Building Your Pathfinder Society Community: GM 101 and Kid's Track

Monday, November 19, 2012

Last month, we offered a blog post that was the foundation of building your community. I wanted to build on that theme and have a series of blog posts that discuss how to contibute to and grow your local Pathfinder Society community.

The first bullet point in that post suggested that you should offer to GM. However, you may feel you aren't experienced enough or don't know the rules well enough to be a "good GM." One thing I have learned in my years of gaming is that often people who want to GM, but who feel too shy or uncomfortable running a table, actually turn out to be some of the best GMs.

Over the past year, our Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants have often said that there is a lack of GMs. This is why I worked with a group of the best GMs in the Georgia area (people I had personal experience playing with and GMing for) to develop a GM 101 course. This course debuted at PaizoCon and was also offered at Gen Con. The feedback from attendees was incredibly positive and it is now time to share the course with everyone. The GM 101 instructional PDF will support the running of GM 101 courses in your area. Even if someone just reads the GM 101 course, there is a ton of great information to be shared.

The course is divided into four lessons, each lasting approximately one hour. These include "Roleplaying: Bringing Scenarios to Life," "Rules: Enabling Awesomeness, Restricting Abuse," "Running the Game: The Science Behind the Art," and "Advanced Topics: When the Unexpected Strikes." These four basic topics will allow new GMs to ease into the role and also feel more comfortable overseeing the enjoyment of a table for a group of four to six players.

One thing the GM 101 PDF refers to in the second half of the course, but that it does not include, is the Deck of Many Situations. This deck allows new GMs who have been through the four building-block lessons above to take those instructions and adjudicate real situations that have occurred at Pathfinder Society tables at local game days and regional and national conventions. I will refer you to several of our Venture-Captains for access to the deck. They have developed different decks, which include situations encountered in their local regions. If you would like to obtain a Deck of Many Situations, please refer to the Pathfinder Society Regional Coordinators page. If your Regional Coordinator does not have a copy of the Deck of Many Situations, he or she will be able to obtain one from another Venture-Captain and provide it to you. Some of the more memorable situations I was able to be a part of at Paizo Con were "warring spouses" and "a child pitching a temper tantrum" (yes, I was playacting the child). It was interesting to see how GMs handled both of those very tricky situations.

The other PDF I wanted to provide for download today was the Kid's Track lesson plans. The lifeblood of our hobby is the next generation. A decade ago, I took my son to his first Gen Con when he was eight years old. There was very little for him to actually participate in or be involved with at that age. Over the years, I had toyed with the idea of creating some kid's games so that young children would have something to do. When I was hired by Paizo, it jumped to the top of my priority list since I had resources available that I had never had before. I reached out to Ontario Venture-Lieutenant Jeff Mahood to help me develop a lesson plan. He has experience with early childhood education and I wanted to gear these lesson plans for kids that were six to twelve years old. What he put together and provided blew me away and I can't thank him enough for his work on it.

With this awesome document in hand, I was unsure how it would go over at Gen Con. I reached out to several store owners and forum members, and received overwhelmingly positive feedback, so I put it on the official Gen Con schedule. We sold out every slot at Gen Con and ran eight unscheduled overfill tables. With the reponse we had at Gen Con 2012, I have my sights on expanding the program even more at Gen Con 2013.

What the Kid's Track lesson plan offers is four lessons on the basics of roleplaying games, broken down by the total minutes spent on each subject, using the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box to teach those fundamentals. Each lesson builds on the previous lesson and helps a GM teach children as young as six what roleplaying games are and how to play roleplaying games, specifically using the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box rules. Each lesson plan is followed by the four children playing one of the four Beginner Box Bash Demo adventures.

I hope you find both of these PDFs useful for building Pathfinder Society, and roleplaying in general, in your community. I would love to hear your feedback on how we can make these programs better and look forward to reading your comments.

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Pathfinder Society
Sovereign Court

I've got to admire Jeff's work: that's lovely stuff.

4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

In fairness, what makes it lovely is the job that the Paizo team did on prettying it up. :) I'm fairly certain it was Crystal Frasier, if I remember correctly from earlier this year, and she did an awesome job with it.

Thanks for the kind words, Mike.

Liberty's Edge 2/5

Jumpin' Jackalopes! The Kid's Track is what I've been thinking about, waiting for, planning, and failing to implement.

I have a seven year old who has played with me a few times at PfS events, but those games require me to do much of the playing for him. He has fun, but he's not really learning the system in that setting.

