Evil may be evil, but definitely with enough gray areas like allying with a tribe of kobolds etc.
The sandbox style of play is quite sandboxie, but there are quests and events providing hints/directions for heroes. (which they can decide not to use of course.....)
Whether there will be areas of civilization..... that depends on the players, they will be the rulers and have to found these cities themselves.....
The deeper levels of mystery, that has to be seen. There is a level of mysteries, but I think the GM could well do adding some more links between mystery and events. (But I also understand Paizo not building loads of these links into a sandbox game.... as players will find a way of breaking the links :-))
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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There are bad guys, they are mostly episodic - there is not one EVIL CONSPIRACY THAT HAS ITS HANDS ON EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE AP. Yes, there is a subtle background villain that is sponsoring some of the mayhem here and there.
Some of the evil is evil.
Some of the evil is ambiguous neutral.
There is some skulduggery and deception, but it's not a constant bacchanalia of betrayal either (unless you want it to be).
There is a ton of room for tailoring or customizing those bits and pieces to make them more or less EVUL!!!MWAHAHAHAA!!! as appropriate to the tastes of your game.
There is a medium-sized city not too far away - about 100 miles or so, so it's close enough to travel there if PCs want/need to buy or sell expensive items or get spellcasting done, but far enough away that it's not going to impact the main area of the campaign.
The sandboxiness makes it very easy to tailor parts of the campaign, to link different encounter areas with wandering monsters that come up, to allow players to follow leads that interest them. Some situations can be resolved with talking, some with stabbing, and some could go either way. It should facilitate both types of players without unduly penalizing someone who specializes in either Stab or Talk.
Hi. New subscriber here.
I'm wondering how straightforward the Kingmaker Adventure Path is. Is evil definitely evil without ambiguous gray areas? Does the sandbox style of play leave things too open for the characters to know where to go? Are there deep levels of mysteries to unravel? Is there a heavy focus on roleplaying? Etc?
I'm just getting out of a campaign that had all those traits, and it did not work well for my group. Even if Kingmaker has these, is it possible to excise these and still have a playable game?
Also, are there any areas of civilization (towns, large cities, etc)? [These often cause problems.]
Harles
Sounds like you have my Wednesday group. They stopped pursuing the Ptolus (Night of Dissonance) module part-way through to set up a pizza parlor. Not being satisfied with the level of success the restraunt was having, they started making pizza deliveries disguised as the other competing pizza joints, albiet with infected rat meat in their pizzas. The idea being to give them a bad rap and thus expand their own pizza business into a monopoly. What this had to do with "fighting Drow" or "saving the city" I'm not sure. But the only justification they needed was "my character sheet says chaotic neutral so I can do whatever I want!"
(Countless other stories exist, but that's the one I'll choose to relate at the moment.)
When I pitched Kingmaker to them they fapped with glee about how they could secretly work for enemy (possibly Nazi or Communist) governments or parties and bring down the kingdom from the inside. When I remarked how trivial that would be given that they ARE the government, one of the players simply threw up the sig-heil OOG and announced that "victory would be glorious."
I decided that perhaps Rise of the Runelords would be for the best, and we're playing through that one right now. Having a strict, almost rail-roaded plotline with an obvious evil has kept them on track and enjoying it.
Sadly, Kingmaker is *not* for everyone.
Creative Director
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There's nothing sad at all about Kingmaker not being for everyone. The same goes for EVERY adventure path we do. That's a big reason why we do two a year and not one, because we want to try to get as many Adventure Paths out there so that there's usually one that any one GM will want to run.
Even if Kingmaker has these, is it possible to excise these and still have a playable game?
Definitely.
James has already explained that the kingdombuilding aspect of the game can be put in the background and the GM simply rules how things are going for the would be rulers.As for exploration you can decide to skip that part too assuming that that is in fact what the players do as they travel from quest to quest.
It is not necesary to solve all quests in the game, and it can actually seam rather forced if the players do every single thing there is to do.
If I where you, and your intention is to run Kingmaker without the sandbox aspect, is to map out on a flow chart what parts of the adventure are essential and how the players will come into contakt with them. Then decide which side-quests you actually would like to run for your players and think of a way in which you want to tie them to the flow chart. That will give you a lot more structure and control of what the players do and don't do.
If you decide to do this you should probably give the players some ad-hoc xp/gp rewards to make sure they do not fall behind the AP's level progression, and become too underpowered to meet the challenges ahead.
They stopped pursuing the Ptolus (Night of Dissonance) module part-way through to set up a pizza parlor. Not being satisfied with the level of success the restraunt was having, they started making pizza deliveries disguised as the other competing pizza joints, albiet with infected rat meat in their pizzas. The idea being to give them a bad rap and thus expand their own pizza business into a monopoly. What this had to do with "fighting Drow" or "saving the city" I'm not sure. But the only justification they needed was "my character sheet says chaotic neutral so I can do whatever I want!"
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When I remarked how trivial that would be given that they ARE the government, one of the players simply threw up the sig-heil OOG and announced that "victory would be glorious."
W...T...F????
