I've only attempted two APs, so I'm not much more experienced than you are, but I've found it helpful to just focus on the now.
No matter how anxious you get for the players to uncover the story, their primary focus is on the immediate dungeon/challenge at hand. So if you take your time and run each chapter as its own adventure, the details will work themselves out later.
In other words, while the players may get some extra enjoyment out of tying together all the little plot elements you've been peppering along, I don't think that will equal the enjoyment they get from having consistently solid adventures run for them.
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It sounds like you are fairly new to GMing, possibly gaming in general. Your role as GM is to act as the narrator for the PCs' story. You describe the world they are in and decide how all the NPCs react and behave. The players tell you what their characters do and the rules of the game determine the outcome of all these actions.
I'd recommend picking a fairly straightforward AP for your first outing. Rise of the Runelords is just now being reprinted as a single revised edition and the pdf is relatively inexpensive. Carrion Crown is not too complicated if you and your players enjoy horror.
You may think about starting out with one of the 1st level adventure modules like Crypt of the Everflame before diving headfirst into a full AP, just to get used to the system and flow of the game.
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Ok. No disparagement was intended, I was unsure of your exact level of newness.
Basically, you should read each chapter of the AP in its entirety before starting to run the chapter. There can be some benefit to reading the entire AP before starting, as it can allow you to more tightly tie the adventures together and foreshadow, but that's a lot of reading and not at all necessary.
Your players should read the corresponding Player's Guide that goes with the AP you run. This will give them the background info they need to be able to make characters that tie into the AP's story well.
Generally, any text you are supposed to directly read to the players will be in it own "box", usually at the beginning of the section. Everything else is extra information about hidden materials, background, monster tactics, and so on. Some of that info will come out during play, some can be figured out by the PCs using skill checks such as Knowledge and Perception, and some will remain forever hidden from them.
You should be aware that Second Darkness was written before Paizo released the Pathfinder system, so it was written for 3.5e D&D. Thus, there will be some small differences in stat blocks and skill checks. I haven't hunted for it myself, but you may be able to fins some conversions of NPCs to Pathfinder done by fans. If you try to run it straight out the books, be aware that there will be some skills like Search/Spot/Listen that no longer exist (now all part of Perception) and that enemies won't have stats like CMB/CMD.
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It sounds like you are fairly new to GMing, possibly gaming in general. Your role as GM is to act as the narrator for the PCs' story. You describe the world they are in and decide how all the NPCs react and behave. The players tell you what their characters do and the rules of the game determine the outcome of all these actions.
^^^^^^
This. A hundred times. This.In spite of decades of experience, I considered myself a pretty crappy GM. So I wondered, "Why are my friends' campaigns so much more enjoyable than mine (other than the fact that I get to be a PC in theirs)?"
I finally realized: The GMs I enjoyed the most did not try to lead us through a series of steps. Instead, they set up their world, decided what events were happening, who the NPCs were, where they were, and then simply let us wander.
This sounds contrary to an Adventure PATH, but it's not. Rise of the Runelords has a great description of Sandpoint and all the NPCs therein. You can get the Guide to Korvosa for Curse of the Crimson Throne. I started both APs letting the players just wander the town, interacting with the shopkeeps, seeing the sights, and generally beginning to enjoy the town. No "missions", no "you must go here", just, "Here's your world. Enjoy it."
Then you provide them with a hook -- the mysterious notes that start CoCT or the Swallowtail festival in RotRL. Here, it's up to your players to be cooperative. "Oh, there's an obvious hook. We should probably follow it." If they don't, roll with it and think about, "What would the consequences be if the PCs totally ignored this event?" and follow through.
So ADVICE #1: Think of your job as providing a world for them to interact with, rather than a path to lead them down. It VASTLY improved my GM'ing.
