I'm about to end my current campaign, and in it the characters have just gotten a flying city (From the Crucible of Chaos module).
In the next campaign I'm going to have the pc's run two characters: Normal characters, starting first level, and on the side they will keep playing their old characters in regards to running and expanding on their flying city. The new characters will have some connection to the old ones (probably the children of the old characters) and after taking a look at the kingmaker campaign, I think I might be able to make it work so that I can run this adventure path with a flying city...
The characters were planning on making some farming colonies as they expand the city and travel the world, and I was thinking I might break the adventure path into multiple locations in the world as they are expanding their empire.
Those of you who have played in the kingmaker campaign, can you give me some input on problems I might run into if I attempt this? Thanks!
Crucible of Chaos a Golarion module? (i.e. does it tie to Golarion/Pathfinder canon?)
Purple Dragon Knight wrote: Crucible of Chaos a Golarion module? (i.e. does it tie to Golarion/Pathfinder canon?) yes
Well you will have to defend your farming communities, and if your flying city is not there when the hords attack... or when diplomatic envoys come by, or when drought, or heavy snows, or monsters wander in or... and if you have multiple communities all over the place you could be spread quite thin...
You might want to start building the kingdome in the city. Start by trying to figure out gardens, grypon or hyppogryph stables, people to inhabbit your city, and fill all the areas needed to make it sustainable :) This in itself will take a lot of adventure work :)
Forges, markets, crafters, tinkers, tailers, soldiers, spys, organizers, delegators, diplomats, latriners, garderners, taverners, innkeepers, peasants, girls, wizards, clerics, city guards (I like Monks for that), Cavaliers mounted on flying animals (pegasus, gryphon, hipogryph),
Ground support in farming communities could have a small town with a garrison in each with a noble (son or daughter) running the show... and support staff - cleric, ranger, cavalier, fighter, monk wizard/sorcerer, diplomat/bard :) plus organizers and delegators, gardeners, latrieners, guards, tinkers, tailers, soldiers, spys etc...
jlord wrote: I'm about to end my current campaign, and in it the characters have just gotten a flying city (From the Crucible of Chaos module).
In the next campaign I'm going to have the pc's run two characters: Normal characters, starting first level, and on the side they will keep playing their old characters in regards to running and expanding on their flying city. The new characters will have some connection to the old ones (probably the children of the old characters) and after taking a look at the kingmaker campaign, I think I might be able to make it work so that I can run this adventure path with a flying city...
The characters were planning on making some farming colonies as they expand the city and travel the world, and I was thinking I might break the adventure path into multiple locations in the world as they are expanding their empire.
Those of you who have played in the kingmaker campaign, can you give me some input on problems I might run into if I attempt this? Thanks!
Hey there,
First of all you should have no problem starting the game in this way. I set my Kingmaker game on entirely different homebrew world and it is working perfectly fine with just a few tweaks.
Based on what you said here are my recommendations:
1) This is the most important one. You need a believable reason why your PCs parents are not constantly interceeding with their superior levels and their flying city, but at the same time a good explaination as to why the other nations do not just stomp out this upstart nation. YOUR HOMELAND NEEDS TO PROVIDE A SAFETY NET, BUT NOT A CRUTCH!!! In the original game this was explained by the near civil war state of Brevoy. The end result was that why Brevoy would defend its colony from attacks from other nations, it will not send a single solider to help them against monster raids. In my own game the PCs are running a colony of a distant empire with a very impressive navy and wizard corps. The end result is if my version of Pitax or any other nation attacked, in 3 months time the navy would arrive and push them out (and conquer them under the guise of a defending themselves), but their homeland will not send then navy to help deal with the latest monster threat. That is the PCs job.
-- Recommendation: I don't know your exact situation, but my suggestion is perhaps the floating city supports itself by drifting around Golorian trading with various friendly cities. A flying city could ship a LOT raw materials around at low costs, plus the people in your city could be producing finished goods while in transit. The PCs colony, Fort Drelev, and Varnhold are all farm communities that have been established in order to ensure long term economic & poltical independence.
