I've been toying with the idea of running a Kingmaker game where the entire party are Dhampir (to begin with) that have been tasked by their Master(s) to use the Charter in order to bring about a Vampire Nation.
Although I have the imagination for this idea, I lack the experience. Anyone have any ideas what would need to be changed/added to the AP to make this work?
Well, for one, a lot of the NPCs would need to already be Dhampirs or be willing to be converted into Vampires, or the party's going to have difficulty finding allies until they're powerful enough to forcefully convert.
Before you go any further into KM's plot, I'd suggest having Way of the Wicked on hand - it gives a lot of good advice for both running an Evil campaign, and for running PC Vampires.
For any actual Vamps in the party, as well as any Vamp NPCs, movements and adventuring are going to have to be primarily at night; Dhampir without the Dayborn trait will probably want to do likewise. Otherwise in Chapter 1 I don't see much need for change. You'll still have the normal issues of clearing out intelligent, animalistic, and monstrous threats alike, regardless of your intents, until the major threats are sated and the Stag Lord dethroned.
Chapter 2 on, you're going to need to deal with the issue of building a kingdom for undead. You'll need different resources, different people, etc. You'll probably want to create some kind of adjustment to the building rules to allow for a "sun shield" of some sort - mundane or magical - that'll allow your kingdom to keep functioning during the day. Otherwise you'll be forced to have the Vamps all stay underground/indoors while the Dhampir handle the daily activities, then swap at night. Grigori will probably be the biggest threat in Chapter 2, as he could be someone who's discovered the kingdom's grisly secret and might expose them.
Chapter 3 brings in the threat of a druidic neighbor in the Centaurs, who will likely not be happy to have an encroaching land of undead to their west, and Vordakai, who could see the Vampires as rightfully his servants as a master necromancer.
Chapters 4 and 5 bring in neighboring kingdoms as enemies. Changing Drelev to be less "hive of scum and villany" and Pitax less "impending empire" would probably be recommended; my knee-jerk suggestion is for Drelev to be a more reckless CG frontier town full of would-be heroes eager to wipe some undead off the planet, and Pitax to be a more lawful counterpart which will give the Dhampir/Vamps some goodly Clerics and Paladins to face.
Chapter 6 is the tour-de-force of the ultimate antethisis to a vampire kingdom - an invasion by the First World. Life represented by Fey versus Death represented by the Undead. I would actually remove the "Nyrissa's corruption" part of the plot entirely for a game like this, and make Nyrissa herself a fey heroine, seeking to remove a growing necromantic blight by an all-out assault before it can spread and infect other lands. Prior assaults could have been prompted by her or her agents, as in normal KM: she could have been prodding Pitax to get involved, starting with sending Grigori to spy out the place; she could have spurred the Centaurs into action, and arranged for Vordakai's awakening hoping the two necromantic titans would obliterate one another; she could have urged Drelev and Pitax into more aggressive action; and when all those failed took things into her own hands.
Otherwise just swapping a lot of the Evil enemies for Good heroes (make Ilthuliak a Bronze instead of a Black, for example) or rival Evil factions would do just as well.
On what would the vampires feast if no one is around except other vampires and dhampirs? Would it not lead to the dhampirs being killed very soon? Or do you imagine farms where humanoids are raised as cattle?
I figured that one would be left up to the PCs to figure out >=)
I don't see any of the neighboring nations letting that kind of country getting too big before they attempt to wipe it out. For me, it would be immersion-breaking that Brevoy, Pitax, Mivon, and maybe even some of the crusaders, didn't send some LG paladins to come put us out of existence.
Given a timeframe of years to grow, the paladins would come even further. "What, a nation of undead is growing? We must pour all our resources to put an end to this!"
I have a very sketchy outline of how I would imagine this playing out to begin with. First of all, the party would start out as Dhampir with the order to keep their ultimate intentions a secret. For all intents and purposes, their neighbours and paymasters would see a group of Dhampir who appear to be working according to their plan. I will likely have some who are suspicious of their motives but without any concrete proof then the group will probably be free to act out book 1 and possibly 2 in relative freedom.
The vampire template requires a victim to have at least 5 hit die which means fifth level at the very earliest for the party being turned into fully-fledged vampires. The issue I foresee is that they would then suddenly become extremely powerful. I'm toying with the idea that they would lose their class levels up to level 5 as they gain a lot more. This would be advertised ahead of schedule. It could also be that they don't wish to turn immediately and would retain some class levels after turning if this was the case.
I think that by book 3, they should have been turned into vampires and the suggestions here give me a lot to think about. I might look into this a bit further and try and sketch out a rough plan and attempt to pencil in some required changes.
From a player's perspective, I think this game would require a lot of politics and subterfuge in order to manage to successfully reach the climax of the arc.
I guess a bigger question is, is this something YOU want or something your players have requested? If this is something you're planning on doing without them knowing, it could lead to some unhappy situations down the road.
If it's something THEY want make sure they know they will have to hide themselves for as long as possible and there may be a power-spike mid game.
To me the vampire/fey mashup doesn't really go well together but that's just my feelings.
To me the vampire/fey mashup doesn't really go well together but that's just my feelings.
As I said in my prior post, I think they make excellent enemies because of how diametrically opposed they are. It's going to come down to one or the other in the end, a clash is inevitable - there is no peace, no parley, no compromise that will sate either side until the other is destroyed.