Hi all!
(this may belong in a GM-specific sub-forum somewhere, if so please let me know)
I've got about 3 years worth(bi-weekly) of PnP RPG experience behind me, 2 years of that is 3/3.5 I've played 8? PFS games, but that's about all the Pathfinder experience I've got.
I ran Beginner Box yesterday for some friends, and that went pretty well. The Players include two guys who have played Pathfinder for a while, one of which seems a bit Encylopedic about what he reads. They'll be my initial "Rules Lawyers"
I gave the players the option between Rise of the Runelords, Reign of Winter and Shattered Star for me to run and they picked Shattered Star.
At GenCon I attended the GM 101 class, and I've spent some hours reading on how to GM on the web. I've read up on some of what has been suggested on how to prepare for AP games in the Paizo forums that I found via Google.
Despite all this, I'm still intimidated when I'm reading the beginning of the first book of the AP. So many things to know and remember that it would slow down the adventure so much if I have to reference them. It almost feels like I need to make an extremely detailed outline of everything just to be sure I don't miss anything. I can definitely highlight or underline(once I get my own copy), but that still involves needing to read a bunch during the AP, especially the RP-heavy sections.
Fights may end up a bit easier. Print out/copy down the stats for a mob, paper clip them together with a piece of paper noting room and quantity of each.
There's about a month before our first actual session, so I've got some time to read all 6 books and maybe borrow the City guide from a friend, and maybe even some of the Inner Sea guide too.
I worry a bunch that Reading the whole AP now, each book again before we start them, and then what I expect to get through each week with detailed notes or outline(total 3 times) is going to be enough and that I'll slow down the game a lot.
Any Advice is appreciated.
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Yep, that's AP's for you. It's a lot of work. You may be better running a couple of modules first though as the core game can be quite complicated, the beginner game is a quick and dirty version.
One thing you do have to do is read the entire thing through first. Don't read book 1 then play etc otherwise you will miss out on crucial plot threads and NPC motivations.
You will need to make notes as well when starting to run it, I personally would find it really difficult to run if I just picked it up and ran it on the night after just reading it through.
You have a month as you say so just start by reading all parts making notes of the plot and recurring NPC's. Then I read part 1 and make notes, don't worry about the rest so long as you have an idea as to what happens in each part and the overall plot that will be enough. Some bits you may unfamilar with so make notes to check rule questions that come up, read the players guide to so you are familar with player traits and can help with the pc generation (Remember that AP's are built around 4 pc's with 15 point buy stats, more players or less players you will need to adjust the CR of the encounters to fit otherwise it will be too lethal or too easy).
There are plenty of GM tips on the forum but my favorite is to use index cards for combat, write/print the stats on them for the monsters/npc's add in a card for each PC then add the initative number on the top left of the card and add in order highest to lowest, its fairly easy to keep track of a combat round this way.
If you are just starting out I would personally just use the corebook, some of the classes (summoner) are hard to adjudicate.
so above all read the whole of AP at least once and note the plot and recurring NPC's, read part 1 make notes, read the players guide, remember 15 point buy 4 players and above all read the core rulebook and make notes of the rules if you are unsure. If new and unsure about things stick with the corebook to start with.
Oh and be prepared for a long time investment too. AP's if played properly can take at least a year of game time to play depending on play style and length of sessions. One book in our group is roughly 10-12 weeks of 3 hour sessions to finish.
I've got two Rules Lawyers that will help with rules, and we know that gameplay until the end of the year is probably going to be a bit slow as I definitely want to be looking up some rules to help me remember them.
I think we're doing 20 point buy in and I expect to eventually have 5 players. Two of our players just moved to the city from an hour away and when one of them finds a job in this city, she'll be able to play. She'll create a character then. I've got no issues just adding one or two of the more common mobs to the basic fights and perhaps adding an AC or two(or something) to the Single mob fights.
I'm pretty sure two of the players have decided to play Brother-Sister Barbs, and one is very likely going to be an Arcane Spellcaster. No idea on the last two, but i'm hoping for a healer or at least a UMD-guy so I can give them a CxW wand...or not, and just not adjust the combat much. Being a little overpowered when you dont have a healer makes it a bit more even, right?
For Initiative, I used color-coded index cards hanging from the GM Screen. The players had individual colors and the Mobs were all the same color. I may customize the mob init cards for each mob, or I may simply have Mob 1-10 and write on each detailed monster card which is which. I just wrote HP on the Chessex square map I had under the Beginner Box map for that game and kept track of which was which (mob 1-x)in my head.
Your Advice on the first read through is to try and remember when something links back to something mentioned previously and write that down so that I can properly foreshadow early on. I hadn't considered that, but I recall reading somewhere "If a gun is on the wall in act 1, it needs to be used by Ac 3, Scene 2"
I'm limiting to Core, APG, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, PFS Field Guide. Traits are limited to those in the Shattered Star Players Guide.
Good advice! keeps me thinking and thats always a good thing.
Thanks!
