As the title suggests, I am curious to what else has other DMs used to supplement their Kingmaker campaign, particularly in regards to 3rd party publishers.
Personally I have mostly used Legendary Games' stuff (for fey, mythic, and additional adventures), but I have also used Neil Spider's Realm of the Fey Night Queen and inserted bits and pieces crafted by fellow DMs who posted on this board.
Luckily for me, Legendary Games is compiling all of their previous products meant for a Kingmaker campaign into a single book, along with new content (thanks to an on-going Kickstarter), but I am always keeping an eye out for interesting content/products to add to my campaign (from written materials to illustrations and fantastic cartography).
Please feel free to comment on what you used (good or bad) and if it was memorable for your group?
CB
Well Jon Brazer Enterprises has the original Kingmaker Adventure Path add ons. Between the:
Book of Beasts: Monsters of the River Nations
Book of the River Nations
Book of Friends and Foes: Assassins in the River Nations
You'll have some awesome additions for your Kingmaker game.
Not only that, these titles are available as part of JBE'S Big Book of Everything, available now but only for a limited time.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Luckily for me, Legendary Games is compiling all of their previous products meant for a Kingmaker campaign into a single book, along with new content (thanks to an on-going Kickstarter).
Thanks for the kind words about our KM-themed product line, and for anyone who hasn't checked out the Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium Kickstarter, it's over 300% funded just 4 days into the campaign, and swiftly pushing towards 300 pages of content (with Pathfinder and 5E) versions, including all of our existing KM-compatible products plus brand-new stuff, including big expansions of tournament and festival rules, fey influence in the world, adventures, monsters, magic items, spells, character options, and more.
It's a great product line, and a lot of it written by the same authors that wrote the original Kingmaker AP adventures!
Please feel free to comment on what you used (good or bad) and if it was memorable for your group?
CB
When I ran Kingmaker, I added in a fair amount of stuff from Rise of the Runelords, including the Skinsaw Murders house on Candlemere Island, and replacing the mysteriously destroyed fourth colony to the west of Drelev with Fort Rannick from Hook Mountain Massacre. We used the dam from HMM as part of the cyclops ruins in Varnhold Vanishing (I think we might even have had Vordakai's island in the middle of the lake behind the dam, rather than just in the middle of a river).
We also moved Varnhold Vanishing to happen AFTER War of the River Kings, making Vordakai a much bigger threat and having him wipe out a bigger Varnhold (I think we used the existing Varnhold village map from the adventure as a border town between Varnhold and the PCs' kingdom). I used a fair bit of stuff from Shadows Over Gallowspire to represent the destroyed capital of Varnhold that Vordakai had trashed using his artifact.
We actually never played Sound of a Thousand Screams. The players felt like the up-leveled VV was a good ending place and were ready to start a new campaign (in part because almost the entire group of players had turned over from the ones who had started the Kingmaker campaign and felt like starting something new instead of just playing out the string on the earlier group's campaign).
Although I did not go into great lengths to describe everything I used so far for my Kingmaker campaign, I did use the Book of River Nations (you guys had some nice buildings and hex improvements in there, the Apiary being the best).
I also used numerous things from Kobold Press, especially in regards to fey, and I inserted bits and pieces from Rogue Genius Games, Rite Publishing (to really build memorable npcs), maps from Heroic Maps, numerous systems from Everyman Gaming (the latest being the unchained fighter), and probably some others I have forgotten at this point.
More to follow on specific changes.
CB
Also, just to point out something interesting (for me at least): prior to Pathfinder, I rarely used 3rd party material. I stayed away from it because (a) WotC did not really support 3rd party materials (I DM'ed mostly Forgotten Realms stuff during the days of 3.0/3.5) and (b) the quality and game balance of 3rd party materials were not that good then.
But nowadays? I don't know how well I could run Pathfinder-compatible games without the inclusion of mods and 3rd party materials. The latter has been especially fantastic for inspiration and providing fun encounters.
