Kingdoms of Kalamar: Ask the Emperor!

[Mark Plemmons]

OK I'm thinking about playing LKoK one of these days (well, actually once I have enough exp from DMing to start at 3rd level). I have the character worked out statwise, but I don't know where to base him. I am thinking either human or dwarf who hails from a place where the populace is opressed by wizards (of the evil variety, preferably).

So what places in the world are run by evil wizards?

buzzard

Let's see... Since sorcerers and wizards tend to be rarer than clerics, this might be a tough one. Also, while evil wizards can certainly rule small areas, they don't tend to rule cities or other large settlements. Their focus would be on gaining arcane knowledge, rather than trying to fend off attacks from enemy armies of the adjacent land/nation. Also, societies and religions favoring no arcane magic, or proper use of such, would interfere.

1) my personal favorite would be the Theocracy of Slen, since it's one of the most evil lands, with the Order of Agony the only religion allowed. Also, the hidden dwarven city of Draska is located in the nearby mountains. The big problem with Slen is that wizards are distrusted, and most are persecuted. However, if you want to change "oppression by wizard" to "oppression by clerics," you couldn't choose better.

2) My second suggestion would be to have your dwarf in the Protectorate of Karasta, since Emperor Kabori appointed a wizard to assist in governing it. The latest appointee is Sir Etera Zem’Par, a useless hedonist who hides his ineptitude behind grand stories about slaying giants, raising mountains, and so on. In a one-on-one battle, however, his choice of spells and tactical use is overwhelming.

3) Esmaran, an evil vampiress necromancer, rules Giilia. The nearby mountains are mostly inhabited by giants, not dwarves, but you could easily put a dwarf passing through or living in the city of Giilia itself. Maybe even a stone dwarf who somehow got lost in the Underdark, or had been captured there, and recently came from these dark caves beneath the city.

 

[Mark Plemmons]

I have a quick question. I'm DMing a Kalamar game with 5 players (and a 6th NPC), and most of the players do not have a language in common (and only one has an intelligence over 11, and she picked Draconic). In the interests of playablity and having fun, I just ruled that everybody in the party can talk with everybody else with no penalty. I certainly didn't want the Kalamar language system to make the players unable to communicate!

All PCs know how to speak their native language, plus one other, so this usually isn't a problem, unless your players decide NOT to choose Merchant's Tongue as the "other" language. ("Merchant's Tongue" is, at its simplest, the KoK equivalent to the "Common" language in D&D.)

So, a typical PC Brandobian would know Brandobian and Merchant's Tongue, a hobgoblin would speak Hobgoblin and Merchant's Tongue, and so on.

Do you think my solution will mess up the feel of the world at all?

It depends. If you assume that everyone in the world (PCs and NPCs alike) speaks the same language, you're losing out on a lot of flavor when your players encounter a foreign region/person. Among the players, however, it's probably okay. You may want to give them "Merchant's Tongue" for free.

Second Question:
The Atlas goes into great detail describing which roads are 1st class, all the way down to 5th class roads. But I couldn't find anything suggesting what practical difference it made to travel on the different classes of roads. I went ahead and drew up a chart giving bonuses to the better roads and penalties to the worse roads (though I made sure that any road would be faster than no road at all). Is there supposed to be a practical difference? Why or why not?

The road detail in the Atlas is mostly intended to differentiate the major and minor roads. This shows the most common land trade routes, and provides some flavor, along with pages 129-130, "Traveling the Roads," in the KoK Player's Guide.

The differences currently defined in game terms are that the less-used trails allow the PCs to become lost more easily, and those that are overgrown reduce squares of movement (see pages 86-92 in the DMG).

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Any thoughts on more pdf stuff to come out? I would love to have dangerous denizens in a cut and paste friendly format.

As far as I know, we don't have any PDF releases coming out in the next few months. After that, I'm not sure.

We are trying harder to release PDF previews of upcoming products, like "Goods and Gear: the Ultimate Adventurer's Guide" and the "Trove of Treasure Maps" supplements currently available for download on our website.

 

[Mark Plemmons]

For Mark: I'm aware of the Kalamar setting since it's publication under the 3e rules -- what's the history of the setting prior to that?

Well, I haven't been with the company since the very beginning, but the first printing was July 1994. I THINK the setting may have been first released in a plastic bag containing two volumes and a map, but my memory's hazy on that. I do know that the second printing was February 1995, and it came in a boxed set (w/two books and foldout map).

