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And I'm back, with Session 32 ready to go. Not sure about the next one. Getting a little burnt out with all the running I'm doing, and we might switch things up once a month or something to give me a little break, as needed. Thanks for sticking around and reading.
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Well, back with another adventure log. Cutting this one close, but here is Session 33. Got some more death in here. Enjoy.
Wow, talk about changing the guard.
I sympathize with you on "GM burnout". Having a vested interest from the players helps. Sometimes swapping out to a one-shot module can help, especially if the module can at least be loosely tied into the main campaign. Approaching 2 years' real time with the same campaign (Council of Thieves leading into Kingmaker) myself, I'm feeling that burn too.
Mixing things up and *especially* getting some time in as a player helps a LOT in my experience.
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Wow, talk about changing the guard.
I sympathize with you on "GM burnout". Having a vested interest from the players helps. Sometimes swapping out to a one-shot module can help, especially if the module can at least be loosely tied into the main campaign. Approaching 2 years' real time with the same campaign (Council of Thieves leading into Kingmaker) myself, I'm feeling that burn too.
Mixing things up and *especially* getting some time in as a player helps a LOT in my experience.
Due to that flooding in Northeast PA (we're all managed to stay safe), I actually got a nature-given break for a couple weeks, and that helped a bit. Also got to play this past weekend on a playtest with the Flagons & Dragons podcast guys, and it really cleared things up for me a lot. Still probably gonna do the one-shots just to prevent slipping back down that slope, but I'm doing better now.
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Stopping by with Session 34. Careful, the title of the log is likely to fall under NSFW. Getting near the end of book 2. Enjoy.
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Here we are with Session 35 and it didn't go quite as far as I had planned. Oh well. Hopefully things work out better this week.
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And here is Session 36. Losing a player to a deployment, so this is probably the last you'll really read of Vanden.
Gotta say, having two under my belt, it's weird to not the be the one in the family going on a deployment. His character is going to remain in the city as an NPC, as discussed with the player, seeing as how Vanden is the only original character around from session 1. Anyway, thanks for continuing to read.
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Back again with Session 37. Feeling another break coming on. Bad enough a player argues rules for extended time at the table, but even worse when they don't look it up and just go off what they used to know. Can find out they're wrong with just a bit of research.
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Combined two sessions into one adventure log, since they were just about all kingdom turns after finishing up book 2. Sessions 38 and 39 as one log can be found here. Thanks!
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Here we go with Session 40. Not sure when the next one will be up, since Skyrim comes out next week.
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The healer goes blind in Session 41 and a bit of forest for the trees problem from yours truly makes things probably easier than they should have been. Enjoy.
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Here is Session 44 ready for any readers. Doing a long day tomorrow what with the holiday break and all. Should roughly equate to a double session. Might get a good portion through book 3, possibly even finishing up the 'main' story of it.
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For anyone still reading, just wanted to give a heads up: We've switched to "Kingdom in the Background". The kingdom turns were consistently taking more than an hour to go through, and it became increasingly frustrating asking if they were going to build anything 10+ times before getting an answer. It'll save a lot of time during the sessions, and hopefully will help bring the wealth-by-level issue caused by my homebrew stipend rule under some control.
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Ready with Session 45 for readers. Seems like we're doing another long session tomorrow. Crazy times.
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Sorry for being absent so long. I switched over to trying to put together podcasts of the sessions, and between my last post and this one, we were also on a bit of a hiatus. Anyway, my Kingmaker game is over now, thanks to a party wipe. Stretches (and I'm gonna use a super popular forum word here) verisimilitude to put together a new party to pick up where the last left off, and I think my players were getting a bit burnt out on the expansive sandbox that was Kingmaker.
It was mostly fun while it lasted. Hopefully I can talk someone else into running now though so I get a chance to play. Thanks for stopping by and reading, everyone.
Happy Gaming.
Spill the details on the party wipe!
KGMs' gotta know these things :)
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Who?
Anyway, it was pretty sad... They wiped to one of the (actually, based on the chart, probably the) most dangerous random encounter. Mind you, random encounters were very rare for my group. Rolled one this time, to the joy of the group. Rolled to see what they were facing *roll roll* 100 *check chart* Uh-oh, 1d4 adult black dragons. Maybe I should re-reroll this. The party was vocal that I shouldn't. (I'd find out later that one person in particular was so adamant about it because he'd caught some of the other players taking part in "practice" rolls when I hadn't, and didn't want them or me re-rolling just to make things easier.) Fine. *roll* 4. Damn...
So, 4 adult black dragons find them while they're camping for the night. But hey, they've got a wizard with teleport, so they might take a few hits, get pretty beat up, but they stand a chance to escape, if not really one to win. Frightening Presence, wizard flubs. Abject terror sends him teleporting away by himself without gathering the rest of the party. Rogue cowers invisibly under a bed inside the wizard's magic hut. Ranger and fighter aren't scared. Fighter gets one to within 10 hp of death, by himself (would've killed it, but forgot to use the flaming property, and by the time he remembered, wizard was gone, rogue had messed his trousers, and ranger was snack. He didn't last another round.
Now, technically, with the wizard still alive, having gone back to the capital city, yes, it could've continued. Technically. However, the ranger and wizard were recent additions to the party, held no spot on the council, and were virtually unknown to anyone in the kingdom. Rogue and fighter were well known and have been around since the early days. In keeping with the story (and numerous "replacement" officials already), it didn't really seem to fit that a group of what would essentially be mercenaries somehow became rulers of the kingdom by proxy of being played by the PCs. Too immersion breaking, IMO.
So that's how it went down. Unfortunately, the day before that happened, I had just finished putting together some extra stuff to make up for the XP deficit in the book (4).
Wow, I actually chucked the random encounters, laegely due to the PCs coming in at around 11th level.
Unplanned-for XP is also a big no-no for my version of KM, so any wandering monsters were built in. They occured randomly though.
Sorry to hear about the wipe.
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Eh, well, got my first ever party wipe as GM, so there's a merit badge out of it at least. Strange just how many specific details I'm discovering from my players about their feelings toward Kingmaker now that it's over. One of them was telling me how poorly they thought the execution of it was:
Why would rulers of a kingdom be leaving their lands for all but one week a month to continue adventuring when they should be ruling a kingdom, and hiring an adventuring party to take care of that stuff? Hard to reconcile the APs popularity with the glaring slap to logic's face, pointed out by spotlights and neon signs.
I'm paraphrasing of course, but there it is.
At the time, it is my understanding that it was felt that the PCs would not want to hang up their adventuring gear for badges of office so early on.
As an idea for any one taking a second crack at GMing it, including your own survivng rulers, perhaps they do just that: handle the "real adventuring" via the wanted posters/bounty system while the rulers do ruler stuff. This permits any number of adventurer types to be played in dealing with the threats to the kingdom without unnecessarily jeopardizing the kingdom's entire govorning body.
If the players want to run the kingdom without needlessly endangering the rulers, this seems the happiest medium.