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Greetings and thanks in advance for all the helpful tips.
I consider myself a competent GM, but I have never run a premade adventure before.
What I am hoping for here is to receive general advice relating to the preparation for and the implementation of the Kingmaker AP.
I have the first 2 books and I’m mostly done reading the Stolen Lands. I have also read the Player’s guide and I have the Book of the River Kingdoms and the 3rd party bestiary.
How do the pros prepare? How do you turn information found in the books into narrative? What do you use directly from the books? What do you extrapolate into notes? What do you add, and when do you add it?
What is important to have at hand when running a session?
And finally, what general advice do you esteemed folks have? To be a bit more specific, but please do not consider this an exhaustive list: what pitfalls can expect to fall into and how might I avoid them? Are there any great hand outs, map, or other supplements I MUST get?
Again, thank you all in advance for you speedy and pointed advice.
DSP
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Having run games from three Pathfinder APs at this point, one bit of advice I would make to you is this: Don't be afraid to ignore or completely change elements in the books if they don't fit in with your party's disposition or your personal preferences, or if they would otherwise hinder the game flow.
One weakness of the APs is that they tend to be very heavy on background, historical events, and "behind the scenes" information that the PCs would have no possible way of knowing, or that would not be truly relevant to them in most circumstances. The way I approach this story information is as a guide to help me understand the motivations of the NPCs so that I can play them more realistically. The PCs may not know exactly how some minor villain came to be where he is, and odds are most of them won't care, so don't worry about it unless they specifically ask or search it out. However, if I'm keeping the NPCs' motives in mind when I play them, their particular actions might motivate the players to learn more about them.
When it comes to playing some NPCs, often I'll just stumble into a personality, mode of speech, or affectation that feels "right", something that wasn't necessarily planned but which comes across as interesting and distinctive. In these cases, my advice is to go with what is fun and natural, regardless of how the NPC is portrayed in the book! If the minor villain is depicted as being dour and humorless but instead you find yourself portraying him as sneering and egotistical, don't sweat it. Your players will probably not be able to tell the difference, and so long as you don't turn a major villain into a goody two shoes, it's terribly unlikely that you're going to "break" anything. (And in my case, PCs have managed to turn minor foes into friends because they thought the NPCs were interesting to interact with.)
For Kingmaker specifically, since that AP emphasizes exploration, travel, and open-ended discovery, another thing I would recommend is keeping information regarding weather effects and overland travel at hand--maybe write down the different weather types on notecards so you can quickly reference them if it starts raining while the PCs are travelling.
Make the AP your own. Add some substance to the stolen lands beyond what is written in the AP.
This is an excellent example of how to expand on a KM game PBP that I am playing in...
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/playByPost/dMAlexande rKilcoynesKingmakerPBPChapter1
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For me, no matter which AP I am running I have learned to own all 6 books and read them once through before I begin my preparations. I am far less likely to make a mistake if I know who/what the Npc's are and what they are up to.
I am an over prepared GM. I write up my own copy's of stat blocks (or copy/paste from PDF's If I have them) I keep an exhaustive list of the treasure in Excel so I know where an item came from, what its value is and what the party did with it. I photo copy/print maps from pdf's so I can mark them up with notes and ideas.
I keep a file box for each group I am running, each PC has a file that they can keep info/notes and such in. there is a file for maps, one for props, one for any house rules we use (though since PF came out that is rarely used). I have an NPC file where I keep any character sheets for NPC's that are possibly going to be going along or helping out the party for any length of time (this is rare but has been helpful when needed).
I have a perception sheet where every game day before we get started the party rolls up 10 or so Perception checks so they can roll them but I don't have to reveal when a perception check is called for. This works great for rogues with the trap spotter (I make them give me 20 checks)
I like props, I like to hand out as much stuff as I can. I also like to use terrain as much as possible, especially interesting locations where a 3D perspective can really enhance the encounter. All those take time and preparation.
But that is my style, your group may not be as into that kind of thing as mine is.
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For me, no matter which AP I am running I have learned to own all 6 books and read them once through before I begin my preparations. I am far less likely to make a mistake if I know who/what the Npc's are and what they are up to.
This is a big one. It also helps in terms of foreshadowing and making sure that major villains get some face time before it's time for them to get killed at the end of the AP. Once you know where the plot is headed, you'll also have a better idea of how to customize it for your group without going so far off the rails that you need to rewrite the later books entirely.
