Hi there. I'm going to be trying to convince some friends to join me in a pathfinder campaign sooner or later. I have an idea for a campaign storyline, or at least the start of one, but im more inclined toward a more loose sandboxy game. It would be set in Golarion to dave me the trouble of worldbuilding, but no published modules or APs or anything like that. What i would really love to do is take the PCs backstories and build them into the campaign narrative in a more collaborative storytelling way, encouraging PC interaction and character/relationship development over pure gaming. At least thats the part about RPGs that appeals to me most.
Anywho, im considering trying my hand at GMing this campaign as a PbP first, to get my feet wet as a GM. The advice im looking for as someone who has never GMd is: How much preparation is necessary to run a more open less linear campaign as a PbP? In my experience of PbP so far on these forums, they tend to run at a slow pace, with about a 'turn' a day. I feel this natural pace of PbP will allow me as GM to develop things sort of 'on the fly', or would that be contributing to the lag?
How far in advance do you plan as PbP GM? What aspects of the game take the most planning? (Overall story arcs, dungeons, encounters?)
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There are technically no hurry with PbP, so making stats "on the fly" doesn't really apply quite honestly, since you can take your time to reply to anything from a hour to a couple of hours...
Prep is still prep(it takes awhile but nowadays there are a lot of ready to use npc that you can use for many purposes), but well take your time and make it an enjoyable experience.
Quite honestly one simple thing to keep in mind, players don't see your npc sheet...so quite honestly you could even take a monster and change a thing or two to make different monsters and just change the look. That doesn't take into account all the various templates.
I mostly reserve really unique npc to either the BBEG or one of his very unique lieutenant...if not, I just grab a npc from one of the books and ready to use.
It is my opinion that Paizo has done a good enough job building their world with enough detail to inspire stories, all the while leaving enough space for players to fill in the gaps. I had a basic premise to start with, found a location on Golarion that felt right, did the research which helped to build the backstory and inspires the motivations behind the plot. The structure of the campaign will provide opportunity for PCs to do a but if travelling to other locales, and it is easier for me to pull from something established than making it up myself. Also, the open nature if the content means that the players will also have some familiarity with the world (as would their characters, naturally), and not everything is a surprise or needs to be spelled out for them.