P Tigras's page

I believe that there are two smaller issues that together make a bigger issue with the NPC's in the early books of WotR. The first issue is the number of NPC's the PC's are forced to take along, and all the personal drama between them that isn't to everyone's taste. This I think holds for the first two books in the AP. In the first book the boatload of NPC's is required, in the second it is highly encouraged and the players are rewarded if they are taken along.

Then there is the fact that one of those NPC's is Irabeth who starts out several levels ahead of the players, has a lover as another party NPC, and is eventually promoted to the nobility where she starts giving the pc's quests in book 3. She requires a bit of judicious handling on the part of the GM, so that the pc's don't feel outshined by her extra levels in book 1, don't feel like her sidekicks (if she is placed in charge of the troops as suggested) in book 2, and don't feel like her errand-boys and girls in book 3 when she is given command of the city the players liberated and starts sending them on quests.

I would not call Irabeth a Mary Sue, but I do think that depending on the party, she may require careful handling by the GM, because I -can- see how she could come across as a GMPC.

P Tigras - you may want to look at Throne of the Night if you want a Kingdom build experience.

http://paizo.com/products/btpy92m8?Throne-of-Night-Book-1-Dark-Frontier

You read my mind Curmudgeonly. :) I'm planning on looking at Throne of Night next.

It's my impression that your theory about Kingmaker's popularity is correct. However, I think there's more to it than just popularity. Since day 1, Paizo has given me the impression that they're all about telling the story they want to tell, and, while Kingmaker is very popular, there are a LOT of stories to tell. Some of those stories do not mesh well with the sandboxy nature of Kimgmaker at all, others (such as Wrath of the Righteous) might fit somewhat, and yet others are tailormade for the concepts that Kingmaker introduces.

So, Paizo will get around to another Kingmakeresque adventure path if/when the story they want to tell is perfect for the concept. They undoubtedly know it's a popular form of storytelling. In the meantime, there are many other play styles and preferences out there to cater to and tell stories for.

You make several interesting points. First, I think it's pretty clear that Wrath of the Righteous #3 -could- have been a mini-Kingmaker. The elements to set it up were all there, but the design team chose to take it in a different direction, as is their prerogative. Yes I was disappointed, but I'll live. And clearly there are plenty of people who are happy with the direction that was taken.

Secondly, Kingmaker was a giant sandbox because so much of it was focused on exploration. A Kingmaker variant taking place in a more settled area that is well mapped would easily lend itself to a much different sort of story.

Also, Kingmaker wasn't universally beloved, either. I couldn't continue after module two, because I couldn't stand the city building system and one-encounter-per-day schedule anymore and wanted a meatier story.

I grant that the new rules Kingmaker introduced weren't without some flaws that required massaging by the GM. As far as the desire for a more meaty story is concerned, a Kingmaker variant that is less sandboxy would create more room for a richer story arc.

I'm reminded of TSR's old Bloodstone series which starting with the barony of Bloodstone set the PC's up to be the rulers of the Kingdom of Damara, if they chose, once they finally triumphed over Orcus in the Abyss. That was by no means a sandbox, and the story was very meaty.

Frankly it's not a big deal and I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. And really has almost nothing to do with the current discussion.

I was thinking the same thing. It's not.

Drock11 wrote:

I thought that Irabeth being put in charge over the players was a weird thing also, but it's something that's easily enough remedied by changing to to the queen offering up Irabeth's services as a stand in commander of Drezen when the players are otherwise preoccupied or it's inconvenient for them to run the day to day operations of the city as hero's of the war when they are needed other places.

Still it would have been nice if the it was created that way or at least stated more clearly if that's the way it was supposed to be.

When I get around to running this part I won't have Irabeth making the decisions about the city when the characters are there and it's reasonable for them to do so themselves.

There's two pretty simple reasons why Irabeth is put "in charge."

1) It gives her an important job that's worthy of the character and thus keeps her on stage in the background. Put another way... the PCs' jobs are more important than staying at home and ruling a city.

2) This is not "Kingmaker 2." The PCs aren't supposed to stay home and help run and protect Drezen—that's the job of the Sword of Valor and the significant NPCs. This third adventure is sort of a transition point where the PCs go from the last of their "non-mythic" adventures on the Material Plane and move on to much bigger things elsewhere, and we didn't want to repeat the error of Second Darkness and set things up with the expectation that the PCs SHOULD stay at "home" when the adventure path itself needs them to go quite far away from Drezen in order to save much more than Drezen.

