d20radio.com

Hi All,

Quick recap. I'm running a Kingmaker game, but didn't listen to the podcast or watch your game beforehand. Its just my wife and I (teaching her the joys of a game she thought she would never play). ANYWAY, we are having crazy amounts of fun but only just finishing book two after playing since Feb.

Question: Do you find that, in a sandbox like this, that you vear off the path of the book into something you didn't expect or do you stick to the books?

For us, its been great to let the story drive to new vistas. Love to hear your thoughts.

_________________
Saint Mac: Patron Saint of Crit Misses and Host of The Bloodied Bard Podcast

In a world full of people only some what to fly, isn't that crazy? (Seal)

In my game we've stayed fairly close to the "approved" storyline, although perhaps not in the order the AP creators envisioned it. There have been a few extra storylines, but nothing major to date.

I think that Azmyth's campaign has had some more stuff happen generally that wasn't in the written adventures.

In the Kingmaker game we're playing the off story parts have almost exclusive been to develop individual characters stories which can sometimes be neglected if you stick too closely to the main story.

I'd say about 80% true to the modules with 20% side stuff for flavour, we also dropped the empire management part of it somewhere between ch3 and 4 where you basically can't fail rolls and the group wasn't really getting much enjoyment from the time spent doing it. I mean its cool at the start but once your setup its a clunky thing to keep track of.

I had a simular experience with the kingdom build...of course, I ended up not watching out for the drawbacks and broke it. lol Playing by the seat of my pants and letting things go this way and that has something to offer that isn't always thought about. The character developement is amazing. This AP gives players time to do some really cool things from taking time to craft or gamble at a tavern or try their hand at relationships or some buisness.


I have to say, that the hexplore brought back found memories of that first D&D boxset I had as a kid and the adventures we built. Maybe that's why I like this style of AP *shrug*.

Anyway, its cool to hear how people are using this or that part or even playing it to the letter. That says a lot. Think this is a great intro to sandbox play to a player or group that has never done one. Kudos to them, eh?

_________________
Saint Mac: Patron Saint of Crit Misses and Host of The Bloodied Bard Podcast

In a world full of people only some what to fly, isn't that crazy? (Seal)

I'm just starting my Kingmaker Game next Tuesday, something I've been looking for ward to for the last two plus years while I've been all but living in the hospital or rehab center (I was in a tremendous car accident that left me partially paralyzed after being hit by a drunk driver) and while I don't have any stories about how it worked... I can say that as I've been setting up for it, following Az's advise in making sure that I had the deep background (the political infighting in Brevoy), I've already seen about a dozen different places where I am going to have to be ready to tangent (briefly hopefully) off and back in because of the way my group plays.

Sandboxes are rife with that kind of thing. They are sandboxes after all. The AP is VERY player driven... so unless all your players refuse to drive, you are going to be all over the road as the steering wheel gets wrenched around. (Hmm, that is an uncomfortable simile for me...maybe I'll have to try to minimize that after all.)


Isshia

Given I am running this with a single player, most of my pre-game time is reviewing my DM notes (50 odd pages at this point). Given the solo situation, I'm up to 24 NPC that interact with the player. Its a ton of work, but I"m learning a lot.

Now, throw in the sandbox aspect of this game and it can get hairy. What I ended up doing was taking the most basic aspects of each book and make that the skeleton of the game. Having this skeleton story in place, the gaps or the meat of it fills in naturally. Its pretty cool. I doubt I could do NEARLY as much if I had a group of more than 3.

So yah, its pretty neat situation to play through.

_________________
Saint Mac: Patron Saint of Crit Misses and Host of The Bloodied Bard Podcast

In a world full of people only some what to fly, isn't that crazy? (Seal)

I did a campaign like that, partly Homebrewed although once the Planes opened up alot of the latter adventures took place in Sigil, various locales in Oerth and Faerun and even Gygax's last campaign world in the Dangerous Journey's setting. My wife was playing in another game I DMed as well, but since she was a RP junkie (sometimes being a pusher can be an ok thing ) I also did a 23 level long campaign that took us four years to play through on the side.

I began to wonder about just turning it in to book, since there were, after four years, literally five note book of notes pluses over 100 personality NPCs she had dealt with to one extent or another and gods alone know how many stock NPCs with throw together personalities to add to that...call it fourteen, maybe fifteen hundred pages all totaled. Detailed, complex, convoluted and terribly involved and interwoven by the end in a manner you can never manage for a group. But then, reading through it afterwards, I discovered too much of us had leaked in and that it was likely to pornographic for publication. After all, not all RP needs dice.


Isshia