I am starting two separate Pathfinder groups, one is playing Legacy of Fire, the other Second Darkness.
Both groups new to Pathfinder, not to D&D as a whole.
I did some DMing back in 3.5 but most of my DM experience came in 4E.
So, as a DM, I have often found my adventures were laid out for me in straight lines. Wizard's adventures seem to follow a flow, you do a then b, then c and so on. Nothing wrong with this, and often because I get maybe 30 minutes to read before we play and if lucky 2 hrs during the week to prepare, this type of adventure works well.
The Adventure paths I am starting to find are more story driven, less a, b, c, d driven and clearly not (for me at least) easy to grab skim and play.
Advice on how best to prepare knowing my time limits and your familiarity of the Adventure Path format?
Will it kill me to sometimes skim material when we play, wing it so to speak, or do I run danger of really messing up a story line this way?
Open to all suggestions!
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Soulkeeper,
I would strongly suggest you make more time to prepare by pre-reading the adventure path part(s) you are currently running. Often important facts are hidden away in the descriptions of the adventure and being familiar with the entire story for that particular part can really help you run it better.
I know time is an issue for you so if your two groups have entirely different players, I'd say run the same adventure path for both groups so you only have to prepare once.
Each AP is different.
Kingmaker is the most sand-box AP currently out.
Jade Regent is more of a rail-roaded AP,
but still has some areas are in an more flexible order than others.
In the kingmaker one, it's best to read as much of it as you can and memorize it and but down notes to help remember things.
In Jade Regent you could read the needed 10-15 pages and be good, but it would be wise to prep some notes and get things ready.
No matter the AP it is wise to read the current book in the AP you are running and take notes and prepare stuff for the game. Even bookmarking monsters and important pages in the AP book, for quick referencing when in game.
There are times when you will have to "wing it" for some minor details
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First off, I know you probably don't want to hear it, but I'd suggest not running two APs at the same time, let alone two that you have to convert to Pathfinder rules.
That being said, I'd definitely take the time to read through the entire AP before running it. Since the books are written by different authors at approx the same time, you don't really get a feel for the whole path with just one part of it, and they deviate from what the synopsis at the end of the first book says, sometimes quite a bit.
It's funny, I often see "time-saving" given as an advantage of Adventure Paths, but in truth I think they actually take more time and effort than homebrews in some ways. A well-run is more complete and consistent, but a GM that's good at improvising and modifying existing statblocks should have a much easier time running a homebrew than remembering everything that's supposed to happen in an AP.
I don't save any time on adventure content by running APs, although I play a VTT game which is very map heavy, so being able to use the maps does save time.
I generally read the books through before I start the campaign, then I read each book a second time just before the players reach that part. I then go through each encounter with a fine-toothed comb as I set things up for MapTool play — finding images for relevant props, correcting the map to match the text, correcting the text to my liking, putting the text on tooltips on the map, creating tokens from the character art, etc. By the end of this process, I usually have a clear grasp of the encounter.
Sometimes, stuff slips through. Nobody's perfect. I've often realized, post-hoc, that I left something out that would make a huge difference. It seems to happen less often these days, so maybe practice is the solution.
It is always safe to "wing it" if you're mentally prepared to prosecute the consequences. That is, after all, the mark of a great GM.
Here's more advice you probably don't have time for...read the 'GM Reference' thread for the adventure you are on before running it. GM's post there with problems they had in the adventure and suggestions for making it better. The thread are an excellent way to give you a heads up where other GMs had issues with the adventure and how they adjusted it to make it better:
I'd strongly advise reading the whole book you're running at least twice, as well as reading a good campaign summary (something, IIRC, the older APs lack). Ideally, of course, you'd want to read all the books all the way through and then reread them, but that's probably not practical with a limited time budget.
Maybe the best way to go is to read the whole book twice (things aren't always well-organized and you will come across things that will trip you up in-play if you don't know where to look for them) and then, before each session, read the encounters or sections you anticipate having to run that night. That way you won't hold up combats or intense RP sessions while you hunt for that one thing you seem to recall reading (and believe me, the text always rearranges itself when you're stressed to make it hard to find it!).
I am starting two separate Pathfinder groups, one is playing Legacy of Fire, the other Second Darkness.
Both groups new to Pathfinder, not to D&D as a whole.
I did some DMing back in 3.5 but most of my DM experience came in 4E.
So, as a DM, I have often found my adventures were laid out for me in straight lines. Wizard's adventures seem to follow a flow, you do a then b, then c and so on. Nothing wrong with this, and often because I get maybe 30 minutes to read before we play and if lucky 2 hrs during the week to prepare, this type of adventure works well.
The Adventure paths I am starting to find are more story driven, less a, b, c, d driven and clearly not (for me at least) easy to grab skim and play.
Advice on how best to prepare knowing my time limits and your familiarity of the Adventure Path format?
Will it kill me to sometimes skim material when we play, wing it so to speak, or do I run danger of really messing up a story line this way?
Open to all suggestions!
