Technically, no problem at all. They might well kill Oleg and employ the bandits instead of the other way around, but that's still a totally workable way to start things off.
As long as the group genuinely intend to explore the area and found a kingdom, the fact that they're evil shouldn't make too much difference - they still have an investment in the kingdom, and most of the enemies are direct threats to the kingdom. They might make a totally different set of allies than a good party would, but those characters can still serve the same roles.
An evil party will probably have a more proactive 'get them before they get us' attitude, so be prepared that as soon as you hint something is a threat, they're likely to go after it and shortcut some of the plot.
Book 3 might be an issue, as an evil group might be tempted to take over Varn's lands and never rescue the people, but if they do that then they'll have both a Cyclops lich and an angry centaur tribe on their borders. Vordakai is sufficiently arrogant and self-absorbed that he won't consider negotiating with them whatever their alignment.
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You might want to basically start at the beginning and rip apart the AP. Read through all the books and decide how each faction, NPC, ally, will react to an evil party. You probably want to flat out change some of them as well.
I suggest the following. Instead of the Stag Lord, have the bandits defeated earlier before the party gets there. In their place put a group of rangers and perhaps clergy of Erastil intent on cleaning up the Stolen Lands. Now this group is putting pressure on Oleg, who is a smuggler and uses his black market connections into New Stetven and Restov to help smuggle goods up through the stolen Lands, and fence stolen goods from Brevoy down into the River Kingdoms. The fort of newly goody two shoes don't like his nefarious ways and are trying to get him to pack up and leave. In comes the party....
Kesten I would make a disenfranchised noble who is ruthless, but respects a stronger leader, and make him LE or LN with evil tendencies... well you see where I am going with this I think...
If you want to run it as is...I think you are going to be far less satisfied with the result. There are things that just won't make sense, not enough allies, and the whole fey thing gets fairly complicated unless you swap some out for evil fey.
One last thought...If you are going to run Kingmaker as an "evil" game, I highly suggest using politics and involving neighboring countries, like Brevoy and the River Kingdoms. Decide in advance which lords and Barons are "good" guys and which ones are "bad" guys so you know which group the party comes from (unless of course they are just a bunch of nasty noble bastards who hate all the ruling class). This way they can do terrible things and merciless things and get away with it through the use of politics and diplomacy.
Although it depends on the party. I can see a LE party trying to dominate everything in sight. Of course they will save Oleg's - at a price. Same with the Stag lord - kill Staggy and take over.
The Kobolds had better stay in line and anyone travelling through had better pay the taxes and fees that are imposed. They might even be able to intimidate some of the lesser trolls and keep them on side.
If they are CE - just let them rampage and kill things as they see fit.
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The party shall be dhampir, who are going to transition to full vampires by the end of book 3 with cohorts to complete the book as written while their vampire characters focus on the political game.
They are operating at the behest of a small coven of vampires who will be keeping tabs on them, so they shouldn't get too out of hand (at least to begin with).
Some good suggestions here, that I shall make sure to run with.
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The thing is, there really aren't Good and Evil "Sides" in Kingmaker. Damn near everything you face in the game main story-wise would come after you no matter your alignment, and nothing about the kingdom-building really depends on Good and Evil either.
I agree with Samas. This campaign is very Lawful vs. Chaotic. Play up the power struggle between the two alignments. It will be a bit tricky, but this idea can be a very fun one. Especially if the PCs decide to ally themselves with a powerful undead entity (see book 3).
Then, about mid campaign, the power struggle should shift to good vs evil. Irovetti could become a LG leader who is attempting to hide Briar in hopes that mankind will finally flourish in the Stolen Lands. He encountered a CG Nyrissia and she granted him her favor in hopes that she could use him to finally free herself from her prison and establish her own realm in the Stolen Lands. Perhaps Irovetti doesn't trust her to keep her promise of peace and he is holding Briar to protect it. Being that her realm is closely tied to the Stolen Lands, the presence of the humanoids might weaken her hold over this land as fey who are looking for Briar are continually killed off.
Has anyone done this before? Any major stumbling blocks and/or problems?
