Thursday, September 5th, 2002

Today is the big day, I actually managed to sleep for about 6 hours last night. We are going to load the car in a few minutes and begin the drive to Deerfield. Strangely enough, I’m hungry. I never want breakfast, and when I travel my tummy is usually too upset to care about food. So I guess I better eat J

Next entry…SPAIN!

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2002

Ok, so I have 2 days of work left. This of course means I have a million things to do before we go. How many of these things do you think I got done today? Exactly. Zero. So instead of only having to do half a million things tomorrow, I have to do all one million!

I might be going slightly overboard, but seriously…today sucked pretty bad.

Monday, September 2nd, 2002

I have just woken up to begin my celebration of Labor Day, hopefully by not working today. As many of you know, for the last month-ish, leading up to this trip I have been working many, many hours so that I can ‘feel good’ about leaving for this long.

Last night we had a wonderful night out in Iowa City with our friends Dimitri and Itzel. Dimitri and I achieved our goal of SAKI!

I guess that’s all for now. I’m just trying to get the feel for this thing before we leave .

Only 3 more days!

Author’s note: Last night I found a printed copy of the ‘web journal’ I did in 2002 when I traveled to Spain for a month. I think it will be interesting to re-post these entries in light of having to cancel my upcoming July trip back to Spain.

Saturday, August 31st, 2002

Today I have setup a web journal, so that I can post information about my exploration of (mainly) Madrid, Spain. I will be in Madrid from Sept 5th – Oct 5th with my wife, Wendy. She is attending a 4 week language study. During the day time she will be in class. so I will perusing my own. varied, interests around Madrid.

I will be trying to post here at least every other day once we are there and I find a Cafe that I like…
Welcome!

In my last post I talked about what you need to start as a Pathfinder player. Today I’d like to talk about the rest of that equation, the Game Master. It is the Game Master’s job to run the show. Part writer, part story-teller, part judge and part ring master.  The amount of work the GM puts into a session is much more than the players ever will.

What does the GM need to get started? The Core Rulebook and a Bestiary. “But wait”, I can hear you saying, “that’s all? Really?” Technically yes. However, of course, there are many supplementary products out there as well. The focus of this article is for those new to Pathfinder and perhaps new to GMing entirely. You don’t want a shopping list longer than your arm for something you aren’t sure about.

The Core Rulebook contains both player and GM sections. Beyond the basic rules you need to know there are great chapters in the GM section for how to create, run and breathe life into your game. Explaining how to build encounters, treasure, traps etc will soon become second nature. These sections do a great job highlighting the mechanical parts of creating adventures.

The Bestiary, of course, is a monster book. It’s full of all kinds of threats big and small for you to challenge your players with. There are numerous appendices helping you to find monsters in various ways which you might be searching for them (by CR, by type, by terrain) as well as the mechanics for how to create stat blocks for your own monster ideas.

Creating the adventures and challenges for your players can be a lot of work outside the actual play session, to say nothing of creating your own unique game setting. There are many wonderful resources published by Paizo to help fill these needs, but I feel they are highly individual choices. One GM may want a game setting ready to go, another may be looking for monsters. A third GM may want both! Paizo has also have made available several modules for free, and more coming next month! Hollow’s Last Hope,  Master of the Fallen Fortress and Revenge of the Kobold King are all available for free now. We Be Goblins and the First Steps trilogy (In Service to Lore, To Delve the Dungeon Deep and A Vision of Betrayal) will be released in June and July for free. These are great resources, even if you don’t plan to run them as you can get some ideas or see what kind of challenges they’ve included for a party of 1st level characters.

Paizo’s game setting world is Golarion, and it is a rich world indeed. In future posts I will go into more detail of this gem. For purposes of this post, I will mention the newly released Inner Sea World Guide. There is enough detail in this book for you to run rich adventures with amazing detail and plot hooks a plenty!

