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No, this is not a question about if a female character take the lead role in the upcoming Kingmaker AP.. I would think that would be an obvious "yes".
Rather, I imagine that there will be all sorts of various challenges and obstacles to building a nation in the Kingmaker AP.
I'm curious if marriage for political reasons (or romantic ones) will be part of it? To forge alliances, make necessary deals, or even to ensure a royal lineage and heir.
I require no answer to this question. I just wanted to through this out there for the Editors to think about.
You know after finishing Dragon Age: Origins (Spoilers):
Creative Director
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First off... Kingmaker doesn't care if the ruler of the nation is a King or Queen. In fact, it'll be built so that there can be BOTH a King and Queen.
In any event, the entire AP is about the difficulties of managing and ruling a kingdom, from wrestling the land away from monsters and the wild all the way up to courtly intrigue.
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Creative Director
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No, this is not a question about if a female character take the lead role in the upcoming Kingmaker AP.. I would think that would be an obvious "yes".
Rather, I imagine that there will be all sorts of various challenges and obstacles to building a nation in the Kingmaker AP.
I'm curious if marriage for political reasons (or romantic ones) will be part of it? To forge alliances, make necessary deals, or even to ensure a royal lineage and heir.
I require no answer to this question. I just wanted to through this out there for the Editors to think about.
Marriage will be part of it. There are 11 different leadership roles for PCs/NPCs to take on in a kingdom, ranging from king/queen to treasurer to high priest to spymaster to royal assassin and so on.
Of all of these, only the King/Queen slot can accommodate two (all others have only one slot so you can't stack the bonuses for having, say, ten generals). If the king and queen (or king and king, or queen and queen) get married, then the bonuses for BOTH rulers stack.
There will be NPCs in the AP who are gunning for the rulership position. Some of them might bring baggage to the position, and some are going to be TERRIBLE choices for co-ruler. Some will be great choices though, depending on the direction the PCs want to take their kingdom.
At this point, a political/romantic angle to the two rulers is not hard-coded into the adventure path, but I suspect something will develop there anyway.
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Of all of these, only the King/Queen slot can accommodate two (all others have only one slot so you can't stack the bonuses for having, say, ten generals). If the king and queen (or king and king, or queen and queen) get married, then the bonuses for BOTH rulers stack.
You rule. My character plan is for a Brevoy noble who was disowned by his family because of his 'preferences' and decided to stake a claim in the River Kingdoms with his partner.
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No, this is not a question about if a female character take the lead role in the upcoming Kingmaker AP.. I would think that would be an obvious "yes".
Rather, I imagine that there will be all sorts of various challenges and obstacles to building a nation in the Kingmaker AP.
I'm curious if marriage for political reasons (or romantic ones) will be part of it? To forge alliances, make necessary deals, or even to ensure a royal lineage and heir.
I require no answer to this question. I just wanted to through this out there for the Editors to think about.
Marriage will be part of it. There are 11 different leadership roles for PCs/NPCs to take on in a kingdom, ranging from king/queen to treasurer to high priest to spymaster to royal assassin and so on.
Of all of these, only the King/Queen slot can accommodate two (all others have only one slot so you can't stack the bonuses for having, say, ten generals). If the king and queen (or king and king, or queen and queen) get married, then the bonuses for BOTH rulers stack.
There will be NPCs in the AP who are gunning for the rulership position. Some of them might bring baggage to the position, and some are going to be TERRIBLE choices for co-ruler. Some will be great choices though, depending on the direction the PCs want to take their kingdom.
At this point, a political/romantic angle to the two rulers is not hard-coded into the adventure path, but I suspect something will develop there anyway.
Much better and enlightening post lol, guess you were hopped up on the squash any political correctness complaints early tear. Happens to the best of us. Thanks for the heads up, it sounds interesting.
It's good to be the king.
Also, James? I included at least one possibility around romance/marriage in "Blood for Blood" but I know you haven't gotten too deep into developing it yet. I'm curious to see if that bit makes the final cut.
::fingers crossed::
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Creative Director
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Much better and enlightening post lol, guess you were hopped up on the squash any political correctness complaints early tear. Happens to the best of us. Thanks for the heads up, it sounds interesting.
Meh... more like my original reply answered the first line of the OP's post and I probably got distracted and hit Submit Post before finishing my thoughts, actually. I'm not sure what "squash any political correctness complaints early tear" means, actually...
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Creative Director
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It's good to be the king.
