As a GM of Kingmaker, where have you "gone out of the box" and made significant changes to the AP? And if you have, or haven't, why?
0. I did "Russian-ify" and "German-ify" a lot of names, to go with a narrower cultural theme for Rostland and Issia.
1. Jhod Kavkin, Priest of Abadar.
One of my PCs was a priestess of Erastil, and she had prophetic dreams of the Temple of the Elk as one of her reasons for heading into the Stolen Lands. Making "Father Kavkin" an Abadaran let me add one more of Brevoy's main religions to the area.
2. Kesta Garess, female.
With two of my five PCs being females, first, I wanted a strong military female character in the setting, as there will be lots of strong male characters. Secondly, it tied into Sir Falgrim Sneeg in a different way, that made him seem more redeemable. (See below). And since Gorum is still popular in Northern Brevoy, I made her and her war band Gorumites (including a character with one level of Cleric).
3. Akiros Ismort is Sir Falgrim Sneeg
Changing the Garess/Sneeg story to a love story gone wrong, and an arranged marriage escaped, even though it meant Sneeg was expelled from his position, and excommunicated. Not that Sneeg was without fault -- well, for simplicity's sake, let's just say his motives may not have been Paladin-pure, mixed with a bit of "Lancelot goes mad for a couple years and wanders the Wilderness" vibe.
Unfortunately, any attempt to "resolve" this story-line ended badly when an Alchemical bomb rendered him unconscious and on fire in the battle in the Stag Lord's fort. By the time the battle was over, there really wasn't much left of Sir Falgrim Sneeg. They still have his enchanted sword, Akiros, though. (And another "normal" bandit took over the spot Falgrim had in the rank and file).
4. In RRR I've used most of DM aka Dudemeister's Changes to Hargulka's Kingdom. with great results.
Thoughts, comments, criticisms all welcome.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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I have added many, many new NPCs, mostly small parts that move in and out of the game as the party explores or visits Oleg's Trading Post. Of these additions, there are a few notables.
- I changed the guards at the trading post to five level 3 warriors, I gave them names and personalities, and I allows the party to choose if and when they interact with them. There is one evil guard who I can use to cause trouble if I need to spice things up. There is also a female guard that I have yet to really do much with.
- There are about a dozen hunters or trappers that I have created that move through the trading post and the area. The area that is being explored isn't the only place they would be, so half of them will only be encountered at the trading post. Some of the hunters have traded for information on the area, making exploration easier, but the party is yet to hire one as a guide.
- Hirelings, or at least possible hirelings, have also come and gone. There is a Varisian gypsy following the group, but mostly to provide the party with healing and very minor magic items (she is an adept.) There are two porters hired out, and they both have been good tools to use in adding more flavor to the game. The party can choose to hire as many as they want, and there are always more to choose from.
- I gave names and personalities to all of the bandits at the camp, and then kept track of who died and who survived. This gave their capture and execution a little more realism. A few reformed and became possible hirelings, but they have mostly moved on to other places in search for honest living.
- I changed how travel, exploration, and encounters are done completely.
You can find the rules here.
- I added dudemeister's party roles system, but changed them slightly.
You can find those here.
- I took and combined all of the hex maps. I have three versions, one of them is used by the party cartographer, one is used by me to add in some events and locations in blank hexes, and the other is a master copy.
- I read through "Tales of the Margreve," and added in some of the elements. The forest is very much alive in my game, and has a very old world feel to it. The party has been told that the further south they go the more dangerous it becomes for those that don't follow the old ways. Right now, most of it is just meant to scare them but eventually I will be adding in elements from the Margreve, as well as more of the queen nymph Nyrissa's movements, to make the forest something they think twice about entering.
- I plan on adding elements of the First World coming in and out of existence long before the sixth part.
- Brevoy, Pitax, and Mivon are going to be part of the politics that party has to deal with during their kingdom building.
I pretty much left the NPCs already established alone, only expanding on their backgrounds as needed. As of yet, the party hasn't shown great interest in learning more about them, but that should change once we grow closer to the kingdom building part.
I'm thinking what we really need is a Community Created Content Thread that gets maintained with links to content similar to the one from the RotRL board.
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A couple of things I've done that I enjoyed.
Between books 1 and 2, I added in Raging Swan's "Road of the Dead" module. It's a neat little dungeon crawl that can be dropped into any empty hex and easily tailored to fit the history of the Stolen Lands.
Solo adventures- Book 2 had a lot of material and I thought some of the stuff was way too easy for my group to even bother running. However, a couple of my players wanted to do solo adventures to either catch up on XP or fill in gaps to various character back stories.
