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As a curious nerd who habitually plays characters who are also curious nerds, I like the idea of opening up little details through passive checks and/or taking 10!
That lets polymath characters sink their teeth into odd, delicious factoids, which others can take or leave as they choose. :)
Yes yes please!
You could allow players to take narrative control with particularly high rolls, assuming anyone cares about that? Like a Survival roll of 10+HD might let the player declare what the weather will be?
@Trillium, re: Tsia's chatter in gameplay: Have at it! I was just floating some ideas to possibly play with, and not imagining these are particularly niche interests that Tsia’s getting at.
Per the wiki, Tieldlara’s kind of a big deal among the swordlords, so anyone who’s spent any time in Restov who cares about such things would probably hear some of the gossip. I’m not sure if canonically her performance types have been established, but I figured she might well be somewhat musical. She sounds like a bit of a jerk, honestly, but between her and the current Blademaster in charge of the Academy, Tsia is probably happier to stick up for another chaotic elf playing the long game.
From bardic swashbucklers to broader pop culture in Restov, ‘Sovai’ just sounded like a reasonably northeast Avistan-esque title for a broadside ballad that could be in the city’s top 10 or whatever. It could actually be – because I’m happy to shamelessly mine historical texts for this sort of thing – a version of ‘Sovay’ (the more usual spelling), aka ‘The Female Highwayman,’ ‘Sylvia,’ or even ‘Cecilia,’ apparently. Usual ‘disguised lover tests beloved’s commitment’ business, only with more unhinged menace. I was actually trying to think of one of the ballads set in London, but I can’t place the one I vaguely had in mind. Probably not ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington,’ and certainly not the ‘Fair Maid of Islington’ (warning: scurrility) – while Tsia might know some such songs like the latter, she wouldn’t admit it to just anyone.
Been taking a class and getting a PBP I am GMing going so I am sorry for the slow response. Will post later today!
Hey, I wanna check in here. I was--and am--super psyched about getting into this game. I love the concept as presented and digging into the storytelling.
But I'm struggling to get into things, and I'm feeling a bit rudderless. Obviously we've started and stalled a few times--even if at other times we've gotten a ball rolling for awhile. We haven't had anyone post for almost two weeks and I'm getting a sense most folks are waiting for a GM post to nudge us along--or waiting for something else. Or maybe some folks have lost interest?
I wanted to speak about both some stuff I feel like we're lacking as well as why I'm personally feeling stuck a bit. I want to be very, very clear that the reason I'm saying any of this is not to complain or criticize but rather to just get a discussion going, offer some feedback, and hopefully get the energy flowing again.
1. Can we have more communication on where we want to go together--AND who is doing what?
Since part of this experiment is as much to be writing the story of Kingmaker together as it is to be playing its RPG aspects, I think talking more often about some shared plot points--but moreover, how much each of us might take on a given aspect of the story. For example, we chatted about how to characterize Oleg and Svetlana. And that was awesome! But what are we going to do with them? Should one of us primarily take the role of one of those characters, or are we only "driving" them insofar as how they might interact with our PC.
Are there plot points we should be planning out together OOC before RPing them? For example, I had the idea of the woman behind the curtain at the party. And basically that's all I had. I was thinking, "I'll throw this out here, and maybe someone else will build on it." I had no real plan other than to put a moment of action into the scene. And some folks did respond! But then it kind of lost momentum. Maybe someone else was thinking I was going to be the one to elucidate who that woman was or what she wanted? Maybe I should have discussed OOC my thinking and we could have talked about whether this was a significant story moment or nothing.
2. Can we have clarity on how much storytelling we're doing and how much we're waiting for the GM to... well, GM us? Only he knows his overarching plot so we can't do the big things, but where exactly is the line here between shared fiction writing and RPing with a GM adjudicating what's happening? GM, how much should we be waiting on you and how much should we just be carrying the flag?
3. Can we be discerning and selective about how much information or detail we offer in one post?
I want to be responding more, one way or another, to what other players are posting. However, I am also feeling very overwhelmed at times by what other players are posting. Especially when it involves a ton of background lore not necessarily that my character could know or be involved with--or even background lore I myself don't know so I have no idea how to build on it (I've read--and even professionally edited--a ton Pathfinder stuff but many of you have key Golarion history details memorized I don't know and/or will probably never remember.)
I want to make clear this is very likely more of a me problem than a you problem, and it's possible I'm just too stupid a person to be playing with all of you.
Nonetheless, for whatever it's worth... many posts are long with a ton of background and detail... and I am struggling sometimes to find what threads to pick up to take along amidst all that detail... especially when there's of course five people each offering dozens of threads. (And you may well feel the same about me.)
Then what happens is I don't tug on any of the threads and post something my character says or thinks but that isn't actually feeding you any roleplay you can in turn bounce off of. In other words, I know I'm not giving you much to work with.
Whom do I respond to? Will someone be upset if I don't respond to them? What about this character do I need to know as we help build this story together versus what is just in-the-moment flavor text? When I write a post, what am I offering to someone--or not--to pick up and carry? How much am I saying "yes and" or offering someone else the opportunity to do so?
4. If we're feeling lost, can we, like I am trying to do, say so? Like, rather than let the game sit for two weeks, if we're waiting for a response or someone to throw them the ball, do we feel comfortable speaking up in discussion?
I have a rule in the games I run that folks have to show up once every couple of days in OR out of character. Someone who posts in the OOC thread, "I'm here, I've got nothing to say at the moment," meets this requirement. (But so does a lengthy IC post and anything in between.) By encouraging folks to post OOC when they have nothing to say IC it helps others identify if they are waiting for a response--or even if they are simply lost. Or bored. Or just plain waiting for something else to happen.
With a grand storytelling experiment I think we probably need to talk OOC more... but of course I'd welcome ideas for how that can work/what that looks like.
What do y'all think?
I've sort of been assuming we're waiting for the GM to add something that will provide some forward direction since the posts from players have petered out. But, I'm not really sure what's up.
I've been considering posting again. Specifically since Trillium asked Svetlana for a tour of the the trading post, I could have Svetlana agree to give Trillium one and just take the keys to drive Svetlana for a bit. But, there are some practical issues that have kept me from doing it. First, I've no idea what the trading post is like. Do I just make up whatever I want about the trading post layout etc.? What if the things I decide don't work in terms of what the trading post needs to be like for future plot elements? Does my post have to be retconned? Does the GM, or other players have to work around what I've established? The same with Svetlana. If I lay her blueprint, what if someone else wants something else instead? Do NPCs just morph as needed by someone at a particular time without ever having an "objective" core identity we all work off of? If NPCs aren't malleable in that way, what if the Svetlana I establish runs counter to the Svetlana someone else wanted, but I posted first so I win?
Or, if all these things are supposed to get hashed out among us so we reach a consensus before those kinds of decisions about people, places, and so forth are made, when do we ever get around to posting in-game?
I guess my take on things after reading the introductory materials, especially the section on narrative control tokens, was that fundamentally this Kingmaker is still recognizably still Kingmaker like all the other Kingmakers being played, but there would be more room and latitude to "riff" on things that our characters do and say without having to involve the GM in running NPCs, and/or to a more limited extent players running other PCs. This could even involve nudging the plot or situations in small ways. But, going back to my example, does Trillium have any tokens? If so, how many? how many tokens would Svetlana taking her on a tour and chatting and becoming friendly cost?
