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Looking for some advice: starting a new (and first PF) campaign with friends who haven’t played together for almost 10 years (3rd ed. DnD). Debating between CotCT and Kingmaker. Personally, I love the idea of PCs running a kingdom (Anyone remember the Principalities of Glantri Gazeteer?), but more importantly, I’m wondering if the kingdom running aspects could be done via email between sessions (given families and such, we’ll be lucky to play for an evening everything month or so). I like the idea of that functioning as an ongoing thread between the sessions, but it’s not clear to me if it would work well.
Otherwise, Curse sounds good and has gotten high praise on the boards, so was thinking of that since I saw people mention it uses fast track xp, which also might be nice given the long lapses between sessions. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Of all the Gazateers, I liked Glantri the best.
I own them all! :)
==Aelryinth
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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They both have their strengths and weaknesses.
I would ask your players what three things they are expecting or wanting out of a game. Post their answers here, along with your three things, and I can better give you advice on which one to play.
Curse of the Crimson Throne has more dungeon delves, a little bit of wilderness, and a great mix of monster types. About 75% of it happens in a city. My GM moved us along like crazy and there were a few times where I felt our PCs were very rushed and in need of at least a couple days of rest. There is one main bad guy and you know who they are and what you need to do to stop them.
Kingmaker is almost all wilderness, with a few dungeon delves, at least one siege, a few mysteries to solve, and some play with politics (or a great deal of politics if the GM puts in a little extra work.) It has a wide variety of monsters and foes. There are way more bosses in Kingmaker, almost none of them connected in a way the PCs would recognize. There is one main bad guy, but unless the GM works in foreshadowing the PCs won't know about them until part 5 or 6. The pace is slower, and pretty much set by the players with kingdom building.
I'm playing in Kingmaker and I ran Crimson Throne up until the end of the 4th book. I prefer Crimson Throne, because, as a player, I was very frustrated in Kingmaker. For most of the first 2 books, you wonder around with no direction. It was frustrating because there was no goal, no enemy, nothing to strive to overcome. I was simply, "Explore the land, build a Kingdom". We recently started the third book and the GM said it seems there will be more wondering around again.
In Crimson Throne, you, mostly, always have a clearly defined goal, someone you need to talk to, need to confront, a mystery that needs solving, etc. However, I will mention that because Crimson Throne is 3.5, the XP rewards do not match up. You'll find you need to throw a few side adventures to the party for every book there, or they won't be high enough level to continue through to the next book. At the end of the 4th book, my Party was APL 10, and they should have been 13, and they had only just made 10th. So they would be entering one of the most Infamous dungeons out of the Adventure Paths with an EXTREMELY deadly monster that would have wiped the floor with them. I ended up throwing them a side adventure to get them high enough; I tried to pick one that would be a training run compared to Scarwall. Turns out, my party is horrendous at dungeon crawls, and we ended up dropping the campaign due to various issues on both my, and their, parts.
Kingmaker requires a lot of note taking (more than usual). You have to have someone that is going to dedicate themselves to being the Kingdom Secretary, to keep track of all the buildings they've purchased, the stats of the kingdom, what lands they control etc. As the GM, you will have to keep track yourself to double check the Secretary, and you will need to make up some random encounters ahead of time. If you want to, I'd suggest linking all the side-quests and odd-jobs together so it feels more focused. Beware the Item Crafting Wizard. Item Crafting changed in Pathfinder, it no longer requires Experience to craft, just time and money. In Kingmaker, you have access to both. My cousin is playing in Kingmaker and his GM didn't keep a tight enough rein on Item Creation, now all the melee characters have +2 weapons and armor of various metals at 4th level, and the casters have potions, wands, and scrolls galore.
For the most part, every monster in Crimson Throne has been republished, though some have not. Some you have to custom build because they used 3.5 material (like Cindermaw the Clan-Eater). It isn't very difficult and there are tons of conversions out there. Be warned, some people posted their conversions for parties more powerful than the 4 person parties suggested in the Adventure Paths, so read through them carefully.
Whichever Adventure Path you decide to run, make sure to buy the relevant guide book (Guide to Korvose, or Guide to the River Kingdoms) as the book will contain tons of info that really helps make the area come alive. Each Guide book has potential spoilers, so make sure to read through it first and if your players want to read it, let them know what they can and can't read.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Buy the Book of the River Nations, which has the rules expanded. Also, look for the kingdom spreadsheet here on the forums.
