Amerist's page

I want to share this story here on the boards. Last night I had a gaming session (black fang scenario) with the kids of good friends. We (parents) were talking about this for some time and finally we settled down to yesterday evening as the moment. The session was at the house of one of the parents and I went to them with very low expectations. Arriving there the kids (2 girls and 1 boy around 13 years old) where hanging behind facebook and the game console, so not much chance to get a game started. One of the fathers rallied the kids together and with much whining and long faces they assembled at the table where I started to explain the concept.
Slowly a transformation happened, the two girls were first fighting to play the elf and once they settled on that, they started to talk, talk, talk in character to each other and us. The boy who played the fighter started to explore the game mechanics trying to minmax the use of his character. One of the fathers filled in the role of the wizard and I instructed him to keep low profile and only help when they were stuck (we used to play ad&d together back in the old days).
Once they got past the first combat and started to realize the freedom a game like this offers, they started to run the game by themselves. They organised the group together, using me only to ask questions about the environment. I barely had to do anything. At the end they started to do very clever tricks with the potions they found and while the playing father was holding his wizard back to use the spells at the end, each time it was his turn the kids where yelling "BURN, BURN, BURN".
They ended by severely wounding the dragon before he fled.
They had a great evening together (without TV or computers) and are asking for more. They want to play the full game now since I showed them the website and artwork in the books.

Moments like this shows me what a great product the beginner box is and
the public it is meant for. The other parents are very supportive for this since it is more social and creative.

I am unable to run longer campaigns with "bigger" groups (4 to 5 people) since making agreements on playtime becomes very difficult then. People are overstretched on rpg sessions, lots of call offs at the last moment, etc....

However most of the time I find it easier to make agreements with smaller groups, most of the time groups of two people who are a gamer couple.

I find it very difficult to create balanced encounters for such a small group, while they are able to rp themselves out of trouble most of the time sometimes they just hit the blade.
Especially around CR5 monsters start to have special abilities which can render a party of two people completely helpless in a turn.

My question is, what do other gm's do to help such groups to have a surviving chance ?

Last saturday I gm'ed my first game in years. We played the scenario in the beginners box. Got three players, where one was an experienced PF player who gave a helping hand. One was new to PF and the third didn't knew what roleplay was.
We all had a blast and I rediscovered the fun of gm'ing.
I have two converts for pf and they are already asking me to play more regularly with the full rules :-D

Greetings all from Belgium. I have the beginner box now for a week and it is such a wonderful product.
I have the Pathfinder core rulebook since it was available in Belgium and find it difficult to grasp the rules since it is so big, it doesn't help that I collected a few more core game books.
Years back when I played that "other" RPG seems that I had a lot more time on hands to read and learn rules.
The beginner box makes it a lot more approachable and allows me to enjoy GM'ing without making a huge time commitment.
Eventually I will get to use the Big Books.