Our Kingmaker campaign has kicked off with some excitement, our first session will be posted this coming Friday. All but one of the players were available (with George subbing in), so we had a full group of characters. Per the start, the adventure begins with the characters responding to a call for Heroes, adventurers willing to go into the Stolen Lands and settle the territory. Most of the session was roleplaying, with the group dealing with a meet and greet over an extended dinner. Surprisingly, our typically combat focused group actually did pretty good with this challenge with several of the players surprising me with their approaches and thoughts. Several allies were found, and a lot of the background situation filled in, before the dinner ended and the group headed off to sleep.
That night however, the palace was attacked in the dark by rogue agents, apparently from the rival nation of Pitax. The group dutifully grabbed their gear and weapons, and set out to clear the attackers, saving several notables along the way. It was a rebalance for the group as well, the last time we had played they were level 15, and the threat of death was minimal. In this case, though many of the foes were low challenge, a few caught them off-guard and overconfident. The group’s general healing capacity is somewhat reduced due to character choices as well, meaning they need to be a bit more cautious with their approach.
As for the Foundry software and official Kingmaker content, the entire group was rather impressed. Not only has Foundry really matured, but the professional quality of maps, artwork, NPCs, and automation really shined during the session. The ability to individually loot foes without GM intervention was well received, with the group quickly sacrificing combat actions to stop to check for coins. And the automated encumbrance caused several to quickly realize the challenges with picking up everything. Surprisingly, and as a result of the storyline, the group did leave a lot of potential items behind, since they were on a perceived time clock.
Audio was also a bright spot for the adventure – the Foundry module is equipped with all of the soundtrack and music of the video game format. That provides unique background sounds depending on the scene or scenario. In our case, we had it playing in the background quietly, and it felt like it added to the story, versus distract. This is an option I have wanted to try in other games, but have not had the time to properly curate, or the materials to actually populate enough variety. As an aside, the session recording includes the background music, which I am surprised to say did not register as a YouTube copyright violation. If that holds, it will provide for the background soundtrack much easier.
One caution for our group – only George has played the Kingmaker PC game from Owlcat games, but the storyline, especially at this point, is very close to that one. As a result, I strongly encouraged all players not to research or play the game, to avoid spoilers. George was careful not to influence as much as he could as well, to avoid bias. But there is some loss if you are already familiar with the computer game. I do suspect that will rapidly drop away though given the sandbox nature of the game.
