|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I am thinking about adding elements from the Kingmaker adventure path to my Rise of the Runelords campaign after the PCs liberate Fort Rannick. Specifically, I intend one of the PCs to become Baron Rannick, ruling over a 5-hex domain near Turtleback ferry and leaving it up to them what to do with what I am naming the county of Rannickshire. If they run with it, I would expand the timeline between HMM and FotSG and likely relocate the Sandpoint attack to whatever city the PCs build.
To this end, I superimposed a 12 mile hex grid on the Varisia (and Turtleback ferry and Sandpoint Hinterlands) map and added in my interpretation of the holdings of the various political entities out there:
Varisia - Letter Sized
Varisia - Poster Sized
Fort Rannick and Sandpoint hinterlands maps to scale
I was surprised by how large a hex is - essentially the first two Runelords modules take place in about half a hex.
I guess I'm most interested in feedback about what I've done, about the political boundaries as I have defined them and in what people think about mashing these different themes together.
Brilliant.
Thanks for doing the hex maps. I don't have Kingmaker and I'm about to be a player in that AP, but I am very excited by this idea!
Real quick I set your map up as the background for a hex grid in maptool. You can then do measurements very easily on the map. With the drawing tools set to the right color and %50 opacity, you can also mark up the map (if Korvosa is expanding, for example). Neat stuff!
|
|
Brilliant.
Thanks for doing the hex maps. I don't have Kingmaker and I'm about to be a player in that AP, but I am very excited by this idea!
Real quick I set your map up as the background for a hex grid in maptool. You can then do measurements very easily on the map. With the drawing tools set to the right color and %50 opacity, you can also mark up the map (if Korvosa is expanding, for example). Neat stuff!
I did everything in Corel Draw and chose the hex orientations such that the stuff around Rannick made sense, kinda. If it's helpful, I could extract the shaded parts and the annotations to make a hex-and-map combo but I imagine that it's pretty trivial to do that in MapTools and the hard part is all the reading of the Varisia Gazetteer to figure out which towns belonged to whom.
Yeah, I think I'm gonna take a higher res varisia map and just use Maptool's built in hex functionality. I will be stealing your political data there though...
+1 for this great idea!
I am in love with the land-accumulating concepts behind Kingmaker, but I'm currently running RotRL, and we're still only in Burnt Offerings.
Why not incorporate those wonderful Kingmaker elements into RotRL? Genius! I'm totally doing this. And it will inspire me to do more open-ended sandbox style side-treks in the process. Thanks so much for sharing!
+1 for this great idea!
I am in love with the land-accumulating concepts behind Kingmaker, but I'm currently running RotRL, and we're still only in Burnt Offerings.
Why not incorporate those wonderful Kingmaker elements into RotRL? Genius! I'm totally doing this. And it will inspire me to do more open-ended sandbox style side-treks in the process. Thanks so much for sharing!
James said in the Kingmaker thread that he had wanted similar mechanics for HMM. So he's just as geeked about this as the rest of us.
Two of my party's members (siblings) have taken custody of the Turtleback area (now called The Rannick Marches in my game ^.^), and I've been waiting for Rivers Run Red to come out so I could see the viability of incorporating these rules. I'm glad I wasn't the only one with that crazy thought - thanks for posting these hex maps, Greycloak! :D
As far as the political boundaries - I might add the hex that encompasses Claybottom Lake, as guarding a valued water resource for both food and travel would be in Magnimar's interests (unless your thought is that Magnimar holds sole jurisdiction on the waterways, of course.) In my campaign, Black Magga spawned an Argorth after she died that fled into the lake, so my PCs have to still contend with that beastie - thus my reason for including it.
Now that I think about it, the rest of the Kreegwood and Hook Mountain could probably be included as well - with the trouble that came from those areas, their 'pacification' would be a top priority...
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
|
|
(Snip) As far as the political boundaries - I might add the hex that encompasses Claybottom Lake, as guarding a valued water resource for both food and travel would be in Magnimar's interests (unless your thought is that Magnimar holds sole jurisdiction on the waterways, of course.) In my campaign, Black Magga spawned an Argorth after she died that fled into the lake, so my PCs have to still contend with that beastie - thus my reason for including it.
Now that I think about it, the rest of the Kreegwood and Hook Mountain could probably be included as well - with the trouble that came from those areas, their 'pacification' would be a top priority...(snip)
Yeah, I imagined The hex that includes Claybottom Lake to be the part that includes the ghost-nymph side trek near the end of the adventure so I didn't mind it as wild. Plus, once Black Magga is in control of the lake (which is the most likely scenario at the end of HMM), I see it as anything but settled.
As for the Kreegwood hex, I left it as unsettled by design. As it is drawn, the road to the fort is patrolled and controlled while the backwoods is not. I imagine that when the PCs come rolling through, the Grauls have just started encroaching on territory that once was patrolled and pacified by the Rangers. I may well push their homestead a bit further off the road.
So to sum up, I reached the opposite conclusion (intentional non-inclusion) for the same reasons you chose to include them. If I were the PCs, those two hexes would be the first two I would be working on because they are problems, they would be partially explored already and they may well have a political alliance with the folks from the Lake's edge already if they can drive Magga out.
