So is kingmaker any good/Hard to DM?

[Fooly_Cooly]

So I saw another thread about kingmaker and read through it. It sounded very interesting but my group has never successfully finished a single book of a pre written campaign. I think we all just like to do so much random stuff its hard for a dm make is stick to the book outcome. So what I want to ask you ENworld is-Is the kingmaker campaign any good and is it hard to DM?

 

[Drathir]

good/hard is of course a matter of opinion but my opinion is the following. Pretty easy to run, like most of the APs, but unless you have people in the party that like to micro manage book 2 and later can become tiresome. I wont go into details, if you want details there are any number of sites with strategies and the like, but when you start managing your kingdom it is actually easy to do one of two things, break the game or completely and utterly bankrupt your kingdom. and i know book two and three are both pretty much the same thing with different "Baddies". Expand/manage kingdom, explore, repeat steps one and two, find the story (almost by complete accident it seems), confront story, proceed to next book.

I know this seems to paint a bad picture for it but it really is/can be a fun and interesting campaign.

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

Well I already own the guide to kingdom building river nations book. And we already employ the hex and city system. My players manage really well. However as to staying on a pre made plot line in books...well it was when I first started dming but I believe it went WAY wonky. I tried to run the curse of the crimson thrones APG. Even had all the books bought. Never even made it halfway through book 1.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Is it fun? Yes. Is it hard to run? Yes, probably. There are other APs to run which might be a better "starting" AP. But if you and your players can't stick out an AP as you feel it is too restrictive, then perhaps Kingmaker is better suited to your group's play style.

We did a lot of the prep work for you though. If you download and listen to Episodes #08, #12 and #15 of the podcast (link below) you will get the three episodes that cover Books 1-3 of the Kingmaker AP. We discuss the AP at great length, provide our own advice, tips and tricks. We also interview the authors and developer of each of those books and go into spoilerific detail about the ins and outs and crunch of specific encounters and issues which may crop up in your Kingmaker campaign -- before they actually do so. That way, you will be on your lookout for them.

I have enjoyed Kingmaker a lot. If there is a problem with the AP, I found that it is a little too long for my tastes. If it might be too long for yours, you can take steps to speed it up and cut out things you don't like and concentrate on things your group WILL like.

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

Wow. Thats great! Podcasts about d&d? Whoohoo! Never even heard about that . I will probably listen to all of them . So any suggestion on char restrictions or limitations I should make before starting the game?

 

[Steel_Wind]

Sure. We have about 15 hours of them in those three episodes alone. Better to listen to them first I think

Start at Episode 08. If you want to listen to them all eventually, that's fine. But you should start at Episode 08!

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

Well it will be a while before I can anyway. There are currently 5 games being run in or self created world called incarnium. I'm running 2 and the other 3 are being run by the other DM's that created the world with me. But hopefully once we quest through all those fun adventures we can go into the wonderful golarion world paizo made .

 

[IronWolf]

I am currently running Kingmaker now, we're rolling into the 6th book tonight. I think it is a fun campaign and has lots of potential. I do not think it is easy to GM though. It has pointed out some of my shortcomings as a GM and given me areas to improve on for the next campaign. The biggest thing?

I really need to work on my NPCs. Mine were way to shallow in the early stages which has an impact as the game moves one because I think the players could have had a much more vested interest in their kingdom than they do. I think the people that have been really successful with Kingmaker have likely been good at building and maintaining a good number of NPCs that the characters care about.

As a GM I feel like I dropped the ball there (though I blame some personal life stuff that happened mid-campaign for not helping the situation). So I am chalking that up for an area of major improvement in my GMing skills, better and more in-depth PCs.

So while the players are still having fun from the looks of it, I think the campaign would have been better with more vested interest in the NPCs. Of course this is likely true of any campaign, right?

The other factor that I found somewhat difficult is that there are two new mini-rule systems in the Kingmaker campaign. Kingdom building and mass combat. I guess I am slow to pick up and digest new rules. So I feel like learning those rules for play detracted from the campaign as a whole.

Overall though I think Kingmaker is a very fun campaign. And with the right GM likely transcends to an awesome campaign. There is lots of room to really make it your own.

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

I'd love to play in it with an experienced GM. But I have the same problem with NPC's. So far the only way I have figured to make char's more interested in them is to make them indespensible. Like well if you garner a friendship with this cleric she might follow you on quests. Or this king is helping fund building your keep but in return you must pay him back by doing job's for him from time to time. Stuff like that. I also try to squeeze as much personality into each one I can in the time given. They actually remembered some old herbalist from the main city just because I made her such a kind old sour mouth. The first thing they thought of when they made the keep and needed people was( I wonder if we could hire that herbalist to come here). That was actually a proud moment for me .

 

[gamerprinter]

Something else you could try involves NPC boons, Rite Publishing has a product called 101 NPC Boons, which means instead of 'stuff', NPC offer favors, promises to help in future crisis, that kind of thing, in exchange for saving them when they are encountered during the adventure. Even when these are one-time boons only, they create a connection between the PCs and specific NPCs in ways that 'befriending them' is not enough to make a real connection.

I've been adding such boons to my personal games and this has in fact created dynamic relationships where otherwise these NPCs would have been incidental and forgotten.

It's one way to handle that situation, anyway.