Bramble
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I have added many, many new NPCs, mostly small parts that move in and out of the game as the party explores or visits Oleg's Trading Post. Of these additions, there are a few notables.
- I changed the guards at the trading post to five level 3 warriors, I gave them names and personalities, and I allows the party to choose if and when they interact with them. There is one evil guard who I can use to cause trouble if I need to spice things up. There is also a female guard that I have yet to really do much with.
- There are about a dozen hunters or trappers that I have created that move through the trading post and the area. The area that is being explored isn't the only place they would be, so half of them will only be encountered at the trading post. Some of the hunters have traded for information on the area, making exploration easier, but the party is yet to hire one as a guide.
- Hirelings, or at least possible hirelings, have also come and gone. There is a Varisian gypsy following the group, but mostly to provide the party with healing and very minor magic items (she is an adept.) There are two porters hired out, and they both have been good tools to use in adding more flavor to the game. The party can choose to hire as many as they want, and there are always more to choose from.
- I gave names and personalities to all of the bandits at the camp, and then kept track of who died and who survived. This gave their capture and execution a little more realism. A few reformed and became possible hirelings, but they have mostly moved on to other places in search for honest living.
- I changed how travel, exploration, and encounters are done completely.
You can find the rules here.- I added dudemeister's party roles system, but changed them slightly.
You can find those here.- I took and...
I forgot about these. I like em and will pitch it to my group.
- I changed the guards at the trading post to five level 3 warriors
Mine are all third lvl PC classes -- a Ranger, some fighters, and a fighter with a lvl of Cleric (Gorum). Some, like the cleric Ritter, are very well known to the party, while some are still just names.
- There are about a dozen hunters or trappers...
I don't have that many. Although my group did meet Breeg just hours after the bandits were defeated. Suspicious timing. Made a certain Hex more poignant.
- I read through "Tales of the Margreve," and added in some of the elements.
I replaced the Gronzi with the Margreve, lock stock and barrel, name and all. The party has travelled through it twice now, and it's never the same. (I'm toning the Hearts down a bit, but still trying to keep all the Russian Fairy-tale sense of it).
I'll take a look at the rules, and thanks!
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Drawing inspiration from a certain piece of artwork inside Stolen Land, I played up the Stag Lord as a more psychological adversary to the party, replacing his drunkenness with a mystical, spiritual madness and working towards something of a Jack Torrance/Roy Batty vibe. Throughout the middle section of Stolen Land, the Stag Lord hunted the "invaders" in his domain, stalking and striking fear into their hearts. After weeks of hit and run tactics, stalking them from just out of sight, firing arrows aimed not to kill but "merely" injure or frighten, an incident involving the hurtling of a freshly-slain stag into the party's camp late at night finally pushed them into an assault on the crazed bandit's stronghold. There, the Stag Lord's games of fear finally turned deadly, but that's what the Obituaries thread is for.
I've also made Maegar Varn and the entire town of Varnhold into dwarves. Since my Kingmaker party is entirely human, half-elven, or elven, I thought their domain's sister colony was a good opportunity to work one of the other races into the campaign's narrative.
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My first group kept rolling fairy dragon in the random encounters. As such they got to know Neelix pretty well and decided that he was somewhat useful from time to time...as long as they had sweets. With Rivers Run Red the same party didn't know what to make of the Troll Hounds (they kept rolling them as well), and started making a theory that there was a wizard in the area that was experimenting with trolls. I took that concept and ran with it, making the abandoned tower on the isle (encounter O I believe) and turn it into an actual tower shrouded with an illusion. The wizard also gave Hargulka a ring of minor fire resistance as a "gift".
I also had plans to have some of their former adversaries that escaped, make a return visit for revenge. Alas I needed to end the campaign prior due to RL issues.
The biggest change I made was to introduce a minor artifact that gave random glimpses of the past to the wearer that it attuned itself with. I wanted a lot of the back story to be made to the players. As such this artifact would show a vision to whenever I thought it was important for the party to see it, putting the PC in a trance state. Thus they were able to see how the Stag Lord came to power, how Akiros ended up in the Stag Lord's service, and why the Mad Hermit and Bekken hated each other so much and why they were quite off. With each use a DC 25 Will Save was to be made. Upon five failures a minor insanity trait would be given to the user. The next step was DC 30 will, 5 failures being a normal insanity trait, with the last being a DC 35, 5 fails for a severe insanity trait. The benefits of the artifact is it stops aging for the end user, and made them resistant (major) to disease, poison and paralysis. These visions could occur at any time, and as such I had the full story of the Stag Lord play out to the party's cleric upon the cleric seeing him. This however occured during the battle with the Stag Lord in his keep, effectively knocking the cleric out of the fight while watching the past.
Currently running with a new group and as of yet no real changes have been made.