Thanks Mike and Jeff, I will be suing this starting, well . . . almost immediately.

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Washington—Spokane

Thank you for posting both of these documents. I have a small hiatus before my next Society games so I plan on going through the GM 101 document while I prep the next scenario I run as a checklist.

I also need advice on another matter, my 13 year old son would like to start GMing and at public events. I am wondering if the kids track will be a better platform using the beginners box for him to start with and then move from there. I think he wants to do what I do in running a PFS scenario but I have not been running long and have started playing again around 6 months ago (I started with 2.0). Any advice will be helpful and very appreciated. Thank you again.

Dark Archive 3/5

Yes to all of this. You're doing it right.

Dark Archive 4/5

Congratulations Jeff. This is a really cool thing you've done for future roleplayers! :)

4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Preston,

From the author's perspective, the kids track is not really intended for a novice GM. Basically, when I wrote it, I just made sure that I was giving advice and instructions intended to break "learning the game" into manageable chunks for younger children, and also to address some of the major issues that can arise with kids that some people (ie: those who don't interact with them on a regular basis) might not be aware of. (For example - attention span is limited to about five minutes.)

If you want to get a 13-year old into GMing, I'd try to ease them into it in a couple of ways.

1) Get them to run a home game first for you and some friends. GMing is about confidence, and he'll probably be more comfortable with people he knows in an environment where time pressure doesn't exist.

2) For his first public event, hand-pick the players. His players need to respect him in order for the table to work, and there are some people who will see a child at the head of the table, rather than a GM. On his first experience, he doesn't need to deal with that attitude.

Basically, build his confidence and make sure he's comfortable before he GMs a table. A fast way to do that is to get him to GM his peers, but there are other ways to do it too.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

Awesome on all fronts!

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston

Thanks! As a new GM myself, I look foward to reading this!

The Exchange 5/5 RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

On page 5, the GM 101 document notes that "Season 0’s often use Pathfinder Beta rules".

How should GMs go about getting access to the Pathfinder Beta rules?

4/5

Chris Mortika wrote:

The GM 101 document notes that "Season 0’s often use Pathfinder Beta rules".

How should GMs go about getting access to the Pathfinder Beta rules?

Fun fact: The Product Page still exists, though there is nothing on it.

Paizo Employee Developer

Chris Mortika wrote:

The GM 101 document notes that "Season 0’s often use Pathfinder Beta rules".

How should GMs go about getting access to the Pathfinder Beta rules?

That's actually an incorrect statement. Season 0 used no Beta rules, and stuck strictly to the 3.5 SRD.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Mark Moreland wrote:
Chris Mortika wrote:

The GM 101 document notes that "Season 0’s often use Pathfinder Beta rules".

How should GMs go about getting access to the Pathfinder Beta rules?

That's actually an incorrect statement. Season 0 used no Beta rules, and stuck strictly to the 3.5 SRD.

Which is still available here

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Washington—Spokane

Jeff, thank you for your advice on my son running a table. We are in the process of setting up a home game now and will work with him from there. After reading your response and seeing your intent with the kids track, I completely understand the reasoning behind your advice. Thank you again for your advice and work on the Kids Track document.

A thank you to Mike and all who worked on the GM 101 course. I am sure it will be very useful and I plan to contact my VL about the Deck of Many Situations.

Grand Lodge 5/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Mark Moreland wrote:
Chris Mortika wrote:

The GM 101 document notes that "Season 0’s often use Pathfinder Beta rules".

How should GMs go about getting access to the Pathfinder Beta rules?

That's actually an incorrect statement. Season 0 used no Beta rules, and stuck strictly to the 3.5 SRD.

You mean 3.5 wasn't PFRPG Beta? ;)

The Exchange 5/5 RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

Seth, I know you're kidding, but no.

During Season 0, I had many people -- many people -- come to my table with sorcerers who had d6 hit dice and bloodlines; rogues who started out with ranks in Perception, but not Listen or Search; energy-channeling clerics, and some of the stranger aspects of the Beta rules that didn't make it into the final ruleset.

I got to tell them, over and over, that they needed to rebuild their characters. Usually, cutting out things they thought were cool.

I played innocent earlier in the thread, but really, that's not an error I'd like to see propagated in print.

3/5

Mike Brock wrote:
We sold out every slot (of Kid's Track) at Gen Con and ran eight unscheduled overfill tables. With the reponse we had at Gen Con 2012, I have my sights on expanding the program even more at Gen Con 2013.

