So when COVID happened, I, like many of you worried that my carefully selected group of nerds and I were going to be unable to play Pathfinder for a while. To combat this, I got pro-active. I learnt how to use Roll20.net and suggested that we start playing a campaign that was already set up to be played on the site, War for the Crown.
I don’t know whether it was the lack of entertainment, not being able to have any social contact or the fact that I am an awesome GM but War for the Crown was an instant hit. So much so that it quickly became a weekly fixture and thus began a Pathfinder Campaign that I have run weekly since March 2020 and that is sadly coming to an end on the eve that I write this.
For me, War for the Crown has everything. The intrigue of whether the PCs will support Princess Eutropia on her bid for the crown including an interesting foray into social combat, awesome battles across different lands and even a jaunt to the most lawful place of all, Axis.
It’s been an adventure like no other and though I have used some artistic liberty when it came to the game due to the characters my players created, I have managed to keep the story going and the players have not only been engaged with the material but have actively become invested in Taldor’s future and politics!
As the adventure path now comes to an end, I thought I would share what I have learnt as a GM, maybe it will help you, maybe it won’t but here goes;
• Don’t be precious about the story
Before 2020, I always wanted to do the story justice and make sure the players knew the story and ALL the details of the campaign but it’s not about that. Playing Pathfinder is about having fun and escaping the horrors of everyday life. If my players want to throw down weapons and have an epic carriage chase through the outback of Taldor, G!$&#$mit, I’m gonna let them do that. It’s their game, after all.
• Read the room.
This is an important one. As GMs, we can be so invested in a certain line of storytelling that we can fail to see if this is something that players are enjoying. Having to run a campaign entirely online and not be able to see body language has been challenging but I have made sure to always be able to see all players on the screen. When something happens, I watch for reactions and I respond quickly to where they take it. By doing this, the players are having an active part in the campaign and it’s not just me telling them what’s going to happen next, we all have a part to play.
• Backstories are hard to include.
I’m proud that I managed to get half of the backstories my players worked on into the actual campaign. One of the players had a long-lost son and throughout the campaign he was basically a drunk trying to forget his past. I changed one of the battles to incorporate his enemy who had hunted him down and trained his son to hate his father. Dark, I know. However, it gave the character more depth and it gave an explanation to all the other players of why Cedrik was such a drunk. It wasn’t perfect but there was some awesome role playing. What I would say is that if a backstory is just too hard to make it work in your campaign, don’t include it or just allude to it. I was lucky that some of the back stories fit in quite well with the actual campaign.
• You will get rules wrong
Yep, rules are there to be broken and misread in Pathfinder. I have got so many rules wrong throughout the campaign and it’s OK. A game can become stagnant and frustrating if you focus too much on the right way to do something. If I’m unsure about a rule and it’s going to take longer to figure out, I have done what I thought was best for that situation then figured it out later. One thing I never do is go back on a decision. I see the story as constantly moving forward. For instance, one of the characters was resurrected because I didn’t realise this couldn’t happen as it was a death effect spell. I put it down to his will to return to Golarion being too strong and Pharasma deciding he had too much unfinished business. In a fantasy world, everything can be explained by blaming it on unknown magic or the will of the Gods.
• Be prepared for an endless churn of characters
I have had characters retire from action as the player felt that their journey had come to an end or their story didn’t align with the adventure. One of my players developed a character that became more and more socialist as the story went on. By the time we got to Axis, his passion for helping Taldor had diminished and he ended up going to work in the sewers of Axis. Another player had a baby, so her character retired from action. (She returned a few months later with a new badass character).
With this, I felt I had to be creative in how the characters were introduced and why. It was a challenge especially when one of the players created a werepig/human called Ser McRib who was riding a pig called Gingerham and had another pig flying around his head called Scratching. I won’t get into the laborious task of the character sheet that enabled all of this, but he was basically the three little pigs and incorporating this monstrosity into the story was nothing short of challenging.
So, there we have it, seventeen months of my life has been dedicated to this campaign and it has made what could have been a very depressing time into something awesome. My group of nerds really committed to making this work, they created an intro reel that we play at the beginning of every session and this has really made it feel like an episodic adventure that we are in control of. What a ride but now it’s coming to an end, what will we play next?
