New GM advice needed.


Advice


So I'm a member of my school's gaming guild and I want to play pf there and there is no one that wants to be a gm. So I will have to be it if there will be any pf there.

Right now I'm looking at running crypt of the everflame. It looks interesting and has 4.5 stars and was recommended a few days ago by someone in the forum.

Information about potential players. I don't have any players that I know will play right now. But I think 3-5 will be and I will ask closer to the date to see how many people are interested. Also, all players would be college students.

I'm thinking of playing with some of my house rules and optional systems we use in our home games. But I don't know if it's a good idea. For example, I would like to use revised action economy.

I will create pregen characters or modify pregens that already exist, so no one needs to create one for them selfs.

Preparations that I have done.
I have drawn out the 2 maps of the crypt onto a flip mat that I will cover with something if I feel like it's important.

I have read throw the adventure once.

Preparations that I'm thinking of doing.
Pre-record some of the text boxes with descriptions so I can play them instead of reading them out loud. I'm dyslexic and I think it could have trouble reading stuff during play. I will probably have my laptop and my iPad at the table.

Print out the map and so I can split it in the number of players that will play during the game at the table.

I will pick out all monsters in the adventures from the pawn boxes so I have them ready to use.

I will bring a lot of dice and condition cards to help with the game.

Anything ells that I should prepare with?

any tips on how to run it or anything I should think about?

any tips for a dyslectic GM. I have text to speech but I don't what to use that during the game. or at least not so the players can hear it.

Edit
Forgot one thing. Is there any tool that i can use to have characters sheets with ability printed out on them. Or will I have to do stuff like that my self or people could use their phones to read what things do at 20pfsrd.com


For the last item: ironically enough, over at Dyslexic Character Sheets they have really great printable sheets for all the main classes, and a few archetypes. If you're building the iconics, that'll work great to display class abilities.


thanks, i will take a closer look at them.

looks like it's not showing rules text for stuff but they still might be good.

I could make google docs for each pregen character with the rules that people can read on there phones and stuff.


do anyone else have some advice?


It sounds like you’re already trying to have as much ready in advance as possible.
You could try to distribute the pregen character sheets ahead of time so players can study them.
When you all sit down to play start with saying, “We are all new to this system so there will be mistakes on both sides. I am willing to admit my mistakes and be creative in fixing them. Let’s have fun.”
Then start.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

If it's for newbies or practically newbies, I would stick to spontaneous casters with known spells that will help with the specific scenario you are planning on running, and also use classes with lots of skill points, since newbies tend to try to do lots of fun things like "Can I climb that tree and jump on its head?" and "Can I hide under the stairs and reach through and trip them?" and "Can I search for tracks?" and "Can I try to scare them?" etc. etc.

It sounds like you're doing lots of good prep work. :-D

Also, say "Yes" or "Yes, but..." instead of "No."

Rangers are really great intro classes. Sorcerers and Oracles too.

If no one is a healer, drop some extra potions of cure light wounds.

For boss fights, include some minions to balance out the action economy between the PCs and NPCs.


Scrap paper or note cards and extra pencils/erasers.

Handy advice for anyone handing out pregens - give options. Have more pregens than players so the last one to choose still has plenty of choice.
I would recommend a session 0 - just to help familiarize players with the world, lore, basic rulesets, and roleplay aspects of pathfinder.

Session 0:
- Determine the game tone (Silly, serious, hardcore combat, roleplay heavy, survivalist/realist or hand wave the details, etc).
- Lay out houserules (More for experienced players than anything) and table rules (food/drinks, electronics, Out of character conversations, spectators allowed or not, turn etiquette, determine personal gaming requirements for players, etc).
- Class/Character/Detail selection.
- Set up the world, history, backstory of Pathfinder, and your personal adventure setting. New players really seem to like having a world they can leap into for ideas, and this lets them feel their character is part of a larger world. It makes them seem more real I find IMHO.
- Set up roleplay dynamics, and let players become comfortable with their characters and with roleplaying in general so they don't meet as strangers in a tavern day 1.
- Help familiarize the players with the system, let them ask questions about stats, skills, actions, spells, items, conditions, AC vs touch vs Flat footed, movement, combat angles/ranges, etc. It doesn't have to be much, but every bit helps speed up day 1.
- I usually like to end with some combat just to showcase the system. It could be tied into the party backstory, or an irrelevant combat vs some dire rats.

This is more generalized advice but always good, I would say prepare some backup random NPC's, and starter random encounters just in case. This really depends on your ability to improvise and your system familiarity (it sounds like you have some experience already). I personally like being able to go to my list and pull out Bandit encounter 1 or social road encounter 4, with some names, loot, and a map layout ready, it speeds me up as GM.


I heavily agree with Guardianlord about the importance of a session 0.


The pregens are Barbarian dwarf, Sorcerer gnome, Rogue Tengu, Ranger Human, Witch half-orc and an Alchemist Elf. The witch is the most complex one there but i think it will work well.

I will print out this help document. It's the first draft so it's not finalized yet. From it, you can see that I give players some bonus feats that I think every character should have. Power attack and combat expertise for example.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iFePDBqN6luKAsJS4sO2GQk__YlyF2_kf9OhGX5 Rby8/edit?usp=sharing
I think the longest will be 2 pages.

I will definitely mention that I'm new to this in some form.

If I find anyone interested before the game date I will let them pick a pregen then so they can get familiarised with it if they want to.

I have 3 different casters. Sorcerer, Witch, and Alchemist. So there is some variance and I have picked spells that I think will be useful.

I will try to remember saying "yes but" instead of "no" when I can do that.

Will definitely drop extra healing potions if needed.

the scenario is premade so I don't want to change to mutch. Will add more enemies if there are more then 4 players and they kill them too quickly.

I will use scrap paper to make notes during the game and I will have Some npc names city's and stuff like that on a paper to so I don't need to look stuff up.

I don't think we will be able to have a session 0 and the scenario is pre-created so some of those things would not apply. I will definitely explain how the game works and let them ask questions before the game starts and during the game.

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