DisFanJen's page

Not sure if anyone's interested in an update but here's one anyway. :)

After a bit of a delay due to, well, life we finally got around to our first gaming session last night.

The GM, with a little encouragement did put in the extra work, doing a pre-walk through of the adventures, getting the tokens ready (which did take some work as we have the PDF version, so printing, backing onto thick card and laminating was the name of the game) and that really showed during the game.

Things went a lot more smoothly that I expected, with a couple of rule screw ups by the group that the GM managed to gloss over with probably only myself noticing and no disruption to the game.

The most important part however is that the group had a blast! Everyone was laughing and joking, and showing the biggest initial sign that someone is getting invested in their character, they were all excited over the XP and the loot and spent a good 20 mins pouring over the two equipment sections looking for more gear, though how you can take that long given the small amount of gear is beyond me. I can't wait till they see the real books! :)

We're going to play the last 2 beginner adventures next week then sit down with the players and see if they would like to keep going with the full version of PF, but I can already tell you the answer they'll give. We have four more converts my friends. :)

The only downside that I think you get with all new groups was the lack of real roleplaying. Trying to convince someone to give us some information was an exercise in rolling D20's rather than anyone trying to play it out and possibly getting a bonus to the roll for good oratory. But that's pretty much par for the course with new rpers so I'm hoping that'll get better with time.

Oh, and one player just didn't get the idea of alignment. He went with lawful good then spent most of the game suggesting killing prisoners, torture, etc. More than once I said "Lawful Good dude!". I think we're just going to force a switch to at least Chaotic Good then go from there.

So we definitely need to look at full adventures or an adventure path and soon as we're probably going to need it for 2 weeks from now.

I just need to help the GM decide what to go with. Preferably with a starting point in Sandpoint, Korvosa or Riddleport (all places we've been to, or near, in the beginner advs).

DisFanJen wrote:

Thanks for the input.

I see the advantages of starting with individual adventures, my only worry is that once you go too far down that route you're pretty much locked out of adventure paths with those characters as they'll be too high a level. Not necessarily a deal breaker but an adventure path tends to feel more 'epic' in scope for the players.

Also, I may not have been clear, I wasn't thinking of starting and adventure path at book 2 but rather making sure the chars didn't advance beyond level 2 so they could start from the beginning of an adventure path without being too overpowered as you can easily scale up to handle an extra level then just be meager with the xp so they advance a little slower and then the levels match up (I honestly don't know how much XP you could get from the beginner box modules and whether you could get above level 2 with them).

EDIT: Or as stated above just run the AP with an extra level for extra surviveablity.

Why would you recommend playing the kids track first (let's not mention it's called that, our youngest players are in their late teens and they might be touchy about it ;) )?

I must admit I'm starting to feel that I might end up GMing after all as the 'would be' GM doesn't seem to be too interested in putting in the leg work and keeps asking "is it all pre-done, so all I have to do is pick up the book and run it?"

I've never hit an adventure path, module, etc that doesn't need at least a bit of pre-planning (and a lot of pre-planning if you really want a good game).

We'll see though. I can take over if the GM feels overwhelmed after the beginner box stuff...

Kids Track teaches the basic principles of the game in four hour-long chunks.

It will teach the GM as well as the players.
It goes:
Combat
Skills
Feats and special abilities
Roleplay

Thanks for that, I didn't know much about them as I was trying to avoid spoilers while still helping the GM.

I'll pass the info on and see if we can start with them.

It probably is a

DisFanJen wrote:

We could print and cut it apart ourselves but why re-invent the wheel if someone has already done it? :)

Use your google-fu!

Google: dungeon map tiles

I did and though I could probably cobble together a good facsimile I couldn't the specific adventure map. Hence me asking.

Heck if I'm going down the 'close but different' route I could just fire up CC3+

One bit of good news, just found out one of the players has played D&D E5 before so they have a bit of experience at least and jumped at playing the wizard.

I'm happy with that as I though I might have to play the wiz as it tends to be one of the harder ones to get your head around. :)

That's pretty much what I expected but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I must admit I was hoping that Paizo had already thought of it and Black Fang could be built using one of more of the map sets, but it is what it is... :)

Thanks for the input.

I see the advantages of starting with individual adventures, my only worry is that once you go too far down that route you're pretty much locked out of adventure paths with those characters as they'll be too high a level. Not necessarily a deal breaker but an adventure path tends to feel more 'epic' in scope for the players.

Also, I may not have been clear, I wasn't thinking of starting and adventure path at book 2 but rather making sure the chars didn't advance beyond level 2 so they could start from the beginning of an adventure path without being too overpowered as you can easily scale up to handle an extra level then just be meager with the xp so they advance a little slower and then the levels match up (I honestly don't know how much XP you could get from the beginner box modules and whether you could get above level 2 with them).