But, if I'm understanding the intent correctly, right now we don't have anything substantial to work with. We're in a place, but don't have a setting well defined enough to interact with. We have a couple of NPCs but we've barely said "hello" so we don't know them well enough to puppet master them. We have each other, but generally characters build relationships through shared experiences and we barely have any of those at this point. Even characters that have linked backgrounds need some time in play before they have relational dynamics worked out in practice. Time in play means forward motion of the game. Events need to occur.
It seems to me the concept behind this game can't work without a neutral arbiter acting as a compass and creator of the basics of a shared reality. The players can't crowdsource a Kingmaker game into being. Even improv (and I tend to think of PbP games as a mix of improv and collaborative writing) depends on a mutually understood and adhered to framework underlying it.
I feel it's too early in the story to for us to run wild and start spinning stuff beyond our own characters. So perhaps in these early stages we need the game to be more of a traditional Pathfinder PbP game and get more guidance from the GM, have the setting a bit more built up so we have a basis to work with.
Jack and Trillium have both made valid points and asked very valid questions, so I have nothing to add there. I'll post regularly in here so you know I haven't vanished. :)
But I did want to mention that Ta Bayang's narrative most likely won't come until later, so until that time - unless I get to drive an NPC or two - they'll be mostly in the background being odd. Or maybe Oleg and Svetlana have had some encounters with fey recently, not just bandits?
As much as I'm willing to run with delegated narrative control, I don't think a Pathfinder game can work without a dedicated GM guiding the helm. At least once we get into combat, we need regular posts. I've been waiting for GM Hurley to figure out their posting schedule, as their last post said they would do now that the holidays are over. I'd prefer it if we could all commit to a daily post, even just to check in, as I think that keeps things going forward at a reasonable pace, but if that's not possible it would help to have a sense of what is. No offense intended, but if it's going to be a post every two weeks, I don't think this game will ever get off the ground.
One of my favorite TTRPG games that isn't D&D is called Ars Magica, and it has woven into it an idea called "troupe-style" play. It is a system designed to give all the players more buy-in to the story by assigning them as game masters over different aspects of the setting. It is supposed to lessen the burden of running the game for the primary GM, and also make it possible for everyone to play a main character (though usually the primary GM plays a character that doesn't adventure much). Everyone plays multiple characters, and often when a new NPC or companion is introduced by the GM someone else takes over playing it at the table.
I bring this up because if our well-intentioned GM cannot manage everything about this game, they might be willing to delegate some of it to us in a similar fashion. In Ars, we usually try to assign aspects of the setting to players with characters that are not very involved in those adventures, but it might be that the opposite is better here because those of us with characters that are extremely invested in certain story elements would probably be able to storyguide them better, and I suspect would be more engaged in pushing the story forward because it affects their character. But I know that can also feel a bit monomaniacal, and one of the reasons we went with our various character directions is because we want to discover things through interaction that we didn't come up with ourselves, so playing both sides of these scenes is kind of disappointing. :)
Speaking for myself, I hesitate suggesting such a system because I know I'm a terrible GM. I have good intentions and I aspire to do a good job, but the two or three times I've put together a game and recruited it has fallen apart pretty quickly. So I wouldn't advise us relying on me to run the game in GM Hurley's absence, even temporarily. But I might be able to run a combat or two, I suppose. I do have the 1E and 2E Kingmaker PDFs and I'm somewhat familiar with what is going on. If I were to nominate myself to take over some part of the game under GM Hurley's occasional guidance, I might suggest I govern the Stag Lord and his bandits. We're coming up on our first encounter with them, and I might be able to get us through it with minimal involvement from the GM. It's not ideal, though, just warning everyone.
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Hi everybody! I'm still here. I know my posting is frustratingly slow. I'm sorry for that, but that's just how it is for me right now. I know the overall concept here is ambitious, and you're all on board to at least try some different things to see what we can do.
It's not my intention to leave the game rudderless. I'm also not going to simply disappear without warning; if I have to leave, I will tell you as soon as that has to happen. I say this just to reassure that pauses like this one don't raise the alarm bells. I can swing a daily check-in post here in the discussion thread if that will help.
It is expressly my intention to turn over as much GM power (but not strictly responsibility) to the players collectively, that's part of the experiment of trying to find better ways of running PbP. I'm happy to provide whatever support I can to you all to help you feel comfortable engaging with that. I'm not trying to keep any plot info secret or hidden, I'm trying to make this as open-book as possible. However, I recognize that nobody can just read my mind to see where I'm planning to take things. I am using materials from the 2e hardcover as baseline, so the map of Oleg's Trading Post is coming from there. I should have posted the map to the Google Doc when I submitted the post previously, I will do so now and update the Campaign Info with the link to the map.
On a separate note, this discussion thread is also a useful place to discuss elements of craft. I've been thinking a lot about how to write fey/fae characters (I prefer the spelling "fey" for fantasy roleplaying, but fae definitely has its place in literature overall). Fey in D&D are something of a catchall category of mystical creatures from different mythologies, and Pathfinder added to that. Recognizing that there are multiple folklores which are represented, how do you like to play with or write with fey? For my purposes specifically within this game, my intention for the NPC fey is to lean on Greek drama and Shakespeare as the two touchstones for style. I'm not totally sure exactly what that looks like yet, but I'm thinking iambic pentameter if I can swing it, Greek choruses, weird prophecy, etc. I'm not expecting our fey PCs to adhere to this, I encourage you to play as you like. But when I think about Nyrissa, Count Ranalc, and The Lantern King, I very much think of it in terms of Shakespearean tragedy with elements of Greek irony.
Thanks all for chiming in.
I think regular checkins is a good idea. Might every 2 days be more realistic than 1?
GM Hurley, I'm still not clear on how much we are to take the reins. I think the most of us have been interpreting this is to write our characters with a fair amount of detail but only write NPCs as they directly relate to our character. For example, Svetlana talking to Trillium as they make the stew.
Part of the hesitation I feel I think in writing beyond my character is that in PBP I can't look at someone in the moment and say, "Is this okay?" So some more explicit ground rules on what we take up as co-narrators would be really helpful.
On fey: I think Pathfinder really leans into their manifesting either as the spirit or guardian of a place... or of a concept. So I think they would not have a universal way of communicating but their speech would reflect a given fey's nature. A fey associated with drama and poetry might speak in iambic pentameter, but one associated with water may simply speak in a gurgling tone and mellifluous prose.
As for Nyrissa, I can't not hear Amelia Tyler's performance from the video game. (Highly recommend clicking the link.) I think trying to overload her dialogue with poetic meter or anything overconstructed risks removing the primal despair and rage that I think drives her. I don't think we need to copy Owlcat's prose exactly, but I think a lot of nature-informed metaphor alongside raw passion suits her.
Hey, Hurley. Since we have you here could we get a general idea of where you want your story to go? I think we're all probably pretty well able to separate OOC from IC information and if we know the general story beats you want to hit that would help us keep the game moving in your absence. Even if you just said something like 'the first mod pretty much runs as written' that would be very helpful since it would tell us what to to write toward (i.e.- Happs's bandits showing up in a few days).
Since you touch on fey in your post, are you leaning more heavily into the Nyrissa storyline and planning on hinting at her presence early on? I've seen (and usually include in my games) Realm of the Fellnight Queen to ramp up the fey presence in Kingmaker earlier than the AP does on its own- are you planning on doing that?
Basically, anything you can tell us about your planned direction will help.
Does the GM, or other players have to work around what I've established? The same with Svetlana. If I lay her blueprint, what if someone else wants something else instead? Do NPCs just morph as needed by someone at a particular time without ever having an "objective" core identity we all work off of? If NPCs aren't malleable in that way, what if the Svetlana I establish runs counter to the Svetlana someone else wanted, but I posted first so I win?