2) The second most important one is next. You need a believable reason why your PCs parents slowly and eventually fully withdraw their support. In the later books the PCs will have huge swaths of territory under their control and face huge threats, 2 of them from sister colonies. If a your PC parents are still heavily involved in their children's well being then they will have strong reason and means to easily solve 2 of the books on behalf of the PCs! In the original game this was explained by the civil war looming and the City leaders that commissioned the PCs from withdrawing their support. I can't tell you what I have in mind since my players occassionally read the forums, but I have something in mind.
-- Recommendation: A flying city is a very valuable asset that would be coveted by every nation that that sees it. I would probably say that your PCs parents find that power groups are constantly harassing them so they have to spend more and more time avoiding the PCs colony (so as to avoid attracting threats to it), and eventually they lose contact. Meanwhile the PCs parents tell the PCs to keep working on growing the colony since it is critical to their long term plans. After the PCs defeat the big bad in the final book you can have flying city return and now it parks over the PCs kingdom permenently.
3) Have an explaination for the sister colonies. I used the same explaination for my game as the original game. Varn was a mercenary leader who earned a colony charter. Drelev was an adventurer who married into a connected noble family.
-- Recommendation: Since their will be a large timeskip to help the PCs grow up, you could say that Varn was a reliable mercenary the PCs parents hired to help police their city and that noble class of some sort sprung up in the flying city.
4) Tweak Oleg and Kesten In the original Oleg was nominally allied with Brevoy and chartered by them to run the outpost. I used the same concept but changed originating nation.
-- Recommendation: This is touch tricky for you, but I would just say that PCs were sent to the Stolen Lands to both map the Stolen Lands and negotiate him allying himself with the PCs homeland so they could use his forgotten outpost as a base of operations. After the PCs save Oleg from the bandits, he will probably readily abondon his weak alligance to Brevoy. As part of the shift in alligance, the PCs parents send Kesten to protect the outpost full time.
5) PCs parents must become NPCs for the duration of the chronicle. A lot of these suggestions a recommended rely on your the old PCs performing in certain but very reasonable ways. If the old PCs are not on the sidelines then you will be essentially running two games. The one game where one set of PCs found a kingdom, and other game where you constantly distract and fustrate the another set of PCs so they can only help the first group in selective ways. That second game is a lose-lose. If your plans to distract succeed like they need to, then your PCs will be fustrated or feel railroaded. If they fail then the other game will suffer.
There are other things I could recommend, but they have little to do with converting the game. But do these 5 things and you can run the books nearly exactly the same as the original.
Thanks for the feedback shiv and tic_web,
Between the campaigns I might have them build on their city using the kingdom building rules.
in response to tic's points,
My game is based off of a homebrew world too. Sorry, I was vague in my first post. The quick background of the world is that a magicial experiment had gone wrong and planeshifted a large community of people in a seemingly uncivilized world. The people have built a small nation in 20 years, and then the pcs have found their flying city and this is where we are at. The next campaing is going to be 20 years into the future give or take when it starts. So basically I have a blank slate to set up what I need.
1) The 20 year jump is going to place all of the current Pc's into the middle aged category. In fact, I think one or two of them might make it into the old category... The Idea Was that the old characters have retired from adventuring to run the city/do their own thing. Not sure if this is a good enough Idea, but the players are excited in general. The Land is vast and the only known communities are the country the PC's started in (named Tower), a community of dragons somewhere on the planet, and a large amount of small druid circles all over the wilderness. The people are only 40 years aware of this new world and have yet to discover more. The plan is that the Country of Tower is allying themselves with the Pc's new country due to their own civil war, and that if they tried to take the PC's Flying city, it might be destroyed.
2) This one I diffidently need to think about... the Players are stoked to be on the flying city. The idea is that I am trying to see if Kingmaker can fit into my flying city campaign. I might be ok with this happening on occasion, but not for the entirety of the campaign... Hmm, I need to think more on this...
3) This sounds pretty simple, I don't remember any sister colonies, but then again I only skimmed the first two book, I still need to get the rest...
4) I can probably align them with the country of Tower.
5) Hmm. You make some good points here... Their old characters are going to be NPC's, but I was going to allow them to "play" them in the world building aspect. Regardless if I run kingmaker or not, I'm probably going to have to do something with this...
Thanks for all of the feed back, if you guys or anyone else have anymore good insights, please let me know.
