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So with the coming of Kingmaker this October and my AOA group slowly moving their way towards the final books I've been looking for the next adventure on our horizon. I find myself in the lucky position to be in groups that are running EC, AOE, SOT, and soon to be OoA so all thoes are out which means that kingmaker is a pretty good bet for me.
That being said I have absolutely fallen in love with Mwangi Expanse, from its culture to its people to the setting. So much so that I dont think SOT will satiate my desire to play in that region. Simply the overwhelming joy I feel being able to look at NPCs and see some that look like me brings me more happiness then I can describe. Since we already have an adventure and an AP set in the region I don't foresee too much more content being put out which is why I was wondering if Kingmaker could make the switch.
I'm not too big on the River Kingdoms and I've heard that the AP's encounters and combats are more slot as-you-go which may make it easier then some APs with region specific plot (like Bloodlords haha). Maybe someone whos played through the original could spread some light on how easy or impossible it would be to convert. I plan to purchase the 2e version coming in the fall so it isn't really a question of mechanics and more of a question of story.
I was thinking something perhaps along the lines of creating a kingdom on the legacy of the Shory empire, bringing flying cities back to the expanse. Or dealing with diplomatic negotiations with the likes of Mizali, Nantambu, and the Nine Walls. The entire concept seems cool but without first hand knowledge of the AP its impossible to know for sure. For example I know the first book is all about clearing out bandits and savage inhabitants of the River Kingdoms. Something which has...controversial history with the Mwangi to say the least. Maybe replace them with demons akin to the White City or Charau'ka?
Thank you for reading my long post and ramble and I'm eager to hear any and all suggestions! Even if they are "No its not possible find another adventure".
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Mwangi Kingmaker is tough because your PCs would essentially be cast as colonizers; Kingmaker’s whole thing is moving in to bust up the locals so you can set up shop. Once it stops being that, it starts tying into your neighbors in the River Kingdoms and the history of the region. There isn’t really a good spot to throw a Kingmaker party at in the Mwangi Expanse the same way the Stolen Lands are.
I think if you want to do Mwangi Kingmaker, you’ll be doing the bulk of the work yourself. The original AP is pretty married to its place on the map and the context that region affords it.
There are some hoops you have to jump through that are all fairly easy with a bit of imagination and some preplanning.
The start of the adventure gives the party a charter to colonize a swath of land. If I recall correctly the second edition version is adding a prequel adventure where the player characters and NPC’s meet at a party hosted by whoever’s giving them the charter and the support needed to actually form a barony.
Most of the enemies you encounter early on are either bandits or violent monsters. Moral ambiguity is not a focus of the adventure at all unless something is updated in the second edition version.
Negotiations with other powers in the region is also not a major focus of the adventure path, unless, again, they changed something in the second edition version. Even the few diplomatic situations that come in the adventure might not work straight from the book, the dynamics at play in the regions are very different.
Of course, your players might want to play colonists that don’t care to negotiate with the locals. That’s also a possibility.
There are also two standalone adventure modules that take place in the Mwangi Expanse; Crucible of Chaos and River into Darkness. They’re both for 3.5 so they will only be useful to you as story content, but Crucible of Chaos is exploring a Shory city.
Creative Director
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Mwangi Kingmaker is tough because your PCs would essentially be cast as colonizers; Kingmaker’s whole thing is moving in to bust up the locals so you can set up shop. Once it stops being that, it starts tying into your neighbors in the River Kingdoms and the history of the region. There isn’t really a good spot to throw a Kingmaker party at in the Mwangi Expanse the same way the Stolen Lands are.
I think if you want to do Mwangi Kingmaker, you’ll be doing the bulk of the work yourself. The original AP is pretty married to its place on the map and the context that region affords it.
I was very careful, both in the original Kingmaker and even more so in the remake, to NOT cast the PCs in the role of "colonizers." I guess settlers is a better word. The goal of Kingmaker isn't to kick out indigenous groups and claim their land for your own, but to move into a wilderness region and bring civilization to it. There are, of course, plenty of groups of NPCs and monsters and people living in the region, but the campaign works just as well with you fighting the monsters and claiming their land as it does making diplomatic relations and building your kingdom peacefully around their lands.
There's plenty of locations in the Mwangi that would work, as there are a LOT of wilderness regions to chose from. That said, there's a lot more to doing something like this than doing a find/replace for forest into jungle—there's a lot about Kingmaker that's closely tied into that region's history, its monsters and people aren't all great choices for other parts of the world, and so on.
A big part of Kingmaker is that you're building your OWN nation, rather than interacting with a lot of established ones. As such, I don't think that Kingmaker is a great choice for you to convert over to the Mwangi, since the parts of that book that seem to be the most compelling—the established nations—are things that don't really have much of a place in a campaign set mostly in truly wilderness areas.
In fact, most of our Adventure Paths are in the same category—we try REALLY hard to make them feel legit in their places, and lean in to local and regional lore and background and elements. It's easier to convert an Adventure Path into another campaign setting, as a result, than to move its location inside the scope of the Lost Omens setting.
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Mwangi Kingmaker is tough because your PCs would essentially be cast as colonizers; Kingmaker’s whole thing is moving in to bust up the locals so you can set up shop. Once it stops being that, it starts tying into your neighbors in the River Kingdoms and the history of the region. There isn’t really a good spot to throw a Kingmaker party at in the Mwangi Expanse the same way the Stolen Lands are.
I think if you want to do Mwangi Kingmaker, you’ll be doing the bulk of the work yourself. The original AP is pretty married to its place on the map and the context that region affords it.
Maybe a place where the locals had to leave under pressure and the PCs are descendents of those people and try to rebuild their ancestors' homeland.
Kind of feels like Sarkoris.
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Mwangi Kingmaker is tough because your PCs would essentially be cast as colonizers; Kingmaker’s whole thing is moving in to bust up the locals so you can set up shop. Once it stops being that, it starts tying into your neighbors in the River Kingdoms and the history of the region. There isn’t really a good spot to throw a Kingmaker party at in the Mwangi Expanse the same way the Stolen Lands are.
The Stolen Lands weren't a "good spot" to do an imperialism either, natch.
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Thanks everyone for the input! I think overall I'll take the advice and either write something homebrew from scratch (maybe using the upcoming kingdom building rules) or shift things in another direction all together.
Its pretty interesting to hear how easier it is to shift an AP cross-world then it is to do inter-setting. I have always been a big fan of using and leaning into monsters, set pieces, and lore from the place the AP takes place in so drag and dropping was never going to work in hindsight.
I appreciate everyone's help and Il be sure to post again if I end up making something to fill this space :-)
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I wish you the best of luck in whatever you end up doing! The Mwangi Expanse is such a rich location, and I know personally I’d have fun in any campaign that makes use of the rich cultures there.
I ran the first two books of Kingmaker in the world of Monte Cook’s “Ptolus: The City by the Spire” campaign. Yes, I can see where transplanting the AP to another world might be easier than finding a different spot on Golarion.
Even then, there were some fun challenges to work out. For example, there’s not an Erastil equivalent. So, I split the symbology between two existing Praemal deities. (Praemal is the world Ptolus is set in.) And then, I placed the campaign near the Cherubar Mountains, so I personalized the campaign by switching out the Nomen centaur with some indigenous flying elves, who lived on high mesas instead the Nomen’s plains.
I don’t know. When people say you can’t put the campaign anywhere else, I feel like you actually can, it’s just that you need to be prepared for some amount of extra prep to make it fit.
The only way to transplant the AP to somewhere else without ANY work would be to just have the Stolen Lands in a void, and I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just have it in Golarion at that point.