Ultimate Campaign

I got the Pathfinder book "Ultimate Campaign" as a Christmas present, and finally finished reading it yesterday. To be honest, it was a book I had always thought would be interesting enough, but didn't really have any burning desire to own, read, or use. (The problem is that I needed to pick out some Christmas presents for people to give me, and nothing leapt to mind.)

It turns out that this is one of the better RPG books I own, and one that's pretty widely applicable, beyond even Pathfinder - most of what it covers would work just as well with any system, and much of the rest would fit 3e, 4e, or probably 5e without too much hassle. It's certainly not a must-have, even for Pathfinder DMs, but like 3e's "Unearthed Arcana" it's certainly a nice-to-have.

The book opens with a chapter on character traits. This is something Pathfinder introduced early on - at the start of the campaign each PC can choose one or two background traits to customise his character, representing aspects of that character's background. (5e, of course, has exactly the same notion in "backgrounds", and it's also quite similar to 2nd Ed's notion of character kits.) It's a decent system, if a little power-creep-y, though I think it will probably work best if the traits are mostly campaign-specific - that is, when running "Kingmaker" everyone should select a Kingmaker-trait as at least one of their choices.

The second chapter is about Downtime, and gives several options for things PCs can do between adventures. Which is all well and good, but I doubt I would ever even consider using the material here. It's just too much effort for me to bother with.

The fourth, and final, chapter contains systems for kingdom building and mass-combat. These were pioneered in the Kingmaker adventure path, and are expanded and cleaned-up here. The systems are pretty good, provided the campaign is going down that route. (Frankly, the relative lack of mass combat rules in D&D is a bit of an oversight - the old Companion boxed set had some, but otherwise they've been largely omitted. A shame.)

But the real value of the book is in the third chapter, which contains lots of "Campaign Systems" - things like Honour, and Lineage, and Fame, and more detailed Alignment tracking, and Magic Item Creation, and built-up rules for Companions (be they animal companions, familiars, cohorts, or other).

This is all good stuff, representing a selection of side dishes for the DM to consider introducing to his campaign. (And, as I discussed ages ago, those side-dishes are really quite good. You don't need them, but it seems that a long-term campaign would significantly benefit from having something more than just "orc and pie".)

It's that third chapter that represents the real value of the book. Like the 3e "Unearthed Arcana", it's not something that will be used as a cohesive whole, but it's a toolkit of stuff that the DM can use to turn his campaign into something special. It's obviously not exhaustive, but it's good nonetheless.

So, this is a book I think I would recommend for DMs, be they DMs of Pathfinder, D&D, or indeed some other game entirely. It's not the top of that list ("The Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide" from 2nd Edition is still the best book about DMing I've read), but it's definitely in there.