I'm having my players take a break from the main Kingmaker story to run another party in Brevoy, working for one of the noble houses or maybe as a mercenary group. The idea is to give the players a better appreciation for just what exactly is going on in the backdrop.
Has anyone else done anything like this that they'd like to share?
I have a few old Birthright adventures and Game of Thrones Wedding Knight that I may do some modifications on to get me started.
I'm looking forward to having actions of one group lead to repercussions for the other and vice versa. :)
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I would suggest making it connected to the players in some fashion. Perhaps relatives of theirs, in particular, noble relatives back in Brevoy, or perhaps they are involved in a big merchant house moving operations down to the PCs lands. Even better, have them be friends or relatives of the PCs and discover a plot to undermine or assault the new kingdom. Maybe they are discovered so the end of the adventure is getting word to the PCs before they all are hunted down and killed.
Wedding Knight is an excellent intro to Brevoy. I ran as a o-level intro session to the AP, with the PCs as teenagers, and it worked well.
Do you have any paticular Birthright Adventure in mind?
I currently have Sword and Crown and Destiny of Kings, both of which are compelling but will need some revamping to fit the setting better.
Excellent mini-adventure redcelt! I love your Game of Thrones in Brevoy and it's a core part of the inspiration for this venture.
Reading through Birthright's Sword and Crown I may add another faction of rebels, separatist elves whom hide in Gronzi woods and the Icepeak mountains. Hoping that will add a bit of flavor outside of generic bandits.
I'm leaning toward the players being lesser nobles, knights and scions of the remaining Rogarvian minor houses or perhaps a mercenary group working for them. I imagine with the disappearance of the Rogarvian bloodline there have been a number of major land grabs and infighting between their remaining houses, add in pressure from the swordlords and Surtova along with wily elven rebels whom just want to watch it all burn, you have interesting times for the PC's.
That and a powderkeg that is ready to drop the entire country into a terrible civil war.
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If you are going to involve Brevoy politics, there really just has to be at LEAST one group that wants the PCs lands and resources. Maybe they want to ally with them until they take them over, but they are coveting what has been built. Probably there is more than one, but there should be at least one. This sort of drags the PCs into Brevoy politics, because if they have an enemy there, they need allies there to counter them, and voila, now your players are knee deep in the conspiracy muck, lol.
I would have whoever your "bad guys" are in Brevoy not be revealed until you run your side adventure in Brevoy. Regardless of what the actual adventure/main mission is, make sure you reveal the designs of the bad guys to your alternate group of PCs and therefore your players. Its okay for them to have this meta knowledge, and at least in the few groups I have seen this done in, tends to fire them up and get their blood going about someone coming after them.
This is also good foreshadowing for your group if they are not paranoid, enabling them to be better prepared for Book 5.
The main goals of my Brevoy side adventure were:
- illustrate that ALL the nobles had secrets and were up to something
- Clergy were part of these power players
- spies and informants were plentiful and answered to a lot of different factions and sometimes just to a single person
- commoners always take it on the chin anytime nobles start messing about. Armies, taxes, and plots always throw them under the bus.
Brevoy was heavily involved in our game. Quite a lot of dialogue with certain powerful swordsmen. Good relations, but it certainly could be more complicated.
We could see the civil war on the horizon, and my ninja wanted to get it sorted, going, and ensure the right side won. The dm and events steered us away from this though.
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You can run a bloodthirsty group through Brevic politics and civil war by putting them under the banner of a Baron, war leader, etc. Let him do all the planning, etc, and they do all the killing. However they are also the first ones into the traps, so eventually they will get at least minimally involved in figuring out the politics to avoid getting killed in traps and double crosses.
I mostly got them involved with Brevoy to provide a venue to let other nobles with clout and power (not always military power or personal power) meddle in the affairs of my PCs kingdom. As it turned out, the queen was highly volatile and took offense to some of the scapegoating that targeted her family and lead her council up north to settle scores, not once but several times. I took my cues from her and dragged more of Brevoy into the game, and now it looks like everything after Book 2 might get tossed or repurposed to allow the party to participate in a ginormous Brevic Civil War.
Sort of going miss the chance to run Books 3 and 4, but since the party has been doing almost nothing between 6-8th level but skirmishing and doing small scale mass combats between mercenaries and their own forces, its sort of deflating and predictable to run Book 4. Book 3 I would have to rewrite since they are soon to be 9th level. However the party seems completely happy to lead armies, counterstrike groups, hold off enemy sieges, etc. I think that's where our game is going. Our spymaster is getting adept at slipping behind enemy lines to poison mounts and food supplies, sabotage siege weapons, etc.
As another suggestion to Addax, I had thought it might be fun when half our group deploy again to run a short mini-game up north in Brevoy. I planned to have it highlight the Lodovka-Orlovsky conflict between the Lodovka raiders (like the Ironborn in my game) and Orlovsky's fishing villages and farm settlements. This is one of the catalyst events, along with the slaughter of a traveling Orlovsky wedding party, that lead to open civil war. The party would basically start off as low level recruits in a decaying seaside fortress guarding several fishing villages along the coast. Raiders come and they have to fend them off, then get word of the attack to the nearest garrison. Things progress and they get embroiled in the escalating war, carrying messages, riding to give warnings, running scouting parties, clandestine missions behind enemy lines to rescue trapped VIPs, etc. Each little mission would be about 1 game session in length, and they would level after each mission. Something along those lines might be fun to throw at your party if they have not done this sort of long running series of battle scenario like Red Hand of Doom.
Actually as a way to try out 5th edition I've been converting and running Red Hand of Doom. They just finished with the Ghostlord and are racing back to the city to join the main battle for this weekend. Its been a fun and fulfilling adventure to run.