I had, until recently taken a break from TTRPGs, and I haven’t GMed a game for even longer.
However, despite all the everything going on, my mental state has somehow slightly improved, and now I’m ready to jump back on the proverbial horse.
Pathfinder 2E has been like a favorite suit to me; I really love it, but I haven’t had many opportunities to use it, in fact, I haven’t never gotten around to GMing it (only playing it), but now I’m ready to take the plunge and I have four people who have agreed to follow down after me.
The problem is, the amount of experience my courageous players have with the game is, on average, low. Two I’m not that worried about; one has a fair amount of experience with the system and the other, though a novice, I have played other TTRPGs with and know they are an intelligent and attentive player, so they should grasp the rules quickly.
Another has I’ve also played RPGs with before, and though they try there best, they regularly forget rules and ask to be reminded. The last one has had 0 experience with TTRPGs, but they are my sister and I know they are capable and I can’t stress for how long I’ve wanted them to try RPGs, because I’ve thought they would love them.
My current plan to help them get there feet wet is with a short adventure with pregenerated characters; The Great Puppet Heist. In addition to introducing the to most of the P2E mechanics, it will introduce everyone to each other. Then after the adventure, assuming none of them were completely scared off from the system, I will give the group the choice of a few APs and see what they what piques there interest.
Then the next week, I’ll have everyone to sit down for a session 0; we’ll set up the ground rules and everyone will make there characters together. Then, the next week we will begin our full campaign.
So, I didn’t just make this post as a diary entry, but to get some tips of advice.
Are there any good resources that I could share with my players to help them understand the rules without overwhelming them?
Does my strategy seem to have merit, or should I rethink my approach?
What APs would be a good choice to offer as possibilities to my players? I’m okay with 1st edition Adventure Paths as long as there are good tools to convert them to 2E.
Some of the one’s I was looking at were:
1. Curse of the Crimson Throne
2. Mummy’s Mask
3. Abomination Vaults
4. Strength of Thousands
5. Season of Ghosts
I would appreciate any replies and I thank you if you read this far.
The beginners box is a pretty good introductory adventure to the rules and such. The Great Puppet Heist should also work for that, though, as the free RPG day adventures are meant for new players.
If your players like videos, there's some new player videos on Youtube. I don't know how most of them are because I haven't watched them, but I know NoNat1s is pretty easy to listen to. He does occasionally get stuff wrong, but it's not a big deal at this point.
New players can feel like there's a lot of rules, and there is. But they don't need to know most of them. Like if you're playing a Fighter, you don't need to know how spellcasting works. You need to know that spells usually provoke Reactive Strike, and that's it. There's a lot of the rulebook the just don't need to look at to start. They need to know about actions, MAP, how attacks work, and what their skills do. Thinning it down makes it a lot more easily digestable.
A reference card helps a lot. I like to make an index card with the key actions listed that the player will do most often, so they can look at that to get a quick idea of what they can do. A bigger version of this is to create an index card per action which can also explain the action on it, but personally I use the single card.
And of course that if they have an idea to improvise use of a skill, to speak it up! Those creative moments are some of the best ones.
One key piece of advice I will give is to stay away from variant rules at first. People might tell you that every game should use free archetype, ancestry paragon, and a bunch of other stuff. Don't do that. Most of it adds more "stuff" and new players already have a lot of things to pick and learn to use. You can add variants and house rules later as you learn the game and decide what things you want to change.
Aside from that, it also depends on how strict your group is in terms of the rules. I have two groups, and one wants a game that adheres pretty closely to the rulebook. The other is more vibes based. Unsurprisingly the second group doesn't know the rules as well as the first group, but as long as they understand their own character that's really all that matters to them. I just adjudicate whatever makes sense, the game moves, and everyone's happy.
In terms of APs... don't start with a conversion unless that conversion is actually complete. A lot of them are "mostly done" and you'll run into places where its not. Some of the higher rated PF2 APs are a good place to start. Season of Ghosts definitely qualifies. It's also relatively easy in terms of its combat difficulty and the plot is interesting.
I'm running Abomination Vaults now and it has some pretty difficult fights for a group of 4. It's also very dungeon heavy unless you work to expand on the town (Abomination Vaults Expanded has lots of resources to add more to Otari). If the group really likes dungeon crawls then it's a good pick, but do be careful of the nastier battles. Giving out some free relevant loot like a ghost touch rune early on helps a lot, and also shows them the kind of items they should be looking for. All that said, Curse of the Crimson Throne is awesome and if you're comfortable dealing with the conversion, then keep it as an option.
Speaking of items: they'll need some guidance there. There are a LOT of items and finding the relevant ones is tricky. Weapon/armor runes, skill boosting items, and healing/recovery consumables are all handy early on. Once they get a feel for it you can take the guardrails off there, but steering early loot towards things that are actively useful will help them vs giving out a bunch of talismans that they'll forget they have.