Matt Wrycraft's page

Yesterday, after 4 years of playing (on and off - my group is also playing ROTRL and other games), I finally finished my Kingmaker campaign. I thought I would summarise the game, and highlight some of the changes I made throughout, and their effects on the game. Hopefully this will be of interest to other GMs.

Suffice to say that this has MANY spoilers. I'm not going to call them out, so if you're playing or going to play, then probably not a good idea to read on.

So...

I had PCs in the game:
Human Cavalier (became the King)
Human Cleric (Gorum) - died, not raised, and replaced with an Aasimar Rogue
Human Druid
Human Ranger (who later took Leadership and brought in a Cleric of Erastil companion)
Human Wizard

Before I started I read a number of the forums and identified that the BBEG was not obvious enough throughout the campaign, which became disjointed as a result. In addition I wanted to include closer ties with the broader history of Brevoy. To this end I added to significant changes to the metaplot:
1. Nyressa was 'allied' with Choral the Conqueror. She added him in uniting Brevoy, but at a cost. 300 years after he united the country his entire line (the Rogarvia house) as well as Choral himself - who is a Red Dragon in my version) were all pulled into Soul Jars and Nyressa and remain in her Fable.
2. Nyressa has a mirror which she smashed and then sent the shards into the Stolen lands. She could spy through them and over the course of the campaign the PCs learnt that there was someone behind this. Shards ended up in the possession of most of the bad guys in the AP:
Staglord
Hargulka
Witches of Gyronna
Vordakai
Irrovetti
etc.
3. The Druid PC regularly had dreams about a boy lost in the woods. From time to time he could hear someone (a girl?) calling 'Briar'!) He had not idea what or who Briar was but knew it was important.
4. The Aasimar came in the world with a prophecy that she was here to protect Briar.

Other adventures
Partly because I had 5 players and partly because I wanted to tie more of the fey aspects of the campaign together stronger, I incorporated a few other modules into Kingmaker:
1. Carnival of Tears.
A wickedly evil module which works with little effort. The carnival came to their capital city and then people started to die. They learnt that someone was behind the events and gained at least one mirror shard. The varisan harrower left behind a single harrow card with a blue dragon on it (The Tyrant I believe?)
2. Realm of the Fellknight Queen.
I incorporated the locations from the module into the Narchmarches (which was easy) and then started the adventure when the PCs were 6th level. Pretty much ran this as is. By now they add enough circumstantial evidence to believe that the Fellknight Queen was behind the shards and the attacks. They were wrong - it's Nyressa and Roswyn is her daughter(!) Of course they would find no broken mirror in the Fellknight Realm, which confused them.
3. The Harrowing
Two of the first KM NPCs - Oleg and Svetlana Leveton had twin children in the first year of the campaign. They were kidnapped on there birthday and taken to the Harrowed Realm. behind was left a harrow deck with one card missing. As soon as the PCs brought it together with the one left from the carnival of tears they were whisked away. They had to find the twins and return. It was during this time that tazlford was attached and razed to the ground.
4. Revenage of the Kobold King
Chief Sootscale (who was originally an ally of the PCs, but was convinced to cause them issues by Hargulka and was 'put down') returned in undead form to raise an undead army using the magics in an ancient Azlant tomb (taken from the module) and discovered in the plans to the east of the Narlmarches.
5. Dragons Unleashed - Eranex
I added in both the Fey Dragon and Vespyrs Blade. The PCs helped her and she returned the favour by telling them about Briar and Nyressa. They gained Vespyrs blade which helped them later in the campaign.

Comments on the individual parts:

Stolen Lands
1. Ismort betrayed the Staglord and ultimately became a member of the PCs Council.
2. There is a much bigger Gyronna temple under the hill - this would be found later...

Rivers Run Red
1. Grigori was arrested and forced out the Kingdom. He returned to Pitax and was later encountered.
2. I expanded on Cult of Gyronna. Niska actually ingratiated herself with one of the PCs. Became his wife, had a son, and then was exposed and the PCs had to stop her from sacreficing the boy to the hag-goddess. She had a shard.
3. Kundal was saved and cured of Lycanthropy - he married one of the PCs and became the General of the kingdoms army.
4. Hargulka set up his one competing 'monster' kingdom. He had a shard.
5. I used the Ultimate Campaign Kingdom building rules rather than those in KM. Fortunately for me a couple of my players really like the crunch of this system and I encouraged them to spend time outside the game doing the numbers (they developed a spreadsheet). The rest of the players preferred the 'fluff' of naming cities, people, etc.

The Varnhold Vanishing
1. Pretty much run as is. Vordakai had a shard of the mirror.
2. The found a copy of Zuddigers Picnic but made no connection that this time.

