*de-lurks*
Hey all, I'm running Kingmaker. This is the first AP I've ever run but most certainly not my first time DMing (Been gaming 20+ years, 90% of the time behind the screen).
So my players were unsatisfied with the last 3.5 game we played with another DM (we leveled roughly once every 1 to 1.5 sessions for the first like 9 levels) so I offered to make a clean break from 3.5 and run KM using PF, the players are all excited to play, they just want to level much more slowly than they've become accustomed to, even with the slow advancement track it feels like KM still will hand out too many XP and have the characters blowing thru their first 3 levels quickly (this is important, they want to, strangely enough, be underpowered for a longer than normal time in a fantasy RPG, I can understand that, some great stories come out of those early levels where the odds are really against you (like in 1e or in RIFTS where you almost never level). Following the guidelines in Stolen Lands I know the characters need to get to level 3 before they challenge the Stag Lord and should finish the module at about 4th level.
To resolve some of these issues I've simply told the group to mark down 1 xp per session and I'll keep track of xp and tell them when to level.
We've had 3 sessions and it feels like the group is blowing through the content of this module, the party is 5 instead of 4 and while I haven't given them any levels yet they've fully explored 14 hexes and even defeated the bandits at the camp in area K (experienced roleplayers can do a lot even with 1st level characters). The guidelines in the book give a 5% chance per day of exploration for a wandering monster encounter to occur, as I've said they've gone thru 14 hexes, and as the percentage would indicate the dice have actually come up under 6 on d% once giving them one encounter (1d4 (I rolled 3) trolls, which they wisely ran from before the monsters noticed them).
Last session I asked the group if they feel as though they deserved to level yet (I didn't say why), they said no, a couple mentioning the old 14.5 encounters per level standard from 3.5, they've had maybe 4 combat encounters, but by my notes they should be second level now with bonus xp from exploration and quest completion (moon radishes and fang berries) and not for nothing they're good roleplayers so in a typical game I would have awarded bonus xp for that.
I want to honor my group's request that we level slower in this game, but I know the needs of the module and the AP itself require them to get to certain thresholds at certain times, I know the leveling will slow down once we get to the second module as they take copious downtime to develop their nation, and they're kind of blowing through this content faster than I had anticipated as well.
At this point I'm not too sure what to do, I've developed a couple of caves with goblins (why goblins, because I like em and they don't appear in this AP and I don't want to make the PCs make enemies with the Kobolds yet [they had a delightfully peaceful encounter with the too full of fangberry Kobolds and I hope to nurture a peace treaty instead of wholesale slaughter) I can throw in to slow them down and use their resources to make them go back to Oleg's and spend more time in traveling so we can stretch the module out somewhat, the only other thing I can think to do is to have more random encounters whether indicated by the dice or not. And to spend even more time roleplaying with NPCs (as that takes up a bunch of real world time without necessarily advancing the plot by much).
Do any of you have any advice for me?
Except for a few very notable examples (stag lord, the cyclops lich) Kingmaker is a very easy campaign due to the 1 encounter per day layout. I have only 3 not very experienced players in my kingmaker, so I was very generous with XP - they now are most of the way through book two and destroy most encounters in a single round (charge paladin, witch slumber and druid.... druiding). I could've put them on the slow track and they still would be fine I think.
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*de-lurks*
Hey all, I'm running Kingmaker. This is the first AP I've ever run but most certainly not my first time DMing (Been gaming 20+ years, 90% of the time behind the screen).
So my players were unsatisfied with the last 3.5 game we played with another DM (we leveled roughly once every 1 to 1.5 sessions for the first like 9 levels) so I offered to make a clean break from 3.5 and run KM using PF, the players are all excited to play, they just want to level much more slowly than they've become accustomed to, even with the slow advancement track it feels like KM still will hand out too many XP and have the characters blowing thru their first 3 levels quickly (this is important, they want to, strangely enough, be underpowered for a longer than normal time in a fantasy RPG, I can understand that, some great stories come out of those early levels where the odds are really against you (like in 1e or in RIFTS where you almost never level). Following the guidelines in Stolen Lands I know the characters need to get to level 3 before they challenge the Stag Lord and should finish the module at about 4th level.
