Pathfinder 1E Did You Ever Make Your Own Version Of Kingmaker?

[Kaodi]

I had thoughts about trying this. I even made up an area map or two, though I never really got beyond that stage. But it always seemed to me that Kingmaker was particularly excellent as a model of what you could do. As Celebrim said in that other thread - most hexes are kinda self-contained. You could devise a whole set of original encounters, or maybe reskin a couple from the modules, and throw them on a new map and have a new adventure.

In particular I envisioned using an island for mine, maybe with some orcs or goblins thrown in, a dwarven outpost that could be the gateway to an underground map, a temple built by a heretic and her followers (at least I think it was a heretic of a good deity rather than a priestess of a straight up evil one). There would be a shipwreck, and the end of the initial adventure would mean scraping together enough resources to get transportation back home, after which you would be sent back to build a barony (rather than a kingdom) on the island. An island perhaps with geographic proximity to the sponsoring kingdom similar to the Azores and Mainland Europe.

Islands mean that you can keep the kingdom or barony relatively contained without having to introducing (other) artificial reasons why it cannot expand in such and such a direction. And it might be a way to throttle resources as well - everything and everybody has to be shipped there, so maybe you do not get as many BP to start and have to spend it on things like a port first.

So in any case - have any of you developed your own unique iteration?

 

[kenada]

I ran Kingmaker years ago for my group, and it was probably one of the best APs we played. I’m running a hexcrawl in 5e currently using Justin Alexander’s hexcrawl procedure that I hope to convert over to PF2. There’s no kingdom-building, but the PCs are putting work into establishing and fortifying their base camp.

The campaign is set in a homebrew setting that’s a bit different from a typical D&D setting. The premise of the campaign is the Sageocracy commissions expeditions every generation to explore the Shattered Remains, an area that hasn’t been under civilized control since the War of the Giants over a thousand years ago. The PCs are part of that expedition, and their only obligation is to report back weekly via spanread.

We’ve played about eight sessions, and the PCs haven’t yet ventured more than a few hexes away from their landing position. They’ve seen five total out of 121 hexes. One of the things I didn’t like about Kingmaker is the hexes were player-facing structures. With the procedure I’m using, they navigate the world as their characters would, and random encounters serve as content generates to keep hexes always interesting.

 

[ccs]

Kind of.....

It started off as KM.
And it drifted further & further from the modules the longer we played.

 

[RangerWickett]

I ran a campaign that was sort of a sequel to War of the Burning Sky, where in the aftermath of an evil empire's defeat and collapse, the place had spent basically a century being overrun by monsters and being afflicted by magical cataclysms, plagues, and other disasters.

The PCs were part of the third wave of settlers sent by a king who wanted to lay claim - in a supernatural sense. The King of Dassen, if you're familiar with WotBS. An artifact book grants the Monarch of Dassen magical powers over any land that accepts his rule, so he needed to make sure the new land was properly loyal.

There was a small town, and the PCs were tasked with exploring the surroundings, dealing with threats, and maybe making allies if there were any settlements still around. But they also got wrapped up in a plot by the wizard academy (Lyceum, also from WotBS) who chafed at the current monarch's reign and wanted to break his power by destroying that artifact book. To do so, though, they needed to bind the Demon Lord Baphomet, lord of beasts and savagery, whose mere presence destroys written material. And Baphomet had, a century ago, been trapped in a magic jar, lost somewhere in this land.

So while the PCs were off exploring, agents of the wizards were doing so too, and they'd always show up whenever the PCs stumbled across places where magical savagery seemed to have gripped the land. The wizards wanted to release and control Baphomet, which would entail sacrificing the PCs' entire town as an offering. Of course, the PCs tried to thwart this, using a variety of allies and magic they'd discovered in their exploration.

It was fun.

 

[John R Davis]

Inspired after completing Kingmaker I created Kingslayer for very evil PCs. Even put the first few art free editions on drive thru'.

KM by far the best PF AP I have completed

 

[Zardnaar]

I've used it as a template for other adventures using the blank hexes. That and the way they have didequests.

 

[amethal]

You might find Robert Conley's guide to making a fantasy sandbox useful. (Won't be any help with BPs and the like, of course.)

How to make a Fantasy Sandbox

 

[Remus Lupin]

I was really excited for Kingmaker and loved the story (and I thought the videogame was an excellent implementation of the concept). But in all honesty I found the Kingdom management rules to be just too unwieldy and cumbersome, and my players didn't enjoy it, so we ended up putting a lot of that on autopilot and just playing through the adventures, though ultimately the campaign (well, I), just ran out of steam.