God its like The Walking Dead, it has so many great things going for it but falls into various tropes and predictable pit traps.
As a DM the concept of this AP is by far my favorite, players dealing with making a kingdom and raising armies is unique to published material though I've homebrewed 3 campaigns over the years where this happened (though mostly in 2nd ed with the fighter's stronghold being the centerpiece.) I've been doing fey since I stopped larping back in the early 2000's and wanted to still use some Changling from WW.
But the mechanics of Kingmaker can be frustratingly clunky. The realist in me cannot abide the kingdom building rules as written (leading me to redesign them) and I'm finding the mass combat and army building rules just so so. I've tried redesigning them but I'm still not satisfied and I'm sure I won't ever truly be.
The random encounters always come up to easy or to hard, and the planned encounters always need beefing up, with very few exceptions (Stag Fort, Troll lair.)
The Fey plots are underdeveloped, and the logistics of the kingdom run by the players authorizing the 2nd book missions is a clumsy misstep.
I fix it, I make it my own and its allot of fun. Its also a mountain of work for a DM.
Several factors keep me from hating this AP.
1) Encounters like Tig and Perlivash and Gregori, there always seems to be a highlight.
2) The amazing work of countless DMs on this board that have halved my work but coming up with outstanding supplemental material (redcelt, orthos, dudemeister, that extras thread, the 6 player conversion thread) props to all those contributors.
3) The sandbox style of it all, I hate linear APs sandbox is clutch.
4) There's some rich detail around most all of the encounters (though I needed to create a Wise Owl spirit NPC to convey some of that rich history to my players.)
5) The politics possibilities. I love in game politics which is why I loved World of Darkness by WW, this is the first AP I've seen truly succeed in creating situations that allow for an intensely political game.
The good outweighs the bad by far, but Paizo could really make more of my money by adding supplementary products to cut down the workload on this AP. Extra encounters, a better tweaked mass combat and army building rules set, more detail and character development of the surrounding countries.
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My biggest complaint about this AP is the fact that there was no option for interaction with Brevoy and a more political slant. There were lots of "exploring the wilderness" options for groups that just want to explore and kill stuff. From everyone I have personally talked to IRL, this pretty much falls by the wayside around 8th lvl or so. I would have much preferred at least a side bar about running a more political game. I found it sad that the whole AP takes place right next door to Brevoy, but doesn't involve Brevoy, especially when the odds of a pure Brevoy AP are slim for a long time in the future with so much of the world still untapped.
I also agree the strong Fey thread just didn't happen without active GM involvement, like adding Realm of the Fellnight Queen in to the mix, etc.
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I love Kingmaker. You have some valid gripes, but this AP is a wonderful skeleton to hang your own additions and changes. I hope we see another AP in this style in the future (Skull & Shackles comes close). With iinteresting meta-plot and cool encounters but plenty of space for GM expansion and modification.
It won't be out for a while yet, but you may want to check out Ultimate Campaign when it comes out next spring as it's supposed to take a lot of the feedback on kingdom creation/maintenance and mass combat and refine them from what's published in the original AP. Or get Book of the River Nations right now.
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I wasn't too bothered by the lack of political involvement as that's not a route I wanted to go, but I agree that the main fey plot thread was very underdeveloped. And I have people on this forum to thank for informing me of it in advance and giving tips to fleshing it out - things like the suggestions in the various chapter threads, Dude's RRR rewrite, and the like.
I think my main allure of the AP to me is its replay value. Even if you didn't change a lick of the story, you could run Kingmaker multiple times, changing the party or even rotating players and GMs, and get a completely different result every time, just based on which NPCs you fought and which you allied with, how you handled different situations, which ways your kingdom grew, and stuff like that. How many other APs can you say have as much allure or reason to play them ever again once you've completed one? I'm playing in a CoT game now and I've GMed Savage Tide in the past (still need to finish that, one day...), and neither seems to have the same potential for a second go-round.
That and I love Fey, and I haven't gotten to do anything with them in the past. I've run a dragon-focused campaign, a fiend-focused one, a pirate game (with more fiends), and I've played in Age of Worms so there's your Undead plot; Fey I hadn't yet found a plot that centered around them prior to KM.
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After being a DM/GM for a long time, was pretty sure I had campaigning figured out until I ran Kingmaker. I generally run modules because I don't have the time to write campaigns from scratch. But I've poured innumerable hours into this one, making some time. In return, my players rave about it, they're eager to see the next session, and the adventures have gone in directions I would never have foreseen. The modules have flaws. But there's a creative genius to the adventures that required just a bit (or at times quite a bit) of GM love, much of which has been gleaned off these forums.
Notably, the module designs are inconvenient. Thorough description of the god Gorum, which is pushed as a dominant diety in the region, doesn't come out until several modules later. The Pathfinder Society story, while entertaining, took up space better reserved for "optional" material or more fleshed out details. Bestiary creatures (which generally are great seem randomly assigned with low-level CRs in high level adventures. Could have used them earlier. Minor gripes though offset by my love for this path.
