Review – Kingmaker, Volume 2: Rivers Run Red

The second installment of Paizo’s Kingmaker adventure path gets to the heart of the campaign: kingdom-building. The PCs found their fledgling nation and begin to build it up; at the same time, they continue to explore the Stolen Lands and confront its many obstacles.

This review is really two in one: a look at the adventure (and supplementary material) and a look at the kingdom and city building rules that complement the adventure path. I’ll discuss each in turn below.

Note that I have not played through the adventure, although I have made some “practice runs” with the kingdom rules.

Please refer to the first review in this series (here) for more overall impressions of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths in general and the arc of this one.

The Physical Product

As with the first volume, the book itself is very nice: a 96 page perfect-bound softback (4 pages of advertisements) with glossy pages and full-color artwork throughout. Most of the major NPCs get a picture to show the players. The inside covers are even utilized nicely as “quest” descriptions (see below).

Unfortunately, also as with the first volume, there are a reasonable number of typos and grammatical errors, as well as some minor mistakes on the maps. Nothing show-stopping, but frustrating nonetheless to a nitpicker like me.

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Paizo’s newest adventure path is a marked departure from their earlier efforts. Previous paths have had six closely linked adventures with a more or less linear plot leading PCs from 1st to 15th (or so) level, where they then meet and (we hope) defeat the evil mastermind behind the vast majority of the trouble they have faced. The key point is that these followed a more or less fixed story: the PCs’ actions did not significantly affect future episodes, or even really the order in which they experienced the story elements.

Kingmaker instead follows the recent vogue in “sandbox” adventures, where PCs have more or less free reign to go in whatever direction they would like. Overarching stories recede into the background, although certainly some of the encounters build upon each other, and the adventure does have a conclusion.

The particular conceit of Kingmaker is that the PCs get the opportunity to explore new territory (known as “hexcrawling” to the grognards) and to found their own kingdom there. They must first clear out the existing inhabitants and then protect their domain from the depredations of their neighbors and other supernatural threats.

As a result, this adventure path has a very different feel from others. Rather than a rapid-fire and world-shattering sequence of events that move inexorably to a climax, the players have the luxury of time to build up their kingdom and play both politics and architect (through a novel city-building minigame). They can, in many cases, meander through the encounters at their own pace.

The introductory adventure, taking characters from 1st to 4th level, sets the stage for by sending the PCs to explore the “Stolen Land,” where their kingdom will eventually be centered.

I have not played this adventure through, so you can regard this as a “reading” review. That said, there are a lot of us out there who buy adventures to read or plunder for ideas!

The Physical Product

The book itself is very nice: a 96 page perfect-bound softback (4 pages of advertisements) with glossy pages and full-color artwork throughout. Most of the major NPCs get a picture to show the players. The inside covers are even utilized nicely as “quest” descriptions (see below). The pdf is bookmarked and equally nice – though being full color it is not at all printer-friendly!

Unfortunately, there are a number of typos and grammatical errors, as well as some minor mistakes on the maps. With a company as large as Paizo, I do expect such things to be corrected, but I guess it is a casualty of their intense production schedule.

The Adventure

WARNING: Some spoilers ahead – players stay away! I’ll confine the spoilers to this section.

The adventure path gets going with “Stolen Land.” The PCs are hired by the Swordlords of Restov – power brokers in the nearby kingdom of Brevoy – to explore the so-called Stolen Lands to their south (this occurs before the adventure begins).

The PCs arrive at Oleg’s trading post at the edge of the wilderness, which is set up as a convenient home base for subsequent exploration. They discover that Oleg is beset by bandits, and the opening encounter lets them chase off the bandit tribute collectors. Conveniently, the PCs ..read more

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The GameMastery Face Cards Enemy deck is the latest in Paizo’s line of playing card-sized play aids. They are designed to be handed out by GMs to give their players a face to put to the names of major NPCs. Most of the faces come from Paizo’s previous adventure paths and thus are perfectly suited for GMs running one of the adventure paths. For example, King Mokknock, from The Howl of the Carrion King, portrait appears on one of the cards. However, the images are generic enough that almost anyone will find a use for most of the enemies pictured. Also, while most of the faces definitely look somewhat sinister, enough of them are relatively friendly and so aren’t going to be a dead giveaway when introduced before the big reveal.