Blood for Blood
1. I already mentioned that I used the Harrowing as a distraction whilst Tatzlford was attacked.
2. In Fort Drelev, Stroon became an ongoing villian after he escaped the battle, he would return time and time again before finally being killed in the battle for Pitax.

War of the River Kings
1. I started with invitation to the Outlaw Council for the King and his council. It was there that Irovetti delivered the invites to his Tourney.
2. I used Hex Maps the KM Map book, and Carcasonne board game components to represent the citys, and Game of Thrones Boardgame components to represent the armies. We used Jason Nelsons Ultimate Battle PDF to expand on the War rules in Ultimate Campaign.
3. The Siege of Pitax involved the thieves guild and the noble houses. The PCs allied with some that wanted a return to a time before Irrovetti. They destroyed the thieves guild that was controlled by the king and then organised a coup. Pitax became a vassal city-state and Irrovetti was killed.

Sound of a Thousand Screams.
1. By now they knew of Nyressa (and her relationship to Roswyn and Shards, and all the events that had happened throughout the campaign) and Briar and the Eldest.
2. The used Zuddigers Picnic to navigate Thousandbreathes and slew Nyressa.
3. They found the broken mirror.
4. The destruction of the house released all the Rogarvia house and Choral! He 'thanked' them and returned to reunite Brevoy.
5. The story officially ended with the wedding of a PC and Tamary Numesti of Drelev. It was a fully wedding of Erastil.

Epilogue
The campaign lasted 8 years. Three of the PCs had children during this time.
1. At the end I let the players tell me how they leaved out their lives. None of them adventured again.
2. Finally I accelerated forward 11 years and gave out 2nd level characters - the children of the original PCs. They had an encounter in the Narlmarches and found a shard of mirror with a flickering light within.
The End

General comments.
Kingmaker is not, in my opinion, an AP you can just read and run. Due to the sandbox nature it needs to be customised to suit the group. It also needs more 'story' in places and incorporating other modules helps.
The PCs NEED to care about the Kingdom and do everything possible to encourage that. Create loads of NPCs, some important, some not. But breathe life into them and then kill them later (or marry them, or whatever).
Encourage the PCs to enjoy the kingdom building, and don't make it all number-crunching. All know when to stop using it.
Do the same with the Army/War rules. Use it to create an epic story, but don't let it get in the way.

In Review.
I loved Gming this. It was a lot of work but hugely rewarding. The sandbox nature made it easy to customise and therefore personal to the players. I suspect that Kingmaker will be remembered for many years.

If you want to find out more check out - https://the-conquerors-legacy.obsidianportal.com It's not complete, but there's an adventure log and NPCs there.

Is there a downloadable guide for Core anywhere? If not, why not? It would help both GMs and players at the table...

I'm sure others have had the situation at PFS table:
You're just getting started and players are deciding which characters to bring. Inevitably there are discussions about APL and class makeups.

I recently ran a scenario which definitely benefited from having a certain type of character (click Spoiler for the name of the scenario)

During the initial 'which character should I bring?' discussion I outright said that this is a roleplay focused scenario requiring fast tongues over fast blades.
The players considered this and some changed their choice of character
The result was that all all the PCs were engaged with the plot and it was clear that everyone enjoyed the adventure. I should add that one player said that he didn't have a character 'like that' (he had a straight fighter), but he played the game anyway and roleplayed his less that subtle approach to things brilliantly; his altercation with the name NPC was great and both of us obviously enjoying the verbal posturing involved. It's fair to say though that he knew by then that the situation would be better fought with words rather than with weapons...

In my opinion, my decision to 'warn' the players of the style of the scenario added to their enjoyment, but others might suggest that I gave them an 'unfair advantage'. My counter would be that reading the scenario introduction, which is typically part of the con sign-up (and obviously available on the relevant page on this site), would provide a similar hint to the kind of adventure ahead. I also don't consider PFS 'competitive' in any way, and make my style of GMing clear in my introduction at the begining ("...I want us all to create an exciting story together and have fun!")

My question is, strictly speaking is it legal to suggest or offer advice on the types of characters that someone should play in a game?

Or should I just have let them bring potentially wholly inappropriate PCs without any of the skills needed? To be clear, I'm not suggesting telling them to bring a certain class, items, etc.

Thoughts?

I've just started a new PFS group and, after completing three intro scenarios (Master of the Fallen Fortress, In Service to Lore I, The Confirmation) I really want to immerse them in the overarching plot for Season 5.

Apologies if this has been asked before, but is there a list of story arcs, or recommendations for ones to include, and in what order, anywhere?