Yeah - I saw that side of the coin a few hours after I posted...argh. ;D
The intent could be that Magnimar wants those areas pacified, but the PCs will have to really work to make that happen. So the initial five hexes are the base they have to operate from - the others will be 'contested' hexes until the gameplay shows otherwise.
Good times ahead... :)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
|
|
Yeah - I saw that side of the coin a few hours after I posted...argh. ;D
The intent could be that Magnimar wants those areas pacified, but the PCs will have to really work to make that happen. So the initial five hexes are the base they have to operate from - the others will be 'contested' hexes until the gameplay shows otherwise.
Good times ahead... :)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
Have you talked to your players about using the Kingmaker ruleset? Are they excited about it? Are you thinking about changing any of the rest of the Path to accommodate them running a kingdom?
I had thought that if the PCs do keep the keep, they could get exposed to the goings on in the next module in a more organic way - hear about giants moving around in the North (displacing other peoples perhaps), rumours of some kind of gathering on the NW slopes of the Iron Peaks, then they could intercept or track a scouting party and get intel of an imminent attack on Sandpoint and rush to save the day.
If they were enjoying the kingdom expansion aspect, the giant movement rumours could take place over months (or even years) and could be interspersed within side-treks dealing with forest Fey or negotiating with the Gnomes or fighting wyverns in the mountains or dealing with Magnimarian political machinations or something.
I'd be excited to hear about how it goes for you because my players won't be there until 2011-ish if ever.
Have you talked to your players about using the Kingmaker ruleset? Are they excited about it? Are you thinking about changing any of the rest of the Path to accommodate them running a kingdom?
I had thought that if the PCs do keep the keep, they could get exposed to the goings on in the next module in a more organic way - hear about giants moving around in the North (displacing other peoples perhaps), rumours of some kind of gathering on the NW slopes of the Iron Peaks, then they could intercept or track a scouting party and get intel of an imminent attack on Sandpoint and rush to save the day.
If they were enjoying the kingdom expansion aspect, the giant movement rumours could take place over months (or even years) and could be interspersed within side-treks dealing with forest Fey or negotiating with the Gnomes or fighting wyverns in the mountains or dealing with Magnimarian political machinations or something.
I'd be excited to hear about how it goes for you because my players won't be there until 2011-ish if ever.
I haven't breathed a word to them yet. I wanted to actually get my eyes on the mechanics before I make any mention of it. I've essentially set up the area as a border march for Magnimar, since it's so unstable at the moment. It will never be its own kingdom, per se, but its isolation will give it a lot of potential autonomy if things go well and the area is productive in the eyes of the Lord Mayor.
Most of my party has no interest in ruling or running anything other than themselves, to be honest, so I may be just using the rules so I can quickly make a roll or two and tell the interested PC how the area is doing. (They felt like they had no choice but to take custody over the region, because they didn't want any chance of the Hellknights running things up there instead). ;D
Their more immediate concern is the fact that one player has managed to almost single-handedly call down Lamashtu's wrath on them after all the stuff his ranger/wizard of Sarenrae has done to destroy her worshippers and her unholy places. The giants will probably just slip right on by while they deal with the Argorth and possibly even the Yethazmari itself before Sandpoint gets attacked in FotSG.
Or they could do something completely different...again. So I try to prepare for as many tangents as I can ;)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
|
|
It will never be its own kingdom, per se, but its isolation will give it a lot of potential autonomy if things go well and the area is productive in the eyes of the Lord Mayor.
I used the term "kingdom" because that is the general term for a ruled area, be it ruled by a Baron (1-20 hexes), a Duke (21-80 hexes) or a King (>80 hexes). (aside - my paper copy won't be here for 2 or 3 weeks but I have already read the pdf of the kingdom rules)
Because of its isolation and the buffer that the Sanos Gnomes and independent kingdoms to the south provide, this colony is almost begging to secede - especially if the PCs aren't cool with the Hellknights.
I guess it all depends on the time line and what the PCs want. If they love the idea of being rulers (and everyone could have a role to play by the KM rules), I would stretch things out and expand that part. If they don't, ruling the Rannick Marches (a term I like) could be more of a background kind of thing. The kingdom management rules boil down to a set of decisions and dice rolls every month so there is room for intense management, expansion and whatnot at one extreme but there is also room for a group whose interest is more in stewardship to get that part out of the way quickly in an email or something.
|
I am thinking about adding elements from the Kingmaker adventure path to my Rise of the Runelords campaign after the PCs liberate Fort Rannick. Specifically, I intend one of the PCs to become Baron Rannick, ruling over a 5-hex domain near Turtleback ferry and leaving it up to them what to do with what I am naming the county of Rannickshire. If they run with it, I would expand the timeline between HMM and FotSG and likely relocate the Sandpoint attack to whatever city the PCs build.
To this end, I superimposed a 12 mile hex grid on the Varisia (and Turtleback ferry and Sandpoint Hinterlands) map and added in my interpretation of the holdings of the various political entities out there:
Varisia - Letter Sized
Varisia - Poster Sized
Fort Rannick and Sandpoint hinterlands maps to scaleI was surprised by how large a hex is - essentially the first two Runelords modules take place in about half a hex.
I guess I'm most interested in feedback about what I've done, about the political boundaries as I have defined them and in what people think about mashing these different themes together.
That was GREAT!
My group has just played in a way that required this information. Tks a lot!