Hi All,
I'm starting a new Kingmaker campaign, following the Stolen Lands and following paths, and I was wondering if anyone had any additional resources that would be useful.
I plan on using Ultimate Campaign/Ultimate Kingdom rules.
Does anyone have a functional kingdom spreadsheet? I found one that might work, but, with no working knowledge of how Kingmaker works, I'm not positive how useful it will be.
Also, does anyone have a spreadsheet with NPCs or other things that come up/they've created to add life to the campaign/kingdom?
... Or any suggestions at all? Other books to consider/use? A fantastic spreadsheet of random NPCs? Etc...
It will be a 5 person party with some unique qualities -- I'm not worried about increasing encounter difficulty or anything on that front.
Thanks!
Question one, are you aware of this section of the forums? You are likely to find advice and resources best there. Each AP has its own subsection for people only looking for things about that AP.
Second, there is infact a community spreadsheet for kingdom tracking.
I believe the latest one can be found here
In case you dont know, 'ultimate rulership' is a 3rd party product that expands on what is in ultimate campaign for kindgom building. Obviously its optional, but you may want to check it out. My group has liked the improvements made both to kingdom building and mass combat, but they have a version of the sheet for JUST ultimate campaign rules so no need to go beyond what you want to use.
I had no idea! This was my first official post, and I had assumed "advice" fit my question. Thanks for the redirect, and the resource!
I've read through Ultimate Rulership (I mis-titled it in my previous post) and think it is definitely the way to go. Probably taking too much on, but I'm excited!
Yeah the Adventure Path threads are where all the cool people hang out:-D
I would recommend the following...
https://daddydm.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/kingmaker-the-app/
It is still a work in progress. The creator is active on Paizo's forums. And frankly, even as it is now, is simply amazing.
I would recommend the following...
https://daddydm.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/kingmaker-the-app/
It is still a work in progress. The creator is active on Paizo's forums. And frankly, even as it is now, is simply amazing.
Does the app feature the additional supplements (UCAMP/URULE)?
This could be very interesting.
... I've started a new thread in the appropriate area, and specified that we'll be playing over Roll20.
This is addressing you actual questions, but wanted to say...
I don't know what your group is like, but see what you can do to encourage your players to play characters that actually have a home and feel like they grow over time. Kingmaker is a rare type of campaign where the characters will be in one area for years (literally). Basically its a chance for the party to be the opposite of a bunch of murder hobos.
I also suggest that some of the players are charged with certain tasks:
-One player can be in charge of the hex maps and keep notes on them. Eventually it will be important to know what is in each hex - such as roads, farms, towns, NPCs, etc.
-Another player can keep the kingdom sheet to track all of that info (although as GM you may also want to keep one of these). This person tracks the build points, bonuses to kingdom running checks, who is in each kingdom role, etc.
-Yet another player can keep all the little maps that detail what is in each town.
-And someone to keep track of a calendar/timeline. Perhaps each in-game month they summarize what happpened. So you would include that you founded the town of such-and-such and explored the tomb of so-and-so, but you wouldn't document how many houses are in the town or how many skeletons you battled in the tomb.
-Finally I recommend someone to keep a journal. This person writes down in short- or long-hand what happens durring the sessions. This can be purely to document the story, or to keep track of side quests, NPCs, or whatever works for your group.
Of course, your group may split up these tasks differently. Most importantly I feel it is best to keep them all involved.
The app doesn't feature any of the rules outside of Ultimate Campaign, but does include all the optional rules, if I'm not mistaken. It does not include Ultimate Rulership, as it is a 3rd party product. I have never used Roll20, so don't know if it would integrate with it in anyway.
I use Hero Lab for character generation. I do know that allows export to Roll20 (or at least it appeared to when I looked into it before). However, Hero Lab is pricey. But I absolutely love it.
This is addressing you actual questions, but wanted to say...
...Of course, your group may split up these tasks differently. Most importantly I feel it is best to keep them all involved.
For their character creation process, I've asked them to construct characters all from (or for some reason in) the town of Highdelve. They are all starting at level zero, and have some sort of profession.
