayor and just want to go kill monsters and take their stuff?
I'm hoping the PCs took the bold, red line of "Treasure hunting is for schmucks" in the recruitment to heart, because its intended that fighting monsters in this campaign is stupid dangerous, even for 7th level PCs. Players start with no attuned items, and such items are rare. Their intended enemies aren't orcs and dragons in dungeons, but stubborn folk, witches and rival power-seekers in the cities and countryside. It is specifically for this sort of campaign, where the overall party is intended to be more toward Lawful Evil instead of Neutral Good.
Advancement does get me a bit giddy; if my hopes come to fruition, the PCs will end up leading a small clandestine company of mercenaries to complete their objective. The game will largely be social interactions, handling the results of their effort and planning. Hence the Lawful Evil bent. I intend to have the players work for their information, and there will be a lot of it. The other form of advancement in the game is achieving the goal of the campaign; discovering and collecting feats. Once collected, the players will be able to learn the feats, free of the usual restriction of 1 every 4 levels as a choice. The limitation being time, money, ability, and notoriety. The system is meant to help me create more options to achieve the goal of collecting all the feats.
Money is the big factor- without pillaging dungeons as a viable source of revenue, the PCs will have to rely on downtime to make money for the most part. While all the PCs have spells, the great equalizer is that society is averse to magic, and competitors go to great lengths to ensure nobody makes a habit of using magic to earn coin. So making money itself is advancement.
Notoriety being a cap... they'll discover that the more known they become, the more dangerous their situation becomes... and if they get too far, it's basically game over when they attract the attention of higher powers that would take the Tome of the Extraordinary from them.
Perhaps the most potent advancement they can attain from using the system is to craft magic. To start with, they won't have the ability, but as they move through the world, they'll discover how to make permanent, potent magic items themselves.
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Of course, this isn't meant as a promotion in any way.
I'm about to launch a game in which there is a LOT of downtime. I'm talking maybe 20 encounters at most, expecting 12, and 3+ years of game time.
When I conceptualized it, it was a given in my mind that I'd use Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign rules for downtime. It's quite a bit to digest, but it's fairly intuitive in my mind. It basically introduces new resources: "capital", which is divided into Goods, Influence, Magic, and Labor. These can be used to perform certain activities, which primarily revolve around business operation and construction, research and development, discovery of secrets through different methods, and of course, making money.
The system translates easily (simply reduce skill checks and costs). I believe it was created with Pathfinder: Kingmaker in mind, but provided the players don't go about trying to make a kingdom, the GM should be able to handle the system without the player's direct understanding of its mechanics, simply explaining "it will take X gold with Y days of elbow grease and a casting of Fabricate to build an alchemist shop".
Shops generally generate Goods. A scrying room generates Magic. A sauna generates Influence. Followers and the PCs generate Labor. Several activities generate multiple kinds of Capital, and all sorts of capital can be bought, so long as the NPCs can provide it (and are willing to).
When the PCs go about trying to find someone unique, I translate their abilities and time spent to determine the results. If they hire help, that also gets translated to Capital which then influences their chances of success. Should they continue to do everything on their own, I expect the campaign will take quite a while. So far, at least 1 PC has hired help, and I hope to see others recruit more mercenaries.
This does change the way some skills are used, but the system doesn't take away those abilities, and allows others to accomplish the same, albeit with more effort.
So my question comes to this: is operating this system in the background a fine idea? Its not too late to axe this intention out and simply use muddled, simple skill checks, but it really was my intent to proceed with a robust handling of downtime activity. Thing is, I didn't exactly announce that as my intention as seen in the recruitment thread, as I did mean to do it in the background. I have mentioned this is my intent since then but nobody said anything about it.
Thoughts?
This isn't in the correct forum, is it? It now appears that this should be in Game Masters Only.
It seems like it could work, but are you sure it will be in the background? My hesitation is that it could overwhelm the adventuring part of the game and force the PCs to worry more about min-maxing their henchmen to buff their town.
Personally if I had lots of downtime, I’d spend it crafting myself piles of magic items so I can live longer next time I leave town.
I guess that’s my question, how does this advance my character? Is it like the video game model where if I upgrade the shops enough they’ll start having better gear? What am I, personally as a character, going to get from all this capital the town is generating? What if I don’t want to be a mayor and just want to go kill monsters and take their stuff?
I'm hoping the PCs took the bold, red line of "Treasure hunting is for schmucks" in the recruitment to heart, because its intended that fighting monsters in this campaign is stupid dangerous, even for 7th level PCs. Players start with no attuned items, and such items are rare. Their intended enemies aren't orcs and dragons in dungeons, but stubborn folk, witches and rival power-seekers in the cities and countryside. It is specifically for this sort of campaign, where the overall party is intended to be more toward Lawful Evil instead of Neutral Good.
Advancement does get me a bit giddy; if my hopes come to fruition, the PCs will end up leading a small clandestine company of mercenaries to complete their objective. The game will largely be social interactions, handling the results of their effort and planning. Hence the Lawful Evil bent. I intend to have the players work for their information, and there will be a lot of it. The other form of advancement in the game is achieving the goal of the campaign; discovering and collecting feats. Once collected, the players will be able to learn the feats, free of the usual restriction of 1 every 4 levels as a choice. The limitation being time, money, ability, and notoriety. The system is meant to help me create more options to achieve the goal of collecting all the feats.
Money is the big factor- without pillaging dungeons as a viable source of revenue, the PCs will have to rely on downtime to make money for the most part. While all the PCs have spells, the great equalizer is that society is averse to magic, and competitors go to great lengths to ensure nobody makes a habit of using magic to earn coin. So making money itself is advancement.
Notoriety being a cap... they'll discover that the more known they become, the more dangerous their situation becomes... and if they get too far, it's basically game over when they attract the attention of higher powers that would take the Tome of the Extraordinary from them.
Perhaps the most potent advancement they can attain from using the system is to craft magic. To start with, they won't have the ability, but as they move through the world, they'll discover how to make permanent, potent magic items themselves.