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Within a month I am planning on running the Council of Thieves adventure path. This affects me in several ways: filling me with wonder and excitement at the idea of running my friends through an exciting quest involving intrigue, the almighty diabolism controlled country of Cheliax and it's city Westcrown, battling forces on both sides of the law. At the same time, it also draws to mind questions I need answered, as well as a search for general advice to buff myself as I prepare for the adventure ahead.
I own the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide, which has been a great deal of help, as well as the Council of Thieves: Bastards of Erebus book. It seems pretty straight forward, but I'm wondering if there is:
A. Any advice which can be offered about this particular adventure path from people who have run it.
B. Any advice in general which a new GM should know which would help things to run smoothly.
For B - know the rules. Have a mechanism for resolving rule disputes (particularly if some of the players know them better than you) and tell folk what it is before hand. If you're not running PFS you're entitled to say "the rules work the way I say they do" but being arbitrary is never a good thing. Don't be afraid to ask for clarification if some know them better, but be sure you're running it.
I don't know the path at all, but if it's a campaign with intrigue there are probably going to be plenty of npcs for you to play. Be familiar with their stat blocks, especially perception and sense motive scores. Get to know them (especially if they're recurring characters) - what do you like about them, what about them irritates you - exaggerate these characteristics a little. Do they have any speech characteristics? How do they see themselves (villain, hero, survivor...)? Memorable npcs and memorable fights are the things that characters carry away with them.
When the dice come out, make sure everyone already has coffee, has had comfort breaks, made that important phone or text message because you don't want to get to the middle of the initiative tree in the first round and find that you're waiting for one of your players to get off the phone or come back with the coffee or...
Be flexible and be prepared to stop and think - I hate reading in a monster description "in round three he..." because by round three he's likely to be pushing up daisies. Being familiar with the stat block helps a lot and each pc will maximise their effectiveness once the fighting starts - so should the npcs even if this takes more time.
Feed off the players. If they take a liking to an npc, or a massive dislike, reuse that character even if the path doesn't call for it. If they have a really clever, but incorrect, idea about what's going on consider using it - it may be better than what the path writer had in mind.
Decide in advance how lethal you want it to be - do the monsters finish off downed pcs? Are you going to fudge events a little to improve survival chances? Similarly, how many of your dice rolls do the players see? All of them? None of them? Just combat? Will you let your players make their own perception rolls? I'd advise not, but players don't much like GMs making ANY of their rolls.
Finally, have fun. If you're having fun, probably so are the players. (Not always true, I know, but generally we feed off the environment and if the players are sulking it's going to be hard to be having much fun yourself).
I am running the path atm (am up to module 4) and have enjoyed running it quite alot. That isnt to say I havent had some issues with it though.
First, the treasure handed out can be way too much. Total it up for each module to make sure it is in line with player development. Even after I dropped it significantly the players are still about 10% over (which I consider to be within reason, over 50% wasnt). Page 399 of the Core rulebook shows how much treasure players should have at each level. A note: this is the amount of treasure a player should have if newly created at that level. Actual treasure handed out is slightly higher which takes into account players selling equipment and using up consumables.
Second, the first module has alot of story awards. This may give your players the feeling they advanced in level way too quickly to get used to level 1 and maybe even 2. You might want to consider dropping most story awards and replacing them with encounters. However, that is up to the style of your group.
Third, the sixfold trial may have an issue depending on the style of your group. It is the most RP heavy module up to module 4 at any rate. I would examine it early and decide if you need to modify it as it may not be what your group likes.
Regarding DMing: Elinor has said pretty much what needs to be said regarding the group dynamics etc. Regarding DMing itself: I would suggest typing up key points rather than operating only out of the module. Prior to a session I type up alot of points so that I have an easy reference. I also put the encounter exp/treasure into an excel sheet so I can more easily keep track of them. This will also show if there is too much/little treasure and exp.
Good luck. - Gauss
Hi there.
Pretty much all the above for general advice.
