Players may be the heroes of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, but whole worlds rest on the Game Master’s shoulders. Fortunately for GMs, the Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide is here to back you up. Packed with invaluable hints and information, this book contains everything you need to take your game to the next level, from advice on the nuts and bolts of running a session to the greater mysteries of crafting engaging worlds and storylines. Whether you’ve run one game or a thousand, this book has page after page of secrets to make you sharper, faster, and more creative, while always staying one step ahead of your players.
The 320-page Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.
The Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide includes:
Tips and tricks for preparing and running a better game, suitable for beginning GMs and battle-hardened veterans.
Step-by-step walkthroughs for creating campaign worlds, cities, cosmologies, feudal systems, and alternate dimensions.
Difficult player types, and how to handle them gracefully.
New rules for subsystems like hauntings, chase scenes, fortune-telling, gambling games, mysteries, and insanity.
Charts to help you generate everything from interesting NPCs and fantastic treasures to instant encounters in any terrain.
Advanced topics such as PC death, game-breaking rules, overpowered parties, solo campaigns, and derailed storylines.
Sample NPC statistics for dozens of common adventuring situations, such as cultists, guardsmen, barmaids, and pirates.
AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-217-3
The worksheets from the back of the book are available as a free download (3.8 MB zip/PDF).
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GameMastery Guide Errata (This errata has already been incorporated into the Second Printing):
This book is brilliantly presented (which is not all that surprising considering Paizo's track record) and full of great information.
However, this is the book I reach for the absolute least. I am absolutely certain that this book would be invaluable to novice and intermediary GM's but the content in it is stuff that I have been dealing with for years.
I have to admit that some of the advanced topics were good to read through and it is these that I find the most useful in the book, but the whole designing focus is a bit lost on me. So I looked at the review for this book through the eyes of a novice and find that this book would be very useful when you are first embarking on designing some game content. It is full of tips and tricks on how to breathe life into a game.
An excellent book for those who want to be better a GM.
The GameMastery Guide is a wonderful tool for those who wish to truly master the difficult task of being a competent GM. The guide may, at times, seem redundant or basic to advanced GMs, but by expressing the simplest game-mastering concepts, the guide helps to establish the essential nature of the fundamentals of any RPG as well as emphasizing their importance in the hearts and minds of all talented GMs. Can someone be a GM without The GameMastery Guide? Yes. Will that person be a better GM if they own and use this guide? Absolutely.
Also... the world building section is pure creative genius, not just for GM, but writers as well.
I've been a gamer for nearly 30 years, and I've seen lots of products designed to assist Game Masters in designing their campaign worlds... My campaign world started as some simple notes on loose-leaf paper with some hand-drawn maps, and gradually became a living, breathing world...
This book contains lots of information I wished my fellows and I had had long ago. Now that I have revived my world and began building it back into a playable world, this book has certainly been helpful. Furthermore, most of my campaign was run in 1st Edition, then converted to 2nd Edition, then partially converted to 3rd Edition...
I am constantly trying to improve my own skills as a DM and a book like this may come across to some as a ploy for Paizo to just milk more money out of you for stuff you already know, but it is definitely not.
To say the least, it is packed full of practical, insightful, and constructive information that will really help you along the way. It is a delight read and no matter how long you've been gaming, this book really does have something for everyone.
Also, any book that has a Drugs and Addiction section is evidence that they sat down and thought EVERYTHING out to help their players. Plus, some of my PCs need help...
This is the book on how to design and build not only adventures, but the world. What an amazing resource for any GM or player. The info in here is pertinent to just about any genre and game system.
Thirty Five Years Later, and It Still Gets My Creativity Flowing.
This is hands down the best tool a Dungeon Master could have. I have seen them all, and Paizo does it right...finally! Check out my full review Game Mastery Guide
wow, i bought this cos ... i love the other pathfinder stuff i have already, hoping to find a gem of wisdom or two, and it blew me away!, so much useable stuff and insightful advice, after DM,ing for 25 years this still offers me tonnes of inspiration, three cheers paizo!!
OK I have to start by saying I really do love what Paizo has done with 3.5 and taking the mantle of the RPG and raising the bar. I really do. And this book is good. But it's not great.
First, what's good about it.
The artwork is on par with the rest of the PFRPG line so far. In other words, fabulous.
The NPC builds of varying levels for each "type" of NPC make for a wonderful time saving device for GMs who know roughly what they're looking for and just need a quick and dirty set of stat blocks for the band of highway robbers that set themselves on the road the PCs are travelling down. On a related note, I also like the random tables for giving NPCs little quirks that make them memorable.
Also, each DMG type book you ever get has a section on "how to run an RPG" and I usually skim or skip those because I've been roleplaying for a long time. But there was actually useful stuff in this one for me.
OK, now the stuff that was not so good.
At times I felt like I was reading the Paizo product release catalog. I lost count of the number of times I was told in the first 50 pages how useful and wonderful the Combat Pad is for tracking initiative. I own the Combat Pad, and yes, it is cool. I get it. Miniatures, flip mats, modules, adventure paths, map packs, the crit and fumble decks, and so on. I get it - they're useful. But I don't like paying $40 for what at times felt like blatant advertising.
There are also what seem to be an inordinate number of typos and spelling errors in the book. Another layer or two of proofreading would have done wonders.
Overall though, more good than bad, and it's definitely a book I will use significant parts of. So I think 3 stars is reasonable. I could probably be convinced to do 3.5 but that doesn't exist, and I don't think I could give it 4.
First off, let me say I love this book. There are so many things in it I found extremely useful, and have taken notes to bring to the table for the next time I run. I did notice it seems more geared to GMs who create and run their own worlds/adventures as opposed to published modules/APs, however, it's more than useful for GMs of all types. The one issue I had with the book is the numerous typos. I know they get busy, but I've not seen another Paizo product with nearly as many typos; I felt the urge to make use of my ever-present red pen on the pages. Despite this, I recommend this product to any GM.
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