Yes, you could run the kingdom building from email, but the PCs need to be at their capital when they do. You should not have kingdom building happen while they are exploring.
I've finished GM'ing Crimson Throne through Module 5 with a very small, close-knit group (my family, to be exact): 3 PCs and 2 NPCs. I'm about to GM Kingmaker for a much larger group (8 PCs) this weekend.
Huge advantages of Crimson Throne (most already detailed by Tels):
- Clear-cut goals in each section of the adventure
- One big, bad, obvious boss you know you're going to take on in Module 6
- Other than Module 2, no pointless adventuring for the sake of getting XP to get to the next level
- Incredibly rich NPCs. My players still talk about Laori Vaus, Trinia Sabor, and Cressida Kroft as if they were real old friends
- A wonderful prebuilt city in the Guide to Korvosa.
The big disadvantages of CoCT:
- The XP path is too slow; you HAVE to throw in side adventures
- Some people don't care for the 'railroad' nature of Module 4, or the massive dungeon crawl of Module 5. I and my players loved both.
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Huge advantages of Kingmaker:
- No time constraints
- No clear-cut goals: Wander around and build your own kingdom, dude!
- No dependencies on completing previous adventures
- The real feeling that you're doing something epic
Huge disadvantages:
- Much, much, MUCH (did I say 'much'?) more work for the GM to adequately prepare. I've spent at least 20 hours trying to get ready for just the first module, and I'm still not even close.
- Far less interesting NPC interactions.
- Much more of a feeling of "aimless wandering for the sake of aimless wandering".
However, Kingmaker is considered by most posters on these threads to be "the best of the best" APs, so ask me in a couple of months after I've run a few sessions and we'll see how I feel. At the moment, I had a heck of a lot more fun GM'ing CoCT, just because the NPCs had much more flavor.
CEO
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I’m wondering if the kingdom running aspects could be done via email between sessions (given families and such, we’ll be lucky to play for an evening everything month or so). I like the idea of that functioning as an ongoing thread between the sessions, but it’s not clear to me if it would work well.
You could totally do the kingdom building via email between sessions. You might have to store up some of the events to play out when the players are together at the table (some events have combat associated with them). Another issue could be one of time. The kingdom building happens in monthly intervals. If you got on a roll between game sessions, a number of months or even a year could go by. If you left the last session in the middle of a battle or in the middle of a dungeon crawl, the building would be happening in the future and you would have to go back in time when you were back at the table again. But all in all, I think it would work well if you have a flexible group.
-Lisa
Awesome! If you're going with CoCT, I'm going to self-promote a bit:
My review of (and tips on GM'ing) CoCT are here,
and Mizake did a similar blow-by-blow of his campaign here.
(And apologies to anyone who's done something similar but whose thread I missed).
Mikaze, Tels, and I are still very active in the CoCT thread, so at least you know you'll have some GMs with the experience fresh in their mind to provide input.
Good luck!
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I'm on book 3 of CotCT and I have completed KIngmaker having run both. Both campaigns are totally different so there is a bit of apples and oranges going on here but I'll give my views.
General consensus is that Kingmaker is one of the best AP's if not the best. Certainly top 3. I do not share this consensus. Personally I have preferred both Carrion Crown and Legacy of Fire far more. CotCT is also far more up my alley.
The issue is a simple one, some would call it railroad vs. sandbox but I hate those terms. I prefer to call it GM led vs player led AP's.
In a GM led AP story X will happen and the obvious route through the AP is to follow that story. Effectively it is a series of events that lead to a final confrontation.
In a player led AP the story is a framework to hang the player's actions on. Players are presented with an environment and are told to get on with it. The plot carries on but the players can engage with it whenever they like.
Effectively it depends what you want to do. Do you want the focus of the adventure to be the stories, plots, enemies and characters you present or do you want to turn the creative reins over to your players to drive the adventure.
My players vastly prefered to be part of a story rather than the driving force for the story. It is a subtle distinction but an important one.
So if you want the focus to be your players run Kingmaker if you want a fantastic story for your players to go through run CotCT. My vote would be the latter.