Recommend an adventure path

[IronWolf]

BTW, I see that you want to use this for 4e, whereas I really don't know how exactly the new mechanisms in Kingmaker work. So maybe someone who has it, could help both of us:
Could you give a short description of how they look like? Are they system-interchangeable (maybe more like a subsystem/minigame), or rather specific? I've heard about the exploration, and management parts - are there more?

There is an exploration subsystem, kingdom building and eventually mass combat rules added into the Kingmaker AP. Exploration and Kingdom building are more like a mini-game and can stand apart from the system used to run the game in (i.e. pathfinder, 3.x or 4e). I am pretty sure Mass Combat could too, as it is sort of its own system in itself for easy mass combat resolution.

 

[Retreater]

Chalk me up as one "against" the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I'm midway through DMing the 4th adventure, and it's mostly fallen flat for my group.

Here's a few issues we've had with it.

1) If everyone doesn't get into the kingdom building aspect, you're going to have several players sitting around for an hour or so of each session doing nothing but being bored. (Unless this is all handled via email, but that's been hard for us to coordinate.)

2) Based on the first mass combat battle featured, the mass combat system so far has been a little "wonky." The party easily overpowered their rival army.

3) If a player becomes the ruler, that person can bully around the other party members. More of an interpersonal issue, but it's still there.

4) It's been very difficult to build up the kingdom, particularly to get Build Points. Every turn (which takes about 15 minutes) nets about 5 Build Points. (It takes something like 10 to build one section of city wall.) Therefore the kingdom building aspect is very slow and tedious.

5) Be prepared to have your kingdom information on a spreadsheet. It turns into an accounting exercise very quickly due to all of the different modifiers. (You'll be making what amounts to DC 100 checks regularly later on in the Path. So if you can imagine tracking all of your modfiers - it gets a little crazy.)

6) Concerning the adventures themselves, I've found them to be of average quality at best. A general comment is that they're not adequately challenging. Meaning that you can be 1st level and run into 1d4 trolls or 11th and have fights with CR 2 bullywugs (okay, boggards). The overall feel is of a bunch of disconcected, one or two room adventure sights (most of which aren't mapped).

I'll delve into each of them a little.

Beware the SPOILERS from here to the end!!!

i.) The Stolen Lands: This adventure is good. The PCs take down a bandit lord and his minions. A few of the other adventure sites are event connected to the main theme of the adventure. (For example, there is an undead creature that had been wronged by the bandit lord; there is a subgroup of bandits that can be turned against the bandit lord; there is a frontier keep under attack from the bandits.) This one started the Path off with a bang and persuaded me to start the series.

ii.) Rivers Run Red: This adventure is disappointing. It is a level grinder of an adventure. Basically, these are just a bunch of unconnected adventure sites with no unifying theme. You fight a giant owlbear, a troll encampment, and do some errands for a couple of fey creatures in the woods. The point of this one is to build up your characters' levels and to start building your kingdom.

iii.) The Varnhold Vanishing: This is the first in the series that actually feels like a real adventure. There is a clear goal: investigate the disappearance of the citizenry of Varnhold. There is a clear villain: a lich that wants to dominate the countryside. There is a sizable dungeon to explore: the lich's tower. This one is okay, except that the lich can easily mop the floor with an inexperienced party (or one that doesn't know what they're getting into). I had to drop a lot of clues before they faced him to avoid a TPK. Overall, a harrowing combat.

iv.) Blood for Blood: This is the one I'm currently running. The party is attacked by a rival nation and gets intel to sneak into the rival baron's palace and kill him. On the way there, the party is harrassed by pushover encounters with monsters that can't touch their ACs. When they enter the palace, every encounter is a joke of a single NPC waiting to get murdered. (Or, at least, that's how it's written. A well-written adventure would give the DM a few sample combats and situations where the NPCs would work together; however most of the NPCs aren't trusting each other and would likely not band together anyway.) After that, there's a dungeon crawl to find and kill a barbarian leader who has kidnapped a few of the rival town's fair maidens.

v.) War of the River Kings: While I haven't run this one yet, it seems more or less a repeat of Adventure 4. The party is invited to a suspicious celebration held by a rival king. This will probably take some railroading to get the group started. Once they're at the celebration, there are some interesting mini-games involving a poetry slam, jousting, and log chopping. Once that's over, the PCs find out their kingdom has been attacked in their absence and they have to again sneak into a rival kingdom, breach the palace walls, and assassinate a rival ruler. Here the challenges are a little more varied and interesting - partially because the NPCs are working together and have strategies in the adventure. Overall, it seems like a rewrite of Adventure 4 that has been improved. However, coming right on the heels of such a similar adventure, it feels a little redundant.

vi.) Sound of a Thousand Screams: This is the unnecessary capstone to the Adventure Path. The group has probably had no clues that an evil, otherworldy force was behind everything. Apparently, a crazed nymph was behind everything that happened. She wants to run civilization out of her lands, and that means eradicating the PCs. While this one sounds interesting, they have really upped the difficulty. There are creatures that attack that have something like DR 20/vorpal, so the characters are pretty helpless - yet they must be killed to advance the story. Then the final villain has an obscene AC (I think it's 51) that no PC can have a decent chance to hit (I've looked ahead and done the math just to be sure that my group will have no chance to beat her). Given the entirety of the module, it seems that the writer just came up with the toughest encounters imaginable and said "ha! let's see somebody beat that!" It's as if they never intended anyone to actually play it. It reads more like Killer DM porn than a playable adventure.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Retreater

 

[Gundark]

Chalk me up as one "against" the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I'm midway through DMing the 4th adventure, and it's mostly fallen flat for my group.

