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I have just joined the Pathfinder Society, and played my 1st game at mace. Any advice on what to do in getting started GMing Society games at local or semi-local stores?
Charles
Charles, sounds like you had a good time and want some more. My advice is to strike while the iron is hot. Josh has created a "One Sheet" flier available on the paizo.com/pathfindersociety page. Make some copies and find a game store that has open gaming tables. Preferrably one that stocks the Pathfinder RPG Core Rules. Ask the store manager permission to post the flier. Write your contact e-mail at the bottom. If the store has a bulletin board, check it out for any players looking for a D&D game. Give them a call/send them an e-mail. Visit all your local gamer hang-outs and post the One Sheet with your e-mail address on the bottom. You might want to go so far as to create a Yahoo! Group for your local Pathfinder Society events. Check out New York's group as an example. While you're there browse the Yahoo gamer groups in your area and promote your gameday. Oh yeah, plan a gameday on a Saturday or a Sunday. In fact, schedule two gamedays 2 weeks or a month apart. It helps to run two slots for the players who inevitably busy in the morning or afternoon and want you to cater to their personal schedule. Be sure to build the gameday as an event on the Pathfinder Society website. Include the address of the store so players who are members of Paizo already can search for games in their area and will see where you are running your gameday. You may also want to go to warhorn.net and build an event page. You don't even need to enable the sign-up function, just post your schedule and direct interested players to contact you if they want to learn more.
Before your gameday, be sure to prep very well. Have your maps ready, appropriate miniatures and know the scenario backwards and forwards. Nothing turns off new players faster than a GM that fudges about trying to figure out the plot at the table. Download and print the pre-generated characters that Josh created for walk-up players. Download a sheet of membership cards and print them onto business card templates. Print a copy or two of the Organized Play rules. Have extra PC minis, dice, paper and pens/pencils for walk-up players also. If you can afford it buy a spare PRPG rulebook. But most of all prep the scenario well and make it memorable. Some nice first-time scenarios are PFS#1 Silent Tide, PFS#4 Frozen Fingers of Midnight, PFS#6 Black Waters, PFS#8 Slave Pits of Absalom, PFS#23 Tide of Morning or PFS#24 Decline of Glory. You'll need to do a little updating because they're written for 3.5 but they have balanced fights and engaging stories.
One of two things will happen. Either you will have more players contact you than you can possibly service OR you will have some people express interest but regret they are too busy to get involved. If the former happens, you will need to convince one or more of them to share the mantle of GMhood (get two guys, offer them a deal 'play one/run one'; now you've doubled your table capacity) OR, you can organize a private 'slot zero' table to prep the GMs who are going to help you on the gamedays. If the players don't come out of the woodwork don't lose heart. People need some time to come around. Many players won't jump onboard until they see which direction their peers are heading. Recruit your friends, ask them to try it out for just one day. Sit and play and chances are a few store customers will wander over and ask what game you're playing. Be friendly and inclusive. Make a brief pitch for Pathfinder Society (no pressure, don't scare or bore them) and ask them if they want to join the game. If they don't want to, remind them you'll be back (next week, next month) and let them know that things are just getting started.
This is the formula that I used to get things really started in my area. We had a core of players who played in the home at private tables, but there were no public gamedays and no one knew about Pathfinder Society outside of my circle of peers (or so I believed). I promoted the game at four different game stores and built a small base of regulars. Another player stepped into the organizer role (Uncle Den from the messageboards), built onto the base and settled things into a pleasant biweekly schedule with about 12-20 players consistently attending. We also have weekly games to keep our GMs prepped. Our Yahoo Group boasts about 60 members, although we don't compare to New York. It didn't happen overnight, but it's coming along nicely now and we even helped our host game store to sell 30 copies of the PRPG Core Rules.
I hope this helps you!
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I'm also excited about starting a pathfinder gameday, having just come back from Neoncon in Las Vegas. I will follow your advice about starting a Yahoo group and building an event page on warhorn.net. Being that I live in SoCal I'm expecting more warm bodies than I can comfortably fit in my little condo and in lieu of convincing nearby gamestores to let us use their tables, do you have any suggestions for a venue to run about 3 tables besides a game store?
I'm also excited about starting a pathfinder gameday, having just come back from Neoncon in Las Vegas. I will follow your advice about starting a Yahoo group and building an event page on warhorn.net. Being that I live in SoCal I'm expecting more warm bodies than I can comfortably fit in my little condo and in lieu of convincing nearby gamestores to let us use their tables, do you have any suggestions for a venue to run about 3 tables besides a game store?
Check with local libraries about using a community room. Or perhaps a local college that would have a spare room. Of course, that one may require at least some of the players to be students there.
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Everyone’s community is different. Where I live we have a few local game stores that host CCG tournaments and have spare tables for use when they’re not running store events. I have had this problem though (FLGS are closing down all over), and it’s not easy to find a friendly public place to game if you don’t have a store nearby. The place my coordinator uses for our gamedays is an hour from where I live, but sacrifices must be made. As mentioned before, libraries have meeting rooms that the public can use. However, with the amount of noise and activity created by gamers you might get uninvited quickly. A community center would be a good location, likely to be more tolerant of noise. I’m no longer young enough to pass as a student, but a college student center would be a fantastic location to meet and have lots of table space to use. I know of one group that plays at a restaurant that caters to students and community meetings. As long as some food is ordered they always welcome gamers.
What you need to do is do some planning, then go on a scouting mission. Get on the net and search for places that might have spare meeting rooms or table space like mentioned above. Write down the addresses, then map out a route so you’re not backtracking a lot. Take a Saturday or Sunday and visit these locations. Talk to the staff and test the waters, get a feel for how much space you’ll need and the pros & cons of each location. Find out when they’re busy and when their rooms/tables are unoccupied. Also, if you have a small player base, try and keep it close to home for their convenience. Once you make a candidate list you can start working out the details. See about making a reservation on the room/tables. Nothing ruins a gameday like showing up and the community-use tables are infested by the local knitting club (or worse, Yu-gi-Oh! players). Make sure that the place is going to open/close at a convenient time on the weekend too. You’ll need to allocate at least four hours per slot you want to run. A food break between the slots is important also. That means the place needs to be open for nine hours on the weekend in order to pull of two slots.
Now all this really sounds like a pain in the ass, but once you fight this battle life gets a lot easier. A bad location is going to kill your game attendance as much as a bad GM will.
I'm also excited about starting a pathfinder gameday, having just come back from Neoncon in Las Vegas. I will follow your advice about starting a Yahoo group and building an event page on warhorn.net. Being that I live in SoCal I'm expecting more warm bodies than I can comfortably fit in my little condo and in lieu of convincing nearby gamestores to let us use their tables, do you have any suggestions for a venue to run about 3 tables besides a game store?
Warhorn is great for getting sign-ups, but you have to have an event created on paizo.com, otherwise you can't report the scenarios played. So be sure to register your event at paizo.com/pathfindersociety, click "My Pathfinder Society" and follow the links after you sign in.
Also, if you're running Pathfinder Society game days at your local game store, at a convention, or at any play space where you can keep up permanent advertising, send me an email (josh@paizo.com) with your address and I can send along some "Pathfinder Society is Played Here!" posters to advertise your sessions.