Also, James? I included at least one possibility around romance/marriage in "Blood for Blood" but I know you haven't gotten too deep into developing it yet. I'm curious to see if that bit makes the final cut.
::fingers crossed::
I'm relatively sure it'll survive that final cut.
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Much better and enlightening post lol, guess you were hopped up on the squash any political correctness complaints early tear. Happens to the best of us. Thanks for the heads up, it sounds interesting.Meh... more like my original reply answered the first line of the OP's post and I probably got distracted and hit Submit Post before finishing my thoughts, actually. I'm not sure what "squash any political correctness complaints early tear" means, actually...
It means answer the concerns before they become a problem, and I'm mostly just responding with silly non-sequiters here
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Creative Director
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King and Queen....Only two posts, I cant have the King marry a bevy of beauties and they can all be queens...or the Queen have a cadre of handy male flesh each being Prince consorts to the Queen...
Nope. Because having that many rulers will only result in arguments and poor choices.
Unless the GM decides to houserule things, of course.
Nope. Because having that many rulers will only result in arguments and poor choices.Unless the GM decides to houserule things, of course.
That sounds like the players are forced to name one of them king.
They can’t decide how they run their land????One player will have more power than the rest of the group????????
Like being their boss ??????????
I imagine my groups would decide they want to rule as a council of equal barons
The moment I tell them that one must be boss, the campaign will be over, even if they could decide who will be boss, the rest will lose interest.
I once was player in a campaign that was centered around one player, he was a Lord’s son and we where sidekicks – it was totally terrible
Nope. Because having that many rulers will only result in arguments and poor choices.Unless the GM decides to houserule things, of course.
That sounds like the players are forced to name one of them king.
They can’t decide how they run their land????
One player will have more power than the rest of the group????????
Like being their boss ??????????
I'm actually not too worried about that - I don't think they are forced to name a "King", but rather to name someone, or two, to a primary leadership post. King, President, Prime Minister, Eldest Councilman, Lead Baron, etc.
And nothing I've read says those posts can't be swapped or rotated around.
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Creative Director
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One player DOES get to be the ruler of the kingdom. But there are 11 different leadership roles in the game, and to the citizens of the nation, all 11 of those leaders are equally "boss." And a king is nothing without his co-leaders.
It's certainly a different style of play, though, and if you think your group won't be able to handle having one of the PCs be the ruler and that would just cause dissension and jealousy, you should probably have an NPC be the ruler and the PCs take on other leadership roles.
The way the kingdom and city building stuff is built, ALL the players get to take part. And all of their characters help to bolster the kingdom and make it better. And in addition, you'll be able to change who serves in what leadership position pretty much every month. It might not be realistic to change the king every month or every year, but it does let everyone have a chance to sit on the throne and the rules themselves don't punish you for taking this route.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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The way the kingdom and city building stuff is built, ALL the players get to take part. And all of their characters help to bolster the kingdom and make it better. And in addition, you'll be able to change who serves in what leadership position pretty much every month. It might not be realistic to change the king every month or every year, but it does let everyone have a chance to sit on the throne and the rules themselves don't punish you for taking this route.
Interesting. So will Kingmaker have a longer timeline than the standard AP, with long breaks between adventures (or even adventure segments) or is this more having to do with what the party does after the AP? What volume/level are the PCs likely to achieve kingship? Is it the cherry at the end, or is a significant part of the AP dealing with the inherent struggles of leadership.
BTW, it sounds very much like Kingmaker will be what I was hoping for when I asked for a more Sandbox style AP. I'm really looking forward to it.
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Creative Director
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Interesting. So will Kingmaker have a longer timeline than the standard AP, with long breaks between adventures (or even adventure segments) or is this more having to do with what the party does after the AP? What volume/level are the PCs likely to achieve kingship? Is it the cherry at the end, or is a significant part of the AP dealing with the inherent struggles of leadership.
BTW, it sounds very much like Kingmaker will be what I was hoping for when I asked for a more Sandbox style AP. I'm really looking forward to it.
Kingmaker is actually constructed so that, if you want, you can take a long break in the middle of an adventure. As in, "let's stop exploring this wilderness and build up our city and kingdom by taking a year or two off."
Kingmaker's REALLY us trying to address two frequent criticisms we've heard of our APs, actually; that they go by too fast and you have PCs reaching 15th level in half a year, AND the complaint that the Adventure Paths are too railroady.
