Pathfinder 1E Do we care about what it's doing? Ultimate Campaign

[Squire James]

Wizards are pretty powerful hombres in 1e, and were about the only class that actually got significantly more powerful past 9th level.

"Just go off and spend half a year building that fortress and recruiting 100 guys that would instantly fall dead to a fireball spell. I'll just chill in my magical extra-dimensional mansion and research a spell that makes that thing fly!"

 

[SkidAce]

Was it really? I know that the earliest days of D&D, coming as they did from wargaming, had that as part of play, but was that approach also used by everyone else?

I'm not saying it *wasn't*, mind you, but I've seen a lot of reports of dungeon adventuring and very little on owning a castle.

In my experience, yes.

 

[Starfox]

Most of this stuff comes from past adventure paths, and this is a way to compile it into a non-adventure book for those who want the rules, not the adventures. From what I've seen, its not much edited or worked over, tough there are some changes - those I noted seemed to be for the better. But the origin of these things in adventure paths is indicative of how it's to be used. That is, these are situational rules that are essential in some games/campaigns, but irrelevant in many, many others.

As long as pazio can cover their costs and not too many purchasers of the book feel cheated, I think this is a fin addition to the pazio line. But it is not a book for everyone.

 

[billd91]

It's an interesting book. Even if you don't do a lot with non-adventure time activities, building towns/kingdoms, or mass combat, there are still nuggets of interesting information. For example, I'm now thinking of using the followers you get from Leadership not as a body of soldiers or hangers-on at your stronghold, but as widely scattered contacts.

 

[skinnydwarf]

I have Ultimate Campaign and really like it, especially the Character Background and Campaign Systems chapters. Honestly, the character background chapter was half the reason I bought the book. But then I'm a sucker for using random tables to help generate story ideas.

I think that given that the Rules Cyclopedia has rules for kingdom building, kingdom building is a Thing in D&D.

 

[Storminator]

For example, I'm now thinking of using the followers you get from Leadership not as a body of soldiers or hangers-on at your stronghold, but as widely scattered contacts.

I did that with a Forgotten Realms PC. Every town we went to, he knew someone. Usually a bartender.

PS

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

It was part of the class descriptions, even! This was part of becoming "name level" in 1e - you got to build a stronghold and gain followers. Wizardy types got the short end of the stick, as they were "allowed" to build a tower, but didn't get people showing up. Fighters and clerics got small armies to play with. Rangers got a band of merry men (and women, and creatures).

Yeah, MerricB obviously knows that. What he was referring to was the fact that, for many of us, the rules just didn't see play.

 

[brvheart]

G'day, all!

<snip>
It's not that these topics are bad things, but rather, do you really want to deal with them as part of a D&D/Pathfinder game? At its heart, D&D is a game about a group of characters going off and having fantastic adventures. To a large extent, things that happen before, after and between these adventures don't actually matter. That's the traditional approach.

Ultimate Campaign says, "Yes, these things do matter", and gives you a lot of mechanics to handle them. Of course, actually implementing these mechanics takes time, and so takes away from the fantastic adventures you could otherwise be having. (I ran Kingmaker; I'm quite familiar with how much table-time the actual running of the kingdom could take; it's not horrid, but it's still time spent away from adventuring).

I'm curious: What do you feel? Is the material Ultimate Campaign covers irrelevant to your games, or it something that you're very glad exists and was lacking from your game? Or something else?

Cheers!

I don't know about your experience Merrick, but I have been playing since 1980 and what happened during downtime always DID matter in my games whether it was in 1E, 2E, 3.x or Pathfinder so I think it will have some use in my game. Will I take all of it as gospel? No, but I will pick and chose what works for me. We used the Stronghold builders Guide in 3.0 quite a bit and I always liked having random background tables for use. Yeah it is better if the players create them, but especially dealing with NPCs it is good to have.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I see this as an opportunity for people who say that D&D isn't just about adventuring to put their money where their mouth is...

 

[S'mon]

I bought the pdf, but like you my reaction was "Why would I actually use any of this stuff?". Conceivably that might change in the future, but I doubt it.

Edit: The random tables look ok if eg my PCs were bar managers and I was stuck for inspiration. I have some better tables already though for some of the areas covered.