One of the suggestions I would make is using additional modules to keep things interesting when your players are exploring the Stolen Lands so they don't get bored with hexes that have nothing but random encounters. I used Realm of the Fellnight Queen during Rivers Run Red, and I used it as an excuse to foreshadow Nyrissa- when the party managed to kill Rhoswen I had her proclaim to the party how 'they changed nothing' and 'my mistress will soon take all your lands', but I never mentioned the nymph at that point.
In another thread in the Kingmaker forum there's a post by the author stating he intended to have this big foreshadowing at the end of Blood for Blood I think, where the party is at a banquet at their castle at the end of the adventure and Nyrissa makes an appearance in the form of this whirlwind of leaves that magically creates her form and she taunts the PCs. That's another way to foreshadow the nymph and give the players hooks to research just what the heck is going on.
Also- do NOT assume your players will take even the most general actions assumed in the AP. They may try to redeem the Stag Lord and make him a noble in their kingdom. They may enslave or completely wipe out the Nomen centaurs. They may try to negotiate peace with King Ivoretti of Pitax and avoid a fullscale battle altogether. So obviously read the APs ahead of time to familiarize yourself with the overall plot, but plan for alot of contingencies.
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Kingmaker is my third AP from Paizo that I have DM'd, which I am doing now - characters currently just finishing book. (FWIW, it's the best of the three). However it is not easy for a new DM because it has so little structured storyline - great for groups who don't enjoy the railroad storyline that doesn't allow for much deviation; but great for those groups who are not "self-starters". Kingmaker relies on groups being proactive, and making decisions on what to do next. DMs have to be able to ad-lib a lot, and change on the fly since so much of it is driven by the players and their decisions.
That all being said - it can be quite rewarding. I suggest the following:
1) familiarize yourself with all 6 books - pay especial attention to the major NPCs especially the baddies. One problem most of the APs have is that the BBEGs get very little foreshadowing before they're thrust upon the PCs. Find out which bad-guy NPCs are important to the game and which ones you favor, and consider how to foreshadow their existance and motivations into the game. Foreshadowing in this way is important as it gives the PCs a reason to despise them. It becomes personal.
2) Familiarize yourself w/ the Kingmaker section of this messageboard. There are MANY of us running that AP that have posted alot of feedback, advice, and additional content to liven it up and expand on the published material. In that vein, find some other modules, dungeon magazines, dungeon crawl classics, pathfinder modules, etc, and find a way to use some of the content to spice up hexes or build off events that the kingdom faces. Read some of the other DM journals and testimonies of their games to find inspiration from them.
3) Consider ignoring XP. I have been levelling the PCs based on the story - how far they've gotten and how large the kingdom has gotten - thus they level when YOU are ready for the game to proceed. This gives more freedom to add alot of different small dungeons, encounters etc to spice up the hexes, and you need not worry about those and random encounters raising the levels too fast.
4) Get yourself a spreadsheet for the kingdom building aspect of the game as it will get cumbersome. Also consider carefully using some of the gamer content that we've added for expanding the events, and the buildings that can be used, and read carefully some of the commentary from DMs in regards to building generating magic items for sale; every group is different - some consider this too much - others love it. Another thing to consider is how much of the rules of kingdom building that you want to disclose to the players. Some say none to avoid min/maxed metagaming kingdoms. Some say all to avoid players making uninformed dumb decisions.. Many somewhere in the middle - disclose some basic info or estimated info but not specifics. It's dependant on your groups style and preference.
5) As for descriptive text - that one is hard to struggle with espcially DMs who are not as generally creative on the fly or newer to the game or are simply more build for "published" material descriptions. Since so much of the first few books is simply exploration with little to no detail of much of the area, I offer the following suggestions: If you play an MMO such at LotRO, or other visually stimulating artwork MMO for exploration, spend some time exploring 'like-terrain' in the game and get some good viewpoints - then imagine how you would describe a specific setting to a group. Imagine that particular valley, or set of hills, or woodland region or waterway etc. This works with art too - check out deviantart or flikr to get some panorami scene photos, and then imagine yourself describing that to your group. Try doing this occasionally and offer a couple situations to the PCs based on the descriptive text - such as "you can either cross the brook and find a way to climb out of the valley which looks like it will be a sheer cliff in places, or travel downstream where you know the terrain flattens out to some wide plains - easily the safest route but would take the longest to travers. Or you go up-stream followig it around to the north where you know there are some balding lazy (easy) hills to climb, but known for it's wind sheers and offering no cover from any inclement weather - but would probably be the fastest way to continue north towards the plateau." (the key is that regardless of which way they go, a planned encounter you have should more than likely be placed in that direction - but at least they have the feeling of being in control of their destiny; you need only customize it a bit and the narrative to detail the direction they traveled).