To resolve some of these issues I've simply told the group to mark down 1 xp per session and I'll keep track of xp and tell them when to level.
We've had 3 sessions and it feels like the group is blowing through the content of this module, the party is 5 instead of 4 and while I haven't given them any levels yet they've fully explored 14 hexes and even defeated the bandits at the camp in area K (experienced roleplayers can do a lot even with 1st level characters). The guidelines in the book give a 5% chance per day of exploration for a wandering monster encounter to occur, as I've said they've gone thru 14 hexes, and as the percentage would indicate the dice have actually come up under 6 on d% once giving them one encounter (1d4 (I rolled 3) trolls, which they wisely ran from before the monsters noticed them).
Last session I asked the group if they feel as though they deserved to level yet (I...
Kingmaker is a great campaign for running slowly, I've been running it for 3 years :-D
I stopped using XP before the end of book 1, because I wanted to really sit in the low to mid levels as long as possible, while adding my own content.
My only recommendation is to combine encounter areas into single hexes or to expand encounters to be 4-6 encounters instead if you want to challenge the PCs.
Furthermore make sure they keep track of food (both for themselves and their pack animals), this will force them to return to Oleg's more often and interact with the NPCs there.
The Mite Lair is pretty tough to take on at 1st or 2nd level (it was the location of the first player death in the game. The second was due to a random troll encounter).
Kingmaker is more of an AP skeleton that lets you flesh it out with your own content. Embrace that. There's nothing stopping you from slowing down XP gain by doubling the amounts on the Slow Chart. You have 5 experienced players if they want to play on "hard mode" then let them.
I agree with Dudemeister, though my group didn't let me get rid of XP. Anyway, I'd like to warn you. My previous Kingmaker group consisted of four players with rolled stats (and they rolled quite well), and they still had a lot of trouble in a certain encounter in the second book, which even led to one of them getting killed. However, if your players are smart and a bit lucky, I'm sure they can avoid that character's fate. Actually, I have a new group and I'm running Kingmaker again, and we had the wizard getting killed over a careless mistake as well as a critical hit from a monster. That session was yesterday, but it led to an amusing new development thanks to the Reincarnate spell.
Many of the Paizo APs hand out experience for reaching certain marks. I usually do not use the non-encounter XP that the APs hand out.
Also, I use a hybrid of Event based and XP based leveling which can best be described as "level when appropriate" combined with "where would the actual XP put them right now?" as a check to see if I am giving them enough encounters.
Sidenote: My group is running two adventuring groups through Kingmaker as a way to deal with leveling too fast. We have bypassed a number of lower level areas and rather than going back to deal with them 4 levels after we should have we have instead hired an adventuring crew (4 levels lower than ourselves) to explore them for us. Of course, we get to play the second adventuring crew.
It is a break from our regular characters without taking us out of the campaign (we don't lose track of things).
- Gauss
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I GMed levels 1 through 3 or 4 (Chapter 1), and am playing in Chapter 2 (dwarf barbarian 1/magus 5 so far), and we're 20 point buy, with Hero Points, and the rest of the party is an archer ranger, mounted cavalier/fighter, and rogue/witch. There was an (very) occasional cleric archer and a one-shot alchemist too.
Most of the encounters have been a cakewalk. I re-designed the Staglord map, and upped the CR of each major NPC and I think boosted the goons too, added templates to pets, etc., and it was still pretty much a cakewalk. Some of the featured monsters original to the setting
I would suggest increasing the number of critters per encounter, and maybe try to stretch them out so there is more than 1 encounter per day/hex. Like scouts outside the lair, then family units in the lair. Action economy action economy action economy! Maybe add a level or 2 of warrior to NPCs or goons. Depends on the make up of your PCs. A Power Attacking Greatsword wielding PC is going to 1-shot a goon with 4 hp or 14 hp. But if you a party of mages using burning hands and magic missile and produce flame and inflict light wounds as their main attack spells, then 5 hit point goons can be challenging, but still goony.
