| Brian Turner 355 |
I have finally decided to make my own world using pathfinder rules and i have a question. How do you determine how long an encounter will take before your first game with a group of adventurers. I know what my first adventure will be. but im not sure how many encounters are needed to make it last a session or two. I know i want this encounter to last untill they are third level. so i know it will last probably one or two sessions. and i i plan for each session to be about 4-5 hours depending on what the group can do. So is it all a guessing game or do i just have to do the math of how much each encounter will reward them in xp but then what should i plan for a standard four party adventure or a six party adventure. Thanks for all your help. I welcome all tips in gming and world building thanks again. (Sorry if this is in the wrong forum. the pathfinder society is the only forum i know of .)
| MagiMaster |
I'm not sure it's even remotely possible to gauge such a thing before the first game. Even several adventures in with my current group (all of whom I've know for a while and have gamed with before) are nearly impossible to predict. Some adventures I had set up to last a whole session only lasted half (thanks partly to one player having just the right item that time) and other times what should have been one session took two.
Vanessa Hoskins
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This should be moved to the generic Pathfinder GM forum, but I'll try and answer your question as best I know how:
Rule 1: No plan will survive contact with the enemy.
This goes for the GM and the players. There are fights that you think are hard and complicated that the players will walk all over, and there are fights that you think are simple, but take 30 rounds of combat.
Rule 2: Design locally; plan generally.
Design encounters, traps, and possibly maps that are likely to come up given the circumstances you have provided for your players. At the same time, have a general overall plan of what is happening in the local area the players inhabit.
Create a list of 5 to 10 NPCs with the following: name, basic race, class and level (not a full build), profession, family/personal situation, current goal, secret desire. You can use resources like the NPC Codex to fill in the mechanics if you need them.
By doing this, you create a good feel for how this world exists and what's going on in the player's community. Let the players make their own trouble. This will help you time manage because you won't be forced to invent things on the fly.
Rule 3: Have a system for stopping mid-combat.
Sometimes you'll have an hour left and think you can get the players through the next encounter and then have a situation where your simple goblin ambush turns into one of those 30 round combats. In these cases, have a good system for recording what's going on and a good stopping spot. My method is to write the initiative down on the battle mat and take a picture with my cell phone. The next time we start up, I have the map, the character positions, and init order.
TL;DR
It is very hard to tell, most combats last between 30 and 90 minutes. You have to be prepared for tangents and fluctuating combat times.
| Raiderrpg |
An addition to Andrew Hoskin's answer, which is very well done, but lacks an important note-
"Rule 1: No plan will survive contact with the enemy."
A corollary to this- "Rule 1a: Most plans won't survive contact with allies, either."
At least one of a new group's first five-six 'combat/trap/puzzle/social' encounters will take up half a session or more, if you run for 4-5 hours.
This is because the group doesn't yet know how to act with each other, and complications abound as they learn how their abilities and plans interact.
The best thing to do here is to NOT streamline that encounter, but instead watch for and kill arguments. Once the party clues in to how they all work, things tend to be much smoother in future encounters, but they need a chance to discuss and debate to do that.
Vanessa Hoskins
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To steer this back to PFS for a moment, one thing I do at PFS tables is have everyone introduce their character including what they are well known for, what other Pathfinders might say about them at the PF Lodge bar. This gives them a chance to describe both RP and combat information about their character. I find it helps with table synergy when everyone starts out as strangers.
You could do something similar to your home game. Raiderrpg is correct, though. It will take some time as the players figure out how to make their characters work best together.