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So I'm going to be running Kingmaker after our group finishes Iron Gods. (I'm not the GM for IG) I want to familiarize myself with as much of the area as possible so I can give the players as much information as I can. Is there any material that pertains specifically to the Kingmaker AP that would be useful.
For example when I ran RotRL, I bought the Varisia and Magnimar books, when I bought the Iron Gods stuff, I bought the Numeria book, People of the Stars, Technology Guide, etc.
I just want to know if there is any material that can help me with Kingmaker.
I plan on buying Ultimate Campaign and Guide to the River Kingdoms, any other suggestions?
There are three books I recommend:
Book of Beasts: Monsters of the River Nations, a book of monsters designed to work with the Kingmaker AP.
Book of the River Nations, all the exploration, kingdom building and mass combat rules for kingmaker all in on player friendly book. Plus there are class options, spells and magic items for a Kingmaker game.
Book of Friends and Foes: Assassins of the River Nations, a book of assassin NPCs for when you roll the assassination attempt when you make that random roll.
I should say that all three of these are 30% off right now in the GM's Day Sale so grab them now.
These are all from my company, Jon Brazer Enterprises.
[/shameless plug]
It depends pretty heavily on how much you're interested in customizing stuff, but I would definitely say that Fey Revisited has a lot of useful material for a fey-oriented campaign like this. Dragons Unleashed contains a dragon who actually lairs in the Stolen Lands and isn't even mentioned in the Kingmaker books, so that might be handy for adding an interesting and thematic encounter also. Also, the Quests and Campaigns book is a pretty good companion to Ultimate Campaign. Ultimately though, there's no books on Brevoy itself, and a lot of what is useful depends on whether you intend to play Kingmaker straight or supplement it with original content of your own design.
Certainly I would recommend considering books like the Revisited series, because the format of Kingmaker benefits by presenting the party with unique and difficult challenges to overcome. Some people complain that the tendency for the party to face one encounter per day results in the party being able to blow all their resources in one go and easily overcome the challenge. I feel that this actually represents a unique opportunity to present greater challenges to the party. Instead of facing off against challenge ratings close to the APL, use much higher challenge ratings for that one encounter per day, and make it something unique and memorable. Dhirgiska from Mythical Monsters Revisted is an interesting CR 13 encounter who would present a formidable challenge to players starting Blood for Blood, and a great match to the terrain being explored.
Aside from official supplements, I would also recommend this forum. Dudemeister's conversion of Book Two as absolutely amazing (Hargulka's Monster Kingdom), Redcelt's Game of Thrones in Brevoy could be really helpful, and "Venture Capital: A Deal with the Devil" is also really great.
I would also consider looking at some other modules as supplements and changing the EXP tracker to either slow progression or just leveling the party when you feel like it. With a little work, Realm of the Felnight Queen can be added easily, as can a number of others. I believe there's a thread floating around with regard to how to do that.
There are three books I recommend:
Book of Beasts: Monsters of the River Nations, a book of monsters designed to work with the Kingmaker AP.
Book of the River Nations, all the exploration, kingdom building and mass combat rules for kingmaker all in on player friendly book. Plus there are class options, spells and magic items for a Kingmaker game.
Book of Friends and Foes: Assassins of the River Nations, a book of assassin NPCs for when you roll the assassination attempt when you make that random roll.I should say that all three of these are 30% off right now in the GM's Day Sale so grab them now.
These are all from my company, Jon Brazer Enterprises.
[/shameless plug]
Thanks, I will be looking into those. I am curious though, I'm planning on purchasing the Ultimate Campaign book, is the Book of the River Nations up to date with the Ultimate Campaign rules?
I'd recommend the 'Ultimate' series from Legendary Games. Their three books/PDFs Ultimate Rulership, Ultimate War, and Ultimate Battle are amazing. I'd go so far as to call them essential.
They also have a line of "Kingbreaker" material that has several very good PDFs meant for use with Kingmaker, ranging from a collection of characters to use to a pair of good adventures to some more information on the fey. Great stuff all.
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1st I recommend: read all the AP books before starting planning anything.
2nd recommendation: Use the Ultimate Campaign rule sets for Kingdom and Mass Combats, not the standard AP ones.
I also second the recommendation for the "Ultimate" and "Kingbraker" Legendary Game series, they fit very well with the Ultimate Campaign rules since Jason Nelson wrote them too.
Jon Brazer Enterprises's stuffs are good, I especially liked the Assassin NPCs one.
Some Wayfinder numbers also have good additions to the kingdom building part I really enjoined. And they are free!
But the more precious resource is this dedicated forum.
Tons of good ideas are here, as Aestereal already suggested: Dudemeister threads are awesome, so is Redcelt's GoT if you want that style of Noble Houses politics game, and "A deal with the devil" too
Want to add Mythic Tiers to your kingmaker campaign or simply have Mythic foes to fight? Here is Dragonchess conversion for the AP to Mythic Adventures rules.
Also, have a look at Pennywit's threads about Mythic Kingmaker too, or mine "Ascension to the Temple of Elk" if you like that kind of game.
One other thing I would recommend when prepping for it is to build say, 50 random NPCs. Don't need statblocks, just names, race, gender, personality. It'll be important starting in book two, and even in book one, it's nice to have some idea of who the hunter they randomly came across is, or the bandit they're trying to redeem.
Thanks for all the suggestions. Fortunately I have plenty of time as we just started the Iron Gods AP and since I'm not GMing I'll be able to read at my leisure and prepare as much as I can.
I also have the NPC Codex so I can get a bunch of the NPCs from there as well.