Also, maybe use the Slow XP rate?
I should probably note that we ran an intro session of the journey from Restov to Oleg's Shop, so they had a bit of an XP boost. Then I put in a dungeon (at the player's request) in the sacred pool to Erastil section.
I'm not worried about killing a character or two during the game, I told the players right off the bat that there's no destiny, even when one of them becomes king or queen, they can die (I also couched that by telling them that they shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking just because it's in the adventure doesn't mean they can defeat it (at least not yet), ie: they should know when to run).
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My best advice is really a bit more general the kingmaker specific and I assume you probably know most already, from what I understand you have the following:
a 5 man group
fewer random encounters statically then indicated
a group of good roleplayers.
Your five man group is a bit more than the four average, so you could start by beefing up encounters by 20%.
Does the character in your group fit into the 15 point-buy stat range or are they higher? if they are increase the encounters even further.
Analyse your group to see what are their strengths, go to strategies, weaknesses and what do they avoid. Exploit their weaknesses to make the encounters harder, create unfavourable conditions to water out their strength a bit.
- Example: for my kingmaker group one of thir key strengths were an abundance of magic, one thing I found that put a bit more thought into how it was used and made it harder for them was an outbreak of cold weather (their exploring went well into winter) that forced them to spend quite a few spell slots of endure element (for themselves and their mounts).
Analyse your own strength, weaknesses and patterns for encounters and every now and then do something you wouldn't normally even consider, something off the bat.
If you are not rolling enough random encounters simply don't roll for them every time to catch up, if you don't want to do that toughen them up instead and create unfavourable conditions for the players, where they are forced to make less then optimal choices.
Remember the 20% resources spend per encounter by equal CR rule, and up the encounters to force them to use more resources.
Increase the number of times they can have a random encounter to say 5% every time the enter a hex, 5% per day and another 5% per night and finally a 5% chance of a natural hazard occurring per day (heatwave, cold snap etc).
the first book of the Kingmaker AP is to be a bit static, so look it through and make the opponents dynamic, think of it as a game of chess or Go, the staglord should react (badly) to their moves.
Example: After the river camp was taken out the players spend a bit too much time on other things then going straight for the staglord which resulted in that he had a party of bandits take over Oleg's trade station which resulted the players having to liberate it in a situation where they were actually heading back to drop off stuff and resupply making it a very difficult situation (which they solved by allying with the kobolds and have them dig a tunnel into the compound to allow for a diversionary attack from the outside with an infiltration through the tunnel).
Have some of the random encounters be something the players can't "escape" that is, rather than being able to run away before the encounter stats have them be the prey that walked into the clever hunter's trap. One thing is retreating from a pair of trolls you see, another is retreating when you are in their ambush, that is is someone down first round? it raises questions like how are we going to get that person out of here with us or do we leave that person behind to be eaten?
Change the fact of an encounter on them, when they think they have a encounter well in hand, throw in a monkey wrench, they are taking down some bandits with no problem? have a Owlbear or a pack of Thylacine attack or even just have the bandits receive serious reinforcements or maybe an old mite pit trap is triggered by a random player at some point in the fight.
Obviously they are doing more than well so you don't really need to be too cautious of them since they can handle it.
Hope it gave you a few ideas.
From having run 5 books of Kingmaker, I would say that the encounters are a bit swingy (that is, too easy or pretty hard). If your group is caster heavy the one encounter a day format will heavily favor them and the result will be easy encounters.
I know it is a lot of work on the DMs part (and frankly that may be why you are running an AP...thats why I do), but take the AP off the rails a bit (Kingmaker is built for this anyways) and add lots of your own stuff. Give the PCs more than one encounter a day. Change all the solos (and there are a LOT of them in Kingmaker) to have a few helpers.
