redcelt32's page

I like this idea a lot.

It'd also placate the Brevoy Houses as no Swordlord could also be a member of a rival house.

One way to do things is to establish a Master/Apprentice relationship as common to Swordlords. Each major Swordlord would have an apprentice and leave stuff to their Apprentice in the evnt of their death.

Wills also seems like they'd be very common and that works just fine.

Swordlords can also have children themselves and can leave stuff to them.

This ginormous thread from forever ago when we ran our Kingmaker game (spanned 8 years of RL time) has a bunch of info about how I set up and ran the Swordlords politically, including NPCs, motivations, Houses in Brevoy and Mivon, etc. Also, a lot of stuff with politics.

Redcelt's Game of Thrones in Brevoy

You may want to peruse the PF1 Kingmaker forum for more of these type of thread since there are a number of very popular ones there from Dudemeister, Pennywit, and many others who I am embarrased to say to dont remember well anymore.

Very nice job Nicholas! This is a fantastically presented resource for any kingmaker game, and it looks like yours got as complex as our own did politically and with hordes of NPCs :)

Hey all, I am working on a reboot of my Kingmaker game with half of players from the original game and half new. I am going to have the Original Party have planes-hopped to you know where from Book 6, then never return, or at least not in the 20 years since they left.

Many things will have happened in the party's old kingdom, eventually leaving most of it in ruins or shambles. Enter the new party, with a focus more on exploring the new mysteries of the Stolen Lands, and slightly less Lannister-Targaeryn political mayhem. There will still be remnants of the old kingdom, and some of the NPCs, and still a little dirty, dirty politics, but hopefully it still feels fresh and new to the old players.

Just curious, has anyone else taken a previous game of Kingmaker that your party finished or abandoned and run the new game on the bones of the old? If so, I would love some insight or suggestions. I may post here with some of the events that befall the old kingdom in case anyone is interested, since I have 6 months or so until the Abomination Vaults gets completed (our current AP).

I am starting a new campaign for my group involving Arcadia and opening trade with the new World. I have read everything I can get my hands on about Arcadia (distant shores, book 5 of Tyrant's Grasp, etc), but mostly now I need some info about trading houses and which countries would most likely be involved in a trade wars, etc between Arcadia and Avistan/Garundi.

Are there any canon resources about trade, trading houses, that I might have overlooked? I dont think there is a Traders of Golarion, but maybe part of a sourcebook?

If not, I would really appreciate suggestions or input about existing trading houses in Golarion and ideally where they are based country-wise.

I plan to make up some of my own, but I would really like to include some known forces in the mercantile world.

Thanks in advance!

Hero Lab Classic is a thing of beauty, and you can keep it forever, regardless of whether the company continues in its current form or not.

Herolab Online is slow, clunky, has a recurring charge, requires a constant internet connection to use, and there is no guarantee of service continuance or speed from their servers as the number of users progresses. I am sure this was conceived as a great move to the cloud, etc, but all I see are many many detracting elements and no improvements over Herolab Classic. Even though I understand the reason for the slow rollout of Realmworks, that whole experience did not fill me with confidence regarding large IT projects from Lone Wolf. Moving more functionality and responsibilty to their side to maintain does not fill me with confidence.

YMMV and hopefully time proves my current feelings regarding this app wrong, but right now I am going to let my current account lapse with no plans to renew in the near future.

On the bright side, my table will soon have lots of paper character sheets and no tablets and PCs for players to surf Facebook, IG, or play Civ 6 on during the game LOL...

Have a contract demon for Asmodeus show up and say "I hear you are about to become a free agent! Have I got a deal for you....just sign up right here on the dotted line!"

Or have real inquisitors of Torag go hunt him down, like he was a bad jedi that turned to the Dark side lol...

Their governmental structure is based on who is the best at swordfighting. So they aren’t exactly geniuses.

Dudemeister is absolutely correct. When I was setting up Mivon for a major story arc for a royal visit from my PCs, I ran across this issue. I decided that since the kingdom hadn't collapsed from incompentence, there must be some sort of understood rules to swordlord rule by blade prowess. Basically in my world it goes like this:

- if you are a great swordsman, you find yourself an advisor to handle all your administrative affairs and live like the rockstar that you are, arrogant, confident, and cocky.

- if you are a great policymaker or merchant, you back the strongest swordlord in your House.

- if you suck at both of these areas, you make yourself indispensable in some other way, ie- information gathering, lead a gang of secret enforcers, be a great smuggler, or lastly a productive artisan.

If you are already a noble member of one of the houses, you have an automatic place in one of these roles. However if not, here is how I handled it:

- unaligned great swordsman - you become a champion for hire. If someone need to travel, fight a war against Pitax, or simply has to face a more talented swordsman, he hires you as his champion. Much like the Ronin, these swordlords often gain greater renown than House Swordlords given they have more opportunity to shine in confrontations. This model was sort of implied with how the mayor keeps his position. I just codified it as part of the "rules of law".

- unaligned merchant or administrator. These are hot commodities and often vied for like free agents in professional sports. Treachery and intrigue are a big part of this internal layer of House politics, in particular if there is rivalry between Houseborn and unaligned for the same positions.

Spies, thugs, artisans that are unaligned usually either stay neutral or hire out on a mercenary basis, much like Mivon's greatest export, hired swordlord troops.

I also codified the rules for mercenary troops, their conduct, and terms of surrender/ransoming back to their House.

As an aside to this, I play Mivon as a sort of Venice in renaissance Italy, with a very dark, seedy underbelly hidden under a veneer of sophistication, culture and artistry. Often times the veneer is extremely thin, lol...

yeah, I'm mostly concerned about the pacing (when happens what?) and structure of the political intrigue. For example, most of the political stuff would happen after the first part is completed, I suppose, but I could really use directions on the timing and pacing of the political intrigue, or if you got examples from your tables.

I think the first step is to determine how much influence you want Brevoy to have on your player’s fledgling kingdom, and how deep you want your players in politics in the early game. It should be obvious to them with the nature of this AP that politics will eventually come into play. However, it may surprise them if it plays a big role before Book 4.

1. Light to no Brevoy politics – Brevoy is so busy dealing with its own mess, it ignores the player’s kingdom for the most part. By the time they draw the notice of Brevoy, their military strength makes it a losing proposition to do anything against their kingdom. The players possible deal with some trade issues, a few isolated nobles, and maybe so light bullying from either the Regent or minor nobles. This is the default setup for the game.

2. Medium Brevoy politics - players deal with fallout from Brevoy power struggles, some nobles and factions (particularly religious) engage the player kingdom, either seeking alliances or trouble. At least one Brevoy faction/noble becomes a recurring adversary/nemesis and causes problems until the player kingdom deals with them. The PCs receive regular visits from envoys pursuing the goals of their respective faction. This starts somewhere between the end of Book 2 and continues throughout the remaining AP. This option adds some spice to the default AP setup, without having Brevoy be a major player in the PC kingdom development.

