I love Ultimate Campaign, it's in the running for my favorite rules-line hardback.
Just one thing I wish had been done differently:
I wish they had sprung for an all-new hex map, because the example hex map is a great big spoiler for my group.
Kingmaker players may be disproportionately likely to be reading those rules in Ultimate Campaign. It's kind of a bummer that we're on book 1 and they now have a significant chunk of the map for book 2.
It's not as though the map they used works particularly well as a smaller map either.
</beef>
Of course, this is a very minor blemish on an otherwise extraordinary book. I'm sympathetic to the fact that the AP has been out for years now, but in this case I think that the content in question was really directed at KM players.
You know. When I was flipping through my copy of UCamp I thought the exact same thing. I think including the very recognizable area map as their example was an unfortunate oversight. My Kingmaker group is at book 5 so the hexploration aspect of my game is done. But if I was at Book 1 and my players saw the complete map, I would be upset. If a key part of the AP was not that there is NO MAP of the area and the players are being hired to explore and make on, I don’t think it would be that big a deal. Certain areas of Golarion are well mapped and the players might be assumed to know aspects of the Varisian coast for example. But the Stolen Lands are not mapped, and making said map is key part of this adventure. It is unfortunate that no one at Paizo (I am guessing) thought that GMs might want to provide the kingdom rules to their players and including a giant spoiler in the art might be a problem. Oh well. Maybe black it out, and copy/provide just those pages to your players (now minus the map?).
Let's just say that having that map appear in Ultimate Campaign was not our first choice.
That is unfortunate.
Fellow Kingmaker GMs, have you any strategies for damage control?
I plan to
** spoiler omitted **
I play on a Virtual Tabletop, so changing course at this point involves photoshop.
It's not the end of the world. It looks like Paizo's aware of the misstep, so they will likely avoid similar issues in future.
Maybe they could have flipped it on the X and Y axis...
I just looked it up in my pdf and what exactly is the problem?
I just have an empty map without any markings. Was that changed after the original version went to printing?
It doesn't have any of the hidden notes for the hexes on it, just basically shows where the rivers run. Given that river trade from Brevoy would come down those rivers, it's probably the only part that people might already have a good idea about. I can't think of any relevant spoilers that the p159 map would grant that wouldn't be quickly evident to PCs who--
A bunch of NPCs, like Tiressia and Melianse would know the details even moreso
I mean, otherwise its just hills on the right and a forest on the left, running north-to-south.
It's more about the tone of the campaign methinks.
Hitherto it has been all about carving out a map of the land hex by hex, so any big information drop like this seems like an interruption.
I did call it a "lesser" gripe. Something I'd like to see avoided in future products, but certainly not a big deal.
While I understand your slight annoyance and feel similar I think that it's more about the players ruining their fun playing the campaign by gaining knowledge about the lay of the land.
It's not about winning so does it really matter?
@RE:
Ruyan.
I would expect that by the time they have seen enough of the map to recognize the area, it'll be mostly explored already. And it doesn't reveal any of the secrets of the map, so I'm not real concerned.
I guess if you have been using a digital version actual map revealed as the campaign it is more of a problem. I describe and they hand draw. Here's what our map currently looks like.