My PCs blew through book 1 with a few exceptions:
As a bit of background, my part consists of:
One Paladin played by an experienced d20 player
One Paladin who has been playing a year and change
One Fighter who has been playing as long as I have
One Oracle who has played 3.5/PF for a few years
One Ranger for whom this is her second character
I was re-reading stolen lands last night and noticed where I failed my reading comprehension roll, it's 5% on entering a hex and 15% per day or night exploring or camping that a wandering monster can occur. Had I read that, and been rolling more often I'm sure we would have had a few more encounters. I'm not used to running published modules at all, I usually write everything myself, but my players wanted to play this and I wanted to run it for them, my initial assumption that being designed to cover several levels that it had enough content on it's own, I'm rapidly discovering that not to be the case, I've already added my own friendly NPCs to the game that the PCs have interacted with, and as I mentioned I want to use the kobolds for more than a speed bump on the road to rulership (maybe the PCs will redeem them, maybe it'll be an uneasy alliance)
My PCs stats were rolled, I'm generous (roll 4d6 drop lowest 7 times, drop lowest of the 7, twice, choose best set of stats, assign as you like), the fighter likely rolled 3d6 6 times, and then assigned or some other crazy thing from the 1e DMG, he likes to challenge himself, probably why he went fighter with a Paladin's stats. One paladin has a nice spread the rest of the party has a flatter curve to their stats (but more stats with a better bonus than a point buy usually affords)
To account for the extra party member I've already increased the encounter size by 20% and/or added HD, maxed hp, or outright fudged hp for some baddies, I roll behind a screen but don't usually cheat, however I think I'm going to just add some 'random' encounters and locations to the AP.
It's good to know that my experience with the pace of volume one isn't an isolated experience. Back to the drawing board, I've got some good ideas to work into this.
Well with that much healing let them have plenty of encounters each day, make them use it or combat encounters will quickly be meaningless.
Basically you have a group with two obvious strengths and two glaring weaknesses, martial combat and divine/healing and support spells are their forté it is going to be hard to challenge them in these two areas however they have a serious downside in that they lack arcane magic and the pure skill monkey of the rogue, especially in regards to traps and locks. Sit down with the core rulebooks and find out what exactly this means for the group and try find none standard ways to challenge them then just pure straight up combat (ie. be sneaky! they want the challenge and have healing and combat resources to overcome them!) ohh and you can probably throw the idea of 2 or 3 encounter workday out the window.
In regards tos tats and number it sounds like you need to increase the extra from 20% to 50% or more!
Anyway good luck and hope you have fun.
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Some suggestions that most of the Kingmaker GMs could tell you and Im sure you will find them on your own if you poke around:
1- Dudemeister is 100% correct. I recommend adding at least 50% to the content of the AP. This is a sandbox, so you should flesh things out quite a bit with NPCs, encounter, strange mysteries, subplots, factions, etc. This gives your PCs opportunities to puruse whichever threads they wish in whatever order they wish.
2- Decide what content you absolutely want your PCs to experience, then let go of the need for them to explore the rest. Maybe your players decide to get heavily involved in Fey and forest activities, or kingdom building. Don't force the timeline on them, just because the AP says you should be 5th level for this event. If they tackle it at 1st, let them...and if they tackle it at 9th, let them. Some encounters lose some potentcy as they advance, and others have serious consequences for ignoring.
For example, my players are heavily involved in Brevoy politics and skirmishes between barons there. We are using the story point leveling system, so I control when they level, but I just could not in all fairness hold them back anymore after their recent amazing accomplishments, so now they are 8th lvl. They have yet to complete any events post Book 1 except a few encounters from Book 2. I am probably skipping everything but the main BBEG from Book 2, who is going to roll up around 10th level, perhaps involved in Book 4. Don't even ask me what I am doing with Book 3, because I am still working that out. However, thats my problem, and not theirs. :)
3- Use the story point leveling system and throw out XP completely. It works beautifully for this AP. Also, you can offer other incentives in the form of kingdom bonuses, favorable alliances, allies, resources, hero points, political and economic favors, etc as rewards besides gold and XP. You may be surprised at what your players do with magic items and gold they would typically keep.
