As the subject line says.
I jumped from 1E to a tiny experience with 5E (not even one session, but I got to roll up a character and study the hell out of the rulebook.) I saw the Humble Pathfinder Bundle and jumped on it. Ever since I got into tabletop RPGs I've wanted to GM, and now that I have the opportunity I really want to get started.
The (college) group I'm going to be starting up is full of people who are completely new to tabletop gaming so thankfully their standards are next to nil. Regardless, I want to run a fun campaign. I've read articles and have been studying the handbooks, but I wanted to know if anybody had any "personal" advice. Stuff you can't get from books. I'm thinking of building my own world and keeping things very relaxed and open. Less "save the world from Asmodeus" and more "save the neighboring village from dem orcs", although I wouldn't be too opposed to running a module from the bundle. I'm taking a lot of time to get this together and make sure I'm prepared. By the way, I'm going to keep this very modest at the start. I'll probably just do some tavern quests and maybe one dungeon until we all get used to the system. We're a very chill group of people.
Any advice? Materials y'all forgot/can't live without? Easy ways to mess up? Best ways to streamline charts? Thanks!
*EDIT* I'm kinda new here so I think I posted in the wrong board. This probably needs to be moved to advice. My bad!
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Advice the First: Read the Core Rulebook. Sounds like you're already doing this. Don't worry about memorizing it, but reading it gets you familiar with the book, so you know where to find things when you want them.
Advice the Second: Take it slow to start. You're already on the right track here. But expand it. Don't start allowing every Paizo and 3PP book right out of the gate. You can always add more later as you grow more comfortable.
Advice the Third: Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone forgets a rule. Make a ruling if you have to with a little bit of time spent looking it up, but don't be afraid to just make a call and go on. The time is better spent playing than arguing out rules.
Advice the Fourth: I do recommend the Gamemastery Guide for reading, but there are also many threads here on the boards and articles elsewhere that can help. If you hate making up NPCs, the NPC Codex is useful. Don't forget that the Core Rulebook is online, look that up with that link over to the left there labeled 'Rules Archive (PRD)', some people prefer electronics over dead trees.
Advice the Fifth: You and your group are here to have fun. Do that, and you won't go far wrong.
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The beginner box (the pdf version was part of the bundle) also has some good, quick 'just starting out' adventures for you to get the feel of things, as well as one you can do solo if you want to test drive it before you bring in everyone else. It may also be a good way for you to get a feel for how your group plays, which will help you determine what sort of story they'll like for your campaign.
Really the biggest piece of advice is that as long as everyone's having fun, you're doing it right. (And by everyone, I mean both the GM and players.) In a home game, you can house rule all you want, so only allow what your comfortable dealing with in your game. It's probably a good idea to have players run their characters past you in the beginning, so that you know what options they're looking at, and then you can tweak them if needed. This way you'll be relaxed and enjoying yourself, which means you can focus on giving them a great campaign!
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Read all of Darths and Droids and follow any advice suggested in the annotations box.
Thanks, all! I'm reading your comments and am much more confident going into this. I really appreciate your time and thoughts.
Read all of Darths and Droids and follow any advice suggested in the annotations box.
Heh, this is hilarious. Also incredibly helpful. I'm on episode 85 right now. I'm stopping for the afternoon but that was really great!
My biggest piece of advice is relax and have fun. Don't sweat screwing up from time to time and remember is it just a game.
The rest will generally take care of itself.
The first and core rule is for everyone to have fun, including you. There is plenty of adapting as a GM, learning what the party enjoys and tailoring the experience constantly.
Secondly as a new GM you are far better off starting with a module to get your footing, then building from there. Reinventing the wheel is a waste of time when huge worlds and campaigns already exist for your modification. Your first few games will have you realising many simple mistakes, that you'll fix and improve on as time goes on.
Dare I say most of your troubles will come not from the game, but your players. Learning how to negotiate as well as saying "no" will keep your party and sanity.
The Pathfinder OGC has been a massive boon to me as I GM. Just keep an eye out for 3rd party material, which is also put up on the site.
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The Pathfinder OGC has been a massive boon to me as I GM. Just keep an eye out for 3rd party material, which is also put up on the site.
I'd argue that The Archive of Nethys is likely better for someone new to the game, since it doesn't change the names of things and doesn't have 3rd party material.
The interface is maybe a tad more complicated, but still.
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Biggest thing - start small. Pathfinder has huge levels of available customization with archetypes, alternate racial features, feats, traits, etc. Start with just the core classes and races for your first few adventures until people start to understand things.
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Thanks, all! I'm reading your comments and am much more confident going into this. I really appreciate your time and thoughts.
Read all of Darths and Droids and follow any advice suggested in the annotations box.Heh, this is hilarious. Also incredibly helpful. I'm on episode 85 right now. I'm stopping for the afternoon but that was really great!
