figurehead's page

First of all, I apologize because I made slightly similar thread a while back about the sheer amount of Pathfinder rules to read. I just wanted to make a new topic since this is a bit different and it's always good to get new perspectives.

So 15 years ago or so I played a lot of 3E D&D, though I never DM'ed. Then, around 5 years ago we had a slight resurgence with Pathfinder, so I've played a bit of that too. Now I'd like to get back into it, and it seems like I'm the one willing to GM. So I'd like to take it seriously and use Pathfinder to its fullest extent.

Since it's been so long I thought I would start from scratch and read the Core Rulebook (I read the Inner Sea World Guide recently just for fun). The problem is, I've got just enough residual 3E and Pathfinder knowledge that it makes trying to read through the Core Rulebook frustrating. I struggle with reading through the stuff I already know, but I don't want to skip anything and risk missing things I don't.

How would you recommend dealing with that? I'd like to get the basics down solid so I can start exploring things like the Advanced Players Guide, Ultimate Combat/Magic, some of the more advanced stuff we never touched back in the day. Anyway, I should be asleep so I'm rambling. Thanks for the help!

So I played some Pathfinder a few years ago, and now I've gotten it in my head to maybe GM for 2-3 friends at some point.

Now, I know you don't need to have read everything cover to cover in order to play, but if I'm going to really dig into it and make it a real hobby I will want to have read and internalized a lot.

Right now I'm about 150 pages into the Inner Sea Guide and I'm really enjoying it, but ultimately I'd like to have read the Inner Sea Guide (320 pgs), Core Rulebook (576 pgs), Game Masters Guide (320 pgs), Ultimate Combat (256 pgs), Ultimate Magic (256 pgs), Ultimate Campaign (256 pgs), Ultimate Equipment (400 pgs), Inner Sea Gods (300 pgs), Advanced Players Guide (320 pgs), and the Advanced Race Guide (256 pgs), Advanced Class Guide (256 pgs), and that's just off the top of my head. Give or take some cover pages and indexes, that approximately 3,516 dual column pages to read. That's a lot of pages.

It's taken me about a week to read the first 150 pages of the Inner Sea Guide due to time restraints and being a fairly slow reader. So at that rate it would take me rougly 6 months to read all of that assuming I was reading all the time.

Just curious what you guys do, or what tips you have for internalizing this staggering amount of information. Help me transform from a casual observer to a Pathfinder expert!

Thanks!