Reviews: Kingmaker by Eric Jones Ludibrium Games

Kingmaker by Eric Jones. Art by Eric Jones. Ludibrium Games. Available in PDF for $2.95. 18 pages.

"Tragedy has fallen on the Kingdom of Ambarge-the King is dead; long live the King! But the kingdom's woes have only just begun, for the crown prince, the King's sole heir, is nowhere to be found. The fate of their kingdom rests on the deeds of a handful of wayward pilgrims that walk a solitary road in a remote land."

From the intro:
To play this module requires that you own an original edition or retro-clone fantasy role-playing game such as Labyrinth Lord™ or OSRIC™.

Eric sent me copies of the three Ludibrium Games modules to review, after Kingmaker was released. I'm doing Kingmaker first, so let's get started.

Let's get the production values out of the way, first. They're very nice. I noticed no typos. Double columned text. Some pleasing B&W illustrations from the author. There are no maps, but some cut-out tokens are given, for those who want to use a battle-mat. As several NPC's might be involved in fighting on both sides, the DM might find these to be very handy, unless they're used to running combats involving 20 - 25 participants, without such aids. The layout is appealing, overall. The cover is fairly representative of what you should expect.

It's always tough writing reviews, as I strive to give away as little as possible, while still giving my readers an adequate idea of what the module is about.

Kingmaker begins, for the characters, when they're hired to escort a caravan. From the blurb, you might can guess who's hiding in that caravan and that some bad guys, will be attacking said caravan.

The journey and action takes place on the open road. As mentioned, no map is provided. Details like the length of the journey, etc., are left to the DM. It's just the open road, with a town, somewhere, the destination. There's nothing wrong with leaving those details up to the DM and in fact, it's often a virtue.

But...

The adventure is for 2-8 characters of 1st level. If you have a small party, the shortfall is made up for with some red-shirts hired by the caravan master. There are some other leveled NPC's with the caravan as well.

The set-up is very convenient, with the Heir's mother casting as a MU, of significantly higher level than the PC's. She won't cast anything, except in extremis, so as not to give herself away. She has an opposite number, a witch casting at a level comparable to herself. The witch let's her mercenaries and servants do her dirty work, throughout the adventure. From my reading of the text, she won't become involved in combat directly, unless the PC's track her sorry ass down.

Yeah.

Not taking the Heir's mother into account, the PC's & Co. are pretty evenly matched against the witch's forces. So, there's a damn good chance that Mommy MU is going to have to take action, upstaging the hell out of the PC's, in the process. I'd recommend dumping her at the get-go, or, if there's no MU PC, bringing her down to 1st level.

There's potential for intrigue, ideas for double-crosses, etc. Some interesting Scheduled events, one of which, unconnected with the main course of events, seems to be provided solely for the purpose of giving fate a chance to off the heir, thus ending the adventure. I kind of liked that. It tickled my sense of whimsy.

Other Scheduled events are tied directly into the main struggle. Some Triggered events, help move things along and detail how certain NPC's will react to the current state of affairs, as things unfold.

Some stuff you'd probably like and use, some you would replace or tweak, like any other module. There're Details of NPC's, their personality and motivations, etc. Much of this could have done with tighter editing. There's dressing, more than I would care for.

The epilogue is about a page of various follow-up ideas and "what will happen later, if..." sort of stuff. There's a new magic-item, which gives the opportunity for some interesting developments. A new monster and a new spell. I like the new monster and magic item. The spell was ok.

Aside from the "Guardian Angel" issue, this is the problem with Kingmaker:

"...they're hired to escort a caravan. From the blurb, you might can guess who's hiding in that caravan and that some bad guys, will be attacking said caravan."

"The journey and action takes place on the open road. As mentioned, no map is provided. Details like the length of the journey, etc., are left to the DM."

"...the shortfall is made up for with some red-shirts hired by the caravan master. There are some other leveled NPC's with the caravan as well."

"...Heir's mother casting as a MU, of significantly higher level than the PC's. She won't cast anything, except in extremis."

"...opposite number, a witch casting at a level comparable to herself. The witch let's her mercenaries and servants do her dirty work, throughout the adventure."

There's just not much more meat than that in the module itself. In "giving my readers an adequate idea of what the module is about," I've given you just about everything but the potatoes and garnishing. I like some of Eric's "Potatoes."  As mentioned above, if I were running Kingmaker, some of his ideas I would use and some I wouldn't. Par for the course, with most modules. But there's too much hand-holding, too much verbiage and just not nearly enough of the sort of time-saving material I'm looking for in a module and way too much of the sort of thing I would think of myself, given the initial set-up.

I could take the basic idea as presented in this review and run it on the fly, without recourse to the module and be no worse for that, in any way. And there's not enough meat to recommend your purchasing this for purposes of adaptation and general design yoinkage. And while there were some ideas I liked, not enough that I would purchase the module, to read them.

Given the above issues, I don't recommend Kingmaker.