Keeping up with books.


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


I'm at a bit of a wall. I'm starting to seriously get behind in using the Pathfinder material that I have.

When the Advanced Class Guide came out people were crying out 'bloat' but this actually started with the Occult classes. Not that I don't like the Occult classes but the ACG were pretty much different shades of familiar concepts. New options to better do what you've been trying to replicate. But The Occult classes are a bit weirder and have their own book full of new things and since then we have a book on Intrigue and one on Horror with sub rules and new ways to play different types of games. There's a million and one way to play Pathfinder now and a ton of concepts that I want to play but haven't gotten to.

And this is disregarding that finding a group and playing with it is either lengthy or shaky. In most cases a group will fall apart from flaking or people just not having time, some lasting mere weeks before having to shut things down from too few players and not enough communication. When things do get going a campaign can last for about a year maybe more. Curse of the Crimson Throne went by once a week like clockwork and the group grew OP by the last book and finished it within three sessions and even that took almost a year. Rise of the Runelords somehow took months for the first book alone. That's one character and one set of options that has a slot for a year, meanwhile new shiny things are coming out.

So I have to ask, how do you cope with having a lot of options and not enough room to use them?

Alternatively, any advice on how to hustle out some more gameplay? (Note: I have a busted computer and a bunch of more important expenses so online isn't exactly an option.)


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I GM, so it's a lot easier to grab lots of things and play with them in campaigns, whereas I imagine it's tougher for players who only get to try out their options one or two at a time. The players get the option to stick with their stuff for a long time, though, which is cool.

I also worldbuild, so I get to play with lots of material in the creation of my setting. Even though the players may never even speak to the king who has some cool archetype that I wanted to try out (much less fight the guy), I still get to pass a little time and play with the archetype by saying "Hey, let's build the guy I gave this thing to!" And if I get an urge to use it later, I've now got an already-built NPC in storage.

Got something like 300 NPCs sitting in storage at the moment. It's convenient to be able to grab one whenever I need something for a game and, say, the Codex doesn't have what I'm looking for.

Dark Archive

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Back in the late 90's early 2000's I was in a group that lasted quite a while. One thing we did was that we alternated who GM'd. So with six people in the group, there were 6 different campaigns being ran. Each person would run a single adventure, which often took 2 or 3 sessions to complete. Meanwhile the next person in line to GM is getting their next adventure set up and ready, and so forth.

It actually worked out rather well. Each campaign had a different feel to it. One person ran it almost entirely open ended. He populated his world with various things to do, and what actually happened depended on where we went and what we did. Another person had an overarching story he was telling. Each adventure lead into the next, and so forth. I ran kind of an episodic campaign. Each adventure was stand alone, but set within an a greater world where things are happening. And sometimes there would be a multi-adventure story they would deal with.


Partly because I don't do PFS, more like both other posters, I create my own settings, though I sometimes publish them. In my home games, I don't allow every book within a given homebrew AP. Normally I don't allow gunslingers and have never looked at occult classes, however, I am currently working on a setting and adventures I intend to publish which is old west/Cthulhu-inspired where gunslingers and occult classes are the expectation. Since there will be included archetypes for every class including magus. You only need the gun rules (guns everywhere), Occult rules, Core, and the setting rules to run/play - that's it.

I never get bogged down, I only need to concentrate on a limited set of books at any time. Though I might eventually use every Paizo book - I know right now I'm creating content for Starfinder, and its still a year away.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

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I never experienced the issue with too many books.

All of the new books encapsulate a concept for specific types of campaigns. You're not going to use the Intrigue book if you're not running a primarily urban campaign. You're not going to use the Horror and Occult books if you're not playing a horror campaign or a campaign that has psychic magic.


Books only matter if either players or the GM use them. I won't stress myself with not having or knowing a book - I have a lot of material anyway. If a player comes up with exotic stuff, I will ask him to show me the source and study it with him. Honestly, I found Occult Adventures overwhelming, but over the course of years I will digest a good share of it, I guess. The book didn't follow the usual '80% comfortingly familiar, 20% excitingly new' paradigm, but on the long run this means more ideas for the campaigns.

My players are ambitious, but not that experienced, so they stick with Core and some extra stuff. Sometimes they rely heavily on guides, not realizing that those were written for Core only (or not much beyond), resulting in less material to deal with for me.


Cyrad wrote:

I never experienced the issue with too many books.

All of the new books encapsulate a concept for specific types of campaigns. You're not going to use the Intrigue book if you're not running a primarily urban campaign. You're not going to use the Horror and Occult books if you're not playing a horror campaign or a campaign that has psychic magic.

That's kind of my issue. Particularly because I use a lot of third party I can't really used everything at once and have to divvy them out campaign by campaign. I have more material than campaigns to use them in.

Its like the announcment of Bestiary 6. I only just got to use one monster from Bestiary 5 and that's because we're playing in outer space. I'm up to my eyeballs in monsters but only so many get a chance to do anything. If I just stopped buying any Pathfinder material (I'm about ready to ditch my subscription soon) and just used the stuff I have I'd be playing Pathfinder until 2030. Or just looking at the APs, we get about two a year plus modules and it takes a year to complete one. And I'm behind because of homebrew campaigns too. I'm pretty much at the point where I'm like, "I'm good. Don't need any more, this will keep me busy for a while."

I don't have an issue with bloat in the sense that 'Ahh the game is too huge!', its more like 'Cool, Horror Adventures came out! Too bad I'm playing Spacefinder, and then we're doing Feudal Japan, then Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Shattered Star again, then Steampunk and then Iron Gods and Legacy of Fire and Mummy's Mask and a Galt Campgain. I guess I'll get to that book in 10 years.'. I feel like I need to cut APs in half just to churn out more adventures with different characters so we can play with it all. Its like a Steam library after a sale.

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