So You Want to Be a Pathfinder GM [Suggestions]

[Novawurmson]

Hello, everyone!

I'm going to be running a panel at a small (~1000 people) local nerd convention with the above title. One piece of advice I'm obviously going to be suggesting is to reach out to online communities for help, so I would be a hypocrite if I didn't take my own advice. :smallsmile:

Two portions of the panel will be "How can I become a better GM?" and "What are some major traps GMs often fall into?" I'm planning on incorporating some of everyone's answers into the final presentation.

Here's some of my answers: What are some of yours?

Know the rules - Sit down with the CRB and read it cover to cover. If you don’t have a base idea of how everything works, you’re not going to have a fun time. It’d be like hiring a lawyer who never went to law school or went to a courtroom before. Learning the rules speeds up play - every second you don’t have to spend flipping through a book is another second of play.

Prepare for sessions - The more you prepare, the more time in-game can be spent on fun. Going to use a monster? Re-read its stats and feats. Going to use a subsystem you’re not familiar with (i.e. grappling or mounted combat)? Re-read the rules. Going to be introducing an NPC? Come up with two new interesting aspects to them.

Be flexible in how your players achieve goals - Don’t railroad. Always think of multiple solutions to the problems you’re going to present, and allow others. Always have a few NPCs and encounters in your back pocket for unexpected situations. Always let players TRY their ideas. Follow the “Rule of Cool.”

Create deep characters, and encourage your players to do the same -
Appearance - How they look.
Personality - How they interact with others.
Background - Defining events in their life.
Connections - Who they have strong emotions or social bonds with.
Motivations - What they want to accomplish.

Don’t feel utterly bound by the rules - be inspired by them. The name is often not what it says on the box - A Fighter is not necessarily the best at fighting. A character who believes in a higher power doesn’t have to be a cleric. The toughs at the local bar can be Barbarians even if they’ve never left city limits before. Don’t be afraid to refluff - A demon that “summons” other demons might regurgitate them from a secondary stomach (failure indicating that they were digested); an ogre or an orc warrior works just fine as a CR ⅓ to CR 3 “baby” troll.

Vary Your Encounters - “One Opponent Every Encounter” leads to action economy problems. All humanoids means no reason to take anti-undead abilities.

Run a Premade Campaign at Least Once - Helps give you an understanding of a lot of things newbie (or even veteran) GMs have trouble with, like “chaining” story events, appropriate loot, varying encounters, etc.

Audit Your Player’s Character Sheets - Go through each player’s character sheet. Find every term you don’t know and learn it. This is critical for finding your players’ strengths and weaknesses. In addition, if you can’t figure out how a player got something, talk to them about it. They may have made a mistake, made a judgement call that should have been yours, they may be cheating, or there might be a reasonable explanation.


Play in a Campaign - If you’ve never played in a campaign, or haven’t played in a while, it’s easy to lose sight of how the game looks from a player’s perspective.

Randomness Does Not Equal Fun - Don’t use critical fumble rules. Don’t force players to randomize parts of their background unless everyone is enjoying it.

Make Your Campaign Serious; Your Players Will Add the Silliness - If you make the campaign silly, it can be extremely hard for your players to see it as a believable world. If the baseline is serious, then the fun, crazy things your players do will be different and engaging, rather than blending in with the background of “weird.”

When Your Players Stumble, Make Setbacks, Not Failures - Rising and falling action creates tension and drama. When your players fail a Stealth check while sneaking into somewhere, don’t immediately send the whole fortress crashing down on them: A few guards get alerted, and they lose some time chasing after them to stop a greater hubub. When the players insult the High Priestess, don’t have her kick them out immediately and forever: Give them a chance to apologize or make it right later.

No Alignment Equals “Stupid” - Good is not naive, it’s compassionate; Lawful is not robotic, it’s disciplined; Evil is not incompetent, it’s ruthless; Chaotic is not cartoony, it’s unrestrained.


