How I’ll be running Kingmaker

So, I’m preparing to leave for Spokane this week. I’ve gotten a group set up in Spokane, ready to go. All it needs now is my physical presence.

The group will consist of my wife, an old friend and his wife, another old friend, and possibly a friend of the second old friend.

I’ll be running Pathfinder’s Kingmaker Adventure Path, and I’m looking forward to it.

Instead of the standard Hexmap used to explore the Riverlands, however, I’ll be using Heroscape tiles. This will give a good 3D representation on the board, and will be kind of like building a puzzle. I’ll allow the players to place the tiles as they explore them, using different colors to represent different types of terrain. Not sure how I’ll implement rivers, as the water tiles will be way to huge for that. We’ll have to see. To the right, you can see how someone has implemented the tiles to make a map of the US. I’ll be doing something similar, but with elves.

In addition, I’ll need materials to represent different locations. I can do this a few different ways.

I own Civilization, which has lots of little pieces representing cities and settlements. I can paint those up, and sticky tack those onto the board so they’re permenantly fixed.

In addition, I plan on picking these up from Ebay. This’ll give me some smaller locations for the houses, and larger ones for the castles.

Finally, I plan on having the outpost the players start as an actual castle, rather than a wooden fort. The idea is that it was a castle outpost built to defend the riverlands, but was soon abandoned until Oleg showed up and took over. I want to pick up one of these castles, but still not sure which. They’re fairly inexpensive, but the shipping’s rough on them, since they’re coming from Russia. This one in particular appeals to me.

And that’s my plan for the setup! I’ll be getting the players together once I’m in town to plot out how they know one another, or even if they do, and we’ll begin!

5 Comments

Lowell Francis
May 21, 2012

OK- that sounds awesome. I know the original Mighty Empires from GW had some neat scenic pieces that might work with that, although I think the more recent version had everything hot molded onto the hexes.
Mark
May 21, 2012

I would love to use the new Mighty Empires, but they’re so expensive! To create the whole map, I’d need about 3-4 sets, which are each $50.
Lowell Francis
May 21, 2012

Yes, they’re lovely but hideously pricey. I wish you could still get the old ME plastics and metals: bridges, towns, cities, wizard towers, fortresses…they were nice.
Snarls-at-Fleas
May 21, 2012

Why by castles from Russia if it’s expensive? They don’t look like Russian castles at all and besides are smallish, not for usual 1inch base minis.
Snarls-at-Fleas´s last [type] ..Dropkick Murphys – Going Out In Style (Uncensored)
Sabrael D. Carroll
May 21, 2012

Ah HeroScape, the very reason all of my games are hex instead of grid, just because I have them, and they allow for interesting terrain and inclusion of elevation. The use of Disney pieces would probably do well. If you get a marker that can easily be wiped off the plastic, you could always draw on rivers where pieces interlock.
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