So, I'm running my second attempt at a face-to-face game of Kingmaker. The previous group dissolved due to conflicting schedule and by the time they had started gaming again I wasn't available so they started other games. They were good roleplayers and sort of made the exploration interesting on their own playing off of little bits I'd toss them about the weather and general traveling conditions. My present group has one or two good roleplayers but seem a little more focused on the hacking and the slashing. They can get down with the role playing (instead of the roll playing) in certain situations but dice rolling heavy aspects of the campaign (like the exploration) sort of fall flat.
So, does anyone have any ideas on how to make things interesting and get rid of the monotony between encounters? Anything help would be welcome.
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Some things that I've found make exploration interesting:
Campfire Tales
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This is a mini-game that gets played any time the characters rest in game. The concept is simple. Ask each character a question based on the following:
Trivia
* What deity do you follow?
* What is your character’s favourite weapon?
* What is your character’s favourite saying?
* When is your PC’s birthday?
* Who is your character’s biggest enemy?
* What food does your character like most/least?
Hooks
* What do/did your character’s parents do for a living?
* Where is your PC’s hometown?
* Who is your character’s greatest enemy?
Character development
* Why is your character a member of the party?
* What does your character want more than anything else?
* What does your PC fear most?
In groups where character stories are important and shared often, you might consider questions like these:
* How did your PC get to be so good at their best skill?
* How did your PC come to be a member of the party?
* What was the lowest point in your character’s life and how did you get out of it?
Characters get a point for answering questions about their fellow players correctly. Give out bonus XP, or action points or whatever for correct answers (I give out a Plot Card for each 5 correct answers).
DISCLAIMER: This game was something I found randomly on the internets but I can't remember where. If someone knows let me know.
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Secondly - Use weather. Add terrain hazards (sinkholes/falling trees/etc)
Thirdly - Have the players narrate the pastoral landscapes occasionally.
You've basically got two choices. Either spice up the narrative and try to entice them into the story and the roleplaying, or go with the flow and give them what they want. Just skip to the planned ncounters and wandering monsters and minimize the in-game exploration aspect by rolling that all ahead of time. Nothing wrong with that if it is what your group wants.
The answer to this is a little bit group dependant, based on what they're looking for. Try one of these:
Not all of these would work for every group!!
Artistic: Give them a blank hex map (ie black lines on white paper) and have them draw (out of game, with colored pencils) the terrain as they explore it. Give them artistic license. And if they ask a "stupid" question like "what kind of trees are in this area" give them a serious response like it matters.
In case you think I'm joking: this is what I'm doing with my group (3 girls) and it's a huge deal for them.
Crunchers: Take a queue from the next AP and make the camping/exploration rules have more crunch. Right now the rules are a fairly boring "5% upon entering, 15% upon camping/exploring." Up that number to around 20% and 50% each, but then give all sorts of interesting ways to bring down those numbers. (from simple Survival checks, to lots of player creativity) Again, read Souls for Smugglers Shiv if you have it, and mine it for ideas. (Nightly check for diseases anyone?)
Storytellers: Each night, the party Bard (or equivilant) has to tell a campfire story. He can just summarize the main points and make a Perform check, but make it an ongoing thing. And have the local fey eavesdropping. And have it affect the events going forward.
Alternatively, you can do this. Take a queue from Tolkien's writings (specifically his author's style; they left this out of the movies): every time the party moves past a random hill, or stream, or tree, it seems Aragorn or Gandalf have an entire story to tell about the history that location. Have your PC's roll a Knowledge History check (roll it secretly so that they always succeed :-p) and give them this info.
Immersion: Every day, every hex, give them something interesting. Something that is by default not even interactive, just noise to make things more interesting. Ideas include: "for the 11th time, you have to stop and put the wagon wheel back on. Whoever sold you this cart was a cheapskate!", or hearing the howling of wolves, or noticing a pair of mated birds that makes the PC remember his ladylove that he left behind in Restov, or describe the ridgelines and canyons in interesting ways, or remember that even on nice days, there's always something interesting to say about the weather.