I think with the style of play that's been proposed we'll all just have to 'yes and' everything with respect to NPCs. We might need to keep a Google Doc or something with notes about what NPCs have said or done before so we can keep characterization straight, but going with the traditional improv idea of building on instead of retconning what's come before seems like the only practical way to share storytelling.
Or, if all these things are supposed to get hashed out among us so we reach a consensus before those kinds of decisions about people, places, and so forth are made, when do we ever get around to posting in-game?
I'd love to do this now or far in advance for major NPCs like Sootscale or Irovetti (or Hargulka or Rhoswen if they're included or even Maegar Varn or the Swordlords if we want to get deep into backstory) where their motivation might change their approach to the PCs.
For minor but not majorly game-affecting NPCs like Oleg/Svetlana, Kesten, or other potential advisers like Jhod or Jubilost maybe we could just do a bullet point kind of guidelines sort of thing.
For antagonists who are going to fight with us regardless, like the Stag Lord or Armag, we might not have to do as much work.
I bring this up because if our well-intentioned GM cannot manage everything about this game, they might be willing to delegate some of it to us in a similar fashion. In Ars, we usually try to assign aspects of the setting to players with characters that are not very involved in those adventures, but it might be that the opposite is better here because those of us with characters that are extremely invested in certain story elements would probably be able to storyguide them better, and I suspect would be more engaged in pushing the story forward because it affects their character. But I know that can also feel a bit monomaniacal, and one of the reasons we went with our various character directions is because we...
Much like I asked of Hurley, it would also be helpful if all of us shared the story beats we want to see for our PCs. Not just in a 'I wrote it in the backstory' sort of way but more an explicit 'Ta Bayang performs the Darkhallow and uses the ritual to replace the Forgotten Prince as an archfey' or 'Szofia beheads Joffrey Baratheon on the Iron Throne' kind of way. If we all have the same signposts it would help us all write in the right direction.
On fey: I think Pathfinder really leans into their manifesting either as the spirit or guardian of a place... or of a concept. So I think they would not have a universal way of communicating but their speech would reflect a given fey's nature. A fey associated with drama and poetry might speak in iambic pentameter, but one associated with water may simply speak in a gurgling tone and mellifluous prose.
I generally wrote fey as more human-like the less powerful they were. Like Perlivash and Tig Titter-tut are basically tween pranksters and the Lantern King is an unknowable eldritch god, with dryads and swanmays and Nyrissa and whatnot somewhere along that spectrum.
I tried doing the iambic pentameter thing to differentiate the First World and fey from the prime material and humanoids in one game but it was a huge PITA and I dropped it.
Love the idea of a Google doc to track characterization ... and perhaps plot points and ideas.
I bring this up because if our well-intentioned GM cannot manage everything about this game, they might be willing to delegate some of it to us in a similar fashion. In Ars, we usually try to assign aspects of the setting to players with characters that are not very involved in those adventures, but it might be that the opposite is better here because those of us with characters that are extremely invested in certain story elements would probably be able to storyguide them better, and I suspect would be more engaged in pushing the story forward because it affects their character. But I know that can also feel a bit monomaniacal, and one of the reasons we went with our various character directions is because we...Much like I asked of Hurley, it would also be helpful if all of us shared the story beats we want to see for our PCs. Not just in a 'I wrote it in the backstory' sort of way but more an explicit 'Ta Bayang performs the Darkhallow and uses the ritual to replace the Forgotten Prince as an archfey' or 'Szofia beheads Joffrey Baratheon on the Iron Throne' kind of way. If we all have the same signposts it would help us all write in the right direction.
I want Jack to eventually find Briar! But for the depth of the story...
Jack is fixated on finding out what happened to his friend Arion and saving and/or avenging him. My thought is that Arion was one of the first Hollowborn and serves the Fellnight Queen, but Jack doesn't know that.
I am assuming that Arion is not savable--but I don't know anything about this Hollowborn plot. What I want for Jack is to be able to go through a journey of grief that ends with accepting his loss.
But I also want him to learn that it's safe and okay to make friends and get out of his shell a bit. I want him to learn to build something for the future rather than regret the past.
This said, accepting Arion's loss does not have to preclude whupping the Fellnight Queen if that's possible.
What's hard here is that I want some surprises and may find that my goals for Jack may change as we play, so I don't want to set these things in stone. But that's the gist of where I'm going.
Does the GM, or other players have to work around what I've established? The same with Svetlana. If I lay her blueprint, what if someone else wants something else instead? Do NPCs just morph as needed by someone at a particular time without ever having an "objective" core identity we all work off of? If NPCs aren't malleable in that way, what if the Svetlana I establish runs counter to the Svetlana someone else wanted, but I posted first so I win?I think with the style of play that's been proposed we'll all just have to 'yes and' everything with respect to NPCs. We might need to keep a Google Doc or something with notes about what NPCs have said or done before so we can keep characterization straight, but going with the traditional improv idea of building on instead of retconning what's come before seems like the only practical way to share storytelling.
Or, if all these things are supposed to get hashed out among us so we reach a consensus before those kinds of decisions about people, places, and so forth are made, when do we ever get around to posting in-game?I'd love to do this now or far in advance for major NPCs like Sootscale or Irovetti (or Hargulka or Rhoswen if they're included or even Maegar Varn or the Swordlords if we want to get deep into backstory) where their motivation might change their approach to the PCs.
For minor but not majorly game-affecting NPCs like Oleg/Svetlana, Kesten, or other potential advisers like Jhod or Jubilost maybe we could just do a bullet point kind of guidelines sort of thing.
For antagonists who are going to fight with us regardless, like the Stag Lord or Armag, we might not have to do as much work.
If we are going to make these kinds of decisions, more or less treating the Kingmaker AP as a known text for us players, should I maybe buy the AP? I've played Book 1 before in 1st edition but it's been a while. Beyond that point I have very little idea of what happens and who NPCs etc. are at all. I don't imagine I'd have much to say about the ones I don't know one way or another.
That's not necessarily a bad thing perhaps. Trillium isn't really tied to anything strongly except the vanishing of the Rogarvians thread. That particular piece of things may or may not be a big presence in Kingmaker more generally. My impression is it doesn't.
That could mean that Trillium is mostly floating along just taking things as they come without needing anything in particular from the NPCs or setting, at least for a while.
That would actually work pretty well for her as a character. If this is potentially a "yes, and..." kind of game, Trillium is a "yes, and..." type of person.
If you're familiar with the black and white cut-scene in New Order's video for Bizarre Love Triangle, ( if not the cut scene is here, coming up in a few seconds) it's the initial seed for Trillium's personality. I flipped it around though, she IS a real 'up' person. Trillium would find the good in coming back as a bug or a rabbit. Also, now you know why Trillium picked up a rabbit along the way. It's the most deeply hidden easter egg ever that only I would ever get until now.
Trillium will be concerned about some things from the beginning, but those will mostly be personal and may not even be shared much in a direct way with other characters. So for a while as she wrestles with some internal issues, a lot of her posts will be about what she is thinking rather than necessarily saying. This isn't to say nothing happening for a while won't affect her, just that rather than having specific plans I can be opportunistic in picking up things that do affect her in some significant way.
Anyway, I digress. My point is that I think Trillium can mostly just go with the flow on lots of things, especially the early things I'm aware of. This should make make it easier to manage collaboration easier early on as we get used to things and find a groove.