3. Heavy Brevoy politics – Right from the outset, the PCs are thrown in the deep end. They receive lots of notice from Brevoy factions, and are embroiled in Brevoy disputes and the “game of thrones” from the outset. They are offered enticements, bribes, and maybe threats by factions and nobles who wish to develop early relationships with the PCs hoping it will pay dividends to them at a later date. The PCs can expect Brevoy to have a big hand in shaping their kingdom building choices, laws, expansion directions, etc. At some point, the regent will decide their colony needs to officially become another duchy of Brevoy and pay taxes and bend the knee. He may even try to appoint a viceroy or duke of his own choosing over the PC kingdom. Good times…

If you choose Option #1, there is no need for the GM to say anything or prep the PCs.

If you choose Option #2, you may wish to suggest to your players they take diplomacy, sense motive, and bluff skills to deal with Brevoy envoys.

If you choose Option #3, you should warn your players BEFORE the game starts that they are playing the Game of Thrones, and better prepare themselves. The PCs absolutely need to take the “political skills” (bluff, diplomacy, sense motive), and at least one PC should seriously consider starting as part of a Brevoy faction in order to have a built in ally from the start. I strongly recommend that one of your PCs choose the role of Grand Diplomat or ruler in order to directly influence negotiations with Brevoy factions.

In our game (Option #3 obviously!), I warned the players that not only would they have to deal with Brevoy, they could expect to be tested as the “new kids on the block”. I emphasized that “you have what you hold” and “Nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t exploit your resources, someone else will”.
The queen chose to be allied to the Swordlords, and I tied her to a noble house in Rogarvia that had good intentions, but lacked the viciousness and savvy to weather outside forces (a la Ned Stark). This ruler started as an ally of the alliance between Orlovsky, Medvyed and a few Rogarvian barons. This immediately set them as opposed to the regent, Lodovka, Lebeda, and some of the other Rogarvian barons. The queen also gave them an ally in the swordlords, which caused both problems and support at various times in the early games. It also gave her many suitors from their ranks.
I set the tone before the game even started by using the module “Wedding Knight” from the Song of Ice and Fire RPG, which is light on combat and heavy on roleplay. It is basically two feuding houses that are going to make peace through an arranged marriage of their heirs. All sorts of forces and circumstances are set against this effort being successful and the PCs are expected to step in and ensure a positive outcome. In my version, I made all the characters 12-14 years old and gave them all jobs like stablehand, porter, cook, and chambermaid. The PC ruler was the cousin of the bride in that story, so she had a vested interest in the outcome. I specifically told them that if they didn’t take steps, there would be a “Red Wedding”. This set them to spying, manipulating NPCs for information and leverage, and covering up incidences while they weren’t even adults yet. I told them worse case scenario, none of them would die, but thinks could go bad if they didn’t succeed. So basically it was a safe, dry-run exposure to Brevoy politics.

Hope this gives you some ideas Vast!

Ill post an update this week...the party just completed an epic story arc built around a prophecy that the Champion of the Elder God Dagon would stand upon the shores of the Candlemere and begin down a dark path that would eventually summon Dagon himself into Golarion.

There were cultists, dark harvests of pumpkins with corrupting creatures in them, strange living swarm cell leaders, attacks on their capitol, the Wild Hunt sweeping them up to transport them to battlefields far to the south (it was fun watching them and their enemies glare at each other..as part of the wild the couldn't attack each other while caught up in it), and finally the summoning of the Avatar of Benthic Madness. One of the beloved NPCs sacrificed herself to save the kingdom and the party eventually triumphed.

The best part...it all started as a throwaway scenic encounter at 1st level, when the party discovered a tiny Stonehenge like altar with ancient Aklo ruins in it. After searching, they found the Book of Dark Fathoms, which contained a prophecy...which they then fretted over for the 3 in game years that led up to the date mentioned in the book :) Far be it from me to disappoint them by having it be what it was originally intended to be - some historic color of no significance!

Story Hook successful!

I have quite a few dragons in our Kingmaker game. Major NPC monsters like hag covens, dragons, liches, etc I map out way early at the beginning of a campaign, because like mountains, rivers, and such, they affect how everything around them evolves. We have:

- black dragon group, mostly females that live in the swamp, led by a very old female. The party tangled with a young male that was kicked out and told to go prove himself worthy by gaining a horde... from the PCs kingdom.

- there is an adult blue dragon that is part of a dragon rider/dragon pairing that the party tangled with during a siege of a town they were defending. They fought them to a standstill, but lost two wyvern riders and 12 elven giant owl riders in the process.

- The major dragon in their plans is a very old green dragon living in the ruins of an ancient elven city in the Narlmarches. I made her a cleric and she has strewn statues of herself all over her "territory", 3 hexes, so she can interact with the party and not give away her location. She kidnapped the PCs kingdom dragon sage to give herself an advantage against other dragons in the region, and when the party stalked her to demand his release, she offered them a fey/elven history sage in return. Since she threw in a few choice lore items, they relented. She later however hired rogues to break into the PCs castle and steal a dragon spellbook the party wizard was jerkishly (in her mind) demanding far to much in exchange. So she is an adversary that is occasionally useful.

- There is a strong dragon in the mountains to the east of the PC kingdom, what sort the party isn't sure. They have twice seen adult black dragons flying back battered and defeated from the mountains to the swamp, but have no idea what type of dragon is doing it. It is a silver dragon offspring of the original silver dragon who created Silver Lake. The party already discovered huge Koi living in the lake who were magical. The silver dragon would baleful polymorph evil creatures he defeated into Koi and place them in his dragon made "Koi pond".

I was reviewing information I posted on this thread and realized that one fairly big aspect of our game was missing from here - The Arcane Order of the North and wizard tests. This definitely wont work for everyone's game, but it did add several layers of complexity and politics to the arcane casters in our game. So there are human politics, Fey politics, and Wizard politics!

The wizard in our game tested at 6th level vs an orc fire sorcerer and lower level grippli wizard. He obviously emerged victorious, but took out several blocks of the founding town of Vallis in the process!

The sorcerer in our game tested at 7th vs a fire sorceress, who attacked while the party was sneaking around in an enemy occupied town in Brevoy, specifically avoiding the attentions of an evil 11th level wizard who was one of the leaders of the occupation. Needless to say, it was a crazy battle, where both opponents were trying to kill each other and avoid the nastier spells of the higher level wizard who came out to stop their combat. Lots of urban fighting and explosions ensued before the PC sorcerer emerged victorious.

The arcane PCs now have to deal with prepping their own apprentices, garnering favor among certain factions to aid in their own research, spying on other wizard factions to determine their secret plans, capturing rogue arcane casters in their realm, and dealing with demands for alliances from various groups. They have also benefitted from access to trading arcane spells and less useful magic items (necromantic, etc.) to other arcane groups in exchange for useful items. They recently founded their own arcane faction, The Ring of Serpents, within the Order.