With Kingmaker, you can take as long as you want and the PCs really drive the storyline's pace and development by deciding what to do, where to go, who to help, and who to kill. Provided, of course, that they stay within the confines of the Stolen land, which is an area along the northeast border of the River Kingdoms and the south of Brevoy that's about as large as the state of Maine. There's a lot of room in there to explore, in other words, but that leaves us VERY little room to talk about what happens if the PCs want to go somewhere else.
But it's flexible. You can certainly play out Kingmaker as a standard AP, and you can certainly play it without taking PC breaks and level up to 18th in six months if that's the way you want to play. But it also easily supports a model where the PCs take frequent breaks. We'll be suggesting taking breaks of 1 to 2 years between adventures, probably, and periodically taking a 1 year break in the middle of an adventure maybe, but those could be 5 year or 10 year breaks as well. That does mean that you could end up with a campaign that goes decades into the future, of course, but since the Stolen Lands are located on the edge of the map they're also relatively isolated so events in the rest of the world can play out without impacting the AP if you're worried about that.
As for your other questions:
The PCs will gain control of their own nation at the start of the 2nd adventure when they're 4th level. At that point, they're barons and ladies of their new nation. As they start to expand and colonize hexes, that changes. At 20 hexes they'll become dukes and duchesses. At 80 hexes they'll finally become kings. A single adventure's region is about 70 hexes in size, so I don't expect most parties will see kingship until partway through the third adventure. By the fourth adventure, when the PCs are about 9th level or so, we'll expect that they've reached king level and will have to start doing some legitimate international stuff with building wars and the like. Up until then, their kingdom's going to be pretty self-contained and dealing with internal problems with a few (but not many) influences from nearby nations (mostly Pitax, but also Brevoy).
As for whether or not it's a happy ending, that's mostly left up to the PCs. They'll certainly be faced with tough choices now and then, and they'll have to be making choices about how they lead their nation the entire time.
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Creative Director
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Do you have a way to prevent players from bringing a small army with them to the dungeons?
One does not stay king of anything for long if they bring their soldiers on dangerous missions. Their people will start to rise up in anger if they're treated like trap trigger goons or monster fodder. The mechanics of the kingdom rules have mechanics for your kingdoms gaining Unrest... gain too much, and your kingdom falls into anarchy and you lose it and get to finish Kingmaker all lonely and without a kingdom.
But that said, this is kind of a classic example of a player trying to ruin the game for his friends. We have no more way of preventing players from doing something like this than we do of preventing players from trying to kill other player characters. No more so than we have any way to prevent players who have characters who take Leadership and get a small army of followers to bring them on dungeons. No more so than we have any way to prevent a player from buying a hundred horses and leading them in to a dungeon. No more so than we have that same player from buying a hundred MORE horses and killing them one at a time so he gains XP safe and quickly.
Actually... we do have a way to prevent that. It's the GMs who run our adventures.
I'd like to think this type of goofy player behavior isn't something so widespread that we have to worry about designing for it, honestly. (crosses fingers)
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Creative Director
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James Jacobs:
Hmm. Rules for training apprentices and making sure your army captains level up?
And a piece on children of PCs, standard precautions to make sure villains don't try to kidnap & ransom them, how to cope with a tutor who happens to have an agenda of their own (EG indictrination into the Church of Calistria) that might be problematic?
The expectation of Kingmaker is that the campaign will last for several years. But the FOCUS of the entire thing is to give you six adventures. The kingdom building rules are VERY streamlined and VERY simulationist. There's not enough room for 99% of what goes into making a kingdom run; that'd be its own 560 page book.
We'll give you enough to get started, and if a specific game wants to get into lineages and the like, I'm sure someone on these boards will be up to the challenge. But as for in print in Kingmaker... that's far beyond the scope of what we'll be doing.
I should ask, though... Would folks want to see something like this instead of a more heavily detailed adventure? I suspect that, for all the excitement about building a kingdom... it's the adventure that folks are going to be focusing on once the campaign begins. That is, after all, the game that we're all playing.
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This has to be the most anticipated product ever, in my house at least. Solnes and I have already been discussing what kind of characters we would like to play through it with, and to be honest I suspect it will be an oft re-run campaign for us. (I've run SCAP 4 times, and set 3 other campaigns in that city.)
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I should ask, though... Would folks want to see something like this instead of a more heavily detailed adventure? I suspect that, for all the excitement about building a kingdom... it's the adventure that folks are going to be focusing on once the campaign begins. That is, after all, the game that we're all playing.