We're doing 4 hour sessions once every two weeks right now. If one of the players decides not to join us, we may go weekly.
Don't worry about missing something or forgetting it—it's going to happen. Just as long as you account for it and don't forget about it later! Focus on having fun, work on making the PCs care about the adventures, and it will all work out.
It sounds to me as though you've got a handle on GMing. GMing Pathfinder is only very slightly different than GMing 3.5, and the differences are just things you'll pick up.
GMing is an art, not a science. Every GM prepares differently. Heck, my preparations can range from many hours to making it up as I go along, depending on my time. The key to good GMing is exactly what Lilith said: concentrate on having fun. The rules are just guidelines. If you don't know the exact rule, make it up on the spot and keep going. Look up the "right" answer later.
GMing Shattered Star is not particularly difficult. The most important advice I have is to echo what Ferrinwulf said: read the WHOLE AP. I approached it similarly to what you did. I read the whole thing once, straight through. Then I re-read the first adventure ("Shards of Sin") more carefully, noting important NPCs and any unusual rules being used (e.g., drowning). I made a copy of each NPC statblock so I could refer to it in combat without constantly looking things up in the Bestiary, and I chose miniatures to represent my NPC's. Then, the night before running each part of the adventure, I read through that again.
You have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to miniature figures. There is a whole set of Pathfinder pre-painted plastic miniatures dedicated to Shattered Star. If that's too expensive, there is a whole set of "pawns" (cardboard stand-up miniatures with plastic bases) for this AP. And if that's too expensive, the Paizo store has some very nice paper minis you can print out and cut up for a very reasonable price.
You really should consider allowing traits from the free, downloadable Character Traits PDF. Generally, you should only require characters to take one campaign trait and let them choose the other from that list (or the expanded list of traits in the SRD.)
Get to know the Pathfinder SRD. It's an awesome tool. I refer to it practically every game to get the right rule fast.
Last thought. You don't need to buy these AP's, but part of the fun of Shattered Star is that it is in some ways a sequel to several other AP's, including Rise of the Runelords, Second Darkness and Curse of the Crimson Throne. It is worth reading a little about those AP's so that you can understand when Shattered Star is making reference to them.
Have fun, and feel free to send me a PM with any questions you may have as you go along!
As I prep my first 'monster card' for the upcoming AP, I realize how crazy this really is for a campaign that has a shit-ton of Mobs. I'm wondering if there's a better method of having a mobs statistics in front of me that isn't going to require me to copy the stat blocks of some 500+ different monster types to Index cards.
Suggestions?
Thanks
Edit:
It does dawn on me that while they're in the Dungeon, all I really need to prep are these monster cards. Then its just a matter of binding them per room in the Dungeon and making sure they're properly marked.
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Do you own a laptop or tablet?
I've found having d20pfsrd.com open in a few tabs to be very handy, as well as a blank notepad document for scratch paper.
If you don't own a laptop or tablet (presumably you own a PC & a printer) then you can use the website and copy paste the stats you need and print the monsters out. This has the added advantage of letting you write directly onto the statblock.
Good luck and good Gaming :-)
So there isn't some kind of reference that allows you to say...add X number of Monsters to a printable guide and then the software figures out to best lay that out (likely based on a grid system with each mob pre-set for X grid spaces) so that you've got some fairly compact monster references for your game?
Does Hero Lab do that if you buy the Bestiaries?
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised by that.
Any Advice is appreciated.
My advice is to only worry about closely reading the amount of the adventure that your players can reasonably do in the time allotted. That is usually only about 10 or so pages of a given adventure. Just make yourself an expert on those ten pages.
Also, prep more than you think you will need to! My players got halfway done with the first book in 2 hours, and I kind of winged it from there. It didn't go too well.
Also, prep more than you think you will need to! My players got halfway done with the first book in 2 hours, and I kind of winged it from there. It didn't go too well.
2 hours? Damn, that's fast!
My group has taken around 20 hours(5 sessions of about 4 hrs each) to get to the siccatite doors.
Also, prep more than you think you will need to! My players got halfway done with the first book in 2 hours, and I kind of winged it from there. It didn't go too well.2 hours? Damn, that's fast!
My group has taken around 20 hours(5 sessions of about 4 hrs each) to get to the siccatite doors.
They... Skipped some stuff by being creative.
Mine climbed the side of a certain hideout in the first book, and alerted the main protagonist of the encounter, and the rest of the hideout all at once. Almost wiped the group with the fight then again in the following fight but the fighter got really lucky and chained some crits with her falcata and turned the tide.
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To the OP, I like to keep a three-holed binder where I have a printout of the PDF, so I can highlight, underline, and put notes in the margins to my heart's content. I also have post-its to mark important pages (for example, the map of their current location, the wandering monster table, etc.). I also print pages from my PDFs of the bestiaries (or if I don't have the PDFs, from the online sources noted above), and have those in the back of my binder for easy access. I like to detach them from the binder when I need them, especially when I am using more than one statblock at a time.