1 Set of rulebooks, 1 laptop, 5 players.

[kiljoy712]

I'm new to Pathfinder, and me and my gaming group recently changed to it from Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. I have the core set of rulebooks, and am getting more familiar with the rules, but my other players aren't as familiar. Of course there's the online reference document and http://www.d20pfsrd.com/, but we only have 1 laptop to use to refer to when playing.

I'm thinking to print out any and all rules regarding whatever might be involved in the game session, be it magic items or monsters, and anything relating to the player's character (race/class pages) or whatnot.

But that leaves the problem of what to do when improvising, it breaks the flow of the game if I stop to go print something out for a player or make a copy of it for easy reference from the book if the player (who owns the laptop) is using the laptop.

And the rest of my players don't really have the spare income to purchase the books, or they're not interested in purchasing the books.

What should I do?

[Lincoln Hills]

You'll spend a fortune on printing if you try to crank out that much paper. The whole point of a laptop is to avoid being buried in paper.

About the best I can think of is to have multiple 'copies' of your pfsrd on the laptop, each "belonging" to a different player and with that player's preferred bookmarks. Of course, there may be a downside to that which is not occurring to me.

As for breaking the flow - well, that'll happen less and less often as your group grows comfortable with the rules set. I don't think there's a solution to having things a little choppy at first.

[Macharius]

kiljoy712 wrote:

And the rest of my players don't really have the spare income to purchase the books, or they're not interested in purchasing the books.

What should I do?

If they're reluctant to buy the book, have them consider buying the PDF... $10 vs $50 is a pretty good deal, and they can read up and take notes on what's relevent or necessary at home. This will save you the $$$ of printing as well as time at the gaming table.

Or have a dedicated rules referee to look things up. The indexes are great, and for an online source I think the paizo PRD is a better tool than d20pfsrd since it doesn't contain any third-party content and is organized by volume.

[Fromper]

The actual Pathfinder rulebooks are available online for free, just without the pretty pictures and a little of the other fluff: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

Have your players do their own reading in advance from that link. Since you're new, I'd recommend sticking to player options in the Core Rulebook, and maybe Advanced Player's Guide, but skip Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat for now. There's a lot to learn, so stick to the basics first.

Maybe have your players copy and paste the specific race/class/feat/spell information that applies to their character into a Word doc or something, and print it to bring with them on game day for reference. Make each player do their own, both to reduce the work for you, and to force them to figure out what they're looking at.

[Nightskies]

Make sure everyone has the details of their spells on cards or printed. If they have a lot of spells, just cover the ones that will be used most. Make the character sheets detailed- include a truncated description of each ability rather than just listing them. It will take longer to create, but that is to be expected for a 1st run.

Rules I'd recommend to have printed out or noted with a sticky in the book for quick reference (with page number):
Knowledge (99), Actions in Combat (183), Attacking (195), the Appendixes (554-568), Spells list (234), Environmental Rules (442), and of course, the index (572)

In any case, I'd strongly recommend the GameMastery Guide.

[DanTheS]

Bookmarks & multiple windows are your friends, use lots of them. I tried this for a while, until the Collector in me had to have the books in print.

the command "ctrl-F" to find text is also a major time-saver. Good luck!

[doctor_wu]

Also tell the players that summon monster or summon anture ally spells I would want the character to have the bestairy. Or have them print out the stats for waht they can summon. you could try having one hard copy of the core rulebook the rest could share if tehy all pitch in money for it. So you can have one and players can look stuff up.

[Brambleman]

Its doable with those materials there. Harder if your players are not 3e familiarized.