I've had a longer break from pathfinder and never properly transitionned into 2e and now the parties where I've played other systems are having a GM burnout..so I considered GMing myself, with only one or two scenarios in my resume
So I'd be facing a situation where I'd have probably 3 players new to pathfinder(not to mention new to 2e), myself with a slow thinking issue (thus the need for printed material rather than making something up), also only just reading up on how to even make and play characters in 2e, and very little experience on GMing..and yet needing something potentially more than a one-shot
Biting more than I can chew? Probably
The saviour that comes to my mind are adventure paths, but which one to pick for a good start?
In 1e I read through Legacy of Fire and absolutely loved it, but that's left in 1e.
The party used to do Legend of the Five Rings previously, so I though Season of Ghosts, but I'm getting hints that there's some additional things like reputation with factions and downtime to activities to keep track of? Might not be a good idea if something will require an excel sheet and tons of notes from both me AND the players..though..will it?
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Well, I have a couple of things that you might find helpful.
First off, have you considered the middle ground between a single-session story and a whole adventure path? Paizo also makes what they call (a bit generic..) "Adventures", which take a couple of levels, and each level tends to take 3-ish sessions to play.
One in particular that I can recommend is Rusthenge. It starts at level 1 and shows you a bit about how the game is set up, with the difficulty starting pretty mild but increasing to kind of medium challenging by the end, so you and your players have some time to find your footing.
So, then let's talk a bit more about adventure paths. One of the people on this forum (Tarondor) recently did a giant project to catalog all adventure paths and review the good and less good of them. Of course it's opinion based, but it's thoroughly researched opinion. You can find that here.
Another thing with adventure paths is that they pretty much all of them have a "gimmick". Some extra mechanical part that they use for the unique theme of that adventure path. For example the Strength of Thousands AP is themed around everyone being part of a magic school, so it has some extra mechanics for making sure all the characters get some spellcasting stuff, even if your main class is something like fighter or barbarian. That helps make it so everyone's character fits nicely into the campaign.
Finally, a bit of a bad thing to watch out for. Well not super bad, but something that's useful to know about. A lot of new gamemasters like to pick adventure paths because they want an example of how to run Pathfinder, before trying to make it all up homebrew. And what people often complain about is that the AP isn't completely ready to use 100% directly out of the box. You still need to think about what parts of it you might want to change a bit, or customize to the needs of your gaming group.
For example, the books are written assuming a party with four characters. If your group only has three characters, the adventure as written is going to be really hard. So you have to either make the enemies a bit weaker, or make the characters a bit stronger, to get back to an enjoyable difficulty.
My point with this is: you're gonna have to adjust things a bit, but that's okay. Just look to see what works and what doesn't. Talk with your players about what parts they like and what parts they don't.
Not Kingmaker. It has so much going on that it really is a lot to ask of a new GM (and new players).
Aside from that... what kind of play are you and your players interested in? All APs have combat, but some APs lean more heavily into dungeon crawling and combat as solutions to things. Others have a different vibe and expect you to solve problems other ways more often.
I think some APs are easier than others to get into, but something that helps a ton is if folks are actually invested in it. ie: If your players prefer a dungeon crasher kick the door in style of play, Strength of Thousands is not a good AP because it just doesn't offer much of that, and it also actively wants the players to not view killing as the primary way of solving problems even when you are in combat. It's a good AP, but not for that group. Likewise something like Abomination Vaults and Seven Dooms For Sandpoint are primarily focused on dungeons.
I ask that because it doesn't matter how good an AP is if it's doing things your players aren't interested in. It's a lot easier to learn a game and stay invested if you're interested in the campaign itself. I ran Fists of the Ruby Phoenix for a group of new PF2 players, which as a high level adventure (11-20) isn't making it easy for them. But they were absolutely into the tone and theme and that gave them a reason to deal with high level play.
Tarondor's guide was mentioned, you can find that here. It's definitely helpful to get an idea of what an AP is good or bad at. It's also not gospel and most APs can be fun for the right group. My Extinction Curse group really enjoyed the AP and we fully completed it with a lot of fun despite its issues. It just worked pretty well for us and I didn't have to make many changes, though most of the criticisms I agree with. They just largely didn't matter to us.
