Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I was going to run the 'Githyanki Invasion' campaign arc as mentioned in an old Dragon magazine - but then I saw this PF and thought 'what a great way for them to become attached to a town & its population just before I dump a Lich Queen army on it' - cue evil GM laughter.
As the final part of this AP is self contained (I've read the spoiler posted elsewhere on the board) does anyone (aka a Designer) know that if running an Invasion will 'ruin' the campaign arc as envisaged within the AP or is it flexible enough to withstand such strains?
Well, it could ruin it in the sense that the PCs might get so interested in dealing with the githyanki as a clear and immediate threat that they are less interested in dealing with the as-written bad guy mastermind at the end of it.
Of course, you could easily:
1. Replace that mastermind at the end with the githyanki and have them be the manipulators all along. All the manipulations they've been doing will be toward the gith's goal, not that mastermind's. This would probably require ignoring the 6th and final adventure of the AP or doing a pretty massive rewrite of it.
OR
2. You could catch the PCs in a crossfire. The first 3 mods in the AP are about exploration and building a kingdom. The last 3 assume the PCs and their kingdom are established and now start to branch out into external issues that impact them. The AP mastermind could be coming at them from one direction and the githyanki from another.
I ran a campaign like this, wherein you had two different "alien armies from beyond the stars" fighting with the PCs and their allies in the middle of it, and I thought it came out very well. It's more work for you, of course, but if you wanna do it, it can be a lotta fun.
I'd caution you about pushing very hard with the invasion plot early on, though, because a lot of what makes Kingmaker what it is is the non-time-urgent nature of it, especially during the first half. If you want to run the invasion, perhaps drop in a stray scouting party or two early on, and maybe a secret hidden advance base, but let at least a couple of years of in-game time elapse before the bad stuff really starts hitting the fan. After all, if you want to invade their kingdom, you gotta let em GET the kingdom first!