The Swordlords of Restov have organized several large expeditions into the Stolen Lands, each consisting of a number of experienced adventurers. The four of you have been given the simple task of exploring the region of the Greenbelt, which comprises the large hilly expanse of the Kamelands and the primordial forest of the Narlmarches. The mountain range known as the Tors of Levenies forms the eastern bounds of the area you have been granted purview over, as that region, along with the Dunsward, has been granted to Maegar Varn, his daughter, and a couple of knights sworn to his service. To the west lies the vast swampland of the Hooktongue Slough, which has been promised to Hannis Drelev and his companions. To the south lie the River Kingdoms, notably the kingdom of Mivon, which you should avoid provoking.
The Shrike River flows through the city of Restov and into the Greenbelt region, past Fort Serenko, which stands as a bulwark against monstrous invasions from the wilderness. Further west, just past the effective border of Brevoy, lies a fort abandoned decades ago which used to serve much the same purpose. Last year, the Swordlords gave funding to a merchant named Oleg Leveton to renovate the old fort and convert it into a trading post, so as to encourage more Brevic citizens towards the southern border. They have suggested that you follow either the Shrike River, charting the course it takes through the vast Kamelands, or to take the South Rostland Road west to Oleg's Trading Post, and set out from there. You of course can choose any course of action you desire, but your goals are simple:
1. You must defeat the bandits who have become a menace to trade in the area.
2. You must deal with any monsters making their lair within the region.
3. You must select a site for establishing your new fiefdom, and then return to Restov to lead the caravans which will carry settlers and supplies to that location so you may establish a new barony.
Discussion thread!
Alright, so, this is going to be a little bit different from most Kingmaker campaigns, and you're starting out with full knowledge that the Swordlords intend to sponsor a new fiefdom in the Greenbelt if you can deal with the brewing bandit problem there. Also, the campaign is starting a bit later in the year than 'normal', which means the bandits have had some time to consolidate, so things will be a bit different. You might still head to Oleg's Trading Post first if you like, but that's not a necessity if you'd rather get straight to exploring. I'll have a map and a gameplay thread up by Monday.
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For more than two hundred years, the bickering twin nations of Issia and Rostland have been united under the banner of House Rogarvia, descendants of Choral the Conqueror, who forged the kingdom of Brevoy with the fire of red dragons from the Icerime Peaks to the east and the blood of countless Sworldlords and their retainers from Restov. So thorough was the defeat of his foes his family's rule went unchallenged for generations until one wintry night two hundred years exactly after Choral was crowned king, the entire line of House Rogarvia vanished, beyond the reach of divination.
In the chaos that ensued, House Surtova sat one of their own scions upon the Dragonscale Throne as Regent until the Rogarvias could be located, though few were truly interested in seeing the brutal tyrants restored to power. Yet there has never been any love lost between Issia and Rostland, and the Surtovas are the most Issian of the great houses of Brevoy. Peace might have been possible had Noleski accepted a bride from House Lebeda, but a decade layer he remains unwed, the Rogarvias have still not been located, and the Swordlords of Restov prepare to make war for the first time in two centuries.
Yet Restov has far more enemies than just House Surtova and whoever might ally with them: to the east, tribes of centaurs in the Nomen Hills have been stirring and attempting to expand into the fertile Shrive River Valley, which Restov sits in. To the south less the wilderness of the Stolen Lands, once part of Brevoy and settled by the same Taldan settlers Rostland traces ancestry to, but abandoned over one hundred years ago to monsters. Beyond the Stolen Lands lie the River Kingdoms of Mivon and Pitax, ruled respectively by traitors who fled Choral's invasion two hundred years ago and by criminal families who would betray their own mothers for a copper piece. Normally the Stolen Lands would be a safe barrier against these bandit nations, but word is spreading that bandit activity has all but shut down travel in the region, and the Swordlords fear this means the River Kingdoms intend to exploit Brevoy's internal conflict to expand.