This gives the otherwise ordinary "hex" some definition and allows the PCs to have more a role in making decisions on exactly where to go. The alternative is to say "You spent three days exploring this hex....where to next?"
6) As written, when PCs meander about exploring hexes they are subjected to possible encounters (randomly). Weather is another feature you can add to the game randomly. Finally another feature that is random is the kingdom building events that can happen each month. I have learned that it is MUCH more efficient for the DM to roll several random encounters, weather, and events ahead of time; and work on narating them, adding to them to spice them up and have all preparation/research done on them before the game happens. This is a HUGE game-time saver.
Robert
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Gee, you'd almost think that something like this needs its own 2011 ENnie Award winning podcast...
Wait a minute! There is such a beast, too.
Chronicles: Pathfinder Podcast
You need to listen to:
Episode 008 - The Stolen Lands with Tim Hitchcock
Episode 012 - Rivers Run Red with James Jacobs and Rob McCreary
Episode 015 - The Varnhold Vanishing With Greg A. Vaughan
We go through each of these modules in spoilerific detail, interview the authors of each, including aspects of the modules which were unclear or were left on the cutting room floor. We also discuss how to prepare for them, too: what went right and what went wrong. It's about 10 hours of Kingmaker Podcast Goodness for you in those three episodes of Chronicles alone.
I will also add that most AP's have at least one TPK-worthy encounter, where the bad guy is heads and tails above the PC's. Feel free to tune it down when you find it if the group is not ready for it. Many GM's dont realize AP's are not "one size fits all", and run them as written with bad results.
On the other hand feel free to make encounters harder if the party is mud stomping the NPC's also.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I will also add that most AP's have at least one TPK-worthy encounter, where the bad guy is heads and tails above the PC's. Feel free to tune it down when you find it if the group is not ready for it. Many GM's dont realize AP's are not "one size fits all", and run them as written with bad results.
On the other hand feel free to make encounters harder if the party is mud stomping the NPC's also.
This is a very good point. Xanesha in Rise of the Runelords is a good example. One thing I would encourage when dealing with these encounters is not simply to scale it to the PCs--though you can do that too--but to encourage the players to recognize and anticipate that there will be some very hard encounters. Not all fights have to be a straight-up slugfest until one side falls down, and if the PCs come up with some clever way to eliminate the threat--so long as it's plausible and it works--then let them do it. Encourage them to fight smarter, not harder. (Of course, some groups prefer to just fight harder, using intricate and elaborate tactics in a direct fight. That's fine too; just know your players.)
Incidentally, my PCs defeated Xanesha by dropping an 800-pound statue on her and throwing her down twenty flights of stairs. She wasn't in much condition to fight after that.
Some gaps you may want to fill:
The AP as written has neither weather nor seasons, and would really benefit from them. You can roll up weather in advance, or tie it to a real-world city (Prague might be about right!) or just go with seasons and fill in the weather appropriately. It should *matter* whether the PCs hit the boggards in midwinter when the bogs are frozen, or in late spring when they are at their wettest.
The random kingdom event table gets tired after a little while. Either increase the table or design your own events (they do not need to be genuinely random, only reasonably mixed between good and bad).
Consider rolling kingdom events a few months in advance, so that you can foreshadow some of them and the PCs can possibly intervene. This one change helped my campaign more than anything else. (I actually invented a new Kingdom stat "Responsiveness" which the PCs can invest in to get warning of upcoming events, but you don't have to go that far.)
You will need some NPCs in Brevoy, and ideally in Mivon (it's closer than it looks!) and Pitax. The earlier you can develop them, the better.
Make your own copies of the hex maps so that when you add things you know where you put them. I didn't do that till around book 3 and it was a mistake not to.
