redcelt32's page

Hello! Im a GM whose starting a kingmaker game soon, and a loooooong time ago, I remember coming across a document which looked amazing to set up the scene around the Stolen lands.

A big part that appealed to me is it changed how starting a kingdom worked, instead of just getting resources, you have to talk to a bunch of different politcal people/parties, each with their own expectations/obligations and (often secret) motivations in order to gain resources to found the kingdom. Some parties who would give you considerable resources to have their religion as the main/only one, others wanted your loyalty while others wanted you to simply not take the deal with another group. Seemed like a really good way to get the party into the "local" (on a massive kingdom level of course) politics of Golorion. But for the love of Iomedae I can't find the damn document again and was wondering if what I described rings a bell for anyone.

A lot of this sort of thing was covered in the agendas and motivations sections for different factions in my thread, but I think the one you may be looking for specifically is Capital Venture aka Deal with the devil

Just a final note...sometimes it just a scene or concept from a movie that hits home and sparks a portion of your KM game. There was one scene from The White Queen series that I really loved, but never got to use. There were two warring sides and lesser noble twin brothers. One was always allied with each side loyally, so no matter which side was victorious, the winning brother could argue for mercy for the losing brother.

Before this major battle of the two opposing forces (Yorks and Lancasters), each brother swore their armies on the side of their regular allies. Once the battle began, there was pitched fighting between the two enemies and the big scene was the twins' army running down the side of these hills towards the battle. Both sides were waiting in anticipation of being helped, and even the viewer didn't really know what was going to happen when they got there.

I always thought that was such an epic scene, and that it would be great to create these twin brothers in Kingmaker. Unfortunately, this was something that really needed to be set up earlier, so I just filed it away in my GM notes for a future campaign.

The answer, like most times, is...it depends...

..on whether or not your game is really political
--you are keeping the cultural analogs that the neighboring kingdoms are protrayed as having
..the tone of the game you and your players are running

Heavy politics I would suggest The Prince for getting in the correct headspace to run NPC rulers, The Art of War possibly for Swordlords, plus other politically inclined things that may float your boat. I used a set of rules pulled from a fantasy novel, The Wolfblade Trilogy by Jennifer Fallon - Elezaar’s Rules of Gaining and Wielding Power. Obviously Game of Thrones could also carry some themes into your game, just like its real life counterpart the War of the Roses from history. I would picking one to emphasize and the others for flavor, whatever you select. Reading up on those cultures and leaning even more into them with beliefs, names, holidays, etc, increases immersion sometimes for PCs.

Cultural analogs you can look to Iobaria, Brevoy, Galt (I had several exiled Galtan noblemen as NPCs in my KM), Pitax, and even Numeria if you want a little Laser Scorpion flavor added in. Iobaria is I think northern Russia, Brevoy is something similar, Galt is revolutionary France, etc. Or you can change them around if you havent made those analogs canon in your campaign version of Golarion yet.

The tone also plays a role. If you like the steampunk feel of things, modify Pitax to be more of that flavor, and add in a bunch of technologies and such flowing in from Numeria. You could also draw some inspiration from Carnival Row for that setting. If you want dark, ominous, strong fey leanings, I used the Old Margreve in my KM game.

Okay thats probably way too much info, but hopefully it gives you some ideas of directions you can lean for inspiration. :)

I like this idea a lot.

It'd also placate the Brevoy Houses as no Swordlord could also be a member of a rival house.

One way to do things is to establish a Master/Apprentice relationship as common to Swordlords. Each major Swordlord would have an apprentice and leave stuff to their Apprentice in the evnt of their death.

Wills also seems like they'd be very common and that works just fine.

Swordlords can also have children themselves and can leave stuff to them.

This ginormous thread from forever ago when we ran our Kingmaker game (spanned 8 years of RL time) has a bunch of info about how I set up and ran the Swordlords politically, including NPCs, motivations, Houses in Brevoy and Mivon, etc. Also, a lot of stuff with politics.

Redcelt's Game of Thrones in Brevoy

You may want to peruse the PF1 Kingmaker forum for more of these type of thread since there are a number of very popular ones there from Dudemeister, Pennywit, and many others who I am embarrased to say to dont remember well anymore.

Very nice job Nicholas! This is a fantastically presented resource for any kingmaker game, and it looks like yours got as complex as our own did politically and with hordes of NPCs :)

Any ideas where to find them?

If you look through this forum, you should find a number of fan created materials and writeups for various factions/encounters/house rules. Try searching for other posts looking for fan content and you should find most of them!

Hey all, I am working on a reboot of my Kingmaker game with half of players from the original game and half new. I am going to have the Original Party have planes-hopped to you know where from Book 6, then never return, or at least not in the 20 years since they left.

Many things will have happened in the party's old kingdom, eventually leaving most of it in ruins or shambles. Enter the new party, with a focus more on exploring the new mysteries of the Stolen Lands, and slightly less Lannister-Targaeryn political mayhem. There will still be remnants of the old kingdom, and some of the NPCs, and still a little dirty, dirty politics, but hopefully it still feels fresh and new to the old players.

Just curious, has anyone else taken a previous game of Kingmaker that your party finished or abandoned and run the new game on the bones of the old? If so, I would love some insight or suggestions. I may post here with some of the events that befall the old kingdom in case anyone is interested, since I have 6 months or so until the Abomination Vaults gets completed (our current AP).

I am starting a new campaign for my group involving Arcadia and opening trade with the new World. I have read everything I can get my hands on about Arcadia (distant shores, book 5 of Tyrant's Grasp, etc), but mostly now I need some info about trading houses and which countries would most likely be involved in a trade wars, etc between Arcadia and Avistan/Garundi.

