Ah, first off, thanks for any replies I get.
Having been bitten by this AP twice, and not getting the experience out of it I wanted as a player, I decided to run it myself. I wrote a good two page proposal so that each player knew exactly what I was expecting from my group - A noble bright adventure.
I'm a new GM all together. I run a solo game via IM/Maptools (which I am not all that familiar with) for my husband that is highly political and sandbox in nature. He's got 8 things he can investigate now, some of them narrow out to the same thread, which widens again as he chooses it... lots of on the fly adaptation to maintain the illusion that it was all connected. I know how to employ misdirection, and I'm getting better at the small rules, and have planned and run two dungeons thus far without getting anyone killed... well... someone almost died. I thought an AP would be an excellent way to introduce myself as a more capable GM.
My husband is part of the adventure, because he GMed our RL game, and, well, he's my husband. I've let the group know that he'll be co-chairing in terms of rules that I am not intimately familiar with, but I know two of my players are also GMs themselves, and have opened myself up for critique and suggestions.
I'm somewhat familiar with most of the players from another game with good atmosphere, which is what made me decide to even try this.
So, my questions are these:
1. How do you guys handle the whole map situation? I know we're not allowed to post links to paizo maps on their site for copyright reasons. I was thinking of making approximations, maybe with some changes in paint or Gimp if it required (like of Oleg's, Erastil's temple, the mite dungeon, and the Stag Lord's fortress). Should I change some details?
2. How are you handling rolls for randoms during exploration? Or, how are you handling exploration at all? I've already stated that I am not going to be a rectum about players encumbrance and asked if they wanted horses to assist them, specifically I offered them to borrow against eventual purchase of a combat trained war horse (none of them are cavaliers) although no one has answered that one yet. I'm not worried about survival rolls unless the AP specifically asks for one, assuming that they can probably figure out how not to set up a camp by now.
3. How do you reward XP? Given that it will be a highly social game, and, I can hope, cooperative, I want to encourage smart play just as much as meeting with random monsters. Should I give XP as brownie points to continue being awesome, or just level them as I see the adventure calling for it?
Thanks, anyone who responds for reading through my wall of text, and in advance for any suggestions I receive.
1. If you have the PDF versions of the modules, it's fairly easy to extract the maps and remove the symbols (which are on a separate layer) to make a player-safe version. Paizo allows you to make copies of their maps for personal use among your gaming group.
If not, a couple people on this board have re-drawn the maps in various formats (Civilization map editor, paint files, etc.) Since these maps are completely redrawn (despite containing Paizo's intellectual property) Paizo has no objection to you providing them to other people.
If you choose to draw the map yourself, please be kind enough to either post it without the DM information (like what each hex contains, encounter-wise) or to clearly indicate that the map contains such information, so players in the adventure path don't 'spoil' themselves accidentally.
If you're talking about drawing an entirely new map, so that your husband and any others who might have played Kingmaker previously will be unfamiliar with it, the only guidelines I suggest are to arrange the map so that the more difficult (or higher CR) encounters are physically further away. Somewhere in the Archives for this board you will find a thread from a fellow who re-wrote the AP to be a nautical exploration of a vast archipelago. Again, the closest islands were the easiest (in terms of CR).
2. I pre-rolled an encounter for every hex and every day & night, in an effort to make the Stolen Lands seem more 'alive. Many (most!) of the random encounters were modified into non-combat events (for example, the PCs heard the far off howling of the creature(s), or spotted their tracks while exploring, or saw evidence they'd left behind rather than encountering 1d4 trolls at 30 feet. Also included early on were natural hazards that the PCs' Survival & Perception checks had allowed them to avoid - i.e. "Late morning you spot a leafy glade amongst the trees. At first it seems quite inviting, but the Ranger is quick to point out several patches of poison oak and you give the place a wide birth."
The first combat in the AP is designed to give the players a horse each, but due to their untrained natures its best to dismount the instant anything dangerous is suspected. IF you want them to have trained warhorses instead, it's easy enough to make that change to the encounter, or have Oleg have sufficient warhorses in stock and offer them (at reasonable rent-to-own rates) as a reward.
3. Playing with this group previously with individual XP, I noticed a tendency for players who had just 'levelled' to want to stop and pause and train for their next level while other players who wherer just a few XP short of next level were desperate to 'fight just one more orc.' That, plus a few sessions where 'the guy who's there every week' was 9th level and 'the guy who was away all summer' was still 6th decided me that I'd go with a 'group XP' approach, and every character would have the same XP total, based on the group's accomplishments.
After a couple months of tracking the Group XP this way, I realized that all the players really cared about was when they would next level, and I just shifted to a 'level three times per book, after roughly each third of the book is completed' approach. Currently, my PCs are 8th level and will not gain 9th until they've located and are about to enter Vordakai's lair. When they successfully dispose of him, they'll get bumped to 10th.
It also means I can slip mini-adventures and side-quests in wherever I like and not have to worry about them getting off the XP track.