Lee Hanna's page

I like the idea of involving Ilora as an Iron Wraith right away.

IMC, I'm just writing them out, there are only 3 expeditions. I am doing the thing wherein the groups try to make and maintain contact with each other, except that I am scaling down the big festival from Book #5 and making it a midsummer thing that Drelev will be starting himself.

ooooo-- I'd been thinking of Mom as dead, but being in Faerie is something I hadn't considered. I'm toying with having her changed into Evindra, but that seems too much.

I've already revealed Akiros' dark backstory-- I shifted him into one PC's missing older brother.

I'd asked players for lots of background ideas before we started, I got a full response from 2 players, partial response from 1 player, and nothing from the other 3; they're just here to hack stuff and take loot. As for secrets, dark or otherwise, I only got the one, so I'm running with that.

Currently, I'm wondering how to tweak Old Beldame, since they'll probably run into her next session. Right now, she seems like she's just plunked down there, and doesn't interact with the rest of the world.

Philip: way ahead of you on that, Dad's still alive, Mom's been missing since the PC was 6, and older half-brother sent one of Mom's journals to the PC in the last session.

Next session, someone might show her the Secret Page spell on some of that--> foreshadowing for some sites in RRR.

Dragging this old thread out from the back of the closet...

Well, that player didn't go for dark-druid, but I've still been wondering about all the NPC dark/mad druids. My current thinking is that this is not the first time Nyrissa tried to break into the world to obtain Briar.

Maybe twenty years ago, she tried to gain it through human agents, and in the process of failing, she drove them to varying degrees of madness (Bokken's brother, Old Beldame, bear-priest, Stag Lord's father, another old noble they've met).

One of the PCs in my game had parents who were adventurers, I think they participated in breaking up Nyrissa's game then, and I can leave her a few clues about that attempt.

Opinions? Comments?

Reviving my own thread again... We're just starting Book 2, so this is all largely academic.

My current thinking is to keep the swords separate, but still merge the two books.
- The Rushlight Tournament will become a Midsummer thing, newly sponsored by the Drelevs.
- I don't want to keep the dungeon-crawl of Armag's tomb, but it may stay. My players are showing a marked preference for the hack & slash lifestyle.
- Pitax is still history, and Drelev may pick up some things from Irrovetti. The barbarian invasion is still on, just merged with Irrovetti's army.

Picking up a dormant thread: I had Akiros become one of the missing brothers. One or two bandits who were captured remarked on the similar looks between the cavalier and that bandit sub-leader, so he called out his brother from the fort. Staggy was too bombed to care, so brother (now Anatoli) came out to parley. They convinced him to defect then and there, and the rest is history.

As for the missing mother: I've had that character receive mom's journal, and is soon to discover some magically-hidden notes. These will not detail much about the Stolen Lands, but will reveal that mom (and Dad) were adventurers themselves, secretly seeking Ovinrbane for the previous Tsar-- and mom was even-more-secretly hunting for Briar. I think there will be a 2nd journal (the first one was left behind when she went on her second expedition, of course), perhaps with the marked-up copy of "Zuddiger's Picnic," found somewhere later. Like in Drelev's castle, since that guy (and/or his wizard brother-in-law) is also on the hunt for those magic swords.

Ah, thanks. I could see the resource marker, but missed the description.

A good read: thanks for that, and congratulations on what sounds like a great campaign!

I'm having trouble locating the "silver mine" element of the kobolds. Can someone pass me a citation?

FWIW, My group's started Book 2, but only one of them is interested in working the kingdom-stats part of the game, and one is willing to do the diplomatic elements that I am whipping up.

As it stands, they're leaving the kobolds alone, after a temporary alliance against the Stag Lord.

My group just got to establishing their kingdom. I had downloaded v2 and v1.5 of these spreadsheets, so I was about to ask questions about those. Now I see there is a v3.2, so I will ask about that one, too.

v2, the Phases tab: This looks like it could be useful , but am I supposed to enter data into the blocks marked "Enter d20" and so on? If it says "Enter 4", I just type in 4? That seems kind of odd, as if I do that, it immediately leads to a Circular Error.

v3.2: Overall tab: how does it tell when I move from one month to another? Where do I enter the fail/succeed for the various rolls? We've claimed 1 hex, it doesn't seem to be tracking the treasury anywhere?

My thoughts are less spaghetti western, and more radio western...

The troll lair in book 2 might move into a box canyon? I'm picturing trolls in black derbies right now. Especially if you run the "Hargulka's Kingdom" variant brought up here.