The A B C adventures are every easy to run, and some of Paizo's AP's do this to an extent also, but the books where the players can do things in any order are not so easy. I have a pretty good memory so I often skim read the AP when I first get it, and then I actually read it the night before we play. Winging works pretty well if you have a decent grasp on what is going on.
If you are that pressed for time I would also suggest only running one group. There is no way I would run for two groups if that is all the time I could spare.I also keep notes beside me for anything that is important that I might forget.
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If you don't have time to prep there's not much you can do about it.
Just let your Players know you only get about 30 minutes to read over the material before you run it and ask them to be patient.
What I would do in those 30 minutes....
1) Read the background and summary thoroughly. This way you know what's generally going on and why.
2) Highlight aspects of encounters or bits of info that seem important
3) Color-Code a few highlighters so yellow means this, orange means that, etc.
4) Fudge stat-blocks that aren't right there in front of you: guess HPs, AC, Saves; use the same couple spells, etc.
I would definitely recommend having read ahead. That's pretty important for my methods.
If you're really worried about messing up things in the future of the AP's plot, I suggest going over the modules and jot out some notes of the important connections and events that occur between the two that you definitely don't want to miss. Going through the effort of doing so will strengthen their impression in your brain and make them easier to remember and plan around. Refer to these notes often when prepping for the next game session.
I would also suggest keeping a calendar for the campaign. It's a good way to take notes and keep track of multi-day durations - like item creation.
I suggest reading it twice.
I suggest reading it twice.
lol
Ultradan
I'm planning to run Legacy relatively soon, and I'm in Darkness at the moment. I'd strongly encourage at least skim reading the whole AP before characters are rolled up so that you have a sense of how you want the flavour of the path to be.
Second thing is that Pathfinder characters are substantially more powerful than 3.5 (for which the APs were written), especially at low levels. Upstatting the monsters to make them challenging and re-statting them so they fit PF is a time consuming process. You don't absolutely have to do it, the stat blocks for 3.5 will work ok, but if your players are very familiar with the rules you may find frequent 'stops' as rulings are challenged 'I don't think it works like that'. (Depends on your players - although I'm pretty dictatorial at my own table I do at least listen to this kind of query and try to respond fairly).
Paizo APs are NOT good for skim and run technique. They do not lay out the information you need in a way that permits this at all. You need to be familiar with at least the whole module you are running to do it without issue as a dm. THere are all kinds of hidden little bits of information in the descriptions of things. And most of the time you have to give careful consideration to how things are going to interact.
It makes the adventures more interesting both to read and to run, but it also makes htem harder to run. I've yet to see a happy medium here from any published adventure.
I'll offer some slightly different "step back and look at the big picture" advice.
As a new GM your first goal is to grow so your adventures fit into one of these two categories:
(a) Fast-paced storytelling interrupted by a slow-paced and clunky tactical combat game involving miniatures
(b) Practiced tactical combat with miniatures, transitioning between fights using slightly clunky and slow-paced storytelling
Eventually you will be able to have both storytelling and combat be quick and exciting. But that is not a realistic goal for a new GM.
So, ask your players which they prefer.
If they want (a) then reread the adventures several times so the storytelling goes as smoothly as possible.
If they want (b) then study the monster stat blocks and privately run some rehearsal combats so the fights go as smoothly as possible.
Thank you all for the advice, I started to fear this was how these APs work, and I can find 'weekend" time, or late night time, to do a full read. Maybe not all 6 books at once, but clearly the current book plus one or two more. I'll cram what I can in and then see how it goes.
Unfortunately, 2 players span both groups, but... I guess if I keep them paced, maybe they can run the same.
I'll offer some slightly different "step back and look at the big picture" advice.
As a new GM your first goal is to grow so your adventures fit into one of these two categories:
(a) Fast-paced storytelling interrupted by a slow-paced and clunky tactical combat game involving miniatures
(b) Practiced tactical combat with miniatures, transitioning between fights using slightly clunky and slow-paced storytelling
Eventually you will be able to have both storytelling and combat be quick and exciting. But that is not a realistic goal for a new GM.
So, ask your players which they prefer.
If they want (a) then reread the adventures several times so the storytelling goes as smoothly as possible.
If they want (b) then study the monster stat blocks and privately run some rehearsal combats so the fights go as smoothly as possible.
Wanted to touch back on this specific.
One of the many reasons were going Pathfinder is the combat in 4E. Who'd a thunk a bunch of 13-15 yr kids would eventually say combat was way tooooo long and distracting. We play weekly for 2.5 hrs and often it was a single combat session with a tiny bit of dialog before and after.
So, we started in 4e by dumping all the end of next turn, push, pull slide, stun and what not that required everyone to have to keep a notebook to know what was going on. They (not me) then started using the same powers over and over rather than sifting through the 28 attacks they had to pick one.
Finally, I picked up the beginner box just to see what it was like and after running them through the adventure (the whole thing in one sitting) and a few other "mini" adventures in a second sitting, they all said... let's play this instead.
So, I know without asking, they want A. They want story and some combat that seems to fit the story and add to it.
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The best advice I can give a new DM is "The best laid plans rarely survive the first encounter".