Are there any canon resources about trade, trading houses, that I might have overlooked? I dont think there is a Traders of Golarion, but maybe part of a sourcebook?

If not, I would really appreciate suggestions or input about existing trading houses in Golarion and ideally where they are based country-wise.

I plan to make up some of my own, but I would really like to include some known forces in the mercantile world.

Thanks in advance!

If you plan on delving into Brevoy politics, you might want to take a gander at *this thread* . We got pretty heavy into politics of Mivon, Brevoy, Numeria, and the River Kingdoms. I think in the end we played most of 8 RL years in this AP, obviously filled out quite a bit. If anything in the thread strikes your fancy, please feel free to borrow away, and let us know how the game goes in 2E. I would be very interested to hear how it plays differently.

Hero Lab Classic is a thing of beauty, and you can keep it forever, regardless of whether the company continues in its current form or not.

Herolab Online is slow, clunky, has a recurring charge, requires a constant internet connection to use, and there is no guarantee of service continuance or speed from their servers as the number of users progresses. I am sure this was conceived as a great move to the cloud, etc, but all I see are many many detracting elements and no improvements over Herolab Classic. Even though I understand the reason for the slow rollout of Realmworks, that whole experience did not fill me with confidence regarding large IT projects from Lone Wolf. Moving more functionality and responsibilty to their side to maintain does not fill me with confidence.

YMMV and hopefully time proves my current feelings regarding this app wrong, but right now I am going to let my current account lapse with no plans to renew in the near future.

On the bright side, my table will soon have lots of paper character sheets and no tablets and PCs for players to surf Facebook, IG, or play Civ 6 on during the game LOL...

What is West Marches? I am not familiar with that campaign?

I'm very okay with some things being class gated, given that we have so many more options with the multi class and archetype feats and the fact that they will be having those for most if not all classes. Yes a few things anyone could take before will be blocked, but there will also be other things you can get now. Its not PF1.1, its PF2.0, so I would expect that not everything will stay the same. Evolution sometimes takes leaps and not small steps.

So Anathema is something that should have a meaningful effect on your character and the concepts and beliefs that shape these characters. All of the Anathema from the other orders are pretty good at this. However Storm Order is much less effective.

"Creating unnatural weather patterns that could be damaging to the local environment (such as by using a 9th-level control weather ritual) is anathema to your order."

This is very open to interpretation of your DM/GM as a first issue. Sooner or later that'll cause issues somewhere.

Second this doesn't matter for your character until at earliest level 9 and that is assuming that you count 'Control Water' as weather. I don't. After that at 15th level you can learn 'Punishing Winds' which makes a tiny area of massive winds which it might count... maybe?

Then the biggest one here is this thing. Storm Druid actually says, "Never, ever, cast the most powerful and only real storm spell in the book. Casting 'Storm of Vengeance' in any location that is not a city is Anathema to you.

As a side note I realise you can be involved as a side participant in a control weather ritual prior to being good enough to lead it yourself and still do something Anathema to your order. However Storm Order as it stands doesn't effect you until high teir 3 90% of the time. Besides that when it does effect you its very much a question of what does the DM/GM think it means and which spells trigger it?

Personally, I would have thought the anathema would have been the opposite...anything that prevents you from experiencing the weather in a personal way in anathema, meaning tents, awnings, pavilions, maybe hooded cloaks... even perhaps enclosed amphitheatres...

I am getting ready to run a campaign in Iobaria, and having watched the TV show Taboo recently, decided to pull a fair amount of Pacific Maritine Fur Trade material into my background setting. Basically this is the trading of seal furs with the local natives and China by the Spanish, Americans, Russians, and of course the British Empire. They players will be their own faction, setting up a trading post and competing for market share and furs, while keeping the natives, druids, and others happy.

A very small assumption- Yes I know the Castrovin is an inland landlocked sea. However, magically, it contains several species of whales, walrus, fur seals, and other such cold loving marine mammals, since that is what is required for this to work :)

I plan on using Taldor and Aspis as the English and East India Trading company, but I was hoping for some suggestions about other groups to involve as rivals or potential trading partners. Some other possible choices would be Brevoy, Andoran, and Galt, but I know very little about the latter two countries. Im probably involving Iblydos as a neutral port and central trading hub, so they are sort of out as a competing faction.

Are there any good factions, trading companies, or countries that spring to mind?

Any good source material for this sort of setup?

Thanks in advance for all your thoughts shared!

If a mod sees this, this post probably should be in campaign setting instead of advice, so please feel free to move it.

Odin's Left Eye wrote:

The Wedding Knight ended up being a lot of fun.
My reasons for running it were simple: foreshadowing. I really wanted the players to get the chance to learn about people and events they would be dealing with later on. The know who was attacking them and why beforehand rather than afterwards while the PCs loot the bodies.

All the ideas shared here are awesome, and I am using them currently.

However, your link to Wedding Knight is dead, would this adventure be the same as the one from Green Ronin on Drivethru RPG?

It is a Song of Ice and Fire RPG adventure from Green Ronin using the rules for that game. However the story is easily lifted and converted to any ruleset, since it is primarily RP and politics.

i found a copy **here*

Hi guys,

i need some brainstorming for a new knight order in the stolen lands.

I've got the idea that a young npc-knight swear allegiance to the baroness in my campaign and found the new order.

My first thought was to change the order of the lion.

Any advice or thoughts?

Are you asking mechanically or storywise?

If you want a mechanic and to have them all be cavaliers, then the order of the Lion is a good place to start. You may want to consider being less restrictive on classes for knightly orders however, which may add more diversity, interest, and options for NPCs and adversarial knights.

