Been awhile since I've been over on the Paizo boards but I have been lurking the last week and reading posts all over about Kingmaker and Curse of the Crimson Throne and mash-up campaigns.
It has gotten me hooked on an idea that just doesn't want to go away which is a Curse of the Crimson Throne / Kingmaker campaign and if that wasn't enough I wanted to pepper some of the extremely good modules around into it. I haven't worked out the details as I originally considered something like Curse 1-3 into Kingmaker 1, as a start, but realized there is better ways to do it. As the Kingmaker Path proceeds the "characters former home" is increasingly hit with unrest and tyranny.
I originally thought about running it in the Fate 3.0 system, but I've been recently talking about taking the best things I like about Fate 3.0 and layering them into Pathfinder in a sort of "Action Points" type of way, and that is Aspects / Fate Points.
Since this campaign is neither Curse of the Crimson Throne nor Kingmaker and both at the same time I didn't think if it really fit in one of their sections, if anything I guess it would probably fall under the Kingmaker section tho. As an aside I was also heavily considering a Age of Worms / Carrion Crown mesh.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Been awhile since I've been over on the Paizo boards but I have been lurking the last week and reading posts all over about Kingmaker and Curse of the Crimson Throne and mash-up campaigns.
It has gotten me hooked on an idea that just doesn't want to go away which is a Curse of the Crimson Throne / Kingmaker campaign and if that wasn't enough I wanted to pepper some of the extremely good modules around into it. I haven't worked out the details as I originally considered something like Curse 1-3 into Kingmaker 1, as a start, but realized there is better ways to do it. As the Kingmaker Path proceeds the "characters former home" is increasingly hit with unrest and tyranny.
I originally thought about running it in the Fate 3.0 system, but I've been recently talking about taking the best things I like about Fate 3.0 and layering them into Pathfinder in a sort of "Action Points" type of way, and that is Aspects / Fate Points.
Since this campaign is neither Curse of the Crimson Throne nor Kingmaker and both at the same time I didn't think if it really fit in one of their sections, if anything I guess it would probably fall under the Kingmaker section tho. As an aside I was also heavily considering a Age of Worms / Carrion Crown mesh.
An interesting idea. Have you considered, running Kingmaker and replacing Pitax with Korvosa, the players run two parties one taming the Stolen Land the other dealing with Korvosa's troubles.
The Castle of Knives could be replaced with the castle in Skeletons of Scarwall.
While one group is in Scarwall the Queen is warring with the other group. Would be interesting...
Ah a GM with the aspirations to do an AP mashup campaign! You have my blessing.
You are not alone in hopes of combining Kingmaker and Curse of the Crimson Throne. A man... scratch that... a legendary being named Barcas inhabits these forums and is currently running a game called "Kingmakers of Korvosa."
This will be a sandbox style game. While it takes place in Korvosa and nominally follows parts of the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, it has a lot more in common philosophically with Kingmaker. (There will be parts of Council of Thieves thrown in as well.) The game will be almost entirely urban, taking place almost entirely in Korvosa and its nearby holdings. The game will have a focus on devils and demons in the same manner that Kingmaker has regarding the fey and Carrion Crown has towards undead.
It is currently underway in the PbP section here so you could definitely read up on how the game is unfolding. Perhaps if you asked politely and brought him tribute, he may deem you worthy and share with you some of his glorious insight into future plans for the game.
My initial thoughts was turning Brevoy into Korvosa... but altering the government structure closer to England... a Parliment (the noble houses) under a Monarch...
I am actually going to run a large intro into Kingmaker / Curse of the Crimson Throne using the following modules...
Part 1
Edge of Anarchy
Hollows Last Hope
(Into the Haunted Forest) - this one is a maybe... I saw ways on combining it in with the other two...
Stolen Lands
Crown of the Kobold King
Edge of Anarchy begins with the characters sent to (Oleg's Trading Post), a small trading settlement in the Stolen Lands to track down and bring to justice a criminal (Gaedren Lamm) who fleed the city. They will arrive in the small town to discover that it is suffering from a plague and (if included) they will end up in a fight with another group of adventurers (I am thinking of tying in one of the other mercenary bands from Kingmaker here, giving the characters a rivalry with them from the beginning of the campaign). Once they have dealt with the issues of the settlement and bought Lamm to justice they will return home to the rest of Edge of Anarchy. Their actions with Lamm, and in the Greenbelt already will earn them the commission into the Stolen Lands. They will return to (Oleg's Trading Post) to find deal with the warring Kobolds (the idea right now is that I will be replacing the mites with more Kobolds and run Crown of the Kobold King here as well). And thus will conclude the end of the first act of the game.