Of particular interest, however, to a fledgling GM is the Game Mastery Guide. Many other kinds of  published materials are praised for their relative ‘crunch’ or ‘fluff’ contents. In the Game Mastery Guide, the fluff is a wealth of information on nearly every aspect of GMing. The crunch takes the form of table, after table, after table of useful charts for generating content on the fly as well as a superb NPC gallery. Need NPC stat blocks in a pinch for an encounter you just had to ad-lib? They’ve got you covered. This book truly is filled with the kinds of sage advice I would have loved to have handed to me 25 years ago.

At the end of the night, it is the Game Master’s job to give everyone a good time. Doing so is not always easy and group dynamics can influence a lot of what goes on and why. Learn your players, learn what makes them tick. Learn why they come to the table and the sorts of challenges they enjoy. Remember why you are sitting behind the screen and make sure you are enjoying it!

In July, Paizo will release 3 new Pathfinder Society scenarios aimed squarely at new players.  New Pathfinders. These scenarios will help to show new players what it means to be a Pathfinder, and who the Pathfinder Society is. And who they aren’t. Normally the 2 a month Pathfinder Society scenarios are $3.99 each (pdf only download) from the Paizo store, these 3 will be free. This is awesome. But let’s back this train up. If you are a new player to the system, free scenarios are not going to do you any good. As a new player, what do you need? With the 7th hardback book, Ultimate Magic, hitting the streets this week, and a Gen Con release set for the 8th book, Ultimate Combat, what are the entry point purchases for a new player?

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook.

Seriously that’s it. This 576 page monster of a book contains all the rules a player needs to create a character and join a game. Paizo also makes Pathfinder Reference Document available on their website, which can give you great insight into the rules before you buy anything.  The hardback book also contains a wealth of information for a Game Master to get started, but the Game Master is also going to want a copy of the Bestiary. Look for a post on that topic aimed at the beginning Game Master coming soon.

“Wait a minute,”  I can hear you saying, “you just said there were 7 hardback books. How can I only need one of them to get started?”

As a new player to the system I strongly recommend you ease into the rules and the flavor at a pace that allows you to savor and enjoy the journey. There are 11 base classes and 7 races to get you started. There are plenty of choices for every character class before you ever start looking at something like the Advanced Players Guide or Ultimate Magic.  I also recommend the Inner Sea Primer if you are going to be playing in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting of Golarion.This 32 page book is packed full of information on the world of Golarion to give the player a great starter taste of the major nations of Golarion.

To get a feel for the choices before you already, dive in and create a character. The character sheet page in the Core Rulebook is great, but if you prefer a fallible electronic version, here is one I like.

Step 1 – Generate abilities. There are several methods laid out, check with your GM how they plan to have new characters generate their abilities. I used to be a big fan of the 4d6, drop the lowest die and arrange to taste. Lately I’ve become a big fan of the 20 point purchase. For those of you looking to play on Hard Mode, 3d6 in straight order rolled.

Step 2 – Choose a race.  There are 7 different races to choose from, each with it’s own feel and abilities.

Step 3 – Choose a class. There are 11 base classes presented in the Core Rulebook. Simple fighter? Devout cleric? Sneaky rouge? Learned wizard? All this and more awaits you. Each class has a hit die size which determines how many base hit points they can gain each level and you Constitution bonus will modify this as well. Some GMs will allow 1st level characters to gain their maximum hit points, others will have you roll the die and use that results. Check with your GM for their preferred method.

Step 4 – Spend skill points. Once you have your class determined that will influence your class skills and overall choices of which skills to spend points on. Every level you gain you get more skill points, based on your class choice and your Intelligence bonus to improve or learn new skills.

Step 5 – Choose feats. Feats are another very important aspect of your character which can really differentiate two characters of the same class from each other. Some feats can improve your combat abilities or options, make your spells more difficult to resists, or even focus a skill to a higher degree of mastery. Several classes start with bonus feats, and can gain additional feats at various level increases. Everyone will gain an additional feat every odd level (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc).

Step 6 – Equipment. Every adventurer needs gear. A trusty weapon, a shield, bags to carry loot, a backpack, a lantern. These things and much, much more are available for your character to purchase. You can refer to Table 6-1 on page 140 of the Core Rulebook to determine how much starting gold you have to spend. Chapter 6 details all the various weapons, armor and gear which you might find helpful to your character’s survival.