Hi everybody! I'm still here. I know my posting is frustratingly slow. I'm sorry for that, but that's just how it is for me right now. I know the overall concept here is ambitious, and you're all on board to at least try some different things to see what we can do.
It's not my intention to leave the game rudderless. I'm also not going to simply disappear without warning; if I have to leave, I will tell you as soon as that has to happen. I say this just to reassure that pauses like this one don't raise the alarm bells. I can swing a daily check-in post here in the discussion thread if that will help.
It is expressly my intention to turn over as much GM power (but not strictly responsibility) to the players collectively, that's part of the experiment of trying to find better ways of running PbP. I'm happy to provide whatever support I can to you all to help you feel comfortable engaging with that. I'm not trying to keep any plot info secret or hidden, I'm trying to make this as open-book as possible. However, I recognize that nobody can just read my mind to see where I'm planning to take things. I am using materials from the 2e hardcover as baseline, so the map of Oleg's Trading Post is coming from there. I should have posted the map to the Google Doc when I submitted the post previously, I will do so now and update the Campaign Info with the link to the map.
On a separate note, this discussion thread is also a useful place to discuss elements of craft. I've been thinking a lot about how to write fey/fae characters (I prefer the spelling "fey" for fantasy roleplaying, but fae definitely has its place in literature overall). Fey in D&D are something of a catchall category of mystical creatures from different mythologies, and Pathfinder added to that. Recognizing that there are multiple folklores which are represented, how do you like to play with or write with fey? For my purposes specifically within this game, my intention for the NPC fey is to lean on Greek drama and Shakespeare as the two...
@GM Hurley: Thanks for the map! I'll probably go ahead and put that post together now when I get a bit of free time for it.
A question about plot elements since we're not going for complete secrecy. As I mentioned in my post before this, Trillium's main plot thread is the Rogarvians and solving the mystery of what happend to them. I said I figure this will be something that comes into play later rather than earlier. I don't think it is something than comes up in the vanilla Kingmaker AP. Also, it seems like something that would probably be engaged with outside of the Stolen Lands, same as the missing dwarven mine colony. My thinking is we will probably remain in the Stolen Lands for quite some time before going anywhere else.
Am I right about this? Would you mind giving us some idea of when the plot elements that are not vanilla Kingmaker would come into the picture? I figure we'll have a substantial degree of choice about when we pick them up actively and they could be delayed that way. But, roughly when would be around the earliest point when they would be tangible?
As for writing fey, I'd never really considered the question before. It seems to me a couple of things could make a difference. How old is the fey who's speaking? Maybe the oldest fey like the Eldest pantheon, Count Ranalc, Ng, etc. do have an archaic way of speaking. Personal habits regarding such things can be very sticky. But there's also a lot of flux and change in the First World, and language or speech patterns could vary tremendously. Fey that are solitary and/or stationary may have more conservative or archaic speech habits than highly social fey, especially those who spend significant time in Golarion. I any case, I'd think high variability would be present.
I've been thinking a lot about how to write fey/fae characters (I prefer the spelling "fey" for fantasy roleplaying, but fae definitely has its place in literature overall). Fey in D&D are something of a catchall category of mystical creatures from different mythologies, and Pathfinder added to that. Recognizing that there are multiple folklores which are represented, how do you like to play with or write with fey? For my purposes specifically within this game, my intention for the NPC fey is to lean on Greek drama and Shakespeare as the two touchstones for style. I'm not totally sure exactly what that looks like yet, but I'm thinking iambic pentameter if I can swing it, Greek choruses, weird prophecy, etc. I'm not expecting our fey PCs to adhere to this, I encourage you to play as you like. But when I think about Nyrissa, Count Ranalc, and The Lantern King, I very much think of it in terms of Shakespearean tragedy with elements of Greek irony.
I love any opportunity to use theatrical language and devices (and I agree with you that "fey" is superior for our purposes). Some fey are timeless or ancient humanlike creatures based on folklore, and I think having them speak like they are in a play is a great way to emphasize these qualities. But "fey" in Pathfinder and especially in Kingmaker also includes lots of nature spirits for which that sense of grandeur isn't usually needed, as Jack says. If you want to emphasize their similarities more, their cadence and choice of words would certainly accomplish that, and I imagine would lead to some excellent dialogue.
Much like I asked of Hurley, it would also be helpful if all of us shared the story beats we want to see for our PCs. Not just in a 'I wrote it in the backstory' sort of way but more an explicit 'Ta Bayang performs the Darkhallow and uses the ritual to replace the Forgotten Prince as an archfey' or 'Szofia beheads Joffrey Baratheon on the Iron Throne' kind of way. If we all have the same signposts it would help us all write in the right direction.
Well, most of my intentions for Zsófia involve meddling with the noble politics of Brevoy and regulating our new kingdom. I figure we will set up our capital city at the site of the Stag Lord's fort like the module prescribes, and an important goal for her subsequently is leading a team to explore and settle Candlemere, with the goal of turning the island into a major city supported by several villages around the lake. I think she'd want to turn the tower into a temple to Shelyn. Then I imagine she will mostly just be concerned with improving our kingdom and resolving the various threats against it.
Diplomatic relations with the Dragon Throne and the Swordlords are both personal stories for her. I think it would be fun to play a surprising romance and courtship with Noleski, perhaps engineered and manipulated by his sister, but it probably wouldn't lead to a marriage even if they fall in lurve because there is no way they could be political equals. Under the right circumstances I could see them having a child together (I wouldn't want to play any of that out, of course!) because that would create a ton of interesting situations and feels.
I don't know what would best resolve her Swordlords character threads. One way to end her grudge against them might be for her to beat Jamandi Aldori in a duel, and for the swordmaster to thus publicly admit that Zsófia is just as good as her Swordlords. I have no idea how that could happen, especially as it would be something of an international incident and a diplomatic nightmare for Brevoy. But if they somehow insulted Zsófia or our kingdom, I could see her demanding satisfaction in a duel, and political pressure forcing Jamandi to participate and perhaps even let Zsófia win. I think Zsófia would catch on and become even more furious, and demand that her opponent hold nothing back.
Zsófia will step back for most of the wilderness and nature-themed plots, including all the fey stories that touch on Nyrissa. Very late game, it might be that we come across Zsófia's mother, a former servant of Nyrissa and imprisoned by her, but that's a revelation that she is not expecting and I don't know how it will affect her since she chooses to believe her mother was an avatar of Shelyn instead. Might lead to a crisis of faith, but it might also lead her to double down on Shelyn and her hatred of fey machinations in human affairs.
If we are going to make these kinds of decisions, more or less treating the Kingmaker AP as a known text for us players, should I maybe buy the AP? I've played Book 1 before in 1st edition but it's been a while. Beyond that point I have very little idea of what happens and who NPCs etc. are at all. I don't imagine I'd have much to say about the ones I don't know one way or another.
I don't think you have to buy anything to tell some good stories. :) Having at least one player who is more or less blissfully ignorant of the module's plots is charming, in my opinion. Might help to keep us all honest, in that options for dealing with various events might not occur to the rest of us.
Hi, everyone! Some thoughts,
1. As for where we’re going, and who’s doing what, this experiment is very much outside my previous experience and, honestly, probably my comfort zone, though I thought I should at least try it. As far as chatting to set up the Levetons or plot points like Jack’s eavesdropper go, as I understood it, as others have mentioned, I think the idea is to share some of the storytelling work, keep things moving and flesh things out that otherwise might be less visible from the players’ side, while still sticking close to Kingmaker as we know it / as written.
