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Generally, the rule of thumb for ANYTHING that you want to take seriously is that to reach the true acceptable "average" productivity or skill at doing X is that it takes about 3 months of doing that thing "full time" and for GMing I'd be generous enough to advise that you can probably count your game-prep hours in addition to running the actual game.
With that in mind, I imagine 20 hours in a week together with running, researching, and preparing for a game you should, in theory, be a competent GM in about 6 months of running games each and every week.
I've been GMIng since PF2 launched; and since most of it was PFS2 I have reported sessions/tables to go off of: 200 tables in just about two years. That includes the PFS credit for a full AoA campaign, three chapters of EC, and two runnings of Fall of Plaguestone. All told its probably over one thousand hours in games, and equal to that in prep time.
I feel able to run games efficiently. Felt that way about 6 months into the process. I was running 6-10 sessions a month back then, between 3 home/lodge sessions a month and 3-7 sessions at conventions.
The convention games helped a lot in that it was re-running scenarios I had already prepped, so I could focus on refreshing any odd rules that came up/questions last time. If I was only running an Adventure Path, and never re-running something I had run before I thought it would have taken longer to feel comfortable.
I think another aspect, in any rules heavy game like PF2,you should never expect to be all-knowing. You should expect players to generally know how their characters' abilities work. If they don't know, its not your fault and shouldn't make you feel like you're not keeping up.
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So what makes PF2 so difficult? Should I be understanding it better by now? How do you keep it straight?
PF2 is really quite easy to "master" for most people, except for when they either put it on a pedestal and don't dare to second guess it, or when they have a bias against the system and don't want to get comfortable with it.
One of the great parts about PF2 is that it's robust. What you've said about pausing every 15 minutes to look up rules leads me to believe you're not fully taking advantage of the system's robustness. It is designed to be easy to make quick, off-the-cuff calls. Once you come to terms with being able to make something up then look up the specific rule later, you'll feel less pressure, and have more fun, which will lead to a feeling of "mastering" the system.
Next time a situation comes up that you don't immediately know the rule for, pull a DC off the chart, make up an action cost, or hand-wave the issue in a way that makes sense. Then look it up later. Chance are that your solution will have been close to the real one, thanks in part to the system's robustness.
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I have a great memory so for me it's unfortunately easier to remember the bulk of pf2e than for a lot of GM's.
That being said, there are some tips I use:
Number 1: fake it till you make it. If there's a rule I don't remember and it would slow the game down to look it up, I don't! I make up something on the spot, and then I double check after the game. If it would have changed the outcome, I apologise to my players and let them know so that they can correct me next time this comes up. Sometimes they even prefer my ruling. The rule of cool is important !
Number2: keep some cheat sheets. The DC by Level tabld is something I can never remember, same thing for the formula costs. So I often keep those tacked somewhere in my notes to be referenced when I need them. Generally, you want cheat sheets for common things that will happen often and are hard to remember by rote.
Number 3: use archives of nethys not the printouts. The printouts are gorgeous, they have that authentic feel and they're great to have and hold... But the editing is terrible and it's almost impossible to find stuff in there. Need a rule lookup on the difference between leap and long jump? Google "pf2e leap nethys" click the link. done! Keep the page open and use the search bar. You'll save a ton of time!
Hope this was helpful!
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One of the things you've neglected to mention is how your players feel about your GMing.
The most important part of GMing, in my opinion, is not rules knowledge, but the ability to create fun for others. Sometimes, it's the case that players can be frustrated when they know the system better than you; sometimes, they're fine with knowing the system better than you; sometimes, they know less and they're okay with it; sometimes, they know less but demand more of you anyway.
If your players are having fun and trust you, making a "field ruling" and looking up the rules after the session ends is a great way to keep the story moving, and focus on Alastar's excellent Point #1.
If your players are distracted by your lack of rules knowledge and or your rules knowledge detracts from their fun (not my favorite type of player, to be frank, but I try not to be too judgemental about it), focus on Alastar's excellent Points #2 and #3.