A PC or NPC needs the background of surviving a bandit ambush, and needs to keep his face covered in a black mask?

There's a legendary horse in book 4 or 5, will he be "a fiery horse with the speed of light?"

Anyone of the quest-giving fishermen/lumberjacks in book 1 or 2 can be played by Gabby Hayes?

I'd better stop here, or my campaign this afternoon is going to morph from sub-arctic wilderness to southwestern desert.

What they all said!

I'm about to start book 2, so I'm waiting to see what will happen.

I'm planning on making about half of them requests from nearby noble families, or the peasants who are moving into the area. I do have an NPC picked out who will be the requestor.

I enjoy it, I've been every year since 1994. I was last at GenCon in '85, so I can't really make a comparison. I have read that the crowd is smaller than GenCon, and last year was an unfortunately bad year for that, due to lousy timing.

Origins seems to try to be all games to all people. There is no single focus, it's boardgames and RPGs and card games and seminars and miniatures games and LARPs and media guests and awards ceremonies. The only group not heavily represented are computer/console games.

Many (but not all) big game companies are there, as well as a lot of smaller companies. They run the same gamut as above, really. The big companies' presence seems to be hit-or-miss most years. There's several that sell out-of-print games (Crazy Egor) or heavily discounted remaindered games (Noble Knight, et alia).

The GAMA staff is pretty small, and they run another trade show in the spring, so they won't be doing a lot with their webpage or scheduling until May.

Just to let you know, I've had this in mind for a while. My group finished Book 1 this weekend, so this will now go into my planning process.

I'll be watching this thread for replies. One of my PCs is a winter-themed Oracle, and I'm playing up the Russian elements in my game.

I'm also a minor student of the Russian Civil War, so the book in which they teleport to Siberia has my interest. I've already had to promise my wife I won't swap that adventure into this campaign, though.

Kingmaker actually is the wrong AP (if taken as written (<-emphasis mine)), contrary to what people say here. While it starts in Brevoy, it has absolutely nothing to do with that nations politics.

Of course nothing stops you from disregarding the later parts of the AP and start to get involved heavily in Brevoy politics with your new nation. But the closest as RAW Kingmaker gets to serious politics is the tournament of King Irovetti.

THIS. I'm running it now (finally), and I'm having to add any political elements to it myself.

KM is very much in line with the old "clear some area, develop the land, rule a kingdom and defend it from invaders" concept.

The Stag Lord went down in Saturday's game, but unlike other bandit leaders (Happs, Kressel, Dovan), he didn't go down like a chump. Those three had been one-round kills.

The cavalier in my group had a missing brother, who turned out to be Akiros (who was going to change sides anyway, right?). Dovan had come out earlier on a patrol and was killed by the barbarian, who took his armor; two of the lesser bandits with him turned their coats. The cavalier rode up alone, called out Akiros, and rode off with him after a short parley while the rest of the group stayed out of sight, including the kobolds, recently won over.

One of the special abilities of the barbarian is that she can disguise herself once a day, and as she already had Dovan's armor and two of his companions, she could walk up to the gates and talk her way inside. When a fog rose the next day, everyone knew they had their opportunity.

The deception at the gates went off smoothly, and soon the group had rushed inside. The kobolds squared off against the bandits in the central tower, the still-disguised barbarian flanked Auchs with the kobold chieftain and took him down in 2-3 rounds. The party archers dueled with the bandits on the walkways, and Akiros and the party cavalier waited until things cleared out.

The last bandit to go down had been holding the kobolds at bay, made a rush to open the owlbear's cage, and almost made it. Akiros and one of the archer PCs made to shoot Beaky down in his den. He broke loose, but didn't get far before falling. Amazingly, only one kobold died in the whole fight.

By this time, the rest of the party were stacked up, SWAT-style, outside the Stag Lord's door, which they rushed. The Cavalier survived a sneak-attack arrow to the chest and the melee was on. It took the combined blows of the cavalier, barbarian, and Akiros to bring him down, as well as all of the cure spells the inquisitor and oracle could use on the combatants.

They've still got to deal with the "spooky caster" in the cellar, with wounds and tapped spells, next session. I'm rubbing my DM-hands, he's going to be so ready....

Wow, fantastic!

I've been staring at this issue myself. My group has visited the Sootscales and gotten the Chief to agree to ally with them against Stag Lord in exchange for the statue. Now, they've gotten the statue, and have been told that Tartuk is dominating the tribe. They haven't thought of anything after that, and the last session ended.

My take is that Tartuk will find out about this before the party gets back (next session, I presume), and will work to intercept them and grab it for himself. He may use that to force the tribe to ambush the party inside their cave.