Not instead of, but it'd be a great companion book though I'm sure there is no way to get it out by March/April.
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There's not enough room for 99% of what goes into making a kingdom run; that'd be its own 560 page book.
Which is the next big project after the APG... right?
I should ask, though... Would folks want to see something like this instead of a more heavily detailed adventure? I suspect that, for all the excitement about building a kingdom... it's the adventure that folks are going to be focusing on once the campaign begins. That is, after all, the game that we're all playing.
Yeah, I wouldn't want the adventure side of an adventure path to suffer too much so that you can explore new rules in more depth... but see above.
...In any case I hope the players do get an opportunity to unleash their army on something. It's part of the fun of kingship after all.
::evil grin::
Oh, they will. They most certainly will.
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Creative Director
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Thanks for the response James. I'm just aware how resourceful my players are. In any case I hope the players do get an opportunity to unleash their army on something. It's part of the fun of kingship after all. ^_^
There will be opportunities for mass combat for sure. More in the later half of the AP than in the earlier half. If your players are itching to go crazy with mass combat, you might want to wait until Pathfinder #35 when the big battles really hit the fan so you'll have some support rules. (There MIGHT be some in #34... although I suspect we'll end up handling those mass battles more like in a Victory Point type rubric.)
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Putting out a huge book that explores kingdom building a few months AFTER Kingmaker would be a colossal mistake in mis-timing. We won't be doing a big book like this for a while, if ever. If Kingmaker ends up being super popular, though... anything's possible!
Fair point, I'm sure the stuff in Kingmaker will keep me going.
I may have to go into cryogenic stasis until this AP is done. I'm going to be looking forward to each month more than the previous months. Can a person explode due to a build up of anticipation?
You know that'll just end in tears... and otters.
James Jacobs:
Hmm. Rules for training apprentices and making sure your army captains level up?
And a piece on children of PCs, standard precautions to make sure villains don't try to kidnap & ransom them, how to cope with a tutor who happens to have an agenda of their own (EG indictrination into the Church of Calistria) that might be problematic?
The expectation of Kingmaker is that the campaign will last for several years. But the FOCUS of the entire thing is to give you six adventures. The kingdom building rules are VERY streamlined and VERY simulationist. There's not enough room for 99% of what goes into making a kingdom run; that'd be its own 560 page book.
We'll give you enough to get started, and if a specific game wants to get into lineages and the like, I'm sure someone on these boards will be up to the challenge. But as for in print in Kingmaker... that's far beyond the scope of what we'll be doing.
I should ask, though... Would folks want to see something like this instead of a more heavily detailed adventure? I suspect that, for all the excitement about building a kingdom... it's the adventure that folks are going to be focusing on once the campaign begins. That is, after all, the game that we're all playing.
I would definitely like to see detailed material that builds upon the foundation laid in the Kingmaker AP. What is being perceived at my groups' end is that there are two things co-existing in Kingmaker: establishing and building the barony/duchy/kingdom/nascent Empire while crushing our enemies, seeing them driven before us and hearing the lamentations of the enemies' women.
Although with Sir Pett involved in #6, I expect more than few fragile minds to be utterly crushed by a few of said enemies. ^_^
Could you tell us what the other 6 are?
-- david
Papa.DRB
1. King/Queen
2. Treasurer
3. High Priest
4. Spymaster
5. Royal Assassin
<snip>There are 11 different leadership roles for PCs/NPCs to take on in a kingdom, ranging from king/queen to treasurer to high priest to spymaster to royal assassin and so on.
Of all of these, only the King/Queen slot can accommodate two (all others have only one slot so you can't stack the bonuses for having, say, ten generals). If the king and queen (or king and king, or queen and queen) get married, then the bonuses for BOTH rulers stack.<snip>
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Creative Director
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Here's the leadership roles:
Ruler (starts at Baron, transforms into Duke when your nation gets big enough, transforms into King when your nation gets even bigger enough).
Councilor (advisor to ruler and representative of the citizens)
General (runs the offensive branch of the military)
Grand Diplomat (handles international stuff)
High Priest (leads the nation's religion or faith)
Magister (leads the nation's education and is the main arcanist)
Marshal (organizes the defense of the nation's rural and wilderness areas)
Royal Assassin (executioner and secret assassin; this is the only leadership role that doesn't give you penalties if you don't have someone in the role)
Spymaster (keeps an eye on crime elements and keeps the leaders informed, spies on other nations)
Treasurer (handles the nation's economy)
Warden (handles the defensive branch of the military)
I tried to make sure that there's at least a couple of choices that are good ones for pretty much EVERY character class.