I haven't worked out all the details of part two, but I am fairly certain it will deal with them returning to get their "Kingdom" commission, and get stuck in the city during the events of Seven Days to the Grave. There are a few other modules I want to run, and they will eventually return to the Stolen Lands for Rivers Run Red.
Just some random thoughts I had here for adventures in Act II... They are sorted by level as I was looking at how I wanted the party progression to work and other then the required two for Curse and Kingmaker none of them are settled modules and since Escape from Old Korvosa is suppose to start at level 8 I made level 7 adventures the cut off...
4th (Seven Days to the Grave) - CONFIRMED
5th (Rivers Run Red) - CONFIRMED
5th (Carnival of Tears)
5th (Revenge of the Kobold King)
6th (Hungry Are the Dead)
6th (Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale)
7th (Realm of the Fellknight Queen)
7th (Seven Swords of Sin)
I am actually going to run a large intro into Kingmaker / Curse of the Crimson Throne using the following modules...
I was skeptical until I thought about it. My initial worry: a kingdom makes it easy for them to be located if they flee there after Escape from Old Korvosa. Benefits far outweigh that, though. I like the idea of a civil war within the Korvosan empire. PCs must slaughter an army that perhaps they helped train in order to enter Korvosa City proper at the final adventure.
Not seamless, but it works.
Oh, don't award them the kingdom THAT easily. Let a grudging Queen Ileosa "award" them the wild province after they foil the "wicked, upstart doctor" and his plague. This both gets them away from her plans and (hopefully) gets them killed in the wilderness, AND if the PCs succeed, she has another province. Win-win.
The rest of the Kingmaker stuff easily transposes to the Bloodvale. If you look through the Kingmaker threads, there's a suggestion that rather than a flat 50 RP, the PCs jockey with various houses for support, promising favors (some specified, some not) in the future. I can just see the argument inside the paladin
I may just yoink this idea, it's that good. I'll have to look for other mashup stuff.
[edit] Ooh, ooh! Have some rare components found only in Bloodvale be requirements for the construction of the Crown of Thorns and her ritual at the end of the AP. :) Never hurts for the PCs to realize that a "harmless gift" isn't that harmless. (Yes, I'm evil. I know this, let's move on.)[/edit]
I settled on the following modules for my Act II.
Carnival of Tears - because it will show up in the PCs "capital" and I hope will help to hammer home the sense that the Stolen Lands are dangerous even for the "civilized" folks and there is a reason that settlements are dangerous.
Then in order to drop the Fey links into the game, Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale and Realm of the Fellknight Queen.
Act II
Seven Days to the Grave)
Rivers Run Red)
Carnival of Tears
Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale
Realm of the Fellknight Queen
Now I just have to read up on them and work out how they meld together.
As an aside I've been thinking about how to run all these modules and keep the PCs from becoming overpowered extremely quickly. So far I decided on a "Low Fantasy" Point-Buy option (10-pts), and the slow experience path (may have to develop a "very slow" path because my players love to count XP, and the excitement of getting close to that level and getting the XP that puts you over is part of the game that I enjoy). I am going to have to completely rework most of the modules for a higher number of players (6-10 at any given time). All in all, I am looking forward to this project though and will be starting in the next several weeks!
ACT II as seen above...
Rivers Run Red begins with the characters returning to Korvosa for their work on the Stolen Lands expedition. Upon arrival in Korvosa they find themselves trapped within the city when it goes on lockdown because of the plague (as I am considering tying this plague with one in Act 1 having the PCs having brought it into the city on their return from the Stolen Lands, going as far as to having a couple of them come down with the plague) no one is allowed into the city and no one is allowed to leave the city to stop the risk of spreading the plague even more. They proceed to complete Seven Days to the Grave and win the respect of the city and given a commission to establish a new nation in the Stolen Lands. They return to establish their capital and after several months of "Kingdom Building" the largest city draws the PCs into Carnival of Tears (in order to illustrate how dangerous the Stolen Lands are and to highlight the reason that many settlements don't last long). The PCs will then proceed with a bit more "Kingdom Building" and Rivers Red Run before being appoarched by one of the other "fledging nations" or Korvosa to establish a overland trade route with said "fledging nation" and those begins Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale. After the clean up with the Bloodsworn Vale and Rivers Red Run, then a very angry Fey will retalitiate on the PCs in Realm of the Fellknight Queen.