So, for Oleg and Svetlana, sketching out some broad contours might help us with consistency, but any one of us might take the lead in running them in any given scene until we’re ready to move on and/or Hurley says, “Suddenly! Bandits appear! Roll for initiative!”
For things like the woman behind the curtain, it might be helpful to think about, “OK, how does this loop back into the wider plot?” The answer could be, “Let’s just run with it, and see where it goes!” Or it could be, “I want to let out some steam / roll some dice, could we drop in an easy combat / round-by-round scene?” I don’t think I’m in a good place to go full sandbox, and in that case I really didn’t want to step on any toes just at the start of the game, so I was happy to let Tsia lose sight of the spy and move on. I can definitely try to make that explicit and ask OOC, for example: “Are we assuming we’ll catch her? Should we set some checks for a basic chase? If she gets away, are we happy with a dangling plot hook, or do we definitely want to loop back to that at some point?”
2. As to how much steering we’re doing, again, and I’m happy to be corrected if I’m off-base, but my sense was that this is still Kingmaker, and the shared writing comes in with possibly fleshing out some things that we wouldn’t normally see for everyone’s delectation. For the Stag Lord, say, it might be, “OK, here’s what you need to know about his whole deal. Shall we take a minute to imagine / play out how things got here and why it’s important?” And then, once we’re happy with what we’ve got there, we return to the plot in the PCs’ time?
3. Lore dumps: I’m afraid I do get bees in my bonnet and very chatty, so I am sorry about that! I can certainly try to put self-indulgent, incidental nonsense behind spoilers, and signpost things more clearly. I do draw on some of the setting sources I have available, but mostly I crib shamelessly from the wiki, and I haven’t yet posted anything I was really eager for someone to take up.
Take my last post in-character: I made up a bunch of news for the gossip in town, because I imagine Tsia as a courtier and so that should come out in her characterization. But I could definitely have added comments and links to clarify who Tieldlara is, that I’m imagining “Sovai” is a popular song, and that I might have some ideas about the details, but would also be happy for someone else to steer them in a particular direction (by deciding, e.g., that Tieldlara plays XYZ instrument, or that “Sovai” is about ABC), or just say that’s silly aristos being silly, and moving right along.
4. If we’re feeling lost, I certainly hope folks will speak up! I have to admit, despite my chatty posts, I’m not the most outgoing person, and I’m on the messageboards and in these games for a bit of light distraction from real life. I very definitely have been – am – on the pointy end of IRL not cooperating, and sometimes having folks check in can feel worse. I gather that Hurley’s got a lot going on, and I didn’t want to add to that. That said, if anyone is unsure where we’re at or how long they can stay in a holding pattern, it’s all to the good to say so, I think. Until such time as we get a bit of momentum going, checking in every couple of days seems a bit much, but I can definitely chime in on the weekends if I haven’t been commenting on any discussion.
Other points, rather more scattershot:
As for Trillium’s question about taking over Svetlana for a bit, as I understand it, that’s absolutely on the table. I think we all have 3 narrative tokens, to start, and you could spend one to take control for the duration of the scene: presumably until we have to worry about really getting ready for the bandits showing up. (Once we're at the point of actually thinking tactics and positioning, say.) At this point, unless Hurley has particular plans for the trading post, I don’t think you’d even need to do that, and could just go for it. It might be different if someone had different ideas (“OK, sure, but which of you cares enough to spend a token on it?”), and there’s probably some inevitable give and take as all of us bring our own ideas, new details, and incidental flourishes, going forward, but we can work that out as necessary, I presume.
More broadly, I don’t have the volumes of the AP, and am unlikely to acquire them for the foreseeable, so I’m afraid I won’t be much help getting things on track in that regard.
I’ll have to think about Tsia’s story beats that it might be helpful for folks to know about.
Or not, and Tsia can just eventually return home at the end of the campaign. There’s the whole romance angle to her background in both senses, but I’m not going to inflict an amateur’s take on the more modern one on anyone; it can definitely stay in spoilers in the background with just an occasional reference in passing: “What’s Lady Troian been doing this week?” “What else? Pining.” / “Swooning.” / Patching up a misunderstanding. / Teleporting back from a weekend at her gf’s. Hopefully, a HEA would be brewing, but presumably happens after the curtain comes down on the campaign. XD
Mostly, Tsia, like her player, is always going to be 1) crafting and 2) kicking against the pricks of limited spells known. :) She’ll always be collecting stuff like spellbooks (and possibly a few occult rituals), alchemical and herbal reagents, and materials for wondrous items, especially textiles. Any of those might be involved with what she’s up to at any given moment, and possibly intersect with what other characters need or are getting up to.
Because some of the most thematically appropriate options for a fibre-artsy occultist are necromantic, there’ll also be a running through-line about how far she’ll take it. I don’t plan for her to be anything other than chaotic good, in the end, but I haven’t yet decided if she might try to justify raising the odd skeleton or two if *necessary,* though she’ll definitely be collecting – and, more alarmingly, distributing – creepy dolls. Tsia’s nowhere near as obsessive as Nyrissa, but there’s probably some thematic overlap to play with.
On fey: I think Pathfinder really leans into their manifesting either as the spirit or guardian of a place... or of a concept. So I think they would not have a universal way of communicating but their speech would reflect a given fey's nature. A fey associated with drama and poetry might speak in iambic pentameter, but one associated with water may simply speak in a gurgling tone and mellifluous prose.I generally wrote fey as more human-like the less powerful they were. Like Perlivash and Tig Titter-tut are basically tween pranksters and the Lantern King is an unknowable eldritch god, with dryads and swanmays and Nyrissa and whatnot somewhere along that spectrum.
For writing with fey, I’m inspired by folklore and some of the weirder and wilder old anthologies, like the ones in Dover reprints. :) I’ve never reread Dart-Thornton’s Bitterbynde trilogy, but it was very important to me (and draws on some very old Irish stuff for major story beats): one thing that was fun is that her unseelie goblin types are suitably crude, while swanmays and nymphs might speak only in blank or alliterative verse, though the most important characters thankfully don’t keep it up. I should also actually read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell at some point, but I very much enjoyed the BBC adaptation. :)
On a separate note, this discussion thread is also a useful place to discuss elements of craft. I've been thinking a lot about how to write fey/fae characters (I prefer the spelling "fey" for fantasy roleplaying, but fae definitely has its place in literature overall). Fey in D&D are something of a catchall category of mystical creatures from different mythologies, and Pathfinder added to that. Recognizing that there are multiple folklores which are represented, how do you like to play with or write with fey? For my purposes specifically within this game, my intention for the NPC fey is to lean on Greek drama and Shakespeare as the two touchstones for style. I'm not totally sure exactly what that looks like yet, but I'm thinking iambic pentameter if I can swing it, Greek choruses, weird prophecy, etc. I'm not expecting our fey PCs to adhere to this, I encourage you to play as you like. But when I think about Nyrissa, Count Ranalc, and The Lantern King, I very much think of it in terms of Shakespearean tragedy with elements of Greek irony.
I like the idea of fey as weirdly off-kilter from mortal perspectives but still down to, if not earth, exactly, something essential about the world, even if only in a small way, in the case of less imposing faeries. Larson draws on some anthropological work in her monograph on Greek nymphs, which has some interesting implications for religion generally that are relevant to the Eldest, and, goodness knows, the mess that is Pathfinder’s cosmology. Though, then again, that’s religion for you, isn’t it?