CB
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But nowadays? I don't know how well I could run Pathfinder-compatible games without the inclusion of mods and 3rd party materials. The latter has been especially fantastic for inspiration and providing fun encounters.
I think Paizo has recognized the quality of our work as well. I mean both Jason and I (and whole bunch of others) have written for Paizo. It is not uncommon for Paizo's hires to be from us publishers or from those we hire. I mean, we still might be the farm team minor leagues, but all of us publishers typically are the minor leagues that train like the professionals because we want to be the best we possibly can be and are just as fun to watch as the majors.
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Legendary Games:
* Ultimate Rulership
* Some Ultimate War
* Some Ultimate Battle
I second all the Ultimate books listed above, as they were immeasurably helpful for our group. In particular Ultimate Rulership, as there are some badly needed (IMO) additions to Ultimate Campaign.
Also Chemlak's kingdom tracking spreadsheet was a tool without which I suspect we would have had to run our kingdom in the background after a few years of game time, as it got cumbersome to track on paper by hand.
Those are really the only mechanical or canon type 3rd party books that I would consider "must haves", everything else being adventure type filler, which really depends on how you run your game.
I have not run the Courts of the Shadow Fey yet but it is on my list to add onto for book 4 (Blood for Blood). We are really just starting The Varnhold Vanishing, which I changed with additions by DM_Dudemeister, Orthos, pennywit, and a host of other DMs. I mean, using A History of Ashes was a genius idea (Orthos came up with it, I think) and I enriched the centaur tribes with materials from Kobold Press' Advanced Races Compendium.
I know about Chemlak's spreadsheet and it looks so beautiful, so beautiful that I had to say it twice. Much better than the hodgepodge of a spreadsheet I made. Unfortunately, because I use other kingdom building stuff (like additional buildings, hex improvements, and even optional rules from Legendary Games, Jon Brazer, Wayfinder, and I think Rite Publishing as well) on top of the core kingdom building rules from Ultimate Campaign, I needed a sheet that I knew where I could add on more stuff and adjust as necessary. Otherwise, I would gladly sing praise to the stars about Chemlak's spreadsheet. *cue in church choir*
But so far, the primary non-Paizo resources I have been mining from are Ultimate Rulership, other DMs' ideas here on the Paizo forums, Kobold Press' Midgard campaign, and Rite Publishing' stuff on character options. I mean, have you seen the Masquerade Reveler? I mean, have you? It is thick with flavourful crunch that makes you weep, shuddering with sobs of joy that finally the barbarian got an archetype that was perfect for a fey/nature based campaign. And the Iron Titan is what I needed to turn Irovetti into Doctor Doom. Literally.
I think I have been running my Kingmaker campaign for nearly 4 or 5 years now. I don't bother keeping track because my group meets online at an infrequent basis (life gets in the way and we all live in different towns) but we have been playing together for over 15 years so I fully expect us to continue gaming with each other until we kick the bucket.
Anyways, enough about that, more about other GMs' favourite 3rd-party resources/add-ons for their Kingmaker campaign!
CB out.
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Since the spreadsheet has been mentioned a couple of times, I think I should probably poke my nose in to comment.
I have some very ambitious plans for the spreadsheet (hopefully not too ambitious) in terms of tidying it up and expanding it.
The sheet is currently in maintenance mode (I'm doing bug fixes but not currently adding new features) while I get some real life things back on track and then there's my second secret awesome project of awesome to write.
That said, I am absolutely committed to the sheet and getting it "perfect". I'd love for it to be usable by CB, for example.
So, I absolutely take feature requests, and if anyone knows their way around Excel and comes up with an addition (no macros) that I can use, then let me know!
Since the spreadsheet has been mentioned a couple of times, I think I should probably poke my nose in to comment.
I have some very ambitious plans for the spreadsheet (hopefully not too ambitious) in terms of tidying it up and expanding it.