Either way, I'm tightening links to the later game, by altering Tartuk's diary to make his transformation the work of Nyrissa, who sent him as an agent to keep an eye on the tribe and the Stolen Lands. He'll have reported back to her already that there is a party of humans roaming about, so she will be watching both him and the Stag Lord.

What plays out after that, I haven't decided. Blargney's idea that he could flee to other Nyrissa agents is similar to my thoughts.

Most of my party isn't interested in talky-talky, so getting this info to the other half is the trick.

Well, if you're looking for *amusing* deaths of major NPCs, read on:

Name: Dovan
Classes/levels: Rogue 5
Adventure: Stolen Lands
Location: scrub-covered hillside near the Old Sycamore
Catalyst: amusing comments and dice karma

Last night's session started with the players camped out, getting ready to assault the mites in the morning. Dovan and a scouting party attempt to get closer, to hit the PCs while they're off guard. Of course, one of them rolls a 1 on his Stealth while the PCs roll hot on Perception.

As the party spreads out to engage with arrows, Dovan is able to hide long enough to pop up behind the barbarian PC, but not get a sneak attack in. I've printed the pictures of NPCs onto 4"x6" cards that I use to track important info, so I was able to flip up his picture at this point. Barbarian (female, human)'s player approved of his goth look, and wished she could make him her boyfriend. "I could so hit that."

She critted, confirmed, while power-attacking with a greataxe-- All the way to negative Con.

There were lots of snarky comments on that, he was a nicer guy on the inside, he spilled his guts for her, etc. She's keeping the armor as a souvenir/trophy, despite the fact that the bare-midriff look seems to be dangerous.

The two bandits still alive at the time quickly surrendered and are now being used as porters.

This is cool, I shall be studying for when my group elevates itself to rulership.

So far (2 sessions), I've been trying not to hit my players with a fire-hose of information. Only two gave me backgrounds that tied to the politics, so I'm thinking they will be pretty solidly behind one faction, and stay there.

Of course, that means I can try to use the other factions to derail their progress eventually.

I've been putting names and families behind the "anonymous Swordlord" quests. My players haven't asked any questions, or put anything behind those just yet, as they haven't fulfilled those. I'm hoping to have the rewards involve invitations to dine at the halls, with the cash awarded then.

I was surprised that they didn't take Bokken up on the potion discount; there has been a lot of worrying about PCs dying like flies when I made it known that there wouldn't be Ye Olde Magic Shoppe on the corner handing out Cure wands like candy canes. They did bring him the fangberries, but just said "oh," when he announced their reward.

We're only 2 sessions, though, the game is quite young.

I thought some more on this last night (instead of prepping for tonight's game). I may crunch up books 4 and 5, and merge many elements. Thematically, 4 and 5 seem to have similarities that I find redundant.

Pitax and Irovetti will disappear, the Tournament (if I keep it) will become a new event hosted by the Drelevs. It might appear between books 2 and 3-- Varn and his champion's absence will be noted. I haven't decided about the hexploration in book 5.

The two wars will be merged into the barbarian invasion (IMC, an attempt to renew the civil war). Drelev's treachery will be part of that war.

The two swords will be reduced to one (Briar), and the whole of Armag's tomb dropped. Fort Drelev will have been built on the ruins of an elven settlement, the under-parts of Whiterose Abbey still under the castle.

In this case, Grigori and Marissa will be working for the same patron (the invader/rebels), but with outside (elven/fey) support. I might lay clues that waking Vordakai was instigated by someone outside, as well.

My group has just started KM, but I've been dreaming & scheming since the AP first came out. Most of that work has been tinkering with the setting, to move it into my own preferred world instead of Golarion.

This is my group's 3rd AP, and the last two were closed down about 2/3 through. This has been from combinations of player fatigue and high-level burnout. So it's long been my intention to wrap up at the end of book #4. I didn't really like "War of the river kings," and I doubt my players would, either.

BUT, I really like elements of Book #6, and I think my group could have fun with that. One player inadvertently set her character up perfectly for it with some background.

So, I have a pair of questions for the group here.

1. Does anyone have suggestions for building up the barbarians to become our Final Enemy? IMC, I've already started this with "Brevoy" having suffered a civil war that ended 6 years ago, and the daughter of the losing tsar fled into the wilderness near the "Stolen Lands." I'll be using her as my "Armag."

2. The other one is more wide-open, I guess I could either downgrade the monsters in #6 to be level-appropriate to the end of book #4 (or not, as this is a party of 6 characters, not 4). An alternative is to replace #4 and #5 with the fey invasion of book #6 (and I would then cut down the CRs).

