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So far we've saved Oleg's, found the kobold's in the radish fields and stumbled across the bandits at Thorn Creek.

My kids and enjoying it and so am I!

My oldest, a boy, is enjoying being a half-orc barbarian who hits things hard.

My middle girl is playing a sneak half-elf ranger who is terrified of getting hurt.

My youngest is playing a gnomish druid riding a wolf, and she spends more time taking care of her wolf than anything else.

Two of my sons friends are dropping in and out playing an elven bard and an elven monk.

I'm thinking of running kingmaker with my 3 kids aged 7, 9, and 11.

The oldest has been playing and GMing D&D for more than a year. The others have had some brief intros when I ran some sessions of Star Wars RPG and Ponyfinder for them.

Any suggestions as I think about running Kingmaker with them?

Let's see if I can remember how ours went.

At first we made a trade deal with them. They remained independent and we gained the bonus of their mine. The kobolds became stronger and stronger. Eventually they became so strong that they asked to become part of the kingdom. However, they required one seat on the kingdom's council and equal rights as citizens. We had a number of interesting off-camera events happening within the kobold kingdom.

Because they were doing so well other kobolds began to migrate. Black scaled kobolds became an upper class noble sort in the kobold community.
The kobolds started worshipping kobold gods. The kobold gods demanded that the kobolds attack the kingdom and wipe it out. However, the kobold leader (Whoever was the original chief was still in charge) thought this was an idiotic idea. The kobolds had never been so rich and safe as now. So all clerics and believers of the kobold gods were purged. The river nearby was filled with kobold bodies for a period of weeks.

My new character came into the campaign at this point. He was a kobold cleric who worshipped a new god. But he didn't know which god. He served on the kingdom's council as the kobold's representative.

By the end of the campaign the kobold's were mobilizing entire armies for the kingdom (at the cost of further concessions for the kobolds within the kingdom of course) and had deployed elite, heavily armoured kobolds as a special guard force for the royalty of the kingdom.

Probably the wealthiest and most powerful kobolds in the history of the world. (Their alignment had also shifted to True Neutral.)

Those Hexploration modules look pretty good.

I'm also wondering if there are other sandbox campaigns that aren't about kingdoms or hexes.

Good modules that have a solid setting, a metaplot, but still a sandbox for players to play in.

Seriously? No suggestions?

Anyone?

Come on interwebs, don't fail me now!

I loved running this campaign. We've wrapped it up and are playing something else, but I would like to find something similar.

Can anyone suggest any other good sandbox campaigns that are 3.5 or pathfinder compatible?

After close to three years of playing our group has completed Kingmaker!

One of out enterprising players has completed a journal of the events. Feel free to read it.

Kingmaker Journal

Thanks especially to Dudemeister as we borrowed many of his ideas, but we also made extensive use of many different ideas from this forum. We have appreciated the many great ideas here!

I messed around with this for Armag's tomb, but got frustrated. Some of Kingmaker's maps don't line up with the grid exactly, which made it tough to get it to line up for Roll20.

I ended up giving up.

Perhaps someone with better photoshop skills than I could pull it off.

So in the last two sessions our kingdom has fought it's first war!

We're using my heavily modified Mass Combat rules which you can find Here. These rules include movement rules, scouting rules, more complex tactical choices and more. Many of the ideas in them came from others here on these boards.

We actually turned Module 4 into Mass Combat. We've gotten over the point where hexploration is still fun and are trying to focus more on the large story. So I created a series of armies that Drelev could make use of to attack the PCs. (A 13 headed pyro-hydra ensorcled by Nyrissa's magic to serve as an army, a host of bog mummies controlled by the Clerics behind Armag, some Tiger Lord armies, and a few Drelev formations.)

The players had been building up their kingdom and recruiting a few armies, just in time to stop the assault on Tatzelford. Then they threw the entire kingdom economy into recruiting armies and preparing for war. Both sides spent two months gathering allies and resources before launching into a full-scale battle.

The modified Mass combat rules use fog of war. I had the PCs who's characters could command armies in one room with the big map we put our kingdom on, and then I had all the Players who's PCs were useless in commanding armies take control of the bad guys and play the opposition with their own map in the other room. I refereed between the two sides. It was fascinating watching the two sides hunt for each other then clashing in big battles. There were some very tense moments as the fate of the kingdom hung in the balance for a time.

