2 weeks until I leave for Gen Con! I need help deciding what type of game to DM..er GM after the Convention. I would like your assistance exploring the Pros and Cons of each option.
I'm assuming that I will only have time to run one campaign at a time. My wife and I will be playing in 2 PFS events at Gen Con, so we'll both have official PFS characters close to level 2 when we leave.
The group will include my wife and her friend plus a few strangers that I'll need to recruit. We'll likely play weekly or biweekly. I know her friend tends to be very story focused, and my wife is more character focused (at maybe a 70/30 Role vs. Roll).
I present the following options, all of which reflect my personal opinion at this time. I'm sure that this will likely change before, during, and after Gen Con, based on what we experience there.
Pathfinder Society Scenarios:
Pros:
- Least amount of work required by the GM.
- Scenarios are not tied together. So if the "extra" people I find to play with come and go, it won't affect the overall campaign.
- Josh is working on "GM Rewards" of some sort.
- May help FLGS, as I would likely run scenarios at the store.
- Helps Paizo by helping to gauge interest in their products. By hosting at FLGS it will give Paizo more exposure.
Cons:
- Houserules are not allowed.
- Scenarios are not tied together. Thus the "campaign" is limited to a series of excursions instead of a grand plot.
- Only $3.99 per Scenario, but to get to the characters 16th level, will require 45 scenarios ($180).
Pathfinder Adventure Paths (Council of Thieves):
Pros:
- Houserules are allowed.
- $84 to get from level 1 to ~16.
- Less GM work than a Custom campaign.
Cons:
- No Pathfinder Society advancement for the characters. (May be important to the wife after Gen Con)
- May require some railroading to advance along the entire path.
- May not be able to find a "core group" people to play the campaign, thus hurting continuity of the party.
Custom Campaign set in Golarion:
Pros:
- Houserules are allowed.
- ~$0 to get to level 16. (The Chronicles series will likely be purchased regardless of campaign, if "only" for inspirational reading material.)
- The entire adventure will be custom tailored to the composition of the players and characters.
Cons:
- No Pathfinder Society advancement for the characters.
- Significantly more work required by the GM.
- May not be able to find a "core group" people to play the campaign.
(and if you live in SE Michigan (Howell) and want to play, let me know!)
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i myself run 3 games
localy, every monday, either at home or at a friend's Rise of the Runelords... since they are more roll, than role oriented we have part of the sesion with infromation or roleplaying or discoveringthings, and i let the rest of the scenario to be the dungeon and/or combat.
i think they have had fun, and I have had fun trying to kill them with the villains... none of them had let theirs chars arrive to -10
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i am playing a 1PC - 1 Henchmen CotCT, obviously a bit modified to be not overly deadly... here is a player really really character oriented... so he usually determines where does he goes, i just elt some thigns happen and he responds.. or sometimes he acts before them...
the same player, runs RotRL for me in asoloe dition... heavily modified and evry character centric... if i let somethign pass... well cest la vie... for example I went to magnimar BEFORE meeting the problems in Sandpoint during skinasw massacre
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in Absalom we have an almost complete personal adventure, they created stories and i have created dangers and adventures around that.. the players themsleves do their thing... but sometimes when i need dieas i take Pathfinder Society Scenarios and mix them with the game... and actually the 1st one was that Slavepit's of Absalom... and it dictated the tone and theme of the full chronicle
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what I say... it doesn't matter what is the core of the game, what matter is that you and your players get some fun... if you decide to run Burnt Offerings, and then your players head to Riddleport or the Mierany to advance Second Darkness ITS cool, let them, and have fun :)
Hella would say the same from Osirion, i just beyan playing in Tuesdays with an ulfen fighter, thatr everyone believe she is barbarina... and she gets as pissed of when someone steals from her.
Personally in your place I would wait till after Gencon and find out how important Pathfinder Society advancement for the characters might be. If it is important you kinda have your answer. If it is not important then you only really have to pick between option 2 or 3.
QFT. On the players' side, if they positively need PFS advancement then you're pretty much stuck with scenarios.
On the GM's side, the other 2 options depend on how much you enjoy having homework. If you don't have time to spare on brainstorming for a story that's continuously mutating with the PCs' actions then your choices are limited to either scenarios or APs.
Now, if you have the time to spare and enjoy the extra work you can go for either APs or full freeform.
Being the GM Montalve talks about, originally I was just running our Alternity game, then started taking the 1-PC RotRL sessions for kicks. I'm usually only able to focus on a single game at a time, but didn't think much of RotRL thinking it was a canned adventure so I wouldn't have much work other than a quick reading before the session and carry on with the script... then my terminal allergy to railroading and scenarios kicked in and couldn't resist reading the whole thing in order to be able to butcher it to my needs in order to give my player a fair chance to change things if he could.
While I enjoy trying to dupe my PCs into effecting the end of the world themselves as much as the next GM, when it comes written in stone that the players are to be duped -by decree-, going as far as to resort to -every single dirty trick in the book- to pre-emptively block all efforts from the PCs to put 2 and 2 together well... that's where I draw the line. Even RAVENLOFT warns GMs that, no matter what, PCs should always have a chance to change their situation.
