When I first started my pathfinder group so long ago it was to run this adventure path. And we loved it. Made it all the way through book three before people moving, time, and what not put this game on the back shelf. But it's always been in the back of my head to pick back up and recently I convinced my group to do just that. I'm stupidly excited! Way back when, I had put together all the maps and mounted them on my wall. I loved taking them back down!
I decided that the game would take place some 20 or so years after the end of varnhold, centering around the leader's children and friends picking up a new adventure with the Tatzlford invasion. Starting them at tenth level, I'm going to run a mini adventure or two first to familiarize them with their new characters and get them some of the fun EQ from the earlier books.
Unfortunately, I don't have nearly any of the collateral we used for kingdom creation back in the day. I remember some of the cities, names and locations, but not much as far as size and scope of the kingdom and cities themselves. Does anyone know of some kingdom docs from around this part of the game that I could crib to get my players going?
I've been trying to read as much as I can on the board but I admit I'm getting a little overwhelmed. But it's all extremely useful! I can't wait to implement it all (and not to mention I'm a bit better of a GM than I was back then.)
Thanks!
If I understand you correctly, you're looking to re-create the stats and details of the players' barony from scratch (or from someone else's realm stats), inspired by your recollection of what they had at the end of book 3?
Each module contain a "Kingdom in the background" blurb somewhere in the early pages which outlines the details of the realm they'd have if a group wants to hand-wave the RRR realm-building rules. So, if you find that in book 4, it should give you an idea of what the module expects in terms of realm size. It won't give you the actual stats, but IIRC it says how large their territory should be, the number of settlements they have and the population size of their capital.
I have a browser-based kingdom tracking sheet which I wrote, which might make it easier for you to quickly stat up their barony. It works for the RRR rules, but I make no guarantees about the UC mode, which had a lot of TODOs still in it at the point I gave up on that ruleset and made my own Fate-based realm building rules.
Awesome thanks. Yeah, I'm hoping to not have to do it from scratch. I'll look into that tracking sheet and see if there are some things I can do there.
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One thing I didn't mention - my browser-based tracking sheet actually has a feature to automatically build improvements in cities each turn. That's in the "Kingdom Turn" section at the bottom, in step 2d.
You give it various parameters, such as the number of BPs that it should not drain your treasury below, and when you click the button it will try to add buildings to your cities, within the limits of your current realm's build limits and the parameters you set. It won't add new districts or found new settlements however - that needs to be done manually.
I mention this because it might make simulating a 10-year time pass somewhat easier... if you get something approximating what they had at the end of book 3, then you can relatively rapidly simulate things growing in a random and unplanned fashion.
(Also, the import/export feature might be handy - it's in the "menu" link on the top right. It allows you to view/edit a plain text dump of the current kingdom details, which means you can copy that off to a text document somewhere and then experiment, and if you don't like how things have gone you can paste back in the older version and revert your changes.)
This might be something where the Microscope RPG could be used as part of a Session 0 -
http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/ - with you providing some baseline info and some nudging or vetoing. It's a collaborative world/history building game that could be used to fill in those years, get your players to name cities and NPCs, etc.
Would still take some work to wrap kingdom mechanics around, but would at least give you something to work with, as well as give the players some emotional connection to this place their characters grew up in.