The first 6 levels of Kingmaker have enough encounters for character to reach 9th level. I'm thinking of breaking that up into two campaigns

[AllenJ]

There are 20 hexes in the Greenbelt (lvl 2) with encounters or "dungeons," another 9 in Tuskwater (lvl 3) and 10 in the Kamlands (lvl 4). I'm toying with the idea of starting 2 new campaigns, one that focuses on the core adventure and one that focuses more on hexploration and completing the companion side-quests, kinda a "Kingmaker Abridged" and "Kingmaker Adjacent." Both groups would become aware of the actions of the other. I'd add a bit of homebrew Umph! to the Adjacent group. They would both be loyal to the same sponsor who would start out as their ruler. Once they get to kingdom building, each group would fill different roles and alternately participate in kingdom turns. By level 6, I'd hope the sponsor dies letting a PC fill the role and the groups begin to merge (possibly due to the usual online campaign atrophy). Does that sound workable? Two groups, different players (unless some wanted to play both), different nights.

[Omri Heffer]

I don't see why you should split it. Will your players explore every single hex in the area? Mine explored around a little and did most of the major stuff (bandits/kobolds/the fae things) and they're near level 4 before the Stag Lord.

[Andostre]

Most of the KM campaigns that I've been involved with or observed tend to lay off the hexploration aspect of the game after a certain point to focus on the rulership and main story or stories. It sounds like 2E allows for that, and not all of the hexes are expected to be explored for the campaign to advance as planned.

[guise709]

My group is keen on exploring so what I start doing is tapering off the XP gain for encounters. I also toyed around with the idea of raising the total XP needed per level from 1200 to 1500, but since I was already doing 1200 to level I didn't want the change to be too abrupt so I started handing out less XP for easy encounters and stopped giving as many bounty quest and the like.

[draj13]

What I did with the massive amounts of XP given at earlier levels of the campaign is skim some off the top and keep track of it and put it in a pool, I also did the longer leveling track setting it to 1200 XP to leveling up, but when they were about to out level the quest they were on, I would takes some off and stick it in a pool and use it for levels later on when they will actually need some extra XP to get to some quest and chapter content that they may not be at level for yet. I also don't give XP in dungeons out until the dungeon is completed.

[Zor D'Lan]

After running this AP a few times, there is definitely room for lower level or multiple parties.

For example, once my current group established their kingdom ... we did a side trek adventure with low level PCs to clear out some of the unexplored areas "at behest of the new rulers".

Later, we wanted to introduce a new player ... so we did another side trek where they had also been hired by the rulers to investigate a long lost crypt.

Basically, all the un-explored content could be used as small mini-adventures for lower level parties - without much conflict.

Alternatively, having the one group focus on kingdom building ... while they "hire" the second party to explore locations, even at same level, could be interesting for some groups.

As a bonus, the adventurers in group B could also fill leadership roles for the kingdom ... which provides further benefits.

If you had one group working the main story and another doing the side quests ... then collaborating when it comes time to do a kingdom turn, it could all work out.

Those are just some ideas ... with the right groups, it is definitely possible.

[James Jacobs]

One of the tricky parts about a Sandbox game like Kingmaker is that you do need more encounters than are needed to level up, since that helps the PCs keep their agency and make choices and not fall behind. While it's a really fun way to do a campaign, it's a very inefficient way to do an adventure when wordcount is a limited resource. So it was kind of a breath of fresh air when developing this version of Kingmaker, with its many extra pages over what we had in the first version, to really lean in to the idea of doing a true sandbox type experience.

But yeah, that does mean that a group who does every encounter will hit 20th level long before the last chapter. (Which also makes Kingmaker a pretty strong choice for a slower XP reward schedule...)