For Christmas I got the anniversary edition of Rise of the Runelords!
I'm looking to run it in the future so I'm starting to collect peripheral materials to prep for it. But what materials actually make things easier/better? What materials have you used and feel are worth it.
Specifically I'm looking at;
Rise of the Runelords Face cards
The Rise of the Runelords Pawns (I already own pawns from Bestiary 1, 2 and the NPC Codex along with a number of plastic minis from various dead board games.)
The Pathfinder Battles Rise of the Runelords minis.
The Rise of the Runelords item cards.
The Inner Sea World Guide. (I visit Golarian roughly half the time I play/GM. I own but have not run the first books of Carrion Crown and Legacy of Fire.)
Pathfinder Player Companion: Varisia, Birthplace of Legends. (I' always reluctant to get Player Companions that are too Golarian specific, mostly because what I run isn't usually in Golarian and only recently started playing and GMing with Paizo modules and Adventure Paths. )
Pathfinder Player Companion: Gods of Purity/Corruption/Balance.
Rise of the Runelords Mapfolio.
I am hoping that whatever I buy can remain useful for homebrew or future Golarian games, preferably homebrew, but my priority is enhancing the RotR game.
I'd definitely get the map folio. If you use the pawns, then you'd proabbly like the pawns, I've found them to be a nice addition.
The other pieces like the cards I haven't used. If you get the pawns no need for the minis I would think.
The ISWG & Varisia PC are both very good things to have if you're playing Golarion. If not then they would have little or no value. I've bought Varisia and encouraged my players to read it as well as both Players Guides.
Another item I found helpful was the Magnimar setting book. It gives a lot more detail than Book 2 does, and I used it a lot when my guys were roaming around in Magnimar. I simply bought it because my players had to go to Magnimar in book 1, because they had failed to confront Nualia, and she had escaped there with her assistants and some goblins (The Barghest as well) when the players burned down the fort on top of Thistletop.
If I get the ISWG would the Varisia, Magnimar and Faith books be drastically less useful?
What's in the Mapfolio? Are they like battlemats or just maps of the cities you're in?
If I get the ISWG would the Varisia, Magnimar and Faith books be drastically less useful?
I wouldn't say so. There is a greater level of detail in the smaller books. I have the ISWG and the Magnimar books, and use both of them with some frequency.
What's in the Mapfolio? Are they like battlemats or just maps of the cities you're in?
They are nothing like battlemats; although there are maps showing battle scenes, they are too small in scale to be practical, except to use as a model for drawing out a battlemat youtself. There are also maps of the cities, which you could use as a handout or display piece if you wanted to.
In other asides, there are Sandpoint-specific pawns (which could be useful if your players take to it as whole-heartedly as mine have), and there is a nice flip-mat for the first battle in the Swallowtail festival.
If I get the ISWG would the Varisia, Magnimar and Faith books be drastically less useful?
What's in the Mapfolio? Are they like battlemats or just maps of the cities you're in?
The Varisia and Magnimar books do not require the ISWG, while the ISWG is pretty bare bones since it covers a lot of material.
As for the gods book, I have gotten it, and it has helped me understand Golarion better, but my players haven't bothered to look at it. I wouldn't discourage getting it, but you'll find running things either with Varisa or Magnimar, but probably won't see much impact from the gods.
The maps are great illustrations for the party (Sandpoint, Magnimar, Varissia), and the small maps of the encounter scenes are a good help for the GM so you don't have to keep going back to the map in the book or pdf. I find them to be very useful. Others may not, and if you have the pdf they can be printed out. The Sandpoint and Varissia maps are 16x22. We lived with the Sandpoint map on the table for most of book 1.
How useful is the crunch in the Varisian and Magnimar player companions?
My current thought process is that;
I either want Face Cards or RotR Pawns not both. I have enough minis and pawns to represent things in RotR, and judging by how the Curse of the Crimson Throne game I'm playing is going representing NPCs on the map is less troublesome than remembering who's who so I'm leaning towards the Face Cards.
If I get the ISWG I may not want the other Player Companions (unless someone buys it for me.) not including the RotR Player Guide. Fluff and setting information seems more important to me as the GM(my players rarely read it) and I have relevant PDFs for the fluff already so ISWG may be a more economical shorthand for relevant information for the players if I go through other adventure paths (I bought Legacy of Fire and Carrion Crown for others to run). The Inner Sea Gazetteer is probably more economical but I get discounts at the store that has the ISWG and it has more information.
