Hello everyone! I just had a quick question, hopefully it won't take up too much of your time.
I'm rather new to DMing, and only recently decided to start my own campaign. After a few successful sessions, I realized that I'd be much better off learning from using a module.
However upon downloading a free module from the site, I was a bit confused about how to use it. Am I supposed to read the entire module and paraphrase everything? How much is player knowledge? How should I move the story forward?
I feel like all of this should be explained in the module, but I honestly didn't see much. Perhaps you all can shed some light on the situation, hopefully revealing my own inadequacy to be the cause. I welcome any tips or suggestions you might have!
The Game Mastery Guide will show you how to run a game, but I would expect a module to contain the story flow.
Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
You might get better advice if you say what module you downloaded - then people who are familiar with the specific module will be able to help out.
Since you mention that it's a free module, I can't help but wonder if it's incomplete (e.g. a portion of a larger for-sale module to get buyers interested) or otherwise not optimal for new players/DMs. Folks here may also be able to suggest better alternatives, although most of the good stuff will probably cost at least some money.
Hi, Sparklepaws. If you're learning from a module, hopefully it's a good module. There are a few things that it can teach you, but not too many. You can get some good ideas for plot devices, for instance, but you could just as easily get those from books.
You should read through the entire module beforehand, and figure out the plot structure (what is the party supposed to encounter? what is the next step? why is this NPC behaving this way?). Keep in mind that a module is a bare bones story structure. Your players are unlikely to cleave exactly to the expected plot or behave just as the writer wants.
Modules tend to have a "railroading" problem, in which you (the DM) are supposed to force certain things and decisions on the party, even if the intended outcome isn't in the party's best interests (or doesn't seem to be the smartest thing to do). Your players may not respond well to this.
Don't be afraid to change things about the module! Add depth, add encounters, subtract characters or subplots if the party isn't interested.
You're absolutely right Cintra, my apologies. The module I downloaded was "Hollow's Last Hope", listed here: http://paizo.com/products/btpy82r0?GameMastery-Module-D0-Hollows-Last-Hope
It's possible that the module is incomplete, but I'm not sure. I'm really new to module-play in general; I'm much more familiar with making my own stories.
@Bleeyargh: Some wonderful advice there! Most insightful, thank you so much. Perhaps I expected too much from the module in thinking that it would take my hand and guide me, a mistake I'm happy to admit to. With this new information I can probably work it all out.
1) Read the entire module all the way through. You need to know what's coming.
2) The PCs generally should not know anything about the particulars of the story beyond what they have discovered in play. There are occasional exceptions to this -- I'm running a Runelords campaign at the moment, and one of the published NPCs actually became a PC, bringing with him a wealth of backstory and setting detail that the player wouldn't ordinarily know. However, as a general rule, plot details should be discovered in play as much as possible.
3) Right before a session, review the stat blocks for the upcoming bits. Pay particular attention to the "Tactics" block, as that gives you the author's suggestions for how to run the antagonists in combat. You will almost certainly have to vary from these depending on the PCs do, but they provide a good starting point.
4) Usually the adventure should include some mechanism for introducing the basic problem that the PCs have to solve. Set the scene using that, and let their actions dictate how the plot unfolds. You can give hints, if necessary -- perhaps they miss something important, and you need to plant some additional evidence, or send a prophetic dream, or something.
5) Don't be afraid to customize the adventure. A module gives you a fully-fleshed out story, it's true, but you as the GM know your party and players, which the author didn't. For example, if you're running a haunted house where the author specifies that the PCs have horrific dreams when they sleep there, you can come up with horrific dreams custom tailored to each PC based on their previous experiences. In some circumstances you might want to increase the difficulty of an encounter by adding extra minions, or make it easier by deciding the villain is tired and likely to flub something, and so on. Any way you stack it -- your job is to ensure that all the players are having fun (including yourself). Anything you can do to make that canned adventure more personal to the PCs engaged in it will help.
If you're new to PFRPG, be aware that older modules like that one still use the D&D 3.5 rules, so you'd have to convert. If you want to play 3.5, you can use that without any problem. I would recommend using We Be Goblins or Dawn of the Scarlet Son, both available for free from paizo, which contain pregenerated characters and are relatively short adventures. WBG is the easier one to GM.
I doubt you'd have to "convert" too much, since numbers still basically work the same. The encounters might flow slightly different than a real PF module, and some Feats might play a little different, but in my experience it's pretty easy to pull from any D20 game's stat block and use the bonuses in any other. I've even used Pathfinder NPCs in Mutants and Masterminds with only minor conversion.