Like most of the other cards I own, the art on these is quite good although a bit more variable in style since they images are drawn from various products. All of them look good, although the pieces by Kevin Yan and Eva Widermann are probably the best in my opinion.

Unfortunately the quality of the card stock the cards are printed on is noticeably worse than the other GameMastery card sets I own. Specifically, the card stock feels slightly lighter, causing the cards to cup slightly, straight out of the pack. The finish on them is also less glossy than other sets, and the color is “chipping” (for lack of a better term) all along the edges of the card – tiny white spots are visible all along the edges. This last bit isn’t really a problem except that these are first cards where I’ve seen it happened. As a whole, the quality issues aren’t terrible but compared to other sets, it’s clear that these are a step down in value.

The Verdict

The Enemy card set is a highly usable accessory if you like using handouts at the table and, in my experience, add a lot to a game since players get a visual hook to associate with your NPCs – the results are much more memorable and meaningful relationships in game.* The quality issues are a shame since they detract from what I would think is a great product, but one which is minor enough to not be a deal breaker.

* The trick to getting the most out of these is to put them in a clear card protector sleeve and provide the players a piece of paper cut to fit the sleeve as well to write notes.

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Another couple weeks, another Paizo review. Yeah, I know I’ve had quite a few reviews for Paizo stuff lately but that’s because I am using a couple of their adventure paths as the basis of ongoing 4E campaigns, plus to be frank, I find a lot of their products really interesting to read and thus it’s easy to write reviews on them. Today’s review is the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting. Here is how Paizo describes the book:

Golarion, the exciting world of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths and Pathfinder Modules, comes alive in this massive 256-page full-color hardcover tome primed up and ready to go for your new campaign! Detailed sections on more than 40 nations—from the frontiers of Varisia to the devil-tainted cities of Cheliax to the frigid Hold of the Mammoth Lords—provide a full picture of the world of the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting, with new rules, new magic and spells, detailed descriptions of more than twenty gods and their religions, and a gorgeous poster map detailing the entire campaign setting. The Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting provides classic adventuring style and cutting-edge game design perfectly suitable for the world’s most popular roleplaying game!

The Physical Book

The Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting is a 256-page, hard cover book that retails for $49.99. The book is full-color, printed on nice quality paper. It also includes a full-color, fold out map of the world of Golarion, which is very attractive and well-done. I personally find the map’s cartography much more attractive than those put out in recent (and even not-so-recent) settings from WotC.

Let’s start off by talking about the artwork: It’s almost universally good and quite evocative. Some of it is reused from previous Pathfinder releases but this is part & parcel for RPG books nowadays. The weakest piece in my opinion is the cover, is actually a very good piece by Wayne Reynolds, but which, for some reason, has a blue-green tint to much of it making it giving it a muddy appearance.

In terms of layout, the book is fairly nice, with wide margins and a logical layout: Most topics get a two-page spread which encompasses the left & right side of the book when it’s opened. This makes is pretty easy to read through a particular entry without a lot of page flipping. Artwork is tastefully & usually appropriately placed so that it accents the text or provides a visual to some point raised on the page. Unfortunately the two-pages per topic format appears to have caused a few issues in word spacing because in places the justification is pretty bad with either too many words crammed on to a line (leaving almost no space between words) or too few spread out across a single line resulting in the typical “full justification” gaff you on older word processing programs. There are also some typos and other errors, but they’re fairly minor considering the size and scope of the book.

My other minor gripe about the book’s layout is the choice of fonts for the page headings: It is terrible. It is some sort of stylized calligraphy font which is hard to read, especially when it’s bold-faced like Paizo used in the main page heading: K’s and H’s are almost indistinguishable and some of the letter’s serifs run in to each other leading to a font that gives me a headache to read. Luckily the font chosen for the main text is a much more readable serif type face.

The book is accompanied by a full-color poster map that is beautiful and ..read more

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