Hello, I am slowly working my way on getting more games of pathfinder in. One of my players was thinking about playing an investigator - and it had me thinking - what are some notes that would be best to have on me so I am not making things up on the spot?
I usually have a list of names, equipment to loot, and some clues for players to find so that I have at least something when someone does something unexpected and I can come up with something fairly logical.
In the instance of Investigator - knowing the feats that interact with hidden rolls or additional information ex. (Eliminate red herrings, That's Odd), and coming up with a list of false info for recall knowledge could be handy.
I'd like input because I also don't want to over prepare and use none of it!
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I think the most useful thing is to make sure you really understand the plot of the adventure you're GMing, whether that's an adventure you wrote yourself or a published one. If you really "get it", then it's also easier to answer unexpected questions, or to know that the room the PCs are in contains an important clue.
A mindset shift that I like is going from "how to I keep the players from guesssing to soon", is to go to "okay, so where are my opportunities to reveal bit by bit what the plot is?"
A mystery that the players never find out about might as well not exist. As a GM, your goal is to create opportunities for the players to find out about what's going on, not to try to prevent them from figuring it out.
When the adventure is finished, players should understand the story behind it. It'd be disappointing to have fought a bunch of monsters and collected loot, but not really understand why it all happened.
So I'd view an investigator character as just one more channel that you as a GM can use to drizzle information onto the players. If they're searching a room, think to yourself, "could there be a clue to the plot here?" and if you come up with one, give it.
One general GMing trick I use is to have a copy of the map where I write which monsters are where so I can more easily see their interactions rather than as a list of spread-out descriptions. I think one could adapt that to an Investigator's playstyle with a "clue map", where you note which rooms, NPCs, loot, et al have connections to others elsewhere. Then you won't default to random "coming up sometime later" clues, but to more topical ones without having to memorize and prep umpteen items. Ex. That's near so & so, so maybe they dropped something or have left footprints or blood spatters from fighting rivals right over there.
So you might draw lines between areas where NPCs wear the same uniforms or have the same commander, another noting an event that occurred at X and who it points to, and clueless areas too, like say a "dangerous creature" only there to highlight the setting, not plot. Then when you need a false lead, you'll also see who or what's disconnected (like said dangerous creature or an ancient temple of no current relevance) and you can tie them in as a reasonable (albeit wrong) subject to investigate.
I have done similar things w/ scenarios w/ lots of RPing, though not on a map, but with summaries like a one-page cheat sheet because flipping through pages exacerbates any issues. And as mentioned, be more than familiar with the story so adlibbing comes from the material more than the ether.
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The tricky part of this is that unless you want it to be obviously false, it's going to be adventure dependent. Like, if you're playing Abomnation Vaults, throwing in notes or information about shady dealings in the Koros island logging industry actually fits with the setting and even though it might have nothing to do with the adventure at all, the players will see it as at least possibly relevant and might actually find it interesting enough to investigate. (And if you use Abomination Vaults Expanded, there's a whole sidequest about that.)
Whereas if you give that same note in Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, what does it have to do with anything?
I find doing this well tends to be context specific so I find it hard to give advice on a generic situation... with one exception. All of my games have an in-world publication called "Divination Daily". It's a tabloid. Canonically, they get their info via divination magic and thus sometimes they only get partial information or mishear things and they run with it anyway.
This gives me a reason to tell the players that rumours around town today are whatever I want, including things that are absolute nonsense... and also things that actually have some truth to them. Like in SoT an article ran about forces gathering in Vidrian to liberate Mizali, which wasn't actually true... but there were some operatives working in Mizali independently from there and it gave me a hook to create a sideplot with Ignaci. The Investigator PC decided to look into this and they were able to seperate fact from fiction after some effort.
Aside from that, it helps to have some names already ready. If you're improving a piece of information, having a list of names to yank one from helps a lot to keep things flowing. You can then write a note in your own GM notes about what you told the PCs and go from there.
