I run a long-standing Lost Lands game that is still going strong. I have a vacancy for a second game I would love to start. I live in San Antonio, have a good-sized front room for six or seven players to sit and enjoy the game. There's enough room and horizontal space for me to set a battle mat down, and for them to flop open a laptop. I have a great wifi set up, that won't be tested by you, your seven phones, and web access, otherwise...
But I want to continue gaming and have another day for this activity. I love to run, I have a lot of figures, a lot of story threads in my head, plus the super-difficult ones that FGG has published to my delight. I think it's time to ask for a Friday night game. I run once every three weeks, due to work. I run for about six or eight hours. I can be convinced that Saturday would be acceptable, too.
Here is some additional information about my campaign. Note, I'm not super excited about the ACG or ARG. I like the Tolkienesque or Barrier Peaks kind of games, though this is not Dwimmermount.
Bruce Lombardo's Deviance's for His Pathfinder Game
For my game, I have few things different that I do in my games, than the 'official' games you find at Pathfinder Society Games. I don't discount the validity of those games, I don't disagree with the mass-appeal of such games. I'm not running for thousands, to keep thousands happy.
For my table, I do a few things that remind players of the days gone by; of magenta boxes and crayons included to get the numbers to reveal themselves better on the new die packaged with the game. I hope you understand and you want to experience the world and work I want to share with you. I would want to evoke a feel of exactly what we felt like when we cracked the box for the first time, way back in the day. I don't want to feel like we're fumbling in the dark for the rules, and such, but I do want that feeling that the table had, during our exploration of the Caves of the Unknown.
I'm not pining for games like this all of the time, but for the game I run to be at a comfortable power level. I do some things which are done quite a bit in the OSR-style of games that gained favor in the early 2010's. I also am willing to concede some things to the newer style of games that Pathfinder RPG has blossomed in to.
I do this, I write this, because I feel that every table does this in some form or fashion. Some use the CRB to excess along with the website (you know which one I'm talking about), others go on urges by the referee or dungeon master, not really stopping to check the rules every five minutes, but willing to 'come on, let's frigging game already!'
I should note, I cuss. Sometimes like a sailor that stubbed his toe, sometimes rarely. Please leave my table if you find yourself offended; I think those folk find fault with everything. I'm out to have a fun time, but I'm not conceding in any mannerisms to make you feel like there's such a thing as a 'safe-space.' You're playing an RPG with a person who likes the style of game that begat this hobby. Don't let this hamstring you from playing my game, or feel like you're forced to play this. Every butt has a seat, and I won't take offense if you decide my game isn't for you. I use the themes (if not the revised rules) from the original games in general; Everything written by the rule writers is merely a guideline. It's a practiced guideline, but a guideline, nonetheless. If something isn't well for the table, we're not using it. I like to live to excess, and I want my games to be fun, but gritty and grimy, as well.
The Set-in-Stone rules that I have for MY table are as follows.
Dice.
Don't touch other people's dice. Mine or your neighbors, you don't do that unless you have permission. That said, ability scores at level one are lower here than other places.
You have the character sheet (or blank spiral) in front of you. If you're playing off a tablet, do me a favor and shoot me emails with it as an enclosure, after every game. I know that sounds like a crazy thing, but the emails actually save your ass when your electronic device gives up the ghost (as it will do at some point).
Character Creation is done for this for your ability scores. You either roll them at my table, or you record a video and get it in front of me. Three die six, as they fall. If you feel like your character isn't good enough for you to roleplay as, I understand...but I notate the number of abortions you have and the amount of negative karma the group will go through will be affected throughout the campaign.
That sounds just absolutely crazy, but I'm not really going to wait four hours for you and your magic die to finally give me the opportunity to run my game. A lot of s##% can go south real fast in a game, and I prefer to enjoy myself as a person who's a fan of the world I run in (Frog God Games, buddy)! I don't think you want to have the misnomer of “I rolled forty characters into the grave before I was happy with my ability score!”
For the Gray-beards in my neck of the woods, I don't use the statistic, Comeliness. While I liked the idea of actually having a statistic of 'how pretty you are,' I wasn't needing it in what I ran. I need players that understand Role-play. Please approach my game like an opportunity to socialize with friends and have fun at the table. We might even have a combat! Between those two things and all the paperwork of having an actual character, I don't need to focus on the fact that Paladins of X sect require “high pretty pretty princess” scores for their Comeliness...I think that's probably not what I want.
You might want to have a yellow stickie available for during game times, instead of erasing things like 'hit points' and such...I'm just trying to help.
Races.
To keep it simple, I allow all races from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. Over the course of time, through the game, one person or the whole party, may open up an opportunity to create a character of a certain type of race, but unless it's CRB, it's locked until then. There are plenty of options for people to create something like what they would want to play in an established gaming world, that has been around for thirty years or more.
From time to time, a narrative reason will open up for something unusual. I don't mind doing that when the story that is being played among us, unfolds in a natural sense. Most players just want to play 'something.' But forcing a race that is all-but-absent from the game at my table...it's not a welcome mindset. There are tables out there that want a party that is more varied than a game of Tales of the Floating Vagabond, but it doesn't fit the theme of the game which I desire to run.