Skip the good stuff: Just say "you get there" and begin fighting. Some PCs hate travel stuff, so don't put them through it.
If you don't have "Guide to the River Kingdoms" I'll suggest you pick it up. Great fluff in there.
I have found that a lot of times the more "hack-n-slash" players are really more into using their character's stats/abilities/items and flexing for the camera than requiring a Rambo-esque body count.
If you throw in some exploration encounters that will play to the party's abilities without blood splattering around you won't have to have Kingmaker turn into Dragon Warrior III where you hit a random encounter every couple of steps...I may have dated myself slightly with an NES reference...
I recently picked up Skill Encounters: Non-Combat Challenges by 4th Dimension Games. It is pretty groovin'.You can use encounters like that to build up little bits of background and story to provide some cohesion to the open-ended nature of the campaign.
If you are just looking for ways to spice up the monotony of "okay you guys spent two days in this hex" then just start jotting down cool, creepy, awesome, terrifying, disgusting, hilarious, etc things that they do encounter.
Just for a couple examples off the top of my head:
--Maybe they find a field full of little stone gnomes in various terrified poses......but it sure is a nice grassy field now-adays.
--Have something mysterious follow or hunt them in the wilds (don't attack them, just stay in their periphery as it were).
--They come upon a small copse of trees in the Kamelands arranged in a perfect circle and each tree is bleeding actual blood into a central depression.
--Have them find a single stone arch/doorway that if something walks or is put through it is randomly teleported 2d10 feet in any direction (including up, but not down into the earth cause that's just mean imho). They'll sit there trying to noodle this one out for a good long while. After a certain number of uses it seems to go dormant...or does it?
Wow, thanks everyone, these are just the sort of things I was hoping for!
An idea for how things would be typically:
The groups ranger would plot out an exploration route, I would roll for the random encounters, try and toss some flavor text into the hexes while they roll their survival checks and/or perception checks accordingly. I worked some fey pranks in there at one point as well turning a few combat encounters into non-combat encounters related to things found nearby hexes. It's keeping the exploration from going dead and just being skipped but I want something more.
My players have the potential for good roleplaying, I've seen them do some good things, they lack initiative however so I'm also looking for things that can kick them in the pants and get them working on the role playing as much as the roll playing.
One idea I might try is similar to the bards campfire tales idea:
During the evening the players settle in, it's too dark to really explore but it's not late enough to sleep, and their evening tasks can only take so much time. Boredom sets in and they decide to tell campfire stories (which is to say I tell them that's what they decide :P), the two better roleplayers in the group are fellow theater majors so I would likely pick one of them to tell a story on the spot. The guidelines would be simple:
The story would have to have some connection to their character.
It could be anything, for the Barbarian it might be the tale of how she got her elven blade and earned the name 'elf-slayer'. Or maybe something not as directly related to the character and their personal experiences, like how the noble born rangers father one his composite longbow in a contest.
At the end of running an exploration route the players might then vote on who told the best story or who has made the best improvement in telling stories, to them I would give an extra plot card.
I use a combination of the 'Immersion' and 'Crunchers' ideas given above - every day (and night), in every hex, something occurs. Good Perception and/or Survival checks can avoid it. Since my PCs love to take 10 on their checks, this gives me a chance to describe all the 'natural hazards' that a DC 15 Survival check is supposed to allow you to avoid, a la page 107.
It also means the difference between an encounter with 1d6 hungry trolls and an encounter with a stripped elk carcass and the tracks of 1d6 hungry trolls is the result of the PCs skill checks. It changes their outlook from "No matter what we do, there's a 1 in 6 chance of something trying to eat us" to "Thank goodness we have a skilled ranger along to spot the Shambling Mound from hundreds of yards away, and to keep us out of the troll hunting grounds, and to show us how to avoid the quicksand."
Artistic: Give them a blank hex map (ie black lines on white paper) and have them draw (out of game, with colored pencils) the terrain as they explore it. Give them artistic license. And if they ask a "stupid" question like "what kind of trees are in this area" give them a serious response like it matters.