As a Kid's Track GM I must say it was a blast! The material that Jeff wrote was fantastic. The faces of the kids at my tables were priceless, and the table that I almost TPKed, wow! Keep up the great work.

Mike, I'm all in for Kid's Track GenCon 2013. Sign me up.

-Swiftbrook

Grand Lodge 4/5 Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Swiftbrook wrote:


Mike, I'm all in for Kid's Track GenCon 2013. Sign me up.

-Swiftbrook

Thanks!

Silver Crusade 4/5

These documents are victory!

PFS GM Conferences, and Young Players Leagues here I come!

Dark Archive 3/5

Like many of you, I've been teaching RPGs for many years now.

This Thanksgiving, I plan on doing Beginner Box stuff with the niece and nephew and I'll be incorporating some of the tips in here. Good stuff.

4/5

What an amazing resource! Bravo to the authors of both of these--they are sure to grow the hobby in a positive way.

In reading GMing 101, aside from the Season 0 Beta thing that Chris spotted too, I'm kind of surprised that Penumbral Accords was listed as being "complicated" in the final section, as it seems as straightforward as possible in setup as far as I can see, and has a possible added advantage:

Penumbral Accords:
Not only is Penumbral Accords just a string of combats, it takes place on the exact same map as Mists of Mwangi, so the GM running Penumbral cold might have played or run Mists and thus have been familiar with the (relatively simple) map already, which is a big advantage
All the other scenarios on both lists I think are spot on. Was Penumbral Accords put onto the wrong side?

4/5

Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Penumbral Accords

It is in the wrong section. At both Gen Con and Paizo Con I asked participants to move it to the "Straightforward" category.

Grand Lodge 2/5 RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Am I the only one sad that the fourth lesson in GM 101 doesn't start with an "R"?

;)

4/5

John Compton wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Penumbral Accords
It is in the wrong section. At both Gen Con and Paizo Con I asked participants to move it to the "Straightforward" category.

Cool! I figured that might have been the case given how I pretty much agreed with you guys on nearly everything in the document both in philosophy and details, and that one classification just stuck out as extremely odd.

Grand Lodge 3/5

Thanks a lot for that. Really looking forward to use this material with the 4 kids I GM these days.

Is there any GM PFS boon for running this material?
(not that it would change the fact that I will run it, but a reward could be nice)

Grand Lodge 4/5 Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Elzedar wrote:

Thanks a lot for that. Really looking forward to use this material with the 4 kids I GM these days.

Is there any GM PFS boon for running this material?
(not that it would change the fact that I will run it, but a reward could be nice)

We do not have a GM Boon for either of these.

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/5

Always love seeing an update on the GM 101 program. Enjoyed the two "beta tests" of it I was involved in, and the Deck of Many Situations is amazing. Ran through it with my local group and it was a lot of fun.

Shadow Lodge 3/5

That GM 101 guide is absolutely invaluable, even if you're an experienced GM. And that's for any roleplaying system, not limited to just Pathfinder.

Excellent work guys.

Grand Lodge 5/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Michael Brock wrote:
Elzedar wrote:

Thanks a lot for that. Really looking forward to use this material with the 4 kids I GM these days.

Is there any GM PFS boon for running this material?
(not that it would change the fact that I will run it, but a reward could be nice)

We do not have a GM Boon for either of these.

Run either at a 15+ session convention and you'll likely be given a GM boon for participating as a GM at the con.

The Exchange

Thanks for all of the work getting these documents available. I look forward to looking at the GM tips and starting to work my little ones in to pen and paper gaming :D

The Exchange

Jiggy wrote:

Am I the only one sad that the fourth lesson in GM 101 doesn't start with an "R"?

;)

Yes.

3/5

Swiftbrook wrote:


As a Kid's Track GM I must say it was a blast! The material that Jeff wrote was fantastic. The faces of the kids at my tables were priceless, and the table that I almost TPKed, wow! Keep up the great work.

Mike, I'm all in for Kid's Track GenCon 2013. Sign me up.

-Swiftbrook

+1 to what Swiftbrook said. I had a ball GMing the kids track and would love to do it again in 2013.

Scarab Sages 5/5

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook Subscriber

Where can I get a copy of the Deck of Many Situations?

Community / Forums / Organized Play / Pathfinder Society / Paizo Blog: Building Your Pathfinder Society Community: GM 101 and Kid's Track All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Pathfinder Society