I'm going to be running a campaign fairly soon, and I'm looking at Council of Thieves.
Should I read the Adventure Background stuff to them or should I just tell them they're in Westcrown, Cheliax and that Cheliax is ruled by devil-worshiping nobility and leave it at that?
Give them the Player's Guide. It's free and that's what it's there for.
Ha! My friends....reading something themselves.....that's rich! If they were the reading sort I would be all over this but one of them can't be bothered to read a comic book!
My suggestion would then be to have a series of quick social encounters in the game that bring out the points from the Players Guide that you want them to know.
First guy starts having lunch with an old friend who is complaining about the corrupt politics...
The next starts at night with a group being escorted down one of the few lit paths and someone else telling their child about the creatures that stalk the night...
Another might watch a patrol of Hell Knights in action...
Etc.
etc.
Basically go with the motto, show, don't tell.
Sean Mahoney
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Ha! My friends....reading something themselves.....that's rich! If they were the reading sort I would be all over this but one of them can't be bothered to read a comic book!
Make them read it in order to get a Campaign Trait. It's only ten pages, and they can skim parts of it, after all.
Seriously, it's not that large an expectation.
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Give them the Player's Guide. It's free and that's what it's there for.Ha! My friends....reading something themselves.....that's rich! If they were the reading sort I would be all over this but one of them can't be bothered to read a comic book!
Explain that if they can't be bothered reading the players guide then you won't be bothered reading the adventures. If they expect you to put the work in GMing, and doing all that prep work between games the least they can do is read 10 pages before creating characters.
There's no excuse for being a lazy player.
Unfortunately, some of us are not blessed with players who will put much (if any) work into their characters, or read in advance about the world or adventure.
For a group I just started, I typed up a page worth of short descriptions for some of the different APs I'd be fairly prepared to run, describing the type of adventures they were and what kind of characters would fit well. No one read it.
To the OP - I'd take a similar approach to what you first posted. Tell them they are citizens of the city of Cheliax. They've watched their city turn corrupt and depressed since they were children. Criminal gangs rule the streets during the day, and shadowy monsters stalk the streets at night. Then one day a woman approaches you with an invitation . . .
For the above, I'm paraphrasing. I'm actually a player in this AP, so I don't have the books to reference for facts. Yet, essentially, you just want to establish 1) the PCs care about their home, and 2) their home has turned into a dark miserable place, and 3) the PCs would like to change it.
Of course, you may need to remind them of these points if, for example, one PC all of a sudden decides he wants to explore Mwangi. My players will typically at least ask questions like "would my PC care about this? Would this be something important to my PC?"
I think that if your player's can't be bothered to read the Player's Guide, then they suffer the consequences.
I like the idea of reducing the number of traits.
And then simply set them into the adventure with no background and let them spin and suffer until they learn that investing in the campaign has it's rewards.
Frankly, if they can't be bothered to participate in the campaign world, tell them to play Encounters, where they can simply walk around and kill stuff for fun.
Or, if your group is split, give rewards for those who do invest in the storyline: extra traits, extra feat, background-related skill points, or even extra XP for roleplying in the AP.
its a real problem in game with a lot of pathfinder AP and PFS.
the party just never get to know the backstory
Wow, I have never seen this before. Our groups love the background generation part and developing that backstory.
Tell them they have to pick a background trait, so they have to read at least that part of the Player's Guide.
Then, if they come up with a backstory for their character and how they tie into the intro to the campaign, then they get something cool, like another trait and a free feat. Or another trait and some xp. Hopefully you know what motivates your players and what will get them off their lazy butts and into the most fun part of the game: the roleplay!
Frankly, I wouldn't bother GMing for a group that won't bother to read my handouts. But your miles may vary.
Frankly, I wouldn't bother GMing for a group that won't bother to read my handouts. But your miles may vary.
Pretty much.
Frankly, I wouldn't bother GMing for a group that won't bother to read my handouts. But your miles may vary.Pretty much.
Double yes.
Do you have the time/inclination to write stuff yourself? Would your players read it?
