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I posted here earlier expressing my interest in Pathfinder despite the fact that I tend to run rules-lite games. I just had some more questions. If you guys wouldn’t mind answering some of them that’d be swell.

-What does a fledgling Pathfinder DM need to know like the back of his hand, rule wise?

-What rules do you consider non-essential?

-How do you keep combat moving?

-What major pet peeves do you have about DMs?

-How much time in generally split between roleplay, exploration, and combat?

-What do you consider a successful session?

-How do you handle balance?

I’m becoming more accepting of lengthy combat the more I read about it. Do you guys get much roleplaying or exploration in though? All I ultimately want is a decent balance between those three aspects.

As others have pointed out, the question is not whether you could play pathfinder, rather whether you should play pathfinder.

There are better systems for storytelling style RPGs. I don't understand why you would not want to play one of those instead of trying to force the system to work in a way in which it is not designed.

Because it's hard to find people who aren't playing Pathfinder. The general response I get when I offer to run something like Dungeon World, Eclipse Phase, or Deadlands is "We only play Pathfinder."

I’d rather expand my horizons as a DM and run something crunchy over nothing at all.

I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that combat takes some time.

How much time do you guys typically spend roleplaying, exploring, and such? If combat is taking so long, what else does your group typically get done in a session?

I’m a forever DM; I’ve always run games for people who aren’t heavily invested in the hobby from a mechanical standpoint. They like to participate in a story, but they don’t optimize. They usually just pick a simple class and roll with it. We’ve been playing rules lite systems as of late because we’re on deployment right now and we’re usually pressed for time.

When I get back home I want to branch out though, and it looks like everyone is playing Pathfinder. I don’t have any objections to it; I think it’s a serviceable system. I’m worried that my laissez-faire style of DMing won’t be well received though, and I’m admittedly pretty ignorant on how most people actually play Pathfinder. The few times I’ve run into someone who’s a fan of the system I was left under the impression that I wouldn’t fit in.

How I DM:

-I like to sketch out a simple drawing of what the room looks like, I might place some coins here and there to give players an idea of where the enemy is, but I don’t fuss over movement and placement too much. I don’t want to play a tactical board game; I want to tell a story. I want combat to be fast and cinematic. I’ve heard horror stories about combat taking 30+ minutes and in the back of my mind I’m thinking “No, not for me.”

-I want combat to move quickly is because I want it to be frequent too. I like to toss in combat whenever it’s appropriate, but if I ran Pathfinder the way I’ve seen a lot of people run it I’d probably hold off on encounters most of the time because I’d be thinking “Well, here goes another 40 minutes where the plot doesn’t move forward.”

-I tend not to count EXP, characters just level up after major campaign events.

Will my DMing fly? Should I bother running Pathfinder at all? Is the culture surrounding the game static? Or is it more varied?