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Ok first feel free to move this topic if there is a better place for it.
On to the help. I am looking to have a get together in October with some friends and family, some of which have RPG experience, but not pathfinder, some have pathfinder, and some have none.They have all agreed to give a pathfinder one shot a go.
What I want to do is create a small story/dungeon run. It should have some role play, some dungeon exploring and a final set piece encounter. However I would also like to get the game playable within 4-5 hours; 6 tops bearing I have to explain some things to the new players.
Here is where help from the boards come in. I have experience running modules but never anything I have written myself so I have no idea how to do that and if at all possible I would love to keep it Spooky/Halloween theme, being the month and all.
There will be between 5 to 8 players and I will be making some pre-mades to fit the theme of the story and make gaming a bit easier
Now what I need from the board is some questions and some ideas.
First, what level of gameplay would be best and which classes would you recommend for the pregens to really show the game off.
Where should I set it? I was figuring some town with some crypts under it? perhaps have some cult, litch, or vampire lord lording over the town?
I would also love any ways to show of certain classes out of combat skills so any ideas on how to do this with recommended pregens would be great.
Basicly I would love the community to help come together and lets build a fun showoff spooky adventure!
Designing the story is going to be the most difficult part especially if you are the one making the characters. Getting any significant or immersing role-play will be a challenge. The high number of players will compound this problem further.
What kind of setting were you looking to use? Pathfinder has it's own setting on Golarion with a whole slew of modules that are basically one-shots in and of themselves. Baring that you could craft your own using the Golarion or some other world setting.
For character level I would recommend something in the 7-8 level range. Full BAB classes will get their second attack (and 3/4 BAB classes if you go 8th level) and full casters will have access to fourth level spells. Something around this level gives you a chance to experiment and show off, but keep the group from feeling overwhelmed.
Pathfinder actually has lineup of characters known as Iconics. They are the ones that you see in the artwork for the books that Paizo publishes. Paizo has released builds of these characters at levels 1, 7 and 11 and I would recommend using them or at the very least looking to them for inspiration.
The classes that I would recommend (in order):
-Fighter
-Cleric
-Sorcerer
-Rogue
-Bard
-Ranger/Barbarian
-Druid
-Wizard
I would keep the martial classes like Fighter and Ranger/Barbarian for the beginners or people who do like to keep things simple. The Cleric, Sorcerer, Rogue and Bard should go to the intermediate players who do not mind memorizing a few quick rules and planning their actions. Save the Druid and Wizard for the advanced players who can handle complete autonomy.
If you don't want to come up with an adventure on your own, here are two one-shots that I have wrote a while ago. Feel free to use either of them.
Tomb of the Pharaos is a 1st level dungeon crawl that I tried to give as much interesting atmosphere as I could. The RP opportunities are mostly among the party though. I only play-tested it as a PbP but it might be a little bit longer than the time span you described.
Glare and Shadow is for 4th or 5th level parties and is a little more bare-bones although it does have significantly larger RP sections. This one is marginally shorter than a PFS scenario and easily would fit within 4-5 hours. With 5-8 players maybe 3rd level characters would work even.
Both come with relatively high-res maps as well just to make the experience all pretty.
I think you'll first need to make up a overall story. Think of wich parts are rollplay and wich fighting. (I started my first home made dungeon with the characters being attacked in there beds, an easy encounter but every character got a chance to do something, afther wich the got to talk with the barkeeper wich was some rollplaying)
For starting quickly, make some of the statistics of the characerts yourself, maybe ask input from the player of build with them next to you. As said before, give the easy characters to the inexperienced players. (I would recomend giving the cleric to a experienced player.)
If you want to make your own dungeon but you don't have a lot of experience, steal. Better well stolen than badly made up. (It's a saying in my language, not in english I'm afraid.) Rise of the Runelords has a great haunted house. Only make what you have inspiration for.
Since you have limeted time, hand wave a lot of things. Everything that isn't part of the story should be hand waved. With an exeption for the things that all of your players like very, very much.
I'm sure I forgot a lot of advice, but I hope the fellow forum people will help out ;-).
Crown of the Kobold King, maybe? The missing kids add something to the depth of the dungeon crawl. If I remember right it might still be 3.5 rather than Pathfinder, but it should be pretty easy to sub out PF stats. Easier than writing your own from scratch, certainly.
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Designing the story is going to be the most difficult part especially if you are the one making the characters. Getting any significant or immersing role-play will be a challenge. The high number of players will compound this problem further.
Yea I kinda figured that however I am not shy of writing, I tend to write a lot... poorly but I keep at it to get better.
What kind of setting were you looking to use? Pathfinder has it's own setting on Golarion with a whole slew of modules that are basically one-shots in and of themselves. Baring that you could craft your own using the Golarion or some other world setting.
Honestly I figured Golarion would be best, as those who have played some of the modules with me before know it. For new players or new to pathfinder I dont think they will care one way or the other for the setting.
For character level I would recommend something in the 7-8 level range. Full BAB classes will get their second attack (and 3/4 BAB classes if you go 8th level) and full casters will have access to fourth level spells. Something around this level gives you a chance to experiment and show off, but keep the group from feeling overwhelmed.Pathfinder actually has lineup of characters known as Iconics. They are the ones that you see in the artwork for the books that Paizo publishes. Paizo has released builds of these characters at levels 1, 7 and 11 and I would recommend using them or at the very least looking to them for inspiration.