Our first RotRL game is on the 21st. The players already told me their character classes, races, and one-paragraph "generic backgrounds". On Tuesday I started sending carefully-partitioned stories to all of the players. "Here is the story of your life, xxx."
They're eating it up, and because it's THEIR characters' backgrounds, they're eager to read it all. I can set up the characters to have exactly the backgrounds I need for the overall story, and I'm aligning what I write with what they picked.
A (long) example after the cut. The player in question wanted to be a Drow paladin of Sarenrae. Yep. Pretty cool. Here's the story I wrote for her:
The year was 4608. Aroden, god of light and wisdom, was dead. Cheliax, Aroden's home country on Golarion, was in civil war. The Worldwound had opened, spilling demons across the northlands and overwhelming the nation of Sarkoris. To the west, a massive storm named the Eye of Abendego formed off the coast, drowning the nations of Lirgen and Yamasa. Absalom, city of light, was in chaos.
It was the perfect time to strike.
The drow poured forth from the Five Kings Mountains, overwhelming the dwarves who had long held them at bay and poured southwards into Andoran, figuring farmers and halflings would make excellent slaves (for as long as they lasted), and Cheliax was in no shape to protect its erstwhile colony. Even better, Andoran considered itself the "birthplace of freedom" and the origin of the worldwide abolitionist movement, so its people would provide great entertainment as well as half-decent labor. Sure enough, the drow easily cut a swath of destruction through Andoran, returning thousands of slaves to their caves in the mountains. Hope seemed lost. What god or nation would intervene?
Sarenrae took offense.
Sarenrae herself manifested in her temple in Absalom, ordering her paladins to form an army to deter, and, if necessary, exterminate the drow menace. The paladins worried; their forces were vastly insufficient to engage in full-scale war, and all the neighboring nations were already dealing with their own internal wars. They would obey their goddess, but their cause seemed doomed.
The paladins assembled their meager forces, bolstered by volunteers from Absalom who had relatives in Andoran, or who merely wanted to help. Their ships were to sail at dawn, as was their custom.
As dawn broke, sails were spotted. Hundreds of sails. Thousands of sails. The crusaders of Aroden, tasked with civilizing the entire southern continent, were coming home, led by Aroden's herald, Iomedae. They had gathered by the hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands in Osirion after Aroden's death, and Iomedae tasked them with sealing the Worldwound. Absalom happened to be "on the way". Hundreds of Aroden's paladins, bolstered by dozens of clerics and thousands of support troops agreed to join Sarenrae's crusade to wipe the drow off the map. There were many bitter discussions; Sarenrae's forces merely wanted to drive the drow back underground. Iomedae's forces wanted them exterminated. At the end, it was agreed they would "play it by ear" and the combined armies sailed northwards.
Against an army of paladins, the drow had no chance. They were slaughtered by the thousands, and the armies drove them back into the mountains and even pursued them into their caves.
And there, it happened. Icobar, paladin of Sarenrae, was traveling alone through a drow tunnel deep in their caverns when he heard a commotion ahead -- the screams of women and children, and the sounds of steel on flesh. He charged forward, unthinking, and struck down the men who were in the drow nursery, slaughtering the drow nursemaids, children and infants. Icobar stared in horror at the scene. Every drow was dead, even the infants. The men had committed atrocities beyond mere acts of war, transgressing into acts of unspeakable evil against the innocent babes. Icobar wept at the death around him. As his sobs echoed through the chamber, another cry joined his: A tiny drow infant was still alive! He used the last of his goddess-given abilities to heal her, tucked her in his arms, and carried her to the surface. Most of the warriors, and many of the paladins of Iomedae begged him to put her to the sword, but none dared face his wrath, and Icobar merely repeated, "She is a sign from Sarenrae that even the most evil of races may be redeemed. She is my charge. I name her Rae'Sheleth, Watched Over by Sarenrae."