I wasn't sure initially how well it would be received, but my players went with it and it has been fun. So far its has added to the complexity of being a Tier 6 class and given the wizard and sorcerer a direct method of competing and comparing staff sizes with others of their kind. I will post the spreadsheet of wizard factions and info I gave my players later on when I am home from work.

For those of you who remember this now aged thread, there should be a few more updates soon.

To catch you up, we lost the queen in our game, and the grand diplomat, one to deployment and one to RL stresses, so we sort of put Kingmaker on hiatus for a year or so. With these two missing, no one cared about the Swordlords and royal marriages, plus we lost central figures for some prominent story threads. It took a bit of cutting and stitching to put the tapestry of the campaign back together, but we have started again now.

Stay tuned for my writeup of the Gate of Endless Worlds on Candlemere, my own theory of why the gnomes fled to Golarion (made 5 years ago, and not in alignment with the now official canon of the First World book), and the current Dark Tapestry/Elder Gods story line the party is following. Night Heralds, Moon Beasts, and The King in Yellow oh my!

It sounds like the paladin is pursuing a LG quest to stop the corruption. If his god supports this quest, he should either adjust the magic of the demon to benefit the paladin from being negatively affected by it, or remove it. The paladin is using all of his abilities and is even willing to consider whether the aid of a devil might be of benefit in completing his mission.

Personally, I would have his god applaud him, or at the very least, send a messenger to gently chide him for stepping over a line, even in for the cause, depending on how you view it.

Otherwise, what QuidEST said, if you are going to homebrew something majorly mind affecting on a paladin, at least give him a chance by informing him of your view on devil consorting. Remember most gods, even those of paladins, are not absolutist jerks with a zero tolerance policy. They are divine beings who have a use for their earthly instruments and therefore would want to protect and guide them, otherwise why bother to grant them holy powers in the first place?

One of my players asked me the other day how many of the NPCs they have encountered were part of the adventure Path as written. After a whole bunch of yes and no’s, we figured out only about 5% of the 100 or so major NPCs were actually part of the AP (As a side note, we are now up to 273 NPCs that have at least a paragraph or two written about them, so the ratio gets even smaller the farther we go!)
I am interested to hear about any NPCs that your group found memorable, that you really liked, or unexpectedly became a major player in your game when they started out as a bit part. I think there was a thread about nobility somewhere earlier in the forums, but I thought this one should be for any NPCs.

Here are the three voted most memorable by my players:

I didn't see it in my brief glance over the thread, but what seems to have been missed is the fact that Archery does Piercing damage (or rarely Bludgeoning if someone actually remembers to take Blunt arrows) Against things that are DR/Slashing, they are suddenly ineffective, even if they are piling on the damage.

And then there are even some monsters out there that get *buffs* from piercing. So in a home campaign, to get folks away from the idea archery is god-power, drop a few of those suckers in there and boom, no need to debuff the archers, the lesson will become clear real quick.

Presto. Problem solved, issue shut down, and hey, other folks get to shine.

Well unfortunately, as soon as you do that, some enterprising player will pull blunt arrows out of the APG, and then that idea goes out the window too. That's the problem with power creep...slowly the books start offering ways to shore up every weakness for a tactic...like snapshot, reflexive shot, and clustered shots. So now the only drawbacks for full attacking nearly every single round are all gone...

First off, nothing you have asked for is at all unreasonable, weird, or even slightly upping any sort of character power curve. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

As far as your concerns, you might try talking to him about what he is hoping this particular game is going to be like. This is something that players almost always fail to do. True, it would be nice if all GMs made a players guide to their games, but lets get real, most GMs arent going to do that. Doesnt mean they don't have an image in their mind of how their campaign is going to go.

It sounds to me like he has it in mind to do a pirate themed game, much like skull and shackles. Find out if this is true and how much he is focused on this aspect of the game. Perhaps this is why he balks at wolves as ACs, but might let you have a saltwater crocodile or and african cat with no problem. If this is the case, then my first suggestion is to make sure your character concept fits into that campaign image, and if not, try to come up with a character concept that does fit or see if you can adjust your existing character without sacrificing things that are important about it to you. Knowing what he envisions for his campaign should also give you a better feel for things he might allow or not allow. It also gives you an angle to argue for things you might want that he says no to initially :)

It sounds like you appreciate the work and energy the GM puts into the game, so consider jumping into the spirit of his game. The alternative of course is to butt heads or walk away.

I will say that the armor thing sounds like he is just unfamiliar with this new thing and his inclination is to say "no" because he doesnt know it or (if he is an old school player) its not traditional. If he has been playing a while, then you might find he tends to get traditional about things and not want to add in the latest and greatest rules and toys. If this is the case, then you and he may have to work this one out betwen the two of you regarding what is permissible.

I agree that he should try to give you what his houserules are in advance. As a longtime GM, I try to make sure any curveballs or major changes/subtractions to my campaigns are listed and clearly explained up front, usually in a players guide or campaign house rules document. That way you arent springing things on players 5 levels into their builds, and taking away things they have been dreaming about using since 1st level :) The unpleasant truth is that there are always things that will pop up that the GM may not have thought of in advance, so even with a house rules list, you might get some surprises.

The main issue is, I can't see where Kingmaker needs a re-do at all. The whole AP is just a shell framework for GMs to homebrew within, and the only thing that's really changed is the rules for kingdom building, which is covered by UCAM.

The other APs are more railroad, and in some regards the older ones were less effective because they had imbalances in their connected-ness, WBL, and like some have said, they were 3.5. I think by Kingmaker, they had a very good handle on making APs.

By contrast, I think Second Darkness could go from being something folks sort of forget about to something really amazing. Book 5 sort of torpedoed this AP, and just about anything different would really make this AP a great one.

Couple of suggestions:

First, figure out what the long term agenda of Surtova, the Med-Orl-Gar alliance, and the swordlords. That will give you some guidelines of who is the most desperate for connections to the new players kingdoms, etc.

For instance, the swordlords have no really noble standing to speak of, so giving them a connection to a kingdom that gets them some real clout would be pretty important. They would probably be willing to give up more to get less over any of the others.

Also, even if the players accept the offers of one side, keep the counter offers coming from the other sides, even if it gets really amazing. Think of the players kingdom as a new market and the opposing factions like two competing companies trying to win that market. They just keep outdoing the other until they get what they came for. Of course, if the bidders are forced farther than they want to go, they might just decided that physically owning that market is cheaper than incentives :)

The biggest thing to remember is that nothing is free. Everyone wants something in return, and IMO most of the tradeoffs should be something that some member of the council doesn't want. This creates discussion and politics in your PCs kingdom as well :) For instance, in my game, the NPC priestess did not want the churches of Abadar and Gorum in the new kingdom. At a dinner party in Brevoy for the ruling council of our kingdom, one of the church leaders of Gorum offered in private to build the general a barracks in every settlement of their kingdom for free. THe only catch was he got to put a small chapel inside each one and assign a priest to the soldiers staying there. When the High Priestess found out she was obviously unhappy, so the players had to build a cathedral for Sarenrae in return to placate her.