Jlord,
Hmmm, with what I have read of your world it sounds like you might be for a large rewritting to make it work. Here are some problems:
1) If all the civilized people just planeshifted over then where did the bandits of Book 1, the ancient lich menace of Book 3, the Tiger Nomads of Book 4, and Pitax for Book 5 come from? You are going to be running into a LOT of NPCs with no reasonable explaination for how they go there in all the Books.
2) Also a bigger problem is where do all your new citizens come from? Your kingdom is going grow a LOT faster than the natural birth rate would accomodate. The Kingdom building system from Book 2 has an unspoken assumption that you have and allow plenty of immigration. In my own homebrew game I actually have a few rival colonies racing against the PCs colony and they only allow the "right" kinds of people to move in. A granted a large bonus to stablity and doubled the cost of buildings. If you are going to rely on natural birth rate then you might want to triple or quadruple costs, but give the PCs a HUGE bonus to stablity so they don't feel gyped entirely.
3) It sounds like your PCs are very attached to have worked very hard for that flying island. On top of that you have given the impression that they will get to keep it and have no good explanation as to why it wound be wondering all over the place.
I think I have a good series of suggestions though:
BOOK ONE: The PCs are told by their parents that they want to groom their children for leadership and have see the pit falls of inheirted rulership. Decadence and a sense of entitlement will destroy their little nation if allowed to forment. The PCs are told to scout out an area for a potential colony. Once they are there they learn that the area is filled with a group human bandits that recently plan shifted in.
--- I would allow the PCs visit their home periodically.
BOOK TWO: With the bandits defeated and the area explored, the PCs parents feel they are ready for actual rulership responsiblities. They are given a charter to establish and rule a colony. However the PCs are informed that they are in competition with other colonies also being established. Meagar Varn is a high ranking member of the military and well respected by them. Lord Drelev is an accomplished adventurer who also well connected. I would throw in 2 or 3 more for good measure.
--- For one month at a time the Flying Island floats over one its colonies.
--- I would triple the cost buildings but give the PCs a +4 to Stablity and Loyalty to denote that the nation depends on natural birthrates to grow. HOWEVER, the PCs home country would take a much more active role in the PCs colony than Brevoy does in Standard campaign. Whenever the Island is over the colony then all its excess BP goes to the PCs colony (And if you build it right that one town section could easily generate 10 BP for the PCs everytime it visits). This means you will have to design the Flying Island using the Kingmaker rules. Should probably involve the PCs in that project.
--- I would play all the Sister Colonies as friendly to the PCs. Have then give the PCs gifts of minor magic items on their birthdays and special occassions. That way the PCs have no incentive to waste time sabotaging their rivals.
BOOK THREE: Varnhold as established next to a large pairie that was appearantly planeshifted in its entirety. The native centaurs as a consquence are bearly aware they are on a new world and continued their ancestral duty of guarding a tomb that plane shifted over to them. One day Varnhold. The PCs parents offer a reward for any of the colonial leaders that discover what happened.
BOOK FOUR: A city by the name of Pitax and large swath of countryside around it is planeshifted near to Fort Drelev (probably some during Book One or Two). After years of observing the PCs nation they are ready to make their first aggressive move and use a group of hill giant proxies to conquer Fort Drelev, and then use Fort Drelev to attack the PCs' colony. The attack is timed to occur IMMEDIATELY after the Flying City finishes its one month term over the PCs colony, which means that it will be unavailable for months. Furthermore the leaders of Pitax (the PCs are unaware who cast the Wish) have used a Wish cast from a scroll to bar all communication and transportation magic to the island until it returns. This means that the PCs have to deal with threat by themselves.
BOOK FIVE: While there is no concrete evidence that Pitax was behind the attack on Fort Drelev, Pitax launches a series of games improve diplomatic relations. The games and the wild adventure leads are just an attempt to distract the PCs.
After the end of Book 5 the PCs will formerly named the heir appearant to the nation.
BOOK SIX: The real force behind the planeshifted Pitax and the Bandits reveals itself and tries to bottle the PCs' colony
After end of Book 6 the PCs parents retire and grant them the whole of the new country to control. But off course by now it is probably time for the next set of PCs to enter the game.
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