Opinions?

Touc, I would be interested in seeing what you're planning-- I've already decided to cut off the AP after book 4, but I'd really like to incorporate #6 as well. I'm about to fire up anther thread on just that idea.

http://www.epicwords.com/campaigns/2591

Is mine on Epic Words.

We've only done one session so far, and there's been very little player postings. I hope that will improve someday.

I had thought the owlbear's hoots and cage-rattling would be something they would hear from their watchpost.

I don't know what they will do next-- the next game will be after New Year's, so I intend to bug them about plans shortly before that date. Infiltrate, attack, or avoid?

I kind of hope they try the infiltrate thing, it would be a chance to show off what awaits within. One PC has an innate Disguise Self spell, and another has lots of ranks in Diplomacy and Bluff, it could be attempted.

I like random weather tables, and I've rolled up some heavy snow coming in the next in-game day. I had already considered giving Hargulka (or an ally of his) some kind of weather-control magic to begin with. Using that to cover a (doomed) assault by the trolls might be a fun option.

Hmm, still thinking out loud here, maybe one of the other anti-bandit expeditions takes a shot at it, and gets wiped out, in view of the party?

At least two players were aware they were in over their head, they're just looking for an in-game reason for their characters to figure it out. The party leader is a cavalier, so he's all about the glory, and is game no matter what. There's also the matter of the password they got, which they suspect is perishable, so there's a time element, too.

ooo, and I wanted to point out the trolls perhaps soon anyway....

After at least a year of waiting and planning, I've finally begun running this AP. It's a big party, 6 players, with emphasis on melee combat (Cavalier, Ranger, Barbarian, Inquisitor, Oracle, Rogue).

As I suspected, they blew through the fight at Oleg's in 2 rounds and change. They shot straight to the Thorn River Camp, and mopped that up in 6 rounds (2 got away, they let one run free). That time, I got some licks in, as Kressle KO'd the barbarian and three others got peppered with arrows, and down to low hp.

After that, they at least took their time exploring their way down to the Stag Lord's Fort, but there they are, scoping it out while still 1st level. I figure on perusing this forum for suggestions used in similar situations (not tonight, though). My main thought is to show them something as they watch, to let them see that this is a pretty powerful outfit.

I'm also attempting to be digital-DM for the first time, as I use Combat Manager for me at the table and Epic Words away from the table. So far, neither has quite lived up to my hopes.

Add some more, non-charmable, trollhounds to the mix?

I'm not near my books ATM, but doesn't charm person need line of sight? Give the trolls some vision-reducing things, like magical darkness or fog.

OTOH, don't go too far out of the way to nerf the sorceress big gun, IMO. Just weaken it against the baddest and best of the bad guys. I like the charm-resisting magic from Nyrissa idea.

Murderous allies and ghost-Kressel, I love it!

I approve-- these were themes I was already thinking about. My campaign kicks off on the 1st.

Final 3 PCs are mostly done now: Inquisitor, Oracle and Barbarian. The Inq. is the guy I mentioned above who was leery of the big cleric spell list, and was more comfortable with tank-style PCs.

Spells hadn't been picked yet, but both casters are aware that the party will be relying on them for healing.

First off, props on using the random encounter distance table. I played Kingmaker under a GM who did NOT use this table, and as a result we loss several party members to trolls and shambling mounds that spawned 20 ft from the caster (in plains).

With this experience, I suggest leaving things mostly the same. Let the PCs reap the reward for being smart enough to outfit themselves with bows and horses. You could adjust the CR by a little to account for the ease.

This. I am weary of GMs who don't allow for the world to be anything but encounters at 30 feet or less. If your party was smart enough to have bows, horses, and open eyes, I fail to see what the problem is. So they won this one easy, IF that bothers you, don't give them as much xp.

Yep, Game of Thrones will be (I hope) a heavy influence. All the players should have read at least the first book, and most will have seen the 1st season of the TV series.

I'm keeping the 6-player conversion in my back pocket for now, our group has had a hard time with the lethality in 3.5e so far. If they are blowing through too many paper bags, I intend to start thickening the bad guys.

Redcelt32: Since I'm using my low-magic world, I don't think the comm and recon elements will be overly difficult for them, as the rest of the world won't be more magical than they are.

Chargen is scheduled to wrap up in two weeks, game to start in early December. Updates will be posted here.

I am the GM, so, yeah, it's not my problem (unless they all quit because the game it's un-fun).