Step 7 – Alignment. Alignment is a shorthand summation of your characters relative believe in law-chaos and good-evil spectrum. There are 9 alignments which traverse this spectrum. Some of the classes have specific requirements (any non-lawful, any non-evil, etc) and deities require their clerics to be within ‘one-step’ of the deities alignment.  There is a nice diagram of the alignment matrix on page 166 of the Core Rulebook which makes visualizing the ‘one-step’ rule quite easy. Many games do not allow evil characters and for good reason. Check with your GM for any alignment restrictions for their game.

Step 8 – Background. Weather you write it down or not, it is a great idea to work out some of your characters background. This will help you visualize your character and understand the motivations of your character.  Perhaps something your background is the reason why you choose a certain feat or skill. Your character prefers to use a battle axe over a longsword? Something in your background influences that choice.  A devout follower of Sarenrae? Was that part of your childhood upbringing or did some event bring your character to the Church of Sarenrae later in life?

Game on!

I am by no means a perfect GM, nor to I claim to have all the answers. I am, however, mostly good with people and can usually offer suggestions or solutions based on my past experience and have no problems being frank about my own shortcomings. I accept myself as an imperfect being and look for ways to improve myself in all aspects of my life. Ultimately as a GM you are trying to provide the players with a memorable experience that leaves them wanting to come back to the table next week. We are trying to broaden the community and the only real way to do that is by word of mouth. Friends telling friends what a great time they had and they should come check it out too. There are many hats to wear, for sure. Some of them fit better than others. I’m happy to give advice and discuss specifics, I’m happy to wax philosophical and preach about the perfect world I aspire to. I am personally committed to growing a group of top-notch GMs in Indianapolis. I plan to host the Gen Con GMs before Gen Con starts next year at Scotty’s Brewhouse and want to blow them away with our talent pool.

1. Read and re-read the module as many times as it takes to feel comfortable with what’s going on and why. Make sure the story makes sense in your head so you know where to try and get the players back on track when they go off.
2. Arrive as early as you can prior to the game start. That way you have time to setup what you need, and you can also greet the players as they arrive and in this case help sort out who’s playing at which table.
3. Introduce yourself to the players. Some you’ve played with before, some you have not. Always give your players a little intro speech. Who you are, maybe some of your player or GM history. Why you like Pathfinder Society, why you like to GM. That sort of stuff. Give them a little idea about you and where you are coming from.
4. Introduce the module you will be playing. With the level of email communication we have everyone should be well aware of what they showed up to play, but you’d be surprised. Make sure you say both the number and the title, some players pay attention to different aspects of that. We want to avoid a player accidently playing the same mod twice or showing up thinking they are playing something else. “Tonight we are playing the module #5 Mists of the Mwangi. It is a season 0 module for tier 1-5 level characters. Based on the APL at the table it looks like we’ll be playing sub-tier 1-2.” If there is a choice for the table to make on the sub-tier (because it’s APL 3) then ask them now if they are going to play up or play down. Don’t try to goad them into playing one way or another, you have no vested interest in which sub-tier they play at and should try to remain neutral to the choice.
5. Remind the players of the 3 in game Society rules: Explore, report, cooperate.  These are powerful words to help shape the world.
6. Remind the players of the 3 out of game table rules: No player vs player combat, don’t bully other players and don’t cheat. It is up to you to manage the players at the table. If one player or character is being particularly forceful over other players or new players, gently remind them about the bully rule. There is a world of difference between suggesting a course of action and treating another player like they are their own personal NPC to order around. If it’s not appropriate for a gentle hint, ask them to step out of the room for a moment and speak to them in private about it. If you have to call them out in front of everyone, so be it, but you want to be sure you aren’t being a bully also.
7. Keep out of game chatter to a minimum. This can be a challenge at a large table, when it’s not someone’s turn in the spotlight they can get bored, restless or disruptive. You also need to keep yourself on track and not branch off into stories of past games. It can be tricky as GM also to not slip into meta game conversations since that’s where your brain is partly living the whole time. Focus on the adventure you are playing now, make it the best you can. Make it so the players will want to talk about this session in the future.
8. Perhaps the hardest thing to come to terms with as a GM (at least for me) is don’t pull your punches. You have to reach an equilibrium with the fact that even though you are controlling the ‘bad guys’ you are not against the players. But neither are you for them. You should try to run the encounters as written as much as possible. If there are tactics written, follow them. If there are none, try to have the NPC/monster behave with respect to it’s intelligence and the situation as best you can determine. I have found rolling my dice in the open (as much as possible) to be very liberating in this respect.
9. Players come to the table for different reasons and you have to try and accommodate them all. Some want to role play, some want to role dice. Cutting short a role playing session or cutting short a combat maybe taking away someones reason for coming to the table.
10. Keep notes on the players as the game progresses so you accurately annotate the Chronicles. Be especially careful of the ‘small change’ they spend for things during the mod. Players will forget the 25 gp bribe they gave someone when you hand them the Chronicle.

