My son is six-years-old. When he’s eight and better able to distinguish between fantasy and reality we’ll start playing Pathfinder. I loved Keep on the Borderlands, so I thought that Ironfang Invasion would be a good AP to start. Assuming 1 - 2 years to complete an AP, we’d start the next one when he’s ten. It would take place in the same region and I thought Giantslayer would be a good follow-up; it would be, in game, the next generation. The third (when he’s around twelve) would be Kingmaker, also in the same geographical area. And the last one would be Wrath of the Righteous. This will be cross-posted in the other AP forums.
I have two questions:
( 1 ) Does anyone foresee any problems running these four APs in the same general location, separated in time by a generation (about 30 - 40 years)?
( 2 ) What elements from the later APs would you recommend be foreshadowed in earlier ones? By this I mean NPCs, locations, items, lore, etcetera.
I am setting this in Christopher West’s Lands of Mystery from Dungeon #150 in the area of Kembridge. If you’d like a more detailed description, here it is:
My players determine the history of the globe. I haven’t run anything in Kembridge yet, so Ironfang Invasion, Giantslayer, Kingmaker, and Wrath of the Righteous will establish the lore of Kembridge. I do have some plans than I hope I can steer the players towards.
Kembridge sits at the river delta of a massive canyon. The canyon is roughly 5 Cruises (~300 miles {yes, I’ve developed my own system of measurements for my homebrew}) wide, 2 Vaults (~12 miles) deep, and 2.5 Flights (~1,500 miles long) winding its way back into the Looming Peaks. There are colossal rose bushes throughout the canyon with stems the width of interstate freeways and thorns the size of buildings.
All the ants are of one colony. As they age, they molt and grow. Giant ants are part of the same colony as normal ants, they’re just older. The ants stick primarily to the living stems where they ranch aphids for honeydew. But they are protective of their food, so they do not take well to ‘visitors.’
The humans in the area were refugees from a global cataclysm who were put upon by giants in their floating castle, Schloss Donner (which, if Google Translate is accurate means Castle Thunder). The Terramancer Kembridge (the elemental wizard ambassador to the Elemental Plane of Earth) did battle with the giants and brought Schloss Donner crashing down. The giant king piloted his descending castle right on top of Kembridge, killing the terramancer and the giants.
The castle was destroyed, but not obliterated (like Jersusalem’s city wall when Nehemiah goes back to rebuild). It can be restored and the humans rechristen the place Castle Kembridge. But the rebuilding is very slow-going. Most of it is currently uninhabitable. Most people live in villages and small towns in the surrounding areas, near the sea or where the stone is quarried.
One of these towns will be where Ironfang Invasion starts some 20 - 30 years after the destruction of Schloss Donner. The loss of the schloss broke the control the giants had in the Looming Peaks and allowed the goblinoids to flourish. Castle Kembridge is not completed, which is why the players will have to be the one’s to stem the invasion; there’ll be no help from the fledgeling stronghold.
There will be an opportunity to create an alliance with the ants of the canyon. The ants will be interested in the copious amounts of food humans produce and protection from rapacious races. The ants will offer the non-living rose stems as homes where the massive thorns can be hollowed out for human habitation. The ants will also take criminals who are beyond redemption and formian-ize them so that they can become contributing members of society; at least, deep underground, out of sight of the general public. The ants will agree to manual labor and will even become the conveyance of a metro of sorts for the humans to use. Assuming a successful completion of the Ironfang Invasion AP this arrangement will allow the humans to expand north up the canyon in relative safety.
30 - 40 years later, the giants from the Snowcrown Mountains will have regrouped. They’re not happy about the loss of Schloss Donner and they are incensed that it lies in human hands. This leads to the Giantslayer AP. This one takes place at the northern end of the canyon. The reason for the party to be the ones to be ‘against the giants’ is that if they allow the giants to get past them into the canyon, the civilians will be ill equipped to stop them and countless thousands will die, the roses will be burned to ash, the ants will take a brutal pounding and they might lose Castle Kembridge (which is nearing completion).
Dwarves, displaced from the Snowcrown Mountains by the rampaging giants, will be another group the party will be able to make a treaty with. The sides of the canyon are very tough rock, rich in mineral deposits, but beyond the mining knowledge of the humans. The group will have the opportunity to make peace with the dwarves and allow them to live and work the canyon walls in exchange for accepting the ants, a portion of what they mine, discount on what they craft, and mutual defense.
Again, assuming a successful completion of Giantslayer, Castle Kembridge is completed, the canyon is well defended, and there is a keep at the northern end of the canyon. Dare I say, a Keep on the Borderlands. From this new Keep, land grants will be dispensed and the Kingmaker AP will commence from there, again, some 20 - 40 years after the end of Giantslayer.
Being a sandbox, I have very little in mind for Kingmaker. However, once that is done, I feel like the area will be very fleshed out and established. The players will know that area intimately and will have had a major hand in shaping the history of an entire region of the globe. I’m thinking that for Wrath of the Righteous that the wardstones ring the Frostmere and that their magic is what keeps it liquid when, by all sane logic, it should freeze solid.
Anyway, the further out I get, the less I have in my head. This really is just the first ruminations of the whole thing.