You can also have the opposing factions that are presenting good things to the PCs kingdom start going after each other through the players. For instance, medvyed might sell lumber from the Grozni to the PCs for normal price and increae the price they sell it to Surtova. The catch would be that the PCs cannot resell it to Surtova. When med-orl-gar alliance suddenly has a shortage of lumber next, that puts your PCs in the middle, and sneakily creates discord between them and Surtova, which helps the alliance. This is a good way to get complicated politics in your game. However, this is admittedly a bit cutthroat, so only do this sort of sneakiness if you like a political campaign.

Dunno if this is what you were looking for or not, so hopefully it gives you a few ideas.

I got tired of "my entire family is dead and I want revenge". So I started changing them to make the players work harder on their story or I will change it.

I also am under the illusion that people do not know everything that their parents did before you came along so how do you know that they did not hunt monsters before you showed up on the scene and stopped their fun.

I agree...the next player who tells me this gets a lich for a dad who is the bbeg of the entire campaign and his mom is going to be the head vampires for her own clan.

I think you should let your party member magically break the curse. Based on what you are telling me, you are not likely to do so on your own with this party as an example of what good looks like...

If I were Shelyn, I would be face-palming based on what you describe as happening so far.

You could always play that your character believes he will never be find love or be loved by anyone again if he does not lift the curse himself. This is not a stretch to imagine, since he offended the goddess of Love. Perhaps losing someone he loved (his mother perhaps or an early girlfriend?) when he was young set him on his dark path?

This means anyone discussing magically breaking the curse in character or attempting to remove his curse should incur his wrath. If they succeed in lifting the curse, this could make you want to go back to the temple and get it reinstated. This would seriously befuddle the party and at the same time allow you to stay true to the character concept you originally created at the beginning. Not that getting the curse reinstated couldnt come after you take it out on the party, should you desire this outcome.

I agree with a lot of what Vivificient says.

Make sure the party has ties (mercantile, church, possibly smallfolk they like, and for sure noble) in Rogarvia before you start the rebellion.

When the rebellion starts, fallout might be: increased banditry (including military units), refugees (might be good to have incidents where the players can intervene between enemy military slaughtering refugees), interruption of trade, trespassing of armies across PCs kingdom borders to expedite travel and avoid detection/attack, increased spying, killing of PCs agents and spies in wartorn areas, increase in purchasing of weapons, armor, food, supplies (rope, leather goods, nails, etc).

The biggest thing that jumps out at me is that to siege walled fortifications, wood is extremely useful. Most of the wood outside of the Grozni has been already cut down in Brevoy, but lo and behold, there is this huge forest just to the south call the Narlmarches, just sitting there waiting to be harvested. Your players are probably not going to like this idea much.

Politically, EVERYONE involved (including numerous smaller factions and the churches of Gorum and Abadar) are going to want promises of aid, promises not to get involved or ally with X person, guarantee of supplies in support of the One True Just Cause in the war, and the right to possibly build standing military forts, etc within the PCs lands. Expect possible annexation and rights of angary being exercised by stronger factions and guerrilla activities from weaker factions if they are denied by the PCs. Basically everyone is going to see the PCs as a resource to be used and exploited without much thought about what is best for the PCs kingdom.

Usually, all it takes is one or two offenses by some of these factions before your party will be ready to jump in the civil war.

THere is an excellent map of Mivon, Pitax, Brevoy and the Stolen Lands all merged together posted in the forums, but due to lapsed time, the name of the author escapes me. *EDIT* Okay its the map made by OldManJim and I think he did a pretty great job of matching up the maps correctly. Here is the link he sent me: map

...when the monthly council meetings hold more suspense, urgency, and drama then exploring new parts of the kingdom.

...those same meetings have more division than a recent session of congress over what to spend BP on next, how big to make the standing army, and how big the kingdom should get.

Whatever you pick, I suggest making it an session that shows the players what sort of game your Kingmaker is going to be. Here are some examples:

- Politics I ran A Song of Ice and Fire's Wedding Knight for my 0-level party when they were teens so they could see and dabble in politics and intrigue with sort of the safety net of not being adults. One of the other GMs here ran a formal ball where the party got to meet the other three charter holders and get introduced to some movers and shakers in their future. This works great to establish new and future NPCs that you wish to pull out further down the road.

- Bandits, monsters Have them deal with a small group of the Staglord's men who are more ambitious and have begun harassing merchants and a small village actually in Brevoy. Maybe they confront a few, or maybe their tracking leads them directly into the Stolen Lands. Perhaps while investigating, they meet a aging hunter who regales the party with the dangers of the Stolen lands.

- Adventure. Have one of your noble PCs (assuming you have any) traveling to attend the funeral of a distant relative. They leave a small stipend and their favorite horses to the party. If it fits your party, maybe they leave an ornate carriage (which should be quite fun initially in the Stolen Lands). Amidst their inherited items is a journal of contacts, creatures, mysterious locations, etc in the Stolen Lands. Mix in some inaccuracies, a treasure map (GMs you know what this might point to), possibly even detailing encounter locations that match up to some of the early bounties in Kingmaker.

- Pioneers. Have the party hired to deliver supplies to Lord Varn at Varnhold. He would just be arriving at the site of his initial colony and setting up camp. Let the party meet him and his significant others (his future council members). Maybe they meet an eager sage, maybe they see the seeds of future conflicts. Whatever happens, definitely show them things they will need to succeed in creating a permanent settlement, and possibly things Varn is doing wrong that they could do right. In this scenario, it is helpful if one party member has parents or a mentor who run a trading house, transport company, or hire out wagons as an easy hook.

Other great hooks(any of which could be added to an session adventure or even be the center of the adventure):

- Party finds a book of monster lore. Some are just myths, some of inaccurate, but many are helpful to the party.

- Party finds a book about the Fair Folk. This is a great way to inform them of things they can do to offend and appease fey. Also how they deal with humans, their outlook, what happens when you make deals with them, etc.

- party passes through a town and ragged dirty madman stumbling about outside of town. If the party asks one of the town guards, he tells them the lunatic was a sage of some knowledge before visiting a mystical island in the south, after which he has never been right in the head.

Instead of questions about what sort of magic item shops there are, you get questions like:

"what sort of baskets to they make in Brevoy?"
"Who is the major exporter of honey in Golarion?"
"I want to study the migration patterns of the elk in the Stolen Lands. What is their pattern and where do they go and when?"
"How many ropes would I have to buy to corner the market and drive up the price?"