Greek drama is an interesting thing to add to the mix, because it strikes me as more abstract or general than the sorts of fey stories that I’m most familiar with, and definitely RPG magic. On the one hand, that Nyrissa’s ability to love is stolen from her and turned into something else is allegorically productive, but on the other hand, what does it mean that it is an actual thing? What does it mean for the PCs to be dealing with such, and what does it say about the world, or the sort of story we’re telling together? Swinging a vorpal sword around is one thing, and having Death themself wear out nine pairs of shoes chasing around the world after us is another.
If we are going to make these kinds of decisions, more or less treating the Kingmaker AP as a known text for us players, should I maybe buy the AP? I've played Book 1 before in 1st edition but it's been a while. Beyond that point I have very little idea of what happens and who NPCs etc. are at all. I don't imagine I'd have much to say about the ones I don't know one way or another.
There is now a Secret Link tab on the Dossier page that you might find helpful. I'll remove it after a few days to give everyone a chance to see it.
As for plot points that don't come up in vanilla Kingmaker, the game assumes that the players are able to successfully found a "kingdom" after the events of Book 1. Once that happens, the game goes into Kingdom Management mode, and we're going to have to decide collectively how we want to approach that. It's widely agreed that most published versions of the Kingdom Management rules are bad. Many fixes have been posted on the Paizo forums and in other online communities and on blogs. I'm inclined to move to something less board gamey and more narrative-driven, but we have time to figure that out. Regardless, once the game goes into Kingdom Management mode, there will also be ample opportunity to travel back and forth to Brevoy so the expanded content can get included relatively quickly.
@Maylev One of the most persistent criticisms of Kingmaker 1e is that Nyrissa comes out of nowhere in the final act of the game despite her story being the driving force of the whole campaign. A lot of Adventure Paths struggle from that kind of thing, and we have the opportunity to fix that in post. I'm intending to have Nyrissa show up as an on-screen figure starting from the end of Book 1. I am planning to include the character of the Fellnight Queen and her Fellnight Realm, but the changes are extensive enough that I'm not sure there's anything from the Realm of the Fellnight Queen module that will make it in. I've repurposed the character and made her a big part of the Nyrissa/Ranalc romance.
@Jack Briar is out there. By the time we get to the back half of the adventure path I don't know how much it will still look like vanilla. I'm tempted to say that, while I don't know where Briar is, it's almost definitely not in its vanilla location with Irovetti.
Notes on Book 1
Book 1 can go more-or-less as written. We can gamify the sandbox a bit if you're interested in doing hexcrawl stuff, or we can railroad ourselves. I've been messing with some PbtA-style rules for hexcrawling that would let you as the players have a bit more choice over determining what types of features are placed in which locations on the map. They're still in the rough draft and need a fair bit of playtesting, but I think it's got potential.
The "purpose" of Book 1 is to explore the Stolen Land a bit, get introduced to some recurring characters as well as encounter the natural environment as a character unto itself. I do have some notes about modifications from vanilla. The big ones are alterations to the Stag Lord's backstory and giving Akiros Insmort a more prominent opportunity for a redemption arc in conjunction with the abandoned Temple of Erastil.
GM Hurley, I'm still not clear on how much we are to take the reins. I think the most of us have been interpreting this is to write our characters with a fair amount of detail but only write NPCs as they directly relate to our character. For example, Svetlana talking to Trillium as they make the stew.
Part of the hesitation I feel I think in writing beyond my character is that in PBP I can't look at someone in the moment and say, "Is this okay?" So some more explicit ground rules on what we take up as co-narrators would be really helpful.
Just repeating this as having some guidelines here in the discussion thread or campaign tab would be really helpful.
Just repeating this as having some guidelines here in the discussion thread or campaign tab would be really helpful.
Yep. Hurley, thanks for the notes on changes to the first adventure. But it seems like the real stumbling block here is on how much leeway you as lead GM or whatever want us to have as PC-writers. Is it basically 'write what you want as long as it's within the bounds of the first KM mod'?
Do you have any preconceived ideas about how you want published NPCs to act that you want us to keep in mind as we write?
Ta Bayang's story beats
More or less in order:
- Ta Bayang is searching for information on Nyrissa and her whereabouts - likely solved at the end of Book 1 as GM Hurley mentioned above.
- Ta Bayang wants to understand the nature of her curse and the deal with the Lantern King.
- Then Ta Bayang will proceed to try and find ways to restore Nyrissa to her former self without having to fulfill the 1000 kingdoms condition - this will very likely tie with Jack's search for Briar
- I don't know what will happen to Ta Bayang during this journey and what changes they might undergo, but I imagine becoming more familiar with the world of mortals will also change their behaviour to be less fey-like and more mortal-like. But a part of them will always yearn for the First World, so they will likely seek pockets of it in the Stolen Lands - or create them where they don't exist.
- Bonus content - Count Ranalc/Shadow Realm/Fellnight - would be lovely to tie Realm of the Fellnight Queen into Ta Bayang's storyline somehow.
Narrative ownership and knowledge of the AP material
I do have both editions of Kingmaker and I GM'ed the second edition up until the end o Book 2, so I am quite familiar with the material and can take over any portion of it if needed/desired. I do not have a lot of bandwidth to GM right now, however (also why I'm not posting super often, work is absolutely slamming me), but I can definitely play most of the NPCs as-written. In terms of combat, I'm in favour of narrating/handwaving encounters except for the most important ones (like the Stag Lord).
Fey, meters, mythology
I view the fey of Pathfinder as a mix of mythologies and influences, so I don't think they should/would all talk in the same way. On that note, if you expect Ta Bayang as a fey to speak in iambic pentameter or Shakespearean English, it won't happen. English is not my first language and I haven't studied English literature in original - all the Shakespeare (and Homer, and Ovid, for that matter) was read in translation. Everyone else can do whatever they like with language, of course, but just to set expectations when it comes to me and how I write. If we absolutely want to include poetry, then they'll use the style of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Southern Tang school. :P
I’m still here, waiting for one of the scenes to advance. :)
I just posted something though it isn't much to go on--except to begin preparations for the bandit attack. And some interaction with Ta Bayang that I should have picked up on and responded to two weeks ago.
The upcoming bandit attack is a good test for how we are going to do things. Do we wait and simply react to the GM when he says the attack comes and we roll dice, or do we co-write the story of their arrival and make it more of a narrative event?
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Still here! Next in-game post on Wednesday evening.
I haven't been totally sure how to present Oleg's voice. But with that last section, I was thinking about Vinny from Disney's Atlantis. Something about Don Novello's deadpan delivery gets me every time.
The upcoming bandit attack is a good test for how we are going to do things. Do we wait and simply react to the GM when he says the attack comes and we roll dice, or do we co-write the story of their arrival and make it more of a narrative event?
For now, I want to give everybody a chance to narrate preparations. I'm happy to have you co-write it and make it a narrative event if you're willing to do so. I know it will take awhile to get comfortable with having players take over some NPCs, so if we'd rather just get to the dice-chucking, we can. Either way, I'm expecting to roll initiative within one to two GM posts.
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Of course Trillium owns a set of the yellow cross-gartered leggings. How could you possibly think otherwise?
The Callistria connection is perfect, I'm jealous I didn't see it before myself!
I haven't been totally sure how to present Oleg's voice. But with that last section, I was thinking about Vinny from Disney's Atlantis. Something about Don Novello's deadpan delivery gets me every time.
*Whoosh!* (I am not much of a pop culture person. :) )
But obviously, at some point, Tsia will have to do that one bit from As You Like It when Oleg's around to see it.
But obviously, at some point, Tsia will have to do that one bit from As You Like It when Oleg's around to see it.
In iambic pentameter, presumably? I'm guessing it would be for our 12th night at the trading post.
