First Time GM (Pathfinder)

[Jaros]

So I'm looking to run a campaign for the first time in January. I'm not good at writing or anything and want to play some pretty made campaigns. I've seen the Pathfinder Adventure Paths and think they sound pretty interesting.

Does anyone have any summaries/recommendations for the Paths to help me choose one? Or tips for which rulebooks are good to include/avoid other than Core? (This'll be my first time with Pathfinder, though I used to play a lot of 3.5)

[Nibbens]

So I'm looking to run a campaign for the first time in January. I'm not good at writing or anything and want to play some pretty made campaigns. I've seen the Pathfinder Adventure Paths and think they sound pretty interesting.

Does anyone have any summaries/recommendations for the Paths to help me choose one? Or tips for which rulebooks are good to include/avoid other than Core? (This'll be my first time with Pathfinder, though I used to play a lot of 3.5)

Rise of the Runelords. Plain and simply amazing. It runs level 1 to 16 with some pretty mature themes at times. Complete with serial Killers, and scenes straight out of "the hills have eyes" (Yes, I mean human-leather love-seats).

Spoiler

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It will actually require the Dm to record the characters Sins and Virtues (as in seven deadly sins) as they play and a big reveal occurs when you drop it on them that the way they've been acting in game affect how the end stages play out.

[Spruit]

So I'm looking to run a campaign for the first time in January. I'm not good at writing or anything and want to play some pretty made campaigns. I've seen the Pathfinder Adventure Paths and think they sound pretty interesting.

Does anyone have any summaries/recommendations for the Paths to help me choose one? Or tips for which rulebooks are good to include/avoid other than Core? (This'll be my first time with Pathfinder, though I used to play a lot of 3.5)

Of the ones I have played or DMed for, Legacy of Fire is fun so far, I am enjoying rise of runelords, but I haven't gotten very far yet. Carrion Crown was enjoyable, and Wrath of the Righteous was interesting for what I played. Apparently I can't link things yet... Theres a pathfinder summary page of the adventures though.

[Jaros]

Thanks guys! After looking around some I've settled on Rise of the Runelords, though I've noticed its meant for four players, and I was wanting to run with 5, possibly 6. Any tips for scaling it up? I've seen one person recommend adding another creature or two to each encounter, and another suggesting simply upping all the creature's stats by two.

[the_david]

You might want to try something simpler first. You could run Crypt of the Everflame, Masks of the Living God and City of Golden Death first. (Otherwise known as the Price of Immortality trilogy.)

[Kol Korran]

Hey Jaros! So you've got a bigger party, huh? Well, this means you may need to upgrade a few things:
- battle encounters: both for challenge, bit also for XP, if you use it. (Some groups just dump it altogether, and level when it seems appropriate, after climaxes and such )
- treasure
- possibly other specific features, which may be game specific.

I don't know the RotRL campaign, though I've head good things about it. I suggest you look for logs or discussions concerning it to look for potential problems, solutions and tweaks. Note that running a permafrost campaign can contain quite a lot of work to adjust your gaming group. The AP serves as a base plan, which you tweak, adjust, and respond to. I'm running another AP, and found I needed to change quite a few things.YYet, this changes from gaming group to gaming group.

Some ideas about adjusting an AP (including how to deal with larger groups):
- Consider the party's play styles as a whole, and of individual players. APs can't cater for all of the various personalities and tastes, and so try to keep things quite generic..It's up to you to make things more... personal.
- A word about the APs campaign traits. Pathfinder this to use these in order to tie characters more together, and give a bit more flair to the campaign. I'd suggest not using them though they forces some sort of a story on the characters, which may not fit them. Instead, use them as inspiration only.Let the players pick the stories that fit their concept of character, and either find trait or create one to fit them.
- I'd highly suggest reading 2-3 module ahead. Not in detail, bit to get the gist of future adventures, NPCs and important campaign themes. This will help you plans ahead, tie the loosely tied adventures better, and do some build I'll and foreshadowing ahead. You see, in most of the APs I've read, the different modules are written by different authors and are partially meant to be played as a stand alone adventure. Unfortunately, due to this, the campaign structure as a whole story usually suffer-NPCs/ locations/ thems get forgotten/ shoved away, and so on, while others just "suddenly spring up" when they should have had a reason to appear before. So... Rwas ahead if possible.
- large party? I'd suggest NOT to adjust too much at the start. I use the first 2-3 sessions of a game to let the party get used to their characters, the world, and for me to learn what they are capable of. I try to ere on "easier" than "harder" at first, til I get a good feel of the party power. possible solution are.indeed more enemirates, as your main problem here is action economy. This is especially important for major set-piece battles. I suggest not to use the same creatureach though, bit add someone who adds a bit more complexity/ options/ choices. A caster, a pet beast, a force nurture (bard), a trap, some special feature (magic effect, cursed alter).
- beefing enemies work not as well you don't solve the action economy, and just make things harder than should be.
- A note about most APs adventures encounter design- they are... how to put it? Not that inspiring. I'll admit that I've read but a few, (And I haven't read RotRL ) but many suffer from the same problems: First, a lot for them can be quite easy as written, at least for experience players. Secondly, the APs are many times packed with lots of meaningless and quite boring encounters who add little to the story, atmosphere, or anything other than XP. If you do use advancement by XP, my suggestion Epson be to scrap these entirely, and add their "XP value in enemies to intersting encounters, beef them I'll a bit. My group values it's game time, and we don't intend to spend time on crazy battles. Thirdly, about 85-90% of the battles include just enemies, usually a single type (Mayyybe two), with a mostly boring terrain, and combat gestural. Again, it's up to you to make it more interesting.
- one last thing: Though you're playing an AP, be aware that unless your party likes to be led by the nose, that they WILL do things you don't expect, which the AP simply doesn't cover. A gut instinct of many GMs is to try and reel the party back into your "safe zone". I'd advise you however to try and roll with the party, and see where it leads. Many times for my group those we're the most awesome moments! Yeah, improvising from your *S's can be intimidating, but it's a skill you get better with, and can be great fun!

Good luck to you!