Kingmaker - But I Just Did That! [spoilers, lots and lots of spoilers]

[Sebastian]

Don't get me wrong, I love me some Kingmaker. But, as I was reading the summary I began to get the sneaking suspicion that the overall plot arc was strikingly similar to one I just ran in my 4e campaign. It sounds like the BBEG of the AP is planning on exiling the whole area into the First World. Is that correct?

I'm hoping not, because if it is, I'll probably want to do some reworking of Kingmaker. If I go that route, I'll probably replace the fey with some type of undead menace, but not zombies/skeletons. I'm thinking more of a corrupter of nature undead menace that focuses on more primal non-human centric undead.

Oddly enough, this is the third or fourth time this has happened to me - where an AP overlaps one of our existing campaigns. Maybe I just run iconic games (or focus too much on the trivial similarities).

Or, maybe it's Paizo's orbital mind lasers stealing my ideas...

[fray]

I'd go with the lasers...

[Callous Jack]

Time to break out the tinfoil hats.

[Majuba]

Callous Jack wrote:

Time to break out the tinfoil hats.

Didn't they develop a counter-counter for that?

[baron arem heshvaun]

Sebastian wrote:

Oddly enough, this is the third or fourth time this has happened to me - where an AP overlaps one of our existing campaigns.Or, maybe it's Paizo's orbital mind lasers stealing my ideas...

I smell litigation...

Majuba wrote:

Callous Jack wrote:

Time to break out the tinfoil hats.

Didn't they develop a counter-counter for that?

Yes. Microwave ovens.

What's your frequency Kenneth?

[King of Vrock]

You're not the only one Sebastian, I was running a Jungle/Seafaring/Demon campaign about 6 months before the STAP came out, I had run my PC's through the Dungeon of the Ruins about 3 issues before Prison of the Firebringer came out!

I think it's just an unconscious Dungeon string theory thingy???

--Solid as a Vrock

[James Jacobs]

Parallel design is a very real thing. It was REALLY obvious back when we were working on Dungeon. Something would happen in the real world and suddenly we'd get dozens of adventure proposals that sounded super similar. Not just kinda similar. Stuff like multiple adventures about time-traveling bug humanoids who are trying to "Borg" a village by assimilating them. Or a sudden rush of adventures about bitter druids who have turned against nature and are trying to raise an army of undead plants.

In any event, part of the reason why we do 2 adventure paths a year is so that there ARE an increasing number of choices for GMs to pick from when they go looking for an AP to run. So if one happens to have a similar plot to a game you just ran, there's lots of other choices.

As for Kingmaker's final adventure... (warning BIG spoilers for Kingmaker)

Spoiler:

The last adventure IS about a nymph who attempts to pull the Stolen Lands out of Golarion and into the First World so that she can use it as a gift or a trophy or a bribe. But she's also trying to reclaim her ability to love, which has been transformed into a vorpal sword that's hidden in the treasury of Lord Irovetti's palace in Pitax. (It's a bit more complicated than that, of course... but that's the basic idea.) And this whole plot, while it's being subtly woven into some of the events in the first five adventures, is really self-contained in the last adventure. You could just call the campaign quits after Part 5 and not have any First World influence at all. This'll still carry you through to about 16th level, and then you can use the "Continuing the Campaign" article in Pathfinder #36 to help in extending the campaign further.

That said... while I haven't read up on what WotC has done with the Feywild... there's far more than fey living in the First World. There's a lot of outsiders and magical beasts and dragons and other stuff going on in there too. Not much undead, though, due to the First World's closer proximity to the Positive Energy Plane. So even though the idea of a powerful entity trying to transpose a part of one plane into another plane might be similar, it's not necessarily the same TYPE of planar transposition.

[Sebastian]

Thanks James. That's the type of information I was hoping to get from you. I'm glad to know that the plot is mostly focused in AP6. It sounds very cool, but I have been beating the "prime material plane shifted into another plane" horse for about a decade now and really want to give it a break. I'm sure I can modify the adventure or run something completely different, I just wanted to get the big picture so I can start dialing back some of the fey based encounters.

In the campaign I'm running, the PC's home plane is actually exiled to an alternate prime material where the illithids rose up and destroyed humanity (and demi-humanity), but there's also an eladrin city going in and out of the feywild. It's definitely not a perfect match-up, but there's enough similarity that I worry my players will say "Oh god, not this again." I'm probably going to pull out the kobolds and replace them with goblins for a similar reason (kobolds being yet another trope that I beat to a grimy paste).

Edit: Also, call it parallel design, coincidence, or whatever else you want, just make out my royalty payments to "cash," send them on a quarterly basis and we're cool. ;-)

[Dale McCoy Jr]

Sebastian wrote:

(kobolds being yet another trope that I beat to a grimy paste).

HEY!!!

Oh, the trope is what you beat into grimy paste, not the kobolds themselves. My bad. Ok, carry on.

[underling]

Sebastian wrote:

Oddly enough, this is the third or fourth time this has happened to me - where an AP overlaps one of our existing campaigns. Maybe I just run iconic games (or focus too much on the trivial similarities).

Or, maybe it's Paizo's orbital mind lasers stealing my ideas...

This happens to me ALL the time. Its gotten to be so much of a joke with my players that they'll ask what i'm working on next to see what will be on Paizo's upcoming release list. :)

Now to be fair, there are only so many archetypes to draw on, and if you like gritty, morally gray, Lovecraft flavored (yum, Calamari!) fantasy, you're constraining your ideas to an even smaller area. The chance for overlap gets bigger and bigger.

of course it could just be the lasers.

[Arnwyn]

James Jacobs wrote:

In any event, part of the reason why we do 2 adventure paths a month

Oh, how I wish this were true... :D

[James Jacobs]

Arnwyn wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

In any event, part of the reason why we do 2 adventure paths a month

Oh, how I wish this were true... :D

Oh my god... I just re-read that and the thought of doing two adventure paths a month made me throw up blood and ants.

[baron arem heshvaun]

What's the CR of Blood Ants {tm}?

[Ross Byers]

James Jacobs wrote:

Arnwyn wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

In any event, part of the reason why we do 2 adventure paths a month

Oh, how I wish this were true... :D

Oh my god... I just re-read that and the thought of doing two adventure paths a month made me throw up blood and ants.

Hey James, I just got a great idea for a monster breath weapon!

[Samnell]

James Jacobs wrote:

Arnwyn wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

In any event, part of the reason why we do 2 adventure paths a month

Oh, how I wish this were true... :D

Oh my god... I just re-read that and the thought of doing two adventure paths a month made me throw up blood and ants.

Now I'm hungry again. Just ate too.

[Renraku]

James Jacobs wrote:

Arnwyn wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

In any event, part of the reason why we do 2 adventure paths a month

Oh, how I wish this were true... :D

Oh my god... I just re-read that and the thought of doing two adventure paths a month made me throw up blood and ants.

I totally needed a laugh

thanks, that did the trick....

now to clean up the glass of water I spit out when I read that.

[Rodel]

Maybe she's doing the opposite; trying to pull the First World (or a part of it)to Golarion. Just like the PCs are doing she's trying to build a kingdom (queendom?). If your players start to anticipate too much it could throw them. Just a thought for ya, Sebastian.