Tonight should be the last installment of my Pathfinder home game, Slaves of the Mwangi. This campaign represents so many firsts it’s difficult to catch them all.

1. It’s the first campaign I’ve run 15 years.
2. It’s the first campaign I’ve run under the Pathfinder rules.
3. It’s the first campaign I designed with a clear end goal.
4. It’s the first campaign I kind of want a TPK at the end.

Obviously I’m deeply conflicted about this last one. The players are supposed to be heroes. Heroes win in the end. This campaign didn’t exactly turn out the way I pictured it in my mind’s eye. They never do, but this one troubles me a lot. I can’t exactly put my finger on why. The players are mostly great, taken as individuals but the group dynamic just doesn’t work. There is a lot of bickering between characters (and players) over just about everything. I also feel like my narrative elements have been lacking at the table. I have this great story in my head, but it’s not coming out correctly at the table.

I also got infected with the new hotness a few months ago. Being unhappy with the current group, I started planning the next campaign. I’ve had some cool ideas for it, but also some huge bouts of writer’s block. I don’t want to make the same mistakes, and I feel in part that some of the mistakes were that I had too direct of a storyline in mind. I want the next game to be more of a sandbox and let it evolve around the characters goals and actions.

Tonight’s climax starts with the characters fighting Walkena, the mummified child-god of Mzali. While the body of the boy was being prepared for mummification the horn of a powerful succubus was placed in his empty chest cavity. The tiefling Elim is the son of this succubus and has been trying to free her from the Nemesis Well. Elim has been running the characters all over the Mwangi Expanse tricking them into helping him gather what he needs to free his mother and unleash her destruction over Golarion.

Assuming the characters are able to retrieve the Horn of Dziak from Walkena’s chest cavity, they will head to Osibu where the Nemesis Well is located. When they arrive they will find Elim and his friends waiting. They believe they can collapse the dimensional pocket Dziak is trapped in. Elim believes he can open the dimensional pocket. We’ll find out who is right, and who is dead. Also unknown to the characters (and the players) is that Elim is a Psion, a telepath to be exact. He has laid a rather elaborate trap for the characters  which they are pretty blindly going to stumble right into. I expect there to be fatalities.

Wow. So it’s been a little while since we last spoke. While I was away I went ahead and let my passion of the week run away with me *surprise*

I have become deeply involved in Pathfinder Society Organized Play, being selected as a regional coordinator (or Venture-Captain) for Indianapolis. There are presently 23 Venture-Captains around the world. I help get people interested in playing, and getting games setup in local game stores every week. I also run games, of course, and have a great time doing it!

I organized Pathfinder games at the very successful Who’s Yer Con 2011 with a lot of great support from my new friends in the PFS community. Thanks again to everyone who helped, it was fantastic!

My own home campaign, Slaves of the Mwangi, is about to come to a close after 14 months. It’s bitter-sweet. I’ve had a lot of fun getting back in the saddle, that’s for sure, but the game didn’t take off like I dreamed in my head it would. Do they ever? Still, the story was very cool, the characters are interesting, but the group as a whole lacks the kind of cohesion I was hoping for. I’ve started to plan my next campaign which is currently codenamed: Thundarr the Numerian! I’m going to be using the very excellent Dreamscarred Press Psionics Unleashed rules and can’t wait to see how that all turns out!

