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Our group finally finished Kingmaker! Actually, we finished much earlier in the year, but it took me a while to get around to writing the summary.
Sessions: 39
Estimated Play Time: about 110 hours of gameplay
In-Game Time: 3.5 years
Out-of-Game Time: almost 3 years
This group was an absolute blast to GM. The players really blew me away with how much energy they put in to the game.
In addition to thanking my awesome players and the good folks at Paizo, a big thank you to Orthos (whose ideas for the fey and summer/winter courts I used liberally), Dudemeister (for the idea of giving King Irovetti clockwork), Redcelt (for the idea of doing a red wedding), Delvesdeep (whose Flood Festival inspires every holiday event I have run), Silkenray on Deviant Art (for the Zuddinger's Picnic art) and many, many other messageboard posters who inspired little bits and pieces of the campaign.
Presented in order of when their story arcs were addressed.
Alastor: male Varisian human ninja 5 (briefly Ruler)
Spymaster Lily: TN female tiefling brawler 16
Supporting Character: King Demitri (NG male Varisian vigilante 7)
Story Arc (Book 1): Alastor was forced to abandon his brother Demetri after he killed a rival Scarzni in his brother’s defense. Alastor eventually made it to Brevoy and joined up with a group out to explore the frontier. Demetri became increasingly disillusioned and brooding, eventually joining the Stag Lord’s forces (replacing Dovan from Nisroch). Demetri may have resented his brother’s burgeoning kingdom of Tu Vescun’s core interests at heart to begin with, but that changed when Aastor met his death at the hands of a fairy mistress. To avoid dissent from the loss of a king, Alastor’s friends convinced Demitri to disguise himself as Alastor and take his place. His fellow leaders made some attempt to replace the new “Alastor” with a democratic election, but Demitri ultimately won out and became a fair ruler.
Player’s Star Contribution: Alastor’s player had a firm grasp of the rules, especially grappling, and helped keep the game flowing whenever I got stuck on a rule’s question. He also had some incredibly cool character concepts.
GM 20/20 Hindsight: I tried to make Demetri too close to Dovan, instead of fitting him to Alastor’s backstory. He clearly wasn’t supposed to be a dark character. Also, Lily never really got tied in to the main plot.
Warden Kaija Thrall: CN female half-orc warpriest of Korrok 16
Supporting Character: Treasurer Clif the Bespectacled (NG male gnome expert 8)
Story Arc (Book 3): Kaija was more possessed by Korrok’s primal rage than a worshiper of him, living many years of her young life as an almost feral creature after her village was destroyed. When she discovered that he had a presence at Candlemere Tower, and even a rift to his realm, she knew it must be eliminated. With his disciple Vordekai dead at her feet, she found an artifact capable of destroying the portal, the Oculus of Korrok. Unfortunately, during the performance of the ritual to close the rift she fell under Korrok’s sway once more and had to be restrained by Lily. Luckily, she recovered in time to save Lily from the rift and gain control over her relationship with her god.
Player’s Star Contribution: Kaija’s player handled the vast majority of the kingdom rules, and even created an elaborate spreadsheet to help us keep track of everything. He also helped the newer players understand the rules and level their characters.
GM 20/20 Hindsight: I wish I spent more time to understand the rules for armies and play out the battles at the end of book 5, so all the kingdom building had a chance to pay off.
General Jin Qi Zhong: LN male “Tian/weretiger” fanglord skinwalker samurai 16
Supporting characters: Jin took the Leadership feat, and trained a small militia with four well-detailed sub-commanders. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find their descriptions again.
Story Arc (Book 4): Jin and his sister Lia spent their young adult years in Brevoy as foster siblings with House Surtova, as part of the traditional practice of swapping children to secure political allegiances. Jin was defined most by his dedication to his blind sister Lia and his honor. He served as a source of reason. His tiger inclinations helped him pass the trials of the Tiger Lord Barbarians and he earned the right to carry Armag’s naginata. He declined to wield it as he feared its bloodthirsty tendencies.
Player’s Star Contribution: Jin’s player is an amazing artist, and made character tokens on Roll20 for all the players. He also did an excellent job bringing everybody back in character and focused when the rest of us got sidetracked.
GM 20/20 Hindsight: In general, I wish I did more to develop Jin’s character arc. The Tiger Lord Barbarians were the part of the AP that most closely fit his character, but of all of them he could have benefited the most from bringing in additional material.