The classes that I would recommend (in order):
-Fighter
-Cleric
-Sorcerer
-Rogue
-Bard
-Ranger/Barbarian
-Druid
-WizardI would keep the martial classes like Fighter and Ranger/Barbarian for the beginners or people who do like to keep things simple. The Cleric, Sorcerer, Rogue and Bard should go to the intermediate players who do not mind memorizing a few quick rules and planning their actions. Save the Druid and Wizard for the advanced players who can handle complete autonomy.
I will take all of that into recommendation. Its similar to what I had planned anyway, though I know one of my players saw gunslinger and his eyes lit up so ill tweek. I think I will go with level 8s. Do you happen to have links to those builds you mentioned?
I think you'll first need to make up a overall story. Think of wich parts are rollplay and wich fighting. (I started my first home made dungeon with the characters being attacked in there beds, an easy encounter but every character got a chance to do something, afther wich the got to talk with the barkeeper wich was some rollplaying)
For starting quickly, make some of the statistics of the characerts yourself, maybe ask input from the player of build with them next to you. As said before, give the easy characters to the inexperienced players. (I would recomend giving the cleric to a experienced player.)
If you want to make your own dungeon but you don't have a lot of experience, steal. Better well stolen than badly made up. (It's a saying in my language, not in english I'm afraid.) Rise of the Runelords has a great haunted house. Only make what you have inspiration for.
Since you have limeted time, hand wave a lot of things. Everything that isn't part of the story should be hand waved. With an exeption for the things that all of your players like very, very much.
I'm sure I forgot a lot of advice, but I hope the fellow forum people will help out ;-).
Actually you helped a lot and it made perfect sence what you said. Though I will probably not go with partial builds as the new players have NO idea what they are doing and I find would prefer to just Get into it.
If you don't want to come up with an adventure on your own, here are two one-shots that I have wrote a while ago. Feel free to use either of them.
Tomb of the Pharaos is a 1st level dungeon crawl that I tried to give as much interesting atmosphere as I could. The RP opportunities are mostly among the party though. I only play-tested it as a PbP but it might be a little bit longer than the time span you described.
Glare and Shadow is for 4th or 5th level parties and is a little more bare-bones although it does have significantly larger RP sections. This one is marginally shorter than a PFS scenario and easily would fit within 4-5 hours. With 5-8 players maybe 3rd level characters would work even.
Both come with relatively high-res maps as well just to make the experience all pretty.
Always love a shameless plug. Ill take a longer look at them and perhaps scale them up perhaps meld them into what I am looking for.
As for plot line the general outline i was aiming for is as follows.
Basic town in some city, preferably isolated. Local Villagers are being abducted to fuel as ritual to put the soul of some long dead wizard into the bones of some great old monster of legend. Idea is they can question, interrogate, and investigate to get into the crypts under the city, then the rouge and mages can shine to diffuse trapped rooms of both mundane and magical nature leading to a set piece fight; Cult leader protected by some unnatural mage machines conducting the ritual; machines defended by some bruisers. Depending on how long they take to stop the ritual the more powerful the final beast becomes.
Of course sprinkle in some combat along the way and its an idea at least. I welcome more suggestions, such as location or trap ideas as well.
Link to the iconic characters list. Took a cursory glance at the Iconics at level 7 and they all appear to be rather decently built which was a surprise to me. The feat and spell selections are all easy to understand and use in addition to all being worthwhile selections. The only one I would heavily edit would probably be Valeros. That poor guy is always getting slapped around. You should not run into any significant problems keeping the Iconics as they are for new players and just using them as a launching point for your more experienced ones.
Your story seems interesting and simple. The country known as Ustalav looks like a good fit for your story, I would urge you to take a look and consider it. Hello, I am a link to a page with information on Ustalav.
Recommending traps will be difficult because I tend to take a very methodical approach to encounter design. Basically it all starts with determining what your group's Average Party Level (APL) is. If your group ends up with all 8 members then I would add 2 to your APL. If you have 5-7 then I would add 1 to the APL. If you intend to go with the point buy of 20 that the Iconics are stated with then I would increase the APL by 1 again. After all of that is done it is much easier to select CR appropriate traps.
I like to combine traps with encounters in my games, because I have found that traps by themselves are dry and not very much fun for anyone. Combining a trap with an encounter spices up combat and forces your players to think differently.
Example: there is a 10 foot pit trap on the other side of a door, the party enters and the two people in front fall into a Gelatinous Cube placed at the bottom. The rest of the group is left to contend with a Blast shadow, a Shadow, two Advanced Megaraptor skeletons, two Forge Spurned and a level 5 Cleric. The cleric spends his rounds buffing the monsters and channeling negative energy to heal them. If you were actually interested to see the logistics behind that I could post them, but based on the APL calculations that I made above it defined as either an average or easy encounter.
With input I meant "I want to play a cool girl in armor" or "I want to fight with a bow". Not really a partial buld. (Wouldn't go for that either.)
Let us know how it goes and if you need more help.