Back to running an AP, I strongly advice AGAINST trying to read the entire AP in advance, because you'll have a tendency to drop hints of what is to come. Instead, read the book they'll be going through. Prepare the first 3 encounters, and carefully study the NPCs that go along with (or between) those encounters A 3-encounter session with lots of roleplaying and NPC interaction should take 6-8 hours, which is about the length of our gaming sessions. If they get through it faster, suggest a convenient food break and have them run off and get the food while you prepare the next encounter or two.
ADVICE #2: As Ryric said, read only the current AP book. Work 3 encounters in advance. Focus on NPC interactions.
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My advice is to "get into the heads" of the enemies. Why are they enemies? What do they want? What resolution would make them happy?
Let's take the "All the World's Meats" encounter from Curse of the Crimson Throne, because that's a particularly difficult one to roleplay well as the GM.
First, you have the four thugs. They've learned that it's pretty easy to beat up people, drag them back to the slaughterhouse, cut them up, and give them to the hungry. How are they going to behave? Like typical bullies; they think they're tougher than anyone who might wander in, so you're either a customer or a victim. You play them as dumb and mean with a streak of sadism, and ready to attack at the drop of a hat if the PCs act suspiciously. I think one of them is supposed to be having second thoughts, so he hangs back from the initial attack.
So if the characters try to question them from the outset, they won't give any information. They might invite the PCs into the back for 'a talk' with the intent of attacking them with surprise. (Any half-sentient PC should not be surprised by the attack).
Tactically, they're going to be stupid. They'll attack the nearest opponent, even if he/she isn't the most dangerous. They might move to engage even when ranged weapons are called for. Check the "tactics" section on them in the AP Guide to be sure.
But once they start taking serious damage and realize they're outclassed, they should run. They have no loyalty to their leader, and just want to save their own skins. If they get captured, they'll spill exactly as much information as they need to to get away.
Their boss, on the other hand, thinks he's doing a noble thing. People who randomly come in and start cutting up his men are Evil. So he'll carefully use his bow to shoot to kill and then slip away if he can. He believes he's in the right, so if the PCs want to negotiate he'll welcome the opportunity to tell them why they're wrong, but he's NOT stupid; he'll negotiate from the top of the stairs with them at the bottom with his bow pointed at them. The AP even specifies that if he finds out what his men have been doing, he surrenders immediately. He's going to be a smart fighter and shoot the mages first, drink potions as needed, and escape if humanly possible.
I have a hex map where I draw out the area that the PCs can see; anything they can't see is just a blank area, and I fill it in as they can see it. They're very patient with me. "Damn it, Jim, I'm a mathematician, not an artist!" I have them move their minis for a round, draw the new areas they can see, and have the NPCs react appropriately. And that's the thing. "The NPCs react appropriately."
In 2 years, I've gone from being "the crappiest GM I know" to "Gosh, your stuff is Epic! I wish other GMs would run scenarios the way you do!" with three simple rules:
(1) The world exists regardless of the PCs' existence.
(2) I spend a HUGE amount of time 'getting into my NPCs' heads' so I have them react according to what I think they'd do, rather than 'what the GM wants them to do'.
(3) Once the PCs are in a dangerous situation, I pull out the map, put them on it, and start drawing. It takes MINUTES, but no player has ever said, "Can you stop being so careful about where we are, what we can see, and what we can do, so we can get on with the game?"
As a final note, I find it hilarious that my artwork is so epically terrible. One of the PCs is a really good artist, so if I know we're going to have a massive encounter, I literally hand her the pens, the mat, and the map, and say, "OK, I'm not going to tell you what's going on, but please draw this out for me."
When the players see one of her maps come out, they know something epic is about to happen...
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Exactly what you do to make sure you're prepared for encounters depends a lot on your group's style. One of the groups I game with almost never uses a battlemat/minis, another group games online and we do make maps on maptools.