IMC, I try to avoid limiting social and honorary orders, so I use the requirements of a knightly creed(like a paladin code, but specific to the order), Ride, BAB, knowledge (nobility), must be +4. I also tried to name orders and such with direct references to the houses or purposes of the order. Some examples:

Knights of the Broken Hart - founding members were all part of a noble family (Harte) that lost their liege and lands through an arranged marriage of the daughter to another house, followed by treachery. They have no liege and no lands, instead seeking out and swearing fealty to the marshall of the PCs Kingdom, who is also a noble Harte.

Knights of the Black Swan - founded by a member of House Swann from Lebeda who rode the lands as a knight Errant, lending aid and serving justice where needed. They are loyal only to their code and their leader.

They royal guards for the PCs Queen is the Order of the Risen Lion, since she has died once and been raised. Her house livery is a red lion on a white field.

Hope this helps or offers some creative directions you could go in with your orders!

I think the official explanation has already been given above. I will share how our kingdom defined the roles, and which subroles report to them. Note this isn't official, just how we ran things, but it might help give some other folks ideas:

Ruler: Makes official proclamations of kingdom rulings. Has a whole series of servants who report to them, including dresser/clothier, scribe, chamberlain, squires and pages galore, head of the royal guard, advisors, and lords and ladies in waiting.
Councilor: sits on the royal council and speaks on behalf of commoners, ie - non nobles. Or in general, the needs of the community and populace. Mostly, this role gets info from the GM on what things the common folk would like built in the kingdom and feels the pain of unrest the most acutely.

General: Leader of the actual military units in game. Responsible for kingdom defense, fort building, troop deployment and buildup, and assessing military dangers from outside forces. Has sub commanders or generals under him, an aide-de-camp, logistics officer, training officer, and LOTs of minions, more than any other role ultimately.

Grand Diplomat: Interacts on behalf of the kingdom with factions inside and outside the kingdom (mostly outside). Responsible for assigning ambassadors for diplomatic missions the ruler decides on, and for negotiating and completing treaties and agreements. Has a staff of ambassadors and envoys that serve him. Works closely with the spymaster role to be sure he or she has all the info needed in negotiations.

High Priest: Spiritual leader of the kingdom. Typically, the god of the high priest is the official religion of the kingdom. Responsible for interacting with all official faiths and churches in the kingdom, also determines which religions will be sanctioned and which ones are forbidden to practice within the kingdom (like oh say Urgathoa or Rovagug!). In our game, they are also responsible for the kingdom hospitals and asylum.

Magister: Responsible for all magical events and activities within the kingdom. Rampaging dragon, evil mage, or crazed medusa? These are the magister's responsibility. He has a staff including menagerie keeper, royal alchemist, Chief scribe, royal sages, and the Dean of the Arcane Academy.

Marshal: The marshall is responsible for security and safety in all "civilized areas". As such, he is over guard patrols along the roads in the kingdom, merchant caravan safety, river patrols along main trading routes, and mainly city and town guard forces. Obstensibly, he is also responsible for the personal safety of all major nobles in the kingdom should they venture outside the PCs kingdom. He mainly deals with brigands, smugglers, bandits, and major physical threats inside the kingdom settlements.

Warden: The warden is responsible for security and safety in wilderness or undeveloped areas. As such, rangers, hunters, and scouts are his primary minions, as well as potentially any druids or fey allies in the region. His forces patrol the wilds and along the kingdom borders with wilderness areas, dealing with wandering monsters and poachers.

Royal Assassin: This is one role we really expanded. We made this role the Royal Enforcer and put them in charge of standard law enforcement and punishment. He is responsible for sheriffs, magistrates, judges, executioners, and issuing royal rulings on major capital cases. The Marshal role handles major physical threats (through city guards), the Royal Enforcer handles crime rings, thieves, and other sundry violations of the law (through sheriffs and magistrates).

Spymaster: This role is pretty clear cut, they are the handler and seeker of information, both inside and outside the kingdom. They are responsible for both running their handlers (who in turn run their spy cells) and handling internal security/counter espionage within the kingdom vs foreign spies.

Treasurer: Responsible for the kingdom BP, we found this role to be almost unnecessary, as it could just as easily be served as a special servant to the ruler. You could expand this role by giving them the responsibility of trade agreements, import export roles and deciding special tariffs.

I just wanted to mention a few other roles we ended up creating for our kingdom:

- master builder - responsible for tracking what gets built next, suggests future building, including creating new settlements.
- Admiral - it is the river kingdoms after all. This could be a separate role or could easily slide under the general and a special servant.
- Minister of Resources - We had a Green Faith druid who wanted no part of an official role in a city, but gladly took charge of managing natural resources and their harvesting, including special crops, beehives, lumbering, and managing the forest game and wild animal herds.

Am I correct in thinking that there are no buildings that reduce corruption? I'm not even coming across an event that reduces it. Crime can be managed by building jails, but you just get to accumulate whatever corruption occurs, barring GM involvement?

courthouse is -1 corruption, jails and magical streetlamps are -1 crime. Those are the only reducers that I know of offhand...

If you want to make some of the named encounters harder, you can just use mythic versions on some of the monsters that your party failed to find/eliminate in the first book, ie - Tuskgutter, Crackjaw, etc. This makes them more of a challenge later on and does many of the things you seem to be going for with your solo monster template. There is a bit more flexibility with the mythic rules however as there are different paths that may fit different monsters better.

Since in my game the fey courts are in play, I made many of the named animals enlightened and advanced fey templates in order to emphasize the fey aspect of the AP and increase the challenge level some. My party had more than enough political issues to handle that they didn't need mythic monsters also!