As for the idea of the PCs being sent on quests... that's something that's included for parties who don't have player characters who self motivate well to go get their own things done... which is a fair amount of parties (if I'm only using my own groups as examples). If your group is good at going out to take care of problems on their own, you can probably avoid having NPCs send them on missions entirely... or even better,...

I do believe that you and I can both agree that this AP isn't Kingmaker 2. My group however keeps badgering me to find them another adventure like Kingmaker. Now correct me if I'm mistaken, but to my knowledge, Paizo hasn't put out anything else in the spirit of Kingmaker. Why is that? Kingmaker seems to win all of the online polls I've seen when people get asked their favorite AP. So it can't have done that badly.

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The size and boundaries of Drelev's barony are never really mentioned.

I think this is somewhat intentional, to allow the GM to define those borders as they see fit.

It's not clear to me what's gained by treating Drelev this way, aside from more work for the GM. Laying out the domain would have at least forced the designers to consider the question of how Drelev ended up bordering Tatzlford, no easy feat given both the geography and the rules, instead of punting it for GM's to scratch their heads over.

Quote:

Kingmaker used the word "kingdom" rather liberally, as if were a synonym for the word domain.

This likewise I think is intentional, for a few different reasons.

Firstly, not everyone will use the default titles and such provided in the book - for example, Varn and Drelev are both Dukes in my game, and my PC ruler was a Duchess who just recently got promoted to Viscountess and will eventually top out as a Countess. Varn would have been promoted to Viscount if he'd ever managed to deal with the tribal trouble and get Varnhold expanding some; Drelev was pretty much a lost cause.

So why bother to make distinctions between Barons, Dukes and Kings based on the size of their realms? They're pushing the very default titles you're arguing that they're trying to avoid.

Secondly, it also saved the writers the trouble of having to look up the precise terminology every time they were referring to this or that colony.

It's pretty easy actually:

Baron --> Barony
Duke --> Duchy
King --> Kingdom

I didn't have to look up anything. And any author who knows what a Baron, Duke and King are, should know what a Barony, Duchy and Kingdom are. This isn't rocket science.

Lastly, there's also the fact that you're dealing with a region in Golarion that is full of tiny little independent fiefdoms referred to collectively as "The River Kingdoms", so in that sense the colony/ies - once independent - are technically Kingdoms, and referred to as such in-canon.

If that's the case, then just tell the players they can call themselves whatever they want. Don't force the titles of "Baron", "Duke", and "King" on them, just say their "kingdom" is small, medium, or large. Pretty simple actually.

P Tigras wrote:

No, my group while generally good, isn't particularly lawful, and has a cynical view of authority. They're also acclimated with how situations like this are handled in the real world, and to them this particular event will come across more like this:

Queen Godfrey: "Thank you ever so much for taking back our old fortress-city. In gratitude I'm stripping you of your command of the army and appointing you scouts, a position to which you grunts are much better suited. I've also decided to appoint your former sidekick Irabeth Lord of the city you liberated, a position to which her leadership skills are ideally suited. This will enable you to claim more glory fighting demons, and if you survive, I'll gladly reward you with some more medals.

PC: "Whoa, wait, why are we being demoted from commanders to mere scouts? Why is Irabeth being promoted over us?

Queen: "I don't trust you with the city, or even an army any more, but I didn't really want to admit that to you openly because we still need you to kill demons for us."

PC: "We're not just stupid grunts. f~!% this place!!

Queen: "But, but, the people of Avistan, no, the world needs! Please, reconsider!"

PC: "You're right about one thing lady, there are plenty of other places in the world where great earth-shattering evil is happening, places where we can make a difference and our allies won't treat us like chumps. Good luck with the demons, and please stop turning a blind eye while the other lords and ladies under your command burn innocents at the stake. It makes you look almost as bad as the demons."

Adorable. Abandoning a group of people to their doom because the players are petty and need to be the center of attention is neither lawful nor good.

*rolls eyes* Melodramatic hyperbole. You're forgetting the Sword of Valor. My group is way too savvy for that approach to work.