My group stopped an invading barbarian horde, captured 50k in gold at 5th level after a mass combat at the Stag Lords fort and distributed most of the gold to widows, orphans, and the towns that the militia members came from as compensation for their deaths (it was quite the pyrhhic victory).
4. I highly recommend involving politics in your game early on. This requires a lot of extra work as a GM, but pays off huge dividends. See some of the other threads for ways that Brevoy factions, priesthoods, regional creatures, the River Kingdoms, and even NPCs can create some political intrique.
5. Get your players involved in Kingdom building if at all possible, to whatever extent they are willing to do it. If some are bored, find ways that they can influence kingdom building during the actual game portion of Kingmaker, maybe by securing resources, defending forts, capturing spies, etc.
6. Don't randomly generate encounters or kingdom events. I always pre-roll my encounters and then place them where I deem appropriate during the game play session. Typically you get an idea from listening to your players of where they are going, so pre-determining location so as to remain unbiased is usually easy enough. Kingdom events should be timelined out, and make sense based on whats happening in the game. This way you know in advance what is coming and can foreshadow, create cryptic messages for divination spell prophecies, and more fully develop NPCs, etc.
7. Your group is probably going to dominate many of the 1/day encounters even the tough ones since you have excessive healing and melee. Make sure you create some encounters that cannot be fixed with a sword, or even better can only be fixed with 200 swords. Now the party has to do some work and rely on folks that are "less uber". As a corollary, don't be dismayed if they crush many encounters, its sort of the nature of the AP, except where there are mini dungeons and strings of timed events. It is up to you to craft some additional challenges that cannot be defeated by "going Nova".
One last note: even though it is a ton of work and may not fit your style of GMing, its worth noting that the "Ed Greenwood" game style works incredibly well for this AP. He basically believed that the world should be alive, and the GM should script events happening regionally, nationally, geographically, as if the PCs were not there. Create a ton of interesting NPCs and factions, and then throw the party into the mix. There are few "set encounters" for the party, everything is them responding to stimulus in their world. I know in my game it has led to some pretty amazing places and to some incredible game sessions. We are a bit far afield of the normal direction for the AP, but no one but me knows or cares. :)
You can also go with a more political game - there's some REALLY good suggestions in Redcelt's posts. That would flesh it out a lot more.
I intend to make it more political once they have founded their nation.
The party are still getting used to differences between 3.5 and PF. Other than myself, only the Player who is playing the Oracle has played any PF prior to this, and a few times a session I have to gently remind someone, that no that's not how it works anymore for some ability or skill or something else. As I look at it now, I think I may have been going to easy on them for the first pair of sessions, I'll have stop reminding people of things they can do that they're not used to.
Even with a suboptimal class mix (they initially talked about a 4 or 5 paladin party), this group can overcome a lot of challenges, me and the group's other grognard have instilled within them an Old-school style, they spend their starting gold smartly, we live by the adage that if it's not on your sheets you don't have it (and while I don't enforce it, they actually follow the rules for encumbrance[unless someone tries carrying the whole dragon's hoard by themselves]), they took the bandits' horses for themselves after the initial ambush and bought a wagon (I allowed it, they would have ridden back to Restov to buy one, and I wanted to get into things), multiple characters have handle animal and they all have ride, after some initial successes they bought enough food for the party and it's animals to last in the wilderness for a couple weeks at a time.
My challenge is to challenge their resources fairly, I could simply have a wyvern fly off with their draft animals, but I need to find something fair, even this elite party of 1st level adventurers would suffer a TPK against a Wyvern. I think a rival bandit party to harry their journey is just the thing, maybe 2 warrior types, a rogue, an adept or druid or cleric and an arcanist of some sort (probably sorcerer or and enchanter or illusionist mage), and keep their rivals at the same level as the party (if not slightly ahead), ooh, I haven't worked in the wanted poster for the merc yet, I think I have an idea... (Thanks everyone)
Wow, Redcelt, thanks, that's a lot of good advice, I'm working on getting my players more interested in the world of Golarion, perhaps regional politics earlier will help with that, they've chosen deities and backstories (which is commendable, as nobody should become attached to a 1st level character).