Have a contract demon for Asmodeus show up and say "I hear you are about to become a free agent! Have I got a deal for you....just sign up right here on the dotted line!"

Or have real inquisitors of Torag go hunt him down, like he was a bad jedi that turned to the Dark side lol...

I should think that the threat of war with Brevoy is the main thing keeping Mivon from expanding north, since Brevoy claims that land even though they've done nothing in decades to actually enforce the claim. If not for the civil unrest in Brevoy, such a move would probably be treated as an act of war and you'd have armies marching down through the Greenbelt to lay siege to Mivon.

The lack of loyalty issue could actually be turned around into an opportunity. The houses of Mivon could simply offer to recognize the party as founders of a new major house, complete with the right to compete for a position in the Mivonese government. Whether the party accepts or declines, the nobility of Mivon win, either by being gravely insulted so they have just cause for war against these upstarts, or by making them a pseudo vassal state.

This same issue was raised by my players sort of out of game, and I explained the lack of expansion as a preference for fighting a war with Pitax with all its opportunity for glory in battle as being preferential to carving out a section of wilderness. Plus the mayor doesn't want expanding houses to have free reign to grow beyond what he already has plans for.

This of course didn't stop Mivon IMC from annexing a bunch of hexes in the southern portion of the players land grant once they had cleared them. To complicate things even more, the mayor issued these as rewards to several different houses, which makes negotiating their return or physically annexing them back more difficult.

The PCs got distracted with other events in Brevoy up north, and lost about 6 cleared hexes to the south to a perfectly timed Mivon expansion when their armies were committed to the north. You have what you hold is the law of the land for the River Kingdoms :)

Their governmental structure is based on who is the best at swordfighting. So they aren’t exactly geniuses.

Dudemeister is absolutely correct. When I was setting up Mivon for a major story arc for a royal visit from my PCs, I ran across this issue. I decided that since the kingdom hadn't collapsed from incompentence, there must be some sort of understood rules to swordlord rule by blade prowess. Basically in my world it goes like this:

- if you are a great swordsman, you find yourself an advisor to handle all your administrative affairs and live like the rockstar that you are, arrogant, confident, and cocky.

- if you are a great policymaker or merchant, you back the strongest swordlord in your House.

- if you suck at both of these areas, you make yourself indispensable in some other way, ie- information gathering, lead a gang of secret enforcers, be a great smuggler, or lastly a productive artisan.

If you are already a noble member of one of the houses, you have an automatic place in one of these roles. However if not, here is how I handled it:

- unaligned great swordsman - you become a champion for hire. If someone need to travel, fight a war against Pitax, or simply has to face a more talented swordsman, he hires you as his champion. Much like the Ronin, these swordlords often gain greater renown than House Swordlords given they have more opportunity to shine in confrontations. This model was sort of implied with how the mayor keeps his position. I just codified it as part of the "rules of law".

- unaligned merchant or administrator. These are hot commodities and often vied for like free agents in professional sports. Treachery and intrigue are a big part of this internal layer of House politics, in particular if there is rivalry between Houseborn and unaligned for the same positions.

Spies, thugs, artisans that are unaligned usually either stay neutral or hire out on a mercenary basis, much like Mivon's greatest export, hired swordlord troops.

I also codified the rules for mercenary troops, their conduct, and terms of surrender/ransoming back to their House.

As an aside to this, I play Mivon as a sort of Venice in renaissance Italy, with a very dark, seedy underbelly hidden under a veneer of sophistication, culture and artistry. Often times the veneer is extremely thin, lol...

There are a few things things I suggest to have in your "opening scenes" for Kingmaker:

1- It should give the players an indication of the level of Brevoy politics you plan on using in your game, ie- how much Brevoy messes with their kingdom. If you plan on lots of involvement, this is a good time to introduce a couple of adversaries and maybe a possible ally or two. Also, many of the adventures from the Song of Ice and Fire RPG convert well to handle political roleplay scenes- I used one for our group's intro to Kingmaker.

2- It should give them some future plot hooks, introduce them to NPCs that may be important later on, and give them some resources in the way of personnel, contacts, or factions for a later time when they found their kingdom.

For instance, in our game, when a party member went into town early on in the game for better armor, I had them encounter the smith's helper. He was the one the party dealt with since the main smith was busy schmoozing with a wealthy merchant. The assistant mentioned offhand that "when he owns his own smithy one day, he will treat everyone equally". This gives the PCs some easy options when they decide to start filling in blanks later on for kingdom roles or important followers in their kingdom.

3- I also encourage making changes to Oleg and Svetlana's story to ensure they mesh well with the party instead of possibly not getting along. I think the early connection between the party and this couple is important for the storyline. You might consider having them come from the same home town, and the party remembers seeing them head off into the wild frontier of the Stolen Lands.

Welcome to the greatest Adventure Path ever! :)

yeah, I'm mostly concerned about the pacing (when happens what?) and structure of the political intrigue. For example, most of the political stuff would happen after the first part is completed, I suppose, but I could really use directions on the timing and pacing of the political intrigue, or if you got examples from your tables.

I think the first step is to determine how much influence you want Brevoy to have on your player’s fledgling kingdom, and how deep you want your players in politics in the early game. It should be obvious to them with the nature of this AP that politics will eventually come into play. However, it may surprise them if it plays a big role before Book 4.

1. Light to no Brevoy politics – Brevoy is so busy dealing with its own mess, it ignores the player’s kingdom for the most part. By the time they draw the notice of Brevoy, their military strength makes it a losing proposition to do anything against their kingdom. The players possible deal with some trade issues, a few isolated nobles, and maybe so light bullying from either the Regent or minor nobles. This is the default setup for the game.

