Making Kingmaker Darker...


Kingmaker


2 people marked this as a favorite.

So, I'm gearing up to run Kingmaker this Friday for one of my long time gaming groups. I've tried running it twice before but due to RL issues, both fell apart about halfway into the first book. That being said, I'm looking to spice it up a little this time and make it more of a dark campaign, setting-wise than what I've seen so far. As a disclaimer, I've read through all the books at least once, most of them at least twice in the times that I've geared up to run the campaign in the past. I'm aware of the general story-line and have some ideas on hooks I want to execute but I figured I'd see if you all had any ideas you would like to see tried out!

To give a sense of what I'm looking for, I want to have the entire country of Brevoy walled off with a huge wall designed to keep the horrors of the outside world from getting in. I'd like the stolen lands to represent a part of Brevoy that fell centuries ago that they're trying to reclaim in order to expand the country as they're well at maximum on space and food. Essentially I want the lands outside of the wall to represent something much closer to Ustalav than the area it's in. In short, I want my characters to desire building their own town and kingdom as a way of providing a safe place to sleep at night.

What would you do differently to make the world surrounding this campaign a few shades "darker"?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Couple suggestions that I've used in my own campaign, which recently returned after a long hiatus.

Use Carnival of Tears and Realm of the Fellnight Queen. Carnival is the best pathfinder dark fairy-tale/slasher horror there is. If the fey are like that, or at least some are, that'd be more than enough reason to build a wall between you and them.

Fellnight is good on it's own, but I've taken a suggestion on this board and connected Rhoswen with Nyrissa. What that connection is I haven't fully decided yet. The party hasn't gotten to her yet, so I don't have to! DMing at it's finest right there. Anyway, my own addition it connecting Rhoswen with the Kytons. Evil fey, or just fey in general, can be plenty dark, but Kytons turn it up to 11.

Allowing Rhoswen to already how sway over the Narlmarches would allow you to have a very big, very scary place right next to the kingdom for all sorts of nasty things to creep out from. And those mountains to the east seem like a perfect place to transplant Hook Mountain Massacre to. Fey to the left, ogres to the right. You'd need some doughty heroes indeed.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Play up the Varnhold Vanishing as a horror mystery. Amp up the challenge of the Spriggans and turn them into lurking terrors rather than cannon fodder/comic relief. Make the players dread whatever's out there in this empty town, skulking about in the darkness... and even more fear whoever has the power to make an entire city go silent in under a day without leaving behind a single corpse.

Play up the dangers of the surrounding wilderness. Make the players worried they'll have to deal with troll rampages or barbarian hordes pressing in on their borders at almost any time. Never let the wilderness sleep - if the players ignore a border for too long, something will move in on it. Keep them busy, keep them on their toes. Don't wait for kingdom events - do it any time you think they've not paid enough attention to a certain place for too long, or if their in-place defenses look thin, strained, or distracted.

Play up Pitax's access to power. Give them strange magic, unusual armaments, and other things that simply have no known source, stir in some dangerous rumors, and have the PCs worried about their dangerously-close proximity to Irovetti. Bizarre eldritch magic, pacts with strange creatures, Numerian technology, you name it.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

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.


Lloyd Jackson wrote:

Couple suggestions that I've used in my own campaign, which recently returned after a long hiatus.

Use Carnival of Tears and Realm of the Fellnight Queen. Carnival is the best pathfinder dark fairy-tale/slasher horror there is. If the fey are like that, or at least some are, that'd be more than enough reason to build a wall between you and them.

Thank you so much for these recommendations. I really love the idea of using Carnival of Tears as I've actually run that before as a one shot and loved it. It'll fit perfectly as an isolated town incident. I'm also going to pick up Realm of the Fellnight Queen to add on some flair.

I love everything that Orthos and Redcelt32 mentioned as well, though I'm going to have to read up more on Candlemere Isle. I also really like the idea of having these portals opened up in random hexes that are otherwise empty that are pouring enemies into the world. I just need to figure out some kind of system for rewarding them for figuring out a way of closing the portals. Maybe some extra points on the kingdom building side?