You are an experienced adventurer, contacted by Restov to join one of several expeditions they are hiring to settle the Stolen Lands and end the threat of war on multiple fronts presented by the River Kingdoms. Granted a charter by the Lord-Mayor of Restov and the Council of Swordlords, you have been given the right of conquest within the Greenbelt region of the Stolen Lands, along with three others. All you need do is quell the bandit activity in the region and slay any dangerous monsters, and as reward the Swordlords have promised enough funds and construction material to found a new fiefdom. They care not which among you takes the title of baron or baroness, only that you bring the torch of civilization to the region and support Restov's claim to the lands of the vanished Rogarvias.
Character Creation
● Level 3
● 20-point buy, no more than one score below 10 before racial modifiers
● No 3rd Party content
● No synthesists, master summoners, gunslingers, or 'eastern' classes (ninja & such)
● No Playtest material
● No 3rd Party content
● 3000 gp starting wealth
● All core races plus aasimar*, changeling, kobold*, skinchanger, and tiefling. (* aasimars receive one less bonus trait, kobolds may select any one kobold racial feat for free)
● No 3rd Party content
● No content from modules or adventure paths other than Kingmaker
● Select any two traits (unless playing an aasimar) and one custom campaign trait from the list I will be posting shortly. You may select any of the traits from the Kingmaker Player's Guide as a regional trait.
● No 3rd Party content
● No evil alignments
This campaign will be making use of the rules from Ultimate Campaign, including Downtime, with a few minor modifications. These house rules will be found on the campaign info page shortly. Note that your character doesn't *have* to be from Brevoy, but your background should reflect what you're doing in Restov if you were born in say... the Shackles, why the Swordlords would pick you for this expedition, and how the campaign trait you select fits your character. I have set no specific requirements for background, description, or personality, because there are several methods I enjoy, but please note that this is the most important part of your application. Bad crunch can get you rejected, but only a good write-up will get you accepted.
Recruitment will run until 5 PM PDT next Friday unless I decide too many people have applied, in which case I might choose to close recruitment to new applications, though anyone who has at least expressed interest and articulated a character concept will still have until Friday at 5pm to finish their submission.
Finally, just to be clear: this is not out-of-the-box Kingmaker. The locations may be familiar to those who have played before, as well as many of the villains, but if accepted, you will quickly learn why this is starting at level 3.
Just an odd thought I had, but what if the amulets carried by the Stag Lord's various lieutenants resembled a nymph rather than his helm? It would leave players wondering what the meaning was, and could therefore get them curious enough to actually learn about Nyrissa and her effect on the Stag Lord, especially since the dead unicorn will rarely ever yield such information. (Of course, I also feel it would help for the Stag Lord to have kept a journal that can crudely allude to a lot of this as well.)
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I have been working on putting together material to run a Kingmaker campaign for the past few weeks, with an eye towards improving upon a few deficiencies I noticed the first time I ran the AP. Among these was how terrain improvements work when using Ultimate Campaign. Because farms are given an asterisk, hills become far more valuable terrain than plains, and it's possible to have a city, a farm, a mine, and a fishery all in one hex. Rather than simply remove the asterisk however, I decided it might be nice to change things up and fill out the list of possible improvements a bit.
How my revised system works is this: each hex can have up to three 'major' improvements such as a city, mine, or quarry. The first improvement can be added as soon as the hex has been claimed, the second can be added once the hex has been improved with roads, and the third requires improving the hex with a highway. No improvement can be built more than once in any given hex unless expressly permitted in the description.
Major Improvements:
City
Effect: 1-30 City Districts
Restriction: Any
Description: Each individual district must be cleared in order to begin building (at a cost of 1 BP each). You may build up to three City improvements in a single hex, allowing a large metropolis of up to 90 districts.
Fields
Effect: -2 Consumption
Restriction: Desert, Hills, Plains
Description: A large area given over to agriculture, fields are typically planted with simple grains such as rice or wheat and form the staple of most diets. You may build up to two Fields in a single Plains hex, and a desert hex must contain a River or a Canal in order to build Fields.
Fishery
Effect: -1 Consumption, +1 Stability
Restriction: Coastline, Water, River, Marsh
Description: Simple piers for a small fleet of fishing vessels which catch fish and other seafood. You may build up to two Fisheries in a single Coastline or Water hex.