2. Medium Brevoy politics - players deal with fallout from Brevoy power struggles, some nobles and factions (particularly religious) engage the player kingdom, either seeking alliances or trouble. At least one Brevoy faction/noble becomes a recurring adversary/nemesis and causes problems until the player kingdom deals with them. The PCs receive regular visits from envoys pursuing the goals of their respective faction. This starts somewhere between the end of Book 2 and continues throughout the remaining AP. This option adds some spice to the default AP setup, without having Brevoy be a major player in the PC kingdom development.

3. Heavy Brevoy politics – Right from the outset, the PCs are thrown in the deep end. They receive lots of notice from Brevoy factions, and are embroiled in Brevoy disputes and the “game of thrones” from the outset. They are offered enticements, bribes, and maybe threats by factions and nobles who wish to develop early relationships with the PCs hoping it will pay dividends to them at a later date. The PCs can expect Brevoy to have a big hand in shaping their kingdom building choices, laws, expansion directions, etc. At some point, the regent will decide their colony needs to officially become another duchy of Brevoy and pay taxes and bend the knee. He may even try to appoint a viceroy or duke of his own choosing over the PC kingdom. Good times…

If you choose Option #1, there is no need for the GM to say anything or prep the PCs.

If you choose Option #2, you may wish to suggest to your players they take diplomacy, sense motive, and bluff skills to deal with Brevoy envoys.

If you choose Option #3, you should warn your players BEFORE the game starts that they are playing the Game of Thrones, and better prepare themselves. The PCs absolutely need to take the “political skills” (bluff, diplomacy, sense motive), and at least one PC should seriously consider starting as part of a Brevoy faction in order to have a built in ally from the start. I strongly recommend that one of your PCs choose the role of Grand Diplomat or ruler in order to directly influence negotiations with Brevoy factions.

In our game (Option #3 obviously!), I warned the players that not only would they have to deal with Brevoy, they could expect to be tested as the “new kids on the block”. I emphasized that “you have what you hold” and “Nature abhors a vacuum. If you don’t exploit your resources, someone else will”.
The queen chose to be allied to the Swordlords, and I tied her to a noble house in Rogarvia that had good intentions, but lacked the viciousness and savvy to weather outside forces (a la Ned Stark). This ruler started as an ally of the alliance between Orlovsky, Medvyed and a few Rogarvian barons. This immediately set them as opposed to the regent, Lodovka, Lebeda, and some of the other Rogarvian barons. The queen also gave them an ally in the swordlords, which caused both problems and support at various times in the early games. It also gave her many suitors from their ranks.
I set the tone before the game even started by using the module “Wedding Knight” from the Song of Ice and Fire RPG, which is light on combat and heavy on roleplay. It is basically two feuding houses that are going to make peace through an arranged marriage of their heirs. All sorts of forces and circumstances are set against this effort being successful and the PCs are expected to step in and ensure a positive outcome. In my version, I made all the characters 12-14 years old and gave them all jobs like stablehand, porter, cook, and chambermaid. The PC ruler was the cousin of the bride in that story, so she had a vested interest in the outcome. I specifically told them that if they didn’t take steps, there would be a “Red Wedding”. This set them to spying, manipulating NPCs for information and leverage, and covering up incidences while they weren’t even adults yet. I told them worse case scenario, none of them would die, but thinks could go bad if they didn’t succeed. So basically it was a safe, dry-run exposure to Brevoy politics.

Hope this gives you some ideas Vast!

I thought it was a sad oversight that there was so little Brevic involvement in this AP, so I fixed this issue, by fleshing out the agendas and personalities of all sorts of sub-factions that my PCs could negotiate with, ally, or even alienate as they grew as a kingdom. I tied the backstory of the PC ruler directly into a Barony of Rogarvia, making her the niece of the Baron. When he called for help she came running, sucking the PCs into Brevoy politics. From there, the PCs began seeking allies through invitations to festivals, etc. As their Brevic allies grew, so did their necessary involvement in Brevoy, especially in the fighting that broke out between the Rogarvian barons and their mercenary units.

The PCs faced so many tough conquering threats to their fledgling kingdom from outside groups, Mivon, and Brevoy, that I was forced to change the Pitax assault on their kingdom. They have been fighting tooth and nail since the instant they were first given BP to keep their kingdom alive, another threat later on will be a snoozefest for them.

So the TL;DR version is - Brevoy was a viper's nest that serves up adversaries, conspiracies, assasinatin attempts, staunch allies, treaties that demand the PCs lead armies with their allies against other Brevoy factions, and in general and big fat complication in the players running of their kingdom.

I completely agree with Alyssia, this charter makes no sense whatsoever.

Whether you play the Swordlords like they are reduced to only a select few random wandering noble swordsmen, most of whom have congregated around Restov and made it their de facto settlement OR you play them as a large faction of people who were suppressed by the current rule (like Ireland/Scotland with the British back in the day), this charter is worded horribly. The Swordlords dislike the rule of Brevoy because it was based on destroying and conquering the swordlords. The only faction I can see them disliking more would be Mivon.

So, either the party would be affiliated with the Swordlords and this faction would be sanctioning the charter for any number of excellent reasons (this fits very well considering who Varn is and his backstory)...

Or,

...The Brevoy regent is sanctioning the charter, in which case, he would NEVER acknowledge the Swordlords by including them I the charter and legitimizing them.