Kingmaker used the word "kingdom" rather liberally, as if were a synonym for the word domain. Even small domains of 20 hexes or less ruled by barons were referred to as "kingdoms", when they probably should have been referred to as baronies instead. Varnhold and Drelev, both small domains of under 20 hexes were ruled by barons, and thus would have been more accurately considered baronies.

Varnhold was a barony of 19 hexes. It consisted of Varnhold plus all territory within 2 hexes, including both the road along the Kiravoy bridge, and a "a fair amount of farmland", of which the bridge hex is part.

As for the Nomen centaurs, my group through some amazing role-playing managed to convince their matriarch (after saving her daughter and retrieving the stolen magical bow) that they should join the "kingdom" as full partners. Their matriarch became Governor of the Dunsward with full authority over land rights and construction projects in that area, ie. humans and others can't couldn't claim land or build there without her explicit permission, allowing the centaurs to preserve their nomadic way of life. The PC's were also bound to come to the aid of the centaurs against outside threats as part of a mutual defense pact. Humans were however allowed to travel through the Dunsward and centaurs through the rest of the "Kingdom". In fact, some of the less militant centaurs were hired to act as official mail carriers and messengers between settlements in the other parts of the kingdom fostering friendship and goodwill as well as providing a useful service.

The size and boundaries of Drelev's barony are never really mentioned. Even the travel route between Brevoy and its colony is open to question. Yet I agree that Drelev doesn't seem very viable as is. The people are starving and the population is steadily decreasing when the PC's arrive. There's also that big swamp between Drelev and Tatzlford that reaches beyond the bottom edge of the map. How Baron Drelev could annex Tatzlford without a long chain of hexes around that swamp being in his control is a rather interesting question, and one that appears to exhibit a weakness in the game rules if one looks too closely. In the real world you don't really need to control the land between two settlements to control both settlements. It helps a lot with regard to keeping the realm stable, but it isn't strictly necessary as long as you can travel between them somewhat reliably if you have enough troops.

I thought that Irabeth being put in charge over the players was a weird thing also, but it's something that's easily enough remedied by changing to to the queen offering up Irabeth's services as a stand in commander of Drezen when the players are otherwise preoccupied or it's inconvenient for them to run the day to day operations of the city as hero's of the war when they are needed other places.

Still it would have been nice if the it was created that way or at least stated more clearly if that's the way it was supposed to be.

Agreed.

When I get around to running this part I won't have Irabeth making the decisions about the city when the characters are there and it's reasonable for them to do so themselves.

Yep, this is likely how I will handle it too.

No, my group while generally good, isn't particularly lawful, and has a cynical view of authority. They're also acclimated with how situations like this are handled in the real world, and to them this particular event will come across more like this:

Queen Godfrey: "Thank you ever so much for taking back our old fortress-city. In gratitude I'm stripping you of your command of the army and appointing you scouts, a position to which you grunts are much better suited. I've also decided to appoint your former sidekick Irabeth Lord of the city you liberated, a position to which her leadership skills are ideally suited. This will enable you to claim more glory fighting demons, and if you survive, I'll gladly reward you with some more medals.

PC: "Whoa, wait, why are we being demoted from commanders to mere scouts? Why is Irabeth being promoted over us?

Queen: "I don't trust you with the city, or even an army any more, but I didn't really want to admit that to you openly because we still need you to kill demons for us."

PC: "We're not just stupid grunts. f~!% this place!!

Queen: "But, but, the people of Avistan, no, the world needs! Please, reconsider!"

PC: "You're right about one thing lady, there are plenty of other places in the world where great earth-shattering evil is happening, places where we can make a difference and our allies won't treat us like chumps. Good luck with the demons, and please stop turning a blind eye while the other lords and ladies under your command burn innocents at the stake. It makes you look almost as bad as the demons."

P Tigras wrote:

In Kingmaker, which this AP has misguidedly been compared to, rulership was by no means a "desk job". So the precedent of rulers who adventure has already been set, and it's a precedent that is much loved by my players.

For the most part, I am going to step back and let James respond to this critique, if he wants to.

However, may I ask where exactly this "Kingmaker" comparison came from which has created an expectation which led to you being disappointed? This is a genuine question, I'm not trying for a "gotchya". I have seen the fan-base community make this comparison, but I have never seen it promoted as such from the "in-house" side of things.

If it has been promoted as such, could you give me a pointer? I promise not quibble about this either way. I'm just honestly curious.

