Beginning questions.


Advice


So I'm sort of semi-founding a pathfinder group at my school after the summer holidas end and while being over the moon, I got a few questions surfing through the prd and pathfinder material in general.

1)How long do the sessions need to last. I was thinking about having them about 2.5 hrs long once a week, just so we're not at school till 7, anyway I was wandering if that would be enough or if it would need to be longer? Most of us are going to be 13 so would socialising take up too much time at the beginning

2)Can there be 2 Gm's? Basically my idea is for our I.T. teacher to run the first 12 sessions or so and at the end kill everyone one off so that the we can Dm. Myself being a creative person ,have spent half the holidays thinking about adventures ideas and world settings, want to fill this role but my friend who seams rather insistent on the fact that he be Gm. Now at this point I don't know his experience with the rules; I have spent a lot of time surfing the Prd and have a fair grasp on the rules. At this point ,after our 6 weeks holiday, I do not know his bearing on the rules bout know that his birthday was today and he may of got the rule book. So me assuming that his attitude wouldn't change I came up with and idea to put in play ,for when we hopefully start afresh in the new year, for both of us to Dm simultaneously. The idea would be to get him to make a story idea and for me to come up with a story idea and link the stories tighter. He might think about a basic starter dungeon which the major of the town was captured an taken to. My idea might be a necromancer who pretended to be a normal mage, kill loads of bandits that attack and then animate there corpses to kill the villagers. Then we would hopefully merge the ideas and say that the renaming bandits go the beginning town to capture the major and take him to the local dungeon. After the adventurers save him, they try to find were the bandits came from. They discoverer it was north and they travel there. They discover many npcs who are spooked by recent disappearing. then a elf rouge , who suspects the mage, talks of how after saving them the wizard wastes away in his tower studying dark arts guarded by this owlbear. One night you hear screams and the elf is being eaten by zombies. The Pc's then wipe out all the undead in the village and run up to the wizards tower. They kill the owl bear and smash a few undead skulls but hopefully kill the wizard saving the town. I was just wondering if this idea would work in the long run? I would hope we would be able to make a large overarching story that becomes epic.

2.5)How many sessions of that length we would take to finish the scenario above?

Thankyou for reading and will update this as of the morning.


Welcome to the hobby. I started at about your age and now I'm... too damned old.

First up, as for time you'll have to play it by ear somewhat. My sessions run anywhere in the five to seven hour realm. That said, your game won't start that way.

You should coordinate a planning-and-meeting session. Since you've got new players, sit them all down and help them work out character creation together. Let them argue amongst themselves over who gets what role and who covers what skills and abilities. Rolling up a character, picking feats and gear will kill a session, easily.

That will give you a feel for your group's... attention-span. You may also notice problems and start to work on solutions. Maybe the group agrees to leave cell phones shut off during game time. The DM's job is to keep the game more interesting than Real Life, which can be really hard sometimes.

As for multiple DMs involved, it can be done but it takes a certain kind of game. Having a secret Big Bad Evil Guy doesn't work so well. On the other hand, I've been part of a campaign that handed had three DMs in sequence, ending with me. The first guy designed his story arc, ran it, and when we finished killing his boss, a player took over and continued the story from there. When we offed his boss, I took over and ran the game up into about level 15, telling a third chapter to the story that also referred to things that had gone by in the past. Recurring villains, previously-rescued people coming in to help, you name it. That worked well, but each of us ran the game for a good six months.

There's no way to tell you how many sessions you need progress. I've been doing this a long time and I'm never amazed by how incorrect my ability to judge progress is. Sometimes I think the players will ace a quest and it takes literally three or four sessions (remember, those are 5-7 hour sessions) and sometimes I expect them to drag out and the players crank through much faster.

I have a suggestion though... start small and build up. Pick up a little pre-written adventure module and run your players through it as a test. We Be Goblins and We Be Goblins Too are both free and perfect for this. Find out what works and what doesn't work with your group before planning a year-long campaign with multiple storywriters.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Well my I.T. teacher is hopefully going to run a mini campaign in which I hope everyone one will get the rules written down. About premade adventures I fell rather reluctant to use them because I'm not a particular fan of the golarion setting. I'm a bit of a tolkien nut so finding magic items in a Thorpe is a bit much. I was thinking about downgrading each settlements magic items stats down 2 levels and getting rid of the base price.


If you are wanting to run shorter games pfs scenario might work they are intended to be run in a shorter block.

Grand Lodge

Remember that standard monster CR is based on the magic item availability as given, and it won't take much lowering of magic availability to either make simple monsters deadly (Shadows, which are a high-risk proposition for level 1 PCs, would remain dangerous to much higher levels with low magic item availability); or encourage the players to create a lot of "down-time" for the party to spend on creating their own magic items.

Sczarni

black1blade wrote:

So I'm sort of semi-founding a pathfinder group at my school after the summer holidas end and while being over the moon, I got a few questions surfing through the prd and pathfinder material in general.

1)How long do the sessions need to last. I was thinking about having them about 2.5 hrs long once a week, just so we're not at school till 7, anyway I was wandering if that would be enough or if it would need to be longer? Most of us are going to be 13 so would socialising take up too much time at the beginning

2)Can there be 2 Gm's? Basically my idea is for our I.T. teacher to run the first 12 sessions or so and at the end kill everyone one off so that the we can Dm. Myself being a creative person ,have spent half the holidays thinking about adventures ideas and world settings, want to fill this role but my friend who seams rather insistent on the fact that he be Gm. Now at this point I don't know his experience with the rules; I have spent a lot of time surfing the Prd and have a fair grasp on the rules. At this point ,after our 6 weeks holiday, I do not know his bearing on the rules bout know that his birthday was today and he may of got the rule book. So me assuming that his attitude wouldn't change I came up with and idea to put in play ,for when we hopefully start afresh in the new year, for both of us to Dm simultaneously. The idea would be to get him to make a story idea and for me to come up with a story idea and link the stories tighter. He might think about a basic starter dungeon which the major of the town was captured an taken to. My idea might be a necromancer who pretended to be a normal mage, kill loads of bandits that attack and then animate there corpses to kill the villagers. Then we would hopefully merge the ideas and say that the renaming bandits go the beginning town to capture the major and take him to the local dungeon. After the adventurers save him, they try to find were the bandits came from. They discoverer it was north and they travel there. They discover many npcs who...

1) Honestly, it depends on everyone's schedule. The group I'm in sets aside an entire day and it's usually a 10-12 hour session. I LOVE IT. It's usually on a Sunday too, and there is normally nothing to do on Sundays. It works out for all of us, especially those of us coming back from vacation for work the following Monday. I would recommend the same if it works for everyone. Its much easier to condense it to one very long day and/or night.

2) Of course there can be two GMs. This could be or could not be overwhelming for the players, but I'm leaning more towards this not being overwhelming. That'll really keep the story interesting and fun as long as you and the other DM really cooperate, be it taking turns or claiming certain parts.

2.5) I can't recommend anything on that. It depends on how fast you want to go through it. Generally our group goes through 2 areas in about 6 or 7 hours. There is a lot of RP and random rule callings(to understand wtf we are doing in combat lulz) on some minor things. Also updating character sheets and figuring out what we want to buy in town, AND we have 5 dudes as PCs for this campaign. Personally I like the rate it's going at. Not too fast, not too slow. It gives me downtime to text my gril too. ;D

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Beginning questions. All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice