[Pathfinder] New DM needs some tips.

[Drake Reeves]

Hey all,

So I am not new to Tabletop RPGS, and neither is my play group. However, are normal DM is greatly out of practice and has no motivation to manage and create campaigns, so I have stepped up and decided I will try my hand at creating and running a campaign.

Heres the issue. I have no flipping Idea what to do, how to do it, or how to ensure things run smoothly. I have always been a PC, and although my mind is always swimming with fragments of ideas and wonders I really need some tips or guidance on how to get stuff running.

If any veteran DM's want to give me any tips on how to run a smooth adventure in pathfinder in general I'd love the help. Also, If anyone would like to help me fletch out a plot, I'd love the help! I know that is a broad statement, and I will be posting some ideas in the next day or so to build off of.

Thanks guys.

[Yora]

The best thing to do is to start small with simple ambitions. 3 year, 20 level, world-spanning, mystery-campagins sound great, but they are really difficult to pull off well.
Instead I would strongly advice on starting with a series of self-contained adventures. One central quest for two or three sessions that has a clear beginning and end. And then you follow up with another one, for which you can sometimes include people the PCs have got to know or places they have been to or heard about. And for a completely new GM, I would start with one or two really simple dungeon crawls of going in, fighting what gets in their way or finding ways around it, finding what they are looking for, and making it back to the town. Just learning how to control simple NPCs and monsters in combat is enough of a challenge at first.

For that, I would suggest to get together with the players and come up with a starting point for the campaign. What always works is to have a town where mercenaries are waiting for people to hire them. But that may not always be to everyones liking, so there are some other things they can do as well.
One thing that is the default start for the setting I am working on, is that the PCs are warriors or shamans of a village in the service of the chief. As such, it's their job to protect the village and its people and you pretty much can start almost every imaginable quest from there. If something has been stolen, someone is missing, a healer needs something for a cure, monsters have set up camp nearby, or an unknown ruin has been found, it always makes perfect sense that the chief sends some of his warriors to deal with it.
Or alternatively, the PCs are all members of a temple, being priests, guards, scholars, and scouts for a templar order.
If it is the PCs job to work as a team to solve dangerous problems on order of a Lord of superior officer, you can make almost everything work without it appearing forced.

Personally, I would start at 1st level, but 2nd or even 3rd could also work if that is prefered. But the d20 system is complicated enough as it is, and it's a really good idea to start running games on levels where there are still not many options and variables to consider.

And a generic tip: When things don't turn out as plannes, feel free to adjust things on the fly. If you intended for an enemy to be a tough fight but easily defeated, yet the PCs are short of death and the enemy still has 30 of his 70 hit points left, just adjust his hit points down to 50, which leaves him with only 10. Or alternatively, if you had prepared a wizard with some really cool spells but it seems likely that those would instantly end the battle in his favor, just not use the spell as if he had never prepared it. Or if you roll 8d6 for a fireball and get five sixes, two fives, and one four, there's no problem in telling the players that fire damage is is 28 instead of 44. Simply don't tell them and nobody will know. It's an exception of course when the focus of the game is not so much on advancing a plot but more on having lethal and unpredictable fights, then the players surely wouldn't want that.
But a simple truth is that in most games, it really is all about making it a great adventure. And when an unlucky roll of the dice would make an exciting adventure into a bland one, by having some PCs die from random chance or cutting a great adventure short because one NPC rolled a 1 on his saving throw, then override the dice and let the more fun and interesting thing happen anyway.

[Deathkeeper]

If you really just want to practice a bit, you could try running one of the Paizo adventure modules before your real campaign just so you can get some practice running things without needing to start writing just yet. Otherwise, I agree with most said above.

[Banjax]

I've been in your position having gone from player to GM just a few months ago, here's a few of the things I've learned so far.

Monster Health
Rather than just using the number in the book just make a note of the range that that monster's health could be, I normally start mine at the average health and extend it up to the maximum that its hit die would allow, that way if the party is carving its way through your monsters like butter you can extend the fight by having them not all drop down dead at exactly 56hp.

Names
Name everything, if somebody makes an offhand comment that they come from a village half a days walk away expect the players to ask what its called which leads me on to

Lists of Names
I ran afoul of this one just last night when I carefully prepared two people for my group to meet to get some information from, to my horror they decided they didn't want to talk to either of them they thought they would wander round and see who else was around and I had to scramble to come up with names for people

Other than that I'll just reiterate what's already been said;
Keep it small (I didn't and I'm regretting it slightly) and be prepared for your players to do the last thing you'd expect and ignore all your carefully baited plot-hooks (you can't really plan for this unless you plot everything down to minute detail so its more a case of be prepared to roll with the punches)

[ImpieBA]

There's some really cool suggestions here, and I definitely agree with the module idea for practice. When I did my first session, I just had the party meet during a big celebration festival of sorts that was interrupted by zombies and then had a wight waiting for them at the end, along with a glowing purple rock that I had keep appearing throughout the campaign. The set up worked well for my group. Unintelligent undead, so I didn't have to worry about strategies and evil banter on my first session, he rock gave them a plot hook that I followed up on, and the carnival gave them some rp time for their characters to bond and talk. Maybe something similar would work for you?