These are the kind of questions that consume most of my GM planning time.

Major arguments are not whether to kill the kobolds or not, but how many rights they should have as citizens of the kingdom. Not to mention the anxious council meetings debating ways to keep the dwarves that they hired to work the gold mine from freaking out and killing the "evil kobold colony" located nearby

Oh and to continue the really cool thread above:

- horses, honey, porcelain (the druid found really good clay), aldori swords, and lumber.

There is IMHO no faster way to sift through the hundreds of feats, traits, available spells, etc for characters to select from what is now a voluminous stack of books than Herolab. When I am making an NPC with a certain flavor or theme, it is an extremely useful resource for selecting aligning traits, feats, etc. Also, it makes it easy as heck to tack character levels onto a monster and get a quick statblock.

Could I do this another way or on my own? Sure. Would it be a lot cheaper? Sure. Are there people that prefer the process of developing characters on paper instead of with Herolab? Absolutely and I applaud them. However, I will never again create characters, either as a GM or a player for Pathfinder without using Herolab. Its just too painful and slow the other way, now that the hardback and splatbook count is as high as it is. Even better, its nice to tell my players "uncheck Ultimate Magic because we are not using it" for instance (just an example) and then we still get the same amazing lists, just without a book I don't want to use in our current campaign.

Having it integrate with Realmworks is just gravy... :)

The party's first response to discovering a monster is "Lets negotiate with it, it might help our kingdom."

The biggest problem I see now is that unlike an AP or module, a homebrew has no clear end. If you don't have a conversation with your current GM, he might just be in that role for a looong time, especially if hes walking down memory lane...

It sounds like this GM really misses his 2nd ed DnD game and wants to relive those days. Unfortunately the group uses pathfinder rules, and he has to agree to that while secretly longing for the "good ole days". Not a pretty combination...

Either get the group to agree to step outside this 2nd ed homebrew world into an AP or the like, or I agree, its time to find a new game. If he is and old school player wanting to roll back the years, he is probably not going to be open to you asking him to change his ways... just saying..

Tell your GM that this sort of XP awarding when carried to its farthest extrapolation leads to XP greedy PCs "arranging" for other members to die during big battles so they can claim a greater share. I don't think I need to tell you how easy this would be for a cleric? Eventually the others are a level or two lower than the lucky survivor, and then guess what? The other players die more often facing a higher CR encounter for their lower level characters.

This actually happened in one of my groups (I was the GM). This one player would rush ahead or sneak off to solo kill monsters and gather loot (he was a optimized barbarian so it actually worked a good portion of the time). He also conveniently found reasons not to come to the aid of of players in combat situations, which resulted in several very avoidable deaths. Once I saw what he was doing, I changed tactics. I had to start awarding XP so that 25% was based on treasure and kills, 50% based on group cooperation, and 25% based on achieving group goals. Needless to say, the "killer" PC was not happy with this new arrangement. Being more experienced now, I would have told him after the game to stop or find a new table, but at the time that was my feeble effort to amicably resolve the out of game issue in-game.

Fast forward a handful of years and now our group only uses story point leveling, where we do NOT keep track of XP and everyone levels at the same time. I highly recommend this method.

If your group is set on using XP, everything, and I mean everything is divided equally. If the GM wants to award a bonus, have him grant a hero point, a boon from an NPC, gold, a one time re-roll or bonus added to a roll, etc. Because anything else is a breach of the social contract at the table. And that rarely ends well if it continues....

I gave my PCs 100gp per month per level in cash,luxuries, or equivalent services for their duties. However, be sure to require them to purchase appropriate estates and fine clothing suitable for their title and position if they want other leaders, visiting dignitaries, etc to take them seriously. And since they are an upstart fledgling kingdom, they definitely need to be recognized as a serious player at least by book 3 IMHO. I also regularly gave them gifts from NPCs here and there as NPCs and factions currying favor try to butter them up. Of course if the gifts have little result, then they slowly stop. The queen went so far as to make sure rumors spread she particularly liked diamond jewelry and rare swords (shes an aldori).

Be sure to have a chamberlain for your ruler, preferably someone very experienced in etiquette, fashion, and lineages. I used a gnome that once served as an understudy for a great lord of Taldor. When the players listened to his advice, their festivals, balls, grand events, and outward appearance greatly impressed most of the wannabe Taldor nobles from parts of Brevoy and the River Kingdoms. However, this was not without expense and often difficulty as many things had to be specially imported. A great source of RPing and bothering the party with stuff they normally never have to deal with as adventurers.

I would consider rewarding your party's capture vs killing during kingdom building instead of the assault on the bandit fort. Perhaps have the church of Abadar (lawful) give them a free temple or a few helpful NPC experts migrate down to the new "honorable kingdom being established to the south".

There are very few preset difficult fights in Kingmaker, so you want to be careful not to make them too easy.

Yeah the main issue is that he is a spotlight hog, which is a major problem and will cause you to lose your other players and/or cause the group to break up if not resolved. At least this is my own personal experience. This type of player usually makes a character that is as close to self-reliant as possible so he doesn't need anyone else's help, which is where the powergaming/min-max part comes in.

I have had two spotlight hogs, both of whom I sat down and talked about why this behavior was a problem at the table. One responded well and toned it down, along the way instead teaming up with another person as a "dynamic duo" within the party, which satisfied his need for cool experiences. The other unfortunately had to be asked to leave.

By contrast I have a rabid powergamer in my current group, but he uses his powers for good, ie-to help the party without trampling everyone elses fun time. We all love him and get along great with him, despite the fact that most of the other people in our game are horrible at crunch. I never have issues with him, nor any type of conflict with the less experienced character designers.

Definitely a talk is in order. As far as how big the group is, high maintenance players drastically impact the smoothness of play. If you have a bunch of folks who want to make things go smoothly, you can actually run 1-2 players higher than the ideal, whereas 1 difficult player requires several players worth of attention from the GM.

I did THIS for my players, which let them actually experience the whole Late Unpleasantness firsthard. Seemed a waste not to use such a well written backstory, so I just made them kids so they could only influence the events in very minor ways. It also had the added benefit of starting them out with friendships and adversaries among the NPCs when they began at lvl 1.

Oddly, it sounds like he has not completely made the adjustment to 3.5/Pathfinder from 2nd ed. I know when I made the jump to 3.5 (after a 7 yr hiatus) my group complained (and rightly so) about many of these same issues: whipsaw CR encounters, too high then too low as a response to seeing that the other was too high, etc. I don't recall metagaming in obstacles to player solutions, but I did often adjust magic items and monsters on the fly in an attempt to restore them to what I remember them being like in 2nd ed. All in all, I frustrated my more experienced 3.5 players.