Here's a summary of the events.

Year 5 Month 1 Arodus

Military Support: All resources were spent on strengthening the military

Military Expansion: Tatzlford built additional barracks and expanded the militia. The Leveton militia were also expanded. The first regiment of Pike, one of Cavalry and one of Archers deployed. Roch’s scouts deployed for action. A second regiment of Pike, Cavalry, and Archers began training. The Emerald Knights had a troop of Bards join them and were given improved weapons. The Pike were also given improved weapons.

Reserve: 100 BPs are being held in reserve
Withdrawals to the party treasury have been put on hold, unless the council orders otherwise.
The kingdom economy continues to be healthy despite the vast resources being spent on the military.
An uneventful month elsewhere in the kingdom.

Year 5 Month 1 Arodus

War begins!

The first week of operations (Our first session)

The Emerald Knights with the 1st Pike and 1st Archers in support moved boldly towards the northern town in Drelev. There they engaged units of Pike and Barbarians in a series of successful combats and captured the small town in the north.

Roch’s Rangers moved out into the forest alone and were caught in an ambush by a tribe of Pixies led by the Mite Sorcerer. Roch has not been heard from since.

The Kobolds moved to Tatzleford.

The Pixies scouted deeply into the Jewelled Kingdom only to be caught in a pincer move by Opal’s Cavalry and the Emerald Knights led by Slag.
Slag, Opal, Twitch and their armies returned to the North and engaged more Drelev troops and defeated almost all of them.

An enemy cavalry force with siege engines comes out of the forest and lays siege to Tatzleford defeating the Kobolds and trapping them and the militia inside the town. The siege engines begin smashing the town’s walls.

The second week of operations (Our second session)

While Slag, Twitch and Opal were planning on moving their troops deeper into enemy territory they are surprised by the arrival of a fearsome 13 headed, fire-breathing hydra at Tatzleford. There the kobolds are defeated and the militia flee the scene leaving the town in the enemy hands.

What’s more the enemy cavalry force moves to the capital of Emerald and starts throwing rocks at the city’s walls reducing the city’s defenses.

In desperation the kingdom’s armies gallop back towards the capital. Slag’s Knights manage to drive off the Hydra, but it heals up rapidly and returns the very next day, this time accompanied by a horde of Mummies led by evil clerics. Slag wisely concedes the field.

What follows over the next week are a series of movements and skirmishes as the Jewelled kingdom gathers its forces and the Hydra and mummies move inexorably forward. A group of Tiger Lord Barbarians camps in Tatzleford and begins to raze the town. Many of the citizens are turned into mummies and the town is in ruins.

The enemy Hydra, mummies and cavalry attack the Kobold town of Aurite catching some of the Jewelled kingdom forces out of position. Slag leaves the field to fight another day and Twitch leads his brave and skilled 1st pike in a desperate defense of the town supported by the 1st Archers and town militia. But his brilliant combat skills are no match for the unstoppable undead horde. The hydra flees the battle, but the mummies overwhelm the stubborn defenders and slaughters them to the last man, leaving the town in enemy hands. Twitch is rescued in the last moments by Ember and is recovering from his wounds in the castle.

However, the hydra had fled the field and was all alone not far from the capitol. Slag takes this chance to throw everything they’ve got at the hydra. 8 armies converge on the hydra including the recently recruited 2nd Cavalry, 2nd Pike, and 2nd Archers along with Slag’s Knights, Opal’s Cavalry and the kobolds, plus the survivors of the Tatzleford militia who had escaped the death of their town. In a desperate hard-fought battle the Hydra is finally brought down by the thousand soldiers that fought it. Losses are heavy on the Jewelled kingdom side, but no army is destroyed.

The Drelev forces hole up in Aurite where the Jewelled kingdom attacks with all they’ve got. In a long drawn-out battle the last of the enemy troops threatening the capitol are hunted down and destroyed.

One group of Tiger Lords remain in Tatzleford, but they can easily be dispatched by the remaining Jewelled armies.