It would be great to be able to use the Season to take the group up through the levels in a consistent and plot-focused way! :)

Has anyone come up with any rules for automating hexploration later in the AP? I've read a number of posts about the 'issue' of the new kingdoms rulers being forced to explore hexes and how this ruins verisimilitude.

We've just completed Stolen Lands and my players are looking forward to the Kingdom building aspects of the AP, but they are already questioning whether their PCs are expected to continue to explore the land. From the conversation I think they are looking to see the kingdom grow, still deal with the threats/plots (I'm going to be bringing the threat of the fey queen into the picture sooner), but don't really want the relatively trivial task of exploring.

I was thinking of introducing a simple rule, something along the lines of:

In the Improvement Phase each month, spend 1BP to hire/outfit Experienced Scouts (emphasis on the 'Experienced'. These folks need to be good enough and equipped well enough to survive out the wilderness). They can explorer 10 hexes per month - they have to be adjacent to one another as chosen by the PCs.
The Scouts will not deal with Landmark sites/fixed locations, but can handle wandering monsters (I did think about % chance of them not coming back, but that seems a bit overly complicated tbh). They will map, identify landmarks, report on the types of monsters etc.
The PCs do NOT get the 100xp per hex explored (which is irrelevant really in my opinion) and obviously miss out on random encounter XP/items, but there are other ways to get XP so I'm not too concerned about that.

Obviously this could be extended by extending the Event Phase to include scout events, having the Marshal be in charge of extending the kingdoms boundaries, or introducing a Ranger position to do that.

So, has anyone tried something like this in their own KM games, or aware of any pitfalls of doing so? To be clear, I'm not looking to remove that aspect of the game, just allow it to happen once the PCs have bigger issues to deal with (like Pitax, Nyressa, rampaging Owlbears etc)

WARNING: CONTAINS LOADS OF SPOILERS!

I've just finished running Council of Thieves, and thought I would share my experiences and some of the changes I made to the AP. COT was the first Pathfinder AP I've run, though I'm planning on running Kingmaker next, and certainly others in the future.

The group make up was as follows:
CG Human Bard
N half-elf Cleric (Pharasma)
N elf Sorcerer (though became NG later - read on)
CG gnome fighter
LG elf Paladin

The players all had read the COT players guide and had bought into the premise of the AP. so no issues there.

Heres's my thoughts and changes:

The NPCs
Make more of the Children of Westcrown (or whatever they end up becoming called) throughout the whole AP. I used them extensively to help build roleplaying situations, then started to kill them off as the problems in the city grew. Get them caught up on the action, but really not being powerful enough to deal with it. Loads of them died when the COT attacked the safe house in book 6! I actually had Janniven possessed (as per the rules in the AP) by a devil for a couple of adventures then reveal it when the safe house is attacked in the last part.
Use the information at the back of the Bastards of Erebus to build up the Nobles and the Dotarri. The nobles have a part to play in book 6 - but theres no reason why you shouldn't detail these beforehand so that the events in that part have more impact.
The Dotarri have very little involvement as written, but should, so it's good to develop this, especially in preparation for the final book.
Understand the history of the mayors of the city; Dargentu Vheed is really interesting so it's worth understanding this to bring him alive (um not literally..)
Ilnerik - he's a great bad guy, but consider making a pathetic (in the literal sense) character. He's a victim of the Totemtrix and if the characters start to relate to him it makes the events that take place The Mother of Flies more interesting (especially if one of the PCs is connected to the Morrowfell - see below).

The City
At it's heart COT is about the city of Westcrown. Do everything you can to make the city come alive. Use the information in the back of the first book and supplement with your own information. Create NPCs, shops, descriptive encounters, let the players constantly see a map of the city. By the end of the AP you want them to live and breathe Westcrown as it's really important for the final part of the story to have maximum impact.

The Aohl
I always felt that not enough was done with the Aohl in the AP - it IS an artefact after all. The Totemtrix curses it's owner to Vampirism, and we know that Bisby was obsessed by the Morrowfell. What I decided to do was have the use of the Morrowfell have an effect on the owner. This manifested itself in a number of effects:
+1 Positive Levels (think of it of the opposite of negative levels), when it's power was used for good. This was temporary of course.
An obsession with it (think of it like Frodo and the One Ring - it becomes 'precious' to the owner)
A gradual shift towards LG alignment if not already.
Ultimately it's owners life is linked to Morrofell.

The beginning effects I allowed the PC a Will save to resist, after telling them what would happen ("you're going to get a positive level, do you want to resist?"). I did this a few times, giving them more each time, with the will save increasing by +2 each time, whether they chose to make the save or not, long as they kept using it. The effect on the game was great (I worked with the player on roleplaying the obsession with it). By the end the PC had shifted to NG from N and the will save needed to resist the effects was pretty much impossible since the PC had allowed himself to be bolstered by it for so long.