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W...T...F????They stopped pursuing the Ptolus (Night of Dissonance) module part-way through to set up a pizza parlor. Not being satisfied with the level of success the restraunt was having, they started making pizza deliveries disguised as the other competing pizza joints, albiet with infected rat meat in their pizzas. The idea being to give them a bad rap and thus expand their own pizza business into a monopoly. What this had to do with "fighting Drow" or "saving the city" I'm not sure. But the only justification they needed was "my character sheet says chaotic neutral so I can do whatever I want!"
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When I remarked how trivial that would be given that they ARE the government, one of the players simply threw up the sig-heil OOG and announced that "victory would be glorious."
I had a newbie group get summoned to Lavinia Vanderboren's mansion in Savage Tide, drink all her booze, ask where the hot ladies were at, and generally make idiots out of themselves. Players can do really bizarre things that maddeningly derail adventure paths.
But to counter what James Jacobs just said, I have been running Paizo AP's since the last days of Dungeon and Kingmaker is the first time since I first started playing the game that I have actually felt a sense of glee about every session. I literally don't know what will happen next and that's a rare pleasure for a DM. When they sided with the kobolds, I cheered and had fun right along with them when the chief made them honorary members of the tribe, inviting them to celebrate as Sootscales their victory over a certain thorn in the tribes' side. When the group botched their attack on the bandit camp and barely survived the waves and waves of archers picking them off one at a time, I was as anxious as them about what might happen if they failed. And it's all because only they know what they will do next.
It's not just about moving from one challenge to the next on the path to 20th level and godhood, it's about watching an entire world grow and change as the players interact with it. Make no mistake, it's a challenging AP for people used to being told exactly what to do and who the bad guys are, and even DM's used to reading the italicized text and coming up with creative ways to make the group's bizarre sidetreks lead into the next campaign hook. But it can also be the best time both GM and players will ever have with an AP.
So I say, James Jacobs is wrong. If Kingmaker isn't for your group, there's nothing wrong with that...but there's reason to be sad. It is a very special, wonderful thing to have an AP that no two groups will experience the same and will never fail to surprise even the GM.
+1 to that
I cant really think of any trad frpgs players i know, who wouldnt go for kingmaker
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Creative Director
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I would put players who do their best to derail an adventure path by willfully going against the campaign's story into the same category as the disruptive audience member who's dragged to a movie he doesn't want to see and then proceeds to talk during the movie and make a lot of disparaging comments and laughs at an inappropriate time.
And I would put the GM who doesn't tell his party what kind of AP/Campaign that he wants to/is going to run in the same category as the guy who tells his friends that they're going to see an awesome new sci-fi movie but once the movie starts, it's a romantic comedy.
AKA: Players who WANT to play in an AP will have more fun, and thus the GM will have more fun, than players who don't want to play in a specific AP.
It's the GM's job to not only know what his players want, but to let his players know what kind of game they're getting in to so they can either make characters that'll fit the campaign or so they can either decide not to play the game or perhaps convince the other players/GM to switch to a different campaign.
I would put players who do their best to derail an adventure path by willfully going against the campaign's story into the same category as the disruptive audience member who's dragged to a movie he doesn't want to see and then proceeds to talk during the movie and make a lot of disparaging comments and laughs at an inappropriate time.
And I would put the GM who doesn't tell his party what kind of AP/Campaign that he wants to/is going to run in the same category as the guy who tells his friends that they're going to see an awesome new sci-fi movie but once the movie starts, it's a romantic comedy.
That looks so good on paper, and I keep coming back to that same train of logic and wondering why it's just not true. Because it should be true!
Players a screwy bunch.
- I have a player who swears that all he enjoys is combat and twinking and I should cut out that dumb roleplay stuff. And sure enough, he fights and twinks well. However, groans whenever a fight breaks out and he's an amazing in-character roleplayer and tries to keep the scene going as long as possible.
- I have a player that has a pretty strong case of ADD (like, medically diagnosed). He can't focus on any scene where he's not in the spotlight, so he has to keep his laptop open so he can play Flash games (usually Tower Defense) while it's not his turn. He always looks terribly bored, but at the end of the game, swears he had a ton of fun and can't wait for next week.
- I have a player that swears RAW is god and that we can never houserule anything. He tries to apply this as stringently as possible (whether it works for or against him), to the point of complaining if the CR of encounters isn't applied exactly according to the DMG-recommended formula. He then complains that D&D/PF is too restrictive and doesn't let him do what he wants or tell a fun story.
- I had a player (who moved away) that believed that all adventurers should always be male. She was a female, who would thusly gendermend to play as a male. She encouraged other females to do likewise. She complained that the game was sexist and wouldn't let her play a male. (The one time a male player genderbent and played a female she flipped out.)
- The players demand dungeon crawls, but then get bored to tears that there's not enough plot and "what's the point?"
- The players demand a fantasy setting, then when it's given to them, they try to modernize it as much as possible (through magitech, marxism, or whathaveyou)
- When the players are second-guessed and are given a modern setting (or even a varient, like '20s-pulp) they are bored to tears and complain loudly.
I could go on and on, but I'm derailing the topic too much as-is.