Depends where the portals are coming from, in closing them they could leave behind something useful to the party or their kingdom.

Portals from the First World could leave rare fey-realm livestock that enterprising kingdom rulers could attempt to domesticate and breed; unusual flora that could provide food, resources, medicines, or drugs; and/or stranded fey that the party, now having them in a vulnerable position, could bargain favors or rewards from in exchange for their freedom.

Portals from other planes could provide similar resources - unusual/rare gems or metals from the Plane of Earth, waters from the Plane of Water that provide unusual benefits (variant healing springs, etc.), an impossibly long list of random banes and boons from the Maelstrom, and so on and so forth.

Depending on the nature of the destination, the players might even decide such portals are a benefit rather than a danger, stabilize them (set up portal-gateways or some such), and create trade with the denizens on the other side. Just because it's dark, alien, weird, creepy, and/or evil doesn't necessarily mean it won't be up for negotiation with the mortals, and a few well-played words (and Diplomacy rolls) and some slick negotiations might end with the PCs having themselves an unlikely ally or two. It's certainly gotten a lot of that in my own Kingmaker game. =)

In mechanical terms, a lot of these could be simply rolled down into one-time BP bonuses, if you want to keep things simple.


Be more specific....such as temple of the elk.....specify what power was called upon.... leave a clue or mark in blood on the ground/altar


Lloyd Jackson wrote:

Couple suggestions that I've used in my own campaign, which recently returned after a long hiatus.

Use Carnival of Tears and Realm of the Fellnight Queen. Carnival is the best pathfinder dark fairy-tale/slasher horror there is. If the fey are like that, or at least some are, that'd be more than enough reason to build a wall between you and them.

Fellnight is good on it's own, but I've taken a suggestion on this board and connected Rhoswen with Nyrissa. What that connection is I haven't fully decided yet. The party hasn't gotten to her yet, so I don't have to! DMing at it's finest right there. Anyway, my own addition it connecting Rhoswen with the Kytons. Evil fey, or just fey in general, can be plenty dark, but Kytons turn it up to 11.

Allowing Rhoswen to already how sway over the Narlmarches would allow you to have a very big, very scary place right next to the kingdom for all sorts of nasty things to creep out from. And those mountains to the east seem like a perfect place to transplant Hook Mountain Massacre to. Fey to the left, ogres to the right. You'd need some doughty heroes indeed.

+2

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Glad to see this thread come up, some advice and suggestions on my end.

FIRST- Identify what manner of horror you're trying to evoke. For example: Faery Tale scariness means you need to make the forest something to fear. When players make camp play up the strange noises. When I ran book one I played up Talonquake like something out of Jurassic Park, the players heard the terrifying sound of its roar/screech somewhere to the south accompanied by the crashing of trees. The forest should feel dark, hostile and cruel, the fey pranks should take a dark edge: stealing a familiar and sewing another animal's pelt onto it etc.

SECOND- Hargulka's monster kingdom, make it MONSTROUS, reports of people getting kidnapped, the trolls should have belts of human skulls, they should lick the PCs before making their bite attack, if the PCs catch the trolls unawares they should see them playing intestine puppets with living or dead people.

THIRD- Play up the unknown in Varnhold Vanishing.

FOURTH- THE HORRORS OF WAR, make the Tiger Lord Barbarians cannibalistic savages. Make Lord Drelev's lover on the side his sister.

FIFTH- Pitax, the Clockwork Kingdom adaptation: make the Clockworks operate via gnome hearts. Play up the oppressive beauracracy.

