This post is basically me thinking out loud, so it will be rambly--you've been warned. I'd like other people's thoughts on my thoughts if you have any, if not maybe me just writing it will help.
I've had a few short experiences as a player in Pathfinder or D&D and have really been taken with it--but have seen GMing that I liked to different degrees, and have a few things I don't like about Path. I kind of want to be a GM to (a) unleash my imagination on the world and (b) try to do a better job. ;)
I'm a nonviolent vegetarian sort in real life, and it makes me very uncomfortable when the campaign forces my character to go kill sentient beings for no real reason. In one really great one-shot my character actually was being coerced by the other party members, and it was a huge part of his development and really drew me into the world, which was fun, but I don't like when it seems like the only way to play the campaign is to roleplay a supposed hero who isn't behaving in a way I'd ever consider someone heroic for.
So, what I think I'd do differently if I were a GM:
1. Divorce character progression from combat. Great quote in this post: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qv0d?Expanding-the-noncombat-side-of-Pathfinde r#4
‘Once you remove the "how much experience do we get for killing the guards as opposed to sneaking past them" mindset out of the way, the players are much less likely to feel pressured to kill things, and can instead approach situations as though they were real people trying to solve a problem instead of bloodthirsty murderhobos looking for their next fix.’
There are apparently a lot of ways to do this:
-Be good about rewarding noncombat encounter XP
-Reward constant XP progression per gaming session
-Reward XP based on story goals
-SKR’s step system: http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/AlternativeLevelAdvancement.pdf
-Remove XP and award levels after a certain amount of time
-Remove XP and award levels after a certain amount of story progress
-Remove XP and award levels when the characters do something super-cool and a certain amount of time/story progress has happened
My GMs so far have synched levels among party members, and I’d continue to do that as a good practice. I’m leaning towards removing XP entirely and awarding levels at my discretion as a GM.
2. Take a “combat-optional” approach. That is, as a GM I will never force the characters into combat--they’ll always be able to run away or take a nonviolent approach.
This will involve a lot of contradictory moral choices. For instance, maybe the dragon offers to get out of their way if they do something for it. Killing the dragon instead could end its reign of tyranny on the surrounding peoples… I don’t want the decision to be clear-cut.
When getting a party together, I’d obviously have to get players who were at least close together in how pacifist versus hack-and-slash they wanted to play. I wouldn’t be the GM for anyone who didn’t want something roleplay heavy and who expected to be wiping out any goblins, orcs, etc. that got in the way without a thought for the value of their lives. And if some players wanted to be absolute pacifists but others wanted combat once every session or two, I’d probably tell them not to run in the same group if they weren’t comfortable compromising--I don’t want every session to be frustrating for several players as the dominant player gets their way, or for it to always be a verbal slogging match between players/characters with extremely different moral compasses.
If people wanted to do a combat-heavy campaign, I’d probably have it involve fighting the undead or be based in sheer self-defense since I find that more morally defensible.
3. Ditch alignments. I think it screws with roleplaying when someone’s thinking “Well, I think X would be the best solution, but would a lawful/chaotic character ever do that?”. Sure, stay in character, but in real life people are complex, and morality tends to be compartmentalized and situational. The very idea of good and evil as concrete forces in the universe gives indeterminate moral situations like the “to kill or not to kill” one described above less force, and it hampers noncombat roleplaying when someone can’t pursue a certain solution because it doesn’t match their alignment. (It’s one thing if it’s not something their character would do, but it’s another thing if it is something they’d do but it’s “out of character” because situational morality doesn’t exist in the system.)
Luckily Alzrius has detailed instructions on how to do this: http://alzrius.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/removing-alignment-from-pathfinder- part-one-classes/
Not sure if that would work with newbie players (creating characters is already too complicated; creating characters with alternate rules to look up is worse), but then again it would only need to be addressed if and when it arose.
4. (In an ideal campaign where I had like-minded players and tons of time to spend on planning) Create a character-driven story where the party members have interesting relationships with each other, rather than slotting a bunch of separately-created strangers into a campaign made for a generic party.
My best experience as a player has been that one-shot where I was a member of a homebrew goblinoid race, exiled from my extremely lawful island homeland on penalty of death unless I redeemed myself for a crime by tracking down a halfing who didn’t realize he’d violated the laws of the land while in its waters. I was lost and uncertain, new to human lands, when I got thrown together with the halfling I was tracking (another PC) and two humans (also PCs, who were at that point traveling together). We were camping in a town square when goblins woke us up in the middle of the night, setting nearby tents on fire--I failed a check and was the last to awake, not knowing who attacking first in the middle of the combat and shouting out to the goblins in Goblin to explain what was happening. When events became clearer, I tried shooting at a goblin and hit the human monk instead. Under deep suspicious as a goblinoid, for speaking to the enemies in goblin, and for hitting the monk, I had to accept that same monk’s forgiveness in exchange for being dragged along to clear out the goblin den. During the terrible events that unfolded there, my naivety was shattered in many ways. I really felt like I was immersed in a story, and being in character came easily because the story and the other players reinforced and helped me develop who I was. I’m sure that’s an intensely difficult experience to give to a player--let alone making the entire party each feel like the PoV character in a novel--but as a GM I’d like to at least try.
My thought on how to do that would be, in the pre-campaign session, to get everyone together and say we’re going to create a party, together. People can throw in their character ideas, but should also play off each other’s ideas to create a group with relations and motives related to each other. Characters can have very different motives, but they need to be cohesive. Some example thoughts:
-Most of the players are rebels who see themselves as freedom fighters, and have been hired to kidnap a noble of the ruling class. When they pull it off, however, this noble turns out to be a PC--and to have goals not so different from theirs. Maybe it’s a princess who wants to go adventuring, maybe the noble is actually on the rebels’ side and has been living as a hostage with his uncle the king who belongs to a different religion, maybe the noble character has dirt on the rebels’ leaders that make them question their ideals and agree to run off with the noble to find out the true answers in the tangled-up intrigue of this country, maybe the kidnappers are of negotiable alliance and agree to adventure with the noble in search of greater wealth and their own lordship titles.
-The players comprise a family business, which could be any number of things, could be situated in one place or peripatetic, combat-oriented or non-combat, and so on.
-The players belong to a single organization and share a common goal. Maybe they’re traveling healers trying to combat a plague, maybe they’re exorcists of a sort, traveling the land setting ghosts to rest, maybe they’re an exploration party sent out by a rising city power to explore the coast of a wild land--and under the sea--and convert small local groups into trading partners, maybe they’re scouts or messengers sent into enemy territory during a war. I think the combat-optional GM philosophy would make it a lot easier to have single-class parties--so maybe all wizards from the same guild pursuing some arcane mystery--because the risk of death is limited.
After the party and characters therein were built, I as the GM would go home with a hell of a lot of homework to create a campaign around them--but I’d be aided by the cohesive party composition, which would point the way to a lot of other story elements.
Okay, I need to go to dinner, thanks anyone who’s still with me, but one last thought/question--Would creating a sandbox world and then getting some test subjects to play oneshots in it be a good way to start GMing?
