Merging Paizo's Kingmaker into an existing 4E game?

[Dannager]

Yeah, Rise of The Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne.

And Legacy of Fire, now. I've set up a new project website where I'll be consolidating all the conversions. Once I feel like I've got a decent foundation going with my work on Legacy of Fire, I'll return to the first two and finish them up (Rise of the Runelords is nearly completed).

 

[NewJeffCT]

And Legacy of Fire, now. I've set up a new project website where I'll be consolidating all the conversions. Once I feel like I've got a decent foundation going with my work on Legacy of Fire, I'll return to the first two and finish them up (Rise of the Runelords is nearly completed).

Thanks - since my group is at level 6, and will likely be around level 8 when they finish up the current adventure, I'd have to convert Kingmaker (or something else) into a higher level adventure no matter what. Big difference between kobolds against 1st level PCs as opposed to level 8 or 9 PCs.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

From what I have read, the PCs are sent to a no man's land type of area, and they can conquer it and make it their own and set up their own kingdom there and deal with threats as needed.

This is essentially the thrust of the campaign for books 1 to 4. Books 5 and 6 deal with higher level threats to that kingdom and focus the adventure in a couple of specific directions.

So, I have some questions:
1) Has anybody done similar? (run Kingmaker for 4E)

I am currently GMing Kingmaker in its native Pathfinder rules supplementing the action with Open Design's Tales of the Old Margreve (a truly brilliant piece of work) as well as recently slotting in The Haunting of Harrowstone as a significant directed side-adventure. I have reduced the campaign XP track to "slow" so as to fit in the extra material as well as give the feeling of years (and even a generation or two) passing by as the full campaign arc develops.

2) How do you like Kingmaker overall (even if running PF or another system)

It is a lot of fun, most likely the best adventure path to be produced (the first module won an Ennie last year) and has all the makings of "classic" written all over it. Highly recommended! The thing is, half of my players are natural sandbox style players while the others are better when they have a solid path to follow. As such, I have mixed it up so that everyone is getting their gaming fix.

3) Is Kingmaker something I can easily merge into an existing game, even if it is 4E? I know I'll have to change the encounters around to make them suitable for 4E, but I'd have to tweak any standard module anyways, as I have a large gaming group.

Kingmaker is by it's very nature a simple idea that is easily merged (or perhaps more to the point, it is easy to drop ideas into it). There are two sets of rules that will exist outside of the running system: the Kingdom making rules (book 2)and the Mass Combat rules (book 4). Importantly, I think an adventurous 4e DM could fix some interesting skill challenges to these and really ramp the concept up to it's fullest. I think this aspect would be quite exciting. However, I think you will have a significant job with crafting encounters (more of this next point).

4) Would I be able to start with Kingmaker 1 and just up the encounter difficulty? Or, should I set some things up in game and start them off with (for example) Kingmaker 3?

I think you are going to have a handful of difficult choices here. Kingmaker 1 does presume an entry-level party. However, it would be quite easy to have this "no-man's land" be significantly more dangerous. In module 1, the central threat is a group of bandits that the party must deal with as well as the general exploration and mapping of the area. The sandbox nature means that upping the incidental and set hex-based encounters is very easy. However, what is a little trickier is working out where all of this is going to go. If the party have had a fairly quick path up to 6th (and soon to be 8th level), then stepping into Kingmaker is going to be noticeably slower. Time will go by exploring. Months of downtime as the Kingdom develops is going to be very strange if the players and their characters have the mentality of "let's go adventuring instead of waiting". If levels 1 to 8 have happened in a number of months (or possibly even weeks!), this is going to be a pretty jarring transition and is certainly something to be aware of otherwise. Obviously you can do this. In addition, you can hoist a whole heap of threads from their previous adventure into the "Stolen Lands" area (what you would need to do levels 7 and 8). Is this the "best" way to do Kingmaker? Maybe not but I'm sure it would still be good.