However, the economy of the kingdom is stretched thin. The losses of so many armies have disrupted the kingdom, the damage done to Tatzleford, Aurite, and Emerald itself, and the desperate mobilization of so many armies has emptied the treasury. (Only 12 BPs remain!) The kingdom cannot even keep the existing armies in the field in the next month. Most of the armies need to be stood down and put into quarters in order to save costs and avoid bankrupting the kingdom.

The kingdom cannot field an army powerful enough to assault the fort in Drelev. At most they could send Slag and two other armies. Which will be enough to bottle up the remaining Drelev forces in the town, but not enough to take it. What’s more supplies are being sent in to the town so it can’t even be starved out.

The war has ended in stalemate.

However, the great Barbarian warlord has not been seen.

Other means must be found in order to bring Drelev to its knees before the warlord appears again.

I put together a series of 8x11 pages with some pictures to use with Dudemeisters Kankerata's run. I'm planning on laying them out on the table as I run it.

Pages for Kankerata Run

Thank you for the excellent feedback. I've dealt with a bunch of the things you've suggested.

About Apprentices: It may very well be your wording I borrowed. I chose a d3 hit dice to keep them weaker than the wizard's d4. (We still play with 3.5, Paizo's products adapt well enough and we're happy with it, lumps and all.) Although I'm inclined to follow your idea of scrapping the arcane armies altogether, but I didn't want to diverge from the original rules too much. I've got to give that more thought.

About scouting: I never thought about the real world numbers like you did. You noticed a problem. I was focused on the affect of gameplay if an army couldn't even scout a single hex around in swamp/forest. It would become difficult to find armies and I'm not sure it would be much fun with armies marching around not finding things. I wonder if there's a way to justify the extensive range for scouting. Perhaps every army recruits rangers who are mounted and can cast animal messenger and that's simply assumed to be part of every army. What's more I've also struggled with adding a modifier for the size of the individuals in the army to the scouting rolls. A Medium army of Mites is harder to find than a Medium army of Trolls for instance. Finding the balance between realism and playability here is not easy.

About the Strategy Track. I'm not a big fan of the track either. I've been toying with a major re-working of it. (Based on the classic wargame Empire in Arms which has a very interesting chart of this nature.) But the added complexity may not be worth it, particularly for the players at my game table. I added the Withdraw option because I didn't like the all or nothing nature of every battle. I'm still rolling this idea around. (It also includes a more prominent role for morale in combat as well.)

Grigori was and is awesome in our campaign. He was irritating as all get out when he arrived. (Our GM can talk circles around us in real life, and then we rolled badly too!) Eventually we got rid of him by exiling him. We cast a curse on him that would be active any time he entered our kingdom. Little did we know that he made his save and he's coming back!

Hmm Let me try again.

My Mass Combat Rules

I know lots of others have modified the Mass Combat rules, in fact I've been busy reading all of your excellent work here in this thread. But I ended up editing the rules again.

First, I'd like to thank all the many people who did this kind of thing already. I've borrowed lots of your work and I'd like to give you credit for the work you did, but I don't remember who all of you are! I did start from the Book of the River Nations Mass Combat chapter.

I'd love some feedback on the changes I've made which you can find here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VYxD-k8Qs4EKj_-3HKP9ydJt--H9QScbX1EJhyA GjVA/edit

Here are the ideas behind my changes:

1)Don't increase the complexity too much despite my wargamer side desperately wanting too!
2) Address the issues about army size, consumption, and BP cost. (I borrowed a lot of ideas here!)
3) Connect the recruiting of armies more closely with building types in order to make Player decisions in Kingdom building more important.
4) Include more movement rules on the map that allow players to make decisions that matter.
5) Including scouting rules for how armies can detect each other.
6) Try to increase the number of decisions that players can make that matter.

I am loving this adventure path. The Sandbox style and the kingdom building are really working well. Our group is really enjoying it. (Yes, there are weak spots in the rules and the AP itself, but this forum has really helped my co-GM and I fill in the holes.)

Paizo, can you please do another AP using the same style? We would love it.

Anyone else feel the same?

Can anyone from Paizo comment on the chances of this happening?

There's some great ideas here. (I really like DudeMeisters Nomad stuff.)