As (I think) someone said earlier. Treat Kingmaker as a frame work rather than a fully fledged module.
I have stopped recording XP - I just tell my players when to level. We have had 55 evening sessions charters are L12 - so it takes us 4 to 5 sessions per level (on average).
I add in bits as I see fit. In the first book I added a number of encounters. I often steal concepts from the One Page Dungeon competition entries - and tweak them to fit what I need. However, there is nothing to stop you writing side quests / adventures to suit your game.
Recently, for example, we spent a whole session messing about at the ruler's wedding. An Evil fey gifted the NPC bride a trapped Steal the Soul gem. We had a short side quest to find and collect the ingredients needed to by pass the trap.
However, in between time they were meeting all sorts of local dignitaries and I introduced a number of NPC traders / potential Allies / potential mercenary captains they may well want to meet later.
When I read the KM was a sandbox, I assumed it was a sandbox for the players, that is that they could decide which direction to go (like a sandbox video game), I haven't run a published module in a decade or more, I'm more used to modules where just about everything is done for the DM already. Now that I see it's a sandbox for the DM as well, or more like a skeleton campaign setting, it makes me even more excited to run it, I expected to put my own spin on the AP already, now I see I get to really develop it for my and my players' tastes.
As to names, I'm actually not so bad at coming up with them on the fly, if pressed, I look at the credits page or kickstarter backer thank you pages of whatever books I have at hand for human names and race descriptions for non-human (Dungeon world has some great name lists on their class sheets) and I write down the NPC's name and details as I come up with them.
I have the inner sea world guide and guide to the river kingdoms (and I read pathfinderwiki for fun), I assume that most countries/cultures in a campaign setting are a pastiche of real-world places, I haven't quite figured out what cultures that Brevoy/Restov/River Kingdoms represent which would make naming people easier (so, for instance, Galt is obviously revolutionary France, so I would use French sounding names for NPCs from there), I think the River Kingdoms represent a melting pot, almost a pre US american wilderness, I see the Mayor of Restov is named Ioseph Sellemius, the first name is Greek and the Last name sounds vaguely Greco/Roman, but I didn't really get a Greco/Roman vibe from my reading.
This week's session got cancelled due to real-life, but I did speak to some of my players who indicated they were enjoying the campaign so far, they had no input when I asked if they thought they were leveling too slowly, I'm almost tempted to run KM with the E6 rules adapted to PF, anyone ever try that?
If you're looking for some adventure ideas, my group enjoyed an adventure by Raging Swan Press called Road of the Dead. It's an easy to drop in dungeon crawl for 3rd lvl characters, however, every encounter in the module has rules for scaling the encounter up and down by 1 lvl. My PCs encountered it early at a mix of 1st and 2nd lvl and after getting punked hard in the first room, wisely fled for their lives before. They later went back and tackled it at lvl 3.
I think I'm set on adventure ideas at the moment, I just was listening to a podcast (Know direction I think) with an interview with a freelancer who was making an addon to the "kingdom building" adventure path to slot in in the 3rd or 4th volume to tie the fey weirdness from volume 6 more into the AP, I wish I could remember the name of the guy or the adventure or publisher, because that sounded like a good idea. For the moment, the last things the PCs did was encounter the grig and fairy dragon in the woods (they didn't see them they just heard them giggling and running around the branches), and I fully intend to have a lot of fun with Fey pranks over the next few in-game days, I wonder, can you use mage hand to tie bootlaces together (RAW probably not, but It's a good enough idea I think I'll try (I'll give the victim a save though to be fair)), assuming the PCs befriend the two fey I will probably use them to direct the party to other points of interest as necessary. As I said earlier, I have a couple small cave dungeons I've drawn and statted up to slot in if I need to, but I'll be tossing more encounters their way in general as they explore to eat up their supplies as I can.