Re: the rogue: so far, she's talking about playing as the party "face," and a shooter/sniper in combat, so not the traditional dungeon lock-picker. "Sansa Stark, but with brains" is her inspiration. I intend to play up more politics, so I hope she'll find that useful.

Given the number of melee-ists, some combats might indeed go lickety-split.

No worries, I didn't think I had a problem on my hands. Just wanted to get an outside eye to check.

What I am mildly worried about is that one of our newest players may be intimidated by the size of a cleric's spell list.

My D&D/PF group has finished the Savage Tide AP and per long-standing agreement, I am on deck to run Kingmaker for us next (early Dec. start date). We'll be adding a 6th player for this campaign, so there will be plenty of bodies.

Discussion of PCs has been ongoing for a long time, but not all are finished. Of all of those, we've got 3 fighter-types (ranger, cavalier, probable barbarian?), a rogue and possibly an oracle and some sort of warpriest.

Notice there are no arcane casters: do any of you who have read and run the AP see an obvious problem? What should I look into correcting? I haven't seen anything that could cause problems, but my judgement is often clouded. I think that having lots of bashers and animals plus at least two with healing spells should make combat no problem.

Something to consider: I am only planning to run sections 1-4 of Kingmaker (but I'd really like to run part 6 someday).

Yes, but... it'll take a long time.

The group I'm playing in took 5.5 years of real time to get to about 13th level in Shackled City, and almost 4 years to get to the same level in Savage Tide. That's playing monthly, more or less, and not playing the last half-dozen or so levels, due to fatigue.

If the players will commit to note-taking and between game commentary/planning, I think you can get a lot done that way.

I often say the absent player's character has the flu, and in most games, that means I also don't have to enforce the disease rules.

Re: DM taking control, I had a disgruntling episode once as a player. The DM apparently needed us to interact with an over-eager adventurer-wannabe prince in the nearby tower. So the session opens with, "Your thief is practicing his skills by picking the lock on the king's safe when..." My PC thief, still low level, hadn't put any points into lockpicking at all, and had been trying not to be picked out by the royals as a potential criminal (an honest horse-dealer, I was!).

Dotting.

While I am here, is there a way (that I am missing) to add classes to monsters/NPCs, or especially PCs?

I'm reading the series pretty heavily as I prep to run it, and I hadn't really noticed rape as a theme. It's there if you look for it in this first one.

Part 2 doesn't have it in there, IIRC, but there are two female fey (nymph, nixie or dryad), but they don't appear to be the "lure men to their deaths" type.

That's pretty good, I think. I like it when loose threads come back to bite the PCs.

Where the griffons come from, I'm not clear.

Myself, I'm setting up Book 1's bandits and Book 4's barbarians as the losers of the last civil war in my Brevoy-equivalent. They're back for more.

Suthainn wrote:

If you're Anarchitect or another of my players, don't read this, you'll ruin your own fun! :P

** spoiler omitted **

You evil, awesome manipulative bastard. That's great.

{slow clap} Well played, good chap. Well. Played.

I'm interested to hear how it turns out. My potential group of 6 is talking about 2 divine casters and no arcane caster.

I've been reading the "Chronicle Starter" from Song of Ice & Fire RPG. It profiles six Houses, with NPCs and sites, and a few locations around those houses. Potential intrigues and rivalries are baked right in. There's also an adventure plot featuring a few of those houses.

I've been working at sketching this in as the province around Restov, so these houses are going to be the equivalent of my Swordlords. I've made so many equivalencies, I'm going to need to write my own wiki.

The adventure is a way for raiders from outside to sneak in, taking advantage of a clash between two of the profiled houses; I figure on making that an early appearance of the Tiger barbarians when I get to running KM (looks like winter now).

I really like having backgrounds from my players. I'm setting up Kingmaker in the fall (or winter?), and I've gotten good backstories from 2 of 5 players so far. One told me she wants a social rogue, and since we've discussed the "Game of Thrones" influences, she's thinking of "Sansa, but with brains." We did a lot of emailing back and forth in January and February, using the questionnaire seen above-- that kind of stuff really feeds my personal energy levels! So, now I've gotten her family placed against the background, and I am still considering threads to work her into future plots.

Player #2 was more focused on his build, but we did use the questionnaire to establish why he's using a class that's not normal to this corner of my world.

Player #3 has seen the questionnaire, but hasn't answered any parts. We have had discussions to place her PC in the world's story, and I'm building a list of places she's already seen or been.

Players #3-6 are new to me, and "haven't had time" to see the questions. I figure on granting bonuses, primarily in-game bonuses, for the first 3, in order to encourage the latter 3.