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This is one of the few places a post like this will be appreciated for what it is, which is me being very pleased with how things have turned out. It'll need a little explaining. So from the top...

I'm 38 years old and if memory serves I got my first role playing game at the age of 12 (Marvel Super Heroes), I played in a few of those inconsequential little games that never really got going through my teens but never really ended up in an ongoing campaign until about 1996, until then I was one of those people who enjoyed the splat books so much I just bought them and read them and made characters for fun, the potential seemed so good but I couldn't find a group of friends who bought into it.

In 1996 i was asked to play in a game with a friend of a friend, this lasted 7 years, we covered a lot of ground going from 2nd Edition through to 3.5 of D&D along the way. Eventually babies, work and life got in the way and sadly it ended with a whimper as the game just broke down. A few other groups of munchkins and other varieties of nightmare players later and by 05 or 06 I'd given up of finding another group. In 2009 I moved to a new city far from home and most of my old game books were sold or donated as they didn't seem to have a use any more. That and really I should have grown out of that stuff by now, or at least that's what I probably told myself.

Moving to a new city in your thirties is a tricky thing, you want/need to make new friends and the best way to do this is to go out with work colleagues after the day is done. The people most likely to do this are the young ones, the families and responsibilities get in the way for the rest so there I was the old fart with a bunch of new friends who were on average about 10 years younger than me, a good bunch who had their heads screwed on the right way round. About a year after I'd kind of settled in with these guys Skyrim becomes huge and various conversations about it (Which I still don't get if I'm honest) lead to someone mentioning an abortive attempt these guys made at playing D&D a couple of years earlier which crumbled as no-one had really sat down to figure it out. I mentioned that I used to play and ended up telling war stories from the 7 year campaign. It was fun, nice to do that weird reminicing thing about something that never really happened that only other role-players really understand. These guys were lapping it up, I had never run into such enthusiasm. Within a week 3 of these guys turn up at my house asking me to run D&D, 3 of the guys I didn't even know that well at the time. I was delighted but a bit terrified as I'd always been a player. I told them I'd see what I could do and started to try sourcing some old D&D 3.5 books. Obviously this led to Pathfinder.

That was about a 18 months ago, the group of three starters has grown to a group of six fast friends with another two hovering in the wings also asking those questions which would indicate they want to play too. One of the original three took over DM duties 3 months ago and has done a great job while I took a break and got to play for a while after 15 months of being the guy in the big chair just got a bit exhausting. We plan on tag teaming every three months or so going forward as we do a chapeter of our respective adventure paths in turn. I'm taking over again next week and I was trawling the boards and getting set up to drop back into RotR and I just had a little moment of thankfulness that I got back into all this again and that I found a group who really embrace the game for the story and the sense of camraderie fictional reminicence can bring. Monday nights are one of the highlights of the week for all of us. I wanted to share it and here seemed the best place as at least you guys have an idea what I'm waffling on about.

Apologies if this isn't the right thread but I couldn't see a better option on the list when i scanned down. If you made it this far cheers for reading, I'm not sure what the point was but I think I needed to get it down somewhere.

I think Forbidden Planet in Belfast has it or at least they had it very recently. I was looking at it about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Their number is (02890)438744. I'm not sure if they do mail order but I'm happy to help out with postage if that's all is needed. Only half of people seem to realize Belfast is in the UK so phone calls and postage are no more expensive than posting and calling between London and Manchester so don't let that put you off. Sorry if that comes across badly but you'd be surprised how often people have the wrong idea.

Good luck

Even though I haven't really had much to do with either imprint in a very long time they both were iconic symbols of what D&D stuff was for me. The adventures could be patchy in quality, additional rules could be painfully unbalancing and almost all the ads were for stuff in the states so were not helpful to a kid from England. Despite all this and the fact that a dead tree edition hasn't existed for a hell of a long time this news still makes me feel a bit sad.

I'd be very intersted in this, I was just considering something similar for my group to play as a change of pace. After thinking about creating Pathfinder compatible Pilot and Tech classes and I thought to myself I'll search the messageboards. Finding this is excellent news. FB group request sent.

Sorry to hear that man.

You could also try Orc's Nest in London. All the game shops in Manchester I can think of didn't do mail order last I was there. Unless another shipment comes into Esdevium Distribution (Who as far as I know do disitribution for most game shops in the UK) I can't see anyone who doesn't have it in stock getting a restock anytime soon.

It was only about £25 just two or three months ago. I'm surprised the price has jumped so high so quickly. There may have been a copy in A1 Games in Glasgow when I was there two weeks ago but it could have been Box 2. I'm afraid I can't remember. Not sure if they do mail order either. If not you could try calling Wayland's Forge in Birmingham, they definitely do mail order and if it is available through any of the UK distributors they will be able to order it in and post it out to you as soon as they receive it for standard price plus postage so prob just a shade over £30.

I recently started running Pathfinder myself, I used to play for years but have never run games myself. The players were all new. We clubbed together and bought the Chessex Battle Mat mentioned above and the Bestiary Box. It suits us very well so far. In fact the players were pretty delighted with it when we first used it (In the Glassworks). One of the players has really taken great delight in drawing out the settings as I describe them. He's the one who draws the overall maps too, I suspect he's a repressed cartographer. Sorry, wandering off the point.

The mat, some wipe pens and bestiary box are a (relatively) inexpensive way to get started. The players were using what they could find to represent themselves initially, about 6 sessions in and they've started trawling the net for appropriate figures and talk of buying paints between them. There's software you could put up on a decent sized tv screen though it seemed a bit fiddly (Maptools is the name that comes to mind but i could be wrong) so we chose the low tech option.

Best advice would be to ask your players how they would like to approach it, talk about the pros and cons and go from there. As Uriel222 said above, different tools suit different groups so talking to the players is the best way to identify what you collectively see as the best solution.

Good luck

Thanks all, I'll check those avenues of inquiry and get something sorted. Cheers

Have a new player who is interested in playing an Elven Paladin. Have details of any Elven Paladin orders been published. I may just appropriate the name of the Lantern Bearers and come up with some backstory that'll fit what they want but would be interested to hear of anything official that's out there so I can take a gander.