The “Low Magic” or “No Magic Item” Campaign - Magic items are an integral part of a character’s power - if you are not giving your players magic items, they will not be able to function effectively. It’s part of their expected advancement; would you play an FPS if you were never given guns or ammunition? In addition, the classes that most need magic items are mundane classes.

Not Understanding Challenger Rating - CR=Character Level does not equal a challenge. One encounter per day is usually not a challenge.

Death by Large Party - Makes the math and the social aspects much, much harder.

Death by Disruptive Members - Munchkins, personality conflicts.

The “Book Campaign” - Don’t write your fantasy novel and your campaign at the same time. Becoming too involved in your plans, not willing to allow players alternate ways of accomplishing goals.

No Rules/Freeform - If all you do is story, you’re leaving out major aspects of the game system. If you don’t like the system, find another one that works with the game you want to run. Players who like Pathfinder like some amount of structure - there are other systems if your players don’t like it. Might also cause frustration in players who never know what their characters can do or how to interact with the world. If yesterday a roll of 10 on a Diplomacy check swayed the king’s heart and today a street orphan won’t give you the time of day for a 30, something’s wrong. Players make characters to accomplish goals, but if you keep moving the goal posts, they’ll get annoyed.

Rules Nazi - Slows down play to a crawl to be sure it’s always done “right.” Might keep implementing rules because they’re in the book rather than change it to the reality of the group and the campaign.

The Killer GM - Most players like a challenge made by a friend, not an enemy across the table.

Stinginess - Never granting meaningful rewards, never providing opportunities for your players to accomplish goals, never offering goals.

Wish-fulfillment - Granting everything your players ask for immediately, flooding your players with chances to have their egos stroked, etc.

[rockdeworld]

This sounds like a great opportunity to help people who are interested in being good DMs get better at it! Here's some things I'd add/edit:


Know the rules
That does help make a good GM, and part of becoming a better GM is to be open to new rules you didn't know before. For example, I was introduced to the unchained classes the other day by a player. My gut reaction was "these sound OP, I don't want to use them." And that's even though I know the most powerful classes are in core, even in PF. So I looked at them, at what effect they would actually have on the game (rogue gets Finesse at first level? That's fine. Etc.) And I didn't see anything beyond the normal classes (in fact, some unchained classes are weaker), so I allowed them.

And an example of the opposite (GMs denying things they haven't seen) most often happens with 3.5 psionics, followed by 3.5 Tome of Battle - a book that exists for the purpose of fixing the fighter class to the point that people actually want to play it.


Be flexible in how your players achieve goals - Don’t railroad.
Exactly this. It hurts for the PCs to find a exploit that I didn't think of (and this applies both to solving encounters and in building characters), but that feeling alone should not mean I refuse to let them do it. The only time I question whether a PC should be allowed to do something (that they can do by the rules) is when it renders another character in the party completely useless on a consistent basis (e.g. a class feature they can use in every encounter).


Don’t feel utterly bound by the rules - be inspired by them.
I disagree to the following extent: where your players know the rules and want to leverage those rules, follow them. It's absolutely bad DMing to refuse to allow a player to do something that the rules say they can do (see also the previous comment). And it's also bad DMing to, for example, to give creatures immunity to daze when they normally wouldn't be just because one of the PCs consistently casts Dazing spells.


Vary Your Encounters
I agree. And I would add that if every encounter is resistant/immune to fire, the sorcerer who wanted to be a fire mage is going to be sad and roll a new character/leave the group.

This sortof follows the more general theme of "Don't make encounters that leave one or more PCs useless." Very, very rarely it may be acceptable (most importantly if the encounter is short), but every time you do it, one person who came to play a game doesn't get to play, and that's one of the worst feelings a gamer can have. And it's something DMs should actively try to avoid making players feel.


Audit Your Player’s Character Sheets
I would change "audit" to "Go through" so it sounds less IRS-y, but yes, I agree. And I would add that it's perfectly acceptable to talk with a player about their plan for their character's growth by level. And it's probably a good idea if you have never seen this class before (see again: psionics, tome of battle). Any reasonable player will tell you what they want to do with their character, especially if they know it'll help you make the campaign better (or allow them into the campaign at all).