So let's say I have someone from Varnhold and Drelev attend this diplomatic meeting organized by Brevoy I'm thinking about.

What's Varnhold looking for? What kind of deals will they make? What kind of interesting roleplaying encounter could happen? Particularly with multiple outcomes that the players actions can result in.

Ditto for Drelev.

Our party has just finished Rivers Run Red and will be beginning Varnhold Vanishing soon. We'll be spending a year of game time just growing our kingdom first.

However, there really isn't a good link between Varnhold and the Barony of Lebeda (As our kingdom is called.)

I'd like to put some diplomatic encounters here to build a connection between the two before the events of the next module and even beyond into the ones after.

I was thinking along the lines of a diplomatic summit organized by Brevoy. Brevoy wants to see stable kingdoms to the south and so gathers all of the newly minted petty kingdoms in one place in order to create treaties to solidify the borders and create trade etc... in order to ensure peace to their south.

Who would go to such an event? (Varnhold, Drelev, would Pitax show up?)

What would be their agendas? What encounters and/or interesting events could happen?

Besides this event what other interesting events could happen to build connections between the PCs and the neighbouring kingdoms?

After reading a few things on this board I too had Marzena die just as the PCS met Shukak. I did not change the Draconic Kobolds which turned out to be a good idea because my normally intelligent party split and we almost had 2 PCs die to the silly little things! Flanking bonuses sure add up.

Then they took the egg with them. That's when I had one of Ilthane's babies show up, out in the swamp.

One of the PCs held up the egg and threatened the dragon with smashing it. Imagine my glee when the dragon let him go through with it and the PC ended up covered in green worms! It was one of the best moments of the campaign so far. The PC ended up cutting his own arm off to stop the infestation!

They dealth with the dragon after a fairly challenging fight and they managed to notice that it was not mature enough to have created any eggs. Leaving them anticipating meeting Mother some day!

Here's an idea. So her mom notices something is wrong and goes out and hires/finds some adventurers to save her daughter. Instant reason for the new characters to join the group and to go after Zyrxog.

I drew up a large map for this encounter and then I made every square = 10 feet instead of five. (That map in the magazine was just way too small.) I put all the lizardmen on the map and played them all. (I actually had the PCs moving and attacking themselves with groups of lizardmen, and tracking their HP, so I wouldn't be overwhelmed.)

When the PCs first counted 40 lizardmen out in the open they were convinced they were doomed. (Scouted by flying druid, see more below.) Allustan lets them know that he accidentally left his spellbook behind. (Ok, so he's smart, but not so wise in my game.) The only thing he has of use is a scroll of teleport. He's going to go back and summon the garrison, because it's likely that all the lizardmen in the marsh are attacking all over. (Full scale War!)

So then my PCs enlarge the druid who shapeshifts (PHB II) and flies them one by one to the tower where they meet the soldiers. (This alerts the lizardmen to the flying threat.)
This is the point that the whole thing turns into a cakewalk.

All I can say is half-orc barbarian shapeshifting druid enlarged with great cleave. She killed 8 lizardmen in a single round of combat. Then there was the flying wizard with fireball spells raining down from orbit. And the flying ranger barely even added to the carnage. (He only killed 5 or 6 lizardmen.)
The only dangerous part was the lizardmen druid summoning nature's ally to fight the flying wizard and the lizardmen leader laying down a 48 hitpoint smackdown in a single round on the druid. He died in a follow up cleave when another lizardman moved through the enlarged druid's reach, so that one round was all he got. (My PCs were a level high, so I boosted both the druid and the fighter.)
All in all it was a cakewalk, thanks to some clever tactics by my PCs. And the fact that CR 1 mooks just don't stand up to great cleave with reach when the cleaver does +15 damage on each hit and has +15 to hit when the AC is 15.

This was a good thing though. My group was getting a little down about the campaign. Before this campaign we had never had a single PC death. In the 3FOE one player was on PC #4 and the group was getting a little down about the whole thing. It was a good thing to have the players kick butt for once, instead of hanging on by their fingernails. The group really had a blast laying the smack down on the lizardmen. So the fact that it was a cakewalk was good.