Herbalist
Effect: +1 Loyalty, +1 Stability
Restriction: Forest, Jungle, Marsh
Description: A simple cottage industry serves to collect herbs, mushrooms, and rare reagents from the surrounding countryside.
Hunting Lodge
Effect: -1 Consumption, +1 Loyalty
Restriction: Any
Description: Hunters from this lodge catch enough game meat to feed the local populace.
Mine
Effect: +1 BP/turn, +1 Economy
Restriction: Desert, Hills, Mountains
Description: Miners extract coal, metal, or salt from the earth here.
Orchards
Effect: -1 Consumption, +1 Loyalty
Restriction: Hills, Plains
Description: Cultivated groves of fruit or nut trees produce less food than Fields, but improve one's diet substantially.
Pastures
Effect: -1 Consumption, +1 Economy
Restriction: Desert, Hills, Mountains, Plains
Description: Herds of domesticated animals can graze in a far wider range of environments than are suitable for crops, and often yield leather, wool, or other useful byproducts.
Plantation
Effect: +1 BP/turn, +1 Economy
Restriction: Hills, Plains
Description: Cash crops such as cotton or grapes don't do much to keep bellies full, but do provide a steady source of tax revenue.
Quarry
Effect: +1 BP/turn, +1 Stability
Restriction: Hills, Mountains
Description: Extracting stone from the ground allows you to build everything from cathedrals to paved highways.
Sawmill
Effect: +1 BP/turn, +1 Stability
Restriction: Forest, Jungle
Description: A logging industry turns trees into useful planks for building houses with.
Minor improvements like aqueducts, roads, and watchtowers would continue using the current rules. I was considering setting the cost of each major improvement aside from City and Fields to 6 BP, allowing City to be 'free' (you would still need to pay to clear the land for the district, after all), and setting the price for Fields equal to the current price for Farms.
Thoughts?
I've been working on customizing Kingmaker a bit with the intent to someday run it as a PbP or Roll20 game, and have been retooling the campaign traits to be a bit more powerful and (hopefully) balanced in comparison to each other. I would appreciate feedback on how successful I have been so far:
Obsidian Portal link
This thread is for out-of-character discussion and chatting for the Wrath of the Kobolds! campaign. Feel free to chat all you like here, it's a great place to discuss stuff without clogging the thread full of OOC stuff. The first post for the RP thread is already up, so go ahead and introduce your character while waiting for the festival of Armasse to officially begin.
16th of Arodus, 4713 AR
Today is the first day of the week-long festival of Armasse. Once a high holiday for the dead human god Aroden, Iomedae's crusaders have appropriated the holiday as a time for training commoners with weapons, testing new recruits, holding tournaments, and giving new assignments. The majority of the events will take place in or near Clydwell Plaza, next to the immense structure of the Cathedral of Saint Clydwell, the primary holy site of Iomedae in Kenabres.
Prelate Hulrun Shappok, the fat old human who pretends to rule the city of Kenabres, will set of the official start of the festival at noon by invoking Iomedae's blessing. In anticipation, the Plaza has been filling with people since before noon, both countless crusaders wearing their best arms and armor, and entrepreneurial merchants selling food, potions, trinkets of all sort, etc. Luckily, such crowds present no real challenge to kobolds, who can easily slip between the taller humans. A number of gnomes, halflings, and even a frog-like grippli are similarly trying to squeeze through to better vantage points for the ceremony. Terendelev has yet to make her appearance, but you've all heard the rumors that she wanders her city in disguise.
Apsu called, and you have answered.
It has been several generations since demons from the Abyss first burst forth into Golarion and began their conquest of old Sarkoris. The soft-skinned humans of the Crusade think only of their own kin who perished before the seemingly inexhaustible armies of Deskari, giving no thought at all to the countless warrens of kobolds who bravely fought to their last. Even the mighty dragons of Sarkoris have fallen, the dreaded balors exterminating chromatic and metallic alike with equal zeal. Yet not all hope is lost, for kobolds are resilient, and the heart of a dragon beats in all of Apsu's children, not just his mightiest.
