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Just a heads up that Patrick Keith - sculptor of the Bombshell Babes and numerous Pathfinder minis for Reaper - has his new Kickstarter up for pulp SF skirmish game Counterblast. The minis are looking great so far, and the rules look interesting though I haven't had a chance to try running anything yet. The page is here and it's about halfway funded so far.
I thought I was all Kickstartered out after Bones II, but I'm liking the look of this Kickstarter for modular, laser-cut MDF dungeon elements. I'm hesitant to call it a terrain Kickstarter because I don't see it being used for full layouts so much as to add cover and height elements to battlemaps (at least, that's what I have in mind for it). It's already funded, there are just under three days to go, and the next stretch goal will pay for a second laser cutter and add free elements to everyone's pledge.
My PCs have just killed Rigg and the Grimstalker, and are about to confront The Dancing Lady. Half the party is on top of her tower (and she knows they're there thanks to Detect Thoughts) and the others are down at the entrance. It happens to be a mostly-female party so she's assuming that was deliberate and that they know more about her than they actually do. However, one of my players is on the verge of changing character, writing out the current Spymaster (who is marrying Varn's nephew Felix) and taking over a sorceress who has just come into town and will make a natural Magister. This will leave a gap in the Spymaster role and I was thinking of encouraging them to negotiate with The Dancing Lady and eventually offer the role to her. She has natural enchantment and divination powers, plus I've given her a level of Bard, and she can pass as an elf, so she'd be ideal for the job. And having an NPC spymaster could be fun later on. So, do you think this could work? What will they need to do to convince her, what reasons might she have for agreeing, and how will they (and she) handle her blood drinking? Several of the Kingdom's agents are good fae, so how will they react?
Towards the end of the last session,my players encountered the Temple of Erastil and its guardian... Spoiler: By the time it was badly injured, they heard a yell from the bear that sounded somewhat human, so they switched to non-lethal damage and now have an unconscious bear tied up. They've detected necromancy (curse) magic on it, but aren't high enough level to do anything about that even if the curse hadn't been placed by a god. I'd kind of like to reward them for sparing it, but by the RAW, nothing positive happens until they kill it. Erastil doesn't strike me as a champion of mercy, so I can't see him interceding. The fight was somewhat ridiculous, with the bear being hit by grease, mudball and ray of sickening (I ruled that the latter did stack with the existing sickened condition since it was from a different source), so I can see some friendly fey getting involved after watching that. The party have encountered their first pranks from Tyg and Perlivash, but haven't yet made any attempt to contact them, so if they reveal themselves now all the more involved pranks will go to waste.
Have I missed something, or do we never find out what happened to the Iron Wraiths? Presumably the assumption is that they failed against the Tiger Lords, wandered into Thousand Voices or made the mistake of trying to negotiate with Irovetti before they were strong enough. If I'm right that it's never mentioned, I wonder whether to change Ilora Nuski's backstory to make her the last survivor of the Iron Wraiths. It would give her more in common with the PCs and tie up a loose end with the plot.
I'm preparing to run Kingmaker for my group later in the year. I'm making quite a lot of changes - it will be a 5-player group, for a start, and I'm using some of the ideas people have posted here for modifying the kingdom building rules. But one thing I have spotted is the repetition of a trope over the first three books, and I don't think it's intended to be thematic. In Stolen Lands, the Sootscale Kobolds are tricked into being warlike and worshipping a false god by Tartuk. In RRR, the Lizardfolk are tricked into being warlike and worshipping a false god by an advanced Will-O-Wisp In VV, the Boggards are tricked into being warlike and worshipping a false god by a Spirit Naga. What I'm thinking of doing is dropping the Lizardfolk from RRR altogether (move Tig Tannersen to Candlemere, caught in the Haunt and tormented by the wisps but otherwise unhurt), and changing the Boggard tribe in VV to Lizardfolk. If Tartuk survived past the first book, I'll have him levelled up and running the Lizardfolk in place of the Spirit Naga (which is one of the reasons I want to change them to Lizardfolk, they work better with a Kobold than Boggards would. I also find it a lot easier to give a variety of class levels to Lizardfolk). It does mean that Garuum's arc doesn't go anywhere after Stolen Lands, but it reduces the repetition and possibly brings an old opponent back after a long absence. What do other people think? |
