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So last night my grouped played our second session of Pathfinder. Yay us.
And our second session of the old Dungeon adventure the Mad God's Key.

The group had progressed in their investigation to find the Green Dagger Gang. I had anticipated, from my experiences with my players, a kick in the door, kill everyone and take everything attitude.
So I had my maps, my stats and my dice ready.

And what did they do? Bluff, intimidate, and bribed their way into seeing the gang's leader who was beside himself at how easily betrayed he was by his own gang. And in turn due to some just amazing rolls of the dice and great role playing, teamed up with the party to find the villain of the adventure and give them additional information regarding the "plot". Or as much as it was allowed.

To say I was unprepared was an understatement. I've gamed with many of my players at the table from over a decade, and I tend to know how they play their characters. This was a neat twist. It stymied me for a few minutes, but it went well enough.

But you know how you prepare for a certain portion of an adventure, even though you've read the whole adventure, you focus on what you think will happen that night. The plot moved ahead at a speed I wasn't ready for.

It was frustrating and cool all in the same breath.
I just had to share.
So now we're on our way to the final dungeon/encounter area and are one step closer to starting off our main story of the Age of Worms.
Players are cool.

So I'm getting closer and closer to running my first Pathfinder game.

I stopped playing 3.X around the time 3.5 popped up, played a slew of other games until 4e, and have been running that since it's launch.

So I'm rusty at a couple of things(or at least feel like it).

I've encouraged my group to do character backgrounds, plus tie-in's to at least 1-2 players. And on top of that I'm asking for a 3x3x3 to incorporate into the game.

The backgrounds are purely optional, the 3x3x3 are not.

I can't for the life of me recall what a fair exp reward is for a character background/writeup.
Anyone have any suggestions on that?
I have one player who's done the background, the 3x3x3, and has written a mock-2 page paper on magical theory. Heck, he just texted me a couple of minutes ago letting me know he's doing a paper on how the magical mind interacts with psionics because he has down time at work.

I want to reward that kind of enthusiasm, but 50-100xp seems week sauce, but 500-1000 seems exuberant.

Now I told my group that I'd reward anyone who did both a background and the 3x3x3 with one of the following:
1) Pre-game Exp
2) a free trait
3) I'd purchase the Inner Sea Primer for them(or if they already had that, a player's companion guide of their choice)

But really, I'd rather reward exp to a creative group and can't find any guidelines on this. And my old brain cannot recall what I used to do for such things.

Help?

Ok, so I stayed away from Pathfinder for many reasons, none of them against Paizo or the game. I was at a point of burn out and didn't want any more d20 stuff, least of another 3.X game.

So in planning another game's 11-20 and beyond adventure ideas, I pulled out Age of Worms and thought "I'd love to run this. Maybe I can convert it to 4e and run it for my group."
In my searches, I found more Pathfinder conversions, and discussion which lead me to think about what I missed when playing 4e DnD.

Now don't get me wrong, I like 4e and as a DM it's easy as pie to run, but I missed some of the utility casting of wizards, some of the danger of battles, and more crunch than it offered. So I dug around some more, and the more I read the more I got intrigued, then excited about picking up Pathfinder.

I told my gaming group. Well... I hit up a couple of players whom I valued their opinions on gaming systems. I asked them if they thought I'd enjoy Pathfinder. They both played under me since 3.0 and one since 2nd ed. They both were soooo excited to even hear the possibilities of me running a Pathfinder game, it only fueled my enthusiasm.
So I ordered the core from Amazon on Thursday.
I wasn't expecting it til Wednesday.
I got it this afternoon.

It's the 4th printing. It's freaking huge. Has that wonderful new print smell and it just crisp, crisp all the way around(sorry graphic designer nigglets).

So I just had to share. I've got alot of reading and relearning to do.
I know the rules, but I need to unlearn them and start over. Which is going to be hard. But I'm excited. If I like it half as much as I suspect I will, the Bestiary and Inner Sea books are next on my "to get" list.

First off, hi.
Long time lurker, new Pathfinder convert.
My core book is enroute as I type this, hopefully arriving before the holiday weekend.

I don't have any additional PF material besides what is online, and the first Rise of the Runelords adventure.

But as I am planning on running my next campaign using the PF rules and Golarion as my setting... how involved are the Gods in the lives of mortals and the world in general?

Now, given it's a game and I can handwave how active or involved in my own campaign they are. I like my clerics to feel connected to their deity. They are special, so often many of my games have intervention, help, omens, dreams, long distance calls from their deity in their lives.
Quests, demands, expectations and the like. And often that spills over not only in that character's life, but their companions as well.