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My first group kept rolling fairy dragon in the random encounters. As such they got to know Neelix pretty well and decided that he was somewhat useful from time to time...as long as they had sweets. With Rivers Run Red the same party didn't know what to make of the Troll Hounds (they kept rolling them as well), and started making a theory that there was a wizard in the area that was experimenting with trolls. I took that concept and ran with it, making the abandoned tower on the isle (encounter O I believe) and turn it into an actual tower shrouded with an illusion. The wizard also gave Hargulka a ring of minor fire resistance as a "gift".
I also had plans to have some of their former adversaries that escaped, make a return visit for revenge. Alas I needed to end the campaign prior due to RL issues.
The biggest change I made was to introduce a minor artifact that gave random glimpses of the past to the wearer that it attuned itself with. I wanted a lot of the back story to be made to the players. As such this artifact would show a vision to whenever I thought it was important for the party to see it, putting the PC in a trance state. Thus they were able to see how the Stag Lord came to power, how Akiros ended up in the Stag Lord's service, and why the Mad Hermit and Bekken hated each other so much and why they were quite off. With each use a DC 25 Will Save was to be made. Upon five failures a minor insanity trait would be given to the user. The next step was DC 30 will, 5 failures being a normal insanity trait, with the last being a DC 35, 5 fails for a severe insanity trait. The benefits of the artifact is it stops aging for the end user, and made them resistant (major) to disease, poison and paralysis. These visions could occur at any time, and as such I had the full story of the Stag Lord play out to the party's cleric upon the cleric seeing him. This however occured during the battle with the Stag Lord in his keep, effectively knocking the cleric out of the fight while watching the past.
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pretty cool thanks for sharing.
This however occured during the battle with the Stag Lord in his keep, effectively knocking the cleric out of the fight while watching the past.
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Heh, that would have turned our assault on the SL's Fort into a TPK. Every single Channel Energy got used, and normally it was as someone went below 0 hits. Even stacked with potions and buffs, it was a really hard fight.
Doug.
Drawing inspiration from a certain piece of artwork inside Stolen Land, I played up the Stag Lord as a more psychological adversary to the party, replacing his drunkenness with a mystical, spiritual madness and working towards something of a Jack Torrance/Roy Batty vibe.
See -- now if I had read this a couple months ago? This I would have stolen!
I'm not unhappy how ours turned out, but I do love this angle on the Stag Lord.
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Heh, that would have turned our assault on the SL's Fort into a TPK. Every single Channel Energy got used, and normally it was as someone went below 0 hits. Even stacked with potions and buffs, it was a really hard fight.
Yup understandable. The party that I was running however was not really getting challenged. It just happened to be that the cleric was the one who decided that they should hold onto the "mysterious amulet". The party size (if I remember correctly) was 7. They masqueraded as more bandits and made nice with everyone. Even spent a couple of days with them to know their weaknesses some prior to launching their attack. The Stag Lord was drunk off his keister when this occurred and they did something to delay his, and then lure him over to the trapped beastie (freeing it on him). The fight still wasnt easy for them, but their were no deaths.
I actually made several little changes. Many of them I made to foreshadow the the other books in the series.
Prologue: I started the players out as a group of soldiers separated from their legion and lead by Baron Drelev. Under his command they find an enchanted sword (Armag's sword) and unknowingly cause the barbarians to disband. The earns the PC's the right to settle the Greenbelt.
Betrayal at Oleg's: I had one PC who started a session late so I had him start as the leader of the bandits coming to demand tribute from Oleg. Two of the bandits, the leader PC and one other named Dolf switched sides. Dolph became a traveling companion, as did the PC (Gorthan the half-orc). However that player dropped out so Gorthan just sort of faded into the background. Until I decided that he was playing double agent. He brought in some reinforcements and took Oleg's trading post while the players were away. Falgrim Sneeg, one of the lieutenants there held several people hostage. The PC's attacked despite the hostages and as a result Kesten's squire and Svetlana were murdered and Oleg kicked the PC's out of his trading post.
Stag Lord's bandits and cult to the Dark Lady: I changed all the bandits to male, due to the Stag Lord's thinking that only men should be warriors. The stag lord, in order to settle in the unseelie territory made a pact with the dark fey to offer up all males born in his fort. He has women kidnapped and forced into marriage and into having the Stag Lord's children. Male children are given to a bogeyman called "The Fool" and all the female children he raises to become more wives.
Barbarians: I changed the name of the Tiger Lords to the Sickletoe because there doesn't seem to be any tigers in the area in the area. Instead their tribal totem is the sickletoe, or the feathered velociraptor. Because there are dinosaurs in up there.
I'm sure there are others, but those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.