I think starting at Module 3 would be a poorer option and the campaign would lose a little of its exploration gloss. Carving out chunks of an AP really does leave a few holes in the overall story and achievement that the first two modules provide.

5) Any other suggestions? Am I crazy to consider doing this? The game is at the point where I'd like to get some sort of unifying campaign idea together.

You are not crazy for attempting this and I am sure you would have a heap of fun converting it over as well as putting your own stamp on it.

However, I have an alternative idea that may be OK (or not but heh...).

Could you possibly start up a new second party of PCs for your player's starting at 1st level, playing through modules 1 and 2, with the aim of getting these additional PCs roughly in line with the first party? Then, each player has two PCs to run, two PCs that can take different roles with the kingdom. You can then have missions where the players choose one PC (and then the other for the next "mission") to go out on whatever the task happens to be. I think this might be an interesting way of having enough PCs to run their new kingdom as well as have others that can go out adventuring.

The other idea is just to bite the bullet and reset with new PCs from the start and try to more naturally follow the Kingmaker AP. That way, conversion will be easier, the various stories and threads within the campaign would still be applicable and you will have a lot more resources on the net (both Paizo's Kingmaker forum and various Kingmaker podcasts) that will feel relevant rather than not applicable or useful. While I think that Kingmaker would be relatively easy and fun to convert, complicating it by starting at higher level might just take a little of the fun and shine off.

What I thoroughly suggest though is listening to episodes 8 and 12 of the Pathfinder Chronicles podcast here. They are a couple of hours each with the primary focus being Kingmaker modules 1 and 2 respectively. While it is Pathfinder-based, the advice is brilliant, the coverage deep and the fun bountiful. They talk with the module authors about each module and then talk amongst themselves what they like and dislike, what they would change and what really works. Easily the best gaming podcast I listen to (and I listen to quite a few).

The Kingmaker forum is excellent and I can see you have already found it (currently at 13,281 posts in 780 threads - that really is hugely significant).

[Alternatively, you could run it in it's native Pathfinder rules (our group plays both 4e and Pathfinder) and have an absolute hoot too]
Whichever way, I think it is definitely worth having a look at.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[NewJeffCT]

Thanks for the excellent & lengthy response Herremann.

Also, I may be able to bring the PCs to a point after the current adventure arc ends in game where they have a chance to save a no man's land area that has a small hamlet & a nearby fort. That could be the region they "take over" to run.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Thanks for the excellent & lengthy response Herremann.

No problem - I'm in the thick of Kingmaker at the moment and this is what the forums are all about - hope the advice helps.

Also, I may be able to bring the PCs to a point after the current adventure arc ends in game where they have a chance to save a no man's land area that has a small hamlet & a nearby fort. That could be the region they "take over" to run.

Sounds interesting, but if you expand on this in a little more detail, I could give further advice.

Having said that, If I soften my "don't start at module 3 stance"; I think one of the important features to try and take from modules 1 and 2 is the sense of achievement of civilizing an abandoned and treacherous land. In terms of the Kingdom building rules, I have found the best way of doing it is to have each player become the lord of their own township or area that they help create and populate from wilderness into a village into a small town. If those areas mean something to the players or are significant to them based on actual adventuring (not just being an allotted division of land), then the second half of the path will work very well - otherwise things may fall a little flat. You really need to focus on that civilisation process.

Starting at module three with some build-up (I would begin this build-up ASAP from 6th level) will just take a little work. I think you will need the whole path 1 to 6 to transition it to your campaign and make sure all the driving elements are there. If you get the PDF's, then you can copy maps and illustrations, printing them out as handouts etc. for the group.

Anyway, look forward to hearing a few more details.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[S'mon]

Re Kingmaker-1, I'm still not sure it slots in 'generically' very easily, I guess the "PC Kingdom" Brevoy to the north can be replaced, but you also have the offstage Bandit Kingdom that needs an analogue. Also the topography seems quite 'unusual', as Neonchameleon has indicated. And the map is oriented with the PCs coming from the north & heading south.