A few points of my own:-
1) Live and breath the NPCs. This is what changes the game from a tactical skirmish game to an RPG. It is through the NPCs that the players get the flavor of the world and the adventure. As has been mentioned above, if the players "latch on to" a specific NPC, use that NPC a bit more than perhaps originally planned for.
2) The adventure paths are normally reasonably well scripted, with recurring bad guys etc. That said, there is no reason not to add some other (lower level) interactions that help make the world seem more real... Have a seargant of the guard befriend them (perhaps the party saved the life of his sister at some point?) and give them advanced warning of raids etc. Likewise, have someone at an inn they stay cheat at cards and get caught by the party.... Thereafter, have this guy as a low level annoyance - if the guards are searching for the group, have the card-sharp pop up and shout "I see them - they are over here!" (always from a safe distance!!) kind of thing
3) Most important for me? React to the players, and make sure they can see the results of their actions. Personally, I find nothing kills an adventure more than the feeling that the players have no influence on what is happening. When they do stuff, make sure there are results... They use a fireball in an urban area? Have some houses burn down, people killed and made homeless. The locals then start accusing the party of being murderous vigilantes... Likewise, if the party kill some guards, have a mysterious "package" turn up from the local smugglers guild to say thanks - along with a note saying that if guards A, B and C were to mee similar accidents, further "packages" could just find their way to the players.
4) Steal steal steal - ANYTHING that looks good, do not be afraid to steal it. Take it from TV (base an NPC on Captain Kirk, or perhaps Daniel Jackson), take it from books, take it from other people who have run similar games. There is no rule that says everything you have to do must be original work! The only thing is - don't let the players know where you have stolen stuff from, as they may (being tricksy little SOBs) work out what is happening based on that theft....
Overall - try to make the city a living breathing place, not just a set of encounters. Oh - and have fun as the players ignore pretty much anything and everything you have carefully crafted in favour of a minor point you just planned as a throw-away. If that happens, roll with it, and incorporate it into the main story!
Good luck
Aiddar
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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I have no experience with that adventure path, but here is some humble GM advice.
I have three main purposes when I GM these are as follows:
1) Tell a great story. Unfortunately this takes years of experience to really nail down and do right every single session. I have years of experience GMing, acting on stage, storytelling to an audience, and speaking in public and I still fail to deliver a great story from time to time, so don't feel bad if you have a night where you couldn't really move the players to be excited about a plot point or NPC. That said, the best thing you can do to tell a good story is listen to your players. Ask them questions and let them answers how they want and then take what they give you and build on it. I did this with a home brew game and ended up with a session with no combats that had players on the edge of their seats because they felt like their characters really mattered to the story. The other basic thing you can do is keep notes on NPCs and locations. These would be notes that only you see, and will have information that the players might not even learn. In a way, this is like the acting trick of knowing what happened before a character is in a scene and what will happen after they leave. By having these notes you will have a greater grasp of how to RP the NPCs, as well as some notes to fall back on if your players do ask obscure questions.
2) Help the players have as much fun as possible. While there are nightmare players out there that will only have "fun" if their character is breaking the game or they are doing something inapropriate, these are rare and generally easy to deal with, (I simple don't play with them, see purpose 3 for more details.) Every player is different, and it will take several sessions to understand what each player really finds fun about your game. However, the best way to help them have fun is to ask them ahead of time what they are expecting out of the game. I didn't do this one time and ran a very history lesson heavy game, thinking my players would love all the detail I put into my world. They ended up requesting more combat and dice rolling, and wanted me to tone down the history a bit. Ask them what three things they expect from the game and then keep that in mind as you prepare for each session. At the end of each session, you could even ask them how the game went, what they liked the most, and what they didn't like. In my experience, the players were nice to me and offered information that only made the next session better.