DM of the Rings is another similar webcomic (but a Lord of the Rings RPG campaign rather than Star Wars) which is just as good, and made by the same people.
The advice to start small is well taken. I really want to tinker with the advanced classes, but I'll definitely steer clear of those and the cool races for a long while. Knowing my group, I probably shouldn't even mention that there are other classes. They're just too darn inquisitive.
...as a new GM you are far better off starting with a module to get your footing, then building from there. Reinventing the wheel is a waste of time when huge worlds and campaigns already exist for your modification. Your first few games will have you realising many simple mistakes, that you'll fix and improve on as time goes on.Dare I say most of your troubles will come not from the game, but your players. Learning how to negotiate as well as saying "no" will keep your party and sanity.
I'll take this with a grain of salt. I'm a (mediocre) writer so I love world building and I'm good at it. I guess when I run my own test campaign by myself (great advice by the way!) I'll be able to see if my world building stands up to the tests. I'll definitely keep this in mind though. I don't want to overburden myself, or make the game less fun just so I can have fun with my own world.
DM of the Rings is another similar webcomic (but a Lord of the Rings RPG campaign rather than Star Wars) which is just as good, and made by the same people.
Actually, no. They're both good, but while DM of the Rings inspired Darths and Droids they are not made by the same people.
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The advice to start small is well taken. I really want to tinker with the advanced classes, but I'll definitely steer clear of those and the cool races for a long while. Knowing my group, I probably shouldn't even mention that there are other classes. They're just too darn inquisitive.
For the record, I don't think this is necessarily a good idea. The corebook classes aren't notably less complicated than those in the Advanced Player's Guide or Advanced Class Guide. Slayer, for example, is an order of magnitude less complex than Druid.
Occult Adventures you might want to keep them away from, but aside from that, I'd advocate avoiding prepared casters like Wizards way more than I'd advocate sticking to the corebook.
Starting small is good. I'd definitely begin at 1st level, for example, but if avoiding specific classes...Fighter, Rogue, Monk, and prepared casters are the complicated options to have fun with if anything is.
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DM of the Rings is another similar webcomic (but a Lord of the Rings RPG campaign rather than Star Wars) which is just as good, and made by the same people.Actually, no. They're both good, but while DM of the Rings inspired Darths and Droids they are not made by the same people.
Ah, my bad - been a while since I read the former, clearly time to reread it!
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I think the most important lesson I got when I was starting out is to remember there is a reason the game is run by a DM and not just an automated simulation. The reason is that you, theoretically, know what your group likes more than the designers of the game. Because of that, you are not only allowed to, but in certain circumstances are expected to, adjust or ignore the rules as written. The most important time for this is when there is a rule uncertainty, but it doesn't deal with something important (say an enemy is about to die, and a PC is asking if he can do an awesome jump-attack finisher or something). In cases like that, it's probably better to make a ruling on the spot, since the time spent looking it up would likely take a really long time, and it would kill the flow and mood that is being set by the combat.
Also, as a DM, you have to be okay with losing. The entire point of the DM is to present a challenge for your PC's to overcome, but in the end to be overcome. At first, this will likely not be bad, and it can even be fun seeing the interesting ways they think of to screw over your efforts. However, after a long campaign, all the times you can overcome and outsmarted or beaten in one way or another can add up. If you can get competitive or salty, keep an eye on yourself and make sure you're not letting frustration get to you.
There's probably some other advice, but I'm already starting to enter TL;DR territory, so I'll leave you with those.
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As you probably know, there's a beginners box. Check it out. Probably good for both you and your players to start relatively easy.
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Roleplaying is a hobby. Everyone should have fun. This has been mentioned earlier in the thread, but could stand being mentioned again. It's up to everyone to keep everyone happy. That really needs to be said. Everyone should be allowed time in the spotlight. In-game conflicts should not be confused with interpersonal conflicts between participants (this is sometimes really hard).
As a Gamemaster, you manage a game, a campaign. That means guiding, not absolutely controlling, the players, what happens around the table and in the game.
Start by discussing what you all are hoping to achieve, what you like with gaming, what problems could arise. If you're new to the hobby, this is obviously hard to do - you don't know what you like - but at least it establishes that this is something that should be talked about.
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Take it easy with the rules. Acknowledge that you might judge a call incorrectly, err to the side of the player characters, and move on. Remember (that probably means write down) the issue that arose and check it up later, perhaps here on the message-boards. If you got it wrong, explain to your players how it should have gone and thus will go in the future, but don't try to retroactively mend mistakes (so called ret-con).
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Make the world come alive when you are gamemastering a session. Yeah, but how!? I can't teach you everything, but I'll give you a tip or three.