I'd highly suggest getting both the Pawn Collection and Varisia: Birthplace of legends. Those are the two things I've used more than anything.
Unless you like to show your PCs the entire map of where they're going before they have the chance to explore it, it's hard to recommend the map folio, they're kind of nice for GM use to avoid paging back and forth, but other than that I've not found a use for them.
Lastly, the ISWG has the stats for the Sandpoint Devil, which makes for a really fun encounter later on when they're around level(s) 6-7. Other than that, there's really no need for it.
I'd also get the book Magnimar, Citiy of Monuments. It's not that great but, it helped some and it was cheap. Trust me your PCs will be hanging out there a bunch. I Also got the pwn collection and they rock. Be sure to get bases for em.
The Map Folio was useful to me as well, because Runelords has so many large dungeons, page-flipping can be quite a hassle (especially with a huge hardback - I was using the paperbound individual volumes).
I also highly recommend the Rise of the Runelords Dice Set - both beautifully crafted, and can be great reinforcement of the sin runes of Thassilon.
Varisia, Birthplace of Legends is a great resource, but you might want to check that it doesn't assume too future a timeline (as in, Xin Shalast already discovered, etc.)
I have the Runelords pawns and they're quite good, though I didn't have them when running the AP.
I would have killed to have the Face cards when running, and the item cards were fun - fairly good spread on when they get the items.
On the Item Cards:
TLDR; I think they add to the game but it's a far bigger cost and admin load than I expected
Unless you have the majority of the item cards sets (and in many cases multiple copies), I don't think they really work.
Players having a couple of items on cards and the bulk of their stuff listed the old fashioned way just seems to be a token effort.
So, I went the whole hog with item cards, having at least one of just about every set, numerous of the "random" item decks Paizo have been selling cheap, and asked all of my players who wanted to use item cards (one didn't) to get both Adventure Card decks.
I've had to custom create a number of cards for things like peculiar Thassilonian keys, tiny black dresses, pearl earrings and goblin crowns for which I just didn't have a card.
Whilst the result adds to the game it *is* quite an administrative burden to have them organised. You'll find yourself changing items and treasure to match available cards (e.g. that can't be a Horsechopper because that card's already in use).
All that being said, there's nothing quite like dropping a stack of cards on the table as the treasure haul and just watching the players discover what's there and dole them out. Or watching a player gingerly hand you their last "potion of healing" card. Or frantically search through their pack for something that might help resolve a situation. Or the group pulling stuff out of their packs to flick them onto the "stuff we're selling" pile.
It really does make equipment "feel" like actual stuff.
I agree with Belegdel on the item cards, they do add a lot to the game, but can really add a lot of work to a GM's already heavy burden. I use sticky notes stuck to the "notes" section and kept in with cheapo clear sleeves for resuability, but I really can't be arsed to do it for every masterwork or +1 item they get, so I only really do it for consumables they are not familiar with the spell the effect comes from and items with more than one enhancement.
Just grabbing the RotRL item deck is gonna leave you with way too few cards, I'd also recommend grabbing a Hero's Hoard or Relics of War booster box or two if you want to have any hope of tracking your party's items. The essentials deck comes with a good spread of stuff, but relatively few consumables.
Oops I forgot and Mujba reminded me I do have the dice set. Which is fun although on dice I don't use as much my players mock me a little because I don't easily recognize the rune for max damage. Although all the players now recognize the d20 rune for crits so thats worth it for that right there.
Also I forgot to mention that I have been using the face cards since day 1, I like the face cards. At the start of every game I whip out the deck and sort the people they've met into two piles ...dead and and alive. The player seem to like this
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To the AP: congrats on the new hardcover!
AP Face cards: really useful. I believe that posts above mine have argued enough in their favour. :)
AP Pawns: useful, particularly with specific foes (as opposed to Zombie #5 and Giant Spider #3) and larger numbers of certain monsters than are available in the Bestiary Boxes (e.g., you need five Frost Giants, but the Bestiary Box only has one). The Pawn sets are put together with the assumption that the user already has access to at least Bestiary Box 1. This means that the user will get the bases from the Bestiary Box and fill in the more generic monsters from the same source.