An honest question deserves an honest answer. As you've noted, this comparison has appeared in the "fan-base community". One has only to look in the GM reference thread here to see quite a few such comparisons, and perhaps I should have posted my comments in that thread instead.

I don't think anyone "in-house" at Paizo explicitly promised that this book would be in the spirit of Kingmaker, and this is the reason why I haven't written a bad review and confined my comments to some posts here. I do however think that for those desiring another adventure in the same spirit, the previous volume in this series is capable of fostering an expectation that they'd be running Drezen, right down to the management of city resources. While it didn't explicitly promise it, it certainly seemed to strongly imply it. I can go into more detail about why it gave that impression if you like.

Regarding the background side-quests:

1) Instead of being available to all mythic paths, they're each associated with a different path. So if you want a certain mythic path, the associated background is forced on you.

2) Some players, including my own, prefer to craft their own backgrounds. To those players, canned backgrounds are an unwanted imposition on player freedom to craft their own characters.

I thus doubt that more than half of my players, if that, would choose to integrate elements from the canned backgrounds associated with their mythic path.

Regarding "Huddling Up in Drezen in the middle of the Worldwound":

1) If you think I'm arguing for huddling up in the city, then you really don't understand what Kingmaker was about. There was a lot of both adventuring and domain expansion occurring in Kingmaker.

2) The city is not less safe than the wilds of the Worldwound, or even Mendev itself now that the wardstone wall has fallen. Drezen at least now has the Sword of Valor protecting it thanks to the PC's.

3) The city is not in the middle of the Worldwound, it's pretty close to the Mendev border.

I recognize that there is a significant slice of the player audience that will happily delegate command of the expeditionary force of knights to Irabeth in Sword of Valor, because they don't want that responsibility. All they want to do is kill monsters and collect l00t. And they'll have no reason to be disappointed with Demon's Heresy when Irabeth is given command of the city. They're not my group however.

In Kingmaker, which this AP has misguidedly been compared to, rulership was by no means a "desk job". So the precedent of rulers who adventure has already been set, and it's a precedent that is much loved by my players.

This precedent is built upon in the Ultimate Campaign book, which the preceding volume in this series, Sword of Valor, integrates heavily, creating expectations. Demon's Heresy however drops the ball, stripping the players of both command and rulership without giving them anything meaningful in return. And it's that dropping of the ball that is the problem.

Furthermore there is no plan to close the Worldwound presented in DH, not even a search for a way to push it out of the newly reclaimed land. It's just a lot of scouting until you finally are high enough level to free Ash. And rulership is no more petty than looting dead enemies, and quite a bit less morally less questionable. Both provide resources that can be intelligently allocated in the demon war.

I found myself rather disappointed after reading through Demon's Heresy. The players are essentially demoted from the mythic leaders of a great crusade against evil to a bunch of errand boys/girls for Irabeth as she takes command of the city they liberated. It's basically a small uninspired sandbox with little in the way of story beyond "scouting" out the area and helping Irabeth rebuild her new city. The story doesn't really pick up again until you encounter the reformed succubus, but first the players need to gain a few levels scouting and what largely amounts to running errands. And that's where this story suffers. There are lots of small and relatively uninteresting encounters/side-quests.

Ultimately, I think SoV sets up those players inclined to general their own battles and rule their own lands to expect DH to be something different than what they ultimately get. And I think that can make for some disgruntled players.

In the real world, a letter like the one Queen Galfrey sent to the players after they liberated Drezen would be considered a demotion and something of an insult despite the effusive praise. I can already see my group of players, who -loved- Kingmaker, saying "Screw this! We're out of here. Let's go adventure somewhere else." when they're stripped of their command of the knights and Irabeth gets promoted to ruler over them.

Now it wouldn't be that hard to edit DH to make it work, ie. give them rulership of the city they liberated, and make it feel more like Kingmaker, and less like Pawnmaker. This way they won't feel like they've been kicked in the teeth, and I don't have to hear things like, "You told us in part 2 (as per the book) that our knighthoods entitled us to rule land", and "If the Queen wanted Irabeth to rule why didn't she put her in charge of the mission to liberate Drezen?"

I've just reached a point where I don't have a lot of time to edit adventures. My free time isn't what it once was. So I'm going to grumble when books like this one are produced that aren't very well thought out.