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Definitely an advantage to running it after all the books have come out!
OK just reread Vanhold Vanishing and Blood for Blood. Between the undeveloped sideplots in VV and the monsters in all the books, and the extra themed equipment in B4B I think I can see some good flavor add ins that I missed my first read thru.
The kingdom building was still clunky and needed an overhaul but that work is done.
The reliance on using random encounters to get the PCs to a level they need to be is another sore point, but there's plenty of material to build more encounters around. This is my first time actually using an AP and to be honest I expected it to be allot less work then my homebrewed campaigns and it is not...
That said while flawed the kingdom building rules still provided a solid foundation for how kingdom building is accomplished and for that I give them allow of credit. My previous experience with this was using gold and allot of handwaving.
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If I used xp, my party would be way over levelled even without Random Encounters. That's because Kingmaker encourages a "build-your-own" attitude when players want to zig where we expect them to zag. They've taken extraplanar journeys, fought space aliens in ancient observatories, hosted fabulous parties and stopped thieves, and delved dungeons.
I stopped using xp not because I was worried players would be underleveled, I was worried they'd be OP for the parts as written.
I entirely agree with your observations on XP and would love to go with you level when I say so. I tried that when I took over and one of my players had a sh*t fit over it to a point that I acquiesced to stayign with XP.
Underlevelled PC is not big problem.Frankly,all my 10 level pc have better equipment tan e.g Hannis Drelev. Unlimited resources of PC and plenty of time to craft is enough handicap to players.Technically christmas-tree-PC is ECL +1/+2.
I entirely agree with your observations on XP and would love to go with you level when I say so. I tried that when I took over and one of my players had a sh*t fit over it to a point that I acquiesced to stayign with XP.Ugh.
I put up with it for a few reasons.
1) This was originally his campaign- he got in over his head as a new DM so I took over and he technically owns the first 2 books.2) He's enough of a stickler for the rules that it helps keep some lazy hand waving tendencies of mine at bay and actually adds to the challenge of things (think the archers are OP use the weather rules for example, in any kind of high wind situations they suck.)
3) He's just obtuse enough to make things more fun.
Underlevelled PC is not big problem.Frankly,all my 10 level pc have better equipment tan e.g Hannis Drelev. Unlimited resources of PC and plenty of time to craft is enough handicap to players.Technically christmas-tree-PC is ECL +1/+2.
I ended up in a similar situation, when my party had most of their WBL in pure gold, and the party mage suddenly got an MIC feat and just about doubled the party's wealth. I ended up setting them on a deteriorating acquisition curve, increasing the difficulty of combats by +1 or +2 CR (by necessity) without adding in gold (reducing it, in fact, which was annoying and difficult) and all the while having them complain to me that I was screwing them on wealth.
Since then, I've read a developer's comment that MIC feats are supposed to be used for the crafter's benefit -- not the party's. I wish I'd seen it before the whole thing started.
I'm not going to blame everything that happened on the gold; the party was partially built by the group's optimizer, there were solid tactics from veteran gamers, and I let them continue using some of the house-rules we'd been using for our last campaigns.
Have a look.
PC Wealth By Level (page 399): If a PC has an item crafting feat, does a crafted item count as its Price or its Cost?It counts as the item's Cost, not the Price. This comes into play in two ways.
If you're equipping a higher-level PC, you have to count crafted items at their Cost. Otherwise the character isn't getting any benefit for having the feat. Of course, the GM is free to set limits in equipping the character, such as "no more than 40% of your wealth can be used for armor" (instead of the "balanced approach" described on page 400 where the PC should spend no more than 25% on armor).
If you're looking at the party's overall wealth by level, you have to count crafted items at their Cost. Otherwise, if you counted crafted items at their Price, the crafting character would look like she had more wealth than appropriate for her level, and the GM would have to to bring this closer to the target gear value by reducing future treasure for that character, which means eventually that character has the same gear value as a non-crafting character--in effect neutralizing any advantage of having that feat at all.
—Sean K Reynolds, 01/14/12
Yeah, using XP in my game, my party is only halfway through Book 2 - currently en-route to hunt down Howl, haven't yet done the Lonely Barrow, the Dancing Lady's Keep, Crackjaw, Candlemere, or the King of the Forest, much less anything but talk with Hargulka - and they've just reached Level 8. Note that this is WITHOUT giving ANY XP for hexploration in Chapter 1, none for Kingdom Building in Chapter 2. No other changes other than starting them at 2nd rather than 1st.
I don't mind adjusting up, though. I wanted my game to go all the way to 20th and possibly Mythic beyond.
There's also a lot of joy my players get out of me handing over all the XP they've gained, so there's that.