Advice for a new DM running Burnt Offerings

[Douglas Muir 406]

No, not me. I have to move away from my old campaign, and one of my players is stepping up as DM. He'll start a new campaign, 1st level, and wants to run Burnt Offerings.

He's a reasonably experienced player (playing IMC once a week for 10 months now) but has never DMed before. He'll be running for the other five players from my campaign, so everyone will be familiar with everyone.

So: for a brand-new DM running this as his first-ever module, what advice would you give? What's potentially troublesome, what's great and should be showcased, and what if anything would you advise he change?

Doug M.

[Azure_Zero]

Tips for a starting DM:
1) start core book ONLY (so players can't do game breaking combos),
2) read the whole module.
3) Do prep work, (this means; writing down notes and points, getting maps ready, NPC sheets ready (ally and foe alike), bestiary bookmarked to monsters)
4) It should be a NON-EVIL campaign (evil characters tend to screw over first time DMs really hard.)
5) It should be 15 point or 20 point-buy characters (no rolling as this creates a power imbalance among players and misaligns the CR system)
6) What the GM says goes, no debate.

[Saint_Meerkat]

How I Prepare An Adventure Under Ideal Circumstances

This is a riff on a workshop I attended while in high school in 1983 called, "How To Read A Textbook."

Evening One

1) Skim quickly through the entire adventure. Read all the headings and look at all the illustrations, taking time to look over the maps. Allow myself to stop anywhere that grabs my attention, but don't read more than a few sentences.

2) Go through the entire adventure reading the first sentence of every paragraph AND all the words that are in bold. Allow myself to stop anywhere that grabs my attention, but don't read more than a few sentences.

3) Check the forums for any GM discussions about the adventure.

Evening Two

4) Read all of the adventure. If I have printed out the PDF, I do the following during the main read-through: a) Underline the most important sentence of each paragraph. b) Highlight all the Skill checks with green. c) Highlight what the PCs need to know after the encounter or conversation with yellow. d) Write down on a legal pad any spells or combat rules I don't know or can't remember.

Evening Three

5) Skim through the adventure. Make index cards for all the major NPCs. Make a couple of notes about their appearance and location. Write down three things they might say during a psychotherapy session with their analyst. Work the backstory into a couple of the sentences. (With Burnt Offerings, I did this with a database because of the large number of NPCs. Instead of writing three things, I copied and pasted pertinent information about each NPC as I came across it from the PDF into the database.)

Evening Four

6) Pre-draw any complicated maps (like the Sandpoint Glassworks) on the large presentation board size graph paper with 1" squares that is available at most office supply stores.

7) Make index cards for the combat encounters. I still use the free ones The Game Mechanics made for D&D 3.5 if I have access to a printer and card stock.

--OR--

6) Prepare maps and tokens for VTT software.

Evening or Morning Before The Game

8) Skim the adventure and the NPC cards, reading what I have underlined and highlighted.

9) Review the spells and rules I listed on the legal pad at a website like d20pfsrd.org. Make brief notes on the pad as needed.

[The Shogun of Harlem]

Dotting.

Good advice. I like to see how others prepair. Saint Meerkat, great break down. I even wrote myself a note to go and grab some presentation size graph paper.

SGH

[MongooseMan]

I have been a DM for 32 years and that is some of the best advice I have ever seen! I picked up a few tips that I will make use of going forward. This is a great plan that keeps from overloading the DM right before the game.

[Matías Torino]

Great advice!

I'll add a simple tip for character creation:
Before creating their characters, make them create a group. The game is a lot easier if everyone agrees in what kind of party they want to play.

In this AP, the following group archetypes should work well:
- Treasure hunters interested in Varisian ruins.
- Sandpoint wannabe heroes, eager to start a life of adventure.
- Scholars interested Thasilion's past.
- Giant slayers (they could be Black Arrows in a training mission).
- Goblin-hunters working with Shalelu Andosana.
- Ameiko Kaijitsu's ex-companions, visiting their old friend.

