I'm new to pathfinder, but old to RPGs. I've been messing around with PFS, including having some GMing under my belt now (with a lot of positive feedback for my GMing).
I want to launch my own Adventure Path campaign, and I did a lot of research to reacch the conclusion that Kingmaker was the AP for me to start with. I drove down to my local hobby store where I had seen the Kingmaker line before, only to learn that Volume 1 and Volume 2 are very difficult to find, and very expensive to find. I searched online and saw that yeah, Volume 2 is especially rare and expensive, which I assume is related to the "Kingdom Building" part that is present in that volume. So I told my local store owner that I would have to choose a different AP then (and as a side note, Wrath of the Righteous might be a good altternative...)
Then he says to me that I can still download all of the volumes in PDF (actually he has volume 3-6 in his store; I had thought he had all of them). And he's right; I can buy volume 1 and volume 2 online in PDF form.
My question about the product is this; is there anything absent from the PDF version for sale at Paizo.com that I would have gotten if I bought a hard copy, specifically for Volumes 1 and Volumes 2?
If it's the kingdom building aspect of the AP, can that be replaced by the information in Ultimate Campaign (or from some other source)? Because I also want to get ultimate campaign.
I want Kingmaker because I'm very curious to expand future campaign work into the River Kingdoms, an area that intrigues me a lot (based on what I've read in the Inner Sea World Guide). But like I say, Wrath of the Righteous is reasonably close to River Kingdoms (for future expansion into my own ideas) and also looks like a great AP (I love good versus evil).
I would love to have some info from veterans who know the AP and the kingdom making aspect of volume 2.
The PDF version is is the exact same as the physical product. I get both as I'm a subscriber. I find the PDFs work great on IPAD using IBOOKS.
I ran the King Maker game last year. I'd suggest trying out the Ultimate Campaign rules as they seem a little more refined. Volume two's kingdom making rules were the first iteration that the Ultimate Campaign fixed a lot things with. Might take little adapting but it would be worth it in the long run.