Might be in the wrong forum here, sorry folks if that's the case.
So I'm going to be the GM for a brand new group. (When I say new I mean none of us have ever played any kind of tabletop RPG before) I chose Pathfinder under the advice of my local game-shop guru and have been scouring the interwebs and core rulebook to familiarize myself with the rules and setting. Figure we'll be playing it very fast and loose to start, getting into the more finicky stuff as we go along so as to avoid the huge infodump our first session would otherwise become.
I'll be starting with the Crypt of the Everflame module but (in no small part due to being the brokest of broke-ass) afterwards will be moving on to a homebrew "main campaign."
Know that while new to d20 and tabletop rp I am certainly no stranger to RP in general. I've taken part in many intense and indepth messageboard roleplays (the multi-paragraphic, ridiculously flowery post kind. Not the /stabyouintheface kind.)so am somewhat practiced in... er... playing roles. Yeah. Basically saying I'm mostly confidant in my ability to GM and build a unique and engaging storyline for my players to follow.
Oh man what a ramble. What was the point of this post? I suppose just to introduce myself and open myself up to criticism and advice.
Sooooo... anyone wanna be the willing mentor to a slowly-less-ignorant, highly ambitious and agog-with-the-possibilities new GM?
Oh man. I don't know. Tl;Dr: Hi I'm new lets be pals.
Well I don't think you are going to have any difficult with the fun, your post made me laugh.
Crypt of the Everflame is a good place to start, but in case you haven't found this just yet Paizo does have some free offerings that you might want to have a look at. For the last several years they have produced a free adventure for Free RPG Day that you can download. Also this year (or was it last year) they added some introductory adventures (again free) to the Pathfinder Society you can get those to check them out. Also just a couple of days ago there was a Blog (Check out Pazio Blog) about GMing 101 and teaching Kids to play two excellent and free PDFs very much worth checking out.
Free PFS material includes adventures and those resources for GMs
Oh neat, this forum moves faster than one post a day!
Thanks for the advice Mister Zenith. I'm not too keen on the questionaire as all my players are unfamiliar with the gamestyle (read: I've asked them some questions and they've responded with "just go with it man, s'gonna be wicked.") I figure I'll just remain flexible and be attentive to when they might seem bored and try to mold the gameplay as we go along.
Not to say my players are uninquisitive of course. (that's not even a word) I've been asked quite a few questions about class and race selection and have lent out my core rulebook to each of them in turn (the broke-assedness extends to the entire playgroup) and I've been lucky in that each players' general interest seems to coincide with a traditional party build.
"I like healing." said the WoW fan
"You mean Fighters can DUAL WIELD!?" said the MMA fan
insert funny quips for the other two.
As for the more specific questions: In a homebrewed game, how far ahead do you try to plan? I know I've got the basics of the entire main plot outlined but things like individual encounters and geography and all that other persnickety stuff is what I'm talking about. I was thinking of just trying to keep a good two or three sessions ahead of the game, or would it better to have a heckuvalot of cushion to fall back on, being a new GM? I'd like to think I'd be ok with improvising some things but being not overly familiar with yaddayaddayadda I'd hate to have to end a session early so I can have time to roll up the NPCs in that tiny hamlet I totally wasn't expecting anyone to be interested in visiting but hey turns out ~monkeywrench~
Another specific: On a scale from one to squick, how creepy is a male GM roleplaying a flirtatious barmaid? Not saying it'll stop me, just like to know what level of disgusted sneers I should expect.
Many thanks, Pravus! I'll be reading through that GM 101 pamphlet tonight.
Just take your time and keep it nice and simple. Just make sure you guys keep laughing and having fun at what you're doing. Just because you're running a module, though, don't be afraid to improvise. If one of your party wants to mess with the NPCs giving the quest or the tavern in town just roll with it and enjoy it. Who knows, you might end up setting the module aside and doing what your players decide to do. (that of course doesn't mean you cant nudge them toward that big thing you just read through).
Funny story, I tried to get my PCs to do Crypt of Everflame for a good 4 sessions and they kept doing other stuff. Eventually they went to it and I had to write entirely different thing with a new premise but it worked out great anyway!
Another thing to keep in mind is: The rules don't have to be right. This is one thing that hung me up when I started DM'ing.
If nobody knows exactly how the rules work in a situation, don't bother looking it up on the spot. Just dictate something and move on - it keeps the game flowing, and doesn't break the players' experience.
Afterwards, you can look up what the rules should have been, and then before the next session, let your players know what the rules are.
On acting the barmaid... Your reactions will be dictated by your group and not the larger culture. I'll tell you as somebody who has been a most of the time GM and a some-time player that jumping the gender gap is something the GM is EXPECTED to do and therefore is much more relaxed, comfortable and accepted... only when players have decided to cross gender lines has I ever noticed eyebrows rise and even then less often than so.
It's good to have at least one BIG over-arching story (though your world can have more than one such motivation so your players have conflicts and options) and just try to go with the flow and keep your world populated with lesser points of interest, villains, opportunities, etc. That way if your party are very goal driven you can focus on that, but there are plenty of opportunities to stop and smell the flowers if that's what they like to do, or if you're concerned about the story moving into areas you're not prepared they are used to a living world with lots of different things going on so it won't seem jarring when they are thrust into a more pressing/immediate side-quest or dynamic which will buy you the time to plan the larger more over-arching story at your own pace.
You are generating the right vibe as far as attitude and perception of what needs be done. I have every faith you'll do very well. You have tremendous resources on these forums as well -- keep your questions coming and people will fight to respond. :D
when making your own campaign from scratch, dont worry about filling in a whole continent or anything like that. start with a single city or even a small kingdom adding to it as you go. theres no point in making more than the players will ever see.
what i did when i started playing, which wasnt that long ago, was stick with the basics for combat at first. then every session i would add a new mechanic so both myself and the players could learn a piece at a time. an example was when i wanted to have people practice the grappling rules i started a bar fight.
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A few tips I picked up over time:
1. Your first few games will be slow. You'll work out combat as a group but expect to take a while getting used to it (and for your players to get used to their characters).
2. For prep I would usually try to plan out about 3 night's worth of material, be it encounters, puzzles or roleplay. That way I had a decent buffer and if I got busy and couldn't do anything for a while I wouldn't run out.
3. That said, getting too far ahead can be bad too. Something I've noticed as a GM and as a player is that it is easy to get into a railroad situation if you're not careful. You canr ailroad the adventure a little bit of course, but you'll want to try to avoid saying "no, you can't do that" as much as possible. Unless you're building a world exploration type game, I found it useful to design my dungeons and encounters more loosely than a fixed map. I'd have several encounters or events queued up, and they would find them as they explored an area/traveled between towns/etc.
Alriiiiiiiiight another one of those shmancy sans fancy specific questions for ya: How do you handle people not showing up? One of my players has a dang silly schedule. I don't much relish the idea of running multiple separate campaigns just for when certain people can't make it. Any clever alternatives?
Kinda roll with the punches. Everybody in our group is brand new to Pathfinder as well, bar the GM who's played one game, and all but one of the players is new to Tabletop RPGs in general (the holdout plays WH40K regularly).
I second Raisse's assertion, the first few combats will take FOREVER. Get through it, make sure everybody understands what BaB is and what their spell DCs are and all that nice stuff and it'll pick up fast.
Our first encounter was with a bunch of crabs and it took 3 hours. =/
To be fair though, teh GM misread their HP scores and bumped it up by accident, none of us knew what all our stuff was off the top of our head, and we flubbed rolls like nobody's business (because Serpent's Skull is so wunderbar, everybody starts off sickened. Yay.)
Alriiiiiiiiight another one of those shmancy sans fancy specific questions for ya: How do you handle people not showing up? One of my players has a dang silly schedule. I don't much relish the idea of running multiple separate campaigns just for when certain people can't make it. Any clever alternatives?
Well, depends. We usually just go on without the player and have someone play for the missing guys. Works better for martials and spontaneous casters than for prepared casters though, for sure. Our GM has at this point basically declared all casters are spontaneous to an extent because the Druid often has to leave early or is coming in and out of the game. You could forego that step and play as normal minus that character if you like, just make sure somebody's writing down the basic beats of the session.
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BTW on the concerns of combat the best way to approach it mechanically is through averages. When determining the hit chance and ac of the monsters can be easily calculated off party. Add all the to hit of the party to gather and divide by the number of members in the party. The number u get is the average to hit of the party and should be the number u go off for determining the monster's ac. Increase or decrease this number how u see fit to give u a ball park estimate of how difficult u want the fight. Same goes for determining the to hit chance of ur monster's by getting the average of ac of the party. If u deal with the averages as such u can control the length and flow of the battle a lot easier. Also a few words of wisdom. Play the monster according to its intelligence.
Dotting for when I have more time.
P.S.: Hi again Luna_Silvertear!
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How do you handle people not showing up? One of my players has a dang silly schedule.
Birthmark of Planar Tuning
One of the things I've often toyed with is the idea of a birthmark, tattoo, or item that "phases" player characters out of the game when they miss a session. Instead of participating, they appear as ghostly entities, trapped in a flux-state, somewhere between the ethereal and prime.
So, if one or more players can't make it, but you want to run the session, you can move forward. When the player returns, you explain to them that everything is "fuzzy" in flux and they'll have to ask the other players what happened.
