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Is there a way to get a copy of just the pregen characters that I can print out for players that I'm planning on running through the module? I know that the PDF won't be available until July 1st, but it would be nice to have an individual character sheet for each player.

Ok, so I'm starting to get a feel for this whole GM thing. We are wrapping up the first leg of our caravan and nearing Brinewall Village and Brinewall Castle. As I'm reading ahead, I noticed that the creatures living in the castle behave accourding to what time of the day it is. I've not played any PF sessions yet where time has really been measured. How do you keep track of the time in an RPG? Again, I'm REALLY new to the whole RPG style and PF is my first introduction. As a "PC", I've played through the Crypt of the Everflame, and I've been a PC for a campaign that we are running now, but I've not played long enough to really know all of the mechanics of games of this nature and any advice would be wonderful!

If you guys come up with some easy ways to track down character art on a clear background, please share. I'd love some good Bard of Sorcerer images.

Astral, might I bother you for a copy in word as well? This is an awesome idea! Thank you so much for being willing to share!

Rackzul (at) gmail (dot) com

Thanks for all the feedback guys. And really appreciate the encouragement SnowHeart.

So, I'm curious, what are you guys all doing for this portion of the AP? What are some of your experiences? What are some of the things that your GMs did to make it a fun experience?

Thanks. I have the Players Guide, and I think I understand the rules behind creating the caravan itself. The struggle that I'm dealing with is not knowing the geography of Galarion/Verisia. Are there maps that my party should be using as a reference point as they travel, and I simply pull out the caravan map pack when they have an encounter? What is the best way to represent the progress they are making in their travels? I feel like this is the point where my inexperience with Pathfinder might get me in trouble as a GM with a whole group of new players.

Newbie GM here again with another plea for help/suggestions/advice.

So, Jade Regent is my first time ever being a GM. Additionally, I'm new to D20 gaming as Pathfinder is my first real D20 experience, and I've only been playing for a few months.

That being said, here is my concern. I have successfully navigated my crew through the first part of Volume One. As we approach Volume Two, I've begun reading ahead in preparation for this weeks session and I'm lost with regards to the caravan. As I've only really played the Crypt of the Everflame, and I am partway in with another AP that we play about twice a month, I am really unfamiliar with the geography of this wonderful new world and am lacking any knowledge of maps, routes, and such needed for this portion of the AP. I purchased the Gamemastery Caravan pack, but I'm not really sure how I am going to use them, and what this world looks like, and how to simulate the caravan travelling from Sandpoint to Brinewall.

Any advice?

I just wanted to take a moment to thank each of you for your advice/suggestions. This is the first time I've posted on the Paizo forums, and may I just say I was pleasantly surprised with how helpful you all were. I am looking forward to putting many of your suggestions into practice in the weeks to come. Thank you all again, and I hope you all have an amazing week!

What I've been doing (prior to the map folios arriving) is extract the image and reprint it without the label layer.

For maps like the swamp I just lay it on the table with a marker like a bead or coin to indicate the current party positioning.

Battle scale maps on the other hand I normally draw myself as I can't afford $1000 in printer ink per AP (Jade Regent Vol 1 battle maps when printed to 1in scale clocks in at around 60-70 pages)

One other suggestion I have for you that has worked out well in my game is to find the encounters that have stat blocks in the bestiary only and copy those stat blocks...

Atheral, would you mind sharing what you might use to take the extracted map image and expand it more to the playable scale? Not quite the full size for the 300 ft/square, but for some of the smaller maps.

Quote:

How do GM's usually handle maps and navigating a party through these types of modules?

I usually just describe the locations and have pre-drawn encounter locations mapped out. If the party is going to explore an entire swamp but there's only really one defined encounter, I'll draw a simple map for that encounter and fill it with some swamp terrain. (I really should get pictures up of one of my maps so I can illustrate this for you, but, I don't think I have even a single one.)

I do this by taking a vinyl mat or a big pad of paper and drawing the map either in my Crayola markers or in my vis a vis wet erase markers (I prefer vis a vis to lumocolor because the lines are thinner and in general it uses less ink which means less clean up and a longer lifespan on the markers). I take the map and draw it out as it is in the PDF, square to square, smashing together what I can so that nothing runs off the edge of the mat. Usually, I have to pre-draft using a normal human-sized graph paper pad. This whole process takes about two hours a night every D&D night, or even more if there are a lot of encounter locations. This is because I pretty everything up. I draw individual bricks in piles around shattered walls, for instance. If you bare-bones drew it out, you could probably get by with 30 minutes of map prep.

I really recommend this big mat for most AP usage. Adventure Path maps once upon a time actually fit the 22 square by 25 square battle mats, and now they very rarely fit even these 32 square by 47 square mats. If you play on a kitchen table instead of like a coffee table or patio table, this mat is pretty cool, fits well, can be rolled halfway to reveal locations as the PCs explore-- you know, whatever. Sometimes you'll have to smash maps together or...

That is a lot of really good advice. Thank you so much for taking the time to "Ramble". I can only learn through the experience of the veterans, so I'm quite thankful for any and all "ramblings" lol. Thank you again.

For combat

battlemat linky
pens linky

For travel
I sometimes give players a hand-drawn map that I have made (unless the AP has a suitable handout). Other times I just ask them where they want to go and give a few options: "Do you want to take the quick route through the swamp, or the longer path that skirts the lake and is safer, or pay more to go quickly on a boat over the lake?"

So, with regards to travel, when not in combat, as a GM, how am I reflecting the "3/4 movment through terrain"? I've never experienced the mechanics for tracking time in the game before, so I'm unfamiliar with those types of mechanics. What impact is that supposed to be making on our adventurers?

Hello there friends. I am relatively new to Pathfinder and D20 RPGs. I have been playing once a week, on average, since April. In the excitement of my experiences, I told my cousins and some of their friends about it and they immediately asked if I would host a game for them as well. As of last weekend, I managed to navigate them through the Crypt of the Everflame module. Now, after hearing them talk about the excitement of Gunslingers, Ninjas and Samurai, I thought I would jump on the Adventure Path that Paizo just released, Jade Regent.

Here's where I am a looking for a little training. In the first phase of volume 1, we deal with the large swamp that the PCs have to navigate to deal with finding the "Warden" and handling the goblin menace. When I was dealing with the Everflame module I had the crypt flipmat for the PCs to play on and it made movement easy...however, there are no premade maps that I can use for this one. The swamp map in the pdf also says that the grid is 100 ft squares. How do GM's usually handle maps and navigating a party through these types of modules?

Again, I apologize for such a noob question, but in my weekly group, we've always had the option of playing on pre-made flipmats. I've not had an opportunity to experience gameplay from an Adventure Path perspective yet and any advice would be greatly appreciated from the veteran players/GMs.