After years of playing nothing but Risk, poker and spades over at one of my friend's house I finally told him and the group that hangs at his house that we needed a new game. I recommended Pathfinder and much to my shock and delight I had five people asking for help making a character that week. I've got a decade of RP experience and I'm very comfortable with the PF rules and running a game; my main concern is keeping a group of first time role players interested, especially while everyone is in the beginning stages of learning the rules. Any special tricks?
Another concern, what do you do for people who just have no hope of learning the rules but have lots of enthusiasm for playing? One of the prospective players is a very nice guy, but he's not the sharpest tool in the shed; for instance, he is still challenged by the Risk rules we've been playing with for three years. While I don't want to turn away friendly entusiastic people, I also don't want to have to hold his hand every session and re-re-re-re explain why as a caster he needs to cast defensively if he doesn't want to get AoO'd.
Any ideas or advice on either subject would be most helpful and welcome!
OH! Also, what would be a good intro to the Golarian setting? I was specifically curious if there were any AP's out there with a strong urban element that would be good for first timers.
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For a 1st time group I would recommend pregenerated characters like the ones from the back of the APs. Let them try a different character for the first few sessions or trade characters mid session. Then after they get familiar with the rules, make characters. Let them know if they don't like what they have it is okay to make a new char, as most new players take a while to get in their groove.
I usually have 1 or 2 players that are not gamers and are just trying out the game. I usually give them a premade character and a skill/combat cheat sheet that explains how the character works with a couple examples. If they want to make a character, I try to convince them to stay with something without spellcasting.
I would not start with an AP, keep it to a simple setting with a small settlement and a story that draws heavily from pop fantasy references that they are familiar with. Shreck, LOTR, Robin Hood, and etc. I once did an adventure based on Disney's Sleeping Beauty and turned one players wife into an addict.
Strong urban setting would be Curse of the Crimson Throne. It's prepathfinder, but there are conversions in the forums, and honestly, with a new group, you might be better off running it as is (encounters will be much easier than they would be, as Pathfinder PCs are rough and tumpler) at least for a while, to guage how well the party works together, and how well built the characters are. Much easier to make future encounters more difficult, than try to get them out of a BAD situation...as in, if the last time the party fought the babykicker tribe of goblins they got their butts handed to them, it'll seem weird if this time the goblins are all push-overs. Now, if last time was cake, and this time it's challenging, it's easy enough to say the goblins are a little more prepared for adventurers.
Also, I would recomend the Falcon's Hollow adventures. Again, they need to be converted to Pathfinder, but between the Bestiary I and II most of the monsters are updated...just gotta adjust the NPCs and traps (of which I don't recall there being many). The reason I suggest this series is the level of potential complexity in roleplaying opportunity.
Obviously the following will contain spoilers...
You can run them straight forward, and downplay all the corruption and cruelty in town, making it a frontier community that needs protection from all the crazy evil werewolves and fey and dragons and everything else. Or if you think the players are up for some character soul searching, you can highlght some of the desperation involved in Falcon's Hollow and make the bad guys inside the walls as well as out. If the group is very mature, and can handle some really harsh themes, then there is more than enough info in the adventures and guide book to ramp it up to 11 and seriously give them something to think about.
My advice for starting with brand new gamers, especially coming from a board game background is making sure they understand the party isn't in compotition with eachother (or you as the DM for that matter). Point out rules like Aid Another, and explain tactics like flanking and attacking someone a party member has grappled. This will obviously make them more effective in the game, as well as promote a happy gaming environment right from the get-go.
As for the "nice guy"...I play warhammer with a fellow like this, cept he isn't that nice of a guy, but that's beside the point. If you don't think singling him out will hurt his feelings (though honestly you might want to do this with everyone being they're all so new) give him color coded dice (as in each die type is a seperate color, like his d20 is red, and his three six sided dice are green) that way you get them distinguished in his mind from the start, and it's easier to say "to make an attack you roll the d20, that's the red one." rather than "to make an attack you roll the d20, no that's the d12." and along those lines, only give him (them) the die they need. This is something I found to save an imence ammount of time in not only getting rid of the d20 looking like a d12 problem, but removing the temptation to fidle with the dice all the time that a lot of people have. It's not a terrible trait, but the more dice people have the more they drop them, the more they have to search, the more they want to stack instead of listen...
Also, make sure his character sheet is completely filled out (infact you might want to do premade characters, at least for the first session). Nothing screws stuff up worse than the guy who isn't quite so quick with numbers trying to figure out his base attack bonus manually. Also, possibly highlight key groups of info...what I meen is highlight the part on his sheet that sais saving throws, attributes, skills, class, race. And tell him from the get go "I'll tell you to make a skill check and you look over under the highlighted skill section, then find the skill" pointing out each of the categories ahead of time, so he knows what he's looking for before he needs to find it (even if he forgets later, he'll still have a tiny bit of prep).
All I got for now, maybe more later. Hope it's helping.
Remember to remind them it's a team effort, and you can't "Win" Pathfinder.
Maybe watch that episode of Community where they all play D&D for the first time?
Advise them that melee characters are simpler to learn, but let them play a magic user if that's what really interests them.
Let them describe what they want to do in English, then translate that into game terms.
Tell them that you are dropping some of the more complicated/confusing rules and will introduce them later. Encumbrance and AoO can be dropped without losing much.
I'd encourage spontaneous casters, since then you can avoid having to figure out what spells are prepared. Allowing wizards to cast spontaneously should be fine with beginners, since they still have a limited number of spells known.
As the players get comfortable with the rules you are using, introduce the ones that you dropped but are more relevant to their character.