The other issues the OP brought up are IMO best answered as metagame. The main reason I can see to have the charter is to justify the legitimate killing of any bandits, outlaws, or other troublemakers, freeing the party of any need to deal with capturing and holding bandits. So technically, it nothing else on this charter really matters other than they have been approved for exploration and enforcing the bandit killing rules of Brevoy.

The issue of Brevoy having a legitimate claim on the Stolen Lands is handled in the AP discussion...several kingdoms believe it belongs to them, but since none can hold it, its a moot point.

The charter is much like all currency, absolutely worthless unless it is recognized and respected by others. River Kingdoms will only care about whether the PCs can hold their Kingdom, the charter being worthless in their eyes. Whether the Swordlords/Restov or Regent Noleski recognize the PCs colony/kingdom really depends on their whims and which side the GM decides issued the charter.

~~~~

In case anyone is interested, I fixed this confusing mess of a charter by reworking the whole issue of who was granting the charter and why they were granting it.

IMC, a southern baron in Rogarvia whose lands bordered on the Stolen Lands went out on his own and issued these charters. He was hoping to expand his power and resources to vie for the empty role of Duke of Rogarvia. The PC ruler was his niece by marriage, and very supportive of the Baron and his efforts. This gave the party a support network early on in the AP and also served as a hook to drag them into Brevoy politics.

The PCs figured out the strength of their charter was flimsy and so worked to prepare for the day it might be challenged. By the time Brevoy ruling factions wanted to discuss the legitimacy of the charter (and whether or not the PC Kingdom was actually a holding of Brevoy and subject to rule and taxing), the PC army and fortifications were established and their independence was hard to change.

There is however, resentment, sneaky attempts to undermine their kingdom, and preparation for any sign of weakness that might let Brevoy annex them.

I ran the ASOIAF module Wedding Knight as a 1st level adventure to introduce my party to politics in Kingmaker. I reviewed several of their adventures before selecting that one, and they are all excellent for political, diplomacy and investigative sort of adventures.

Ill post an update this week...the party just completed an epic story arc built around a prophecy that the Champion of the Elder God Dagon would stand upon the shores of the Candlemere and begin down a dark path that would eventually summon Dagon himself into Golarion.

There were cultists, dark harvests of pumpkins with corrupting creatures in them, strange living swarm cell leaders, attacks on their capitol, the Wild Hunt sweeping them up to transport them to battlefields far to the south (it was fun watching them and their enemies glare at each other..as part of the wild the couldn't attack each other while caught up in it), and finally the summoning of the Avatar of Benthic Madness. One of the beloved NPCs sacrificed herself to save the kingdom and the party eventually triumphed.

The best part...it all started as a throwaway scenic encounter at 1st level, when the party discovered a tiny Stonehenge like altar with ancient Aklo ruins in it. After searching, they found the Book of Dark Fathoms, which contained a prophecy...which they then fretted over for the 3 in game years that led up to the date mentioned in the book :) Far be it from me to disappoint them by having it be what it was originally intended to be - some historic color of no significance!

Story Hook successful!

I have quite a few dragons in our Kingmaker game. Major NPC monsters like hag covens, dragons, liches, etc I map out way early at the beginning of a campaign, because like mountains, rivers, and such, they affect how everything around them evolves. We have:

- black dragon group, mostly females that live in the swamp, led by a very old female. The party tangled with a young male that was kicked out and told to go prove himself worthy by gaining a horde... from the PCs kingdom.

- there is an adult blue dragon that is part of a dragon rider/dragon pairing that the party tangled with during a siege of a town they were defending. They fought them to a standstill, but lost two wyvern riders and 12 elven giant owl riders in the process.

- The major dragon in their plans is a very old green dragon living in the ruins of an ancient elven city in the Narlmarches. I made her a cleric and she has strewn statues of herself all over her "territory", 3 hexes, so she can interact with the party and not give away her location. She kidnapped the PCs kingdom dragon sage to give herself an advantage against other dragons in the region, and when the party stalked her to demand his release, she offered them a fey/elven history sage in return. Since she threw in a few choice lore items, they relented. She later however hired rogues to break into the PCs castle and steal a dragon spellbook the party wizard was jerkishly (in her mind) demanding far to much in exchange. So she is an adversary that is occasionally useful.

- There is a strong dragon in the mountains to the east of the PC kingdom, what sort the party isn't sure. They have twice seen adult black dragons flying back battered and defeated from the mountains to the swamp, but have no idea what type of dragon is doing it. It is a silver dragon offspring of the original silver dragon who created Silver Lake. The party already discovered huge Koi living in the lake who were magical. The silver dragon would baleful polymorph evil creatures he defeated into Koi and place them in his dragon made "Koi pond".

Legendary Games:

* Ultimate Rulership
* Some Ultimate War
* Some Ultimate Battle

I second all the Ultimate books listed above, as they were immeasurably helpful for our group. In particular Ultimate Rulership, as there are some badly needed (IMO) additions to Ultimate Campaign.

Also Chemlak's kingdom tracking spreadsheet was a tool without which I suspect we would have had to run our kingdom in the background after a few years of game time, as it got cumbersome to track on paper by hand.

Those are really the only mechanical or canon type 3rd party books that I would consider "must haves", everything else being adventure type filler, which really depends on how you run your game.

I only run big groups and have been GMing for close to 30 years..and I still wont run a group bigger than 9. 13 is way too much, even for mass combat scenarios, which are less forgiving of large parties. You need to at a minimum break the group in half and run 2 parties yourself at different times. Ideally someone else GMs the other group, and you get yourself a co-GM that can do sidebar conversations and encounters to help out. There is nothing wrong with telling them "no", due to the numbers. You can even make them divide themselves in half, rather than you doing it.