But I digress.
How involved are they say compared to other settings? I see the Forgotten Realms being the high end of things. On a scale of 1-10, it'd be 9. Pretty impactful in the world, but not always in your face. But some days is sure feels like it.

Do the setting rules support any kind of interaction or how to handle them?

Thanks.

Ok, a few questions.
First off, I'm new to Pathfinder. I stopped running 3.X right around the switch to 3.5 and haven't run a 3.X type of game since. I've done a myriad of others, and am now finishing up a 4e campaign and will be diving into Pathfinder after it. Which'll be about Summer 2012. A nice blockbuster movie type game. :D

So I've got time to plan out my game, and I will be using the Age of Worms AP as my game. Thrilled to death to do so, and thought instead of doing Greyhawk, which I'm the only old fart in my group who loves the setting; will be converting it to the Pathfinder/Golarion setting instead.

As I have not even purchased the core book yet, and don't have any of the actual setting material, I'm interested in a logical placement of Diamond Lake and the Free City of Greyhawk.

I've seen threads talking about placement in Taldor or the River Kingdoms.
Taldor is a wonderful sounding place for starting an adventure group, but Diamond Lake is a bit seedier than I would think you'd find in Taldor, correct me if I am wrong. And the River Kingdoms looks great too, but the geography might take more work than I'm inclined to do(yet).

Should I just drop in a "generic" Free City into one of these areas(even Cheliax(?)) and work around it? Has anyone found it difficult dropping in or converting these to Golarion?
I had initially considered just using Forgotten Realms(as I have run this more than any other setting in my gaming life), and the Boyd Conversion is pretty easy peasy. But Golarion actually would be fun as it seems to be a great new adventuring place for my group.

Also, starting off the group, I was thinking of running the Mad God's Key to get the group together give them a reason to adventure and care about one another. If not, then why or why would they be in Diamond Lake, and how would they find themselves trying to be heroes?
It seems less heroic and more Deadwood-esque. And to which, I plan on running it more like Deadwood when they are there, and incorporating many of the personalities from the show into NPC's there. Or at least the visage of the actors for many of the NPC's.

It's just through my initial reading of the adventure and the town, I can't think of how/why to really pull the party together. I guess, I've been running too many family/business partners/caravan guard games as of late that the openness seems ... hard. Suggestions or experiences anyone can share would be great.

I'm excited, my group is too. They've enjoyed 4e, but more core players lit up my inbox with excitement when I suggested the new game. So I'm working on my planning stages, learning the rules(from the SRD) and working on a game trailer to lure them in more.
I can't wait. This campaign hits alot of things I love. Undead, the Rod of 7 parts, undead, exploration and travel, undead, unique adventures and did I mention undead?

Thanks for reading my blathering, looking forward to your input/suggestions and rants. :D

Ok, so I just picked up the pdf versions just for the electronic versions of the FR maps.
I already have hard copies, but wanted to be able to print out sections that I use for my campaigns without having to scan in the maps myself.

So as I complete my order and open up the pdf files, I find out these are full scans of the hard copies. Not the original files saved out to pdf, but scans.

I’m a little beside myself. I wouldn’t have purchased the files if I had known this was what I was getting. Is there any way we can gett these? I don’t need layered files, but something that is clean and doesn’t have the wrinkles from the fold lines.

Did I just waste $20?

Thanks.

Just curious. One of the cool things Dungeon had was additional online content.

Will there be any further support for Pathfinder online from Paizo?

Thanks!

Jhilahd(absolutely loving his Pathfinder pdf)

I love the hi res pdf options that have been posted, but I was hoping that we would get a map(or maps) of Cauldron. We have the lo(72dpi) version, but how about a 200 or 300 dpi(clearer) version?

Tif, jpg or even a pdf are fine with me. PDF is nice as long as I can import it into Illustrator. :D

Jhilahd

Wow... I expected that these boards would be full. I guess everyone is over in the Dragon and Dungeon forums...

What I mean is, will we start seeing more than just Warmachine and Warhammer games? I play both of them, but I play other miniature games as well. CAV, Stargrunt, Wargods of Aegyptus(I know there was a recent article on them). I realize you only have so much space but maybe a 1 or 2 page filler with a run down of the games with a shot of painted mini or battle scene? That way you don't have to rag your text to flow longer than it needs to. Hmmmmmm? Anywho... just wondering.

I look forward to getting each and every issue. Keep up the good work.

jhilahd
Dallas, TX