Is it possible that he has just not ever made the adjustment to 3.5/PF from 2nd Ed? Does he has a lot of house rules that make it seem like a throwback game?

I know I was struggling a lot to make the game feel like the games I remembered. When I stopped doing that and focused on what the players wanted the game to be like (oh, and also what the rules suggested, lol) the game became more fun all the way around.

First, I assume that none of the party are good characters, especially clerics or paladins or allying with a vampire would not be on their list of options, much less #1. I would definitely make this a situation where the cure is likely to be worse that the ailment.

As a GM, I would seriously flesh out the vampire lord and his trusted lieutenant. One will vie to be the overlord/emperor of this entire area. If the party are veteran players, make it the lieutenant with the vampire lord an arrogant limited thinking thug so the endgame isnt obvious. Now the vampire lord should plan out the path to conquest assuming several things:

- party will use the VL (vampire lord) as a tool and dispose of him when its convenient. At minimum, they will not approve of his expansion plans, so must plans must be made to deal with this eventuality.

- Secret allies must be acquired to counter or freeze the PCs from action. If there is a potential adversary on the other side of the PCs kingdom or even internally (rebels?), these are the first choice. If someone can be found that can unleash a plague in the PCs kingdom at a set point in time, this is also highly desirable. Several spies need to be placed within the PCs power structure and let sleep until needed. Ideally, one of the PCs trusted advisors is a double agent for the vampire (hostages work well as incentive, or turning someone's slowly dying beloved in exchange for loyalty) Lastly, the VL needs a secret weapon the party never sees coming.

The VL should have a plan to

The Vampire Lord's assistance has a

This sort of setup lets the party fairly easily recruit the VL if they choose to, but also to gain some clues about him and his longterm plans if they are a suspicious or nosy sort of group. If they are out for the easy win and don't care how, this will blow up nicely in their face and require some serious fixing. If they are cautious, they can succeed in using the VL as their weapon, then countering his plans with their foreknowledge.

Assuming the ruler is not completely incompetent, adventurers are the perfect tool for them. They offer heavy artillery firepower, are willing to go places no normal person would go and do things others shudder to consider, and all for a few gold, a couple of minor accolades, and being told they "did a good thing".

The main advantage for a ruler in having adventurers around is that they can hire them to do things for the kingdom, which satisfies the populace that they are responsive, but still maintain plausible deniability if the adventurers over-reach or go outside the bounds of acceptable social choices. Plus the #1 rule for kings is always keep a level of scapegoats between yourself and any potential sticky situation. Adventurers are prime choices for scapegoats and sacrificial lambs to feed to the wolves known as the masses.

If you are the GM, just make sure your rulers set things up so they can throw the party under the bus easily. Or alternatively frame things so that even the dumbest villagers can figure out who the "bad guy" is if things go wrong, even if they are reaching a false conclusion.

Cormyr from the old Forgotten Realms setting is a perfect example of how to use adventurers properly. Register and license them in a gun-control-type fashion so you can keep track of them and monitor their activities and usage, keep them around as handy go-to fixers, but clearly label them in a way that keeps them as outsider/pariah types in relation to the established autority/nobility of the kingdom.

Part of what is muddying the waters in this discussion, is the direct contrast (diametrically opposed) in customer service between WotC prior to 5E and Paizo. I have to really grow to dislike your system if you treat me like Paizo has as a customer in order to leave. Alternatively, you have to hit a triple crown winner to get me to switch after growing to appreciate the Paizo "experience" if you will.

I like 5E quite a bit, and I would embrace it fully if it all the flavors of DnD were the only real game in town. Not only is this not true, I have quite a bit of time and money invested in Pathfinder now.

What would a triple crown winner look like? Fix the martial caster disparity in a way that doesn't completely destroy the game as we know it. What would do that you ask? I have no idea, but if WotC (or anyone else for that matter) wants to score the big win, that's the target to aim for IMHO.

I have been really enjoying reading through this thread. The bits about tensions in Brevoy politics are great. I run a game for players with a great interest in politics and am hoping to leverage a ton of your material.

One question, have you posted a list of the minor houses you have in play in your version of Brevoy? I saw the names from the GoT module you used to start off your campaign, but something similar to the table you created for Mivon would be amazing.

Kudos and thanks for the great ideas Redcelt32!

Here is th link to the spreadsheet for all the lesser houses of Brevoy and their mottoes. Note that the family names and mottoes are a mishmash borrowed from books, movies, etc, with a few originals thrown in, though most were borrowed from GoT or inspired by it. Enjoy!

I really like the easy entry simplicity of 5E for getting inexperienced or new players in the game and playing, including making a halfway decent character without having to have much gamemastery. One of the big drawbacks of 3.5x/PF is that you can go really wrong right out of the gate with your character without a pretty solid understanding of the game. Also the volume of feats and traits in PF, while awesome for those in the game a long time, are downright intimidating and daunting to new players. 5E is reminiscent of 1e/2e games where the mechanics were in the background more and storytelling/RPing was the focus just because the mechanics had less impact in the overall game.

The downside is that I felt like 5E was more comparable to the Pathfinder Beginner Box (stripped down version of PF) than the full version of PF. IMO they would have been better off doubling the size of the PHB and using the 2nd half to detail the "options" where you can fill in the blanks or simplified areas of 5E with other optional rules to add complexity and variety to the game. This would have been a great place to add new character ability scores like Luck/Fortune, variant feat rules, new RP driven reward trees, or any number of other gazillion cool things that would make the basic game feel less like a dumbed down version of all the "DnD-ish" games most of us have been playing for the last 10+ years or so. This would have the added benefit of making every gaming table a unique but recognizable environment, depending on which options they used.

I really like the concept and a lot of the direction that 5E went in, but I feel like they stopped short of where they should have ended up. If this was intentional to sell more books, I suspect this is a strategy that will backfire. If it was simply the new direction the game is being taken, I find it a bit disappointing. I suspect that the the complaint "all class/race combos seem the same" that started in 4E is going to continue into 5E. I think with a little more work, there could have been options added in to negate this argument, which would have encouraged more 3.5 diehards to give it a chance.

Set up Candlemere Isle to be the location of the final scene of Book 4 of Carrion Crown. Then run a similar adventure.

You could also take the concept from Realm of the Fellnight Queen and say that there was once a large Fey realms in the Stolen Lands, which due to some ancient catastrophe has now been split into a number of demi-planes with entrances in the Stolen Lands. Having a number of disturbing planar gates directly in the PCs kingdom lands with aberrant, dark, twisty, or alien (depending on your preferred flavor of evil)things leaking out should help with the mood you are going for.

In my mind, it fits for Surtova to be the size it is. The reason the Surtova family was the first ones to bend a knee to Choral and always make sure they marry their daughters to the heir of the Brevoy throne- the have a small area and the ground is poor for raising crops. By contrast they do have one of the best northern port in Brevoy and bring in a bit by fishing, etc. They make up for this shortfall by cozying up to the previous powers that be, which is part of the reason there is objections to Surtova's reach for the throne from regent.

