I am planning on starting a Kingmaker AP with my group and i have a quick question for anyone that might have the same issue as me. I am listening to an Actual Play Podcast of Kingmaker and it feels like since the group has been in Book 2 "River runs Red" the group has been going thru characters at an alarming pace and have to keep replacing Leadership of the town. Most of the leadership is now NPC's and the PC's have lost alot of say in the matters of building the town. I was thinking to remedy that, at the start of book 2 i could have my guys roll up new adventurers to act as the group that goes out to check Hexes. I was thinking just have them roll up characters of the same level they were and RP it like the Leadership that chartered the old group has chartered the new guys to survey land while the old group acts as town leadership and have my players RP as their old guys in build mode and then their new guys when they explore
I do have a few questions with this. I am not very far into listening to this podcast and I don't know how much actual level plays into leadership of the town but if it ends up playing a big part should i scale the Leadership players Xp to match that of their new guys? Same question with gold and items for the Old guys; should it scale.
Is this a good idea; is this a bad idea. If i could get some ideas on this that would be great. I am looking to start having my group play this in about 5-6 weeks. Thanks!!
My group are just starting book 3 - and they still have exactly the same characters as they started with.
We had a single death so far - and that was fixed by a very expensive raise spell from Restov :) However, I charged them in BP rather than GP, which didn't make it too difficult for them.
I have 3 players - each has a main character (built as they choose) and a secondary character who is primarily an NPC class or built to my spec - but these secondary guys go adventuring with them most of the time.
Day to day running of the Town/Kingdom is done through Charles the Magister (he is an NPC wizard/Expert with basic spells and loads of Knowledge Skills). Charles (ie me the GM) takes instructions from the main PCs and prepares a series of reports on how those instructions could be achieved. The PCs then make the decisions and Charles implements them.
That is pretty much the way that most government runs - so it works OK. The Players feel like they run things, but don't have to get their hands dirty. I get to guide them and suggest ...
(and it lets me slip in plot points quite easily)
Thanks for the idea -- I didn't think about making an NPC for myself to sit in as something like magister -- i will also pole my guys and see if they want to do something like that 1st
Finishing a amped up intentionally murderous version of book 2 no PC deaths yet, though I'm hoping for one on Saturday...
Know your group, if the charge everything head on there will be death, if the remember diplomatic options and ocasionally think sideways they will shred the AP.
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I warned my group. I told them that there were going to be some very dangerous and frequently TPK encounters that they couldn't treat like normal combats. I even told them that retreating is a viable option.
They nearly died in three encounters but made it out of Part 2 alive.
You don't need to come up with something to save their bacon, you just need to warn them not to charge in and stand their ground. If things get out of hand, they need to bug out, carrying their dead with them. If they don't listen to your advice, it is on them.
my PCs handed the entire kingdom over to NPCs after setting it up... had NO interest in the book keeping or BS... they hated it.
Pretty much the same thing happened with my group, we just dropped the whole kingdom building rules to the side.
That's fine, it even says so in the description.
Just make sure to give feedback (once a year? founding day is excellent) on what has been achieved this year: new towns, buildings, etc..
The NPC rule it, but it's still their name attached to it after all :D