How do you handle people not showing up? One of my players has a dang silly schedule.Birthmark of Planar Tuning
One of the things I've often toyed with is the idea of a birthmark, tattoo, or item that "phases" player characters out of the game when they miss a session. Instead of participating, they appear as ghostly entities, trapped in a flux-state, somewhere between the ethereal and prime.
So, if one or more players can't make it, but you want to run the session, you can move forward. When the player returns, you explain to them that everything is "fuzzy" in flux and they'll have to ask the other players what happened.
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As for general advice:
1) Have fun, but be logical.
Most intelligent creatures will only fight when they perceive an advantage and even then, will flee if things turn against them. While a lot of "stat blocks" state that NPCs will fight to the death, doing so rarely makes sense. Don't be afraid to have NPCs (especially fun villains) flee the scene and return to fight another day. This is especially fun at low levels, when a villain escapes and disappears from the basic world, only to reappear 5-8 levels later to harass the PCs.
Have unintelligent creatures go for the throat. Nothing is scarier than a savage troll that focuses on a single target (something soft will do), even while the party fighter taunts and attacks. A sense of danger and excitement, even if a player dies, keeps things moving! That said, be careful, too. If you kill your players frequently or if your world feels too deadly, the level of fun will decrease. Balance is the key.
2) Build Backgrounds, Motivations, and Character Goals!
The more of a character's back story you can tie into your narrative, the better. Heroes like to feel like heroes!
Here's a link for one of my online PCs (relatively new) for an upcoming Shadowlands Campaign we're going to be running here. Notice how much detail goes into the back story? Well, while that's not for everyone, the principle is a good one. Have your characters list 1-3 goals (things you might even award XP for) and have them pursue those! When you tie them in, your players will feel like rock stars! When they accomplish them, even more so!
3) Don't forget the cinema!
If you can keep things cinematic and exciting, using descriptions that display action, you'll find your characters immersing themselves a lot quicker. This is especially important with new players and (at least in my experience), MMORPG players (who are also new to tabletop). Have your NPCs and monsters Slash! Slam! & Rip! your player characters! It's far more exciting than "he hits you for 12 hit points."
And if you can, make those skill checks exciting. Remember the scene in Return of the Jedi where Han Solo is trying to disable the blast door while Princess Leia fires at the encroaching Storm Troopers? Of course you do. That was exciting. Tom Cruise's character dropping between sensors, timed, between a handful of lasers in Mission Impossible? Yup, also cool. When you think about setting up encounters and challenges, think about movie trailers. The more you can keep things 'edge o' ya' seat,' the better.
Pro-Tip: If you have surround sound and some favorite movie music, don't be afraid to use it! Find a few of those tracks that get your heart racing and cue them up as soon as the action begins!
4) Let them be heroes! (Your money is no good here)
Not every reward needs to be delivered in the form of cold, hard coin (although it certainly should be on most occasions). Giving your players a little fame and fortune, not to mention free lodging and all they can drink, is one of the many ways you can build rapport between them and a given region. If they establish a relationship with a town, a tavern, a prince, or even a nation, they are more likely to respond when that person or place comes under attack. Don't believe me? Just ask the Dr. why he spends so much time in London. He'll tell you.
5) And most of all, have fun.
If you're not having fun, you're players won't. Know when to say no. If you're under the weather, if you need a break, or if you're just not up to snuff for a game - take a break. Don't be afraid to stop, end early, or even let a session run long; provided, of course, that everyone is having fun. When players aren't, when the stress gets too much, take a break, order some food, grab a soda, whatever. But keep fun in the mix at all times. If it feels like work, you're probably doing it wrong!
From your posts, of course, I don't think you're going to have much trouble with this, so this is really just a general point. An important one, but general nonetheless.
Hope these help!
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You mean this?How do you handle people not showing up? One of my players has a dang silly schedule.Birthmark of Planar Tuning
One of the things I've often toyed with is the idea of a birthmark, tattoo, or item that "phases" player characters out of the game when they miss a session. Instead of participating, they appear as ghostly entities, trapped in a flux-state, somewhere between the ethereal and prime.
So, if one or more players can't make it, but you want to run the session, you can move forward. When the player returns, you explain to them that everything is "fuzzy" in flux and they'll have to ask the other players what happened.
That works, too!
Dotting for when I have more time.
P.S.: Hi again Luna_Silvertear!
O.O Are you stalkin' me?! <.< >.>
O.O Are you stalkin' me?! <.< >.>Dotting for when I have more time.
P.S.: Hi again Luna_Silvertear!
Nope, we just seem to collide. Same can be said for Rynjin and me. as well as Gauss and me. add BBT to the list of people I can't evade...