Make sure you read the encounter and the suggested tactics for each monster/NPC. Sometime near to game time, I recommend looking up all the feats, spells, and special abilities for each encounter and reading them. That sounds like a lot, but it won't be much for low level encounters and you'll soon start to know what a lot of common spells and feats do. By the time you get to the higher level stuff which is more complicated it won't be as bad since you'll know the basics. It can be very disappointing for a major battle to be over too quickly because you forgot about a spell or immunity on the bad guy. That having been said, everybody makes mistakes and sometimes the PCs get lucky so don't worry about it when you do. I've been GMing for 30 years and sometimes my players are standing over a defeated BBEG and I suddenly notice he had fast healing or something.
If you use minis, and there is either a very complicated encounter to draw or a location that will be used over and over, you might think about getting some gaming paper(a roll of paper gridded in 1" squares, not too expensive) and making a permenent map of the area. That can save drawing time during play.
Always remember the point is to have fun - both for you and for the players. The game is supposed to be fun to run and to play, so don't prepare so much that it starts to feel like work. If everyone's having fun then you are doing it right, even if you get some of the rules wrong, or you don't follow the encounter exactly as written.
Once you get to know your players' styles, you'll be able to predict some of their actions a bit and anticipate what they might do and that can help with encounter planning. They will still suprise you, though.
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What I would do and what I do myself is. Read the whole AP all 6 books first. Make any notes where themes or parts from earlier AP's show up later. Like Arlen Foxglove from the first Rise of the Runelords players a major role in the second book. Make notes of things like that and how they are connected. Then I go back and reread each AP just before I plan to run it and check my notes as I do. Making new notes on ways I think might improve it and play up or hint at the future aspects that are linked. Or notes of things that you think will appeal to your players and or there characters. If you have a player that like romantic involvements maybe play up the scene with Shayliss Vinder in RotRL part one and maybe make her into something more. Or give the same said PC a chance to get romanticaly involved with Ameiko or Shalelu etc. Since you know your players and their character best, so you can more personalize and tailor it to them.
Also by the time you have read them all then each one a second time just before you run them. You should have a much better feel for the flow of the over all adventure path and the adventure you are about to run. So you should be better in a position to improvise if the players do something unexpected. Either way best of luck and hope you enjoy running your first AP.
Just curious what AP do you plan to run?
It can be very disappointing for a major battle to be over too quickly because you forgot about a spell or immunity on the bad guy. That having been said, everybody makes mistakes and sometimes the PCs get lucky so don't worry about it when you do. I've been GMing for 30 years and sometimes my players are standing over a defeated BBEG and I suddenly notice he had fast healing or something.
LOL. Yeah. This happens embarrassingly often. Just shrug it off, and assume your BBEG was having a "Low IQ" day. There are other times where the party, through sheer, dumb, unadulterated luck manages to obliterate a supposedly-dangerous dungeon (the Hospice, anyone?).
Keep in mind that you're not the PC's 'opponent', you're their 'guide and storyteller'.
And you're not going to be perfect. Let it go when you aren't.
If you use minis, and there is either a very complicated encounter to draw or a location that will be used over and over, you might think about getting some gaming paper(a roll of paper gridded in 1" squares, not too expensive) and making a permenent map of the area. That can save drawing time during play.
For Scarwall I had my friend print out several 20"x30" square sheets so the characters could map it out. They loved it. Especially getting to put disparaging names on the rooms of opponents they didn't particularly care for.
Always remember the point is to have fun - both for you and for the players. The game is supposed to be fun to run and to play, so don't prepare so much that it starts to feel like work. If everyone's having fun then you are doing it right, even if you get some of the rules wrong, or you don't follow the encounter exactly as written.
This is the first time I'm sharing a thread with ryric, but I'm really beginning to like him(?) very much. Great advice.
Once you get to know your players' styles, you'll be able to predict some of their actions a bit and anticipate what they might do and that can help with encounter planning. They will still suprise you, though.
I've been with my wife for 25 years and she's the leader of the party I've been running for 8 months.
She still surprises me with her actions and decisions.
Every game.
Try your best and everyone should be happy!