Medvyed has a big area, but if you take the grozni forest out, its dinky. Orlovsky controls most of the northern lands, but they are mediocre for raising crops or livestock so aren't worth as much. Really Lebeda and Rogarvia are the only real prizes due to the great farming lands, which is my mind is half the reason Choral claimed the southeastern half of the swordlords old territory (the other half was to keep a firm hand on them!).

I justify the weird house sizes by the fact that all the Issian lands (everything but Rogarvia and Lebeda) belonged to allies of Choral, which means he was probably reluctant to destrict and cause strife. While it never says, it makes me wonder if he is the one that split the Rostland area into two separate areas.

Thanks for sharing your group pics and success with us! Sounds like you all had a great run. Thanks for the shout out, its nice to know I was able to give back a little to someone after all the great stuff that I have gotten from other GMs off the forums that enriched my own games.

I would love to hear about your epilogue session as well as your council. Also, just curious, how big was your final kingdom and what did it encompass?

Here the is table showing the 29 houses of Mivon. Enjoy!

Mivonese Factions

These factions were named and drawn primarily from terminology gained reading about Renaissance Italian fencing and sword fighting schools and practices. So things like Broca’s traverse are real, though in this case it had another proper name I didn’t like as much. The swordfighting books listed under the Houses spreadsheet are also real. If anyone out is a sword fighting aficionado and doesn’t like how I used the terms, feel free to change them for your world.  My entire write-up of Mivon is based on expanding the canon version of the kingdom into a larger framework, much like I did made the 7 houses of Brevoy (canon) into duchies with sub baronies, to allow for more complicated politics. This may or may not support your vision for Mivon, so adjust as necessary.

Sangue(The Blood) – These houses were the most powerful 9 when they originally left Brevoy. These represent the old guard, who follow the swordlord traditions strictly, including the belief that you are cheating if you are raised or resurrected from the dead, and therefore any duel you fight afterwards is meaningless. They desire to maintain the status quo and support a strict interpretation of the Sword Pact laws.

La Mazza(Informal woodland duel) - Splinter group of Sangue. These houses adhere to all the beliefs of La Sangue, however they believe it is their destiny and duty to expand their holdings for the honor of the Swordpact. These houses are warhawks who advocate conquering the lands surrounding Mivon, both the other River Kingdoms (including Pitax) and the PCs kingdom.

Caminieri(Changes in line of attack) – These houses desire to reform the laws and strictures of the Swordpact to better conform to the realities of life, rather than ideals. Specifically, they wish to reduce the offenses against the honor of a swordlord (many of which demand a duel to the death under the laws of the Swordpact), which often complicate dealings with other kingdoms and outside groups. Parallel to this effort is their desire to reform the way that Brevoy is run, though only in small ways, like removing some of the stricter, exacting interpretations of law that result in some extremism. There are several subgroups, who desire these changes in specific directions.

Bravazzi(swaggerers, ruffians, swashbuckler) – Splinter group of Caminieri. Somewhat derogatory term that was originally assigned by Sangue in reference to their opinion of the PCs kingdom. These houses wish to directly ally with the PCs kingdom, assuming they have been friendly and have at least one Aldori swordlord on their ruling council. Otherwise consider them as Cavazione or Misura.

Cavazione(Changing sides of sword) - Splinter group of Caminieri. These houses wish to work towards a reconciliation with Brevoy. While reasons may vary from house to house (return to old glory, wanting to more easily prove who is superior in duels, or just plain desire to better survive their enemies), all want the same thing –one nation of Swordlords. How exactly to make this happen has not been decided at present. They would be very open to any solid ideas the PCs might make, assuming they have an Aldori among those making the suggestion.

Misura (Measure, distance) - Splinter group of Caminieri. These houses desire to split from Mivon and have two separate kingdoms, Old Mivon and New Mivon. They believe that the more traditional houses that tend to be situated towards the eastern part of Mivon should stay, and those more reformist houses towards the western portion of Mivon should secede into new Mivon. They know they risk open war with the more traditional houses, in particular La Mezza, since the western portion of the kingdom contains the only iron mine in Mivon and some of the best farmland. This faction tries to openly remain at the casual discussion level in their public beliefs, while most are ready to split, assuming they feel they have an opening and the leverage to pull it off. For instance, a war with the PCs kingdom, in particular if Mivon takes some initial losses, would allow them to pull away.

Raffines (Ruffians) – independent splinter group. These people are more interested in the wealth and power to be gained from outsiders by trading Aldori swordlord training for gold or favors. The fact that this goes completely against the laws of the Swordpact in regards to determining the worthiness of training candidates make this group undesirable, and accusing someone of being a Raffine is a high insult among the Mivonese swordlords. Regardless, there are those who are strongly suspected of following this practice. Often it is only the fact that such an accusation in public would demand a duel to the death for honor that prevents this from becoming an openly declared fact for some houses.

Brocans or The Ninth(After Broca’s Traverse – a maneuver where you continue to strategically retreat during a swordfight, sometimes called the Ninth Parry) - Splinter group who wants to focus more on making a name for themselves through trade and by economic means. They secretly desire to move away from the rule by meritocracy to either a straight feudal ruling system. The PCs will find these houses will partners for trade pacts, investments, or financial endeavors.

Rainbow’s Daughter (bandits) – Rainbow’s Daughter is actually a dryad named Persimone who was captured when she tried to stop the logging of her tree by House Gisveti. They chopped down her tree and left her to die, having slain or driven off the other wyldfae who tried to help her. She lay among the mud and stumps of her destroyed forest for three days suffering a slow death, until a sympathetic druid took pity on her. He was a follower of Erastil and unhappy himself with the excessive logging in pursuit of gold, rather than balance and conservation. He used magic to craft a bow from the stump of her old tree, and infused the spirit of her tree into the bow. She now is bound to her bow, in the same manner dryads are bound to their trees, and she can speak telepathically with the spirit of her tree in her bow at will. The bow also grants her other powers, like tree stride when she holds it in hand. Now recovered, she swore revenge upon those who would harvest trees from “her” forest, and has been waging a war against the lumbering houses ever since. Gathering to her the woodland fey as well as those humans who are outcast or unhappy with the rulers of Mivon, she has formed quite a formidable band of forest guerrillas. I will post her Herolab portfolio in the near future.

More Notes

I thought there were several other issues that I have not expanded upon or explored, but thought I would include for consideration by anyone else using Mivon in Kingmaker.

- Hiring out of mercenaries vs growing ther armies of Mivon for military annexation of neighboring kingdoms.

- Conserving remaining forests vs exploiting resources in order to expand

- I completely ignored Naval issues and ideas outside of noting who the shipbuilding Houses were in my chart.

