Advice on GM'ing from campaign pack

[OtterRise]

Apologies if this topic has ever come up before, I'm new to Pathfinder and the Pathfinder society forums.

A little background, I've been running DnD 4e with my gaming group for about 5-6 years now, jumping on and off as we struggle with time constraints. I've been dm'ing the 4e system for just about as long. It's not a perfect system as I've come to learn after reading the core Pathfinder book and talking with a lot of veteran 3.5 players. The way we used to run our nights was to simply homebrew our own campaigns and it has been working quite well each time.

Recently our group decided to pick up Pathfinder and learn the new system. Once again because of time constraints, we decided to pick up a campaign pack instead of spending a day or two to create something by myself. The question I'm now stuck with is, how do I handle all the information that is presented to me through the packs?

I have yet to run my first game later this week with the Rise of the Runelords book. Aside from learning the core characters in the chapter, the town itself, and the scenario of the first events, what else should I prepare for the first game? My group consists of people that are good at RP, one that likes to min-max, and one that just follows the flow of things.

Thanks in advance.

[Kalshane]

General advice for running an AP is read through the entire AP before starting the game. You don't need to commit the whole thing to memory or even know all the details, but reading through the whole thing will let you know where the story is going, and potentially give you ideas to seed things into earlier chapters (as well as to recognize the elements of foreshadowing already existing in those earlier chapters so you know how to work with them if something catches the PCs attention and they start focusing on that.)

Then read through Book 1 again before starting the game to get what's going to happen in the first few sessions fresh in your head. Before each session try to at least skim over the parts that are going to be relevant in the session you're about to run so you're not paging through looking for information later.

There are numerous stickied threads on this forum with GM advice and Community-created content for each chapter of the AP. Especially useful to me are the redrawn maps of Sandpoint (One has all the locations labeled instead of numbered, another shows an overlay of the Smuggler's Tunnels and Catacombs of Wrath and a third shows the Siege of Sandpoint later in the AP) and the NPC Guide that includes pictures, motivations, personality and locations.