Pathfinder Battles AP minis: nice, but expensive and more difficult to store than cardboard pawns. No guarantee of getting every mini, unless you buy big (in which case - expensive). I don't use the Battles minis for those reasons.
AP Item cards: personally, I don't use them. To get the best use out of them one would have to accumulate several different decks, and I think that it would be a bigger cost (cash and time spent on administration) than is worthwhile.
Inner Sea World Guide: extremely useful for the GM if you are going to run stuff on Golarion, particularly if you intend to use the APs (and not convert them to a home-brew setting). Note that the ISWG is the updated PF version of two earlier books: the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer (sort of a short trial balloon) and the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting (the full-blown 3.5 setting book). Some retcons have occurred between the first two and the final book.
Varisia Player Companion: useful for the players, particularly as five of the APs either start or take place in their entirety in Varisia. Any player character from Varisia will find some useful fluff and/or crunch in this book.
Faiths of Purity/Balance Player Companions: more useful for players of divine-powered characters (clerics, oracles, druids, paladins, rangers, and some of the upcoming Advanced Class Guide classes), or simply religious characters. Good for some RP fluff and some relevant traits, etc.
Faiths of Corruption Player Companion: only useful if you allow evil player characters, or allow them to worship evil deities. I haven't let my players even see this supplement - in part because the cover is one big spoiler for the first part of RotR. (Of course, once the party gets that far, the cover could be a good visual aid ...)
Rise of the Runelords Map Folio: if you don't have good photo-copying/printing options for the maps in your RotR AE, then this can be useful. Note that - unlike the later AP Map Folios - the Map Folios for the earlier AP just contained copies of maps already present in the AP. If in doubt, check the reviews and comments on the relevant product pages here on Paizo's web-site.
Keep in mind the difference between the Campaign Setting (CS)/Chronicles product line and the Player Companion line. The former are for GMs alone, and the latter are meant to be player-friendly (although the earlier ones didn't always meet that mark).
Some thoughts on other products ...
CS Magnimar: very useful, particularly for the second part of RotR (or if you run the Shattered Star AP). Although the party is supposed to create some strong ties to Sandpoint, Sandpoint is a small town. The party will need to visit Magnimar frequently to sell loot, buy/order magic items, etc. Also, chances are, that some of the player characters are the "big city" type, and Magnimar would be a logical origin in all but the most extreme cases.
Inner Sea Primer Player Companion: gives a player-friendly overview of the setting. Geography, some history (a short time line), religions, certain arcane and martial traditions, etc.
CS/Chronicles Gods and Magic: gives a greater in-depth view the deities than both the Inner Sea Primer and the ISWG, but without much crunch (and it was from the 3.5 era). HOWEVER, a PF update is coming this spring in hardcover format, one which I suspect will supercede Gods and Magic by a long shot.
CS Chronicles of the Righteous: if you intend to do anything with the mystery cults in Magnimar, this book will be useful. Also a good source if the players are looking for more off-beat deities for their characters to worship.
The usefulness of other sources depends on what sort of characters are in the party and if you intend to run anything "off the beaten track" from the actual AP. For example, there are CS/Chronicles supplements for both Korvosa and Kaer Maga (Varisian cities to the south/east of Magnimar). There is a Player Companion which focuses on knightly characters, ones which focus on dungeon-crawling and demon-slaying, etc.
I bought the face cards, pawns, item cards, and a few minis when I started my game. The face cards are great and my players love them, and the pawns are super useful too. I bought the minis for some of the bosses, and I just ordered some stone giant ones, but I bought those from ebay because they were cheaper, sorry Paizo.
I didn't really like using the item cards, so I stopped using them, they did not seam very useful to me.
I own the inner sea world guide, and it is cool, but not all that useful if you are just running runelords. The varisia birthplace of legends book is similar, though I really enjoy some of the archetypes and feats from that book. One of my players is the thunder caller bard, and it is awesome. Like Majuba I also bought the runelords dice set, they are nice, but if you are looking to save money I would pass.
We also really like the crit and fumble card decks. It adds some nice flavor to rolling 1's and 20's.