Here's a few issues we've had with it. [SNIP]

Thanks for the review Retreater. Exactly what I was looking for. I'm not so sure my group would get into the whole kingdom building aspect either. I find that most people go Paizo APs = AWESOME. Without being actually critical of it. Which is why I didn't post this on the Paizo boards. I got sucked into playing the Age of Worms because all the forums could say was how good it was, when IMHO it was a very poor AP.

That said, Curse of the Crimson throne was much better.

 

[Festivus]

I don't know if you could still get it, but I *really* enjoyed the story in Age of Worms from a DMing aspect. There were some balance issues with 3.5 and higher levels (partly my fault for not restricting spats and letting magic get a little overpowered), but the underlying plot is pretty good. Plus, the kick off adventure (Whispering Cairn) in Dungeon 124 includes a great location to start the story.

I am considering running at least the first adventure again, this time in 4e with essentials because it was that much fun the first time around (I would run it for totally different players mind you)

 

[IronWolf]

Chalk me up as one "against" the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I'm midway through DMing the 4th adventure, and it's mostly fallen flat for my group.

I think an APs success can easily vary from group to group as some of them fit more to one group's tastes and style than another. I think it is a large contributing factor to why you'll see one person raving about a particular AP and another person saying it is the worst AP ever. Group styles differ so what works well for one group can work poorly for another.

I think your post was a great review with thought in it, so please don't take my replies as trying to change your mind, just as providing another viewpoint or how we have or plan on handling some of the issues you've mentioned. (note: you are much further along than the group I am running, so bear that in mind as well).

1) If everyone doesn't get into the kingdom building aspect, you're going to have several players sitting around for an hour or so of each session doing nothing but being bored. (Unless this is all handled via email, but that's been hard for us to coordinate.)

I let my group know up front that the campaign including a large kingdom building mechanic and had buy-in before starting the campaign.

If everyone ends up enjoying the kingdom building, then no problems. If we get a half and half mix, we will use our group's message boards to handle kingdom building between sessions. Our message boards are well established and see active participation between sessions, so I don't see any issues with this option for our group. If no one likes the kingdom building aspect then we implement the kingdom building in the background method mentioned in the AP.

2) Based on the first mass combat battle featured, the mass combat system so far has been a little "wonky." The party easily overpowered their rival army.

I still need to study this closer. As we draw nearer to it, I have considered using the Warpath rules to add some depth to this element. I will decide as we draw closer to this phase in our group.

3) If a player becomes the ruler, that person can bully around the other party members. More of an interpersonal issue, but it's still there.

I don't see this as being a problem in our group. Certainly a possibility in other groups though. We'll see as they get established.

4) It's been very difficult to build up the kingdom, particularly to get Build Points. Every turn (which takes about 15 minutes) nets about 5 Build Points. (It takes something like 10 to build one section of city wall.) Therefore the kingdom building aspect is very slow and tedious.

I have heard that managing the kingdom is a fair amount of work. I suspect we will be using the 'do most of the kingdom building between sessions' option I mentioned above, so I don't suspect it will impact our face to face play time much and be done over the course of a week.

5) Be prepared to have your kingdom information on a spreadsheet. It turns into an accounting exercise very quickly due to all of the different modifiers. (You'll be making what amounts to DC 100 checks regularly later on in the Path. So if you can imagine tracking all of your modfiers - it gets a little crazy.)

Definitely planning on using one of the available kingdom building spreadsheets from the Paizo forums to make this easier to track.

6) Concerning the adventures themselves, I've found them to be of average quality at best. A general comment is that they're not adequately challenging. Meaning that you can be 1st level and run into 1d4 trolls or 11th and have fights with CR 2 bullywugs (okay, boggards). The overall feel is of a bunch of disconcected, one or two room adventure sights (most of which aren't mapped).

At the early stages I have been fine with the quality, though I do intend to add a bit more depth as we roll forward to keep things tied together and add to the feel of the world.

I don't have problems with the mis-matched encounter levels one can find. It is during the exploration phases this happens and it stands to reason that one won't always be running into the encounters of appropriate level when exploring. Many folks also just leave tracks of some big critter that is overpowered to show that one is about, but not actually throw it at the party to help with this.

I know this style does not match everyone though. I've seen the heated debates on whether a DM should ever throw something the party should run from instead of fight or not. I usually fall into that being fair game, but I know many do not like that approach. If you (or your group) fall into that latter group then I can see why the overpowered random encounters are off-putting.

Again, I am not trying to change you mind - not all APs work for all groups due to differing playstyles. I just wanted to provide another perspective for those reading. What works for my group certainly may not work for someone else - true for most of the advice on these boards.