-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Kingmaker: Carnival of Tears?
- Thread starter Werebat
- Start date
Werebat
Explorer
Yeah, one of the complaints I had read about the module was the difficulty sympathizing with the townsfolk due to it being on some level "their own fault" that the fey were doing what they were doing. It seems that in the context of Kingmaker, there is already a reason for the fey to "do what they are doing" in Carnival.
Plus, as ruemere says, imagine the looks on the players' faces... They DEFINITELY have a reason to take action, and fast, against the Carnival.
- Ron ^*^
Plus, as ruemere says, imagine the looks on the players' faces... They DEFINITELY have a reason to take action, and fast, against the Carnival.
- Ron ^*^
GodDelusion
First Post
what a fantastic idea... I will be using CoT of my Kingmaker campaign.
Azmyth
First Post
A few issues I can see with integrating Carnival of Tears into KM...
CoT is a level is a 5th level module. By the end of the module, characters should reach level 6. KM book 2, River Runs Red suggests that PCs start at 4th and finish around 7th going into book 3. This would place CoT somewhere in the middle of it. Positioning the module so it doesn't ruin your KM encounters XP track could be tricky.
Next, CoT requires that it is a very cold Autumn or Winter setting. Frozen lakes, ice mazes and cold fey are the module's meat and potatoes. So timing of the seasons becomes relevant.
Lastly, the module requires a town for the Carney to prey upon. Oleg's certainly is not the place for this to go down. It just doesn't fit. So perhaps you'll need to delay springing the module on your KM party after they've established a community of their own. Evaluate what character level your party is (or will be) at the point of having a thriving community. Does the module still fit your story, your game level and your flavor of play?
My vote: Carnival of Tears is not the best module to include in a King Maker game. I believe it requires to much 'shoe-horning' to make it work and it sets a precedence with the Fey in the region you may not be prepared to play out.
CoT is a level is a 5th level module. By the end of the module, characters should reach level 6. KM book 2, River Runs Red suggests that PCs start at 4th and finish around 7th going into book 3. This would place CoT somewhere in the middle of it. Positioning the module so it doesn't ruin your KM encounters XP track could be tricky.
Next, CoT requires that it is a very cold Autumn or Winter setting. Frozen lakes, ice mazes and cold fey are the module's meat and potatoes. So timing of the seasons becomes relevant.
Lastly, the module requires a town for the Carney to prey upon. Oleg's certainly is not the place for this to go down. It just doesn't fit. So perhaps you'll need to delay springing the module on your KM party after they've established a community of their own. Evaluate what character level your party is (or will be) at the point of having a thriving community. Does the module still fit your story, your game level and your flavor of play?
My vote: Carnival of Tears is not the best module to include in a King Maker game. I believe it requires to much 'shoe-horning' to make it work and it sets a precedence with the Fey in the region you may not be prepared to play out.
IronWolf
blank
I think with some tweaks to either the XP in CoT or in Kingmaker during the time I ran this that I could handle the XP discrepancy. This could be dropping unnecessary encounters, decreasing XP in some spots or some such. It also helps that in my campaign we won't be doing strict bit-by-bit XP accounting and generally just following the guidelines in each AP module to be sure characters are level appropriate as needed.
Azmyth said:
Since expanses of time can pass in Kingmaker just by nature of kingdom building I think it will be relatively easy to drop this in in the appropriate season. There are sections of Kingmaker that mention letting the PCs let a year or two pass as they build their kingdom.
If I recall correctly the climate of the Stolen Lands is likely pretty brutal in the winter. It didn't seem unreasonable from the reading of the Paizo forums for the climate to be similar to Northern Montana/Southern Canada. So cold, harsh winters should work fine.
Azmyth said:
I see this as coming in as a Kingdom event, so it would certainly only be introduced after the characters have a start of a kingdom. If the characters are higher level, it is pretty easy to scale upwards if needed. Or possibly even just keep it the same and use it as an interesting diversion. I figure parts of the module can be cut out if needed if the length is too long to work it into the campaign better.
With the amount of exploration involved in Kingmaker, I think this module could offer a brief change of pace for the campaign.
Azmyth said:
I would certainly do some adaptation to tie it into the AP more closely. I am not viewing it as a "hands-off" drop-in, but as a module to tweak a bit to tie it into a Kingdom event better.
I think the fey aspect actually fits into the Kingmaker AP quite well.
TheAuldGrump
First Post
This is a great idea. If and when I run Kingmaker I will be adding the Carnival of Tears to the Path. I had been wondering what to do with CoT, and now I know,
Thank you.
The Auld Grump
Thank you.
The Auld Grump
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
I am currently running Carnival of Tears in my Kingmaker campaign, which is halfway through book 2. I placed it as a kingdom event for a midwinter festival. When the PCs started building their nation, they solicited deals to gain build points from a number of venture capitalist organizations, including the Lumber Consortium. The Consortium eventually gained control of a hex to set up their logging operations, and that's the site of the carnival.
On top of that, I've added an escalating conflict between factions of the fey. The Summer Court and the Winter Court are at each others' throats. (This led to a friendly summer fey alerting a PC that "winter is coming". )
This module is utterly traumatizing my players. People their PCs know and like are being slaughtered, and the players are totally freaking out. I'm actually a little worried at this point that this adventure might destroy my entire campaign.
-blarg
On top of that, I've added an escalating conflict between factions of the fey. The Summer Court and the Winter Court are at each others' throats. (This led to a friendly summer fey alerting a PC that "winter is coming".
)This module is utterly traumatizing my players. People their PCs know and like are being slaughtered, and the players are totally freaking out. I'm actually a little worried at this point that this adventure might destroy my entire campaign.