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The only tip I have is this: one thing I tried to do very early is to memorize the Level-Based DCs and the Simple DCs. If you need to make stuff up, it really helps to have that at the tip of your tongue.
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PF2e specifically? Yes, and it took maybe 3-4 months of one session a week before we moved out of 'learning mode'
One thing that helps is that I have players in my party who don't mind rules and are happy to look them up immediately to help me keep the game going, and that we agreed to actually stop and look up the rules for a while for the explicit purpose of learning the game when it came out.
Couple that with the same people and me enjoying reading up on builds and participating in the community, and I'd say we got really good at the rules six months in, but like I said 3-4 months for learning.
I will say, like I tell my new players, don't treat it as a glass of water to drink, treat it as a lake to swim in. Start with the things you need to know, and then learn the rest as it comes up, don't be afraid to ask players to read the text of the ability so you can learn from them either. Don't be afraid to tell them they don't need to understand spellcasting until they build a character who can cast spells.
The game is big, you aren't going to know every rule off the top of your head either, ever-- so appoint someone to be ready to look something up as you go! especially for the obscure stuff, and make sure your players are on top of their own rules. The rulebooks are REFERENCE BOOKS, so you're meant to look things up.
I bounced off PF1 when I tried to learn the rules.
I heard PF2 was more intuitive, but I bounced off that too.
I can run Savage Worlds and D&D5e without having to look at the book more than once or twice per session.
Maybe your brain is not hard-wired to 'get' PF and you would have greater luck and enjoyment with a different system?
Is there a point where it seemed like you understood it and then it became confusing? That seemed to happen to me and I had to keep going back until it made sense. Like how staves work for example.
It took me longer than I thought to switch from GMing PF1 to PF2. Pf2 felt limiting and strange at first. For some reason it just didn't click and felt I only had a 'surface' understanding of it and PF2 was so different it seemed daunting. I just made up what I thought was correct during the game and then went back later. If a question comes up, which still happens constantly we just check archive of nethys or revisit it later. I'll make it a point to correct the group on how the rule is supposed to work at the beginning of the next session.
I havent had an encyclopedic memory of rules since the DnD 1e days so I don't feel bad about having to look up how stuff works, even the same thing numerous times. I guess we're all old.
At some point PF2 finally clicked and I now I cant imagine playing any other system, its amazing. I Started creating some homebrewed items and working on some subsystems where I never thought I'd be able to understand it like I did after all those years of 3.5/PF1
I can't speak for everyone, as many of us started our "GMing careers" at different points. For myself, a lot of the basics transferred over quite easily, and that's the stuff I would focus on keeping at the front of your mind. Stuff like overcoming obstacles are typically done with a d20+the associated skill versus a DC and the basics of combat. From there knowing what your party is capable is important (no point in focusing on how stances work if your party never use them, no need to worry about crit specialization if your group has no access to it), and gradually add in as they increase in power and specialty.
The next bit, the GMing bit, needs a little story about my experiences. I started back with AD&D, but my first real foray into GMing seriously was 3e D&D and I got a LOT of rules wrong for a few years. I didn't even know about bonuses not stacking and had players wearing multiple rings of protection on top of their armor and... it was a mess. A fun mess that everyone still talks about, but I got the rulings hilariously wrong.
When I came to Pathfinder 1e (after time with both 3.5 and 4e and a few ruleslite systems), I resolved to make less mistakes. What I did was prep my games differently. I looked at the likely encounters of the day and took notes about the interactions and abilities within each encounter. I highlighted sections that didn't click in my mind and made sure to use them when the time came. After a few sessions of this, I no longer had to take as many notes and soon stopped entirely. I ended up handling high-level play in PF1 relatively well but a lot of that feels like it came from my "cram sessions."
So yeah...