Choose one group archetype you like, or let them choose. Then, ask each player to create a character tied to that archetype. And whatever you do, don't allow disruptive characters (like "almost evil" characters, "I hate all elves" characters, "I hate Sandpoint" characters, etc.). Even when you play with mature people, there's always someone who will test your as a GM.

I hope this advice helps and good luck running the best Adventure Path ever written!

[Damon Griffin]

Matías Torino wrote:

I'll add a simple tip for character creation:

Before creating their characters, make them create a group. The game is a lot easier if everyone agrees in what kind of party they want to play.

Expanding slightly on this: make sure the characters have some interest in the local area. Some of my players created characters who just happened to be in Sandpoint for the Swallowtail Festival, on the assumption they'd be moving on to bigger and better things as the adventure path progressed ("Become an adventurer! See the world!") And yes, there is a good deal of travel in Runelords, but they keep coming back to Sandpoint. This will be a lot easier on everyone if Sandpoint feels like home rather than some one-horse town they thought they'd only be passing through once.

Saint Meerkat's advice to read the whole adventure is critical for Runelords. Your friend is going to make problems for himself if he takes PCs on a boar hunt with Aldern Foxglove during Burnt Offerings, without knowing (as GM) what's coming with Foxglove in Book 3. Even bigger problems if he opts to skip the boar hunt.

Also, have him go through the boards here and find some of the fan-created visual aids. One especially useful one for Burnt Offerings has the silhouette of the Catacombs of Wrath superimposed over the map of Sandpoint.

[Old Drake]

In my experience the first session is always the hardest, so I'd recommend that you get the group together on session 0 and let them build their characters together. Have them make certain that their characters have reason to trust one another and to stick together - that's more important than anything else.

Things to keep in mind:
- characters must stick together. It's not evil that destroys campaigns, it's characters that can't work together. After you know their motivations reread the whole AP and make certain to remove anything that stresses their motivation for sticking together too much, then add in a few bits and pieces specific to their motivation.
Say they are interested in Thasilion; make Aldern a closet historian too! Maybe the topic comes up at their hunting trip and they find a few books in the manor - another motivation to seek out the city house and secure the books he has there. Maybe there are minor/hidden ruins near Fort Rannick or a famous historian/archeologist was visiting the fort when it fell out of communication. Especially at this point a genuine motivation is very much needed, since the adventure doesn't really provide anything, so make sure to give the characters a reason to go to Fort Rannick without much prompting. Maybe when the players clear out the cellars of the fort they find hints to a hidden tunnel that leads into a strange dungeon that the founders of the order located but decided not to explore and that's been unknown since they died. There they could find hints about the dungeon beneath Sandpoint and arrive just in time to defend the town; and look, the chief giant has orders written in runes of ancient Thasilion!

- Core-only and point-buy have been mentioned, but get boring very fast. Since you know the group already, make sure the power-gamers choose feats in line with their character, but try to allow anything a player brings up. My group favors rolling - if you think a character is too weak, compared to the rest of the group, have the re-roll, or give them something special; not a canned feat but something interesting that the player would never choose. Especially interesting for this adventure would be something like see invisible 1/day for ten rounds for a fighter, for example. Or a rogue with very low Wisdom? Well, let's say his perception is so low because he is short sighted (+2 for all non-visual based perception). Players do enjoy non-standard bonuses far more than any canned bonuses! It's a great way to get them invested in characters from the beginning.
This can end giving you a party that's a bit more powerful than simple point-buy, but that doesn't matter. If you have an experienced group, you need to power up most encounters anyway. The AP is designed to not totally screw over novice players and allow them to succeed, so if you even have one system expert that helps the other players level their characters, they will be ahead of the power curve anyway.

- stress test the group! Run them through a few training fights. I'd suggest 4 Kobolds to start with, a Lizard man with his pet Lizard Monitor, and then a very young black dragon (CR5) with a Kobold 5th level sorcerer (black dragon bloodline) in a cave, and after the party died make sure to tell them that there are situation where they will have to retreat if they wish to live - that they can't just brute force through and that not all enemies will just miraculously be appropriately low enough level just because they run into them. If they remember, that should help later on. After the test, let the players modify their characters. The purpose of the test is to get players used to first level characters and to let them make certain feats and class features perform as they expect - it's not part of the actual character history, so no XP.

