Advice for running campaign


Kingmaker

Silver Crusade

I am new to pathfinder and as a GM...i want to run Kingmaker (StolenLand) for 7..thats right 7 Player characters any advice for a new GM with the stolen lands.


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Whew, you have your work cut out for you. An excellent AP to cut your teeth on in my opinion since KM is such a sandbox.

1.) Your group is enormous at 7 players. Determine if you are using any character generation method other than a 15 point buy. Unless your game is using a 10 point buy, this group counts as a 3rd level group for what challenges you can toss at them. Higher than 15 adds another "APL" (average party level) at each point (20 points and 25 points).
2.) Do *not* alter the loot they find.
3.) Brace yourself for item creation and Leadership feats. You could easily see 3 or more cohorts tooling around with the Magnificent Seven.
4.) Get familiar with the kingdom building and mass combat rules.
4a.) "Test run" a kingdom on your own, noting where the modules anticipate the Narlmarch hitting certain sizes. Note how long this took you to get to each chapter. Roll your own random kingdom events. Use the sample "ruling council" in their best roles to run this kingdom. Keep these notes handy, especially if your group skips running the kingdom themselves. You'll already know your campaign's timeline of events all the way to the end, which should permit you the fun of seeing characters, at least a few of them, actually hitting middle age!
4b.) Similarly, test run the mass combat stuff with your sample kingdom, making notes as you go. You'll have a "heroes don't succeed" war to use in your pocket for Chapter 5.
5.) Now that you have a rough idea of what can / should happen roughly when, you're also prepared to advise the players at the relevant junctures during the campaign.
6.) Peruse the several Kingmaker campaign journals and the sticky threads for further insights to make use of.
7.) ??
8.) Profit!

Have fun!


P.S.: single creatures are probably going to need one or more applications of the simple advanced template found in Bestiary 1 in order to stand a remote chance of survival.

Have fun with the "wandering monsters" - they should generate some very scary encounters for them.


I agree with Turin on most of it and I would recommend using 10 point buy plus the advanced template (learn it by heart and write in the mods in your book/notes).

Personally I found it an advantage to roll up the wandering monsters in advance.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

I might consider not allowing Leadership as a feat. Running seven characters is really hard for an experienced GM, IMO, and having to deal with possibly more characters could just be overwhelming.


I run a large KM game with 6 players and the Summoner, who has his Edilon, so it is basically a 7 member party. There is a thread for converting the game for Six players, I highly suggest you print the 6 conversions. They are excellent and will save you GM time in preping. Also, I would suggest that you learn the Templates these are very handly. I, also, use Rite Publishings: "101 Not So Simple Monster Templates" and I highly recommend that product. These will add spice in this large game. Lastly, this is an outstanding Adventure Path but it does take some GM time to prepare.

Sovereign Court

Get the second Module as well (Rivers Run Red). It helps to flesh out the overall area, and there is the possibility that your PCs might become lost (pg 424 of the Core Rulebook). Your PCs also might want to explore further south of the grid than they are suppose to.

Also have a couple of npc types/names generated. My group kept getting the Faerie Dragon encounter. So that dragon eventually became known as Narlex, cousin to Perlivash. It was also helpful for him to "appear" suddenly to give some input to whatever situation was occurring that had them stuck.

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