1. Focus on the very basics, don't sweat the small stuff.
2. Know your players' characters' abilities.
3. Brush up on individual encounters and learn them well.
Age of Ashes is known to be more challenging than the devs expected it to be. It was (if I recall correctly) the first one that they made. So it probably isn't a problem with your running of the game. A more experienced group of powergamers can run through it fairly well...
For us mere mortals, you might increase the character level by 1 above what the AP recommends.
Have You Been Able to Become Proficient at GMing?
Nope. Still fumbling through as best as I can. I can run the rules just fine. My problem is keeping the story going and the other players engaged.
I've been GMing for so long, I forgot how long it took to become proficient. Once your proficient, you can generally GM between game systems with ease because you learn one important rule: fun is more important than following the rules perfectly.
You don't want to ignore every rule of course. If you forget some rules or make a mistake, I wouldn't worry too much about it if people are having fun.
I learn as much as I need to get going. If I forget something and a player reminds me, I thank them and try to habituate into my rules knowledge. It takes time to incorporate all of the rules into the system remembering everything for yourself and your players in a new system. The more you do it, the better you'll get.
Even after you do it a long time and think you know everything, you might forget something here or there or a player might use something new from a new book that you haven't read or incorporated yet. So you'll learn something new and keep going.
And PF2 has a bunch of rules that interact with another rule spread throughout sections which make it harder to learn well and find. Not to mention all the individual tags on abilities. That might make it a little more difficult. In my opinion, the Core Rulebook could use some clean up and tightening of the rules.
I wouldn't worry too much. Make it fun and you'll be good. PF2 is balanced well enough you can roll with it and should do fine.
I've been GMing games for over 20 years. I still regularly ask my players rules questions.
Though I'm sure it's possible to memorize all the rules, it's not really a practical investment for most people. Even when you know the rules as well as I do, it's easy to forget details in the moment when you have so many other things to track and manage. Also, it's often faster to ask if someone in the group knows it off the top of their heads rather than waste time looking it up during the game.
I have been a Pathfinder GM since March 2011. Also, due to skills gained as a mathematician and an avid board-game player, I learn rules easily. Despite that expertise, today I bit off more than I could chew.
One player had missed a game session due to a family trip (family is more important than games) and I wanted to give her character, the gnome rogue Binny, a little solo mission in today's game session to make up for what she missed. She could have played it safe, but she went for the more daring and adventurous path. The other players chimed in with advice, and we pretending that the advice was from friendly NPCs. The players also gave me creative solutions for when Binny lacked certain skills and I had to agree to workarounds. The risk should have been manageable, except that the dice rolled much worse than average with a few natural 1s. The character was facing nearly-certain death, another player suggested a plausible deus ex machina ("What if the spooked horse ran right past her and she jumped on the runaway horse to escape? She could make an Acrobatics check, one of her best skills."), we went with that, and the player rolled another natural 1. Sigh, a natural 2 would have been enough. We fudged a little and played out the deus ex machina, regardless.
The problem was not just the bad rolls. I had also created the biggest Roll20 map I ever made, 2015 feet by 2015 feet. The large scale threw off our intuition about movement.
The most important part of GMing, in my opinion, is not rules knowledge, but the ability to create fun for others. Sometimes, it's the case that players can be frustrated when they know the system better than you; sometimes, they're fine with knowing the system better than you; sometimes, they know less and they're okay with it; sometimes, they know less but demand more of you anyway.
The players who are my housemates assure me that they thought today's game session was interesting and fun. They liked giving advice to a talented yet inexperienced player and to an experienced yet overwhelmed GM.
So what makes PF2 so difficult? Should I be understanding it better by now? How do you keep it straight?
Pathfinder 2nd Edition is more restrictive than Pathfinder 1st Edition. The designers and we playtesters wanted the player characters to rely on each other. That made a solo mission unexpectedly difficult. ("If you throw the alchemical bomb, then you will probably miss. Bombs are a martial weapon and rogues are not trained in them. Let's figure out a way to set off the bomb without throwing it.") The restrictions make a missing rule as obvious as a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
Furthermore, the monsters are built as strong as the PCs, but PCs are built versatile and Bestiary creatures are built specialized. The PCs have to deliberately exploit their versatility to beat the specialization. Versatility requires knowing lots of rules, while specialization is based on only a few rules.