My second thoughts are to just make sure that everyone gets to play their roles. If someone wants to play the skillful rogue use lots of traps or skill checks in areas to make them shine. If your spellcaster is an illusionist that excludes evocation and transmutation, give some guys weak will saves and let his imagination flow with his illusions. And be prepared for things there are no rules on. Prestidigitation can't hurt you, but it can make a pound of paper birds fly around. If the pcs are being chased by zombies, a faintly glowing, vaguely humaniod shape following ten feet behind the group could make for a more interesting target.

If you want someone to bounce plot ideas off of, I'm always open. Just send me a pm and we can talk about stuff like that, if you want.

[DrDeth]

Repeating advice I have given before:

OK, guys, I have been DMing since 1974 or so, I have a few suggestions, they apply most to newer DMs.

Puzzles, riddles? Sure, go for it. Let the players have fun trying to figure them out or guess. But do remember that a player that isn’t so hot at this may be playing a Riddlemaster bardic genius. So, after they don’t get it on their own, let them get HINTS by making skill or INT checks.

Loot? Players love loot, but you don’t want to be Monty Haul. New DMs- use the WBL tables, but be a little more generous, remember that you can go one level above without breaking the game. So, with 5th level PC’s they can have up to 16K gps each. Err on the side of being generous, but don’t overdo it. Throw in some cool sounding loot once in a while like a “delicate hand carved ivory statue, worth 120gps”. (in the back of some older sourcebooks they have tables of this stuff) and make up a few fun but mostly useless in combat magic items like a “Toy song bird that sings along with you, adding +1 to Perform checks”. Never hand out a macguffin that they will NEED several games from now without making it real obvious.

Starting stats? Again err on the side of being generous. If the last DM had a 15 pt buy, try a modest increase to a 20 pt buy. Don’t go to “roll 6d6 keep the lowest 4, roll a dozen times, pick the best set”.

Source books- here’s where you should be conservative. Start with the Core & APG only.

DMPC’s- as in a NPC that you run, not the players. DON’T. Yes, some few experienced DMs can pull these off. You are not experienced. Don’t.

Evil games, evil PCs or CN sociopath PC’s: at some point in time, experienced mature players/DMs will want to give this a try as a change of pace. You’re not experienced. Don’t. Same with PvP. Ask the players to come up with a background which includes why they are together as a team, or suggest a reason. Just tell them “Hey guys, I want to run a mature heroic campaign here, none of that stuff. I can’t have fun too if you guys do that sort of stuff in this campaign. Maybe later in another game, OK?”

Pre-gen PC’s. Never. Do use modules, but change things up a bit.

Railroading. Yes, OK, within limits. Make sure you allow the players to “stop the train” to get off and visit a ‘whistle stop” etc. Read “DM of the Rings” Don’t be that DM.

Table time- make sure every PC has a chance to shine at least once a nite.

Splitting the party while adventuring; half the fun for the players, double the work for you. Don’t.

Lastly- have fun!

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I see lots of good advice, but I have to disagree with the HP/dice fudging. In my experience, DMs overestimate their own fibbing ability; nothing kills the tension in combat more than knowing that you're going to "just barely win," regardless of what the dice say or what the characters do. Also, one of the most important things in an RPG is trust between the people at the table, and it's hard to foster that trust when you, the DM, are misleading and/or lying to your players*.

So if you're thinking of throwing some random bandits at the group, and consider the contingency "well, if the players are doing too well I'll just give the bandits more hit points," maybe you don't need to roll out that encounter at all. If you really don't want the rules to get in the way of a good story, that's fine; just don't waste everyone's time pretending to use them. Put down the dice and narrate the encounter with the help of your players. A little free-form RP combat can add an interesting wrinkle to a game of D&D, and you don't risk having any "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" moments.

*Of course, sometimes the players and DM all understand that the DM fudges, but that still leaves the problem of zero tension.

[Banjax]

The reason I like ranges of HP is that yes while it might smack a little of GM desperation to either challenge a group or keep them alive on the other hand...

It adds a little extra touch of realism, not every bandit is going to die from the same number of wounds and it helps prevent metagaming as they can't think 'i'm going to do 20 pts of dmg and that bandit has already lost 28 hp which will kill it nicely without going over'. Why shouldn't monsters be like players with variable HP scores?

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

The reason I like ranges of HP is that yes while it might smack a little of GM desperation to either challenge a group or keep them alive on the other hand...

It adds a little extra touch of realism, not every bandit is going to die from the same number of wounds and it helps prevent metagaming as they can't think 'i'm going to do 20 pts of dmg and that bandit has already lost 28 hp which will kill it nicely without going over'. Why shouldn't monsters be like players with variable HP scores?You can always roll for hit dice.