Randomness Does Not Equal Fun
Equal is the keyword here. Some people like randomness. Those that hate it probably aren't playing Pathfinder. But in any case, it's probably a good idea to find out where your players are on that spectrum before introducing homebrew mechanics like critical fumbles/successes.

As for random backgrounds: I'd say the one exception is if the character's background contains amnesia. Do whatever you want with that background.


When Your Players Stumble, Make Setbacks, Not Failures
And preferably not instant death. Resurrection is prohibitively expensive early-on, and moderately so/cheap/free (depending on optimization) late. It sucks to have to roll new character unexpectedly though (in battle, players are more prepared for this, but usually still expect not to go from full HP to dead in 1 full attack, so build encounters with that in mind).


No Alignment Equals “Stupid”
I would suggest you drop the second half of each of those phrases, because alignment still causes arguments. And exactly what Evil means depends on the campaign (see Morality and Fiends (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828)). Good is not necessarily naive; Lawful is not necessarily robotic; Evil is not necessarily incompetent (or more specifically: not just attacking things for fun); Chaotic is not necessarily cartoony.


And for traps...

The “Low Magic” or “No Magic Item” Campaign
Yes. I would just add that low/no magic makes mundane classes so weak as to be unable to handle encounters after level 5 or so (see: the CR 3 Allip (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/allip), and it just gets worse from there), and makes full casters relatively very powerful (because they stay about the same).


Not Understanding Challenger Rating
And to be very specific: a party of 4 should be able to handle 4 equal-CR encounters per day before their resources are used up. It's the party of 1 that can only handle 1 equal-CR encounter per day (and then only has a 50% chance of winning).


Death by Disruptive Members
It can be very hard for the DM to tell who these people are because of friendship/romance/social blindness/whatever. Luckily/unluckily, the people who can't stand the disruptive member will just leave and not come back. However, they might keep coming for a while just because your game is the only game in town (or only half-decent one), and put up with the member because they like everything else.

This can toe the line with people just being people, and that's life. But the problem is when some people are actively making the game worse for others, and you won't know unless you're willing to listen to how people are feeling about the game and the group without prejudice (like "I want to get better at DMing guys, how am I doing?"). Even then you may not know. This is a difficult problem to tackle. But if one person is talking about how great their character is (and not just how excited they are to play them, or explaining why after someone asks), or how much better than another player's, that is probably a disruptive player.


No Rules/Freeform
What you said here relates to what I was saying earlier about letting the players leverage the rules they do know to their advantage, rather than ignoring those rules.


Rules Nazi
And if there really is an important rule you messed up, I think there's 2 appropriate ways to handle it:
1. Drop the rule for the rest of the campaign. It's usually not a bad thing (provided the group is ok with it) and it maintains consistency because you've already done it that way, so at least your players will know what to expect.
2. Admit it openly so that the players know why it was wrong and how you're going to do things differently. "Guys, I'm sorry, I messed up enforcing a rule I shouldn't have (or vice versa). I actually should have done X, and it's important because Y, and I'm going to do that from now on."

Using the rule next time without mentioning the change is an inappropriate way to handle it, because it leaves the players uncertain of how the game works. And that will inevitably lead to frustration and bitter feelings.


Stinginess
Forgetting to award monster loot...

Anyway, I think the rest of what you have is good. Let me know if you have any other questions about my post, and I'll try to clarify. Have fun at the panel!

[Selion]

I'm not an experienced master, i'm running a campaign from a pair of years and never had mastering experiences before.
In the early sessions I had most of the issues you reported, mainly the rail-road plot and a bad CR and wealth management.

Additionally i would add a pair of suggestions that helped me in the past:

1) Don't be a killer DM, but don't be too kind either: once players know that you would do anything to save them from a bad roll the amusement is spoiled. If you don't want to kill characters some serious injures or consequences would do the job and open the plot for new stories. A pair of weeks in game without an arm should be enough to instill in a warrior respect for a dangerous world.