I haven't fully read all the adventures so that is subject to tweaking but I believe that it fits exceptionally well. It highlights everything that I want in ACT II which is making the stolen lands dangerous and foreshadowing the Fey. The problems in Korvosa are just icing on the cake since they have to return anyways, and the plague ties in with the Hollows Last Hope plague.
Just to make sure I'm caught up, you're still using the location of Brevoy over by Iobaria, but you're porting Korvosa into that setting over there?
If so, that's a pretty interesting take. My thoughts on the subject always start with trying to build a kingdom in Varisia, it never occurred to me to relocate my favorite Varisian sites to Brevoy*
I like your Act I, but it looks like you're not actually using any of Edge of Anarchy. It seems more like you're going from the CotCT Player's Guide straight to Hollow's Last Hope.
I'm a little iffier on your Act II. Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale is a great adventure, but I'm not sure how it will fit in with a campaign which already has the PCs building their kingdom.
Also, it's my opinion that Fellnight Queen should not be run in any campaign that wants to finish with Sound of a Thousand Screams.
I've seen a lot of people inserting FQ into their Kingmaker campaigns, though, so I may be in a minority there.
Anyhoo, I'm a huge fan of AP mashups, so I look forward to hearing more about your plans and some actual play results once you kick off your campaign.
*Not entirely true. I've considered running the opening scenes of Burnt Offerings in Brevoy as a way of getting the PCs noticed by the Sword Lords and chartered with exploring the Greenbelt.
Combining the Campaigns makes it almost impossible to leave Golarion intact as is. I have struggled for weeks with how I wanted to do the AP mash-up whether in Golarion or another world (established or one of my own making) but I have a few ideas to leave the APs in a "mostly" intact Golarion or atleast one that only focuses on the Brevoy area.
The following are my "hacks" of Golarion and Brevoy... I am not going to spoiler this since all of this information is available in the player guides and such...
Korvosa replaces Restov. (If you are wondering the Aldori Swordlord School becomes the Orisini Academy)
Korvosa predates the invasion of Choral the Conqueror and was allowed to retain its "sovereignty" by recognizing the Brevic Emperor. Therefore the Arabasti line becomes another "noble" house of Brevoy, but bares the title "King" instead of Lord. Choral and his descendants become Emperors instead of Kings, and so Surtova becomes Emperor of the Brevic Empire after the fall of House Rogarvia.
ACT I
I am actually using Edge of Anarchy. Some of the things said seem to suggest that the timeline in CotCT is somewhat slower then the modules makes it seem. So the opening act is going to be the group going after Lamm who had fled into the Stolen Lands from the law... and Falcon's Hollow (maybe replacing Oleg's Trading Post) is their first stop in tracking him down. When the PCs leave Korvosa for the Stolen Lands, the King is still alive.
The base idea is using Hollow's Last Hope and Into the Haunted Forest while the characters are in Falcon's Hollow (or an Oleg's Trading Post that is more a frontier town). Before / After / During those modules the PCs will get their fight with Lamm and kill / capture him in the name of the Korvosan Justice! They will return to Korvosa to find the King is dead and the city in full riot mode at which point I will finish Edge of Anarchy.
As an aside I wanted to expand on the "rival adventurers" in the module "Into the Haunted Forest" and make them one of the groups that eventually get sent off to explore the Stolen Lands... I am going with the Nomen Heights group as my personal favorite so they already have a connection to them.
King Eodred Arabasti II had already prepared several charters into the Stolen Lands before his death. (Including the charter to reopen the trade route through the Bloodsworn Vale which will lie between the Greenbelt and Nomen Heights area). With the group having proved themselves in the Greenbelt already, and having become "Heroes" in Edge of Anarchy, and a certain Queen wanting to get all these adventurers in the city out of her hair, she honors the charters and sends the adventurers away to the Stolen Lands.
We now get to make use of the actual Stolen Lands module, though I am altering it to fit in with my module line-up as well as what has come before and what will come later. I am adding in a rival Kobold tribe (the Truescales) to replace the "Mites" in the adventure, so the Sootscales and Truescales are going to be warring. I will run Crown of the Kobold King if / when the PCs are interested in the Truescales. I am also connecting (allying) the Truescales to Hargulka in his attempt to establish his "Monster Kingdom" from the suggestions on the forums.
Once the Crown of the Kobold King has been dealt with and the PCs go after the Stag Lord to wrap up The Stolen Lands that will be the end of ACT I of the my campaign.
I have not yet put quite as much thought into ACT II as I see I did in ACT I.