Tell your players to creat backup characters at start. Someone is going to die. I told mine and they didn't listen. Someone died on the very first night of play. That made them realize that I was serious. Now we have multiple backup characters ready to slot into the game. (I changed the Seeker organization into a group secretly run by an Inevitable tasked with preventing Kyuss' rise to godhood. This means that We don't have to struggle for why new characters join the group. They're just another member of the seeker organization who is already aware of the threat that Kyuss holds. If there is a TPK we have a legit reason to send in a team to follow the first one.)

E-mail me what you've got 'cause it's more than I have!

Hey all,

My players are also intent on cleaning up Diamond Lake, as mentioned in another post.

I'm actually encouraging this. (Smenk has been using them, he acquired Dourstone's mine's after his untimely death, It just so happens that the parents of one of the characters are among the indentured slaves who work in Dourstone's mine's and Smenk isn't letting them go for cheap!0

But I need a good map for Balabar's home. (I suspect the PCs may come up with some nefarious scheme!)

Can anyone point me to a good and interesting map of a mansion with a good sneaky escape route? I can get ahold of all the dungeon magazine's so if you tell me the number of the magazine that might contain such, or else an on-line source would be good as well.

Thanks!

Alex

Is it too harsh? Did you warn your players of the level of challenge? Do they know what they are in for? Are they prepared to play smart! Are they prepared to die?

I told my players to create a secondary character with story etc... who would be ready to go before we started to play. Few of them really did it.

In our first session they were nearly TPK'd twice and one player died facing some of the bugs in the whispering cairn. They immediately started talking about their secondary characters and laying plans for their new characters.

We're in the three faces of evil and I did modify it a little to allow them to rest between each of the three temples. But our last session on the weekend against the grimlcoks nearly had another TPK and one player died when the Grimlock Chieftien rolled a crit with his greataxe and hit character who only had 26 hitpoints for 30+ when he was already wounded.

The Hextorians was nearly a TPK because they set off the entire sequence and fought everyone at once. (Every single one of them buffed to the max! They only recovered empty potion bottles!) The only thing that saved them was the team's cleric challenging Theldrik to a one on one duel. (Which I thought was what Theldrik would do, being lawful and all, plus the Hextorites were already winning.) The cleric got toasted, but threw a tanglefoot bag at 0 HP and went down, and then all heck broke loose, but with Theldrik entangled right in front of the party, which allowed them to take him down. (Plus terrible rolls on my part.)

I play the NPCs as smart as I can and the players know it. (I loved those Grimlock Archers, they nearly killed the party mage and the ranger.)

AoW is only too harsh if your players don't expect it. I find that a hard fought win is more enjoyable than a cakewalk. Plus my players expect it and have told me they like it. They're even looking forward to getting to try new characters when the current ones die. (Although watch out for a sense of being overwhelmed among your players, there was another thread about that somewhere on this site.)

Alex

This is written by the character that died:

PC Name: Merrill Tuckaberry
Adventure: The Whispering Cairn
Location of Death: Beetle Swarm Hive
Catalyst: not being able to outrun the swarm and failing Fort saves
Long Description: This was the very first session that the party was playing in the Age of Worms, and this was to apply great veracity to the DM’s earlier statements, during character creation, that this could very well be a very lethal set of adventures and that we’d be best to always have a ‘backup’ character ready to go at a moments notice.

The party, consisting of Merrill the Halfling Rogue, Jess the ½ orc druid, Orin the Dwarven Ranger, Glint the Gnomish Cleric and Fiona the Human Wizard, had successfully made their way to the ‘room of the rainbow lamps’ and barely survived the first encounter with the beetle swarm. After a full few days rest back in Diamond Lake (as the cleric was negative but not dying), the party returned and decided to investigate what lay below the opening the Beetle Swarm had made. In the very first room they investigated they once again met another Beetle Swarm, but this time the party was not capable of dispatching the critters BEFORE a character died.

Essentially, Merrill was trying to flee the wee beasties when they occupied his square and he failed his Fort save and immediately went into negative and was never able to stabalize before going all the way to -10.

Despite the fact that this was a character death in the very first session, I think it was a good thing for the party as they were able to quickly realize the seriousness with which this campaign will need to be approached.

Now I just pray my second character lasts more than 1 session!!!!