Back to the question. Modules always used to confuse me when I first started gaming; still do sometimes. One important thing to remember is that is information in it for players and for DMs. Anything specifically intended to be read to the players is generally highlighted in some way, be it italics or background color.
As far as layout, modules vary from straight forward "railroad" plots to "sandbox" type plots where the players can go where ever they want. As a DM, the latter will be harder as it will require you to stay on your feet and come up with more on the fly. Too much railroad will be resented by your players, though.
Sparklepaws wrote:
@Bleeyargh: Some wonderful advice there! Most insightful, thank you so much. Perhaps I expected too much from the module in thinking that it would take my hand and guide me, a mistake I'm happy to admit to. With this new information I can probably work it all out. There is a product designed to do exactly this. Its called the Begginer Box. This is specifically designed for players and dms who are not familiar with the game and walks them through every step of getting ready for and then playing the game.
All other products (including unfortunately the core rulebook) assume some level of competance and understanding of how rpgs, and d20 (pathfinder's predecessor) in particular work. Its not easy to just dive right in with the core rules and a module (though that was a good choice on your part) and get started with no foundation. This is why the begginer box exists in the first place. To help you lay that foundation.
The two things I strongly recommend are get and use the begginer box to get you started. And once you have a feel for the game, get the gamemastery guide, and read through all the advice there. It has alot of great information in it on how to run a game and alot of the common pitfalls, issues and challenges you are likely to face.
1. Reading from text boxes is more comfortable for some GMs. Others will read the text and then provide the gist of it in their own words. When you're starting out, it's probably better to read the "boxed text" parts out, just to be sure you don't forget to mention a vital clue that is brought up in the boxed text.
2. Be stingy with information that would not immediately be obvious. It's their job to declare that they're searching (using Perception) or to ask if their particular skills (Apppraise, Knowledge, Survival, even Profession) can tell them more than what is immediately apparent.
3. Be cagey about specifying the creatures they encounter by name. A description, and the use of vague terms like "the beast" or "the gigantic figure" help immersion a lot more than saying "the manticore" or "the ogrekin barbarian". There are exceptions - all PCs know what rats and horses look like, a paladin or necromancer is likely to be able to distinguish zombies from ghouls, and it doesn't make sense for dwarves to get a +1 bonus to hit orcs if they don't know them when they see them - but in most cases you should feel free to be vague. Review the Knowledge skill descriptions to see what sort of monsters can be identified on sight. (Stick to Rule 2 when it comes to revealing more than names, though; your player will feel rewarded for investing in Knowledge (dungoneering) when you only reveal an aberration's secret weakness after that PC succeeds at a roll.)
4. Module writers have to assume certain things about player characters - for instance, that they are motivated by a love of money and a hunger for power (either to put to good use, or for their own sake.) Since those motivations are nearly universal among PCs, it's easy to center a module around them, but you should always seize an opportunity to give one or more PCs a more personal reason to pursue the adventure. Perhaps a prisoner held prison in the dungeon owes one of the PCs money, or is a less-successful student of the same mentor. Perhaps the village being victimized in the module is home to some distant relatives. Perhaps the PC and the villain have a previous history. When you add these in, it not only increases the PCs' interest in completing the module, it creates the potential for the small conflicts of interest that can encourage players to speak 'in character' to each other.
5. If you suspect, or know, that one of your players has A) read the module and B) is letting that knowledge guide his character's actions, your best bet is to introduce changes. Something relatively minor, such as a band of gnolls that are "just visiting" the dungeon and weren't there originally, will shake up your metagaming player a little; more drastic changes, such as having a key item hidden elsewhere than it was in the text, can follow on this. Just be sure to note the changes you've made and keep them consistent.
There's tons more. There are a few good guides out there to the broad points of GMing: you may want to try to track down Robin's Laws of Gamemastery or Gamemastering Secrets, or a copy of 3.5's Dungeon Master's Guide II: they're worth a good read.
Kolokotroni wrote: There is a product designed to do exactly this. Its called the Begginer Box. +1 to this. A lot of us old school gamers started off with the "Red Box" D&D in the 80s, which provided a much needed "beginner's guide" to RPG, with a slow introduction of rules and character advancement. Though I'm unfamiliar with the Beginners Box (except on these forums), it seems to serve much the same purpose, with the added benefit that it was specifically designed as an intro to the Pathfinder rules set. If I were a beginning role player, I'd grab one in a minute.
Sparklepaws:
Be sure to check back in with us & let us know if our advice was helpful. Other new GMs will want to know. ;)
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