I'm about to start a Roll20 campaign for Kingmaker with a party of mostly-new players - a LN Druid who worships Abadar, a CG Fighter, a CG Occultist who worships Milani, and... a LE Bard who worships Norgorber (secretly, of course). Naturally I have my work cut out for me.
I've known the Bard's player for years so I'm comfortable with them running this character and we've already discussed that we need to find a reason for him to be working with the rest of the party and vice-versa, as well as having the "Don't be disruptive" talk. I trust them to run this character in a manner that won't cause inter-personal problems, and welcome the challenge it will provide. The question now is this - what reason would these characters have to trust each other and work together, especially with regards to the Occultist whose morals and deity are practically the antithesis of the character in question? It's time I got these gears turning and worked out something compelling!
Depends on which aspect of Norgorber as to whether or not this is a problem. If the bard is heading up a "baked in thieves' guild" then this really shouldn't be too much of an issue.
A druid that worships Abadar - patron deity of cities and civilization - seems utterly antithetical to druid-ism.
A druid that worships Abadar - patron deity of cities and civilization - seems utterly antithetical to druid-ism.
Uh... yeah. My thoughts exactly.
The Bard is thinking the Reaper of Reputation makes the most sense, as their character has political aspirations and would use secrets to help manipulate others to gain power.
As for the druid, I brought that up with the player already and he said he's aware that it's a very strange combination and that's kind if the point. His character is meant to be an oddity among druids. We plan on exploring that in game.
So how about those suggestions for the motivation to cooperate?
Asides from "its us against a wilderness that would just as soon eat us as smell us" ?
For starters you have two very lawful characters and two Chaotic Good characters. I'd have the players talk out how they know each other and how they'll get along exploring the boonies and building a nation of their own envisioning before beginning the campaign. Are they all relatives? They're going to need some kind of a bond between each other than transcends their alignments.
A group of strangers thrown in is asking for disaster.
The CG characters are going to want as few laws as possible. The Lawful characters are the exact opposite of that.
I could do a druid-Abadar relationship as something like "ordered fields and human-friendly growth; trees and crops and herd animals" and working to make sure that cities were ecologically in bounds. Certainly urban druid would be a fitting archetype for this, but I think a standard druid with the right mindset could work well.
Think US Department of Agriculture, or the Ministry of Farm Welfare, or the veterinarian for the city horse patrol, or something like that.
The druid plans on taking Menhir Savant because leyline-themed casters sound really cool. I'm thinking he will likely try to establish trade routes and major cities along these leylines, believing that he will prevent damage to them in doing so and could help stabilize the country's infrastructure with their magic. Cool concept.
I'm thinking that the best forms of cooperation between good and evil involve mutually-shared goals and redemption arcs. All I need are ideas for the form these could take.
I'd put the burden on the players for that. You could be pleasantly surprised by what they come up with. This is supposed to be an enormous sandbox for them to play in, literally carving a demesne out of uninhabited wilderness. They will hopefully want to do stuff like drawing up foundation documents (e.g. a "Constitution") and whatnot.
Bucketloads of RP opportunity.
Also, be sure to liberally pillage ideas from the other campaigns that have come before. In the several years since release a great deal of stuff can be mined to enrich your own campaign.
Personally, I like what several have done with increasing the influence of the fey throughout the campaign from the early chapters.
I cannot recommend enough that the campaign be spread out over many years, preferably 40 to 60 years, longer if you can manage it. If not, the entire thing will wrap up within a decade, presuming all goes reasonably according to script.
Additional elements you can incorporate into your campaign include the brewing civil war to the north with the characters' initial sponsors. GoT-inspired politicking could happen early on.
There's all manner of nasties lurking about the perimeter too. A super-nasty hag lich cleric IIRC somewhere in the vast forest to the south. The inhabited stretches of the River Kingdoms to the south and west. And so on.
The whole party of 7 pcs was either LE N or LN. Not sure starting with such opposed alignments is a great plan. But depends on the players I guess
The whole party of 7 pcs was either LE N or LN. Not sure starting with such opposed alignments is a great plan. But depends on the players I guess
They're all pretty good-natured, so I'm not terribly worried about things going bad irl. I'm just looking for ideas to justify why their characters would work together.
The whole party of 7 pcs was either LE N or LN. Not sure starting with such opposed alignments is a great plan. But depends on the players I guessThey're all pretty good-natured, so I'm not terribly worried about things going bad irl. I'm just looking for ideas to justify why their characters would work together.
Let 'em solve that riddle for you. Then you can tie stuff into what they come up with, which should feel more organic for everyone. :)