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Achievement unlocked!
I'm a little late with this post, but my group I was DMing finished the Kingmaker adventure path two weeks ago. The kingdom of Sarendene, ruled by Queen Alanthia faced scores of dangerous foes. The game ran for 10 months before the heroes finally defeated Nyrissa and brought peace(?) to the Stolen Lands. We did a little epilogue session after the final fight and emotions ran high.
Here's some goofy end of campaign photos we took:
Photo 2 (Players with their respective minis)
This campaign was quite the experience and has created wonderful memories for my group to share for years to come. (Good job Paizo!)
However, I also have to thank you forum-goers on the Kingmaker threads. I've seen the other adventure path forums -- they pale in comparison to these boards.
-The six player conversion (that this board provided) used for this adventure saved me so much time. Big thanks to everyone who worked on that.
-Redcelt32's Game of Thrones-style story ideas really helped me out when it came to running books 4 and 5. Awesome stuff. Thanks :)
-Dudemeister. Thanks for making book 2 even more incredible. You're a creative juggernaut. Seriously.
- Orthos. You're the man. My favorite poster on here, for sure. The accounts of your games were inspiring to read and you always have wisdom to offer on almost anything Kingmaker-related.
-And everyone else who makes up this great mini-community. You're all wonderful.
/end
HUZZAH!! Congratulations man! And thanks for the praise =) Glad I could assist.
Who are your (I'm presuming that's you in the green shirt behind the rest of the group) two figs in the minis picture? Guessing Ilthuliak and Nyrissa but I can't quite tell what the one on the left is.
Also can we get a roster of the triumphant PCs (races, classes, alignments, Council positions)?
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Thanks for sharing your group pics and success with us! Sounds like you all had a great run. Thanks for the shout out, its nice to know I was able to give back a little to someone after all the great stuff that I have gotten from other GMs off the forums that enriched my own games.
I would love to hear about your epilogue session as well as your council. Also, just curious, how big was your final kingdom and what did it encompass?
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How about the dark side of things? Any regrets, things you wish you had done, foreshadowing events, things you wish you had known before hand?
Also, congrats.
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Well done! It's always quite an achievement to finish an AP, especially Kingmaker! :)
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Bravo!
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Well done. was the first AP we finished and was a good thing indeed
The Kingdom reached all the way through Varnhold and back to Pitax. We stopped doing kingdom building once the sixth book started and dealt with it in more of a narrative way so it's hard to say exactly what size they were when they ended. They had made friends with Mivon and had burned quite a bit of bridges with Brevoy. In fact, if Nyrissa hadn't begun the blooms they were going to march on Brevoy.
(Players)
Queen: Alanthia Najaar (Qadiran Elf Cleric of Sarenrae)
Councilor: Chen (Tien Cranestyle Monk)
General: Kizaar (Half-orc Inquisitor of Pharasma)
Spymaster: Miles Manners (Human Ranger)
Viceroy of Pitax: Thorn (Aasimar Mobile Fighter/Golden Legionnaire)
Magister: Athos (Human Conjurer)
(NPCs/Ex-characters)
Warden: Akiros Ismort (Human Paladin of Erastil)
Treasurer: Ranny (Halfling Rogue)
Marshall: Brom (Brevic Fighter)
High Priest: Jhod (Human Cleric of Erastil)
Kingdom building rules: Their economy was magic item powered at first (we used the book rules) but once the players figured out that's all they needed to make we had to switch to Ultimate Campaign. That ruleset has its flaws but it is much better and I should have implemented it from the start.
Not everyone liked Kingdom Building: A couple of my players never really got involved. They did not find it enjoyable and got discouraged by optimization of BP and other things that, in their words, "stifled the creative possibilities of having a kingdom in a first place."
Having a Crane Style Monk (Or really, just one character much more optimized than the rest): Without creating a balance debate, I will just say that having this particular build in the party was a problem-maker. Balancing encounters out of the book became a lot more work. Others were simply trivialized (Tuskgutter, for instance, nearly TPK'd them but when I realized that the only conscious player was the monk and he could never be effectively hit by its single attack the drama was gone and he practically auto-won the encounter). It was a hyper-defensive, goofy build that took away the drama of a good fight. Sure, the character was far from the most broken thing I've ever seen, but the WAY it was optimized really ruined the mood sometimes. Once he discovered Improved Vital and bumped his fist damage to 12d10, his offensive options were still good. It was frustrating to DM, and other players resented his higher power level as well.
Hexploring got old: At first they loved it. But by the time the second book was done, my players were very over hexes. The fact that the third, fourth, and fifth books have entire landscaped filled with hexes that aren't integral (or even conveniently near) the main plot seemed like a lot of wasted potential.
Grigori was stressful: I love this encounter. But my players hated it. And not in that good, challenging kind of way. They felt powerless and wanted to give up. I'm sure this encounter goes great with other groups but it was not a fun one for mine.
And FINALLY. My biggest regret was...
Having more NPC's and putting a lot of time into them: As a playgroup fortunate enough to play every week, I have only a small window of time to prepare. Making sure the storyline was coherent and intersting was a main priority and so was encounter balance/redesign. By the time the session rolled around I didn't have enough time to build the people my players interacted with. It would have been an even better campaign had I fleshed out the NPC's more.
I'll do a post about the minis later as well as the things I enjoyed most.
Thanks for the insight. I think I have or am going to have some similar issues that I'll start planning for.