Like the excellent posts above said, there is no magic solution that wont be hard for you to choose. However, my experience is that if you try to run a group you cant handle, EVERYONE gets their fun ruined, rather than just a portion of the folks.

My 2 cents :)

I was reviewing information I posted on this thread and realized that one fairly big aspect of our game was missing from here - The Arcane Order of the North and wizard tests. This definitely wont work for everyone's game, but it did add several layers of complexity and politics to the arcane casters in our game. So there are human politics, Fey politics, and Wizard politics!

The wizard in our game tested at 6th level vs an orc fire sorcerer and lower level grippli wizard. He obviously emerged victorious, but took out several blocks of the founding town of Vallis in the process!

The sorcerer in our game tested at 7th vs a fire sorceress, who attacked while the party was sneaking around in an enemy occupied town in Brevoy, specifically avoiding the attentions of an evil 11th level wizard who was one of the leaders of the occupation. Needless to say, it was a crazy battle, where both opponents were trying to kill each other and avoid the nastier spells of the higher level wizard who came out to stop their combat. Lots of urban fighting and explosions ensued before the PC sorcerer emerged victorious.

The arcane PCs now have to deal with prepping their own apprentices, garnering favor among certain factions to aid in their own research, spying on other wizard factions to determine their secret plans, capturing rogue arcane casters in their realm, and dealing with demands for alliances from various groups. They have also benefitted from access to trading arcane spells and less useful magic items (necromantic, etc.) to other arcane groups in exchange for useful items. They recently founded their own arcane faction, The Ring of Serpents, within the Order.

I wasn't sure initially how well it would be received, but my players went with it and it has been fun. So far its has added to the complexity of being a Tier 6 class and given the wizard and sorcerer a direct method of competing and comparing staff sizes with others of their kind. I will post the spreadsheet of wizard factions and info I gave my players later on when I am home from work.

For those of you who remember this now aged thread, there should be a few more updates soon.

To catch you up, we lost the queen in our game, and the grand diplomat, one to deployment and one to RL stresses, so we sort of put Kingmaker on hiatus for a year or so. With these two missing, no one cared about the Swordlords and royal marriages, plus we lost central figures for some prominent story threads. It took a bit of cutting and stitching to put the tapestry of the campaign back together, but we have started again now.

Stay tuned for my writeup of the Gate of Endless Worlds on Candlemere, my own theory of why the gnomes fled to Golarion (made 5 years ago, and not in alignment with the now official canon of the First World book), and the current Dark Tapestry/Elder Gods story line the party is following. Night Heralds, Moon Beasts, and The King in Yellow oh my!

*evil Grin* do they all have good riding skills, trained in mounted combat and ride war horses ?

As a GM I have great fun watching them roll all those ride skills and spend all that time gathering up the pack mounts and untrained horses afterwards.

1) Oh, and look, that pack of wolves is chasing your pack mule that is loaded with food and your spare clothes. Oh! the mule jumped in the river to get away from the wolves and is swimming down stream.

2) That troll is eating your horse!

3) Snowstorm!

This, the overlooked handle animal check every time combat breaks out on a non-combat trained warhorse. The plate wearing cleric in my party got in the habit of dismounting at the start of every combat, just so he didn't end up prone on the ground after failing a check.

The very first thing the party saved for and bought (having to send off to Restov) was combat trained riding horses. I also deliberately did not equip the entire party with horses to start off with, meaning they were slowed to the speed of the party members traveling on foot.

I also had some interesting fey encounters that got them involved in fey plotlines (pixie wanted them to carry a love note to a brownie, etc) which distracted them in the direction of the moon radishes. This established a pattern of regular fey encounters and activity in order to foreshadow later events right from the campaign start.

Lastly, I had several bandit groups that operated in the area and were loosely allied with the Stag Lord. These groups were VERY offensive to the party and became the main enemy early on. I had these groups stay close to Olegs, and made them fairly tough for a 1st level party. The Forestlords were raiding little farms scattered throughout the Greenbelt, taking slaves and doing to the women what slavers usually do. Needless to say this upset the paladin and LG cleric terribly and caused the party to drop everything in an effort to stop them with extreme prejudice :)

We are running a game in the Stolen Lands and a new player has joined our existing 7th lvl party. I would like to give her appropriate magic items for her level and maybe a little more. Its a fast leveling game and she is a newer player to the game, so stacking the deck in her favor a little isnt going to hurt.

Problem is, I am unfamiliar with what type of items best serve the hunter class. She is a strength based melee fighter that fights beside her AC rather than using him as mount. Right now her only magic item is a +1 shocking burst longspear, so she definitely could use some help. I have the arms, armor, and big 6 items covered, but mostly need input for misc magic that serves a hunter well. I am especially looking for hunter specialized items that I can put in the game through like 12th level (think monks robes for a monk, etc). Any assistance in either suggested magic items or some sample hunter NPCs to get ideas from would be appreciated!

Hey I read through all of this thread and all of these ideas seem really cool! I am new to hear other peoples ideas and I would like to ask if I could use your ideas Redcelt? Also if I may use them, is there a condensed version of your notes and charts?

Absolutely, you can use and change any of my info you like to your hearts content. I posted it primarily to try and give other GMs ideas and perhaps even a little bit of pre-made content to include in their own games. This AP takes a lot of GM work, even if you are only usuing minimal extra content.

The only thing I ask if if you post anything that uses any of my content, I would appreciate a note about where you got your inspiration if not a link to this thread.

Im thinking either a back in time AP to the war against Tar Baphon or Azlanti vs aboleths, or writing up a major expansion hardback of Casmaron.

