After Action Report

Last night we had the chance to try a new module: Kingmaker v1 from Paizo.

First impressions:
One word - Sandbox. I know Paizo was striving for something completely different by allowing a completely free-form adventure where the players aren't railroaded into a single chain of events. This is a bit of a misnomer as they actually ARE railroaded into the over-arcing path, but they are free to put the pieces together as they want.

On the good side this gives your players a lot of freedom. That's a plus right? They have the illusion of control. Quests are doled out from rumors or wanted posters at your leisure with separate rewards listed for each one and they have plenty of random events to explore and flesh out.

Some players may find the grid by grid exploration (one of the larger goals of episode 1) a bit tedious, but as long as you can drop some descriptive text and space out the random encounters you should be able to keep them interested.

The downside to all this "control" is two-fold. As a player, especially those used to modules/set play, the free form may confuse or lose them. Also, it can drive them into the final part of the adventure fairly early if they are stubborn. This puts them way out of their league. Quickly.

As a DM the downside to this was not immediately apparent to me. Since the players are free to explore the 30+ encounters almost at their whim you have to be very familiar with the entire adventure to keep the game running smoothly. I would suggest pre-planning the 'random' events and then set yourself to guessing as best you can to the general direction of the PCs path to smooth everything out.

Content-wise the adventure is solid. It's a fairly straightforward "kill the badguys and move on to volume two" fair. There is ample opportunity to flavor the numerous NPCs as they are introduced.

Overall i'd rate it a solid B+ on the initial encounter and set up. Next week we are trying the first opportunity for exploration and i'm hoping the group enjoys it.

Outsourcing: Justified

As a side effect of being the chronic DM of the groups I travel between, I find myself constantly trying to "outsource" material to include in my games. I don't want to make it sound like my games become episode of the week, but I think that DMs do benefit from an incredible library to pull from in the form of popular entertainment.

This week i'd like to take a look at FX's new series Justified. I think this has a lot of interesting potential for a modern game of any genre.

Setting: If you're setting is/requires a rural locale, these episodes give you a great close-up of the scenery. From seedy motels with buzzing, flickering neon and tacky carpet to Boyd's church on the edge of town with rotting boards and cobbled together interiors, a few lifted details from one of these episodes can intensify any description.

Characters: The show is still developing a lot of the secondary characters, but Waylan or Boyd could both be dropped into any campaign as ready made villains/antiheroes. Need a stone-cold killer or iron-handed peacekeeper? Just watch a single 'showdown' scene with Waylan (the opening of the pilot is a great example for persons not wanting to invest in the series). Boyd could easily serve as a psychopathic killer. Obviously you can magnify these traits or combine them with another element of your setting to suit your needs - I'm personally thinking of Boyd as a backwater preacher serving the Old Ones, gifted once or twice in their graces.

Theme: Instead of listing all the episodes and how you can pull out their story elements, i'll try and keep this brief - Long in the Tooth [s1e4] shows how to pace a chase session. You could put your PCs on either side - fugitives trying to escape detection from the authorities or law enforcement hunting a rabbit heading down the hole.

Hope this helps. I'll start to flesh out more of these in the future for you.