I haven't been totally sure how to present Oleg's voice. But with that last section, I was thinking about Vinny from Disney's Atlantis. Something about Don Novello's deadpan delivery gets me every time.*Whoosh!* (I am not much of a pop culture person. :) )
But obviously, at some point, Tsia will have to do that one bit from As You Like It when Oleg's around to see it.
I didn't know the reference either. I checked it out on YouTube and yeah, it works pretty darn well for Oleg. Deep voice, fairly flat affect to his voice, low key.
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Alright, I'll stop inflicting very long and mostly internalized posts on y'all now. I had some extra time and figured it couldn't hurt to throw up a bunch of stuff to see if it might be useful for others for posting.
Sorry just as we got going, some urgent family stuff came up. I'll post likely tomorrow.
I'm still here, work has been A Lot™ this week and I struggle to find the mental bandwidth.
My dad isn't well so I will be slow to post for the next couple days. Please bot me if needed. In the spirit of the game I also trust y'all to move Jack around in the background as part of your scenes if you need to.
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All the best to your dad, I hope he recovers soon.
Same, I hope your dad recovers soon.
Just popping in to add my best wishes. It's tough when parents aren't well, and I hope your father gets better without too much trouble.
Lots of sympathy, Jack!
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Thanks! Things are better now for the time being and we'll hopefully get him sorted soon. (He's been dealing with anemia, which makes him sleep too much and can get him all off his pill and meal schedule and then that cascades into making all kinds of other health issues kick in... I don't think his GP has been taking it seriously enough, even though this problem landed him in the hospital once, but my sister bullied him into a referral to a hematologist.)
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We're pulling for you and your dad, Jack! Believe me, I understand what it's like to have life circumstances slow down your posting.
I'm currently working on the next in-game post now, should be up in a day or so, and I've been brainstorming better solutions than the Google Doc to keep track of info. I've looked into doing a Kanka.io wiki but that feels slightly like overkill. I'm thinking about maybe doing an Obsidian repo with changes pushed to Git, but I'm not sure how tech savvy you all are and if that's not even more overkill than the Kanka wiki.
@Trillium Long internalized posts are what the format does best!
We do need to have a conversation about what the table would prefer for the exploration phase. Do we want to do standard hexcrawl? Do we want to add mechanics that make things a bit more random (or at least change things from the base campaign so there's still some level of surprise)? The Stolen Lands are big and there's a ton of exploratory vignettes.
I do have some thoughts on restructuring the first book some, mostly in the direction of improving the Stag Lord over the default backstory and to flesh out a few of his lieutenants. Akiros Ismort in particular is an NPC that I think has a lot of potential and he's more interesting if the PCs have multiple chances to interact with him before the main fight at the Stag Lord's fort.
The PCs arrive at Oleg's just before the bandits' monthly tribute collection. They ambush the incoming crew, led by a mid-level thug named Happs Bydon — overconfident, bow-first, fights to the death in front of his men but folds when isolated. Captured bandits point south to the Thorn River camp.
The camp is run by Kressle, a career River Kingdoms bandit who earned her position by impressing the Stag Lord with her competence and ferocity. She's the real northern operation. Her camp falls when she does, and captured bandits there hand over everything the PCs need to approach the fort: its location, the password, and the intelligence that the Stag Lord is a drunk.
The PCs then take the fort, using infiltration or assault or some combination. Akiros defects during the battle. Dovan and Auchs flee. The Stag Lord dies.
Happs and Kressle exist in the published version purely as information delivery systems with combat attached. Neither has meaningful interiority. Akiros, Dovan, and Auchs have no presence outside the fort at all; the PCs meet them for the first time during the climactic assault.
The man who calls himself the Stag Lord was a soldier — capable, reliable, the kind Brevoy produces and uses without ceremony. His lord gave him an order: make an example of a village that had sheltered a rival's men through winter. He carried it out. Six months later the order became politically inconvenient and his lord declined to confirm it had ever been given. The act remained. The justification was withdrawn. He came south and built the same structure he had served, stripped of its pretense, which he considers more honest. He drinks because honesty isn't enough.
His organization is Brevoy with the manners removed. Tribute flows upward. Territory is managed, not destroyed — he has no use for underlings who bleed the land dry. Crews earn their place through valuable tribute or competent control of territory he wants. Impressive performance gets attention; destruction of earning potential gets punishment. It's a hierarchy with coherent logic, which is more frightening than chaos. When the PCs begin building a kingdom in the Greenbelt they are, without knowing it, constructing the same thing he already built — just with a charter and better intentions.
Akiros Ismort
A former paladin of Erastil from Taldor whose entire identity was built on an external structure — the order, the god, his parents' dream — that gave him nothing to stand on when something real happened. A love affair, public humiliation, betrayal. The violence that followed wasn't his true nature surfacing. It was what was underneath when everything collapsed. He has been punishing himself for it ever since, which he experiences as punishing himself for being a monster.
He is the Stag Lord's second-in-command and the man the Stag Lord sends to do unpleasant work — a specific cruelty, targeted at exactly the nerve it hurts most. Akiros does it because refusing costs more than complying. He is already looking for a direction worth moving toward. He doesn't need to be convinced to change. He needs somewhere to go.
He carries a rusted iron holy symbol of Erastil that he never invokes and never discards.
Dovan From Nisroch
Dovan From Nisroch is not from Nisroch. He said it once to seem dangerous and cannot escape it, largely because Auchs tells everyone. He is from Ustalav, where he grew up amid genuine horrors, fled when he became the intended victim rather than the observer, and has spent the years since enjoying the freedoms available to a clever man with no attachments and flexible ethics.
He was the Stag Lord's fixer until Akiros displaced him. He resents this with great precision — not because he wanted the dirty work, but because the dirty work meant the Stag Lord's direct attention, and attention is currency Akiros spends without understanding its value. Dovan From Nisroch understood exactly what being the fixer meant. Akiros treats it like a burden. That's infuriating.
When Akiros is occupied elsewhere and a senior response is needed, Dovan From Nisroch gets let off the leash. He takes this as opportunity rather than orders. What handling the business looks like is his decision. He is dry, sardonic, verbally precise in the service of cruelty, and smarter than his situation suggests. His contempt for Auchs is genuine, loud, and masks an equally genuine affection he would die before admitting.
Auchs
Simple but not stupid — he misses what Dovan From Nisroch says but catches what he means. He wants to be included, to help, to be around people who don't make him feel stupid. Dovan From Nisroch, despite everything, doesn't. He is rarely far from Dovan From Nisroch's side and is taking an increasing liking to Akiros, which annoys both of them for different reasons. He is enormous, earnest, takes everything literally, and is occasionally surprising in small moments.
We're expanding the Stag Lord from a two-bit thug with a few cronies to a would-be king to serve as a foil for Brevoy and for the players. The Stolen Lands are underpopulated in every respect in the vanilla game. In our game, there are various unaffiliated bandits and thugs who are vying for the Stag Lord's attention. They can get his attention with particularly valuable or interesting tribute, or by holding territory he wants without bleeding it dry. The Stag Lord has no use for lackeys that don't understand how to manage the resources of the Greenbelt.