In case you think I'm joking: this is what I'm doing with my group (3 girls) and it's a huge deal for them.
This is similar to a piece of advice I got in the DM Tools chatroom. Only it involved using the map pack and letting whoever did the most in a square mark and name it. Might try it though the actual drawing of it wouldn't work with this group in my opinion.
Crunchers: Take a queue from the next AP and make the camping/exploration rules have more crunch. Right now the rules are a fairly boring "5% upon entering, 15% upon camping/exploring." Up that number to around 20% and 50% each, but then give all sorts of interesting ways to bring down those numbers. (from simple Survival checks, to lots of player creativity) Again, read Souls for Smugglers Shiv if you have it, and mine it for ideas. (Nightly check for diseases anyone?)
This is actually an awesome idea! I'm thinking of using base camps once the PC's leave the northern Greenbelt in the next module. I think I'll blend it with the coterie idea that was discussed on the boards early on in Kingmakers release wherein the PC's can take over their hirelings and play the troubles they encounter while their more powerful employers are gone.
Storytellers: Each night, the party Bard (or equivilant) has to tell a campfire story. He can just summarize the main points and make a Perform check, but make it an ongoing thing. And have the local fey eavesdropping. And have it affect the events going forward.
Alternatively, you can do this. Take a queue from Tolkien's writings (specifically his author's style; they left this out of the movies): every time the party moves past a random hill, or stream, or tree, it seems Aragorn or Gandalf have an entire story to tell about the history that location. Have your PC's roll a Knowledge History check (roll it secretly so that they always succeed :-p) and give them this info.
See my above post for my idea based on this.
Immersion: Every day, every hex, give them something interesting. Something that is by default not even interactive, just noise to make things more interesting. Ideas include: "for the 11th time, you have to stop and put the wagon wheel...
Definitely an idea, with the information people have given me here I think I'm on the right track to pulling that off.
I recently picked up Skill Encounters: Non-Combat Challenges by 4th Dimension Games. It is pretty groovin'.You can use encounters like that to build up little bits of background and story to provide some cohesion to the open-ended nature of the campaign.
Might have to check that out.
--Maybe they find a field full of little stone gnomes in various terrified poses......but it sure is a nice grassy field now-adays.
I love that and my players will too given how much they dislike gnomes. I'll get a laugh after they spend some time looking around in pure pranoia for the cockatrice/basilisk/medusa that might have made them only to find it's bones somewhere nearby.
--They come upon a small copse of trees in the Kamelands arranged in a perfect circle and each tree is bleeding actual blood into a central depression.
I like this one. I think it would be an interesting touch to put pained faces in the boles of the trees.
--Have them find a single stone arch/doorway that if something walks or is put through it is randomly teleported 2d10 feet in any direction (including up, but not down into the earth cause that's just mean imho). They'll sit there trying to noodle this one out for a good long while. After a certain number of uses it seems to go dormant...or does it?
That one also sounds fun. Might have to look into that!
I use a combination of the 'Immersion' and 'Crunchers' ideas given above - every day (and night), in every hex, something occurs. Good Perception and/or Survival checks can avoid it. Since my PCs love to take 10 on their checks, this gives me a chance to describe all the 'natural hazards' that a DC 15 Survival check is supposed to allow you to avoid, a la page 107.
It also means the difference between an encounter with 1d6 hungry trolls and an encounter with a stripped elk carcass and the tracks of 1d6 hungry trolls is the result of the PCs skill checks. It changes their outlook from "No matter what we do, there's a 1 in 6 chance of something trying to eat us" to "Thank goodness we have a skilled ranger along to spot the Shambling Mound from hundreds of yards away, and to keep us out of the troll hunting grounds, and to show us how to avoid the quicksand."
True true, good ideas as well, though in my group it seems everyone has put ranks into survival which has been irritating in some cases but I should be able to make it work.
I also want to involve craft: cartography as well somehow