When they came to Ilnerik, I had the vampire look upon the PC with pity and say they were kindred spirits, stating that they were both used by the Aohl and would be destroyed if artefact was joined (bluffing??)
In my game, when the vampire was killed and the Aohl was neutralised by bringing both parts together the PC actually died (will save to resist), as by then his life force was linked to the Morrowfell. The Paladin in the party activity used his sacrifice spell to 'take the damage' and died instead! Poetically the group used the Philosophers Stone to resurrect the Paladin. It was a great moment in the story, especially as afterwards the originally obsessed PC (no longer affected by the Morrowfell now its power was suppressed) shed a tear as it was melted down.
The price for the end of the Shadowbeasts was high, but well worth it.

The Shadowbeasts
The existence, and therefore removal of the shadow beasts, is important to Westcrown and the story. Until they are destroyed I made it almost impossible to travel at night. When they are removed, I allowed the PCs the time to celebrate their success, but then had the final breakdown in authority take place, and the people started rioting and looting at night as well! Ironically the lifting of the 'curfew' just fuelled the (literal) fires of Anarchy!

Liebdaga the Twin
As written he can be a bit too easy - depending on your class make up. I raised the tension by having one of the PCs (with his amulet) having to make opposed rolls to keep him staggered.
Also consider having the pit fiend communicate with the PCs during their time in the Spiral - encouraging, or even helping them with clues. Knowing you're being 'added' by the creature that is being imprisoned makes for an interesting situation.

The Play
The Six Trials of Lazarod is one of the most memorable parts of the whole AP. My players actually read through the play and had a great time! I highly recommend you do this if your players enjoy the roleplaying aspects.

The last part
I found the non-linear aspect of The Twice Damned Prince required the most amount of preparation. I ended up changing quite a lot of it:
I put Thesing in the Nymmis tomb - which I extend downwards, because I didn't feel that dragging the PCs to another location in the Rego Cader made any sense. This fitted well because of Thesings previous obsession with Nymmis. I also had his Vampiric Spawns be the NPCs from the playhouse, including Robhl Nonan, as well as Nymmis' father (one was wielding the sword).
The undead army changed a lot - I through dozens of zombies at the PCs as they made their way through the streets. This gave them a chance to flex their muscle with things like fireballs etc. The encounters were not really meant to challenge them, just give an indication of the size of the problem. At the Sunset Gate I added a Graveknight from Bestiary 3 (I had previously made up a story about the Devourer that included a fallen Paladin) that was leading the army. This worked really well, and without realising it, the PCs put the armour in the Cheliax Crux; which was being used as a general storage container for loot(!) and yes, he came back to torment - literally "Where are you putting the jewellery?" "oh, just in the Crux" "No problem, roll for initiative!" "what?!"
I completely dropped the Rolan The Tinkerer encounter. It really added no value to the adventurer, nor any challenge.
The Blacknapes because a solely roleplaying encounter, when the napes realised who they were up against they pretty much surrendered.
Skarxs prison I extended and including Lhianna Strikis; the Duxotar from the back of the first book (who I made a lvl 11 Magus) that was aligned with the COT. I had told the PCs (via Ertein Oberigo) that Skarx was a lover of Chammady and the PCs, who had the contract, realised that if they could get to Skarx and convince her that Chammady would die then the tiefling might help them. That's exactly what happened.

BBEG
The Vacant Throne was run pretty much as is. But! I did give Eccardian a chance for a monologue. He's basically Ozymandis from the end of The Watchman - he wants to make Westcrown a better place; under his leadership. Hence the staging of the battle against the devils. In my ending he thanks the PCs for everything they've done, mentioning that everything was as he'd planned (though the killing of Liebadga was a little unfortunate). When confronted with the contract he retorted with 'Think of the songs that will be sung of my sisters sacrifice! Her legacy will live on far longer than any of us!'
Eccardian needs a chance to explain himself to the PCs really. When you're ready for battle to be joined, Chammady can turn up and force the issue by attacking him..

Once the battle is joined the most important thing is to get the PCs out onto the statue, because the cramped interior of statue is no place for a climatic battle. This was easy for me, as one of the PCs bull rushed Eccardian out of the 'eyes'. It's unfortunate that there is no tactical map of the head and shoulders, but it's not difficult to make one up.

All in all, I loved the AP. It's not without it's faults, but still stands as a very good campaign with lots of variety. I didn't deviate very far from the plot, and enjoyed the end result, as did my players.

I hope you found this useful.