3) Have fun being the GM. If you are not having fun playing a game, you are doing it wrong. You, the Game Master, are also a player. You have the biggest role in the game, and the largest amount of responsibility, but you should also have the most fun. I mainly do two things to have the most fun. The first thing is I play with people I want to play with. I have had bad groups, I was physically assaulted by a player once, and I have even disbanded groups because I honestly did not want to be around a few of the players. Don't worry about losing friends, if you are tactful and honest they will understand if you end a game early. If you do lose a friend, you probably are better off in the end anyway. The second thing I do is I never do something I don't want to do. I don't want to play map maker, chronicler, quartermaster, or treasurer for the group. I already have to do plenty of other things. If there is a task that you don't like to do, or find that it takes you too long to do, and you can pass that task onto a player, then do it. Players honestly have the time and ability to help you. They can keep track of initiative, round counts, or conditions. They should be keeping a basic journal of at least names of NPCs and locations. If you feel comfortable enough you could also have someone be the official rules guru. You should still be the last word on rules at the table but they would be the person in charge of hunting down the rules when they are questioned.
I was once told that if I wanted to be perfect at something, I find a basic frame of how it is done and then build on top of that. These three purposes are my basic frame for being a Game Master. Take them, build on them, and make them your own.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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1. Roleplaying Tips is a vast storehouse of accumulated GM wisdom.
2. There are an awful lot of GM tips I could pass on, but here's a quick one: give each NPC a hook, something memorable so the PCs will remember them. Players don't care about NPCs they don't remember. So in a fight in the village square, they won't care that faceless townies are endangered, but they will care about not harming the advice-giving innkeeper, his flirty blonde daughter, and that village boy that runs messages for them and only accepts payment in fruit.
For B - know the rules. Have a mechanism for resolving rule disputes (particularly if some of the players know them better than you) and tell folk what it is before hand. If you're not running PFS you're entitled to say "the rules work the way I say they do" but being arbitrary is never a good thing. Don't be afraid to ask for clarification if some know them better, but be sure you're running it.
I don't know the path at all, but if it's a campaign with intrigue there are probably going to be plenty of npcs for you to play. Be familiar with their stat blocks, especially perception and sense motive scores. Get to know them (especially if they're recurring characters) - what do you like about them, what about them irritates you - exaggerate these characteristics a little. Do they have any speech characteristics? How do they see themselves (villain, hero, survivor...)? Memorable npcs and memorable fights are the things that characters carry away with them.
When the dice come out, make sure everyone already has coffee, has had comfort breaks, made that important phone or text message because you don't want to get to the middle of the initiative tree in the first round and find that you're waiting for one of your players to get off the phone or come back with the coffee or...
Be flexible and be prepared to stop and think - I hate reading in a monster description "in round three he..." because by round three he's likely to be pushing up daisies. Being familiar with the stat block helps a lot and each pc will maximise their effectiveness once the fighting starts - so should the npcs even if this takes more time.
Feed off the players. If they take a liking to an npc, or a massive dislike, reuse that character even if the path doesn't call for it. If they have a really clever, but incorrect, idea about what's going on consider using it - it may be better than what the path writer had in mind.
Decide in advance how lethal you want it to be - do the monsters finish off downed pcs? Are you going...
I often roll dice just to roll them and add a bit of concern to the players a bit of a chuckle or evil cackle can help make the players very worryed about things, also can just tell them to roll you a set of 6-10 perception rolls/ sense motive rolls etc. and write them down in order and then use them in that order or maybe in reverse order. This can help with the fact players hate having you roll any dice for them.
I often make a few partilay stated out npc's or monsters that are not in a published adventure to use to help when they head off on a wild goose chase or have no clue where to go next. The premade NPC's in the gamemastery guide are a great help for this if you have it.
Read any published adventure before you run it and then reread it and make notes about what you might need to alter both for you to fit it in your overall world or when the players go left when the adventuire needs them to go right.
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Thank you all, this is a grand amount of advice I can keep in mind.
I picked up the random dice rolling for drama and suspense on the GMs part, my current GM does it often and it can be quite frightening during high-tension parts of the adventure.
Another GM gave me a piece of advice which I enjoyed- cheat, always cheat both for and against the characters for the sake of fun, which I can agree with. Not every poor dice roll should ruin the experience for a player- and I've had those moments where a brilliant idea comes to mind at a vital moment- and was crushed with a poorly rolled 1.