Specifically for Burnt Offering:
Start before the festival. The players arrive in town (or live there) and get involved in the preparations. If all you do in the first session is the build up to the festival and a few games there, that's a good first session. If you get to end on a cliffhanger with the goblin attack just starting at the end of the session, even better. And if they just see one NPC from their backstory that plays no role in the story, but that they had friendly interaction with during the session get killed by goblins, it sets the right mood.

To prepare for the festival, make sure to write out some speeches and think of at least three ways to relay every piece of information you believe the players need to know that their back story wouldn't provide. Make sure the players have all the information their characters have about Sandpoint.
Think of additional information that various NPCs in town would have - both true and false - and think of ways the PCs could gain that information. It will probably take several sessions before the PCs are friendly enough with any PC for that to matter, but you never know what might happen.

I started with a memorial for the priest that burned in the old church at the graveyard in the morning, several hours before the festival opened.

[GeraintElberion]

Azure_Zero wrote:

Tips for a starting DM:

1) start core book ONLY (so players can't do game breaking combos),
2) read the whole module.
3) Do prep work, (this means; writing down notes and points, getting maps ready, NPC sheets ready (ally and foe alike), bestiary bookmarked to monsters)
4) It should be a NON-EVIL campaign (evil characters tend to screw over first time DMs really hard.)
5) It should be 15 point or 20 point-buy characters (no rolling as this creates a power imbalance among players and misaligns the CR system)
6) What the GM says goes, no debate.

I would amend point 4 to:

4) It should be a GOOD CHARACTERS ONLY campaign (this is much easier for first-time GMs and saves a lot of grief.)

Generally, the advice here is very good.

For campaign specific advice, I would suggest:

campaign specific advice:

-The goblin combat at the start should be kept short and fun but try to throw in some nasty somewhere: it can come off as too light-hearted.
-The ex-familiar can be a real pain to kill, remind your players to make knowledge checks to identify weaknesses and even to improve those checks by getting aid another from the town priest and getting bonuses from using books held by locals.
-Give your players a chance to build relationships with lots of the locals, caring about the town is good for the game.
-Put the Sihedron rune and the thassilonian element of the dungeons up front, don't let them fade into the background as they tie the whole AP together.

[Elorebaen]

I suggest that all of the PCs should be natives of Sandpoint. In fact, I think it would be really useful to run some pre-Burnt Offering session(s) to help build the connection Sandpoint.

[Old Drake]

Elorebaen brings up a good point, but for some players Sandpoint might be overly restrictive; have a look at their class/race desires before you decide anything.
Even if they aren't natives, that doesn't mean this has to be their first visit to Sandpoint or that they aren't living there at the moment. Depending on what motivates their characters, they may be there to study the ruins in and near Sandpoint themselves, for example. Or they arrived a year or so ago to study the Thasollian language under the local expert.

Pre-sessions are a good idea, but I'd suggest one-on-one sessions with each player to establish the characters, their relation with NPCs, their motivations, and what they know about Sandpoint, the area, and whatever else is going on. And I'd suggest finding at least a few tidbits of information that is only known to that character and player - maybe not game critical information, but something that makes him special and given him something non-mechanical that's unique to his character.

If during the pre-session something develops that could/should be explored before Burnt Offering that's great, but it probably should be combined with preparations for the festival and the festival itself; unless your players are dedicated role-players, of course. But without knowing much more about the group, I wouldn't recommend too much exposition. It's a good idea to give the players the opportunity for more role-playing before and during the festival, but trying to force it on them can easily go wrong.

That's good advice in general: Offer them opportunities for in character scenes, but move on quickly if they don't go for it, unless it's a very important scene.
On the other hand, never try to cut a role-playing scene short, unless there's a very important in-game reason.
As GM you control a huge part of the game, but this is one aspect where the players should have almost complete control. And if they miss aspects of the story? You can always try and work them back into the game later on.