Does administration of justice (appointment of senior judiciary or their equivalents and their oversight, etc) default to the King/Queen, or is that more a spymaster thing? In the event of a revolt who sends out a 'hanging judge' (or otherwise) to deal with the captured rebel leaders?
Edit:
Or are local councils of elders (or religious officials) expected to handle crime and punishment, according to local customs, with relatively little interference from the centre of power?
I would guess that those types of jobs would be handled by either the Marshal or the Warden, as one of them would double as the "police" for the land and the other would handle rebellions. Of course, if you are trying to set up your kingdom as a Theocracy, then justice would be dealt by the High Priest and the dominant church for your land.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Thanks for the response James. I'm just aware how resourceful my players are. In any case I hope the players do get an opportunity to unleash their army on something. It's part of the fun of kingship after all. ^_^There will be opportunities for mass combat for sure. More in the later half of the AP than in the earlier half. If your players are itching to go crazy with mass combat, you might want to wait until Pathfinder #35 when the big battles really hit the fan so you'll have some support rules. (There MIGHT be some in #34... although I suspect we'll end up handling those mass battles more like in a Victory Point type rubric.)
As written in my original turnover, #35 is one that might be the exception to the "you can take as long as you like to do this adventure" model in KM, if only because it is focused on a specific EVENT, but even so the adventure is laid out so that it could take a month or more for things to actually play out, and there could be long gaps before it or after it.
This is the first Paizo AP I'll be DMing; I'm stoked about it, and I think it should be a blast.
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I never really understood the "it goes to fast" element of an Adventure Path. Sure it can go fast but it's a series of events that lead to the culmination of such power. Isn't that what it's all about? PC getting thrown into events that are so much over their heads that they adapt and thus grow in power themselves?
Yes you could build in, and here a year goes by between events but that's still not really pacing their growth because the events that give them their power are still going to happen pretty much in quick order.
Of course I'm the type of dm that does nog give xp through monster killing but rather the dm that says: "now you level". This allows me to throw some adventures in between without having them outgrow an AP.
That's probably why I am still in adventure 3 of the RotR :p
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Creative Director
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Does administration of justice (appointment of senior judiciary or their equivalents and their oversight, etc) default to the King/Queen, or is that more a spymaster thing? In the event of a revolt who sends out a 'hanging judge' (or otherwise) to deal with the captured rebel leaders?
Edit:
Or are local councils of elders (or religious officials) expected to handle crime and punishment, according to local customs, with relatively little interference from the centre of power?
Administration of justice is left to the PCs to decide who deals with crimes, whether there's a trial, and how judgment is passed. Ideally though that's the job of the ruler or the warden or MAYBE the Grand Diplomat or Magister. In the event of a revolt, it's the Warden who organizes the government response, likely with aid from the general, spymster, and assassin.
In game terms, though, handling trials and the like is generally easiest to take care of by making a single national Loyalty check against what's called the "Command DC" (which is a DC set by the size of your nation; as your nation grows, your national stats grow but so do the DCs since it's more difficult to run a larger nation than a smaller one). Handling criminals and the like will occur semi-regularly during the game, and unless your group's particularly into fantasy courtroom dramas, it's best to just handle the outcome by these single rolls.
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James,
First, I'm glad you have pardoned me for my bad typo! I do have to admit though that at PaizoCon this summer, if I get to meet you, I'm tempted to call you Lames one time just to see how good your sense of humor is :)
The rules for detailing nations (such as the Command DC you mentioned) ... are these rules all in one Kingmaker volume or will they be sort of spread out throughout all the AP volumes?
I ask because I'm working on a rather large and involved project (very hush hush LOL) and this info could be of particular interest.
Thanks!!!
Pretty sure they'll be in Kingmaker since it would be rather silly to have the kingdom based AP require rules from the next AP.
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Pretty sure they'll be in Kingmaker since it would be rather silly to have the kingdom based AP require rules from the next AP.
Um, thanks ... My question to James was actually if the specific kingdom stat rules would all be in one volume of the Kingmaker AP or if the rules would be spread out between all 6 volumes of the AP in question.
I apreciate you chiming in though.
My question to James was actually if the specific kingdom stat rules would all be in one volume of the Kingmaker AP or if the rules would be spread out between all 6 volumes of the AP in question.
I believe I remember James mentioning the kingdom-building article would appear in KM2.