Long pauses between modules?


Kingmaker


I'm considering taking a six year pause between the first and second modules for the purpose of forwarding through a child birthing/rearing storyline and am wondering if there are any pitfalls with which I should concern myself in regards to kingdom building. Might it run amok if I allowed my players to play through 70+ months of kingdom building? Might it remain manageable if I retarded the players' acquisition of initial BPs to, say, 10 per year for the first five years? I appeal to those with more familiarity with the kingdom building sub-system.

Sovereign Court

Ambrus wrote:
I'm considering taking a six year pause between the first and second modules for the purpose of forwarding through a child birthing/rearing storyline and am wondering if there are any pitfalls with which I should concern myself in regards to kingdom building. Might it run amok if I allowed my players to play through 70+ months of kingdom building? Might it remain manageable if I retarded the players' acquisition of initial BPs to, say, 10 per year for the first five years? I appeal to those with more familiarity with the kingdom building sub-system.

Just in case spoiler:

I'm just finishing book two...

Some events may take you out of ffwd time. It makes less sense for Grigori to show up after the kingdom has been standing for 5+ years, for example.

You also might lose some of that fledgling time where things are really... well... unstable. My players are only just coming to a point where they are feeling secure that there kingdom won't start falling apart despite their best efforts (however true or possible it may have been!) but dealing with that in-game is a matter of personal taste so you'd need to decide.

Overall, I don't think it will spoil anything. I really wouldn't let them know you intend to do this, though. Its one thing to build a kingdom over 70+ months... its another to know you've got no major threats to contend with for all that time and you can optimize exactly when you build things like walls, watchtowers, etc. Also, get your players' opinions. I had figured on letting them take breaks and such but they have been the ones pushing to explore which, inevitably, leads to trouble...

Also, I suggest that you read ahead in the books a bit so you can use this ffwd time to introduce things like Varnhold, etc.


Kingmaker would probably be the easiest AP to do that in, as it's already assumed that several years could pass between each module (especially the later ones).

Rivers Run Red (the second module) assumes a year passes from the creation of the first city until the "events" begin happening. That passage of time could be extended to six years without major problems, I think. Some of the events might need to be adjusted a bit, but it should be doable.

(Alternatively, you could have one event per year with a clear in-game timeline linked to the birth, so the first event would be "Just after Vanya's first birthday, ---" and the second would be "A couple of months after you celebrated Vanya's second birthday, ---" and so on)

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