ACT II
The beginning of ACT II will open with a modified beginning of Rivers Run Red, which means instead of just getting a "charter" from Korvosa for them to create a new nation on the southern border of the Brevic Empire, the PCs will be invited / asked / commanded to return to Korvosa to get the new charter (though the PCs will not yet know they will be getting the reigns to a kingdom!) but they arrive in the city as the plague gets in full swing and the city is locked down (trapping them inside of the city for Seven Days to the Grave).
As an aside I am connecting this plague to the plague in Falcon's Hollow. I had an initial thought to make the PCs the "plaguebearers" when they returned from Falcon's Hollow for Edge of Anarchy in ACT I but I doubt that is going to fly.
Once the PCs complete Seven Days to the Grave and have become even more famous in Korvosa, the Queen is going to issue the new charter to them. I am also slowing down the Queen's descent into "madness" so she sees the PCs as a useful tool and ally if the Brevic Empire attempts to remove her as Queen of Korvosa while she is solidifying her powers. The PCs now had their kingdom charter and I suspect will be returning to the Greenbelt with giddy excitement... I will attempt to blend together Rivers Run Red, Carnival of Tears, and Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale at this stage.
As an aside knowing my group which will be 8 to 10 players strong, the group was schism into multiple "kingdoms" at this stage. I have started planning for that idea, and been thinking up ways to do Vassalage and such.
The Lord from Bloodsworn Vale will request aid from the budding PC Kingdom, and will present his charter to them. It will connect Nomen Heights with the Greenbelt (and therefore open the trade route to Korvosa once more!). However after the PCs aid him, and with the King dead, and the PCs given rule of the Greenbelt, the entire trade route will get rolled into the PC Kingdom. There maybe a little diplomacy at this time with Varnhold since the trade route is now opened. I am hoping to get the players interested in their counterpart in the Nomen Heights (so they have a personal reason to investigate during Varnhold Vanishing).
The Carnival of Tears will come to town at some point to hammer the idea home that the Stolen Lands are a savage place and there is a reason that no attempt to bring civilization to them has succeeded.
I am considering modifying my initial idea of running the Realm of the Fellnight Queen at the close of ACT II. I am thinking of changing in Revenge of the Kobold King in the adventure somewhere to leaving Realm of the Fellnight Queen to open ACT III. Which will put more time between the Varnhold trade route, and the Varnhold Vanishing module. I have considered not using the Hargulka kingdom, but I want to bring in elements of war into the game before War of the River Kings so Hargulka Kingdom will be introduced and dealt with during ACT II. I am going to run it through a few turns, but it will be gimped because Hargulka will not have a full "council" and therefore not be getting the full benefit of rulership.
Realm of the Fellnight Queen seems to be the main trend for introducing the heavy-fey elements of the later modules (for KM), and it is suggested that it can be used to foreshadow the events of Sound of a Thousand Screams. After reading through Fellnight it would seem that I would agree especially if you know you are going to drop some foreshadow in there.
And lastly, some other musings.
As an aside, I am considering removing the "Devil" element from the later Korvosa adventures and make it be more of Nyrissa handiwork. I am a huge fan of Dresden Files fey and the entire contract between the Queen and that Devil could be removed over too Nyrissa. I also considered having Nyrissa, much like the Fellnight Queen being outcast from the First World, and Thousandbreaths landing in Hell/Abyss blending the elements of the Fey and Devils into a single source which means the devils in the last CotCT act work for Nyrissa.
There are a few other odds and ins I've been considering about ACT II and Rivers Run Red. I am dropping the Cult of Gyronna entirely and The Dancing Lady (most because of the Fey elements in Conquest and Fellnight Queen) but I am thinking of expanding on the Candlemere (maybe replacing Revenge of the Kobold King with an adventure at this site), The Lonely Barrow (into a very 'Return of the King' type scene where The Lonely Warrior could be recruited by the PCs), and the Isle of the Lizard King (I have a special place in my heart for Lizardfolk and would like to see this expanded, maybe even turned into a full fledged adventure if I could find a Lizardfolk-centric one, also would like the Lizardfolk to become recruitable).
I can't wait to get this campaign underway and it should see the light of day in the next few weeks.
One thing to note is that I am going into this game with a heavy influence from Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice and Fire, and the Suikoden series of video games. This game is suppose to be political-charged, and full of opportunities that we wouldn't see in a normal game (recruiting kobolds and lizardfolk to the kingdoms, and considering the possibility of having multiple "kingdoms" ran by my group, I want alot of recruitable NPCs in the 108 stars of destiny style).