The sheet is currently in maintenance mode (I'm doing bug fixes but not currently adding new features) while I get some real life things back on track and then there's my second secret awesome project of awesome to write.
That said, I am absolutely committed to the sheet and getting it "perfect". I'd love for it to be usable by CB, for example.
So, I absolutely take feature requests, and if anyone knows their way around Excel and comes up with an addition (no macros) that I can use, then let me know!
Well, you got two weeks because my group just killed the Stag Lord yesterday. :P Seriously though, its an awesome spreadsheet.
I used the Realm of the Fellnight Queen during RRR, as I wanted to give my Kingmaker game a solid Fey presence. My players loved it! I didn't run it as is, the players basically started with Part Two: Dying Dryad, who just happen to be Tiressia from early on in Book Two. It helped to pull the players in and feel that something was "messin' with their Fey Friends." It also let me flesh out more NPCs that are barely mentioned in RRR. Also, my players loved the Drunken Treant, who I renamed to Mossbeard. I really played him up to the Cleric of Erastil, was a hoot!
Highly recommend RotFW!!!
So, with my group being insane, and myself not being any better, we have chosen to run this as a much more long term campaign then we have with other Adventure Paths.
First of all we are starting with the slow advancement track, but if it becomes a pain we will drop XP all together.
I have added quite a few Paizo and 3rd party modules to the map depending on what they do.
I have moved the Emerald Spire close to their Kingdom.
There is an entrance to Rappan Athuk near the Stag Lord's fort. I will make it very obvious that the enter means death.
They can also find their way into the Maze of the Blue Medusa if they play their cards right.
Basically I have put everything onto the map that was on my list of things I would love to run someday, but probably never will, and I look forward to seeing what the players do with this madhouse.
Maze of the Blue Medusa? I am not familiar with that one. I thought about Tappan Athuk but it didn't fit the tone/narrative I wanted to go with in my Kingmaker campaign. It is definitely something I want to run one day though, heh.
Like many GMs who ran Kingmaker, I did away with tracking xp and let my players level up when they hit milestones or at key points in the progress of the storyline.
I will look into the module you mentioned though. I wonder what else I could be using?
CB
I recommend shifting Rappan Athuk to the island in the middle of the lake south of the Stag Lord's fort.
So, with my group being insane, and myself not being any better, we have chosen to run this as a much more long term campaign then we have with other Adventure Paths.
First of all we are starting with the slow advancement track, but if it becomes a pain we will drop XP all together.
I have added quite a few Paizo and 3rd party modules to the map depending on what they do.
I have moved the Emerald Spire close to their Kingdom.
There is an entrance to Rappan Athuk near the Stag Lord's fort. I will make it very obvious that the enter means death.
They can also find their way into the Maze of the Blue Medusa if they play their cards right.
Basically I have put everything onto the map that was on my list of things I would love to run someday, but probably never will, and I look forward to seeing what the players do with this madhouse.
I am definitely considering adding RA to my kingmaker game (and definitely will if I run a second KM campaign). I dropped XP from the start, basically telling the players that its a sandbox and that I will level them up as appropriate but that I didn't want the "hey, maybe we should go over there and kill some stuff first since we are almost to next level". So far it has worked well, though we just finished the first book. If I do add in RA, it won't be the whole shebang just because I want to finish the campaign eventually. :P But a big part of the idea will be to eliminate most of the later Hexploration and replace that "XP" with RA or other modules.
OK, I read what I could about the Maze of the Blue Medusa and I got to admit it sounds awesome. I originally was going to have the Tomb of the Iron Medusa as a stand-alone dungeon for the players to explore whenever they want a break from the main story-line and kingdom building stuff. Still, it does seem like the Maze of the Blue Medusa works much better as a campaign by itself.
The other 3rd party materials I am currently looking at including is the Creatures Compendium Volume 1 and the Morpheus Coliseum (albeit more fey-like; possibly incorporating some of it into Courts of the Shadow Fey).
CB