Simpler Scenarios for a not-so-confident GM


GM Discussion

Liberty's Edge

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One of the occasional GM's at our local doesn't feel like he is doing too good a job. He says he is losing track of stuff and not doing all the weird complex rules correctly.
I haven't been present at many of his GM sessions, but I haven't seen any issues except he is a bit slower than others. But not enough that I would call it a problem and I have not heard any complaints.

But he would like a list of some still entertaining/memorable scenarios that are not too difficult/demanding upon a GM that isn't yet really very confident in himself.

Yup he's got Confirmation, Masters of the Fallen Fortress, First Steps, We Be Goblins, and We Be Goblins Too.

So what are some others that he can do while he gains a bit more experience and confidence without 'boring his players to tears' in the process?

Sovereign Court 4/5

Depending on what exactly his concern is, a few suggestions from the relatively small number I've run:

-The Wounded Wisp looks a bit daunting at first, but if you pre-select the variable options as you prepare the scenario, it's much simpler.
-If complexity of combat rules is the main concern, Library of the Lion is very low-combat, though it has some unusual rules of its own.
-Older scenarios might be a good bet, as they're drawing from fewer sourcebooks, and are less likely to have unusual rules. Black Waters, Slave Pits of Absalom, and the Infernal Vault

1/5

I found On Sharrowsmith's Trail to be a very straight forward and simple scenario. It even has, almost, all the prep included for you.

Wounded Wisp is really easy to run once you've read it through and understand what is really supposed to be going on. The random elements make reading it through a little bit of a slog though.

Dark Archive 2/5

If he sticks with 1-5's they all should be mechanically easier to master.

The season 4 1-5's are almost all excellent, challenging and without too many weird things in them that would bog down a gm session.

Shadow Lodge 3/5

A better idea is likely to address the specific problem he's having; any 1-5 should suit.

Get him to provide a couple of examples of where he thinks he's getting lost, as specifically as possible.

What kind of complex rules does he think he can't follow very well?

What you've described so far are problems most GMs face, new or not.

Lantern Lodge 5/5

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The Goblinblood Dead. Song of the Sea Witch. Assault on the Kingdom of the Impossible.

I'd try and shy away from anything from Season 0- -conversions on the fly are their own unique breed of messy.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/5

Veteran's Vault and Glass River Rescue are both pretty simple to run, from what I recall.

Grand Lodge 4/5

From Season 0, Mists of Mwangi has already been converted, and is fairly simple.

Maybe the whole first three or four seasons worth of Blackros Museum scenarios.

Mists of Mwangi
Voice in the Void
Penumbral Accords

Silver Crusade 2/5

Frostfur Captives

Liberty's Edge

All he said was he messed up with the grabbing tripping scent things with the wierd creatures. I think he meant forgetting to use those specials, but he might have meant he used them incorrectly.
And one of the casters had a bunch of spells he wasn't familiar with, so apparently the players were continually correcting him on how they worked.
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Avatar-1 wrote:

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What you've described so far are problems most GMs face, new or not.

Agreed. He has always had self-confidence issues. I was frankly pleasantly surprised he decided to try GM'ing in such a public venue for potentially complete strangers.

Other than the basic 5, he ran a couple that the local organizer asked for. I guess it didn't go as smoothly as he felt like it should have. I told him if you tell the organizer I have X prep'd and ready to run next saturday, he will be fine with that. It doesn't have to be whatever list he has.
So I was trying to help him pick some easier ones to get some practical experience and build up his self-confidence.
I have the 'Among the X' series. They are pretty simple, but also kinda boring for all but relatively new players.

Grand Lodge 1/5

I recommend the Among the X series as well(although I found Among the Gods a bit difficult in comparison). Tide of Morning//Twilight are also good picks. Assault on the Kingdom of the Impossible has already been mentioned, but it's a fun scenario to run and is pretty straight forward.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

One thing that can help reduce the number of things you have to pay attention to at the same time, is to delegate initiative tracking to a player. I do this myself quite a bit; one of my friends is far better at staying focused and keeping all the trains running on time.

Keeping track of initiative as a GM is fairly time-consuming, since you're also constantly adjudicating every player's actions. I find that I do a much better job at running combat if I don't have to split my attention quite as much.

In interesting side effect is that this friend used to get annoyed because I sometimes get distracted, and then the combat gets a bit unfocused. By giving him the initiative board, he can pull me back in too when he feels I'm wandering.

Liberty's Edge 4/5

Maybe talk to him about what he does right to help his confidence and make suggestions on what he needs to work on. And/or sit at his table to critique him. Talk to your local VC. The guy might need a session of GM 101. But over all don't turn him away. Every local group at times needs more GMs.

I still can't remember what every spell does so I don't fault him on that. I think one of the hardest things is what provokes an AoO. I learned the other day that casting a spell with a ranged touch attack provokes TWICE. I'd never known that in all the years Ive been running PFS.

Just my two coppers.

Mike

Liberty's Edge

I rarely get to play PF with him anymore. We no longer live in the same city.