Marshal Soren: TN male drow ranger 16
Supporting characters: animal companions Buttons (cat) and Albert (fairy dragon)
Story Arc (Book 5): When Lily and Kaija fell into the rift at the top of Candlemere Tower as it was closing, they released the fairy trickster Puck. Puck offered to save one in trade for the saving of his own life, but only one life for a life. To save both, Soren traded the life of a friend dear to him: his animal companion Buttons. Buttons escaped when Puck traveled through Nyrissa’s fairy realm and kept trying to contact Soren through dreams and brief appearances, but despite his best efforts the fairy magic always called the cat back before he could get close. Only when they all returned to Candemere Tower much later was Kaija able to end the curse that kept Buttons from seeing Soren for extended periods of time.
Player’s Star Contributions: This was Soren’s player’s first Pathfinder game, and he dove in with zeal. Soren’s obsession with hats and rings brought a lot of levity to the game and also allowed the party to pick up on some pretty delayed magic item connections. The player even created a language for the kingdom of Tu Vescun to give the town’s consistent names, and even a kingdom slogan.
GM 20/20 Hindsight: Finding Buttons really shouldn’t have taken as long as it did. I dragged on this part of the character arc until it was no longer fun, and should have rearranged some elements so the payoff happened earlier.
Grand Diplomat Lia Qi Zhong: NG female Tian wizard 16
Supporting characters: Latricia, diplomat in training
Story arc (Book 6): Blinded by a childhood sickness, Lia saw the world through the eyes of her monkey familiar. She was fostered to House Surtova along with her brother, Jin. Lia’s blindness saved both her and the kingdom multiple times, not only protecting her from the depredations of many beautiful fey, but also allowing her to destroy the Oculus of Korrok. However, it was her connection to a Tian sun god that most shaped her adventuring career, for it evoked Nyrissa’s jealousy. Throughout the Stolen Lands, fey spoke of how she resembled the summer queen. She was able to turn Nyrissa’s jealousy against her to provoke her into a confrontation and stop her once and for all.
Player’s Star Contribution: When we moved to a post format between combat sections towards the end of the campaign, Lia’s player kept the story going. He kept track of dangling plot threads to make connections and really made the 2+ years of plotting pay off. Along with Kaija’s player, he also helped significantly with scheduling sessions.
GM 20/20 Hindsight: I made Briar a staff for Lia, but never figured out how to stat it appropriately. It would have been great to see her wield it, as Jin, Soren, and Kiaja all got interesting magical items at some point. (Lily was a brawler and came in with more wealth than the other PCs at the time, so I don’t feel bad about her missing out on custom magic.)
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The Kingmaker AP absolutely overflows with interesting NPCs, but the following are my top five favorites.
1. Rilka
Rilka started out as 2 consecutive rolls of hunter on the wandering encounters table in book 1, and became perhaps the most hated enemy of the entire campaign. The second time she showed up in the Stolen Lands, she challenged the PCs to a hunt and didn’t play fair. Then, she shot at Howl-of-the-North-Wind at Candenights and had her hand amputated as punishment. She eventually went to Pitax and became almost like a daughter to Irovetti, who gave her a clockwork replacement hand and blamed Pitax’s wrong-doings on her impulsiveness. Lia killed her in the penultimate session.
2. Magister Old Beldame
Old Beldame is an amazing character in the AP to start with. She’s a witch that lives in a hut, but she doesn’t have the witch class, and she has a cauldron but it’s filled with foul-tasting soup, nothing sinister. In our campaign, she knew the most about the First World and had a very protective way of keeping both the fey and Korrok out of her home. She became the kingdom’s magister. The first couple of times the PCs caused some trouble with the fey and didn’t come to her before it got out of hand, she chastised them thoroughly. They soon started coming to her for advice proactively, and she helped with much of the research to find Nyrissa.
3. Demetri
Of all the player-created NPCs, Demetri had by far the most fun spontaneous development and laid the groundwork for the rest. He took the king’s place after his brother (and PC) Alastor died, and caused a number of political questions as a result.
4. Former Treasurer Torvald
When Soren died in exploring the southern part of the Stolen Lands, the kingdom did not have enough money or magic to resurrect him. To secure the services of a cleric, they made a deal with Lord Garess. In return, they would support the dwarves of House Golka who no longer had a home and install Toval Golka’s loyal Torvald as treasurer. Torvald funneled off money from the kingdom to repay the debt, but also made many advances in mining technology that made up for the losses. Eventually, he discovered that Toval had been lying about his family’s disappearance and went off in search of them, around the same time Clif found out about his embezzlement and reported it, becoming the new treasurer. Torvald was one of my favorite NPCs mostly because, although he was really fully developed, the PCs never picked up on most of the hooks so the twist at the end came as a real surprise.
5. Howl-of-the-North-Wind
Many supporting NPCs had a moment in the spotlight as brief favorites, but Howl-of-the-North-Wind lasted until the end. He greeted the PCs as a very civilized winter wolf, and was treated as an honored ambassador in the kingdom. He disappeared briefly, struck by a frosty curse, and Kaija in particular was hurt by this and saw to his revival. She went to him multiple times for advice on how to control and live in harmony with primal rage.
Honorable Mention: Radishes
After the moon radishes in book 1, radishes became the official vegetable of Tu Vescun. They featured in wine and all of the kingdom’s best-known dishes, and were snacks the one lucky time three of us were all in one place for a session.
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Sessions: 7
In - Game Time: 3 months
Character Deaths: 0
Key character arc: Alastor
Modifications: Added a very short intro where the party met at a town hall to attempt to win the charter to explore the Stolen Lands. They lost to Kesten Garess, but he was disqualified due to his affair and they ended up getting the charter anyway. Also changed Dovan to Demetri, Alastor’s lost brother.
What went well: The best part of this adventure was that it had so many little details that could be expanded on if the players were interested. Rilka, one of the most hated villains of the entire campaign, was introduced here after 2 random encounter rolls. Radishes became the official country vegetable and the trademark of the campaign after the radish soup quest. With so many characters, the less interesting ones such as Kesten Garess and Akiros and even the fairy dragon ultimately fell to the wayside, but this only emphasized that the PCs had choice over how the campaign developed.
What went poorly: Nothing I can remember.
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Sessions: 8
In - Game Time: 4 and 1/2 months
Character Deaths: 2 (Soren and Alastor)
Modifications: Lots of small modifications:
- * Included a short series of negotiations to recruit investors for initial BP (thank you Redcelt for suggesting this)
- * Added a short diplomatic side quest to resurrect Soren. This was where Torvald was introduced.
- * Players organized Candlenights, a winter holiday. Rilka tried to assassinate Howl-of-the-North-Wind and lost her hand as a result. Queen Mab made an appearance.
- * Added a portal to Korrok’s realm to the top of Candlemere Tower, and runes mentioning Puck.
- * Replaced all mentions of Gyronna with Korrok (Kaija’s deity)
- * Switched to fast experience track for last part of adventure and removed repetitive troll encounters.
- * Added jabberwock abilities to the troll king (thank you to Orthos)
What went well: NPCs continued to be top-notch. Both Old Beldame and Howl-of-the-North-Wind were introduced here, and became major characters throughout the campaign. Dealing with the character deaths ended up really advancing the story instead of hindering it. Players really had fun and did a good job taking the initiative, creating their own holiday and managing the kingdom.
What went poorly: My players aren’t generally a fan of huge dungeons, and the troll dungeon was definitely too big. Also, by the end of the book the number of small encounters were beginning to become tiresome, even if each individual encounter was well-written. Candlenights was hard because it was PC-organized, but still needed a GM to set parts of the scene. Should have asked for more details on what players were expecting. Still, these were minor details and the players had a lot of fun.
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Sessions: Between 7 (for the actual module) and 15 sessions (if all of the modifications and kingdom events are included)
In - Game Time: roughly 1 year and 4 months
Character Deaths: near TPK to lobster demon
Key character arc: Kaija
Modifications: Made Vordekai a disciple of Korrok and added a chance to close the portal to Korrok’s realm in Candlemere Tower at the end. Also, moved the Rushlight tournament to the beginning of this adventure. Kaija received a copy of the fairy tale book when she started learning to read, and thanks to Silkenray on Deviant Art I actually had an illustrated copy to share.
What went well: The players actually really enjoyed Vordekai’s dungeon, despite not liking dungeons in general. Most of the encounters were unique and the encounters with undead cyclops didn’t feel repetitive. Totally by coincidence, Lia already met the requirements to destroy the Oculus. Destroying it and closing the portal was an epic session.
What went poorly: Definitely cut or ignored a fair amount of exploration. Managing kingdom building was also difficult. Ideally, the kingdom should have time to expand, but events lead to PCs taking action lead to XP, which creates the potential to outlevel the adventure. If I were to do this again, I might use the Legacy of Fire method of having a year of down-time and giving each PC a small boon based on how they choose to spend their time.
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Sessions: 6
In - Game Time: 1 year and 3 months
Character Deaths: Jin and Lily died in the Tiger Lord’s tomb, although resurrection was much easier by this point
Key character arc: Jin
Modifications: Reduced much of the exploration. Also, the PCs categorically refused to invade and ended up travelling to Pitax to get King Irovetti to straighten out his new vassal. He was still denying any direct attacks on the kingdom, so this worked. He replaced Baron Drelev with an incompetent regent, backed by Rilka.
What went well: The bloodthirsty nature of the weapon in the Tiger Lord’s Tomb had a lot of potential, and led to some interesting discussions, although Jin avoided using it much. The dungeon was decent as well (especially as the PCs killed the derghodaemon before it could summon way too many swarms.)
What went poorly: There were a lot of issues with this adventure. First, while I don’t blame the module for assuming the kingdom would want to expand into Fort Drelev, the PCs completely disagreed with the main plot thread. Second, the exploration was much, much less interesting than in the preceding chapters. The boggard encounter, for example, involved a lot of low-level boggards. The naga proved much too powerful for the group to defeat and charmed everybody, but she also didn’t really have anything interesting to do with her charmed minions.
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Sessions: 2, plus extended message threads
In - Game Time: 2 months
Character Deaths: Lia died in King Irovetti’s throne room, but was brought back immediately with breath of life
Key character arc: Soren
Modifications: Everything. First, added a one session Red Wedding adventure where the PCs were hired as bodyguards for the marriage of King Noleski. Then, reduced the entire book to some research (done over message threads) and a final confrontation with King Irovetti and Rilka once the PCs figured out he had Briar, first in the throne room and then on the battlefield in all-out war. Made Briar a staff to make it suit Lia, as she was the only player that hadn’t received a cool magic item yet and could use one. Gave King Irovetti clockwork troops (thank you Dudemeister for this suggestion).
Once the PCs killed Rilka and had the capital under siege, King Irovetti called for a truce, explained what the party didn’t know about Nyrissa, and asked the party to join forces with him to confront her.
What went well: The players really enjoyed coming up with what the PCs would wear to a wedding. Getting a chance to finally kill Rilka was also a long-deserved win.
What went poorly: I hadn’t had to design many encounters for this campaign, and jumping into designing encounters once the party was already level 12 or above was a challenge. It also made the fights feel much less fair. The fight in King Irovetti’s throne room was much too hard and, while that was appropriate (as the PCs really should have been over their head), I had to scale down the later encounters very quickly.
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Sessions: 1 plus pre-game preparation in a message thread
In - Game Time: 1 month
Character Deaths: Lia died but was brought back retroactively by better knowledge of the rules
Key character arc: Lia
Modifications: My players were ready to end the campaign at this point. Cut the adventure down to three fights: the Nightmare Rook, the faceless nymphs, and Nyrissa herself. Instead of needing bloom trophies to get into Nyrissa’s realm, the PCs only needed sympathetic magic - in the form of Lia pretending to be Nyrissa.
What went well: The players really enjoyed having the chance to look things up and use powers they hadn’t learned before. Nyrissa started out unassailable, and the PCs were only able to defeat her after casting dispel magic multiple times. This was a really good way to make the fight last multiple rounds and feel intimidating. The setting we didn’t have time to get to was also amazing, and thanks to shadow walk the PCs had a chance to see much of it without dragging down the game.
What went poorly: Although putting Nyrissa in a tiny room actually worked really well tactically, it didn’t feel as dramatic as it could have.
Excellent write-up! That sounds like a great campaign for all involved. Congratulations on completing it!
I especially like your Hindsight and What went well/poorly observations.
Where is Korrok from? I'm not familiar with that deity.
The player used an existing Pathfinder diety for Korrok's domain and favored weapon (one of the four horseman maybe?) but the backstory comes from the story John Isn't Dead. He's a Cthulhu-esque computer.