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I strongly recommend you look at the Matt Colville Youtube "Running the Game" videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 Start at the beginning, then jump around.
His advice is system agnostic. He talks about how to keep things running, how to make it interesting and fun.
I've been playing and DM'ing for over 40 years now and started watching his videos last year and I learned SO much it was amazing. (Would you believe I started before I was born?)
The other pro-tips:
"AND" is more important that "no". The players are wanting to try something that your gut tells you is kind of cheating. Don't say "no" ask them what they want to happen. Assign it a moderate difficulty AND let them try it. I find that what they do doesn't usually have that big an impact. The monsters are there for them to beat anyway.
Their shenanigans "ruined" the encounter you spent all week planning and scheming and building and they completely bypassed everything? Easy: "Congratulations, you have defeated the <insert theBigBad> and you find a <plothook> to <location> where the party will fight <theBigBad's Brother/rival/clone> that and now you use what you built.
Also, put a lot more of the improv work on the players. Often players will ask something like, "Why do we want to go defeat this wizard/help this village/rescue this prince/princess/critter?" Put that right back on them: "That's a great question, why do you?"
"What is the villager's name?" "I don't know, you tell me?"
They explore something you didn't plan, go some route you haven't fleshed out yet. Ask them what they expected to find when then randomly left the path. Take what they tell you AND run with it.
It's crazy how often they completely forgot that they came up with the idea and you just ran with it. They will think you are brilliant.
"We look around for any ruins at the top of the hill." "You don't find ruins, per se, but you do find the entrance to a crypt/cave/portal to the past."
The most important thing is to "hold it lightly" to my opinion. Be willing to create rules on the run or ignore existing ones, and after the session search them to clarify your knowledge.
Furthermore, don't be too attached to your mistakes and encourage you players to learn when to "disconnect" from their PCs due to failure, mistakes, etc. (This can be done by just explaining this philosophy and by recognizing that TTRPGs are a game). This way, if you "wronged" a player's PC by making a false ruling, you both will pass it more politely and easily. As well, don't be afraid to stop a session to correct a significant mistake or ensure things will be resolved well - I once stopped a session for half a hour to let a player who their PC were attacked by the rest of the PCs to decide how they want to reslove the PC vs. PC.
Some may see parts of this prespective wrong. I admit that my preferences and play style don't shy from severly entangling my players' PCs or my PCs in troubles or letting them fail (or even lose). In fact, I much enjoy my PCs consticly being desperate.
Pausing the game every fifteen minutes to look up a rule sounds frustrating. I suggest keeping Easy Library open, and use it frequently. When a player of mine does something I immediately look it up in Easy Tools, just so I have my own reference available in case there is any doubt about how it works. Do it often enough and you'll stop doing it for the most common actions/feats/spells.
Do you use a GM screen? Even if you play online, it is handy to have to hand as it contains many charts a GM needs during a game.
That's good advice. But I'm afraid that my "rule of cool" and on the fly rules adjuctations are too tough - I had three TPKs pretty close together. At least some of that was because I don't get the overall feel of the system.
If the issue is survivability in combat, particularly in Age of Ashes, I would recommend applying the “weak” adjustment to monsters for a bit.
You say that you feel more than proficient with PF1 and with 5e, so I have to ask - what specifically do you feel you aren’t grasping about PF2 beyond rules memorization?
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That's good advice. But I'm afraid that my "rule of cool" and on the fly rules adjuctations are too tough - I had three TPKs pretty close together. At least some of that was because I don't get the overall feel of the system.If the issue is survivability in combat, particularly in Age of Ashes, I would recommend applying the “weak” adjustment to monsters for a bit.