Assuming those can be dealt with, it looks like a fun adventure to me - and I think its conquer-the-wilderness theme might actually work BETTER at higher level; 6th-8th in 4e looks fine to me. I had some issues with the statting, something I've often seen in very low level adventures. Characters that would more plausibly be statted at 8th level are statted at 3rd so that low level PCs can fight them. In particular, as written the Horned Lord Bandit chief seems very anticlimactic to me, but he'd work very well as a 4e 8th level Elite. And you could give him a decent sized bandit gang with hordes of Human Thug minion-7s or similar.

 

[Ferrety]

I've been running Kingmaker using 4e. So whats it worth:

I'd start with the first adventure, especially if you are interested in hexcrawling. Level eight might feel a tad too high, and you could mix encounters from the second adventure. Especially the kobold clan might be off for late heroic (I ran them as a clan of hundreds, with core of seasoned kobold warriors). On the other hand, the main enemies, bandits, could work better on late heroic than early. In my game, characters kept wondering how come bandits were such a threat for Brevoy.

I think that my biggest change was on wandering monsters. I created few connected encounters for each area (the forest, norther plains, southern and eastern hills) and had an random chance of them occurring while characters were on the area. Sort of trying to have more than one encounter per day. Interestingly, after few sessions my players wanted to limit long rests while hexcrawling wilderness, so we house ruled that characters are "tired enough" to have long rest only after two milestones (or in a proper bed).

Don't see why you could not use Brevoy (and surrounding nations) as written, with some 4e sprinkled in, if you so wish (I changed churches). You could easily start the campaign in your current area, with pages announcing that (distant) swordlords of Brevoy are offering charter to bandit infested area of Greenbelt.

As for Kingmaker overall, for me it reads better than plays. Especially after stripping Pathfinder stats, I felt that there really was not that much. I am not saying that Kingmaker is bad, but in my opinion, if you are mainly interested in having material for your game, it does not give enough bang for the buck. But if you want to try sandboxy hexcrawling, then you could do worse than the first (two) adventure(s).

The AP has an overreaching story from part 1 to 6, as they tend to have, but the encounters are disconnected, and the story does not feel that engaging. The hex and encounter maps are mostly nice, but I am not sure if they are worth the price of the full AP. The additional rules for kingdom are OK, but you really need to have player buy-in to use them, as building the kingdom can get tedious.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Thanks - so, I have one vote for easy to merge and one vote for not easy to merge.

What was bad about #5?

The implementation. A log-chopping contest based on how many logs with DR x, hp y you could cut through in a minute? The almost as bad dice rolling fest that is the archery competition? The slightly silly Bardic contest? The Joust - NPC vs NPC combat at its finest? And then the army vs army thing which by eye appears to really not work. Without those bits it's a less inspired version of one of the earlier modules.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Re Kingmaker-1, I'm still not sure it slots in 'generically' very easily, I guess the "PC Kingdom" Brevoy to the north can be replaced, but you also have the offstage Bandit Kingdom that needs an analogue. Also the topography seems quite 'unusual', as Neonchameleon has indicated. And the map is oriented with the PCs coming from the north & heading south.

I don't think it seems all that unusual, other than the mistake of the river running uphill... plains, hills, rivers, forest?

Maybe I missed something.

Plus, there are higher level bandits/humans within adventure tools as well.

 

[Dannager]

The implementation. A log-chopping contest based on how many logs with DR x, hp y you could cut through in a minute? The almost as bad dice rolling fest that is the archery competition? The slightly silly Bardic contest? The Joust - NPC vs NPC combat at its finest? And then the army vs army thing which by eye appears to really not work. Without those bits it's a less inspired version of one of the earlier modules.

I haven't actually looked at these events in the original adventure at all, so it's possible I have no idea what I'm talking about, but these sorts of contests strike me as excellent material to convert into skill challenges, which means you can ignore the convoluted/boring/time-consuming mechanical implementations they have in the original adventure.