Icobar was true to his word. He returned with Rae'Sheleth to Absalom, where he personally took to raising her as a proper student of Sarenrae's ways. Her temper frequently got the better of her, but Icobar was infinitely patient, and utterly dedicated to the notion that if he could redeem her, he would redeem himself and all of the men who gave their lives or committed atrocities in the name of fighting the drow. Unfortunately, men's lives are short, and Icobar grew old and died while Rae'Sheleth was still but a child. The high priest of Sarenrae in Absalom believed in Icobar's path, and took it upon himself to continue her training. For the first few decades, most other temple members shook their heads at the folly of raising a drow as a faithful follower of the Dawnflower, but as she grew, her control over her temper matured, and by the time the priest died the young 50-year-old drow was a model of decorum compared to other human children her equivalent age.
Rae'Sheleth continued to live at the temple, a legacy of the old priest and paladin that none dared break. And her behavior was downright tolerable; she was not the worst offender among the young trainees, and even when she lost her temper and beat a cadet senseless or bit his nose off, she would profusely apologize, and spend days in self-induced exile praying to Sarenrae for forgiveness and guidance.
She continues to live at the temple, still relatively young and impatient at the tender age of 99, and the clerics keep telling her it will be "only a few more decades" before she is ready to venture forth as a full-fledged paladin of Sarenrae.
She can't wait.
Stuff like that. (And yes, I made up 90% of it, so it's definitely not "Golarion canon" or any such stuff).
*EDIT* I have to agree with all the other GMs: If they really won't read ANYTHING you give them, no matter how customized for their characters, then don't bother, don't tell them anything, and laugh when you get your first TPK due to lack of party knowledge.
Yes. If it came up I would kill them all ruthlessly, based on something they SHOULD know. Vindictive? Me? Never.
+1Double yes.Frankly, I wouldn't bother GMing for a group that won't bother to read my handouts. But your miles may vary.Pretty much.
Frankly, I don't have the luxury of choice and they're my best friends. And they were interested enough when I explained for a whole car ride the cosmology and gods of the Pathfinder-verse. I don't mind being the "campfire storyteller", so to speak. And when we all played a previous campaign with another GM he just explained what was going on at the beginning and there was no confusion.
That said I looked over the whole campaign of CoT and ended up not liking it. So we're doing RotR instead.
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Frankly, I don't have the luxury of choice and they're my best friends. And they were interested enough when I explained for a whole car ride the cosmology and gods of the Pathfinder-verse. I don't mind being the "campfire storyteller", so to speak. And when we all played a previous campaign with another GM he just explained what was going on at the beginning and there was no confusion.That said I looked over the whole campaign of CoT and ended up not liking it. So we're doing RotR instead.
A lot of people here give the advice of drop the player/gm to any issue. Not seeming to realize that frequently the DM is friends with these people lol.
You can try other ways to get the info out. For one game I did a flashback cutscene and handed out scripts. I also like to sometimes do a one shot prequel or side adventure that exposes backstory I want the players to know, but not their characters.
You can try other ways to get the info out. For one game I did a flashback cutscene and handed out scripts. I also like to sometimes do a one shot prequel or side adventure that exposes backstory I want the players to know, but not their characters.
That is a really good idea! Run a one shot, 2-3 session adventure with pregenerated characters that they have little investment in to get them up to date on background story. You can even give them some cool stuff that the party finds later in the adventure!
-Aaron
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A lot of people here give the advice of drop the player/gm to any issue. Not seeming to realize that frequently the DM is friends with these people lol.
You can try other ways to get the info out. For one game I did a flashback cutscene and handed out scripts. I also like to sometimes do a one shot prequel or side adventure that exposes backstory I want the players to know, but not their characters.
I didn't mean to say to stop playing with these folks-- just set your expectations accordingly. If they're the "kick in the door, kill monster, take treasure" kind of players, then I wouldn't bother running an AP. You can just randomly roll monster encounters, and they'll have a ball. Sometimes you have to adapt your style of GMing to what your players want-- but everyone has to remember that the GM is a participant of the game, and has to have fun too!
I guess I'm lucky that I have more gamer friends than I can run in a game session. (I had to turn away some players for my Rise of the Runelords game, because I know I can't effectively GM a party larger than 6 PCs).
Regarding GM style vs. player style...
One of my oldest and dearest friends and I have been gaming together for almost 25 years. We have come to the conclusion that we can't play in games the other GMs: we just don't care for each others' GM style or the kinds of adventures the other likes to run.