You say that you feel more than proficient with PF1 and with 5e, so I have to ask - what specifically do you feel you aren’t grasping about PF2 beyond rules memorization?
You can also give the players an extra level.
Giving your players an extra level is sort of bypassing the expectations and assumptions of encounter design in the system by allowing your players to face what’s there a little more empowered than they were. It’s a solution to being overpowered that is not unique to PF2 and while a fine recommendation doesn’t necessarily strengthen ones perceived proficiency running PF2. Using the Weak template engages with those expectations and assumptions directly and helps to reinforce some of the numerical conceits of the game.
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And it's embarrassing that I still have to regularly rely on my players to help me get the rules straight, pausing the game at least every 15 minutes to look up an obscure rule - and we're only 4th level. I don't feel confident to make rulings, design encounters. In fact, I feel barely functional when trying to run a published adventure exactly as written.
Here's something I realized only recently. We expect the GM to know the rules perfectly. Because he knows all the rules he can catch out any players trying any funny business. If the players were to expose him making a mistake, his authority would be shattered.
Sounds a bit.. childish right? But it's an unconscious bias that I think is more common than you'd like. Quite often the GM is also the person who first proposed playing the game, teaching the other (children) how it goes, being a bit of a gatekeeper of the rules.
This is not a healthy way of thinking, it doesn't make us happy. It's good for the GM to have a solid grasp of the rules; but your friends aren't going to stop being your friends or fire you as GM if you make an honest mistake. Things get more strained with dishonest mistakes, such as when you double down and insist that you were right all along unless presented with ironclad proof. So you asking your players when you're not sure - that's actually a really healthy thing to do. You don't need to be embarrassed.
That's good advice. But I'm afraid that my "rule of cool" and on the fly rules adjuctations are too tough - I had three TPKs pretty close together. At least some of that was because I don't get the overall feel of the system.
You're running Age of Ashes and that AP is a bit rough. Especially in the early books there are some encounters that are just overtuned. The usual reason given for this is that the game was new when it was being written. I'm not entirely convinced, because you run into rough scenes in later APs too. I think some Paizo writers just like "hard" adventures. Personally I do like clever challenges, but just being faces with steep uphill enemy stats isn't something I find a fun kind of hard. I wouldn't think less of anyone else saying "I want this AP to be just a degree easier". You can give the players an extra level, or a free archetype, or make some monsters Weak.
I think making monsters Weak is the mildest solution. With a little practice you can easily apply Weak to a monster on the fly, when you notice that it's overtuned.
As an exemple, I have been dreaming for years to pull off a lantern archon fusion (9 lantern archons merge to become a legion archon).
It happened in combat and the players (6 level 3 PC's ) didnt manage to stop the archons from merging.
Now this is a party level +4 encounter, so technically a hard to severe encounter for this group.
But after the Legion archons first 3 action heal burst got almost the entire party to half hp or worse (group of dhampirs) I slapped the weak template on him on the fly.
Two pcs got put to the mat at dying 3 nonetheless (good rolls and archons are tough overall) but it was not a tpk because of that.
You gotta judge, analyse and trust your gut.
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The system proficiency is stuff like: saves vs certain effects are considered one step better if they are of lower level than the party, rogues can't be flanked except from creatures a certain level above them, haunts and traps have triggers/disables/routines that are all very unique, crafting, invisibility/hidden/undetected, some conditions last until saves while others go away after a round, automatically heightening spells, remembering different weapon traits, special maneuvers (Intimidation, Shove, Trip, Grapple, Feint), all the variety of spells (including different effects based on different numbers of actions/degrees of success), DCs for skill checks and the number of actions to perform them, identifying monsters and how much information to give, when to let characters use different skills to roll Initiative.
Then there's the actual completely different way of challenging the party. Largely the system allows for complete heals after each combat, so each combat feels like there's no weight to it. Use the highly effective cantrips and you can go all day, with character death being the only way to weaken the party.
