I'm reinstating my OP after deleting it. Shortly after writing it, it transpired on the Paizo boards that my post was premised on a misunderstanding. I have now rewritten the OP in light of this. Hope you get something out of it...

Paizo's flagship product are their so-called 'Adventure Paths'. These consist of 6 modules which are intended to jointly deliver a campaign using the D&D 3.5 (now: Pathfinder RPG) ruleset for PCs from level 1 to 15. Ever since Paizo started doing these Adventure Paths (APs for short) there was a vocal minority among their fanbase who complained that the APs as a whole suffered from two intertwined design issues:

1. Mega-railroady. The campaign was premised on an unfolding 'plot' whose major plot points was set in stone. The PCs could be as stupid or clever as they like, this mega-plot would unfold.
2. NPC driven. The action of the plot (1.) unfolds because NPCs set in motion their major plans. PCs (and their players) are delegated to stop these plans.

Especially 2. was a bit unattractive, as it was just the same 'Stop Dr Evil!!!' every single time over the past 4 years. Austin Powers is sexier than Dr Evil and his Mini-Me, but on the whole, it's Dr Evil who gets to set in motion his own camp on the moon to unleash destruction on the world. In short, he gets to do all sort of cool stuff and the PCs are just there to foil him. Not very interesting.

So as of yesterday, Paizo has now released for the first time an adventure path which tries to re-instate player pro-activity and also tune down some of the assumed meta-plot and rail-roadiness in their flagship product. The AP is called 'Kingmaker', and is touted by Paizo as a hybrid between a campaign-with-plot and a sandbox.

The interesting thing will be to see whether they can pull it off. As of yesterday, the first instalment of the AP - Stolen Land - went live for subscribers as a download. The accompanying 'Player's Guide' also went live and is available for a free download here. I'm going to show you a small resolution sample and encourage you to download it; content copyright by Paizo of course.



So on the top left corner we got the new cover and page background art. It emphasizes hex crawling. Which is cool. Hex crawling is the essence of sandbox play. It's also heartwarming to see this in a time when commercial publishers have all but forgotten that until as recent as 2 years ago all Paizo Basic 'Flipmats' and Chessex battlemaps had little hexmaps on their reverse sides to cater for hexcrawling games. The idea of these reverse sides is that players trace their progress in the unknown lands by crawling from hex to hex and jotting down terrain detail.

Which gets us to the graphic (displayed above) in the right half. It's an A4-sized plain hex map for the players to use. The Players Guide explains the function thus:

QuoteBlank Hex Map: Use copies of these maps to track your progress in exploring the four zones of the Stolen Lands. Each sheet of blank hexes is equal in size to one of the four Stolen Land regions; as you explore, draw in the terrain features, rivers, locations, and other discoveries as you see fit. The box at the bottom of each hex can be used to track which hexes you’ve thoroughly explored (simply walking through a hex does not count as exploring it—your GM has guidelines on what you need to do to fully explore a hex), which hexes you’ve claimed and added to your kingdom, and which hexes have been developed as farmland. Put an “E” in the box once you explore a hex, a “K” once you add that hex to your kingdom, and an “F” if you devlop that kingdom hex as farmland.

Which gets us to the last image displayed above - left bottom corner. It's a map of the region in full coloured glory, replete with accurate distances shown to reasonable scale, indicating all major terrain elements of the region - mountain and forest ranges, rivers - even political borders of the individual baronies the players are supposed to map.

Which caused me to throw a hissy fit on the Paizo forums, and reference an article in Paizo's own print-run of Dragon Magazine. Cue adrenaline rush and nerdrage:

Quote from: me on PaizoWTF INCLUDING A FULLY DETAILED MAP ON THE REGION ON PAGE 11 OF THE PLAYERS GUIDE??!?!?!?!?!?!

Is this a joke or what? The whole POINT of a hex-crawling campaign is that the players start out with a white sheet. Check out the player maps for Necromancer Games' Wilderlands box to see what I mean. Read Monte Cook's article in Dragon #319. Did anyone on the design team EVER play a hex-crawling game? Peeped into the Mentzer Expert set and its instructions?

AAAARGH. Well, good to know that I'll have to disallow my players from using the PG to not ruin their experience. It's not ruining the campaign, not by a wide stretch, especially if you run it as 'yet another non-hex crawling campaign EXCEPT with a cute hex page art'. Oh, perhaps that's because what it is.