I like to run big, action-focued "save the world" kind of plots, with a lot of combat, a fair amount of moral ambiguity, and decent role-playing. I usually include horror elements in my games. I'm also big on rules, and I use tactical combat. He doesn't like horror at all. He finds the "sticking to the rules" of my style to be a drag on creativity, and that combat takes way too long and gets tedious. He'd be happy with one short fight every three or four sessions.
He likes to run small-scale, political intrigue games, generally where the PCs are nobles in the capitol city. The focus is on role-playing, making alliances with other PCs and NPCs, and finessing your agenda forward. I find games like this to be about as much fun as watching grass grow. He is a much more free-form GM, allowing more character actions than I do, but also ignoring or enforcing rules (even some fundamental ones like initiative) as the situation fits. He's not a fan of tactical combat and tends to hand-wave things like combat feats and skill checks.
We're both happy to play in games run by someone else, though.
Frankly, I don't have the luxury of choice and they're my best friends. And they were interested enough when I explained for a whole car ride the cosmology and gods of the Pathfinder-verse. I don't mind being the "campfire storyteller", so to speak. And when we all played a previous campaign with another GM he just explained what was going on at the beginning and there was no confusion.
That said I looked over the whole campaign of CoT and ended up not liking it. So we're doing RotR instead.
For my Shackled City campaign, I wrote down a few paragraphs of history of the country and the city and a short list of prominent local citizens. If your players aren't into reading, you can just read it to them.
I wasn’t going to respond again to this thread because the advice presented here annoyed me so much. Several posters basically gave the advice of dropping your players. I even mentioned this to some of my players over the weekend, telling them that I'm dropping them soon if they don't shape up.
I could just imagine introducing a new group of players, and upon finding that they didn’t read my background information, I tell them to take a hike. As it happens, this exact scenario occurred three weeks ago. I was starting Jade Regent. No one read anything. I read a brief synopsis, and the game moved along fine.
In my regular groups, I rarely have anyone read all the background information. Heck, I have to give a brief summary of what is going on at the beginning of each session. The player who actually reads and remembers all the details of the campaign is a rare and cherished thing to me. But I’m not going to kick people off the table if they aren’t that player.
Maybe other DMs have ample players who fawn over their carefully written campaign summaries. To me, it just seems like a form of geek snobbery.
And suggesting a TPK because the group didn’t read the Player’s Guide? Really?
To the OP, just give a brief summary at the beginning. If your friends start to stray a bit, you may need to guide them a bit, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I can’t think of one thing that is in the RotRL Player’s Guide that is so ultra-important that there is a likelihood of a TPK. There are lots of places in that AP for the PCs to learn information and do research as well. Have a good game.
I didn't mean to say to stop playing with these folks-- just set your expectations accordingly. If they're the "kick in the door, kill monster, take treasure" kind of players, then I wouldn't bother running an AP. You can just randomly roll monster encounters, and they'll have a ball. Sometimes you have to adapt your style of GMing to what your players want-- but everyone has to remember that the GM is a participant of the game, and has to have fun too!
I guess I'm lucky that I have more gamer friends than I can run in a game session. (I had to turn away some players for my Rise of the Runelords game, because I know I can't effectively GM a party larger than 6 PCs).
Regarding GM style vs. player style...
One of my oldest and dearest friends and I have been gaming together for almost 25 years. We have come to the conclusion that we can't play in games the other GMs: we just don't care for each others' GM style or the kinds of adventures the other likes to run.
I like to run big, action-focued "save the world" kind of plots, with a lot of combat, a fair amount of moral ambiguity, and decent role-playing. I usually include horror elements in my games. I'm also big on rules, and I use tactical combat. He doesn't like horror at all. He finds the "sticking to the rules" of my style to be a drag on creativity, and that combat takes way too long and gets tedious. He'd be happy with one short fight every three or four sessions.
He likes to run small-scale, political intrigue games, generally where the PCs are nobles in the capitol city. The focus is on role-playing, making...
Hmm...I like your advice. I'll talk to my players about what they want to do.
In another thread, someone suggested; "drop them from the game, not from your friendlist".