The Fourth Crusade is faltering as the human warriors who comprise the bulk of its ranks grow complacent after a long lull in the fighting, but a dragon is patient, and a dragon never forgets the scent of a foe. You are still young, hatched since the last major offensive, but you have heard tales of the devastation of Sarkoris all your life, how the mighty forests once teemed with game, of the vast hoards kept by crafty old wyrms who laired there, and of the atrocity of their murder by vile demons. The human crusaders call the place the Worldwound now, and all things which grow there are tainted now by the foul influence of the Abyss, corrupting the animals which still live there into foul beasts not fit for eating. The place is an affront to all life on Golarion, and the great and powerful Apsu, god of all dragons, has decreed that the time has come for his children to join the fight. The humans have proven too weak to defeat the demonic hordes, and so now the mighty dragons must carry on the torch of the Crusade.
Kenabres might seem an odd choice for a band of kobold crusaders to choose as their base of operations for launching forays into the tainted wastelands of old Sarkoris, but it has something no other fortress in Mendev can claim. Though the fat old human who claims to rule the city is a vicious bigot who lead pogroms against the people of his own city and has fanned hatred for all those with anything less than pure human blood, the witch hunts of Kenabres are largely in the past, almost certainly thanks to its true ruler. The ancient wyrm Terendelev has made her lair here in the city, its mightiest and fiercest defender. Her once-gleaming silver scales are said to have tarnished somewhat in recent years after she was ambushed by demons wielding a potent poison meant to corrupt her, yet she survived and remains steadfast.
The humans of the city are all excited because the festival of Armasse is about to begin, a multi-day celebration of their dead god, Aroden, where they hold tournaments and train the common folk in the use of swords. You, however, are excited because Terendelev is to make an appearance at the opening ceremonies. She is said to walk about in the form of a human so that she can spy on the people of her city, and you have no idea who she might be disguised as, so it is probably best to remain on your best behavior even if you should face scorn or derision from the soft-skinned folk here. To meet so mighty of a dragon as Terendelev is a rare opportunity for any kobold, and surely her blessing will serve you will when you venture forth to battle the demons.
Wrath of the Righteous, Kobold Edition
I was considering running this anyway, and since there's interest in an all-kobold campaign, here we go! I'm going to be accepting 5-6 characters, and holding this open for one week (until 5pm PDT on January 22nd), or 24 hours after receiving the 10th fully complete submission. (I'd rather not spend hours going over a couple dozen submissions, but I'll give everyone a day to finish up if we get a bunch of submissions early in the week. For this campaign, we will be using the Gestalt rules rather than Mythic, and characters will gain bonuses to ability scores, free feats, and other similar bonuses instead of ascending to Mythic ranks. If you were hoping to play a Mythic kobold, I'm sorry, but not this time.
Ability Scores
- 25 point buy
- No more than one score below 10 before racial modifiers
Race
- Must be a kobold. No exceptions.
- May select any one alternate racial trait (such as Dragon-scaled or Wyrmcrowned) without giving up the ability that racial trait replaces. (ie, you can take Wyrmcrowned and retain the Crafty trait.)
- May select any number of additional valid alternate racial traits.
Alignment
- Any good alignment.
- Must worship Apsu if a divine caster, limiting divine casters to Lawful Good or Neutral Good.
Class
- Select any two classes, using gestalt rules, starting at level 1.
- No more than one archetype per class.
- No ‘oriental’ classes or archetypes: lotus geisha, monk, ninja, samurai, etc.
- No firearm-based classes or archetypes: gunslinger, picaroon, etc.
- No master summoners or synthesist summoners
Traits
- Select 3 traits
- Each trait must come from a different category
- One trait must be selected from the racial/regional traits available exclusively to kobolds, such as Briar Bandit, Lair Snake or Carnation Scales. (Please note, this replaces the campaign traits, which aren't as especially appropriate for kobolds.)
Other
- Must have a background that describes where you came from, how you got to Kenabres, and what your personal motivation is.
- Must have a description which includes your scale color and any other identifying features. Those pesky racist humans always claim they can't tell kobolds apart. Show how nonsensical that claim really is.
- No 3rd party material
- No playtest material (sorry, Occult Adventures looks interesting, but it is not permitted until in print)
- No material from Modules or other Adventure Paths
- 150 gp starting wealth
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