Classes.
You have your ability scores, you have your modifications that your scores are adjusted with. This is where the rubber meets the road, for me. Core Rulebook and Advanced Players Guide are wonderful places to start the game with. Occasionally, I'll allow a non-oriental class or archetype in from Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Combat. I'm not a fan of the traditional Oriental game that pervades many tables throughout d20-style game history. Usually, it's someone from Iowa, writing about Ninjas after reading through the book, Real Ultimate Power.
That said, I do have various cultures in the game world where you will occasionally have access to create a character from that local area. There are alternative archetypes specifically for the Pathfinder-version of the Lost Lands Campaign setting...
It's a narrative, a shared story, and some characters are not available from the first page of the first chapter. Other hardcovers that are published by Paizo are equally great, for their respective games. I usually don't allow them in due to the theme and the scope of the game I have planned. As the games progress, you'll see that I allow some classes to be put in play.
On archetypes, it's a case by case basis. I have a lot higher acceptance for them than I do the majority of the classes that are involved with the last couple of years of the game. The archetypes remind me of the 'kits' that are from the 2nd edition of the game, and they are as useful.
Skills.
So I finally read the Skills and Options chapter from Pathfinder Unchained. There are some parts from this that I'm importing into my game. Here's what is kip.
Background skills are a no-go. While it looks really good, I don't see any reason to implement this. My games do have downtime, and this allows the players to do their studying or keeping abreast of guild affairs, or whatever affiliations they might have, they're participating in those, or studying that knowledge skill to get another rank to max it out.
Grouped skills, again, this is a no-go. There's nothing about these that interest me in my game. There is bookkeeping, and I do appreciate the amount of it for the game I want to run. I'm okay with players not having a character sheet, but use a whole spiral to notate their exploits, their statistics, everything. Don't feel like you're constrained to a single double-sided paper for your alter-ego.
Craft and profession expansion...oh my. Paizo hit pay dirt with this. It gives you the information you need in order to play to your strengths. I used this to a point, up until I read this. Now...I definitely understand the wonderful vague and open demeanor of craft-performance-profession.
Skill Unlocks. These are part-and-parcel of the new Unchained Rogue. For those of you in my game, please be aware, if you buy the feat, you get to reap these rewards. They're worth it.
Variant Multiclassing...nope. If you want to multiclass, you know how it works. And you Dragon Disciple people that whine that I don't allow the bloodrager, get over it. In my opinion, the Dragon Disciple is the weakest PrC that is official. You get dragon at 10th level and there's not much that really changes. I understand, you want to play the game and have the character in your head at our table, but there are better PrC's out there. And I'm thinking really hard on letting go on the replacement DD class that I have been thinking about.
Feats.
There's not too much I'm changing in my game, versus what other games have. The major piece that I'm happy to talk about is this. Since I've had my game going in the 'beta-softcover' stage, I'm of the mindset that keen and Improved Critical should stack. I know, in official games, they don't. This is far from an official game; but it's like every other game, because every group has their quirks. I'm not impressed that you can see characters with a critical range of 8-20 (Justicar of Muir with a rapier or scimitar). Those characters usually put themselves in a melee or a bad spot and get overconfident.
Play smart, please.
Also, the feat, Skill Focus, now also makes the chosen skill a class skill, if it isn't already.
A note about archetypes...Should you choose a archetype that gets rid of something you'd like to have later... Since the start of Third Edition of the World's Most Popular Role-playing Game TM , a feat is something, or defined, that allows you to break the rules 'just a little' for your character.
Say you have a rogue and you go for 'Dagger Master' archetype of rogue. You give up Trapfinding at first level. The one thing that part and parcel is what makes Rogues iconic in this game (and the one special ability that seems to be exchanged for every rogue archetype), is what you commonly give up. And that is pretty much, every archetype. I'm not against the archetypes, in fact, I love them.
But say there's something that you want later. You can burn a feat after the point in your character's existence for a class ability in my game, called 'Night School.'
Night School is a feat where you have to have a prerequisite of having a class ability that you don't have access to due to an archetype. Night School allows you to use 'off camera' time to get access to that feat. The class ability gained back from Night School cannot be part of a chain, like a non-standard, ninth-level fighter trying to get his mobility back by having his Night School cover Armor Mastery 2. A third-level Rogue that is a Dagger Master archetype can use his third-character level feat to take Trapfinding, since it isn't part of a chain.
Once you're finished with filling out the details of your class, I will go through the background generator from Ultimate Campaign. There are other generators available, and I'm pretty impressed with some. That said, I'm not using them for my game.
The APG (Advanced Players Guide) and the website that is universal has rules for our traits. These are in place at every game we have, mainly because they do help with flavor at minimal impact with the mechanics. The traits have traditionally been viewed as half-feats, and when you scramble them down to mechanics, they do exactly that.
In Summary
I hope that this wasn't too long, but after a few decades, I felt like this was something I needed to print for my game. The creators and rule lawyers that have pontificated and argued about this game over the years, they have created a wonderful opportunity for many like us to gather around and enjoy each other's company.