2) It may happen you don't remember a rule in an unexpected situation. Don't stop the game to search for the rule, make clear that you don't know the official rule and decide for a single-use house rule. Later you can search the rule and explain it to the player.
However it should not happen too often, otherwise players lose control of their characters.

3) This could be debatable, but i think that as long as you are equal towards your players you occasionally can cheat. An encounter that should have been epic is going to be resolved too quickly? Add a chunk of HP to the main boss without saying anything, if the party had a big advantage it won't kill anyone, but the players will feel as if they had overcome an hard encounter.

[Novawurmson]

That does help make a good GM, and part of becoming a better GM is to be open to new rules you didn't know before. For example, I was introduced to the unchained classes the other day by a player. My gut reaction was "these sound OP, I don't want to use them." And that's even though I know the most powerful classes are in core, even in PF. So I looked at them, at what effect they would actually have on the game (rogue gets Finesse at first level? That's fine. Etc.) And I didn't see anything beyond the normal classes (in fact, some unchained classes are weaker), so I allowed them.

And an example of the opposite (GMs denying things they haven't seen) most often happens with 3.5 psionics, followed by 3.5 Tome of Battle - a book that exists for the purpose of fixing the fighter class to the point that people actually want to play it.

That's important to add, thanks. You want to only allow things in your game that you're comfortable with, and an important part of that is getting comfortable with the things your players want to play.


I disagree to the following extent: where your players know the rules and want to leverage those rules, follow them. It's absolutely bad DMing to refuse to allow a player to do something that the rules say they can do (see also the previous comment). And it's also bad DMing to, for example, to give creatures immunity to daze when they normally wouldn't be just because one of the PCs consistently casts Dazing spells.

Oops, I was just talking about refluffing. I'll add more about how the refluffing should stick exactly to the rules system even if you're describing it colorfully (i.e. the regurgitating demon still has the same failure chance, the "troll babies" wouldn't get regeneration, and the "village tough" barbarians would still take all normal bonuses and penalties from rage).



I agree. And I would add that if every encounter is resistant/immune to fire, the sorcerer who wanted to be a fire mage is going to be sad and roll a new character/leave the group.

Absolutely. Added to my notes.


This sortof follows the more general theme of "Don't make encounters that leave one or more PCs useless." Very, very rarely it may be acceptable (most importantly if the encounter is short), but every time you do it, one person who came to play a game doesn't get to play, and that's one of the worst feelings a gamer can have. And it's something DMs should actively try to avoid making players feel.

Exactly. This is going to get its own section in "things to avoid."


I would change "audit" to "Go through" so it sounds less IRS-y, but yes, I agree. And I would add that it's perfectly acceptable to talk with a player about their plan for their character's growth by level. And it's probably a good idea if you have never seen this class before (see again: psionics, tome of battle). Any reasonable player will tell you what they want to do with their character, especially if they know it'll help you make the campaign better (or allow them into the campaign at all).

What about "Know Your Player's Character Sheets?" I should also add something about new players (well, new players especially) not leveling up correctly and short-changing themselves - forgetting base saves, base attack bonus, etc.


And preferably not instant death. Resurrection is prohibitively expensive early-on, and moderately so/cheap/free (depending on optimization) late. It sucks to have to roll new character unexpectedly though (in battle, players are more prepared for this, but usually still expect not to go from full HP to dead in 1 full attack, so build encounters with that in mind).

This is kind of what I was trying to get at about randomness (i.e. your players are going to roll more 1s over the course of the campaign then any one NPC, but if your player rolls a 1 at the wrong time it can ruin months or years of emotional investment.


I would suggest you drop the second half of each of those phrases, because alignment still causes arguments. And exactly what Evil means depends on the campaign (see Morality and Fiends (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828)). Good is not necessarily naive; Lawful is not necessarily robotic; Evil is not necessarily incompetent (or more specifically: not just attacking things for fun); Chaotic is not necessarily cartoony.

Yeah, probably not the best idea to let the panel devolve into an alignment debate.


And to be very specific: a party of 4 should be able to handle 4 equal-CR encounters per day before their resources are used up. It's the party of 1 that can only handle 1 equal-CR encounter per day (and then only has a 50% chance of winning).