Guaranteed no one is turning him away. I don't think there have even been any negative comments about him as a GM. I think (and I would bet he agrees) that it is in his head. He feels like he didn't do things as well as he feels he should.
I'd say any troubles have been nerves as much as anything. He knows the rules nearly as well as the average player. He does fine when he is a player.
That's why we're hopping some easier scenarios with less to keep track of will help his self-confidence.

I will pass along the scenario suggestions you folks have made.

Shadow Lodge

I've been musing on a related issue this afternoon, and I'd suggest that scenario wordcount can also have a dramatic effect on a GM's confidence.

While the older scenarios do have some 3.5e stat blocks, in some ways those are much easier to run than the most recent Pathfinder stat blocks - so I'd say that's a point in favor of the older scenarios.

I'd think most GMs are human and they'd want to try to get the "bulk" of a scenario in their fore-mind so they can make ad-hoc decisions or elaborations (like RPing the NPCs). Newer scenarios may have up to 300% more reading-prep to do than older ones.

Random scenario word count sampler:

Word count estimates by scenario
Silent Tide 8,000
Slave Pits of Absalom 6,500
Mists of Mwangi 5,000

Night March of Kalkamedes 10,000

Horn of Aroden 11,500
Library of the Lion 13,500
Scars of the Third Crusade 14,000
Wounded Wisp 16,000

I also know that the more "levers" there are in a scenario, the more the GM has these little fiddly bits floating around in their head, trying to make sure each gets an appropriate amount of "screen time". Wounded Wisp is a good example. You've got the 6 NPCs at the bar scene. You've got the 4 possible NPC priests in the graveyard. These things can all get overwhelming (not to mention these two aspects of Wisp take as much prep in their 6,000 allocated words as the entirety of the Mists of Mwangi scenario).

Scenarios with only 2-3 "levers" are the easiest to wrap your arms around and feel like you've got it all up here (taps head) and are ready for whatever the players are going to throw at you.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

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To be fair, I felt that Library of the Lion was a relatively complex scenario to run. It had a LOT of subsystems.

Night March is relatively straightforward; there's a focused story with some clear encounters. It's important to prep it thoroughly, but the internal cohesion is very high.

Scars looked rather over-complicated to me as a player.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

I'd say that The Confirmation would be a great one for a beginning GM.. a lot of good stuff there.

I will second Mists of Mwangi... simple map, straight forward scenario. And even though season 0, it was the only one converted to PF.

4-01 Rise of the Goblin guild is pretty good as well... there is one mechanism in there that can be a little wonky, but other than that, no big deal.

#5-04 The Stolen Heir is pretty straight-forward. Decent roleplaying opportunities, but still pretty railroady.

#3-19: The Icebound Outpost is also very simple to GM...

I would personally avoid Among the Living, as it needs conversion, and can be quite lethal if the NPCs get lucky. Its map is insanely large as well.

Silver Crusade 1/5

I strongly advice against The Stolen Heir. While the scenario itself is pretty straightforward, it has the potential for some major inner-party-conflict a not very confident GM might not be prepared for to deal with. This goes double if you have Andoran patriots or paladins in the group.

5/5 5/55/5

I would think only scenarios that are really spelled out would be the simple ones. Mist of Mwangi would be a good example. Anything that requires the GM to add lib due to multiple ways characters could go would be daunting for an inexperienced GM. Night March of Kalkameidas with all the possibilities the party could do during the march across terrain takes a lot of GM add libing. Same goes for Frostfur Captives, how the captives react to all the possibilities the party could take requires a lot of add lib.

Silver Crusade 3/5

If the GM is mostly scared of complicated combat (as your examples seemed to point to), the easiest scenarios would probably be those where most of the enemies are things like martial humanoids, animals, vermin and the like. Also no messing around with light/darkness or water combat or the like. Pointing to those scenarios might be a bit difficult though, as it's difficult to remember all the combats of a scenario, but sticking to early seasons and low levels would in general be a good choice, considering that there was less material to draw from back then, and even the occasional spellcaster won't have that spells to complicate things. I'd also probably go for the more dungeon-crawly scenario because it's more difficult to take those off the rails.

Icebound Outpost was at least very straightforward and crawly, Infernal Vault as well (though also boring), Goblinblood Dead has a couple of "this is easy for a beginning GM" reviews.

2/5

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I thought most of the Season 0 Stuff was pretty simple. Not really much to convert and in fact you're not allowed to change much besides skills on the baddies to match Pathfinder which really doesn't come up much IIRC.

Season 0's I played or ran and thought were simple:
Black Waters
Mists of Mwangi
Murder on the Silken Caravan
Perils of the Pirate Pact

Others:
Ice Bound Outpost is pretty straightforward. The "BBEG" is a little unique, but not problematic.

Rise of the Goblin Guild is reasonably straightforward. One NPC using an APG class and a chase are the most abnormal elements I recall.

The Confirmation is a "has it all" type Scenario (Kyle Baird). As far as low level affairs are concerned I feel it's a bit more complex.