7 players? No brainer...bard would add the most to this party IMO...I have a regular group of 8 and its ridiculous how often that +1 or +2 from bardsong changes the entire combat, turning near misses into hits...

Well, technically, the LE cleric of Abadar's a heretic too - the actual god's LN, after all. A LG paladin and LE cleric are both outsiders to the mainstream faith.

(But the gods themselves are totally cool with heretics as long the heretic isn't too far off base...)

Yes, that is definitely true...

Of course, that puts all sorts of interesting RPing aspects in play (which I assume is part of the reason we have players attempting to shoehorn a LE undead raising cleric and LG Paladin into the same party).

Might even be an eventual unifying factor in their storyline, two heretics of Abadar thrown together by their god to shake up the church who was getting too dogmatic and inflexible....

The solution I see is simply to have a LG paladin of Abadar and a LE cleric of Abadar working together because Abadar said to....

Making the paladin a heretic :) Could be interesting...

On the undead front only: a level of Juju oracle makes all your undead neutral IIRC. So maybe playing a juju oracle or even a 1 level dip (yeah I know its painful) could fix one of your main issues regarding the paladin. Plus you could more easily persuade him that since they are not evil, they are merely magical spellcraft, and not undead :)

DM_Blake wrote:

I wish it were that simple, but the CRB disagrees. It essentially says the paladin won't associate with evil characters except for the short term to deal with a bigger problem. Perhaps because evil people are NOT made out of law and cannot be trusted to abide by the letter of their lawful contract the way a devil can. And because the paladin has sworn an oath and loses his powers for violating it, both of which are not problems for an archon.

On a side note (fun story notwithstanding), I would imagine if the paladin did not figure this out eventually, his god would start penalizing his powers and abilities until he got a clue. After all, who do you think put the "don't play nice with evil" clause in paladin's contract. Just because the paladin is ignorant does not mean his god is....obviously this isnt canon per se, but it is a reasonable extrapolation of why that stricture is there in the first place.

What about warpriest? That might synergize better. Also don't forget about quickened channeling if you are having to heal in battle, still gives you a full round attack action.

I made all Captain of the Guard for each settlement a discernible NPC, and their individual personality influences the guards under their command. Otherwise, they are red shirts, at least until they prove themselves.

There was one incident in their capitol where sea serpents attacked the ships at the piers and the town guard fought them off. After they killed the serpents, the PCs made its skin into suits of scale mail and awarded all of those who stood their ground and fought (a fair number ran). They are now recognized as the elite guards of the capitol.

As far as town or city guards, I just told the party there were X number of them for free, and we don't count them as mass combat units. They never leave the city and are typically of only mediocre fighting skill.

I am not familiar with the adventure finder. Is this an index or a website query or something?

Does anyone know of any PFS adventures that take place in or around Mivon? I am specifically hoping there may be one that describes more about the city or mentions NPCs, areas, etc.

Apologies if this is posted in the wrong forum.

It sounds like the paladin is pursuing a LG quest to stop the corruption. If his god supports this quest, he should either adjust the magic of the demon to benefit the paladin from being negatively affected by it, or remove it. The paladin is using all of his abilities and is even willing to consider whether the aid of a devil might be of benefit in completing his mission.

Personally, I would have his god applaud him, or at the very least, send a messenger to gently chide him for stepping over a line, even in for the cause, depending on how you view it.

Otherwise, what QuidEST said, if you are going to homebrew something majorly mind affecting on a paladin, at least give him a chance by informing him of your view on devil consorting. Remember most gods, even those of paladins, are not absolutist jerks with a zero tolerance policy. They are divine beings who have a use for their earthly instruments and therefore would want to protect and guide them, otherwise why bother to grant them holy powers in the first place?

Michelena Aldori:** spoiler omitted **...

Truly interesting and well-played character.

I am struck again by all the interesting and very different choices everyone's rulers make in all these Kingmaker games. It makes me want to read everyone's campaign event log like novels LOL. Your party handled that whole situation with the ultimatum in a very Machiavellian fashion, which gives credit back to your original idea for Michelena.

I'm afraid in the same situation, the queen in my game would either declare war on Brevoy or arrange for the prince to be kidnaped, taken off in the swamp somewhere, beaten up, and left for dead. Even if it meant losing her kingdom. She is a bit more Tony Soprano than Niccolo Machiavelli... :)

Wow, I really like a lot of these!

I particularly like Craster Fekseyev (I really missed an opportunity to inflict a character like this on my party), Dame Yeana, and Belle Leighn.

Orthos, Belle is such a great idea, that I'm thinking I might like to borrow her if my party ever kills the Dancing Lady.

Keep them coming!

...And I think I've settled on a suitable proxy. An erlking, with a suitable retinue, ought to fit the bill. Given that I'm running a mythic game, I'd outfit him with some nature- or fey-themed mythic goodness.

The question is how he got to Pitax ... but I can fill that in later.

You could have Nyrissa offer him all of the fey in the Stolen Lands as his prize for assisting her...so he is here to bag and tag, beating on the party in the same way a old European safari might get native tribesmen out of the way so they can go after the tiger they want.

One of my players asked me the other day how many of the NPCs they have encountered were part of the adventure Path as written. After a whole bunch of yes and no’s, we figured out only about 5% of the 100 or so major NPCs were actually part of the AP (As a side note, we are now up to 273 NPCs that have at least a paragraph or two written about them, so the ratio gets even smaller the farther we go!)
I am interested to hear about any NPCs that your group found memorable, that you really liked, or unexpectedly became a major player in your game when they started out as a bit part. I think there was a thread about nobility somewhere earlier in the forums, but I thought this one should be for any NPCs.

Here are the three voted most memorable by my players: