Kingmaker without travel magic (teleport, overland flight)

[Dijkstra]

I'm going to be running the Kingmaker adventure path soon. I'm considering disallowing travel magic (teleport, overland flight, etc). Is this a good idea?

The rational behind this is that Kingmaker is about exploration and dealing with the land and whatever it throws at you (monsters, weather, travel time etc). Does teleport take something away from the game?

[pennywit]

I would not ban that magic. Instead, I would revise the modules. By the time characters have access to serious travel magic, they really shouldn't be exploring. Instead, they should be hiring people to explore for them through Exploration Edicts, and you as GM should not regard the encounters as things players find in the wilderness, but as story hooks that will threaten or complicate the kingdom.

By the time my campaign got to heavy teleportation, the challenges mostly involved affairs of state -- things like wars and diplomacy. At this point, teleport helped things rather than harming them.

[Warped Savant]

I'm with Pennywit. By the time the PCs have access to travel magic they'll be pretty bored of the hexploration/getting from one place to another won't be much of an issue even without magic.
There's no reason to disallow it.

[Gargs454]

I'm with the others here. Early in the game, the man vs. nature theme is definitely there and tracking exploration time and weather, etc. makes a lot of sense. My group though is now a few sessions into the third book and already hexploration is a bit dull. I'm not even tracking weather anymore unless it's something major.

[pennywit]

Gargs454 wrote:

I'm with the others here. Early in the game, the man vs. nature theme is definitely there and tracking exploration time and weather, etc. makes a lot of sense. My group though is now a few sessions into the third book and already hexploration is a bit dull. I'm not even tracking weather anymore unless it's something major.

Piggybacking off this. We had three major hexploration jags in the third module at my table. In the first, my players deliberately took on alternate PCs who were hired by the kingdom to explore. In the second, my players were very specifically looking for the Nomen centaurs. In the third, my PCs (along with their armies) were actively hunting for Vordakai's tomb to carry the fight to him.

[Spatula]

It's a bad idea just because of the kingdom turns. The PCs need to be in the capital for one week every month. If they have to hoof it everywhere, their range is extremely limited.

[Wolfgang Volos]

My group is about halfway through the second book and they are still enjoying hexploration. I realize that by the time we start the third book they will be tired of exploring everything in a day by day / hex by hex kind of way. My group also made secondary characters which they have been using to explore. Instead of these secondary PCs being made for taking care of the adventuring, they are giving each player a chance to try something new. Each player's two PCs are involved in the story and both of each sit on the ruling council. For example my wife is the Ruler and the Councilor. My best friend is the General and the Spymaster. And our good buddy is the Grand Magister and the Warden. Important or favored NPCs fill the other roles. They hexplore for about six weeks at a time, hit two months of kingdom building back to back (we call it a double tap), and go back at it again. I try to throw enough events at them during kingdom management to keep it interesting.

[pennywit]

Another thought -- by book three, the wilderness encounters aren't really encounters -- i.e., people who hang out in the wilderness until the PCs come kill them. Instead, they're plot seeds, and you shoudl use them that way. In book 4 (for example), my players did little hexploration for its own sake, but they went hunting in the Hooktongue Slough after they heard there was a powerful hydra there.