The biggest stumbling block is that the kindgom building rules are:
(a)Designed to provide no significant mechanical benefit to PCs, in return for their investment of time and effort, both in and out of the game.
(b)Penaltize PCs for behavior that evil feudal rulers will likely consider (and do consider, as NPCs) the standard perks of rulership.
So an evil campaign in particular requires revamping or ditching them. Before PCs start to think that all those ungrateful peasants will be more useful as zombies or fuel for some arcane purpose or another.
Also, a pragmatic evil party (I hope you don't want to GMing a campaign with psychopathic evil PCs, yes?) is more likely to try straight-up recruiting many monster they encounter. And less likely to take b+!**~&! from people who are supposed to be questgivers. The centaur situation might be quite volatile with any PCs who aren't feeling obligated to help people if those people aren't feeling like making themselves useful 9or at least very polite). Also, consider that the AP is already excessively easy to derail if PCs are the slightest bit proactive. A party explicitly bent on domination is likely to be proactive. So, read every adventure and get an idea of how they work together, before you start.
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We are currently running an Evil Kingmaker. Since we are all in school, GM included, it's been largely run as-is. As other posters have noted, this hasn't been a huge problem since most enemies in KM will come after you regardless of your party's alignment. I think the biggest problem we've had was that the antipaladin has barely used his smite, but your regular paladin will encounter the same problem in an AP filled with neutral monsters.
The party consists of a human antipaladin who is essentially a walking, flesh bound force of violence that we just point at any problem that we need to be murdered. He is the warden. The king is a 3pp clockwork oracle who builds clockworks and machines ("miracles"), and runs the kingdom just like Machiavelli would have. The kobold synthesist summoner turns himself into a black dragon and wades into melee. The antipaladin usually rides him, and he serves as the general. We also have a Tyrion Lannister-esque rogue/sorceror who has his diplomacy and bluff skills jacked so high he can talk us out of virtually anything, and a tiefling gunslinger who runs a brothel and acts as our spymaster. She occasionally hints at eating patrons.
Here are some of the ways that the AP's most significant plot points were resolved with an evil party as well as the more interesting changes that have come about as a result of the evil party (warning, spoilers ahead!):
- Book 1 was almost completely normal. Our treatment of the bandits was just exceptionally brutal at times and the antipaladin seduced Svetlana into cheating on Oleg at one point.
- Book 2 got more interesting. Our ruling council is quite a bit more aggressive than a normal party might be, so we broke out the mass combat rules early, raising a militia in order to deal with the troll horde in the south. We still dealt with Gregori through diplomacy in front of our people, but he was mysteriously "disappeared" that night. We decided that Melianse was a threat to the kingdom's industry and killed her. Unfortunately (and hilariously) the antipaladin had decided to see what living as a werewolf for a while would like, and he turned in front of the lumberjacks after we saved them, meaning we had to kill them too so word about the lycanthrope on the council wouldn't get out. We plotted a conspiracy against Jhod, the priest of Erastil, in which we blamed him and Erastil for all the trouble that nature had been giving us. The king instated a new state religion by simultaneously unveiling our nation's first clockwork miracle, a large construct designed to defend the capital from future owlbear attacks, and convincing the public that Jhod, his religion, and nature were to blame for all the nation's recent troubles. The state religion, which worships machines, innovation, and industry, is mostly used as tool for maintaining state control by inspiring nationalism.
- Book 3 continues to become more insidious, as there are many more opportunities for evil solutions to the problems your PCs face. When we discovered the souls of the citizens of Varnhold, we sold them of course, summoning a contract devil and selling the souls to the forces of Hell. We populated Varnhold with our own citizens, and forced the centaurs off of their land with an army.
Our GM tells us that Book 4 will be significantly altered to include some good enemies. He has also included some encounters that indicate that Erastil is pretty upset with us for trampling over nature with industry and banishing his faith in the region. I'm also currently writing a sequel campaign which takes place 150-200 years in the future where the PCs will lead a revolution to overthrow the evil empire that we create in Kingmaker.