@BokaliMali: For dealing with missing players:
I typically make it to where the Character is doing another task fitting for them. Say a Wizard crafting Scrolls or Wands. A Fighter working as a bodyguard/soldier(sort of a National Guard style) or crafting Arrows and weapons for his party. or simply making Money for the Party.
Hi and welcome. What ideas do you have for the game? As to homebrewing...
I've been doing this for years. My advice: get a stack of other people's adventures.
Let me explain: when I first plan out my game I make an extremely rough outline (like a bunch of ideas I'd love to see play out) and then flesh out the first couple (up to 3) as the first level's worth of adventures. Y'know the old saying "no plan withstands first contact with the players?" No? Well get to know it because it's my reality.
Since this is law in MY world anyway, then inevitably this is where I get completely stymied. So every few games I like to grab an old Dungeon, or an old module or whatever, and adapt someone ELSE'S work as my own. Its shameless plagarism but there you have it.
My current game: I HAD planned that adventure 1, 2 and 3 would have the party exploring the hinterlands around the homebrewed town of Tashtanshire, a dwarven/human quarry town where the quarry was great news for the local korred but all the other fey were devastated. Of course, after adventure 1 the party wanted to leave. I even gave them a story award of free room and board in their own attic apartment; they were having none of it.
So adventure 2-4 became an epic journey with side treks as they made their way back to their home town. Now that they've returned I find myself RAPIDLY running dry for ideas. As a result I've stolen the Red Riding Hood tale for one adventure, made a second all my own, and am full-force using Carnival of Tears for the third adventure at this level.
If you need any help, ideas for games or whatever, I'm willing to riff over the forums and again - welcome!
May I suggest running over to this thread for eventual ideas on building a campaign. Rynjin, BBT, Azaleas Fayth...I expect you guys to be there.
I assume Icyshadow will pop in too...
@OP: if you want to get an outside opinion on an adventure feel Free to PM me.
I have over 63 campaigns in the past 3 years (as of Dec. 1). And those are just the ones where I GM'd or Co-GM'd.
Yeah, I am an insomniac of the highest level...
Also hint to them they might want Bludgeoning weapons. Even if it is a Quickly crafted Club from the woods surrounding the crypt.
But Yeah... CLW potions and maybe even a wand would be handy...
Oil of Magic Weapon... is a bit more so-so. It is nice to have But isn't necessary. If you use the Class Kits from UE. The party should be able to afford at least a few potions and oils.
Heck, if you want allow them to get them using starting Gold at the crafting price. Especially if they could reasonably craft the consumable at first level. Like say an Alchemist or Witch in the party.
you mentioned being broke, and while you've certianly seen the site if you have clicked links like te one to Scar of Destiny, but...
it's got most everything, and is a pretty good resource, and free too!
Doing well so far. Bit of a rocky start first session: I need to work on my portrayal of towns and villages. Of course, once we reached the crypt my party immediately decided to split up and were all almost killed by a beetle and a golem seperately. I had to have them do a wisdom check to 'realize' that retreat would be a good idea.
Etta, our Half-Elf cleric, learned the value of checking things before opening them very quickly. I had replaced the maze area with a room with a trapped chest and an Indiana Jones style falling ceiling. First the chest blinded her and Prahk, her Half-Orc monk companion, then when she blindly removed it's content they heard an ominous rumble... Realized that replacing the chest's contents would open the door two rounds before the roof would have crushed them. Since then she's been checking for traps everywhere. "I check for traps in the hallway. OK now are there any traps in this part of the hallway? Is that tree trapped? Wait don't touch that cat, it might be trapped!"
The first session ended rather early (before finding Roldare) and for the second, our Monk was out of town so I decided to stat up Roldare as a DMPC to help our intrepid adventurers. It was all going very well. Then they decided to find out why the room full of azure mold was so dangerous by bodily throwing him into it. After a couple people changed their alignments on their character sheets, Roldare went all acrobatic,got out unscathed and is currently running back to Kassen to tattle on our heroes.
Another change I made was in the room with the Wheel of Woe. I replaced the skeletons with a severed head and some crawling hands, hiding under the water. The goal was for the PCs to enter the water and be tripped and drowned by ghoulish hands while a belching head flew above them raining acid down. Instead, Ix Riggidy, the Gnome Sorceress, remembered she had brought her fishing pole and net. After some great perception and profession: fisherman rolls, the CR4 encounter I'd planned became more like CR2.
I find the parts of the dungeon I've altered to be much more fun to play for me so am looking forward to finishing the module and moving on to fully homebrewed adventures.
Dotting. Might have some words O' wisdom for you later but I must do some work stuff. Stupid work, spoiling things. Good advice so far!
Its alright Shogun, who else is gonna crush that little puke Bruce Leeroy. Sho,Nuff.