For Mr. Not Sharp, I would probably assume that he is doing what makes sense. If he says that he casts while standing next to the ogre, I would just ask for the concentration check. Possibly something like "It's hard to remember the details of the casting ritual with the ogre's club going past your face, so make a concentration check to see if you can cast the spell." Hopefully, eventually he'll start to remember or one of the players will become clueful enough to start reminding him instead.
After years of playing nothing but Risk, poker and spades over at one of my friend's house I finally told him and the group that hangs at his house that we needed a new game. I recommended Pathfinder and much to my shock and delight I had five people asking for help making a character that week. I've got a decade of RP experience and I'm very comfortable with the PF rules and running a game; my main concern is keeping a group of first time role players interested, especially while everyone is in the beginning stages of learning the rules. Any special tricks?
Break the combat down for people. They have One move, one standard. YOu can trade standard for move, but not the other way around.
Start introducing fights to introduce the rules. For example, have a fight with a bunch of kobolds at 40 feet to demonstrate charge. Have another fight with orcs with spears to demonstrate reach. Have them fight a two handed fighter to show the difference between attacks and full attacks.
Another concern, what do you do for people who just have no hope of learning the rules but have lots of enthusiasm for playing?
-Know the rules so well that no matter what they say they want their character to do, you can break it down to a combat maneuver, tell them roughly what their chances of success are, and ask "do you still want to try that?"
I also don't want to have to hold his hand every session and re-re-re-re explain why as a caster he needs to cast defensively if he doesn't want to get AoO'd.
Casting defensively is for suckers. thats what 5 foot steps are for.
Just tell him to roll d20 as part of casting the spell IF he's casting defensively, figure out the concentration check. Just assume a caster in melee that can't 5 foot step is always casting defensively.
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Try a bar room brawl (yeah I know). that way EVERYONE learns the basics of combat, the strengths and weaknesses of their class choice, how to drink a flagon of ale in round three then hitting an opponent in round four with an improvised weapon, the downfall of a natural one in such an enclosed setting, how to swing on a chandilier, how to slide down a bannister, how to throw people over the bar. TBH years ago White Dwarf published a small bar room bar as an intro to WFRP combat - we introduced our physics teacher to WFRP and it was a complete blast!!!
Wow, thanks for the awesome response so far! I knew the Pathfinder community would see me right :)
Let me just say right off that I have yet to actually run anything with this group, so any examples I had in my original post were purely hypothetical (for this group at least).
I'm seeing a lot of support for pregen characters, which I'm not necessarily against, but I was stearing clear of because what my friends seemed most interested in is making their own character. This may require more work, but if it's what's getting people interested I'll stick with it, I'm not going to saddle them with a character they aren't excitied about, even if it's for just one night of example play. That being said, I'm only allowing spontanious casters until they've got a better handle on the rules. I'm just lucky in that most of my players want to be martial classes anyway.
There also seems to be a lot of support for "don't sweat the small stuff" where the rules are concerned. While that's something I definately knew, I needed to hear it again, so thanks for that. Ditto for the game being about cooperation not competition (unless its for roleplaying).
I did print out several copies of the basic cheat sheet included in the back of the Game Masters Guide, and while it had a lot of good terms and simple definitions for them, it was a little light on specifics. I will be taking Shoga's advice and having everyone copy down all their abilities on to their own cheat sheet, very often abilites slip through the cracks and that's a good way to avoid that.
The idea to color code dice and highlight the imporant parts of the character sheet were things that had never occured to me, Fraust, but they seem like fantastic ideas which I now plan to use.
The reason I was looking for an urban-ish AP was because the players seemed inclinded to an urban adventure and I don't have the time to come up with a homebrew campaign. What I think I might do is just print out the list of APs and ask which sounds most appealing to the group.
And I will have to watch this episode of Community. I've caught part of one episode before and it was quite funny, but now that D&D's in the mix I'll definately watch.
Try a bar room brawl (yeah I know). that way EVERYONE learns the basics of combat, the strengths and weaknesses of their class choice, how to drink a flagon of ale in round three then hitting an opponent in round four with an improvised weapon, the downfall of a natural one in such an enclosed setting, how to swing on a chandilier, how to slide down a bannister, how to throw people over the bar. TBH years ago White Dwarf published a small bar room bar as an intro to WFRP combat - we introduced our physics teacher to WFRP and it was a complete blast!!!
Oh you better believe that there'll be a bar room brawl: encounter one, night one! The best part about running for first timers is you get to reuse all the cliches and they seem brand new.
Casting defensively is for suckers. thats what 5 foot steps are for.
Truer words...
I'm seeing a lot of support for pregen characters, which I'm not necessarily against, but I was stearing clear of because what my friends seemed most interested in is making their own character. This may require more work, but if it's what's getting people interested I'll stick with it, I'm not going to saddle them with a character they aren't excitied about, even if it's for just one night of example play. That being said, I'm only allowing spontanious casters until they've got a better handle on the rules. I'm just lucky in that most of my players want to be martial classes anyway.
I think your instincts are right. The best way to get them to come back is to find what they want, and let them do it...and, in some ways, the best way for them to learn the rules is to go through the process of character generation. I'd disagree on the "only spontaneous casters" issue. It's not like it's that more complex.
Also, I'd steer clear of APs. APs are multi-segment, long term things. You don't know how this will pan out. Focus small scale. Just worry about immediate adventure. Just give them the dungeon under the library or whatever. Let it build from that.
I would like to second the use of the falcons hollow moduals. it's enough story for all the way to lvl 6 provides a good environment for lots of encounters an stories.