- Also completely ignored at present is the role of the Church of Gorum in their politics, way of life, and how it fits into the Swordpact. I have quite enough religious issues between Sarenrae, Abadar, the Heresy of Abadar, Rovagug barbarians, and the cults of Gyronna and Dagon. I thought it a small kindness not to inflict more religious issues on my players.

- Identity and role of druids and arcane NPCs in Mivon. I did add a couple of war-wizards who used battlefield control spells or were evokers. Also included a shark druid who had a dire shark as a AC and could summon more. Primarily I envisioned these groups as specialized mercenary talents who are hired for top prices to augment regular swordlord units.

- I have so far avoided the rabbit hole of having to detail ALL of the specific details of the Swordpact laws and protocols, primarily by describing it to my PCs as a Brevic Bushido code. It also leaves me free to invent new ones on the fly if appropriate. Feel free to go there if you have more free time than me.

- Imports/exports – I have no idea what these should be but these are what I have put together based on the description of the lands in the River Kingdoms guide and other sources. Feel free to add/subtract if these don’t suit your game.
Exports (mercenaries, wool, high quality clay, blades, peat, eel , fish, fruit, ale, wine)
Imports (grain, hops, iron(!!), fine goods, silk, coal, beef, horses, oil, stone, armor)

Misc Info

I decided that the basic concepts for the Aldori Swordlord style talks about the “Four Governors” ie- forward, left, right, and back quadrants of attack. It also includes a total of 19 stances, 8 parries, and 47 steps. Four Governors is based on real technique, the rest is invented as it suited me. I I used the interwebs for my research, specifically, I used Wikipedia (Italian sword fighting and Italian fencing for details, house names, and book names. I used the following link for most of the terms LINK .

I gave the party a sage that helped them out a lot during the early levels with knowledge and information. Along the way they noticed he avoided stepping outside into direct sunlight. They had suspicions, but decided he was worth the problems at the time. Now that they are 9th level, he has his own keep, a village that he runs, and villagers are occasionally turning up dead, drained of blood... :)

You should really enjoy Kingmaker if you like making your own campaigns. It seems from the boards the very best ones are those whose GMs use the AP as a framework and add a bunch of their own material in. I can recommend Orthos, Dudemeister, Pennywit, and quite a few other regulars here for nice additional material. I definitely recommend getting the class differences in the player's heads early, as the difference between the lives of nobles and commoners are vast.

I recommend giving your players lots of hard choices. You can take this fat purse of gold and resources, but it has strings attached. Or you can go it alone and take your chances, but be unfettered. You can become allies with these tribesmen, but you also then inherit their enemies. This NPC will help you, but wants to be made the marshall in exchange. These are decisions a party doesn't usually get stuck having to make when they are just sacking dungeons :)

For pure character backstory and RP value when facing off against the characters, I liked Nualia quite a bit. She is hateful, but a character that garners quite a bit of

For pure unadulterated fun to RP vs the players as a GM, I nominate the world's most annoying human, Grigori from Kingmaker.

Somewhat unrelatedly, I just watched the finale of the TV miniseries "The White Queen" about the War of the Roses, which is supposedly a large influence of Game of Thrones (Starks=Yorks and Lannister=Lancaster).

I really want to steal the final scene, where a powerful retainer of the king remains undeclared in his intentions until the very last minute. King Richard and Henry Tudor's armies are locked in battle and Lord Stanley leads a charge downhill onto the massed forces. Both sides stop and turn to see who he is going to start killing. I am so doing this to my players at some point :)

Redcelt, is it true that we can summon you to a thread by looking in a mirror and speaking your name three times?

Hehe, it probably seems that way...I tend to lurk a lot :)

I probably should write a Kingmaker style book, or run like three Kingmaker games going just so I can use all of my plots and schemes in rather than waiting of opportunities to make recommendations. I tend to get a bit carried away and be overly verbose sometimes :P

First off, it appears your party's kingdom suffered a semi-collapse primarily due to some supernaturally bad rolls. If I have this fact wrong, then it does change my suggestions a bit to make them a bit more consequence laden. If bad luck is responsible for most of this problem, I suggest not further punishing your players by sticking an annoying oversee on them. Because unless you are a stickler for random suffering and consequences in a Gary Gygax type mindset, then having your PCs kingdom tank due to random bad luck is not something you want, as it is extremely disheartening. If however, they made poor or stupid choices and then compounded them, carry on :)

You don't say it explicity, but have the NPCs taken over the kingdom now? I assume that is why you were asking about disgracing them?

If you are looking to involve the party more into Brevoy/and or River Kingdom politics, then this is the best thing that could ever happen.

What a perfect opportunity to align them with a political/religious faction of your choosing! Pick a smaller faction with good prospects and an inspiring leader, and let the party's kingdom help pay him (or her) back by rising to greatness and backing their benefactor in Brevic politics. of course, this also makes them the target of their benefactor's enemies! Congrats, your PCs have now won a free vacation in a viper pit, er I mean Brevic politics. :) If they start to do downhill again, their original benefactor (or perhaps an additional one!) can step in and stop their slide. My golden rule of Brevic politics is every request for aid comes with two favors owed back, and every ally brings two enemies with them.

If you want them to dig out of a hole on their own, align them with said benefactor, but make them prove their value by winning back the kingdom. Give them some gold, two spies, a diplomat, and let them work for it. Let these minions find weaknesses, desires, needs, key information, or opportunities to engage the NPCs again. Then they can either set out to win back the NPCs loyalty by their actions, or destroy the fledging NPC government and reclaim their kingdom. Or of course, a mix of the two :)

or

Have the swordlords or their benefactor simply come south and annex the kingdom, then turn it over to be governed by the PCs. This does give them a freebie of getting their kingdom back, however disgruntled NPCs could be very interesting come the time a certain bard wanders into town :)

If you are looking to keep the party in their own little fishbowl, or more like the AP canon, then this is a chance to extend a helping hand to your unfortunate players and give them a fresh start.

In this case, have a sympathethic NPC, either from Mivon (assuming you have a swordlord friendly PC) or Brevoy (Rogarvian noble) step up and offer to basically re-fund the PCs kingdom again. Give them enough BP to basically start over, a mulligan if you will. Perhaps even secure them against further bad luck, by saying that their citizens are so uplifted by the heroes ability to secure this type of support that it overcomes 1 point of unrest for the first 3-6 months. This should give them time to get back on their feet. Otherwise Book 5 will basically be a frustrating doom-laden campaign-ender.

Either hand wave the NPCs welcoming back the PCs as rulers, or make them work for their loyalty depending on your level of mercy.

For something completely different, have Varn offer to help them regain their kingdom right before the events in Book 3 take place, then when the party goes there to meet with him, Book 3 begins. Let them start over in Varnhold instead of the Greenbelt.