Build a Kingdom in Dungeons & Dragons

A new Dungeons & Dragons guide offers players rules for building their own kingdom. A major appeal of Dungeons & Dragons is that characters experience an exponential level of growth throughout the story. A Level 1 character struggles against goblins and giant rats, while a Level 20 character is powerful enough to battle demon lords and gods. A side effect of this epic growth is that players often become the most powerful beings in a region, and their goals may shift from exploring a land to ruling over it. A new Dungeons & Dragons supplement contains extensive rules for players who want to found and maintain a kingdom within their campaign.

Balduran's Guide to Kingdom Building by Adam Hancock is a 167-page guide that covers everything from growing a settlement to managing industry and expansion within a new kingdom. While the new guide may sound similar to Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers book, the books have entirely different scopes. Colville's guide is mostly concerned about establishing a single stronghold or headquarters and customizing it, while Balduran's Guide to Kingdom Building is more concerned with the creation of a settlement and then maintaining it for the remainder of the game. In fact, the two books can be used together with little to no contradiction between rulesets.

In addition to new rules for settlement-building, travel, and expanded rules for mass combat (that play off of similar rules released in an Unearthed Arcana by Wizards of the Coast), Balduran's Guide to Kingdom Building also contains 9 adventures, 3 new monsters, 201 types of buildings, 97 mass combat units, over 850 adventure hooks, and several example settlements. There's even a special city sheet designed to help players keep track of their settlement as they grow it during their adventure.

This is one of the most extensive guides we've ever seen a third party release for Dungeons & Dragons, and it adds an entirely new dimension to the game. If your players have the urge to build their own kingdom, give Balduran's Guide to Kingdom Building a look today.

Balduran's Guide to Kingdom Building is available for $24.95 on the DMs Guild. Hancock has also published a 40-page sample for potential buyers to review, which is also available on the DMs Guild.