EDIT: Or as stated above just run the AP with an extra level for extra surviveablity.

Why would you recommend playing the kids track first (let's not mention it's called that, our youngest players are in their late teens and they might be touchy about it ;) )?

I must admit I'm starting to feel that I might end up GMing after all as the 'would be' GM doesn't seem to be too interested in putting in the leg work and keeps asking "is it all pre-done, so all I have to do is pick up the book and run it?"

I've never hit an adventure path, module, etc that doesn't need at least a bit of pre-planning (and a lot of pre-planning if you really want a good game).

We'll see though. I can take over if the GM feels overwhelmed after the beginner box stuff...

Simple one this, just as the title says, has anyone made a tile set for the Beginner Box adventure?

I know there is a flip-mat but we wanted to lay out tiles as we went along because:

1) It saves having to cover bits of the map before the players get there.

2) Our table space is a bit limited so being able to take off a a bit of the map to put on another bit would be useful.

3) We have the PDF but can only print out A3...

We could print and cut it apart ourselves but why re-invent the wheel if someone has already done it? :)

I do understand that if it's player created tiles that we'll still have to print them out and prep them but at least we won't have to mess around working out where to break it apart.

Ok I know this is asked a lot but as I've a slightly different situation and there's been a few adventure paths released since I last played I thought I'd ask again.

Anyway, onto the background first.

A group of friends wanted to play Pathfinder (well as they're new to RP they said D&D but we won't hold that against them ;) ) and I really didn't want to GM as I always end up doing that. So I'm going to be a player in a game where the players are all first timers and the GM is a first time GM (she's played several times but never GMed and usually plays 'easier' classes like fighters).

Even though I'm not GMing the GM is leaning on me heavily to help as this is their first time. So I suggested playing the Beginner Box as it's a cut down version of the rules and the GM and players time to ease in before moving up to the full rules.

So the idea is to play through the adventures in the GM Guide, GM Kit, and the Bash set by which time everyone should be comfortable enough to move to an adventure path (I've GMed a couple of these but I can' 'play dumb' for the sake of a good game. :) ).

So, from there we want to jump to the full rules with the same characters (converted using the Transitions PDF and a little common sense) and an adventure path.

So what would be a good adventure path to jump to, that's now to big a leap up to GM and isn't RotR? (I've run RotR more than once and I don't want to play dumb for a whole adventure path).

Also take into consideration that we might have 6 players (most likely 5 but a 6th is possible, but I will take a support char so as not to overpower the party) and they will have probably gained a level or 2 by that point (I might suggest to the GM to hold back XP and make sure the players only get one level through the beginner box so they aren't overpowered for the adventure path).

So after all of that, any recommendations? (spoiler free please, remember even though I'm doing a lot of the background work I'll be a player).

As others have said it's an online virtual desktop so you would need an internet connection. However I can see options where you could use it with a live game.

Just use it for yourself where you can put loads of notes over it and use a physical map for the players.

If you want the players to access the map as well you could bring the map up on a large TV or monitor, You would need a second pc for this though so the projected map is logged on as a player.

You can use it like an online session with each player using a laptop, you could move the online tokens for your players so they don't have to mess with tech, or, as a friend of mine did you could set up a projector to point directly down at your playing surface and assuming you got the projection ratio correct, you could just put physical minis down.

So though it is primarily for ppl like me that have to distance play there are ways to adapt it to live play and do the things you want.

The current interactive image widget has labels that show all the time.

I want a map that has icons on it which, when touched, reveal a pop-up.
Also the map needs to go full-screen and be zoomable.
So I can have the equivalent of a battle-map or dungeon/encounter guide with pop-up descriptions of rooms/locations and npcs/beasts.

I can then include an annotated map of Sandpoint etc. And have detailed area maps for the encounters with mini-stat blocks popping up for NPC and encounter scenarios....

Not much to ask for!

Something like this could be done in HTML5 but I don't have the knowledge.

I don't know if you are playing online or live, but Roll20 could do pretty much all of this for you, and you could use the free signup.

Hi,

would anyone have a copy of the Garrison Interior? The link for the one by Terry Dyer doesn't seem to work anymore.

Update: if you go the root of Terry's photobucket site:

Terry's Photobucket

The map, and several other useful resources are still accessible.

Or use the direct link of:

[IMG]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Ter_ruS/Garrisongridless.jpg[/IMG]

Hi,

would anyone have a copy of the Garrison Interior? The link for the one by Terry Dyer doesn't seem to work anymore.