Cypher Pax's page

I'm not a great DM anymore - I pretty much run most things as written and improvise as necessary. My players aren't exactly power gamers either -- I doubt any them have even been to this site and they may might two to three trips a year to a game store. But we've been playing these adventure paths since Dungeon pretty much as written and having a great time at it.

However, Kingmaker has encouraged me to branch out and for the first time since college I've been running much more of my own material than scripted material.

I really like the 'outlines' that the sandbox provided -- it's allowed to branch out and fill in the blanks without having to worry how it's going to come together. The lack of time to do this being the primary reason why I don't run my own stuff. Kingmaker has provided enough structure and set pieces that I'm enjoying expanding on it.

We've also had some much fun with the domain building rules (and expanded those rules to become something that will undoubtedly become part of every high level game we run).

Having gotten back into the groove of writing my own stuff - I'll continue to do so to supplement the adventure paths.

Thanks to all the people who planned and participated in creating this.

While I'm writing this - I'd like to extend my thanks to the people who posted in Kingmaker forum. I read a lot and don't always feel like I have much to add -- but all the conversations here have given me so many ideas.

It will be months before our Kingmaker game wraps up - but I wanted to post this people everyone moves on to the next AP.

I'm considering a house rule that says for a city without walls - 50 people per square live in the city and 200 outside of it in the same hex. For cities with walls, the population is 100 per square versus 150 outside of the city. I think this gets to a more 'realistic' settlement where people have more space.

Otherwise, it's hard to reconcile the fact that the average population density in fledgling town (9,000 per square mile) has a higher population density that many modern US cities with have significantly more advanced infrastructures:

Here are some examples:
- Los Angeles (7,877 per square) *
- Seattle (6,717 per square mile)
- Pittsburgh (6,019 per square mile)
- Washington, D.C (9,776.4/sq mile)
- Atlanta (4,019 per square mile)
- Dallas (3,687 per square mile)
- Denver (3,898 per square mile)
- Phoenix (2,937 per square mile)
* many areas directly around LA exceed this

Even if you ignore sanitation, water & food supply, etc -- people in rural communities typically don't choose to build on top of each other.

They may flee to the safety of the city walls in times of danger. However, unless the city's on a gem mine or an important strategic point - it's hard to see why people why the independent settlers would choose to live somewhere where they need to spend their time huddled behind walls. Either the hex is safe enough to support a settlement, or it's not.

In any case, here are some contemporary population density numbers for some modern Europen cities that seem more likely comparisons for River Kingdoms cities
-Venice (1,690 per square mile)
-Siena (1,186 per square mile)
-Cordoba (671 per square mile)
-Heidelburg (3,466 per square mile)
-Mykonos (229 per square mile)
-Prague (6,522 per square mile)
-Salzburg (5,826 per square mile)
-Liechtenstein (Vaduz) (764 per square mile)
-Bruges (~2,0000 per square mile)

I then treat the population of the whole hex as the 'city' population with much more of the population being distributed over a wider area.

I'm trying to figure out population of 'farm' hexs -- I imagine it's considerable (probably a high hundreds to a few thousand per hex). Any thoughts here?

Hi,

This weekend I had reason to believe my credit card number had been compromised - so I have canceled the card associated with my account. I should have a new number in about a week.

It looks like the October shipment is going to be shipped soon. How should we handle this? Can we postpone the shipment until my credit card number is updated? Should I remove the card from my account?

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Thanks,

Michael

Hi,

I have a player that is rolling a replacement for their Legacy of Fire character as we start the 4th module. The player has a character concept for gen/elemental focused druid. The concept is similar to what I would think of as a druid crossed with a 2nd edition Sha'ir. Instead of a traditional animal nature druid - this one is more of an elementalist natural druid that's more into gen then fey.

This player is a role player and not a power gamer by any stretch, but I thought I'd run this by everyone as I'm certainly no expert at balancing classes.

She has Qadira - Gateway to the East and I just ordered the pdf to review. She wants to use the Suli race which gets to most of the flavor - and who also have an affinity for nature. It looks like we'll use the Zhyen in lieu of a animal companion.

I think I'm going to swap Resist Nature's Lure for the addition of Use Magical Device as a class skill. This last worries me, but it fits what she'd like to be able to do - use an item or scroll to summon a genie and bargain for favors.

Does this sound ok? Any other suggestions?

Hello,

I signed up for an AP subscription before I realized how awesome each issue is even if you don't play through it.

I have been following the boards and I know that #19 is due to ship soon and I don't want to screw that up.

Is there any chance of switching my subscription to start with #18? And how would that work?

Otherwise, I'll just continue waiting. :-)

Thanks,

Michael