While a full-freeform game will always be the best choice in my book, you can always run an AP in a freeform way without that much of a hassle.
There's this narrative technique proposed in one of White Wolf's books, this technique was called "Let the dog have his day": it consists of you thinking in full of how are the BBEG's plans to proceed in a best-case scenario (by best-case scenario be understood "assuming there are no meddling PCs to interfere"). Once you have his plans fully mapped, it becomes all the easier to react to the PCs actions on a cause-and-effect basis.
This is easily applicable to an AP (or at least to Paizo's APs), using the whole text as your "Let the dog have his day" scenario. Now, these books are cleverly written to pre-emptively block every effort from the PCs to step out of the rails, so you may want to remove at least a couple of these railroad-devices in order to give players with initiative the chance to aproach the story on their own terms.
In the case of my RotRL game, I ruled that "rune magic" would not be impregnable, also when my protagonist tried to get Greyst Sevilla to tell her exactly what did the Skinsaw Man do to his friends and how, I gave her the chance of a compex check of Heal/Diplomacy (a "psychology" check of sorts) in order to calm him down just enough for him to describe our protagonist the ritual The Skinsaw Man did on his comrades, after which all it took was good enough Spellcraft checks to eventually put 2 and 2 together... the bastard is harvesting souls! And then all it takes is asking yourself the right questions during the Skinsaw Murders. We have a serial murderer, so:
-What connects the victims? What do they have in common?
-What's the killer's motivation?
After some detective work, our heroine now knows the villain is harvesting souls, souls of greedy people, and after interrogating the right people, she knows its "souls of greedy people for the runelord of greed".... so, something tells me she'll be taking a completely different aproach than the scenario anticipated when she gets to Fortress of the Stone Giants, and that Karzoug may find himself just a few souls short.
Of course, this aproach requires the GM to have the full AP in his hands beforehand in order to have access to every bit of data he'll need to have the full scope of the story. It's pretty much the same as testing any other system or program, you just go through its flow and think of the many ways you could -bork it-... that's where you'll come across of the "plot safeguards" that prevent the players from moving in a non-linear way, then it's just a matter to decide which ones to get rid of and which ones to keep.
I fully recommend this aproach, it's largely satisfying for both players and GM (or at least for GMs who like to put their players to work). =)
Follow-up question:
What option helps Pathfinder (and by extension Paizo) the most? Why?
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Follow-up question:
What option helps Pathfinder (and by extension Paizo) the most? Why?
I would say a suscription to the APs, even if you play them on free form
I myself get every issue of companion and chronicles i can, even ifits just by PDF...
but the APs is one of their backbones, so supporting this is supporting Paizo.
I love the AP's and highly recommend them. However, as you have stated that you don't have a regular group right now, I would actually recommend that you run the PFS scenarios at your FLGS. Use the time and different people joining as something of a screening process until you get enough people who you would like to game with on a regular basis and that can commit to a long term campaign then start an AP.
Sean Mahoney
Follow-up question:
What option helps Pathfinder (and by extension Paizo) the most? Why?
Quoting MAD magazine:
News Reporter: "Is your intention getting our youth addicted to smoking cigarrettes?"
Tobacco Tycoon: "No, my intentions are getting our youth addicted to -buying- cigarrettes, I don't care if they smoke them or not."
I would say a suscription to the APs, even if you play them on free form
Actually Paizo would be much more benefitted by him buying his books separatedly, as a suscription means saving money, which benefits them less than Kyle paying for each book (and shipping) at full price. =P
Follow-up question:
What option helps Pathfinder (and by extension Paizo) the most? Why?
Quoting MAD magazine:
News Reporter: "Is your intention getting our youth addicted to smoking cigarrettes?"
Tobacco Tycoon: "No, my intentions is getting our youth addicted to -buying- cigarrettes, I don't care if they smoke them or not."
~LAUGHTER~ I LOVE that quote Dogbert! Good job!
Director of Brand Strategy
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Hey Kyle, I think you can do a combination. I'd suggest running an AP with modification inspired by Chronicles as needed to make it a guided homebrew. Since there are always weeks when schedules prevent a core group from getting together, you can progress PFS characters at the game store then, or even plan to do that once a month to grow interest in the community. (Also, characters max out at 12, so PFS costs less to get to "the end", but you can always play multiple characters or start new ones once you reach the cap.)
Perhaps you could try a few of them out and see what works best? Some of the modules create a short campaign (Hollow's Last Hope, Crown/Revenge of the Kobold King, Carnival of Tears, Hungry Are the Dead, with Tower of the Last Baron, Treasure of Chimera Cove, and Into the Haunted Forest not far away geographically) so you could run that and see if an AP would work for you. Also, run a few PFS scenarios and see how that feels. And do a short homebrew thing. One of 'em'll catch and continue. Maybe several will. In any case, you'll have a fun time playing in Golarion, so what's the downside?