If you do not have a lot of prep time, at least keep a notebook handy, and make the time one evening to sit down and thoroughly read the adventure path. Jot down the major plot points that you feel the party should encounter. Then as the adventure progresses and the party gets off track (and they will), look at the list and come up with a creative solution to get them back on track.
Remember the adventure paths are just the backbone of the story, a collection of guidelines on where to take your PC's. The most memorable adventures I find are the ones where PC's do something weird, strange or unexpected and the DM runs with it. If they don't hit all the plot points in the adventure, oh well. Just try and point them towards the conclusion as best you can.
I have a lot of experience DM'ing for kids in the 13 to 15 bracket (used to teach at a middle school and helped run the gaming club). I have to say that I find that they are usually happy with some cool, exciting encounters and less concerned with the overall story arc, especially one that will take months or years to complete. I might suggest trying to string together a series of smaller adventures, that way if they get bored or seriously off track, you can spin them off in another direction. Do they want to be pirates this month? Toss in a seafaring adventure. Are ninja's popular next month? Toss them in an eastern flavored adventure. Keeping it varied and exciting will probably hold their attention better than a long adventure path.
There are a number of pathfinder modules that loosely fit together. These come quickly to mind:
1)Hollow's last hope/Crown of the kobold king/Revenge of the Kobold king
2)Crypt of the Ever flame/Mask of the Living God/City of Golden Death
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I do not think you have to read the whole AP before running it. However, you should read the entire chapter of the AP before you run that chapter. As others pointed out and you've already noticed, the APs are not written so they can just be run on the fly. It would be nice if Paizo could find a way to change that, but it is what it is.
I'm running Second Darkness right now and the way I do it is to first read through the chapter to familiarize myself with everything (BTW, they repeated an area on the Gold Goblin map...you can find more info in the Second Darkness subforum). After that, I go through the fluff parts of the AP and re-summarize what's going on in my own notes. This allows me to combine elements spread throughout the AP into a document that I can go through more linearly during the session. The APs' combat is actually easy to run straight from the AP, so when I get to those parts, I put a page reference in my notes, so I can just jump to that section of the AP for the combat. I also calculate party XP and treasure for each encounter and put it next to the page number.
I also use Hero Lab and the data sets for the APs available for it along with Combat Manager for actually managing combat itself.
2 hours of game prep? heh, I usually prep 2 hours for each hour of game time....so for a 5 hour game....I prep 10 hours.
Sandbox games are harder to prepare for, because you need to know every possible way the characters could go. Even knowing the entirity of the module you are running, your players will most likely find something else that you want to do.
I am running a sandbox style game and being daunte by the possibility of them going anywhere, I have started to ask them "What's Next?"
The next skill you need to learn is how to fall back and punt. That is...how to make it up when they go a direction you hadn't planned on....or even thought of. Best way to deal with that, if you can't pull something out of your hat, is to stall. Have a preset encounter set up. Something that you can pull out and stall them for the rest of the session, until you can get some free time to figure out what you are going to do there.
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The Society Scenarios are a great idea EXCEPT... The OP wants lots more roleplaying stuff and even though the Scenarios are great for little prep time, they have considerably less roleplay.
Maybe get the Scenarios and just don't play them as-is: take 10 minutes to read over one and your other 20 minutes of prep to decide how to lengthen it for more roleplay. Kinda a mix of Published adventure & Homebrew
So far people have shared some true gems to getting past this issue. The AP's I have seen and even some of the Paizo modules like to have a lot freedom and player choice to them. You are given several avenues of clues to persue that might take you in differing directions. In your thinking and planning the adventure after familarizing yourself with it. Stop thinking about in a linear sense bot a modular sense. Think of it this way somepeople take notes in an outline others do webs. These adventures sometimes work better in webs rather than clearly organized lines. Section A may not be followed by Section B, 1 may not be followed by 2. Lastly you are not helpless to this chaos your NPC's the stress you place on clues, what you reveal in skill checks pushes the PC's in the direction you need to go. If there are multiple courses of action amp up the clues that drive the players where you want them to go first. Take what you know of your players and prepare accordingly, this can backfire but it can also really save the day. If you have a careful tactical team chances are you will have to make sure you have considered what they will find while scouting or scrying, or gathering information. If they are kick in the door team what are chaos will their approach likely cause, what will they be clueless of and so forth.
I played with a DM who hinged the entire campaign based on what I and another player would do. He was exactly right in our course of action and our motives.
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I'm running all of one campaign, an AP no less, and I'm finding that for my six-hour sessions it takes around two hours to prepare. Of course, this particular AP is pretty railroady.
This includes:
+ Reading, then rereading the module sections I think they'll finish up.
+ Writing up a quick stat block on an index card for the in-the-text 'bad guys'
+ Adding those little post-it-note plastic flags to monster encounters in four or five different manuals
+ Emailing my group information
I do this at work before shift starts, during work on lunch, on my transit commute, and I take about forty to fifty minutes to do the rereading just before game that night.
I hear ya on the time crunch thing.