Okay, I can see you're feeling a bit overwhelmed here, but we can actually split this up into a couple of categories of things that give you difficulty.
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First, there is information you need in the middle of the game that you haven't memorized. I certainly don't want to tell you to memorize the entire book, it's 650 pages, that would be absurd. And there's more books after that. But you need quick access to the stuff that's likely to come up during the next game session. So we're talking session prep here.
You mention stuff like:
- some rogues being hard to flank (really, only if they have that ability listed in their stat block)
- being surprised by the Incapacitation trait
- hazard/trap/haunt triggers and disabling conditions
- weapon traits
- conditions and how to get rid of them
- spell effects
These are all things that belong under session prep. When you're getting ready to run a session you can go through all the statblocks of your monsters and hazards with a highlighter and a pen. (Or the PDF editing equivalent.) Highlight everything that you need to be alert about during the game. With the pen, write in a reminder about what things do that you don't know by heart. For example, I have trouble remembering what the Sweep and Backswing and Forceful weapon traits do, so if an NPC has such a weapon, I'd just write in the margin what it does. For a haunt where it's important that I trigger it at the right moment, I'll use the marker to highlight that trigger condition. If an ability has the Incapacitation trait (or another important trait), I highlight it.
You basically want to go through everything in the statblocks that looks unfamiliar to you and look it up. That's intense at first, but it gets easier because a lot of elements get re-used in later monsters. A handful of weapon traits do most of the work (agile, reach, thrown..) and a handful of conditions are responsible for 80% of the green-faced adventurers (sickened, frightened, drained..)
The GM screen does provide quick reference for a lot of these (weapon traits, conditions, common other traits).
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Second, there are some things that you run into which are more about first understanding some broad rules, after which understanding specific effects that interact with them becomes much easier.
Invisibility/hidden/undetected is an example of this. If the first time you try to use these rules is when someone casts Invisibility, it's going to be confusing. But if you first read the rules for perception & senses, states of awareness, and the stealth skill, then the rules for invisibility are actually quite obvious.
DCs for skill checks and identifying monsters are easier to understand if you've first read the general rules for setting DCs in the GM chapter. As it turns out a handful of skill checks take care of the majority of cases; Demoralize happens much more often than Squeeze. You don't need to memorize the obscure ones, you only need to know they exist and if they come up, then you look them up. The common ones you'll probably know by heart after a while because you or the players are using them a lot.
Which spells heighten automatically and which ones don't also becomes more obvious after reading the magic chapter as a whole. (Basically: spells that don't come from leveled slots, like cantrips and focus spells, auto-heighten.)
Crafting is a bit of a weird subsystem of its own, but a key aspect is that it's a downtime thing. It takes days to craft something in a nice workshop; it's not happening mid-combat in the dungeon. So it's totally fine to say to your players "well I have to look up how that would work, I'll send it to you by email before next session". Don't make things harder for yourself than they need to be - you don't need to know this on the spot.
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Thirdly, some things really just take experience. Like getting a feeling for when doing a combat maneuver is a good idea. You can do some preparation, like paying attention to which monsters have talent (read: high Athletics/Deception/Intimidation) and taking notice when you see that an NPC has a weapon with for example the Trip trait. But a lot of this really is about playing the game and getting a feel for what works. Learning that is part of the game; don't think that you're not really playing the game until you're a master. The learning curve is part of the experience, not something that's supposed to happen before you're allowed to even play.
PFS is good for this. You can get inspiration by seeing other people pull of a trick that you'd never thought of.
It's also a major part of the players' learning curve: going from bumbling newbies each desperately trying to do their own combat loop, to being a well-oiled cooperative machine that's tearing the enemy apart. PF2 has very deep tactical teamwork and getting better and better at it is part of playing the game.
Also we have to discussed system but if you're running virtual TTRPG, roll20 is not very good..
Foundry VTT has the best support by far for pf2e, with every condition being easily applicable, trackable and consistently stackable (or not).