Really the big thing about GM'ing is being able to let go missing stuff and just moving forward. If you're a perfectionist type (sadly guilty) it can be hard. I try to view it as "Dang, I missed that, but everyone had fun, so I guess I didn't miss anything critical."

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Netherlands

Leathert wrote:
Infernal Vault as well (though also boring),

Infernal Vault was the easiest thing I ever ran, but if you have experienced players it will be very boring for them. I find it a good scenario for newbie players.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

One tricky thing that does show up in a lot of older generally simpler adventures is Darkness rules. It takes only a few words to add Darkness to an encounter, but it makes it a much more complex encounter.

4/5

Woran wrote:
Leathert wrote:
Infernal Vault as well (though also boring),
Infernal Vault was the easiest thing I ever ran, but if you have experienced players it will be very boring for them. I find it a good scenario for newbie players.

I ran this cold a couple weeks ago, had about 30 minutes to skim it. It is a simple go get this thing from here kinda scenario. Pretty straight forward to run.

As a side note: I had my first PC death in it, but even the guy who had to get the res said he had a good time.

2/5

The we be goblins 1 is also straightforward enough.

4/5

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One thing I strongly recommend is to avoid the scenarios that introduce different mechanics until he's more confident. The ones off the top of my head that fit that category are
- Scars of the Third Crusade (investigation and awareness mechanics)
- Library of the Lion (awareness mechanic and search mechanic)
- Bloodcove Disguise (awareness mechanic)
- By Way of Bloodcove (awareness mechanic)
- The Disappeared (awareness mechanic and search mechanic)
- Assault on the Wound (mass combat mechanic)

Because these kinds of scenarios add new rules into the mix, they will probably cause more anxiety.

In general:
The best thing you can do to help your friend is to get him to be specific and focus on individual aspects of the game. If he says "I screwed this scenario up", get him to explain--specifically--what parts he thinks he screwed up. This is very, very important.

First, this should help break him out of the "all or nothing" fallacy (e.g., get him to recognize that "I screwed up the grab rules, the chase scene, and the boss spell list" is not the same thing as "I screwed up this entire scenario"). Often, just analyzing what specific issues he had will improve he confidence because he will usually discover that he far fewer mistakes as it felt like he made.

Second, he might not be wrong. When he examines the specific aspects he thinks he got wrong, he might find that he was right and his players were wrong. That should help boost his confidence, too. But if he just comes away with the general impression that he screwed up without analyzing what, specifically, he screwed up, he will never make that discovery.

Third, once he has identified the aspects he thinks he got wrong, he then has something specific to improve for next time. "I need to learn the rules better" or "I need to be a better GM" is not an achievable goal, because it's not clearly defined enough to know when he's succeeded. Phrasing a goal like that is almost a guarantee that he will fail and reduce his confidence even more. On the other hand, "I need to learn the grab rules" is something he can check off a list and say, "There, I've finished this thing." And that will help boost his confidence.

So, basically, get him to define three areas he thinks he messed up. Then help him pick one of those areas and focus on learning that aspect of the rules better. When he feels like he has a handle on those rules, pick a second area. And so on. Identifying and overcoming specific areas of weakness is the best way to build confidence.

Of course, he will never get to a point where he is perfect with the rule set--none of us ever will. But the number of areas he feels confident in will continually get larger and larger, and he'll always continue improving. Which is really the most anyone can do.

Liberty's Edge

Thank you Dorothy and the rest of you as well. This has been some very good advice. I will see what I can do to help him work through some of it. I wish I wasn't so far away. I think I could help him out a lot more if I was at the table with him.

Thanks again folks!

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

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Although I am quite the fan of RP, coming up with responses on the fly can be quite daunting to new GMs. I often find that it's best to let new GMs start with combat-heavy scenarios, then teach them RP later. I also agree that finding ones with simpler mechanics makes things easier. Accordingly, here's my suggested list:

The Prince of Augustana
The Infernal Vault
The Penumbral Accords
The Goblinblood Dead
The Veteran's Vault
The Confirmation

There are a few suggestions that have been made thus far that I find really inappropriate for new, unsure GMs. I'll address each below:

Frostfur Captives - This scenario is made or broken by how well the GM can play as goblins. Asking a new GM to do this is a bit tough.

Night March of Kalkamedes - The entire scenario is improvising solutions for what the players do. I consider it one of the more challenging scenarios for new GMs.

The Wounded Wisp - the storyline is fairly complex and nonlinear. It involves extensive use of puzzles.

Black Waters - The scenario is a bit dry unless you're particularly good at evoking a spooky atmosphere and ad libbing the reactions of the ghosts. Due to the subject matter and extensive improvisation, I don't recommend it for newbies.

To be clear, I'm not saying that these are bad scenarios (In fact, they are among my favorites), I am just saying that they can be fairly complicated to run and that I would not assign them to someone who is not confident.

Sovereign Court 5/5

My GF ran "Sanos Abduction" as her first and it was pretty straightforward.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Silverhex Chronicles is pretty easy to run. It is structured differently, but that should not be an issue.

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