-blarg
Marshall Gatten
First Post
I just ordered all six Kingmaker modules and am awaiting their arrival in the mail. So I haven't yet read any of them, but I'm planning on running it soon and so I've been spending hours and hours and hours going through forums and discussions and reading everything I can find on making it run well. So while I certainly could be entirely wrong, I do feel like I've already got a very firm grip on what may work or not work with the AP.
From everything I've read, it seems that the XP track in KM strongly assumes that the characters find and do EVERYTHING. As long as they do that, levels work out nicely. But what are the odds of that happening? Unless I railroad them heavily (which runs entirely contrary to the whole point of sandboxing), they are likely to miss stuff. By the time they reach level 5, the AP may expect them to be level 6 or even 7.
The rest of this is spoilery of both KM and CoT (which is kinda weird since I haven't actually read either of them yet), so I'd better tag it and say the rest of this is strictly DM-only:
[sblock]
The other biggest complaint I see about the Kingmaker AP is lack of foreshadowing of book 6. The need to add additional foreshadowing of that book is the main reason I ordered all six books before beginning the campaign - I want to know exactly what goes on when, so that I can add lots of foreshadowing.
That being the case, throwing Carnival of Tears in as a Kingdom Event when the players reach level 5 could serve two important purposes: It can catch the characters up to where they belong XP-wise, and it can also serve as additional foreshadowing of book 6. It's hard for players to say that they were blind-sided by a world of angry fey trying to take over a kingdom when they've already suffered character deaths due to the existence of angry fey trying to take over a carnival.
It seems like an incredibly natural fit.
That said, if my players' characters DO manage to keep up on XP and don't need the additional levels to catch up, then I wouldn't feel a need to run Carnival of Tears since foreshadowing can be done in plenty of other ways. So I'm going to wait until they are 4th level and see where they are in KM before I decide whether or not I need to buy CoT.
Of course, the mental makeup of your players is another aspect of the decision: All four* of my players are SERIOUSLY into sidh and fey mythology, and all love exploring the dark side of the fey. I seriously doubt there's ANYTHING in CoT that could actually offend any of them. Not that they aren't impossible to offend - they are nice people after all - but they are also very jaded. I just seriously doubt that Paizo would even consider publishing anything offensive enough to overcome my players' jadedness. If the fey are anally raping children with graphic descriptions or something that shocking, and it's somehow too central to the story to gloss over, then I'd definitely skip CoT. But that's not something I can imagine a company like Paizo doing. (I would totally expect that kind of thing from a company like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, just not Paizo.) And if it's just gore (even gore involving genitalia or something equally tasteless) then it might make my players go a little pale, but then they'll get over it and have fun future stories about that time the game got really unexpectedly dark. If your players are young, or not that jaded, then this should definitely be a consideration.
[/sblock]
Just my 2¢.
m
* (Actually, three players at this point, but I'm hoping to recruit a 4th - and possibly 5th - and the two people I have in mind for that are also into exactly the same things.)
From everything I've read, it seems that the XP track in KM strongly assumes that the characters find and do EVERYTHING. As long as they do that, levels work out nicely. But what are the odds of that happening? Unless I railroad them heavily (which runs entirely contrary to the whole point of sandboxing), they are likely to miss stuff. By the time they reach level 5, the AP may expect them to be level 6 or even 7.
The rest of this is spoilery of both KM and CoT (which is kinda weird since I haven't actually read either of them yet), so I'd better tag it and say the rest of this is strictly DM-only:
[sblock]
The other biggest complaint I see about the Kingmaker AP is lack of foreshadowing of book 6. The need to add additional foreshadowing of that book is the main reason I ordered all six books before beginning the campaign - I want to know exactly what goes on when, so that I can add lots of foreshadowing.
That being the case, throwing Carnival of Tears in as a Kingdom Event when the players reach level 5 could serve two important purposes: It can catch the characters up to where they belong XP-wise, and it can also serve as additional foreshadowing of book 6. It's hard for players to say that they were blind-sided by a world of angry fey trying to take over a kingdom when they've already suffered character deaths due to the existence of angry fey trying to take over a carnival.
It seems like an incredibly natural fit.
That said, if my players' characters DO manage to keep up on XP and don't need the additional levels to catch up, then I wouldn't feel a need to run Carnival of Tears since foreshadowing can be done in plenty of other ways. So I'm going to wait until they are 4th level and see where they are in KM before I decide whether or not I need to buy CoT.
Of course, the mental makeup of your players is another aspect of the decision: All four* of my players are SERIOUSLY into sidh and fey mythology, and all love exploring the dark side of the fey. I seriously doubt there's ANYTHING in CoT that could actually offend any of them. Not that they aren't impossible to offend - they are nice people after all - but they are also very jaded. I just seriously doubt that Paizo would even consider publishing anything offensive enough to overcome my players' jadedness. If the fey are anally raping children with graphic descriptions or something that shocking, and it's somehow too central to the story to gloss over, then I'd definitely skip CoT. But that's not something I can imagine a company like Paizo doing. (I would totally expect that kind of thing from a company like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, just not Paizo.) And if it's just gore (even gore involving genitalia or something equally tasteless) then it might make my players go a little pale, but then they'll get over it and have fun future stories about that time the game got really unexpectedly dark. If your players are young, or not that jaded, then this should definitely be a consideration.
[/sblock]
Just my 2¢.
m
* (Actually, three players at this point, but I'm hoping to recruit a 4th - and possibly 5th - and the two people I have in mind for that are also into exactly the same things.)
Last edited:
