RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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What I did for prep:
Print out the map. On the back label the hexes. Cut the hexes out. Make a backing so that you can glue the hexes to a board as they are discovered.
Make a short list of environmental rules you expect to come up.
Roll random encounters in advance.
Make up notecards for the NPCs you expect the party to come across in the first few adventures.
What I did for prep:
Print out the map. On the back label the hexes. Cut the hexes out. Make a backing so that you can glue the hexes to a board as they are discovered.
Make a short list of environmental rules you expect to come up.
Roll random encounters in advance.
Make up notecards for the NPCs you expect the party to come across in the first few adventures.
That is fantastic advice I will use in my campaigns.
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If you scroll down a bit (a few miles) in the various Forums you'll see a group of them, one for each Adventure Path. In the Kingmaker Adventure Path Forum you'll find bajazillions of Threads, current and past, that you can browse for bajazillions of Kingmaker games.
In fact, this Thread is likely to get flagged to be put in the Kingmaker Forum.
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The advice I give everyone who is looking to run an AP is get all 6 books and read them through before you get in to deep. They do not write them all at once then parcel them out. They are writing the second one as the first one is hitting the market. Then the Third is being developed as the second one hits and so forth.
NPC's and stories change a little over the course of the 6 books. Things change (usually for the better) new NPC's that you would have liked to at least introduce earlier get generated. Story lines are not what you thought they were until you see the final pieces. Quite often there are issues that could have been eased had you only known something in a later book.
Any advice at all will be apreciated this seems pretty big.
Heh. It is big. But fun, too. In addition to the excellent advice above:
You've got a bit of time, but figure out how you plan on doing kingdom building. I highly advise getting ahold of one of the spreadsheets on the forums and playing with it. They're very useful.
Open up the Kingmaker forum and spend an hour skimming through it, hitting topics you may find interesting. A great deal has been offered since this AP came out, and the folks on here are fantastic. Chances are you'll get some amazing ideas just taking a bit of time and reading through old posts. (And don't forget the Fey Pranks post!)
Keep a pad and pencil handy to take notes before, during, and after a game day! You'll thank yourself. (Marking the days and hexes of exploration alone is useful.)
Someone posted up a Golarion calendar. Might want to print out a couple months and mark that up as the PCs go along. You'll not only be able to mark the days and hexes, you'll also be able to note what happens for later use AND be able to show your players the days/months as they progress. (Although, once they start building the kingdom, it goes from "mark the days" to "mark the months".)
Good luck, and have fun! And feel free to hit the forums here if you have further questions! :)
For Stolen Land the BEST prep you can do lacking anything else is to make an exploration style map as John Spalding mentioned above. I ended up printing the map after stripping out the location notations (from the pdf version), gluing it to some foam core and thumb-tacking blank white hexes over the top. There are a bevy of other ways of doing it of course. Being able to maintain an unknown mystery to that hex just over the horizon makes exploration more rewarding (in my opinion).
Hex crawling will not be the most fun you have in Kingmaker so don't let yourself get bogged down in monotonous encounter, survival, etc rolling. John Spalding also covered this well in his recommendation to roll the encounters beforehand. Change up the random encounters to not just be combat. This will allow exploration to be a bit more organic and fast paced if you aren't stopping to pull encounters randomly dispersed on the whim of a die at the table.
Give yourself a timeframe in-game in which events will progress regardless of player involvement. I am not talking about forcing players to adhere to some railroad plot hammer. I just think the NPC's should be able to carry out their plans and do some moving about instead of just hanging out in their designated place on the map. For my group I essentially had a count-down to a very unfortunate series of events once they completed certain key encounters.
My group likes stories, and they really liked the political upheaval in Brevoy at the very onset of the adventure. I wanted to maintain a few of these motivational threads and so I created a competing NPC adventuring party sponsored by a rival group back in Brevoy. Not intended to be hostile (initially at any rate), these guys were really useful in generating a sense of urgency and competition. And it provided us with some cool NPC's to use later on in the campaign both as allies, re-occurring enemies and other NPC goodness.