My hope is to create more narrative surface area that's not just a string of disconnected exploration vignettes and random encounters. Specifically I want the players to have opportunities to encounter Akiros, and Dovan From Nisroch and Auchs, before the final confrontation at the fort. Akiros has some potential for a tale of redemption, and I want to tie him into the overgrown Temple of Erastil that's out in the Greenbelt. Dovan From Nisroch and Auchs strike me as a comedic duo and I want to see them play in the comic register. Think the Wet Bandits from Home Alone, Bulk and Skull from Power Rangers, Pinky and the Brain from Animaniacs. They could both be genuinely dangerous in a fight, but my instinct is to introduce this pair as dangerous in their first appearance and then switch to goofy comic relief afterward, like Jessie and James/Team Rocket from Pokemon.
the Greenbelt is a contested board. You're moving across it, mapping hexes, identifying resources, and disrupting bandit presence. The Stag Lord is also moving; his organization is actively expanding and consolidating territory while you work. Both sides take turns. Your turn is an expedition into the field. His turn happens each time you return to Oleg's to resupply.
Your three goals during exploration are to Explore hexes and identify what's there, Counter the Stag Lord's organizational presence where you find it, and Collect Intelligence about the fort — its location, its defenses, its personnel, its vulnerabilities. The fort's location isn't handed to you by beating a single load-bearing encounter. It's a puzzle you solve by accumulating specific pieces of knowledge from the field.
The mechanics use the existing Pathfinder skills. Instead of the standard hexcrawl rules, we treat each exploration as a West Marches-style expedition. The party decides their direction and their goal for the expedition. We don't stop at each new hex and resolve it; we push through with narrative description until you find a terrain feature worth noting, you come to a decision that needs to be made, or the Stag Lord's presence asserts itself. Returning to Oleg's after an expedition advances the overall "board state" and then the Stag Lord gets to take a "turn".
Obviously this isn't a fully fleshed-out system yet. I wanted to float it to see how we felt about it. If we'd rather stick with baseline hexcrawl rules, we can. If we want to go straight railroad narrative, we can do that.
I am really liking the idea of making the Stag Lord and his lieutenants more-dimensional and encountering some of them before the final confrontation at the fort. I also like the idea that they're not just passively waiting for us to come and kick their butts, the Stag Lord is also actively expanding his influence and control. I also find Kressle an interesting character - in the KM game I ran the party recruited her and she was on a redemption arc. (I love redemption arcs)
I think after the first encounter at Oleg there may be opportunity for tension regarding the exploration - we shouldn't range out too far because we expect a punitive expedition to hit Oleg's. We can probably skip the "filler" encounters in hexes and focus on the ones that introduce characters (be it individuals or groups), to keep things moving a bit faster.
Part of me likes the idea of making the Stag Lord a little more tied into the ongoing politics of the world. Part of me likes the idea that sometimes, especially in a world like this, bandits gonna bandit. I'm willing to go with the former, however... as long as it doesn't just add to a list of really overly complex details that are going to distract from focusing on the here and now of our characters. I want to tell the heroes' adventure, not write an encyclopedia of Brevonian (Brevish?) political machinations.
Re: exploring the map. It makes sense to me that given the PCs are supposed to be exploring and mapping things out. They are going to want to do this methodically and sensibly (well, at least Jack would), and it makes as good sense as any to track where they've scouted by breaking up the area into 12 mile by 12 mile hexagrams of land.
In other words, I don't actually find the hex crawling overly meta nor distracting from the story. The fact that it helps me as a player keep track of where we've been is a bonus.
Moreover, if we keep the hex process, I am happy to be the one who keeps and updates the player version of the map.
Now, of course, I'm happy to handwave through "there is nothing in this area but mud." I don't need to roleplay out assessing the location of every tree. Nor for that matter have I played a version of Kingmaker where we did that. I also don't need the Owlcat version where there's a deadly combat behind every rock.
I also like the idea that the Stag Lord is operating while we also explore and seek him out. If it's easier to track that in sort of a turn based kind of scenario, that's fine with me.
I don't have problems with hex-based exploration. The part I'm struggling with is specifically in using the given mechanics and expectations for how the players and the GM use those mechanics to tell the story. It's not that I don't think there should be hexes or that you shouldn't explore those hexes. It's that the default procedural rules structure of "enter hex, roll relevant skill checks, find or do not find the important feature of the hex, check for random encounters, move on to the next hex, repeat, etc. Make camp, roll for random encounters, rinse and repeat for the next day" is a rigid structure that serves procedure and a certain style of survival simulationist gameplay that sacrifices the ability to craft a more beat-driven narrative structure. I want to find a way to create more coherent narrative structure, but not in a way that just adds even more bloat on top.
I know full well that we have multiple outdoors-centric character builds in the party, and exploration is one of the areas where they get to shine. I want to preserve a gameplay structure that honors and rewards those build decisions; the fact that you made those decisions informs me as the GM that you're interested in that part of the game, and my decision to include you in the game is a contract I have made with you to cater to that mode of play. I'm just figuring out how to cater to that mode of play in a way that also supports this ambitious group creative writing experiment instead of relegating coherent narrative structure to the backseat, because I feel that the default expectation of the game-as-published absolutely relegates the narrative structure to the backseat.
I hear you that you want to tell the heroes' adventures. I want to do that too. I just want the adventures to have a more coherent structure than "we took a lot of long walks in the woods, had a few laughs, met some wacky fey, and fell backwards into toppling the Stag Lord because at the end of the day somebody had to do it." I'm more interested in a version of the world that is dynamic enough that it would be different, and probably a lot worse, if the PCs weren't in it, while also threading the needle so that the main characters aren't Destined Chosen Ones.
I also understand that it might be exhausting and exasperating to be sitting around talking about this when we could just "get to the game already".
I’m happy to stick with the regular hex-crawl, possibly moving a few things around to turn up in new places for folks who have played this bit of the campaign before. I also like the idea that both we and the Stag Lord will end up trying to outmanoeuver, or rather, -strategize the other side. The main question I have about that is what it would look like in-game. Given that the bandits are a nasty bit of work, are we picking off the lieutenants as we run into them, or if their positions outside the fort are too strong for us to do so, what would keep them from doing the same to us? A bunch of reports of trappers and the handful of homesteaders that might be around getting shaken down before we have a chance to intervene, making it more complicated for us to win them over, or the like?
I am curious about who the Stag Lord took the fall for, and how or if that might come up again. It’s fine if it’s just a reminder that Brevoy is actually a much nastier place if one looks under the rugs, but that definitely spins the story in a particular direction away from the focus on what’s going on with Nyrissa et al., if our characters get shown that maybe the main problem with dragons taking the place over is that the jerks in charge are [bleeping] dragons, rather than that non-jerks are being displaced. Although that does raise interesting questions about the corrosive effects on local politics that might be relevant for the fey angle.
Ugh. Guess Tsia's going to have to grow a bit beyond knighthood and start thinking about showing these yahoos what a true lady looks like. ;)
Edited to add: I think just adding a bit more reactivity to the bandits' doings should answer the trick, GM. Otherwise, I mean, how exciting do surveys get? One marks out an area, breaks it up into chunks, and sees what turns up, no? Scenery might not be glamorous (and I say this as a Radcliffe fangirl!) but neither is exploration, short of selling a very decided fantasy of what it is. If we want to highlight the threat the bandits pose a bit more, I doubt it would take much more than addressing it in a post or two as the PCs figure out the best strategy to track the bandits down as the priority bumps up, and then lampshading the clues that lead them to the Stag Lord.
Thanks for the clarification, Hurley.
What would be most fun for you in running the exploration?
These ideas sound great, especially for streamlining hex exploration and a longer campaign against the Stag Lord, but I worry what's going to happen when combat starts. Should we figure out a way to handwave typical combat rounds and make it more narrative? Regular dice-rolling and battlefield tactics of Pathfinder's turn-based system are really going to slow down this game even more if it takes two weeks to get through a single round.