I think I'm set on adventure ideas at the moment, I just was listening to a podcast (Know direction I think) with an interview with a freelancer who was making an addon to the "kingdom building" adventure path to slot in in the 3rd or 4th volume to tie the fey weirdness from volume 6 more into the AP, I wish I could remember the name of the guy or the adventure or publisher, because that sounded like a good idea. For the moment, the last things the PCs did was encounter the grig and fairy dragon in the woods (they didn't see them they just heard them giggling and running around the branches), and I fully intend to have a lot of fun with Fey pranks over the next few in-game days, I wonder, can you use mage hand to tie bootlaces together (RAW probably not, but It's a good enough idea I think I'll try (I'll give the victim a save though to be fair)), assuming the PCs befriend the two fey I will probably use them to direct the party to other points of interest as necessary. As I said earlier, I have a couple small cave dungeons I've drawn and statted up to slot in if I need to, but I'll be tossing more encounters their way in general as they explore to eat up their supplies as I can.
Probably Jason Nelson from Legendary Games. Jason wrote book 5 and his company has created a number of tie products- adventures and rules supplements that are easy to slot into Kingmaker. They just can't call it Kingmaker as that's a trademarked name.
Thank you. Google here I come. It's Horns of the Hunted by Matt Goodall, looking around the publisher's site I see a lot of interesting stuff I might use.
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...I assume that most countries/cultures in a campaign setting are a pastiche of real-world places, I haven't quite figured out what cultures that Brevoy/Restov/River Kingdoms represent which would make naming people easier (so, for instance, Galt is obviously revolutionary France, so I would use French sounding names for NPCs from there), I think the River Kingdoms represent a melting pot, almost a pre US american wilderness, I see the Mayor of Restov is named Ioseph Sellemius, the first name is Greek and the Last name sounds vaguely Greco/Roman, but I didn't really get a Greco/Roman vibe from my reading.
Near as I can tell, Brevoy is a mix of italian renaissance names and eastern European slavic names. River kingdoms are random melting pot, mostly determined by which mother country the ruler(s) came from. My names are a mix of original inhabitants pre-Choral (italian renaissance, most of my swordlords for instance), russian and slavic names for Choral's folks from Iobaria, and old english names for newer folks with a stronger Taldor influence. Just a random thought I am tossing in, but in my game Hallit=Klingon, so barbarians sound really harsh and rough.
BTW if you ever want NPCs, there is a good thread here somewhere with a lot of GMs Obsidian Portal, etc campaign sites linked on it, I mined some incredible artwork, NPC concepts, and names from browsing through the sites.
Slavic, yes that's the vibe I got off the name of Restov/Rostland. I'm still trying to wrap my head around a fantasy setting with more than one human language, I'm glad one is still the "common" tongue for most of the world though, but I haven't decided what they each sound like, I imagine a barbarian tongue would sound Germanic. Luckily my players haven't asked yet, they're more focused on things like, so this river here, which way does it flow, and is the direction it flows from higher elevation than where it flows to? I need elevation maps of the stolen lands. :)
From what I can tell, it's mostly uphill if you're headed west until you hit the Branthlend Mountains on the far side of Pitax, and downhill eastward until you hit Lake Silverstep in Varnhold, where it becomes suddenly uphill again as you hit the Tors de Levenies.
So, taking from the first couple of chapters, the rivers flowing through the Narlmarches down into Lake Tuskwater and Lake Candlemere are all flowing eastward, as are the rivers that flow eastward out of the Tuskwater over to Lake Silverstep.
This was one of my favourite trappers :) The first time they met her, she was skulking around their campsite, trying to work out who was travelling so openly through the Stolen Lands. She was heavily camouflaged with river mud :)
Nug (F) Rogue 2
Half-Orc female – Short, thick set. Tanned, black eyes, black ponytail
Grey cloak, hunched/stooped stance. Wicked looking short sword.
Mainly brings in a few good mink skins - not many though.
Ex Bandit - not very social - gets drunk easily & starts fights
She drunk all their wine, got shouty then snuck away again.