They are not, nor have they ever been, adventurers.
They are to include family members and other relations as well.
First session will be intro, some team building tavern time, an ad-hoc murder investigation, then sudden onset vampirism. There will be a ten year time jump while they go on to become Big Damn Heroes (or Monsters), then they'll get the exploration charter (and prompted to follow it because the vampire group responsible for their condition has been spotted in the area -- and will tie into the final campaign boss, which I understand comes out of left field without GM foreshadowing).
As for the responsibilities, I generally do all those things myself, and leave some minor tasks for the players (we live stream our sessions in weekly, two-hour increments, so it's hard to have them sacrifice time for data tracking and note checking). I'll probably divide this up more for Kingmaker, though, because that's the nature of building a settlement/kingdom, and very different from their normal Murder-Hobo campaigns.
(I just noticed all the typos in my last post! For example, the opening sentance was supposed to say "This is not addressing your actual questions, but I wanted to say". Pretty bad.)
Ah. Two hour online sessions changes it up a bit. I don't know what kind of set-up you have but if it features shared documents you can all view then the GM keeping them up to date does seem smart. My expereince was several hour bi-weekly sessions at a table. At the beginning I would read the log of the last session to get us all up to speed (a page or two). Later in the campaign when our 5th player dropped out, I took over her map duties, glued together blank hex maps, and hand drew two new full-color maps (one artsy, one with writing) that showed all of the towns, roads, et al.. I like writing and drawing though. We would set out the maps any time travel happened to dtermine how far we could make it before hurrying back to run the kingdom.
...Later in the campaign when our 5th player dropped out, I took over her map duties, glued together blank hex maps, and hand drew two new full-color maps (one artsy, one with writing) that showed all of the towns, roads, et al.. I like writing and drawing though. We would set out the maps any time travel happened to dtermine how far we could make it before hurrying back to run the kingdom.
One of my biggest concerns is to make the map tracking/building functional in Roll20, but I'm not able to find many decent quality, clear Kingmaker maps.
Basically, I was hoping someone might also have a fantastic suite of digital Kingmaker images I could use. For now, I've got a lower res map, custom hex tiles to cover the spaces, and will use a running "key" to track location specifics.
For this campaign, I imagine we'll make liberal use of Google Docs/Sheets for tracking. And I imagine I'll also run some of the less exciting/in-person required things to be done through e-mail and the like. We don't have any viewership or anything like that, but, if we did (or eventually do), we want to make sure they're not bored by too many mundane details (even though they're what I'm the most excited about, with Kingmaker).
I never had the books nor PDF but I looked online for some decent KM-specific hex maps that I could modify as we explored and developed the area. The lack of satisfying results is what led to hand drawing on blank hex maps.
So are you saying that the Paizo maps lo-res? Thats seems strange. I'd think theirs would be the best.
I never had the books nor PDF but I looked online for some decent KM-specific hex maps that I could modify as we explored and developed the area. The lack of satisfying results is what led to hand drawing on blank hex maps.
So are you saying that the Paizo maps lo-res? Thats seems strange. I'd think theirs would be the best.
It could just be my photoshop skills, for when I try and transplant the images from the PDF to photoshop to Roll20. I just copy and past to PS, save the image as a PNG, then upload it to Roll20.
Also, the hex tiles seem to be oddly shaped (or that's an unfortunate side effect of Roll20/my inexperience). Normally I just use free map elements and build my own things, but Kingmaker is the first module I'll be running.
Ah, well, I'm sure it'll work out in the end. The players are fine with theater of the mind stuff from time to time, what's a little shoddy map making?
You need to send him an email, since it's in Beta. He seemed very open about sending people the download link. I got in before I ever saw anything about not needing additional testers, so perhaps he won't be as open now.
At some point i found a rather high quality map of the whole area (various maps from the AP stitche together). I think it is here. Cant check at work. But you might check there. For sure someone put together a high quality map of the whole region (as I have used it). If thats not it I'll keep looking.
Ooh! Just checked it out. Thats a beautiful map. It's better than any I ever found. Make sure to hit the download button (arrow pointing down) to get the full-sized JPEG.