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You can then write a note in your own GM notes about what you told the PCs and go from there.
I think that is one of the best ideas.
Yes, prep things before hand - but not detailed prep too far in the future from where the plot currently is. For prep, keep it basic, and keep it somewhat vague. It is more notes for yourself to keep things somewhat consistent overall.
Then when the players ask questions you can create answers fairly easily in the moment.
But write down the answers you gave. That way you can include those details in future prep.
I thought I had nothing to contribute to this thread because my strongest skill in GMing is improvising when the players change the plot. I regularly make things up on the spot. But I can contribute my messy system of taking notes.
I have a freak memory for stories. I remember mathematical theorems by envisioning them as stories, and I am even better at remembering actual stories and gameplay. But before the game starts, I need notes. And after the game ends, I sometimes chronicle their actions to post in the Paizo forums. My notes for my current Strength of Thousands campaign consist of five text files: SoT_npcs, SoT_notes, SoT_classes, RiverIntoDarkness, and gang-backgrounds. This does not include ImpossiblePlaytest and RiskAndRewardPlaytest, which were files for my Runesmith and Daredevil playtests conducted inside my Strength of Thousands campaign.
SoT_npcs contains stat blocks. The adventure path includes stat blocks for unique opponents, but my players like to ally with friendly NPCs, so I stat them out. And sometimes I create a new enemy creature to fill in a gap. For example, the module Hurricane's Howl provided Abendego Brute, Abendego Jailer, Abendego Priest, and Norgorberite Spy for the unnamed Knights of Abendego bandits, but I added Abendego Trainee Trio to represent the low-level Knights of Abendego. They can't all start as creature 8.
SoT_notes is mostly my outlines for changes to the adventure path, several works in progress. It also contains the Discord messages I send out to my players.
SoT_classes refers to classroom instruction, not character classes. The 1st module, Kindled Magic, provided a Life in the Academy system that substitute for the PCs attending actual classes at the Magaambya Academy. My players had more fun attending classes with field trips and studying in the library (the wizard Idris is a studious grind). This meant that I had to write a curriculum. Fortunately, I am a former college professor.
RiverIntoDarkness is the adventures I created by adapting GameMastery Module W2: River into Darkness and Pathfinder Society Scenario #7–24: Dead Man's Debt into class field trips. I have chronicled the River Into Darkness field trips at River Into Darkness Revisited. I am currently working on converting Pathfinder Society Scenario #38: No Plunder, No Pay into a recovery project for the gap between the 3rd and 4th modules.
gang-backgrounds relates to the backstory of the PC Cara'sseth. Before reaching the Magaambya Academy, she used to run with an evil treasure-looting gang. The bard leader of the gang regularly erased Cara's memories so that the innocent young kineticist did not realize she was working with criminals. I decided that the party needs to confront that gang, so I asked Cara's player for details and I filled them out with full stat blocks. The gang is in Jula right now in easy reach of the party, but the party is dealing with the Knights of Abendego in Jula first. I hope the party does not fight the gang, because running a battle with four different NPC stat blocks working as a coordinated team would be at the limits of my abilities.
If I created a new character through improvisation in the middle of a game session, and I suspected that the character could appear again, then I would jot notes in SoT_notes during the session and fill out details in SoT_npcs.
That improvisation requires preparation work, too. I buy the Lost Omens lore books and read up on anything that relates to my current campaign. The Knights of Abendego are allied with two jorogumo from Absolom. I read up on jorogumo in [b]Lost Omens Tian Xia World Guide[/url] and changed their origin to Shenmen for greater roleplaying opportunities. This lead to an improvisation in which the jorogumo challenged the party to a board game contest rather than combat. The party lost, so they switched to entering the Smuggler's Caves by the back entrance rather than the front entrance guarded by the jorogumo. The jorogumo will probably leave Jula peaceably, dismissing the entire Knights of Abendego battle as quaint local unrest.