I have a group of 4 (including me) players that play frequently. We are all in our late 20's to mid 30's and enjoy a good roleplaying experience with solid action. The other guys have been playing D&D for years and have experience as far back as 2nd edition. I started about 2 years ago and only have experience with pathfinder.
We have a casual game style. We mostly stick to the books but will ocasionally make little exceptions if: you can roleplay it in, it makes since for your character, and it doesn't break the game. The other players have kind of been throwing new games at us and GMing them as we finish one and they have one prepared. We do mostly premade stuff with with the occasional "spice" thrown in, while one of our players has a knack for some great homebrew games.
Being the only one of the 4 to not GM for us up to this point I would like to give it a try.
I want something to get my feet wet as a GM while still being fun and engaging for the mature, veteran players I will be playing with. I would like something fairly straightforward but would allow me room to "flex my creative muscles" a little.
I think a game that has multiple steps or segments would be ideal. That way if it works we can continue while if it fails we can relatively painlessly quit at a break in the story.
This is a long winded description of a simple question, I know, I just didnt want suggestions of stuff like "crypt of the everflame!". While stuff like that is great for new GM with new\young players, its not for me I think.
Anyone have suggestions?
yeah, honestly I've never done anything pre-made, just think of some plot cliche and throw a spin on it or two, add in pathfinder stuff, then bam a story. In fact make the stories casual and make it more about survival than stopping evil doom monster.
Until you get you legs under you do not do sandbox, keep things on the rails. Do an AP or make one up, but keep things fairly linear. That does not mean only one way to solve things, just that stuff will generally happen in a certain order. Dungeon crawls are good here as the options are fairly limited.
For encounter design start weak and slowly ramp things up. Until you see how things work it is easy to make a challenging encounter a bit to challenging. So don't go for challenging right away.
Another option might be to pick one of the pathfinder modules you like the look of? This would give a good starting point and at the end of the module you could expand the game yourself with some home brew content or you could choose another module or you could put the game on hold for a while.
I'm a fledgling gm in a similar position to yourself. I've run one pathfinder module so far and really enjoyed that. I changed it where I wanted to and added in some bits and pieces in reaction to players' actions. But I personally I liked having the backbone of the adventure there already for me to build on allowing me to get used to the flow of running the game without everything to think about.
You might also think about running some of the pathfinder society scenarios? (either as part of pfs or simply as a home game). These are short, varied, and linked nicely together.
Hope that helps!
Have them wake up in coffins as ex vampires whose lord was just killed, lifting their vampiric curse, but trapped at the center of a dungeon they must fight out of. Because they were many centuries old, make all their gear bronze and their coins ancient, and when they escape, they are hated and must atone for many lifetimes of evil.
Veteran players will appreciate this kind of angle.