Yup! Another section is going to be all about encounter design.


But the problem is when some people are actively making the game worse for others, and you won't know unless you're willing to listen to how people are feeling about the game and the group without prejudice (like "I want to get better at DMing guys, how am I doing?"). Even then you may not know. This is a difficult problem to tackle. But if one person is talking about how great their character is (and not just how excited they are to play them, or explaining why after someone asks), or how much better than another player's, that is probably a disruptive player.

I think that's the heart of the matter. Also, asking your players how you can improve is great advice.

What you said here relates to what I was saying earlier about letting the players leverage the rules they do know to their advantage, rather than ignoring those rules.


And if there really is an important rule you messed up, I think there's 2 appropriate ways to handle it:
1. Drop the rule for the rest of the campaign. It's usually not a bad thing (provided the group is ok with it) and it maintains consistency because you've already done it that way, so at least your players will know what to expect.
2. Admit it openly so that the players know why it was wrong and how you're going to do things differently. "Guys, I'm sorry, I messed up enforcing a rule I shouldn't have (or vice versa). I actually should have done X, and it's important because Y, and I'm going to do that from now on."

Using the rule next time without mentioning the change is an inappropriate way to handle it, because it leaves the players uncertain of how the game works. And that will inevitably lead to frustration and bitter feelings.

Excellent advice. I like to keep a "house rules" document to spell these out for players as much as possible.

Thanks for all the feedback! Tons of good advice in there (for the panel and for GMs)!

[Vhaidara]

The one note I would make is that there is a form of critical failure that can work: sliding scale of penalties (I use this)
Players get something minor, but flavorful (My usual example is the guy punching a magmin got a reflex save, then a fort save, and when he failed them took -1 to his next damage roll from burnt knuckles)
Enemies get something moderate (Pirate captain had his attack ducked and had to spend a swift action on his next turn pulling his sword out of the mast)
Player Allies/GMPCs get REALLY nasty things (overshooting a teleport attack into a wall of fire, overestimating his cartwheel and KOing himself on a stone wall, etc)

[rockdeworld]

What about "Know Your Player's Character Sheets?"
Yeah, sounds fine. Glad I could help.

[Korahir]

I'd add some advice regarding group composition etc. A GM needs social skills to resolve issues arising in the playgroup. Just think of all the stories in "the most horrible DM - player ever etc." threads. So I would add some recommendations along the line of:

Think of things that are acceptable at your table and things that are absolutely not. If you don't know the other players, write them down or announce them before you start, as a form of code of conduct or roleplaying etiquette. This can spare you a lot of bad DM experiences later on. Examples of such rules could be:


No munchkinery.
No ingame rape or torture.
If you lose your character sheet, your pc dies. Send me a copy for safety.
No smoking at the table.



I picked a wide array here. The general idea is to have some rules that cannot be broken and therefor have a playing field you and your players can enjoy.




Other tips i can think of:

Be patient - It takes time to get a feel what the group wants and what you can offer. Ask after every session what should be changed and adress issues you feel proactively.

Build the world not the story - already mentioned, but cannot be emphasized enough. Never ever use a DMNPC unless absolutely necessary to keep the game going and all your players agree.

Try different levels of difficulty to find out what your group enjoys most.

Use the pfsrd.com or Apps to speed up rule clarifications.

If you made a mistake, admit it and just roll with it.

[Faily]

Use the Pathfinder GM Screen. Not nescessarily to hide rolls (rolling open for the players is fun too), but because the screen have so many cheat-tables of important info on various conditions, DCs, Experience, etc... I found it to be awesome when I GM to have things like that.

Secondly, I encourage having a Session 0 before starting a new game, where people can make characters together and coordinate the party setup. It's also a good opportunity to inform players of what sort of genre that game will be so players can prepare accordingly and also smooth out some ideas or suggestions. If you don't know your players very well (you only meet for gaming and don't socialize outside of it), this is a good time to get to know them a bit better and learn a bit more on how you can create a game they will have fun with.