Sorry to be negative and upset, but seeing the map in the PG really ruined the whole underlying idea for me as per the Monte Cook article referenced above - taken from the former glorious days of Paizo publishing, no less.

Quote from: Monte Cook in Dragon Magazine issue 319Designing Wilderness Adventures: Adventuring off the map

    The PCs head into dangerous territory, occupied not by commoners and gentlefolk, but by monsters and creatures the like of which no one has ever seen. They don't know the way, and their main goals are simply discovery and survival.
    (...)
    Before you can send your PCS off into the true wilderness, you've got to figure out what 'wilderness' is. What's meant here isn't just a lot of trees between towns, or a dangerous mountain pass. 'Wilderness' is a forest where no one knows what's on the other side. Mountains where - if there is indeed a navigable pass - no one knows where it is. The PCs don't have maps; they don't have any knowledge at all of what lies even one step ahead.

Fortunately, as it turned out this was simply a misunderstanding of mine. The main region shown in the detailed map shows the starting region of the players. The campaign has them map the terrain to the south (the 'River Kingdoms'), only a fraction of which is shown in the map. Here are two salient replies, the second by Paizo's own James Jacobs.

Quote from: Helpful posterWhoa, deep breath. That's a map of Brevoy, the nation which sends PCs to explore the Stolen Lands. It appears on page 11 above a description of the noble houses (from which PCs may choose to descend) to provide context when those descriptions reference locations within Brevoy.

Quote from: James JacobsThe map of the region the PCs will be exploring basically consists of a swath of land between Brevoy and the River Kingdoms; this area's long and rectangular but covers the same square mileage as the state of Maine, pretty much.

Furthermore, while you can certainly see the area on the overland map, we've put a LOT more detail in there for Kingmaker; there's mountain ranges, swamps and all sorts of stuff for the players to explore.

So I guess I'm glad that I was mistaken. I am interested to hear though people's impression of this newest experiment by Paizo. It's futile to try to predict how the Kingmaker Adventure Path will unfold, but first impressions are always interesting to hear and easy to give.

Plus I'm interested to hear how much mapped terrain you usually give your players in a hex-crawling game when they start out. I only give mine a single hex on the world map* which stretches 40 miles across (that's 0.5 % of what Paizo gives you). So let me know how much you give your players and why. Thanks!

* See the map in my OP to the "4E and OSR - I proclaim no difference" thread next door.

But I want to hear more.

Quote from: The Shaman;367017But I want to hear more.

Yes. Me too.

Ok, I've re-posted/re-written my OP in light of "popular demand".

Quote from: Windjammer;367027Ok, I've re-posted/re-written my OP in light of "popular demand".

Thank you. I concur with myself by popular vote on this.

:hmm:

I'm just looking at the Kingmaker Player's Guide. Interesting.
On a side note, Windjammer fumbles on the Paizo message boards. LOL Just joking mate. It's funny to read after the fact though, knowing no damage was really done.

I was not interested in Kingmaker before, but I am now.

At first I was all excited, I thought they were rereleasing the Avalon Hill classic boardgame. :duh:

This is the one thing that could have gotten me into Pathfinder.  I'm gonna have to buy this damn thing.

Neato.  Paizo wins again, in my book.

Mmmm...going to have to support said company via filthy lucre in the near future.

Quote from: CRKrueger;367066At first I was all excited, I thought they were rereleasing the Avalon Hill classic boardgame. :duh:

I'll let you in on a little secret: wrt factions and politics, every roleplaying game I run is a reskinned version of AH's Kingmaker.

Kingmaker was awesome; I really wish they'd write a version that works.

RPGPundit

i'm definitely intrigued, as well.  thanks for pointing this one out, windjammer--i would've missed this product :hatsoff:

I got Kingmaker. I was curious to see how they were going to do it. It's purdy and interesting, but I wonder how they're going to keep up the sandbox bits. 'Cause the PCs are supposed to explore the entire area and then the second adventure is set in that area.

Seanchai

This might be the time to re-contact my old DM. He can´t be bothered to desing modules himself, but he can run published stuff like there is no tommorrow. Kingmaker...interesting!

I guess no one got my joke; referring to the original Kingmaker Board Game, not this product. I have no idea if this product will share that game's curse, of being a brilliant concept that's too badly-written to be playable.

But on that topic, shit, someone should really update kingmaker into a playable board game!

RPGpundit