I too had that problem, so instead I wrote Nyrissa out of the story, the ease with which this was accomplished speaks volumes for her involvement.I'll add my vote for Kingmaker: Sound of a thousand Screams, due to insufficient foreshadowing for the PCs. As the GM, you get some foreshadowing, but it really needs to be re-worked in order for the PCs to pick up on it.Yay, I'm not the only one.
I went the opposite direction, ramping up her presence in the earlier books. Granted, Thousand Screams is what got me to want to run Kingmaker in the first place, so dropping it wasn't an option on the table =)
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I went the opposite direction, ramping up her presence in the earlier books. Granted, Thousand Screams is what got me to want to run Kingmaker in the first place, so dropping it wasn't an option on the table =)I too had that problem, so instead I wrote Nyrissa out of the story, the ease with which this was accomplished speaks volumes for her involvement.I'll add my vote for Kingmaker: Sound of a thousand Screams, due to insufficient foreshadowing for the PCs. As the GM, you get some foreshadowing, but it really needs to be re-worked in order for the PCs to pick up on it.Yay, I'm not the only one.
The fey element is just about the only thing about Kingmaker that works for me. It's one of the APs at the bottom of my list to run, along with Legacy of Fire and (probably) Giantslayer. I'd still probably run it if I had run all the others. I have a problem with the exploration aspects (which I like) interacting with the XP system (which I don't mind). Too many 15-minute days. :(
Not saying Kingmaker is bad; I'm glad it's out there. It's just not my style. :)
Yea, very important for Runelords (don't have enough experience with them to speak to other AP's) - if your players are not heroic you're going to have problems. By heroic, I mean the pc's should react to Bad Things Happening to Good People with a desire to directly intervene without a lot of other (financial) motivation.
Yeah, this is a recurring issue. For all the APs I've played or run, the PCs need to straddle this weird line where on one hand, they're so heroic that they get involved in world-threatening danger without any prompting or payment, yet are not so piously good that they won't work with obviously evil forces. Get a PC that falls on either side of that line and the whole thing starts to come off the rails.
It's gotten to where I flat-out tell players to aim for that at character creation.
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I have a problem with the exploration aspects (which I like) interacting with the XP system (which I don't mind).
In hindsight, having gotten to Chapter 5 finally, I really wish I'd thrown XP out and just leveled by DM announcement earlier on in the campaign. A few too many sidequests and unplanned adventures early on and my players ended up much higher level than the campaign expected. The strict XP budgeting on APs - or at least in Kingmaker - really makes it a challenge to add or change anything while still using the XP system and expecting the PCs to remain near the expected level progression of the plot.
Starting with our next campaign XP will be a thing of the past for my group.
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I have a problem with the exploration aspects (which I like) interacting with the XP system (which I don't mind).In hindsight, having gotten to Chapter 5 finally, I really wish I'd thrown XP out and just leveled by DM announcement earlier on in the campaign. A few too many sidequests and unplanned adventures early on and my players ended up much higher level than the campaign expected. The strict XP budgeting on APs - or at least in Kingmaker - really makes it a challenge to add or change anything while still using the XP system and expecting the PCs to remain near the expected level progression of the plot.
Starting with our next campaign XP will be a thing of the past for my group.
Something I can agree on.
Most prewritten campaigns say what level they expect the party to be for certain sections, so during my sessions I just had the players level up at those points.
I don't like XP because it just makes my party covet it. They do things to get XP, not because they want to RP.