Not to mention some absolutely beautiful person created the pdf converter where if you port in your appropriately purchased paizo pdf through his mod, it'll autopopulate everything.
Every map will be extracted and walls input properly.
Every creature will be added to the actors directory with correct stats and mods (you do need to put in artwork)
Every image will be extracted.
Every DM note will be extracted and each room in a dungeon has an easily accessible gm note.
Plus no monthly subscription, you pay once.
For me PF2 was very easy I was proficient after just a session or two. Although to my credit I was already using Pathfinder Unchained Action economy prior to 2E so I felt like I was already playing 2E almost.
The only parts of the system I am not super familiar with are crafting and I don't have a lot of the magic items memorized as I haven't run 2E higher 5th level.
I have Foundry and have imported the PDFs successfully. My primary issue is that I don't have confidence in teaching the UI or trusting my abilities to set up a server. Using a professional server is right back to paying subscriptions. Plus, I have all of the second book put into Roll20 already.Also we have to discussed system but if you're running virtual TTRPG, roll20 is not very good..
Foundry VTT has the best support by far for pf2e, with every condition being easily applicable, trackable and consistently stackable (or not).
Not to mention some absolutely beautiful person created the pdf converter where if you port in your appropriately purchased paizo pdf through his mod, it'll autopopulate everything.
Every map will be extracted and walls input properly.
Every creature will be added to the actors directory with correct stats and mods (you do need to put in artwork)
Every image will be extracted.
Every DM note will be extracted and each room in a dungeon has an easily accessible gm note.Plus no monthly subscription, you pay once.
Setting up the server IS really annoying if you aren't very techy, but you only need to do it once unless you move or replace your internet provider.
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A lot of good answers up thread. I only wanted to add that even a Highly experienced GM should strive to get better each session. I always try to get an "after session" Q&A with my players in, asking what I did that worked best, and what fell flat more importantly, so that I can work on bettering their experience. Because that is really the whole point of GMing imo.
I wouldn't say that I am a master GM or anything like that, but the feedback that I try to get each session does inform the way that I GM in the future. This also helps you to understand the exact sort of experience that your players are looking for, and what they would like to see as the game progresses. Think of it like a little session 0 after each game day. I have even rewritten campaigns based on player feedback, because I found that they wanted to go a different direction than I had originally planned.
Feedback, positive and negative alike, is the key to really becoming proficient at any complex task like running a game.
Edit: This is also the time that I try to bring back up sticky rules issues and work through them with the players. In the past I have had sessions (and in one bad case an entire campaign) completely derailed by arguments about the specifics of the rules. I have learned that it is best to make your best decision at the time and roll with it, even if you aren't 100% certain that you are following the rules to the letter. That is Far better than derailing the game for 15 or more minutes to parse through section after section of rules text, just to come back and realize that your players have now largely checked out of the game, and aren't in the head space they were in before the argument. Really wrecks the flow of the game.
I have Foundry and have imported the PDFs successfully. My primary issue is that I don't have confidence in teaching the UI or trusting my abilities to set up a server. Using a professional server is right back to paying subscriptions. Plus, I have all of the second book put into Roll20 already.Also we have to discussed system but if you're running virtual TTRPG, roll20 is not very good..
Foundry VTT has the best support by far for pf2e, with every condition being easily applicable, trackable and consistently stackable (or not).
Not to mention some absolutely beautiful person created the pdf converter where if you port in your appropriately purchased paizo pdf through his mod, it'll autopopulate everything.
Every map will be extracted and walls input properly.
Every creature will be added to the actors directory with correct stats and mods (you do need to put in artwork)
Every image will be extracted.
Every DM note will be extracted and each room in a dungeon has an easily accessible gm note.Plus no monthly subscription, you pay once.
I know setting up the server can be intimidating depending on your level of experience. Here are step-by-step instructions that should help. I followed these and now have an always online free server for my games.