In the real world, everything has a name. Or at least almost everything to the point of it being a sensation encountering something without one. It's fairly easy to remember to put names on persons figuring in your adventure, but landscape formations, villages, streets, districts, noble houses, divine heralds? Anyhow, you [u]can't[/u] plan for everything the PCs will encounter and you'll need to come up with things on the spot. And there's where you have a chance to portray a deep world. Your players will, rightly, consider anything unnamed to be unimportant. Give everything a name, especially that which aren't important to the PCs, and the players will get a feeling that the world is bigger than what their PCs see.
Make name lists. Lots of people make does, but I believe not everything does them correctly. You don't need lots of names, say 5-10 male and female person names. Use them up and make a new list to the next session, rather than making one big. But you'll need more than person names. Thing about what could crop up during a session that you'll need a name for and write four or five of those down.
I type and print much of my session notes or keep them digital, but I handwrite name lists. That forces me to thing about the names I write. Can I pronounce them in a hurry? I write them with decent spaaace in-between. When I GM and grab a name from the list, I make a note next to it to remember what I used it for. I might need it again and there really is the best place to put the note.
Make the actions of the PCs matter. That is easier than it sounds. It doesn’t, necessarily, mean the PCs should save the kingdom make an the history books. It doesn’t even mean you should plan to have branches in the story, where the players can make choices. That's a different thing.
No, it just mean that what the PCs do should matter for someone else in the game world and the PCs and players should, occasionally, be reminded of that. Did the PCs save a village from some orcs? Having the village throw a party for the PCs at the end of the adventure is a good idea. An even better one is to have the PCs much hear about the anniversary party the village held, celebrating one prosperous year honouring the PCs. That creates a sense of continuity, that the PCs aren't just cursing around in a world that's created right ahead of them and destroyed as the leave (even though it really is).
Keep descriptions short. Long texts in cursive intended for the GM to read used in far to many published adventures (don't know much about Paizo, though) are a bore. Start with the most important stuff. So the PCs enter a room with a person resting on a chair. Quick description; the room is beautifully decorated, the person is a slightly heavy gnome female in a torn dress and seems distressed. Let the players act. Interject descriptions when they pause to discuss among them. When they turn to you, such as in a dialogue, you've got a moment to add descriptions before you "talk". The room contains a huge bed and a unlit fireplace and it smells of perfume and freshly chopped pine. The woman in her mid-forties, her now tattered clothes tells of a lower-class life. The busy street can be heard from outside the window. Involve more senses than sight and hearing. This is not the time to mention the woman holds bloody knife, that did the players deserve to get right away.
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The most important thing to learn is how to improvise. Sooner or later your players are going to do something unexpected. Learn to roll with it and just keep going. This will probably involve making up some rules that the books either don't specifically cover, or you just haven't read yet.
Second thing is to try and get your hands on at least one book with pre-built NPCs. Game Masters Guide is a good one, it has a whole chapter just full of random NPCs covering everything to the village idiot to a King. But there is also the NPC Codex and Monster Codex which are full of pre built characters with class levels ready to die at the hands of your players.
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1. Focus on using a skill against the PCs.
A) Intimidation is used by opponent's to force their will upon a PC, or to leave them shaken before/during combat.
B) Climb a cliff must be descended to reach a hidden cavern, which could lead to a PC taking fall damage.
C) Acrobatics can be used to move across a battlefield without permitting an opponent to take an Attack of Opportunity (AoO). What is an AoO, and how many times can this be used each round?
This way, you will all learn the skills together.
2. Ensure they choose a knowledge or two for each character, then utilize those knowledge rolls in the story.
3. Buy a pack of Condition Cards effects like shaken, blinded, and nauseated are easily kept at your fingertips.
Even if you want to craft your own world and test your universe making skills the advice remains the same. Start small.
Steven King gave an interview once about how he built his most recent novel at the time. (Storm of the century)He noted that the idea came to him of a man in a jail cell. Then he hit on the idea of the sheriff and his deputies being terrified of this man that they had in the cell. After that the entire town was fearful of this man. Why were they? How did it happen? A small start to a larger story.
You don't need the complete backstory to Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, or The Wheel of Time at your first session. You will need a reason for four to six first level characters to meet up and adventure together. Saving the multiverse can come later.
With first time players it may take multiple sessions for you and your crew to decide on what characters they are most interested in playing/running and what location they are most interested in playing in. (Water based, forest, cityscape, etc.) I would run several loosely connected scenarios with each one of those themes to get a sense of what your group (and you) like best. Keep the stuff you like and focus on that.
Remind everyone that mistakes will happen and that everyone is there to have fun. Once you have them hooked after a month or so you then let them know that if they bring you food and wash your car every week that "the gods will be merciful". It may take a few sessions for everyone to decide what is fun for them. Enjoy getting them there.
Nice avatar!
Keep it simple. Read the relevant parts of the Core Rule Book. No shortcuts will help you without doing that first. Audit every character before they sit at your table. Start with a simple adventure like Crypt of the Everflame which was written to serve as an introduction to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. It's the perfect jumping on module for new players and GMs alike.