If you're asking about how the original creators, like David Kenzer, Brian Jelke, and Steve Johansson, came up with the idea, you should post to David's attention on our discussion forums at our website. I'm hesitant to post that since I've probably forgotten a lot, and there's probably more I don't know.

My understanding is that the setting, in many ways, fits better into a ruleset more like Harn or somesuch. If so, what are your comments on other systems that Kalamar would work well with?

Well, I don't have any personal recommendations of other game systems. Most of my personal rpg experience, aside from D&D, has been in the non-fantasy games, and those aren't really the right fit.

However, the KoK campaign setting sourcebook, even though it has the official D&D logo on the cover, can be used with almost any rules set. It's 272 pages, and only about 1%-4% of the book is rules material. The rest is all setting!

 

[Mark Plemmons]

As a linguist, I have been somewhat bothered by the question of how to pronounce all the names in the KoK campaign setting. If it were Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, I wouldn't care to much and pick whatever pronunciation suited me. However, with the pseudo-historical realism in Kalamar, I am trying to keep some consistency and a degree of uniformity for pronunciation.

It can be tricky, but I think it's one of the setting's strengths. Just like Earth, there are different languages and names for the different lands.

The KoK Atlas has a glossary/pronunciation guide (pages 161-166) for all of the major cities, lands, terrain features, etc. Still, if you have a couple you're uncertain about, just ask, and I'll try to type them out "fo-net-ih-cul-ly."

 

[Samothdm]

Basiran Dancer Schools

Okay, this may be a really dumb question 'cause I don't have my book here with me.

In Stealth & Style there is a list of alternate schools for the Basiran Dancer class aside from the default samarata school. The rules say that an "Initiate" in the school the equivalent of a 1st level Basiran Dancer, and that you have to pay a 15% penalty on your XP if you belong to one of these alternate schools.

But, then, each school has a Requirements section with skill ranks that are clearly beyond the ability of a 1st level character (max 4 ranks) to reach. So, how to you "join" one of these schools as a 1st level Basiran Dancer?

 

[Mark Plemmons]

I presume that each language has it's own name for different countries, and the "Merchant's Tongue" names on the map aren't really supposed to be directly transliterated into the alphabets in the campaign book.

Correct. They'd insert similar sounds, though. You know the Monty Python skit about the guy who couldn't say the letter "c"? He replaced it with the letter "b" until he realized he COULD say the letter "k."

To take an extreme example:

Let's say that Kuwon Yan, a foreigner from a strange land west of Brandobian Ocean, arrives and starts crafting swords that he calls "katanas." But... the Brandobian alphabet has no "K"! Also, plurality is indicated by the suffix "-on"!

So, as the word is introduced into a new language, the Brandobians might pronounce these "katanas" as "cotanon".

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Okay, this may be a really dumb question 'cause I don't have my book here with me.

In Stealth & Style there is a list of alternate schools for the Basiran Dancer class aside from the default samarata school. The rules say that an "Initiate" in the school the equivalent of a 1st level Basiran Dancer, and that you have to pay a 15% penalty on your XP if you belong to one of these alternate schools.

But, then, each school has a Requirements section with skill ranks that are clearly beyond the ability of a 1st level character (max 4 ranks) to reach. So, how to you "join" one of these schools as a 1st level Basiran Dancer?

Sorry - I don't have my book with me either. I also didn't really work on the book, except for the art. Here's how I remember it, though. Take a look and see if this makes sense.

I think you're combining two different sections. The first part was about changing to a different, more intense (hence less experience points) style after you've already followed the main style for a while. You lose the abilities your former style gave you, but you don't actually lose character levels. "Initiate" is the flavor text term for the first rank of any dancing style - it doesn't actually mean 1st-level character.

So, let's say a Basiran Dancer specialized in samarata. At 6th-level, he decides he wants to change to another style. He loses the benefits of samarata, but is still a 6th-level Basiran Dancer. However, he gains the "rank 1" abilities/powers of the new style, and other Basiran dancers consider him an "Initiate" in that new style.

At 7th-level, he'd gain the powers of "rank 2", then at 8th-level he's at "rank 3," and so on.

 

[dead]

Sagacious Emperor

I'm told Kingdoms of Kalamar does not include a map of the entire globe. Will other lands "off the map", or even the entire globe, be revealed anytime in the near future? Or, will Kalamar designers take the FR approach and just focus on the "known world" so to speak?

Thanks.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Name pronunciation has been my main hangup with Kalamar. I just can't seem to wrap my tongue around some of those names.