Recession Reviews: Kingmaker 1-3

Recession Reviews: Kingmaker 1-3

Times are hard. While the cost of a gaming book beats any trip to the theatre, our loved ones don’t gaming dollars? Who balances enough crunch with the fluff to allow the frugal GM to recycle, after all the best games are the ones you can play over and over again without losing interest.

Normally we’ll not being doing half an AP all at once, and any who wish to review something in this format should email me a request at theflyingpincushion@gmail.com

Book 1 Stolen Land:

Written by: Tim Hitchcock

Page count: 98 counting the inside covers

Throw Away pages: 21 ( forward, advertisements, and a story not directly useful to the adventure)

Golden Pages: 36 (reusable npcs, spells, reusable maps, monsters)

Cover price: $19.99

Price per page: $0.20

Modified price per page: $0.18 = Cover price/pages + golden pages – throw away pages= modified price per page

Crunch to Fluff Ratio: 4.66 to 1

Our Rating out of 10: 6.5 while you can reuse allot, this is also before allot of alternate classes and suppliments and the challenge rating system tends to undersell what a PC can do.

Description (minor spoilers): This is an exploration grind, but in the right homebrew hands much can be adapted to a fairy tale type campaign or a political campaign if you use the gazetteer on Brevoy. This was really good when it came out, it has suffered a bit with age.

Book 2 Rivers Run Red:

Written by: Rob McCreary

Page count: 98 counting the inside covers

Throw Away pages: 23 (forward, advertisements, gazetteer on a god that actually becomes less compelling as you read more about him and a story not directly useful to the adventure)

Golden Pages: 47 (reusable npcs, spells, reusable maps, monsters, extremely useful kingdom building system that while problematic provides a base foundation for several variant systems)

Cover price: $19.99

Price per page: $0.20

Modified price per page: $0.16 = Cover price/pages + golden pages – throw away pages= modified price per page

Crunch to Fluff Ratio: 4.26 to 1

Our Rating out of 10: 8 (Very reusable, more so if you check in at kingmaker forum or buy supplements to kingdom building rules.)

Description (minor spoilers): The PCs found a kingdom and face some smaller threats. The original story is ok, what DM_Dudemeister did to this is generally considered superior and rightfully so. There are problems with this, but ultimately it’s a foundation any campaign can adapt and learn from and could be a well treasured tome for the homebrewing DM. Also Trollhounds…

Book 3 The Varnhold Vanishing:

Written by: Greg A. Vaughan

Page count: 98 counting the inside covers

Throw Away pages: 29 (covers, forward, advertisements, an wasteful gazetteer on iobaria which never relates back into the story and isn’t functional enough for a DM to make relevant and a story not directly useful to the adventure)

Golden Pages: 38 (reusable npcs, spells, reusable maps, monsters, new items, extra story hooks)

Cover price: $19.99

Price per page: $0.20

Modified price per page: $0.18 = Cover price/pages + golden pages – throw away pages= modified price per page

Crunch to Fluff Ratio: 3.37 to 1

Our Rating out of 10: 5.5 Gives you a method to nerf liches, but there’s some filler here despite restricting the authors space with wasteful story pages and perhaps the least useful gazetteer I’ve come across for a campaign. There’s allot to love but its also hard to adapt and reuse, especially the generic spriggans in the beginning.

Description (minor spoilers): Our heroes sort of save an undersized colony and stop a lich. They also make friends with centaur allies. This was my favorite villain and my favorite core idea for a story. Running it changed my opinion somewhat as the story is a bit sparse and there’s tons about kingmaker that logically do not jibe. This has also aged poorly. That said by far and away my favorite villain in the AP.

Kingmaker comes with an asterisk. If you use it as an outline for a heavy homebrew and you make use of the reams of fan content on the boards it will be your best campaign. If you don’t allot will not make sense and fall flat. Great AP if you have the time to work it and are willing to color outside the lines quite a bit.