The third installment of Kingmaker has been my first disappointment with the AP.
The exploration, diplomacy and wilderness taming aspects of the first two adventures were subordinated to a mystery and it suffers for it. The wilderness encounters lack the depth and detail of the previous adventures and aside from the Centaurs there is only one NPC that the players can form a bond with. And besides the big boss lair there are no ruins to explore! What kind of Stolen Land is that?!
The mystery itself is quite good, but it belongs to another adventure. The threat that the disappearance of the villagers presents to the PCs and their kingdom is seemingly too great to ignore and be put on the backburner. Persistant PCs who follow the clues straight through will wind up in the boss lair a level too soon and probably die for their trouble.
This pdf is a combination of the exploration and kingdom building rules featured in the Kingmaker adventure path (AP #31 and 32 respectively). While it is a good idea to combine two sets of rules that are annoying to have apart, it's not worth the money if you already have those APs. There is some new content to the rules by way of some new buildings and kingdom events, but you can find content almost exactly like that (and more of it) for free on the kingmaker messageboard. The layout is nice and clear and the artwork is surprisingly good (kudos to the artists). There are also some expanded kingdom sheets in the back which are nice, but not nice enough to spend $3 on a slightly bigger sheet of paper with a few more lines. Could have greatly benefitted from new material, I would have even paid more if there was some serious crunch added. Just seems like a wasted opportunity for some serious expansion of the rules.