Scarab Sages

Oh and playing off of what Dudemeister said, you might want to reference classic monsters revisited and borrow some of the favorite games of the ogres there for Hargulka's trolls. Really rather marvelously disturbing if I recall :)


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Get Tales of the Old Margreve - THAT'LL put a bit of horror into your forest! ;-p

As for Fellnight Queen - I ran that between books 2 & 3...kind of as a lead
in to the PCs knowing more & caring more about Varnhold. The marriage was of
Varn to his young bride... (She was going to be stepmum to an NPC daughter of
Varn, who shall be married to one of the PCs soon.
BUT, my point here is that Rhoswen was the big N's daughter - if you want to
tie them together it's a great way to go. You can drop in all sorts of hints
about what's coming. I always referred to her as Princess Rhoswen for example -
after all, she can't be the queen if her mum is greater.


Classic Horror Revisited have a story about three fey sisters who were exiled after their vanity corrupted the First World. They became the first hags (Annis, Green and Sea).

Maybe N was the green hag one and removed her curse?
Maybe the Greenbelt is her old kingdom from the first world, exiled with her to the material plane?
Maybe Candlemere is her old castle?

The story said that the three sisters were jealous and insecure, wishing to be the most beautiful. Maybe N. became jealous of the Queen?

If you are using Fellnight Queen, she could be the Annis one, after successfully kidnapping the bride, a true loved one, and using her in a ritual, she removed the curse?


My table is only near the end of the second book, so I can only help with those two. But I would keep in mind that Nyrissa, the ultimate BBEG, is a pissed-off, insane fairy. Running off this theme, malevolent fey should be a mainstay in your campaign.

I would make the fairies much, MUCH more menacing from the get-go. If you browse the bestiary entries on d20pfsrd, you'll find some great critters. I particularly like Tooth Fairies as a low-level threat. The Debased Fey template is also pretty damn menacing. When people offered up suggestions for my Spring Feast, they offered up some great critters, including the Forlarren and the Skin Stealer.

BofDM has a great idea with the Big Bad Wolf too. Orthos has some great ideas here, too, about the way the fairy courts interact. You can search for his material on the boards.

You might also want to consider making the "good" fairies a bit darker, too. The rather benevolent Tiressa, Tyg-Titter-Tut, and so forth should serve a greater noble of some sort -- perhaps a powerful (i.e., has class levels) Leanan Sidhe who demands an exorbitant tribute such as first-born children, or the greatest artists in the kingdom, in exchange for her "protection" against the things that go bump in the night.

As others have said, the place should become pretty damn scary, with wild animals and malevolent fey lurking around every corner.

A few more specific ideas:


  • Scale up the notable, named beasties (such as Tuskgutter and Talonquake) give them the Fey Creature or Fey Animal templates, as appropriate.
  • Swap out the mites (SL's designated comedy opponents) and replace them with more menacing Gremlins who are harassing both humans and kobolds.
  • Make it clear that the kobolds are friggin' scared of everything around them. In this scenario, Tartuk (perhaps possessing the ability to cast Protection from Evil spells) is influential chiefly because he is legitimately the kobolds' best defense against fey. Also, what if the kobolds are squatting in a cold iron mine instead of a gold mine?
  • Switch up the Stag Lord's motivation and Akiros's motivations a little bit. The Stag Lord is completely insane and convinced the fairies will make him a great lord. Meanwhile, Akiros is actually trying to build a following among the bandits ... he hopes to lay siege to, then take over Oleg's, considering it safer than some other places in the Stolen Lands. Akiros might be amenable to cutting a deal for himself and his men, though. Also: Give Akiros a family that he cares for.
  • Consider making an amped-up Dancing Lady, rather than Hargulka, the Big Bad for Rivers Run Red. Perhaps Hargulka is her dumb muscle. Or perhaps he's a second, separate power center in the Greenbelt.
  • Candlemere is an excellent, creepy location. I think that, if it's built up a little bit with a few rooms, it would make an excellent lair for a bogeyman.


This thread reminded me of a successful Kingmaker run and I pulled what notes I could find. Link.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Path / Kingmaker / Making Kingmaker Darker... All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Kingmaker
Just Finished