In a sandbox AP like Kingmaker the overall meta-plot doesn't really come home to roost for quite some time, and thus your early onset NPC's are your best tool toward long term player enjoyment and player character motivation (in my opinion). I replaced some key NPC's in later modules with ones that my players had more investment in liking/hating/etc. That is one of the many things I love about this AP is that NPC swapping is not going to hose you (as badly at any rate) as it normally would
The kingdom building is a really cool aspect of the AP. BUT, not all people are ultra keen on sitting down for a couple hours and playing pen-n-paper Civilization the computer game. I'd say that for any of my misplaced or overstepped advice thus far, that you really have to decide EARLY (like before completing Stolen Land) whether you want to do:
For my group we do kingdom building between sessions through email, blogs, etc. We also decided to have some of our favorite NPC's as the leadership of the nation. The adventuring group is recognized as heroes by the peasantry and are still very much plugged in to the upper end politics of the kingdom, but they like having the freedom to tromp around the countryside stabbing monsters without worrying about getting back to the castle by dinner. It also allows me to play up more of the story points amongst the rival factions from Brevoy that currently have a bit of a choke-hold on the future fledgling puppet kingdom.
And...sorry for the wall of text...
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We are heading towards to the end of RRR and the laminated map of the Stolen Lands has become central to the game. The players love pouring over it, writing in tips they are gleaned from NPCs about what may be out there, placing dot stickers when the claim and build (they have a colour code system for resources, landmarks, farms etc) and just generally plotting their next moves. Do this and your whole sandbox gets so much easier for you and your players.
Other advice -
Get the players to read the Kingmaker Players Guide.
When it comes time, share the Kingdom Building rules with the players (removing spoilers). Way too much for you to manage on your own. It's the players Kingdom after all, they should keep the records.
Read the boards on the Kingdom Building rules and don't be afraid to modify the RAW to suit your groups style of play and how their Kingdom progresses.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I thought hex crawling was fun in the first few books. It was not fun in later books. In those books I tended to lump encounters or let NPCs explore.
When you get to kingdom building...the rules don't work really well for making a kingdom...sensible stuff fails, odd strategies work well. What they do succeed at is making magical marts palatable and workable. In any case, I second doing most of the kingdom stuff at some time other than at the table. In my case, one or two players really enjoyed it and I let them do it - the rest got a reprieve.
Don't be afraid to turn encounters into NPCs especially random encounters/hex encounters that would otherwise make lame fights or very deadly fights.
Prep for later books early.
1) Have the PCs meet Varn in book 1, just as a friendly visit. It makes book 3 better.
2) I rolled random encounter troll and had trolls harrass them in book 1. I made the troll boss in book 2 that troll (they knew it because he had items he stole from them at lvl 1).
3) My PCs always heard about the yearly contest in Pitax and were always informed that they were too small to be really considered a "kingdom: to go to the games. By the time book 5 came along, they really wanted to go.
4) Some encounters are way better if you make them kidnapping encounters. The NPCs from book 1 made great kidnap victims.
5) Make sure to keep the comedic NPCs (the fey and maybe the alchemist in book 1) alive because they make for good times.
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Just realize there is no rush...this path is wide open for adding whatever you want...you might well consider using the slow XP track like we are. let's you add TONS of side/additional adventures. On a side note, at least read all the nearby city info. I didn't see info on Restov until book 3, but my characters constantly visited it before that book came out. be aware where various outposts are (some are not noted till book 3).
Even the various set encounters (Forgotten King, Etc) can be expanded. I added several cairns, one that had a gate (currently attuned to the lower planes, that they have build a keep to protect after wandering spawn attacked) which the PC's will eventually use to get around to far distant lands. This latter idea also lets me as DM not feel restricted to just having action in the north.
'The Great City: Urban Creatures & Lairs' had some great set-piece encounters I sued while they were visiting Restov, and would fit quite well in their own city when it gets built.
I also ran Hook Mountain Massacre as a stand-alone side trek to get the PC's in good with their northern neighbors (moved the adventure to the mountains east of Isia).
I myself found even at slow Xp track, some of the encounters in book 2 were a bit easy.
I know a lot of GMs like the fog of war aspect to exploring the hexes, but I let my players buy a map of the green belt. I used the map folio, placed the map in a poster frame and just used dry erase markers on the cover to note what was claimed, explored, etc.
Works nicely so far.