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I'd like to say: I'm not saying drop your players. I'm saying explain to them that running a campaign is a two way street. They are missing out on fun if they ignore the background information, and that if you make the effort to prepare something they can take 10 minutes out of their week to read it.
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Frankly, I don't have the luxury of choice and they're my best friends. And they were interested enough when I explained for a whole car ride the cosmology and gods of the Pathfinder-verse. I don't mind being the "campfire storyteller", so to speak. And when we all played a previous campaign with another GM he just explained what was going on at the beginning and there was no confusion.
For reference, I always game with my friends, too. I've always found that to make it easier to get them to do things like reading the background material (or reading it aloud to the group, which does indeed work fine, IME), rather than harder.
But maybe that's just me.
I wasn’t going to respond again to this thread because the advice presented here annoyed me so much. Several posters basically gave the advice of dropping your players. I even mentioned this to some of my players over the weekend, telling them that I'm dropping them soon if they don't shape up.
I could just imagine introducing a new group of players, and upon finding that they didn’t read my background information, I tell them to take a hike. As it happens, this exact scenario occurred three weeks ago. I was starting Jade Regent. No one read anything. I read a brief synopsis, and the game moved along fine.
In my regular groups, I rarely have anyone read all the background information. Heck, I have to give a brief summary of what is going on at the beginning of each session. The player who actually reads and remembers all the details of the campaign is a rare and cherished thing to me. But I’m not going to kick people off the table if they aren’t that player.Maybe other DMs have ample players who fawn over their carefully written campaign summaries. To me, it just seems like a form of geek snobbery.
And suggesting a TPK because the group didn’t read the Player’s Guide? Really?
To the OP, just give a brief summary at the beginning. If your friends start to stray a bit, you may need to guide them a bit, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I can’t think of one thing that is in the RotRL Player’s Guide that is so ultra-important that there is a likelihood of a TPK. There are lots of places in that AP for the PCs to learn information and do research as well. Have a good game.
Well, I'm the offender with the TPK comment, and it was meant tongue-in-cheek. No; I would never do a TPK because the party hadn't read something like the Player's Guide.
It's also worth asking, "Are these personally-prepared handouts (my impression) or just the Player's Guide?" In four APs with 9 different players, exactly ONE of my players has ever read the PG, and of 20 PCs, not one has used a PG trait. I don't worry about that at all, feed them the information as needed, and the AP works fine.
My impression (and I could certainly be wrong) is that the OP personally prepared additional handouts that the players wouldn't read. If that's the case, it's rather rude to the GM. There are times when, as a GM, you want to set a tone by having them find a crude handwritten note, and you give them a carefully-prepared chewed up piece of paper. The notion that I'd have to read that aloud to my group makes me harken back to kindergarten.
For my latest AP, I had the luxury of hand-picking my players, and I think it's worth noting that I picked three who avidly read the massive amounts of drivel I produce (if you ever need to get to sleep, check out my massive background stories on the RotRL thread). But if a player tells me, "I'm not going to read all that, just tell me who I am, where I'm from, and why I'm here," I'm OK with that. I just won't spend nearly as much time producing his background.
Unfortunately, I think that leads to a less rich gaming experience for both the player and the GM, but that's the player's choice.
But yes, if it's just the pre-prepared PG, my players are all avid readers, but they don't tend to read it either, because they want to be surprised. I just have them come from out of town so they don't know anything.
Council of Thieves is particularly hard; I simply could not get the PCs to care at all about Westcrown, and we had to drop the AP. Kingmaker, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Rise of the Runelords all work well with out-of-towners because in Kingmaker greed is the big motivator, and in the others both Korvosa and Sandpoint can easily be roleplayed into towns worth saving.
** EDIT**
I think I should make my position clear:
- Failure to read the Player's Guide for an AP? Meh. Who cares?
- Refusal to read the carefully-prepared decaying diary that it took me 90 minutes to make, or asking me to read it aloud to them: Is this really the best I can do for players?
And yeah, if the answer is #2, I don't kick out the players, I just don't try as hard, and when it's time to set up the next AP, I look for other players.