For more radical changes:
We are running Kingmaker with full casters being quite rare; most casters, both PC and NPC, are half levels in caster and half in something else. So high-level magic is quite rare. I feel this has worked well for us with this particular game, helping keep the focus on kingdom-building rather than on big magical stuff.
We also deleted the long-range movement spells: fly, overland flight, teleport, wind walk, shadow walk, etc. The only fast movement available to the PCs is their small, precious cadre of pegasi and their little army of kobolds mounted on wargs. The kingdom feels a lot more real if you have to tromp back and forth across it and worry about the remoteness of the remote parts. The rivers in particular become a big problem, and bridge-building becomes a much bigger deal. You may not like this--it slows the game down--but I really do.
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I will absolutely include weather.
Mary, what did you mean about the hexes. I'm still not sure I understand those completely. Oh, by the way, the fist session is the third saturday in Oct.
Were your player ok with axing the transport spells? how did you position that?
I really like playing up the passage of time. I've made a calendar even!
Thank you all again. It's so helpful to have people who have already run this AP.
Again, I run games all the time, but for some reason this feels harder. Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of it...I'll probably run my first session and everything will fall right into place.
Mary, what did you mean about the hexes. I'm still not sure I understand those completely. Oh, by the way, the fist session is the third saturday in Oct.
There are blank hex-sheets on the web site somewhere. Print some out and make a copy of the map in the module. Give another set of blanks to the players. It's important to be able to write on the maps. (My spouse would kill me if I wrote on the ones in the modules, though I guess you could....)
Were your player ok with axing the transport spells? how did you position that?
It's something we've been doing for a long time. He has some concerns about the PCs' ability to respond to threats, but overall likes that the terrain matters a lot more.
Without flight, both strategic and tactical terrain is emphasized a lot more strongly. You have to watch out for flying enemies as they are much more dangerous to a non-flying party--if you roll the "d4 black dragons" on the encounter table things could be very bad. Dungeon scenarios like difficult climbs, trapped floors, etc. become real obstacles for the PCs and you have to watch out for those too.
I like it. In previous campaigns we have found that the PCs lose the sense of place if they can be fighting in Cheliax in the morning and shopping in Katapesh in the afternoon. In our Kingmaker game even the other River Kingdoms are a significant effort to reach (except for Mivon--watch out! it is not on the maps but it is VERY CLOSE to the play area).
Great idea to keep a calendar. I have day-by-day notes for all five years of our campaign so far, and a calendar for upcoming events including all of the Kingdom festivals and anniversaries.
I use Foxit PDF reader, and it has a function that allows you to add yellow 'sticky' notes to a PDF and save it. Since I run off the PDFs for just about everything, that is what I use to keep track of what they have explored, what they run into (including some not in the book stuff), etc.
-- david
Papa.DRB
There are blank hex-sheets on the web site somewhere. Print some out and make a copy of the map in the module. Give another set of blanks to the players. It's important to be able to write on the maps. (My spouse would kill me if I wrote on the ones in the modules, though I guess you could....)Mary, what did you mean about the hexes. I'm still not sure I understand those completely. Oh, by the way, the fist session is the third saturday in Oct.
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Greetings and thanks in advance for all the helpful tips.
I consider myself a competent GM, but I have never run a premade adventure before.
What I am hoping for here is to receive general advice relating to the preparation for and the implementation of the Kingmaker AP.
I have the first 2 books and I’m mostly done reading the Stolen Lands. I have also read the Player’s guide and I have the Book of the River Kingdoms and the 3rd party bestiary.
How do the pros prepare? How do you turn information found in the books into narrative? What do you use directly from the books? What do you extrapolate into notes? What do you add, and when do you add it?
What is important to have at hand when running a session?
And finally, what general advice do you esteemed folks have? To be a bit more specific, but please do not consider this an exhaustive list: what pitfalls can expect to fall into and how might I avoid them? Are there any great hand outs, map, or other supplements I MUST get?
Again, thank you all in advance for you speedy and pointed advice.
DSP
- Tabs and book marks for encounters and bestiary pages.
- Make a one page cheat sheet with important page numbers if you need to reference, as well as character names and one line descriptions that will help you remember who they are and what purpose they serve.
- If a creature has a weird spell, bookmark it. I usually have a laptop open with tabs for all the spells I will need.
I didn't run Kingmaker because I didn't like the set up (15 minute work days irritate me) but I stole a lot from it to put in other adventures.