Noble houses of Brevory as antagonists?

[Dorgar]

Hi all,

I am getting ready to start a Kingmaker campaign and one of the party concepts is having the players be from one of the noble houses of Brevory.
Not the direct heir but a cousin or nephew to the Lord or Lady of the house (potential ruler) and other members of the family or servants of the house making up the rest of the party. I right now have the first two installments of the AP and will be picking up the rest in the next month or so. Do any of the houses make appearances as antagonists, or appear in a way that makes this a bad idea? Thanks for any forthcoming help.

[jtokay]

Not directly, but anything is possible in your game.

The northern houses (there is a map in book 1 in the Brevoy section) are more likely Issian and would be more officially against what the swordlords are doing in the Stolen Lands, I’d imagine. (Since it seems like, more or less, all of this is being done sort of “under the Issian radar” until later on in the AP as I read it.)

In my campaign, one of my PCs is an heir to a noble house, but he wrote it in that his father (the rightful heir) stepped away from the nobility willingly, effectively taking the PC out of the running as well (by choice). But now the PC’s father and uncle are dead, certain parties are intent on making sure he doesn’t try and come back making a claim, even though he wants no part in it. It’s making for some good RP, and the lengths to which his immediate family is being mistreated by these “parties” is having a hand in an upcoming multiclass into Barbarian. Bring on the Rage! :D

[Daviot]

Dorgar wrote:

Hi all,

I am getting ready to start a Kingmaker campaign and one of the party concepts is having the players be from one of the noble houses of Brevory.
Not the direct heir but a cousin or nephew to the Lord or Lady of the house (potential ruler) and other members of the family or servants of the house making up the rest of the party. I right now have the first two installments of the AP and will be picking up the rest in the next month or so. Do any of the houses make appearances as antagonists, or appear in a way that makes this a bad idea? Thanks for any forthcoming help.

Not directly. To try to be as spoiler-free as possible, most of the antagonists are either rivals in the River Kingdoms/Stolen Lands or various monsters and "natives". Heck, Paizo was very careful to disconnect NPCs from the adventures—that way, if Ranger Bob is killed in book 2, there's nothing to muck up because he doesn't show up in books 3-6, though this does involve a little bit of GMing if you want Ranger Bob to play a continuing role in your game.

The Gazetteer of Book #6 does feature suggestions on how to extend the campaign past its fully-statted out adventure format, and at least two of these ideas involve getting Brevoy back involved vs. your Kingdom.
That said, you're running your game; find out what your players would like to do, and if getting Brevoy involved in your campaign is the way to go, feel free to bounce ideas off the forum.

[Troubled_child]

My group is also going to have more of connection to Brevoy. The best piece of advice I can give is sit down and decide on how the political landscape of Brevoy is going to work in your campaign as it's not covered in much detail in the books.

[J.S.]

There's a degree to which a conflict with Brevoy stands as dead foreshadowing, occasionally alluded to but not engaged with. Though, on that point, having PCs as part of a noble family would really make that work better.

[Dorgar]

Thanks all :) I really apprietiate the feedback. I am a big Game of Thrones fan, so I plan on devoloping the political side of things a bit more. I am also sure that my players are going to want to start building up a military of sorts way before they get to the end of the campaign. Anyone else have this pop up? How have you delt with it?

[jtokay]

Dorgar wrote:

I am also sure that my players are going to want to start building up a military of sorts way before they get to the end of the campaign. Anyone else have this pop up? How have you delt with it?

I have not had this pop up yet, but if you are sure they will want to deal with it, then you may want to go ahead and pick up book 5 early. It has the rules not only for mass combat but will tell you very specifically how to deal with forming and keeping armies. So even if your players want to deal with this in peacetime, then they should be well-versed with the mechanic by the time stuff starts to go down in book 5.

Or heck, by that time, you might have decided to throw a few things at them off the book just for fun. ;D