I also generally recommend new players do not use Free Archetype. That's not a negative on Free Archetype itself, as I use it fairly frequently. But new players already have a lot going on in terms of what to pick and sticking more archetypes and the rules for taking those is yet another thing, giving you more to pick and more stuff to learn, and more options during game when you're already learning. It's just a lot. It does make a nice thing to add in a later campaign when folks have the basics down and want to build more complicated characters.
If you have a specific kind of campaign you want to run in mind, we can probably recommend a good adventure for it.
Back to front:
why not beginner box? Well perhaps it's a faux impression, but I had a feel like beginner boxes are too..how to call it..boardgamey. The modern consumer, dungeons and dragons kind of thing. I didn't get the impression that those players are the sort
With what I've had to do with that group I think they're much into problem solving with an illusion of a sandbox and some combat topping. I'd be adding a touch of exploration to the mix since they're likely unfamiliar with the setting
But not necessarily dungeon exploration - throwing them into a series of rooms, each a combat encounter or riddle is likely not the way to go with them. Probably won't avoid a few dungeons, but can't have them be a focal point
So..a guide to APs is definitely something I'll be wanting to read through. Thank you all and the author for that
Adventures? Interesting. Earlier days I had the impression those are more of a oneshot thing. Surely not fittable into one session but..enough to build a feel? There's no guide through those is there?
Adventures? Interesting. Earlier days I had the impression those are more of a oneshot thing. Surely not fittable into one session but..enough to build a feel? There's no guide through those is there?
There's a few categories of adventure content Paizo sells:
- Adventure Paths are multi book campaigns and on average in my groups, you're looking at ~12 game nights per book. So these can go on for quite a while, though speed will vary with each group and how much side stuff you do (when my group spends half a session rigging a match for gambling purposes, that's not in the AP). These days they're usually 3 books, earlier ones were 6 books, and there's two outliers (Seven Doom is 2 books in length as 1 book, Season of Ghosts is 4 books where each book is a season.)
A couple have also been reprinted in single hardcover form (Abomination Vaults and Fists of the Ruby Phoenix), and in terms of value for dollar, if you can find one of those you get a ton of adventure for your money.
- Standalone Adventures are like the above, except 1 book long. So they're several game nights. I haven't played very many of these, TBH. The one I did play was Shadows at Sundown, which is a followup to IMO PF1's best adventure path (Curse of the Crimson Throne).
- Scenarios are shorter adventurers and often take ~4 hours, though some are longer than others. These are generally self contained, though are some two-part ones and Pathfinder Society has "metaplot" ones that explore a wider story over multiple scenarios. Though even with those, each scenario is designed to be independently played (like at conventions). So these are good for one longer game night, and characters/players can drop in some nights and not others without disrupting the story. "One-Shots" fall into this length as well.
- Bounties and Quests are even shorter, like 1-2 hours of play.
If you want something to play in a single night but has some meat on it, Scenarios are probably what you're looking for.
With what I've had to do with that group I think they're much into problem solving with an illusion of a sandbox and some combat topping. I'd be adding a touch of exploration to the mix since they're likely unfamiliar with the setting
But not necessarily dungeon exploration - throwing them into a series of rooms, each a combat encounter or riddle is likely not the way to go with them. Probably won't avoid a few dungeons, but can't have them be a focal point
This is roughly how I'd describe my group that really enjoyed Extinction Curse. They spent that one travelling around the Kortos Isles doing stuff in each location, with towns to visit, things to do, and an occasional dungeon here and there (but no really big ones). They were into the circus so I played it up, though another group may want to play it down (one of that APs problems is that the circus is a big part of the story early on and basically disappears later). There's definitely some challenges with running this one, but my experience with it as a GM was quite positive.
Ruby Phoenix also does this, but it starts at level 11 so can be a bigger ask for new folks. But it starts off as hexploration, then has influence, then a big setpiece, and a tournament, of course. But for a martial arts tournament it's not as "direct combat" focused as you might expect and it exercises a lot of different systems. When your group is ready for it, I highly recommend it.