The Third Riddle

Introduction

As I was scribing my trip to the Veduran Forest, there was a knock on my door. “As the Dawn, you are welcomed. Please enter.” I called, closing my tome and setting down my quill. The door opened and a Pathfinder initiate dressed in a gray smock entered. Prarvel or something was his name, I’d seen him around the Grand Lodge of Absalom but never spoken to him. “Pardon the interruption m’lady, but Venture-Captain Hestram bid me to summon you.”

From the private quarters to the meeting hall is only a few minutes stroll across the grounds of the Grand Lodge, headquarters of the Pathfinder Society. Indeed the Lodge in Absalom is the grandest in all of Golarion, a hub of Society activity as well as initiate training. A meeting with a Venture-Captain is not uncommon, but to be summoned alone certainly was interesting. Having known Venture-Captain Hestram a number of years, and trained under him while here at the Lodge I knew him to be a man of seriousness and dedication to the Pathfinders. As I entered the meeting hall, he was speaking to a young Osirion who recently completed the Confirmation and become a fully commissioned Pathfinder. “Go to the docks and see that the Korvosan captain will be ready come daybreak.”  Hestram was telling the Osirion, he looked to me and said “Ah Kuduro, excellent! Let me introduce you to Brother Asim. Brother Asim meet Kuduro al-Lazuri Daughter of the Dawn.” We both nodded a greeting to each other. Asim said “A pleasure, m’lady. If you’ll both please excuse me” with a half bow and was gone.

“Kuduro,” Venture-Captain Hestram began, “we’ve received a disturbing report from the Lodge in the Osirion capital, Sothis. Senior Pathfinder Colm Safan made a wonderful discovery in the ancient Osirion libraries, after many years of research. He’s uncovered the location of the Ravenous Sphinx, believed to be the resting place of the wizard-priest Mektep-Han. Colm set out months ago with a caravan and a work crew but he’s gone missing.” Colm was a Pathfinder scholar of great renown; many of the ancient Osirion texts we studied were found or translated by him.  Hestram continued, “It seems that the Sphinx is indeed hungry and perhaps it’s appetite has claimed one of ours. You have shown great skill during your last two missions, helping to secure a new Lodge in Taldor at the Railford Distillery and returning the Lore Stone from the Veduran Forest. Beyond your skill you’ve also shown leadership, and thus the Ten have chosen you to lead a group of newly Confirmed Pathfinders to discover what fate has befallen Safan. Anything else you learn about the Sphinx will aid in the Society’s understanding of ancient Osirion. When you arrive in Sothis speak with Venture-Captain Norden Balentiir at the Lodge, he will be able to provide you with maps and local contacts to get your team underway. The Dawn will break the night.” Hestram opens his hands palm up toward me.

“Of course Venture-Captain. It is my honor to be chosen by the Ten for such a mission. By the Light and the Truth we will find Pathfinder Safan.” I said. “What of my companions Sakell and Jozen?”

“It is the will of the Ten that the others travel a different path, one which will take them into Qadira.” Hestram said, knowing my discomfort talking about my homeland.

“Yes Venture-Captain,” I could feel my anger rising quickly even at the mention of Qadira. “It probably would be best if I did not travel…there.” A flashback raced to the surface of my memory. The horses. The blood. The sword. The flames. “It seems we will each be having our own kind of fun in the desert. Asim will be part of my team and we will leave with the Dawnflower’s blessing?”

“Indeed Daughter of the Dawn, that is correct.” Hestram smiled. “The rest of your team is comprised of a pair of half-orc half-brothers, if you can fathom such a thing. Havok, a barbarian and Sharanam, a holy man. Talathel is an elven scout whose talents you may find useful, and Lia the light-fingered. Her skills will likely be of the most use if even half of what we know about ancient Osirion burial customs are to be believed! They have already been instructed to assemble at the docks in the morning.”

“I will make my preparations then.” With a head nod I turn and take my leave.